_All things were made by him, and without him was not anything
made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the
light of men_.--John i. 3, 4.
It seems to me that any lover of the gospel given to thinking, and
especially one accustomed to the effort of uttering thought, can hardly
have failed to feel dissatisfaction, more or less definite, with the
close of the third verse, as here presented to English readers. It
seems to me in its feebleness, unlike, and rhetorically unworthy of the
rest. That it is no worse than pleonastic, that is, redundant,
therefore only unnecessary, can be no satisfaction to the man who would
find perfection, if he may, in the words of him who was nearer the Lord
than any other. The phrase 'that was made' seems, from its uselessness,
weak even to foolishness after what precedes: 'All things were made by
him, and without him was not anything made _that was made_.'
My hope was therefore great when I saw, in reading the Greek, that the
shifting of a period would rid me of the pleonasm. If thereupon any
precious result of meaning should follow, the change would not merely
be justifiable--seeing that points are of no authority with anyone
accustomed to the vagaries of scribes, editors, and printers--but one
for which to give thanks to God. And I found the change did unfold such
a truth as showed the rhetoric itself in accordance with the highest
thought of the apostle. So glad was I, that it added little to my
satisfaction to find the change supported by the best manuscripts and
versions. It could add none to learn that the passage had been, in
respect of the two readings, a cause of much disputation: the ground of
argument on the side of the common reading, seemed to me worse than
worthless.
Let us then look at the passage as I think it ought to be translated,
and after that, seek the meaning for the sake of which it was written.
It is a meaning indeed by no means dependent for its revelation on this
passage, belonging as it does to the very truth as it is in Jesus; but
it is therein magnificently expressed by the apostle, and differently
from anywhere else--that is, if I am right in the interpretation which
suggested itself the moment I saw the probable rhetorical relation of
the words.
'All things were made through him, and without him was made not one
thing. That which was made in him was life, and the life was the light
of men.'
Note the antithesis of the _through_ and the _in_.
In this grand assertion seems to me to lie, more than shadowed, the
germ of creation and redemption--of all the divine in its relation to
all the human.
In attempting to set forth what I find in it, I write with no desire to
provoke controversy, which I loathe, but with some hope of presenting
to the minds of such as have become capable of seeing it, the glory of
the truth of the Father and the Son, as uttered by this first of seers,
after the grandest fashion of his insight. I am as indifferent to a
reputation for orthodoxy as I despise the championship of novelty. To
the untrue, the truth itself must seem unsound, for the light that is
in them is darkness.
I believe, then, that Jesus Christ is the eternal son of the eternal
father; that from the first of firstness Jesus is the son, because God
is the father--a statement imperfect and unfit because an attempt of
human thought to represent that which it cannot grasp, yet which it so
believes that it must try to utter it even in speech that cannot be
right. I believe therefore that the Father is the greater, that if the
Father had not been, the Son could not have been. I will not apply
logic to the thesis, nor would I state it now but for the sake of what
is to follow. The true heart will remember the inadequacy of our
speech, and our thought also, to the things that lie near the unknown
roots of our existence. In saying what I do, I only say what Paul
implies when he speaks of the Lord giving up the kingdom to his father,
that God may be all in all. I worship the Son as the human God, the
divine, the only Man, deriving his being and power from the Father,
equal with him as a son is the equal at once and the subject of his
father--but _making himself the equal of his father in what is most
precious in Godhead, namely, Love_--which is, indeed, the essence of
that statement of the evangelist with which I have now to do--a higher
thing than the making of the worlds and the things in them, which he
did by the power of the Father, not by a self-existent power in
himself, whence the apostle, to whom the Lord must have said things he
did not say to the rest, or who was better able to receive what he said
to all, says, 'All things were made' not _by_, but '_through_ him.'
We must not wonder things away into nonentity, but try to present them
to ourselves after what fashion we are able--our shadows of the
heavenly. For our very beings and understandings and consciousnesses,
though but shadows in regard to any perfection either of outline or
operation, are yet shadows of his being, his understanding, his
consciousness, and he has cast those shadows; they are no more causally
our own than his power of creation is ours. In our shadow-speech then,
and following with my shadow-understanding as best I can the words of
the evangelist, I say, The Father, in bringing out of the unseen the
things that are seen, made essential use of the Son, so that all that
exists was created _through_ him. What the difference between the part
in creation of the Father and the part of the Son may be, who can
understand?--but perhaps we may one day come to see into it a little;
for I dare hope that, through our willed sonship, we shall come far
nearer ourselves to creating. The word _creation_ applied to the
loftiest success of human genius, seems to me a mockery of humanity,
itself in process of creation.
