Practical Observations.

1. What wonderful condescension that so glorious a being as the Word should take upon himself our nature, dwell among men, suffer and die for us! “This is the love of God that he hath sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved.”

2. How can any one treat lightly the Word of the Lord when he learns that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word 32was God?” It is said that the Jews refused even to throw upon the earth slips that had printed or written upon them passages of Scripture. We have infinitely more reason for reverencing the Word than the Jews. Every passage of the inspired testimony has come to us through the medium of him who is the Word.

3. Christ is the light of the World. Take a map and delineate those countries which are most enlightened in bright colors, then shade others more and more as you approach barbarism and ignorance. Then make another map in which the countries that most truly receive the Bible and Christ are represented in bright colors, shade those lands that have a corrupted Christianity, shading according to the degree of corruption, and put those in darkest colors where nothing is known of Christ. Then compare the two maps. It will be found that there are not two maps, but two copies of one map.

4. The Word made flesh. God, the uncreated, the incomprehensible, the invisible, attracted few worshipers; a philosopher might admire so noble a conception, but the crowd turned away in disgust from words that presented no image to their minds. It was before Deity, embodied in human form, working among men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning on their bosoms, weeping over their graves, bleeding on the cross, that the prejudices of the synagogue, and the doubts of the academy, and the pride of the portico, and the fasces of the lictors, and the swords of thirty legions, were humbled in the dust.—Macaulay.