I will commence with a noble, and, as I believe, an inspired sentence:  than which no truth uttered by philosophers ever was more clearly or more sublimely expressed.  “In the beginning was the Word:  and the Word was with God; and the Word was God.”  In its due course, we will consider especially the difference between the Word and God; likewise the seeming contradiction, but true concord, of being simultaneously God, and with God.  At present, and previously to 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, wherewithal we know His glorious Nature to be clothed.