266 REV. H. J. CLARKE. 
the doctrine they propound a comparison with all speculative 
efforts to discover first principles, and implicitly asserting 
that it is the true Philosophy. 
In his visits to Ephesus, where he must have had oppor- 
tunities of conversing with philosophers, both Hellenic and 
Hellenistic, including probably not a few Alexandrian Jews, 
St. John could not have failed to become familiar with the 
term Logos in its philosophic application. With a thorough 
grasp of its significance, and, may we not also say? with 
some presentiment of the immeasurably important conse- 
quences of its evangelical appropriation, he took, so to speak, 
possession of it for the service of that Truth which he had 
been commissioned to proclaim, and to which it rightfully 
belonged. Thus, then, we may imagine him to be speaking, 
as the bearer of a message to the multitude of wandering 
seekers after T'ruth, ‘‘ That which, in your search for an intelli- 
gible originating principle, you fancy in your ignorance you 
have discovered, that which under this impression you have 
named the Logos, that Being whom you have long been 
groping after in the dark, Him declare I unto you.” 
The Logos having been reclaimed from fruitless speculations 
and installed in its proper place, the exposition of the term 
distinctly meets each of the four queries which etiological 
inquiry had devised in formulating its demands. For if it be 
asked what are respectively the efficient, formal, material, and 
final causes of all things conditioned by time or space, St. 
John replies, “In the beginning was the Logos, and the 
Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. The same 
was in the beginning with God. All things had their 
origin through Him, and apart from Him not even one thing 
originated that has had an origin”? (John i. 1-3*).- And 
St. Paul, who, if the term Logos had found a place in his 
philosophy, would, it is evident, have made it the subject of 
similar predicates, virtually amplifies and completes the answer 
in the words, ‘‘ In Him was the universe created, namely, the 
things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth, the 
visible and the invisible, whether thrones, whether dominions, 
whether principalities, whether authorities, through Him, 
and with a view to Him, the universe has been created, 
and He Himself is before all, and in Him the universe 
subsists”? (Coloss.i.16,17*). In these philosophically-worded 
* T have given, as I believe, a close and exact translation of these passages, 
but have substituted philosophically significant equivalents for certain 
words which appear in the A.V. 
