Curiosities of Superstition, and Sketches - W. H. Davenport Adams

Supreme. The Jews, under the influence of their intercourse with the Persians,
adopted that conception, and, departing from the path laid down for them by
Revelation, interposed one or more intermediate beings as the channels of
communication between GOD and man. The Apostle seizes on the popular fancy,
and endeavours to restore from it the original truth, when he tells his readers that
the “Word” of which they spoke so vaguely and presumptuously was none other
than GOD Himself,—the SON of GOD, but equal with the FATHER,—the brightness
of His glory and the express image of His person. He showed them that the
mediation between the lofty spiritual nature of GOD and the intellectual and
moral being of Man was not to be accomplished through any independent
agency, but by the revelation of GOD Himself in the person and presence of His
beloved SON. That this, the essential and central truth of Christianity, was one
which the unassisted human intellect could never have developed we know, from
the fact that it is found in no creed of admittedly human origin, and that it is
never clearly set forth even in any religious system which has borrowed from
Christianity.