(p.107.)

[The written and the Incarnate Word.]

"I suppose we all have learned from the language used by the Evangelist St. John, always to look on each of these two employments of the expression, (the Word of God,) with reference to the other; and to see in each, the other also. I shall not attempt to express more definitely this connexion; I only need to suppose that we all apprehend it as existing. But I shall claim from it thus much to my present purpose;—that as He whom the Evangelist saw riding in the heavenly pomp on high, and who was revealed to him as bearing this title, 'The Word of God[656],' was the same who rode as at this time into Jerusalem; in humiliation here, in glory there; here veiled, there in brightness unveiled:—I would now associate the two, and would regard that sacred volume which the poor cottager knows as the 'Word of God,' as placed under the same dispensation; as veiled here, reserved for Revelation hereafter. I say, as all the other circumstances of our condition are certainly to be regarded in this aspect, viz., as things waiting for development; so ordered by a Divine wisdom as that they shall sustain faith and instruct piety now, but shall shew themselves for what they are, (if ever to a created being, yet) only in a later stage than that to which they were given as its present religious provision: as other things, so the written page (I will assume) which speaks of God. I assume that in this world we are using sounds which mean more than we know. I assume that in our churches we are in the highest sense singing the songs of Sion, of the future and heavenly Sion. If Saints in Heaven shall sing (as we are told they shall) the song of Moses, then the song of Moses is already a song for Heaven; only there we shall know its meaning, or more of it than now we do. And the use which I make of the reflection is, to suggest (as I said) the frame of mind in which we should approach the consideration of the sacred page; such a frame of mind as that no future revelations of the import of that page shall have power to reproach us as having dishonoured it by our interpretations here, and having betrayed an inadequate feeling of what Inspiration was."—Sermons, by the Rev. C.P. Eden, pp.180-2.

[656] Rev. xix. 13.