We are no nearer to consistency than before: and it is evident that before the Trinitarian can find in the passage any distinct enunciation, the term GOD must be conceived to bear two different meanings in this short verse,—a verse so symmetrical in its construction as to put the reader altogether off his guard against such a change. He must read it thus:— In the beginning was the second person in the Trinity; and the second person was with the first; and the second person was possessed of divine attributes as such. We might surely ask, without unreasonableness, why, when the _society_ or personal affinity of the Son in the Godhead, is mentioned in the middle clause, the companionship of the _Father only_ is noticed, and silence observed respecting the _Holy Spirit_; who at that moment could not possibly have been absent from the conceptions of any Athanasian writer. But independently of this, the awkwardness of the construction, the violence of the leading transition of meaning, render the interpretation altogether untenable. If it be true, never surely was there a form of speech worse devised for the conveyance of the intended ideas. In order to give the passage its true force, there is no occasion to assign to the word GOD any but its usual signification; as the name of the One infinite Person or Being who created and rules the universe. But it is less easy to embrace and exhibit with any distinctness, the notion implied in the phrase WORD or LOGOS. The ancient speculative schools, seeing that the Deity had existed from eternity, and therefore in a long solitude before the origin of creation, distinguished between his intrinsic nature,—deep, remote, primeval, unfathomable,[192]—and that portion of his mind which put itself forth, or expressed itself by works, so as to come into voluntary and intelligible relations to men.[193] This section of the Divine Mind, to which was attributable the authorship of the divine works, they called the LOGOS, or the IMAGE of God; both terms denoting the _expression_ or _power which outwardly reveals_ internal qualities; the one taking its metaphor from the _ear_, through which we make known our sentiments by speech; the other from the _eye_, to which is addressed the natural language of feature and lineament. If I might venture on an illustration which may sound strangely to modern hearers, I should say that the Logos was conceived of in relation to God, much as with us _Genius_ is, in relation to the soul of its possessor; to denote that peculiar combination of intellectual and moral attributes, which produces great, original, creative works,—works which let you into the spirit and affections, as well as the understanding, of the Author. Any one who can so possess himself with the speculative temper of Christian antiquity, as to use with reverence the phrase _genius of God_, would find it, I am persuaded, a useful English substitute (though I am well aware, not a perfect equivalent) for the word Logos.