"He who surpasses speech, and through whose power speech is expressed, know that He is Brahma; and not these perishable things that man adores.
"He whom Intelligence cannot comprehend, and He alone, say the sages, through whose Power the nature of Intelligence can be understood, know thou that He is Brahma; and not these perishable things that man adores.
"He who cannot be seen by the organ of sight, and through whose power the organ of seeing sees, know thou that He is Brahma; and these perishable things that man adores.
"He who cannot be heard by the organ of hearing, and through whose power the organ of hearing hears, know thou that He is Brahma; and not these perishable things that man adores.
"He who cannot be perceived by the organ of smelling, and through whose power the organ of smelling smells, know thou that He is Brahma; and not these perishable things that man adores.
"When God resolved to create the human race," said Arius,"He made a Being that He called The Word, The Son of Wisdom, to the end that this Being might give existence to men." This Word if the Ormuzd of Zoroaster, the Ainsoph of the Kabalah, the Novc of Plato and Philo, the Wisdom or Demiouros of the Gnostics.
That is the True Word, the knowledge of which our ancient brethren sought as the priceless reward of their labors on the Holy Temple: the Word of Live, the Divine Reason, "in whom was Life, and the Life the Light of men"; "which long shone in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not;" the Infinite Reason that is the Soul of Nature, immortal, of which the Word of this Degree reminds us; and to believe wherein and rever it, is the peculiar duty of every Mason.
"In the beginning," says the extract from some older work, with which John commences his Gospel, "was the Word, and the Word was near to God, and the Word was God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was Life, and the life was the Light of man; and the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not contain it."
It is an old tradition that this passage was from an older work. And Philostorgius and Nicephorus state, that when the Emperor Julian undertook to rebuild the Temple, a stone was taken up, that covered the mouth of a deep square cave, into which one of the laborers, being let down by a rope, found in the centre of the floor a cubical pillar, on which lay a roll or book, wrapped in a fine linen cloth, in which, in capitol letters, was the foregoing passage.
However this may have been, it is plain that John's Gospel is a polemic against the Gnostics; and, stating at the outset the current doctrine in regard to the creation of the Word, he then addresses himself to show and urge that this Word was Jesus Christ.
And the first sentence, fully rendered into our language, would read thus: "When the process of emanation, of creation or evolution of existences inferiour to the Supreme God began, the Word came into existence and was: and this word was near to God; ie. the immediate or first emanation from God: and it was God Himself, developed or manifested in that particular mode, and in action. And by that Word everything that is was created." - And thus Tertullian says that God made the World out of nothing, by means of His Word, Wisdom or Power.
