o the true commencement of our _a
priori_ thoughts, let us, by a word or two, paraphrase that brief but
comprehensive sentence, "In the beginning was the Word." Eternity has no
beginning, as it has no end: the clock of Time is futile there: it
might as well attempt to go in vacuo. Nevertheless, in respect to
finite intelligences like ourselves, seeing that eternity is an idea
totally inconceivable, it is wise, nay it is only possible, to be
presented to the mind piecemeal. Even our deepest mathematicians do not
scruple to speak of points "infinitely remote;" as if in that phrase
there existed no contradiction of terms. So, also, we pretend in our
emptiness to talk of eternity past, time present, and eternity to come;
the fact being that, muse as a man may, he can entertain no idea of an
existence which is not measurable by time: any more than he can conceive
of a colour unconnected with the rainbow, or of a musical note beyond
the seven sounds. The plain intention of the words is this: place the
starting-post of human thought as far back into eternity as you will, be
it what man counts a thousand ages, or ten thousand times ten thousand,
or be these myriads multiplied again by millions, still, in any such
Beginning, and in the beginning of all beginnings (for so must creatures
talk)--then was God. He Was: the scholar knows full well the force of
the original term, the philological distinctions between [Greek: eimi]
and [Greek: gignomai]: well pleased, he reads as of the Divinity [Greek:
en], He self-existed; and equally well pleased he reads of the humanity
[Greek: egennethe], he was born. The thought and phrase [Greek: en]
sympathizes, if it has not an identity, with the Hebrew's unutterable
Name. HE then, whose title, amongst all others likewise denoting
excellence supreme and glory underivative, is essentially "I am;" HE
who, relatively to us as to all creation else, has a new name wisely
chosen in "the Word,"--the great expression of the idea of God; this
mighty Intelligence is found in any such beginning self-existent. That
teaching is a mere fact, known posteriorly from the proof of all things
created, as well as by many wonderful signs, and the clear voice of
revelation. We do not attempt to prove it; that were easy and obvious:
but our more difficult endeavour at present is to show how antecedently
probable it was that God should be: and that so being, He should be
invested with the reasonable attributes, wherewit