The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-12-26

AT Grace Methodist Episcopal Church
 -Subject: ''The Word, His Incarna-
 ton and Glory" - Superiority of
 Christ Over Nature, the Law and the
 Rihle. 7,
 Rev, Dr. wv. W. Wilson delivered a
 very impressive sermon at Grace Meth
 odist church. of which he is the below
 ed pastor, on Sunday. His subject was
 The Word, His Incarnation and
 Glory" He spoke as follows:
 And the Word was made flesh. and
 dWelt among us, and we beheld his
 glory, the glory as of the only begot- ten of the Father full of grace and -44rluth."-John l., 14.
 The name Of Jesusinthe text, where he is called the word, while peculiar to
 John among the New Testament writ CTS. was by no means an invention of his, or original with him. We find it in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Chaldee paraphrase, the writings of Philo. and of the other Hellenizing Jews
 In Genesis we read "the Word of the Lord (Dabar Jehovah) came unto Abrarn in @ vision, saying, Fear not, Abram, am thy shield and thy ex- ceedfng great reward" If it had been a mere utterance of God to the patri- arch It would have been so expressed, but the word performs the personal functions of a speaker and claims for himself a personal office. In the pSalmody of David it is said, "The Word of the Lord is tried, he is a buckler to all who put their trust in him" And elsewhere, '"The Lord ap- peared in Shiloh by the Word of the ! Lord" Other passages might be ad- i duced, but these suffice to show that l the appellation was used in the Old 1 Testament Scriptures.
 In the Targums or Chaldee para l phrase, those writings which were us- ed in the synagogues after the return | of the people from captivity, written 1 In the Babylonian or Chaldee language because having thought and spoken in 1 this tongue so long, they had largely 1 forgotten thtir original language, it is 1 even more frequent. Being a sort of 1 commentary on the ancient Hebrew Bible, wherever God is spoken of as 1nanlfesting himself either in creative energy, word, person or otherwise, such manifestation is attributed not to him but to the Word.
 s Thus, God created man in his own image" "The Word of Jehovah creat- ca man." Adam and Eve heard the voice of the Lord God''-they heard "tfle voice of the Word of the Lord God" "The Lord God, he it is that goath before thee'' Other instances might be cited, but these are enough, all of which were familiar to the Jews. 1 John included, who living the longest and writing the last, and Knowing from his own personal access to the other gospels that this significant name had been omitted from the writings of the other eyangelists, and wishing to re- VlVe It, uses it at the very commence ment of his gospel with as much as- sumption of its being known and un- derstood as Moses did the name of God at the beginning of the Petate11ch. without any attempt at simplification or proof But John was influenced also py another object, namely, to refute certain existing l1eresies respecting 1t.
 Those Jews who had scattered abroad through Greece, or had come into con- tact with Grecian philosophy, Phile in their number, had become enamored with its beauty and depth, and had at tempted to combine it with their own revealed system. The only outcome of Which could be separate and distinct system. Just as when you combine i , acid and soda tha res,I+ iS 1 common salt, so, to combine these two. or let them impinge either antagonist lcally or helpfully one upon the other. Is to beget a third and largely dis { tinet system. The stern and rigid bearing of pfil- osophy must give way before the naive and simple poesy of Hebrew I -nought, and vice versa. Hence we nave syncretism, Neo-Platonism and (