When I spoke to you last, I proposed to examine St. John's Gospel carefully and in order. It was impossible not to pause earnestly upon the opening sentence, '_In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God_.' What does that text say to us? 'It declares,' some will answer eagerly and decisively, 'the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ.' Be it so; but the name _Jesus Christ_ is not introduced till the seventeenth verse of the chapter. If we are sitting at the feet of an Apostle or Evangelist, we cannot change his method for a method of our own. The writers of the other Gospels start from the birth of Jesus, or from the preaching of John the Baptist. We cannot understand them unless we go with them to Bethlehem or to the wilderness. St. John leads us back to the beginning of all things. We cannot understand him, if we assume events that were to take place in the fulness of the time. Acting upon this principle, I reminded you that the expression 'word of God' is one of continual recurrence as well as of most solemn import in the books of the Old Testament. I could not find that, in its lowest sense, it ever meant less than a message from the invisible God to the mind and spirit of man. The assertion that God speaks to men by His word, and that men are capable of hearing that word, was the great testimony for the truth which was implied in heathen superstitions, the great testimony against these superstitions. Idolaters were not mistaken in thinking that they needed intercourse with that which was higher than themselves; they _were_ mistaken in seeking, in the heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth, for Him who was nearer to them than He was to all the things He had made, who was the Lord of their hearts and reins. The more you study the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets, the more you meditate the earliest and simplest book of the Bible--that which tells of the Voice which spoke to Adam in the garden, of the Voice which called Abram to go forth whither he knew not--the more, I am persuaded, you will feel that this is the most characteristic peculiarity of these records, that which connects them with each other, that which has given them their power over mankind.