GREENWICH, MARCH 1ST, 1899

^[p. 151] GREENWICH, MARCH 1ST, 1899

My Dear Brother, — I am very sorry to have been so long in answering your letter, but have been for three weeks very poorly, and unable to apply myself to anything. In regard to the opening of John’s gospel, I do not know that I can say much more than I have said in the little paper in the ‘Food’. All appears to me to depend on the standpoint from which the evangelist regards Christ. If, as I judge from verse 14, John is writing from the point of the apostle’s apprehension, and the term ‘Word’ conveys what Christ was in their thought, there the passage is simple enough. The One commonly known and designated as ‘the Word’ is traced back to His true source, “He was with God and was God”, and, being such, He became flesh. It is, in a word, His genealogy. I am very much inclined to doubt if any presentation of Christ is intended in the passage in any light in which the apostles had not apprehended Him when on earth. By ‘intelligent’ I understand, as you say, the mind that thinks, and by ‘intelligible’, the expression of that mind, the latter is essential to the idea of Word. I am thankful to say that we are all nicely on the mend. Hope you are well and remain,

Your affectionate brother,
F. E. Raven.