=4. In him was life.= There is probably a reference here again to the language of Gnostic philosophy (See Prel. Note), which supposed other eons or emanations from God, besides the Word, prominent among which was Light and Life. Here, as throughout this introduction, John employs the language of the Gnostics to correct their errors. The general and practical teaching for us of the declaration is that Christ is the source of both physical or external life (Col. 1:17), and of intellectual and spiritual life (ch. 10:10). It is admirably interpreted by Kaulbach’s famous cartoon of the Reformation, in which Luther with the open Bible in his hand is represented as the centre of the intellectual and moral awakening which characterized that century. Observe, since Christ is Life and Light, that any religion which dwarfs man, represses their life, belittles them, and any which shuts them up in darkness and denies them intellectual freedom and progress in any direction, is so far anti-Christ. The cause of Christ has nothing to fear from any intellectual life or any light of scientific discovery.--=And the life was the light of men.= Not merely _shall be_, not merely _is_, but _was_. The intimation is that all the light of Old Testament prophecy and instruction, if not all that dim religious light which has illuminated even heathen nations, through special instructors such as Buddha, Confucius and Socrates, came through the Word, _i. e._, through the Mediator by whom the invisible God reveals himself to man, of which revelation the incarnation (ver. 14) is only a part, though a most important part. Compare with the language here 1 John 1:5. 5 And the light shineth in[30] darkness; and the darkness comprehended[31] it not. [30] ch. 3:19. [31] 1 Cor. 2:14.