that has seen Him has seen the Father.

What precisely does this utterance mean? Does it only mean that Jesus in
His holy and loving ways and in the whole of His character was God's
very image? As you might say of a son who strongly resembles his father,
"If you have seen the one, you have seen the other." It is true that the
self-sacrifice and humility and devotedness of Jesus did give men new
views of the true character of God, that His conduct was an exact
transcript of God's mind and conveyed to men new thoughts of God.

But it is plain that the connection between Jesus and God was a
different _kind_ of connection from that which subsists between every
man and God. Every man might in a sense say, "I am in the Father and the
Father in me." But plainly the very fact that Jesus said to Philip,
"Believest thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in Me?" is
proof that it was not this ordinary connection He had in view. Philip
could have had no difficulty in perceiving and acknowledging that God
was in Jesus as He is in every man. But if that were all that Jesus
meant, then it was wholly out of place to appeal to the works the Father
had given Him to do in proof of this assertion.

When, therefore, Jesus said, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the
Father," He did not merely mean that by His superior holiness He had
revealed the Father as no other man had done (although even this would
be a most surprising assertion for any mere man to make--that He was so
holy that whoever had seen Him had seen the absolutely holy God), but He
meant that God was present with Him in a special manner.

So important was it that the disciples should firmly grasp the truth
that the Father was in Christ that Jesus proceeds to enlarge upon the
proof or evidence of this. In the course of doing so He imparts to them
three assurances fitted to comfort them in the prospect of His
departure: first, that so far from being weakened by His going to the
Father, they will do greater works than even those which had proved that
the Father was present with Him; second, that He would not leave them
friendless and without support, but would send them the Paraclete, the
Spirit of truth, who should abide with them; and third, that although
the world would not see Him, they would, and would recognise that He was
the maintainer of their own life.

But all this experience would serve to convince them that the Father was
in Him. He had, He says, lived amon