Let us read the text again: 'All things were made _through_ him, and
without him was made not one thing. That which was made _in_ him was
life.' You begin to see it? The power by which he created the worlds
was given him by his father; he had in himself a greater power than
that by which he made the worlds. There was something made, not
_through_ but _in_ him; something brought into being by himself. Here
he creates in his grand way, in himself, as did the Father. 'That which
was made _in_ him was _life_'
What does this mean? What is the _life_ the apostle intends? Many forms
of life have come to being through the Son, but those were results, not
forms of the life that was brought to existence _in_ him. He could not
have been employed by the Father in creating, save in virtue of the
life that was _in_ him.
As to what the life of God is to himself, we can only know that we
cannot know it--even that not being absolute ignorance, for no one can
see that, from its very nature, he cannot understand a thing without
therein approaching that thing in a most genuine manner. As to what the
life of God is in relation to us, we know that it is the causing life
of everything that we call life--of everything that is; and in knowing
this, we know something of that life, by the very forms of its force.
But the one interminable mystery, for I presume the two make but one
mystery--a mystery that must be a mystery to us for ever, not because
God will not explain it, but because God himself could not make us
understand it--is first, how he can be self-existent, and next, how he
can make other beings exist: self-existence and creation no man will
ever understand. Again, regarding the matter from the side of the
creature--the cause of his being is antecedent to that being; he can
therefore have no knowledge of his own creation; neither could he
understand that which he can do nothing like. If we could make
ourselves, we should understand our creation, but to do that we must be
God. And of all ideas this--that, with the self-dissatisfied,
painfully circumscribed consciousness I possess, I could in any way
have caused myself, is the most dismal and hopeless. Nevertheless, if I
be a child of God, I must be _like_ him, like him even in the matter of
this creative energy. There must be something in me that corresponds in
its childish way to the eternal might in him. But I am forestalling.
The question now is: What was that life, the thing made _in_ the
Son--made by him inside himself, not outside him--made not _through_
but _in him_--the life that was his own, as God's is his own?
It was, I answer, that act in him that corresponded in him, as the son,
to the self-existence of his father. Now what is the deepest in God?
His power? No, for power could not make him what we mean when we say
_God._ Evil could, of course, never create one atom; but let us
understand very plainly, that a being whose essence was only power
would be such a negation of the divine that no righteous worship could
be offered him: his service must be fear, and fear only. Such a being,
even were he righteous in judgment, yet could not be God. The God
himself whom we love could not be righteous were he not something
deeper and better still than we generally mean by the word--but, alas,
how little can language say without seeming to say something wrong! In
one word, God is Love. Love is the deepest depth, the essence of his
nature, at the root of all his being. It is not merely that he could
not be God, if he had made no creatures to whom to be God; but love is
the heart and hand of his creation; it is his right to create, and his
power to create as well. The love that foresees creation is itself the
power to create. Neither could he be righteous--that is, fair to his
creatures--but that his love created them. His perfection is his love.
All his divine rights rest upon his love. Ah, he is not the great
monarch! The simplest peasant loving his cow, is more divine than any
monarch whose monarchy is his glory. If God would not punish sin, or if
he did it for anything but love, he would not be the father of Jesus
Christ, the God who works as Jesus wrought. What then, I say once
more, is in Christ correspondent to the creative power of God? It must
be something that comes also of love; and in the Son the love must be
to the already existent. Because of that eternal love which has no
beginning, the Father must have the Son. God could not love, could not
be love, without making things to love: Jesus has God to love; the love
of the Son is responsive to the love of the Father. The response to
self-existent love is self-abnegating love. The refusal of himself is
that in Jesus which corresponds to the creation of God. His love takes
action, creates, in self-abjuration, in the death of self as motive; in
the drowning of self in the life of God, where it lives only as love.
What is life in a child? Is it not perfect response to his parents?
thorough oneness with them? A child at strife with his parents, one in
whom their will is not his, is no child; as a child he is dead, and his
death is manifest in rigidity and contortion. His spiritual order is on
the way to chaos. Disintegration has begun. Death is at work in him.
See the same child yielding to the will that is righteously above his
own; see the life begin to flow from the heart through the members; see
the relaxing limbs; see the light rise like a fountain in his eyes, and
flash from his face! Life has again its lordship!
