is pen a bit, as it comes over him all anew, and
almost overcomes him, how this wondrous Jesus, this throbbing heart of
God, was treated. Listen: "He came to His _own possessions_, and they who
were His--own--kinsfolk--and the quiver of John's heart-sob seems to make
the type move on the page--_His own kinsfolk_ received him not into their
homes, but left Him outside in the cold night; _but_--a glimpse of that
glorious Face steadies him again--as many as _did_ receive Him, whether
His own kinsfolk or not, to them He gave the right to become _kinsfolk of
God_, the oldest family of all."

<u>God's Spokesman.</u>

John has a way of reaching away back, and then by a swift use of pen
coming quickly to his own time, and then he keeps swinging back over the
ground he has been over, but each time with some added touch, like the
true artist he is.

John's statement, "the world was made by Him," takes one back at once to
the early Genesis chapters. There the creating One, who, by a word, brings
things into existence is called God. And then, that we may identify Him,
is called by a _name_, Jehovah. The creator is God named Jehovah. And this
Jehovah, John says, was the One who afterward became a Man, and pitched
His tent among men. And as one reads the old chapters through, this is the
God, the Jehovah, who appears in varying ways to these Old Testament men,
one after another. He talked and walked and worked with Adam in completing
the work of creation, and then broken-hearted led him out of the forfeited
garden.

Then to make his standpoint unmistakably plain to every one, before
starting in on the witness borne by the herald, he makes a summary. All
that he has been saying he now sums up in these tremendous words,
"_God_--no one ever yet has seen; the only begotten God,[7] in the bosom
of the Father, this One has been the spokesman." In what He _was_, and in
what He _did_ as well as in what He _said_, He hath been the spokesman.
Here is a difference made between the Father God, whom no one has seen,
and the only begotten God, who has been telling the Father out.

Now God revealed Himself to men in the Old Testament times. Repeatedly in
the Old Testament it distinctly speaks of men seeing God in varying ways
and talking with Him. Adam walked with Him, and Enoch, and Noah. Abraham
had a _vision_, and talked with the three men whose spokesman speaks as
God. Isaac has a night-vision and Jacob a dream and a night meeting wit