things were made,”—­but the central Life, the Being in whom life existed and exists as an indestructible attribute, an underived prerogative,[60] the Mind or Wisdom who upholds and animates the universe without being lost in it.  This doctrine, which is implied in other parts of St. John, seems to be stated explicitly in the prologue, though the words have been otherwise interpreted.  “That which has come into existence,” says St. John, “was in Him life” ([Greek:  ho gegonen, en auto zoe en.]) That is to say, the Word is the timeless Life, of which the temporal world is a manifestation.  This doctrine was taught by many of the Greek Fathers, as well as by Scotus Erigena and other speculative mystics.  Even if, with the school of Antioch and most of the later commentators, we transfer the words [Greek:  ho gegonen] to the preceding sentence, the doctrine that Christ is the life as well as the light of the world can be proved from St. John.[61] The world is the poem of the Word to the glory of the Father:  in it, and by means of it, He displays in time all the riches which God has eternally put within Him.

In St. John, as in mystical theology generally, the Incarnation, rather than the Cross, is the central fact of Christianity.  “The Word was made flesh, and tabernacled among us,” is for him the supreme dogma.  And it follows necessarily from the Logos doctrine, that the Incarnation, and all that followed it, is regarded primarily as a revelation of life and light and truth.  “That eternal life, which was with the Father, has been manifested unto us,” is part of the opening sentence of the first Epistle.[62] “This is the message which we have heard of Him and announce unto you, that God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”  In coming into the world, Christ “came unto His own.”  He had, in a sense, only to show to them what was there already:  Esaias, long before, had “seen His glory, and spoken of Him.”  The mysterious estrangement, which had laid the world under the dominion of the Prince of darkness, had obscured but not quenched the light which lighteth every man—­the inalienable prerogative of all who derive their being from the Sun of Righteousness.  This central Light is Christ, and Christ only.  He alone is the Way, the Truth, the Life, the Door, the Living Bread, and the True Vine.  He is at once the Revealer and the Revealed, the Guide and the Way, the Enlightener and the Light.  No man cometh unto the Father but by Him.

The teaching of this Gospel on the office of the Holy Spirit claims special attention in our present inquiry.  The revelation of God in Christ was complete:  there can be no question that St. John claims for Christianity the position of the one eternally true revelation.  But without the gradual illumination of the Spirit it is partly unintelligible and partly unobserved.[63] The purpose of the Incarnation was to reveal God the Father:  “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.”  In