The life of Christ is this--negatively, that he does nothing, cares for
nothing for his own sake; positively, that he cares with his whole soul
for the will, the pleasure of his father. Because his father is his
father, therefore he will be his child. The truth in Jesus is his
relation to his father; the righteousness of Jesus is his fulfilment of
that relation. Meeting this relation, loving his father with his whole
being, he is not merely alive as born of God; but, giving himself with
perfect will to God, choosing to die to himself and live to God, he
therein creates in himself a new and higher life; and, standing upon
himself, has gained the power to awake life, the divine shadow of his
own, in the hearts of us his brothers and sisters, who have come from
the same birth-home as himself, namely, the heart of his God and our
God, his father and our father, but who, without our elder brother to
do it first, would never have chosen that self-abjuration which is
life, never have become alive like him. To will, not from self, but
with the Eternal, is to live.
This choice of his own being, in the full knowledge of what he did;
this active willing to be the Son of the Father, perfect in
obedience--is that in Jesus which responds and corresponds to the
self-existence of God. Jesus rose at once to the height of his being,
set himself down on the throne of his nature, in the act of subjecting
himself to the will of the Father as his only good, the only _reason_
of his existence. When he died on the cross, he did that, in the wild
weather of his outlying provinces in the torture of the body of his
revelation, which he had done at home in glory and gladness. From the
infinite beginning--for here I can speak only by contradictions-he
completed and held fast the eternal circle of his existence in saying,
'Thy will, not mine, be done!' He made himself what he is by _deathing_
himself into the will of the eternal Father, through which will he was
the eternal Son--thus plunging into the fountain of his own life, the
everlasting Fatherhood, and taking the Godhead of the Son. This is the
life that was made _in_ Jesus: 'That which was made in him was life.'
This life, self-willed in Jesus, is the one thing that makes such
life--the eternal life, the true life, possible--nay, imperative,
essential, to every man, woman, and child, whom the Father has sent
into the outer, that he may go back into the inner world, his heart. As
the self-existent life of the Father has given us being, so the willed
devotion of Jesus is his power to give us eternal life like his own--to
enable us to do the same. There is no life for any man, other than the
same kind that Jesus has; his disciple must live by the same absolute
devotion of his will to the Father's; then is his life one with the
life of the Father.
Because we are come out of the divine nature, which chooses to be
divine, we must _choose_ to be divine, to be of God, to be one with
God, loving and living as he loves and lives, and so be partakers of
the divine nature, or we perish. Man cannot originate this life; it
must be shown him, and he must choose it. God is the father of Jesus
and of us--of every possibility of our being; but while God is the
father of his children, Jesus is the father of their sonship; for in
him is made the life which is sonship to the Father--the recognition,
namely, in fact and life, that the Father has his claim upon his sons
and daughters. We are not and cannot become true sons without our will
willing his will, our doing following his making. It was the will of
Jesus to be the thing God willed and meant him, that made him the true
son of God. He was not the son of God because he could not help it, but
because he willed to be in himself the son that he was in the divine
idea. So with us: we must _be_ the sons we are. We are not made to be
what we cannot help being; sons and daughters are not after such
fashion! We are sons and daughters in God's claim; we must be sons and
daughters in our will. And we can be sons and daughters, saved into the
original necessity and bliss of our being, only by choosing God for the
father he is, and doing his will--yielding ourselves true sons to the
absolute Father. Therein lies human bliss--only and essential. The
working out of this our salvation must be pain, and the handing of it
down to them that are below must ever be in pain; but the eternal form
of the will of God in and for us, is intensity of bliss.
'And the life was the light of men.'
The life of which I have now spoken became light to men in the
appearing of him in whom it came into being. The life became light that
men might see it, and themselves live by choosing that life also, by
choosing so to live, such to be.
There is always something deeper than anything said--something of
which all human, all divine words, figures, pictures, motion-forms, are
but the outer laminar spheres through which the central reality shines
more or less plainly. Light itself is but the poor outside form of a
deeper, better thing, namely, life. The life is Christ. The light too
is Christ, but only the body of Christ. The life is Christ himself. The
light is what we _see_ and shall see in him; the life is what we may
_be_ in him. The life 'is a light by abundant clarity invisible;' it is
the unspeakable unknown; it must become light such as men can see
before men can know it. Therefore the obedient human God appeared as
the obedient divine man, doing the works of his father--the things,
that is, which his father did--doing them humbly before unfriendly
brethren. The Son of the Father must take his own form in the substance
of flesh, that he may be seen of men, and so become the light of
men--not that men may have light, but that men may have life;--that,
seeing what they could not originate, they may, through the life that
is in them, begin to hunger after the life of which they are capable,
and which is essential to their being;--that the life in them may long
for him who is their life, and thirst for its own perfection, even as
root and stem may thirst for the flower for whose sake, and through
whose presence in them, they exist. That the child of God may become
the son of God by beholding _the_ Son, the life revealed in light; that
the radiant heart of the Son of God may be the sunlight to his fellows;
that the idea may be drawn out by the presence and drawing of the
Ideal--that Ideal, the perfect Son of the Father, was sent to his
brethren.
Let us not forget that the devotion of the Son could never have been
but for the devotion of the Father, who never seeks his own glory one
atom more than does the Son; who is devoted to the Son, and to all his
sons and daughters, with a devotion perfect and eternal, with
fathomless unselfishness. The whole being and doing of Jesus on earth
is the same as his being and doing from all eternity, that whereby he
is the blessed son-God of the father-God; it is the shining out of that
life that men might see it. It is a being like God, a doing of the will
of God, a working of the works of God, therefore an unveiling of the
Father in the Son, that men may know him. It is the prayer of the Son
to the rest of the sons to come back to the Father, to be reconciled to
the Father, to behave to the Father as he does. He seems to me to say:
'I know your father, for he is my father; I know him because I have
been with him from eternity. You do not know him; I have come to you to
tell you that as I am, such is he; that he is just like me, only
greater and better. He only is the true, original good; I am true
because I seek nothing but his will. He only is all in all; I am not
all in all, but he is my father, and I am the son in whom his heart of
love is satisfied. Come home with me, and sit with me on the throne of
my obedience. Together we will do his will, and be glad with him, for
his will is the only good. You may do with me as you please; I will not
defend myself. Because I speak true, my witness is unswerving; I stand
to it, come what may. If I held my face to my testimony only till
danger came close, and then prayed the Father for twelve legions of
angels to deliver me, that would be to say the Father would do anything
for his children until it began to hurt him. I bear witness that my
father is such as I. In the face of death I assert it, and dare death
to disprove it. Kill me; do what you will and can against me; my father
is true, and I am true in saying that he is true. Danger or hurt cannot
turn me aside from this my witness. Death can only kill my body; he
cannot make me his captive. Father, thy will be done! The pain will
pass; it will be but for a time! Gladly will I suffer that men may know
that I live, and that thou art my life. Be with me, father, that it may
not be more than I can bear.'
Friends, if you think anything less than this could redeem the world,
or make blessed any child that God has created, you know neither the
Son nor the Father.
The bond of the universe, the chain that holds it together, the one
active unity, the harmony of things, the negation of difference, the
reconciliation of all forms, all shows, all wandering desires, all
returning loves; the fact at the root of every vision, revealing that
'love is the only good in the world,' and selfishness the one thing
hateful, in the city of the living God unutterable, is the devotion of
the Son to the Father. It is the life of the universe. It is not the
fact that God created all things, that makes the universe a whole; but
that he through whom he created them loves him perfectly, is eternally
content in his father, is satisfied to be because his father is with
him. It is not the fact that God is all in all, that unites the
universe; it is the love of the Son to the Father. For of no onehood
comes unity; there can be no oneness where there is only one. For the
very beginnings of unity there must be two. Without Christ, therefore,
there could be no universe. The reconciliation wrought by Jesus is not
the primary source of unity, of safety to the world; that
reconciliation was the necessary working out of the eternal antecedent
fact, the fact making itself potent upon the rest of the family--that
God and Christ are one, are father and son, the Father loving the Son
as only the Father can love, the Son loving the Father as only the Son
can love. The prayer of the Lord for unity between men and the Father
and himself, springs from the eternal need of love. The more I regard
it, the more I am lost in the wonder and glory of the thing. But for
the Father and the Son, no two would care a jot the one for the other.
It might be the right way for creatures to love because of mere
existence, but what two creatures would ever have originated the
loving? I cannot for a moment believe it would have been I. Even had I
come into being as now with an inclination to love, selfishness would
soon have overborne it. But if the Father loves the Son, if the very
music that makes the harmony of life lies, not in the theory of love in
the heart of the Father, but in the fact of it, in the burning love in
the hearts of Father and Son, then glory be to the Father and to the
Son, and to the spirit of both, the fatherhood of the Father meeting
and blending with the sonhood of the Son, and drawing us up into the
glory of their joy, to share in the thoughts of love that pass between
them, in their thoughts of delight and rest in each other, in their
thoughts of joy in all the little ones. The life of Jesus is the light
of men, revealing to them the Father.
But light is not enough; light is for the sake of life. We too must
have life in ourselves. We too must, like the Life himself, live. We
can live in no way but that in which Jesus lived, in which life was
made in him. That way is, to give up our life. This is the one supreme
action of life possible to us for the making of life in ourselves.
Christ did it of himself, and so became light to us, that we might be
able to do it in ourselves, after him, and through his originating act.
We must do it ourselves, I say. The help that he has given and gives,
the light and the spirit-working of the Lord, the spirit, in our
hearts, is all in order that we may, as we must, do it ourselves. Till
then we are not alive; life is not made in us. The whole strife and
labour and agony of the Son with every man, is to get him to die as he
died. All preaching that aims not at this, is a building with wood and
hay and stubble. If I say not with whole heart, 'My father, do with me
as thou wilt, only help me against myself and for thee;' if I cannot
say, 'I am thy child, the inheritor of thy spirit, thy being, a part of
thyself, glorious in thee, but grown poor in me: let me be thy dog, thy
horse, thy anything thou willest; let me be thine in any shape the love
that is my Father may please to have me; let me be thine in any way,
and my own or another's in no way but thine;'--if we cannot, fully as
this, give ourselves to the Father, then we have not yet laid hold upon
that for which Christ has laid hold upon us. The faith that a man may,
nay, must put in God, reaches above earth and sky, stretches beyond the
farthest outlying star of the creatable universe. The question is not
at present, however, of removing mountains, a thing that will one day
be simple to us, but of waking and rising from the dead now.
When a man truly and perfectly says with Jesus, and as Jesus said it,
'Thy will be done,' he closes the everlasting life-circle; the life of
the Father and the Son flows through him; he is a part of the divine
organism. Then is the prayer of the Lord in him fulfilled: 'I in them
and thou in me, that they made be made perfect in one.' The Christ in
us, is the spirit of the perfect child toward the perfect father. The
Christ in us is our own true nature made blossom in us by the Lord,
whose life is the light of men that it may become the life of men; for
our true nature is childhood to the Father.
Friends, those of you who know, or suspect, that these things are true,
let us arise and live--arise even in the darkest moments of spiritual
stupidity, when hope itself sees nothing to hope for. Let us not
trouble ourselves about the cause of our earthliness, except we know it
to be some unrighteousness in us, but go at once to the Life. Never,
never let us accept as consolation the poor suggestion, that the cause
of our deadness is physical. Can it be comfort to know that this body
of ours, because of the death in it, is too much for the spirit--which
ought not merely to triumph over it, but to inspire it with subjection
and obedience? Let us comfort ourselves in the thought of the Father
and the Son. So long as there dwells harmony, so long as the Son loves
the Father with all the love the Father can welcome, all is well with
the little ones. God is all right--why should we mind standing in the
dark for a minute outside his window? Of course we miss the _inness_,
but there is a bliss of its own in waiting. What if the rain be
falling, and the wind blowing; what if we stand alone, or, more painful
still, have some dear one beside us, sharing our _outness_; what even
if the window be not shining, because of the curtains of good
inscrutable drawn across it; let us think to ourselves, or say to our
friend, 'God is; Jesus is not dead; nothing can be going wrong, however
it may look so to hearts unfinished in childness.' Let us say to the
Lord, 'Jesus, art thou loving the Father in there? Then we out here
will do his will, patiently waiting till he open the door. We shall not
mind the wind or the rain much. Perhaps thou art saying to the Father,
"Thy little ones need some wind and rain: their buds are hard; the
flowers do not come out. I cannot get them made blessed without a
little more winter-weather." Then perhaps the Father will say, "Comfort
them, my son Jesus, with the memory of thy patience when thou wast
missing me. Comfort them that thou wast sure of me when everything
about thee seemed so unlike me, so unlike the place thou hadst left."'
In a word, let us be at peace, because peace is at the heart of
things--peace and utter satisfaction between the Father and the Son--in
which peace they call us to share; in which peace they promise that at
length, when they have their good way with us, we shall share.
Before us, then, lies a bliss unspeakable, a bliss beyond the thought
or invention of man, to every child who will fall in with the perfect
imagination of the Father. His imagination is one with his creative
will. The thing that God imagines, that thing exists. When the created
falls in with the will of him who 'loved him into being,' then all is
well; thenceforward the mighty creation goes on in him upon higher and
yet higher levels, in more and yet more divine airs. Thy will, O God,
be done! Nought else is other than loss, than decay, than corruption.
There is no life but that born of the life that the Word made in
himself by doing thy will, which life is the light of men. Through that
light is born the life of men--the same life in them that came first
into being in Jesus. As he laid down his life, so must men lay down
their lives, that as he liveth they may live also. That which was made
in him was life, and the life is the light of men; and yet his own, to
whom he was sent, _did not believe him_.