bit is just like that. It seems very simple, easily
understood at first flush in the mere statements made. The water is near
the top. You easily drink. And you are refreshed. But when you try to
find out how deep it is, you are startled to find that it is clear over
your head.

But it is _never over your heart_. It is too deep for you to grasp and
understand. You never touch bottom. _But_ it's never beyond
heart-understanding. You can sense and feel and love. You can open the
sluice-gates into your heart, and have the blessed flood-tide lift and
lift and bear you aloft and along. You can _love._ And that is the whole
story.

Was John an artist? Is he making a rare painting for us here? Is he
studying perspective, shading and spacing, to an exquisite nicety that
is revealed in the very way he puts words and sentences and paragraphs
together? I do not know. And if any of you think the thing I am about to
speak of is due to a mere mechanical chance of the pen, I'll not quarrel
with you. Though I shall still have my own personal thought in the
matter.

But will you notice this? John begins his prologue with a description of
a wonderful personality. He ends it with another description of this
same personality. Both descriptions are rare in beauty and boldness, in
simplicity and brevity. And right midway between the two, at almost the
exact middle line of the reading, at what is the artistic center, stands
the word "_came_."

That word "came" gathers up into itself and tells out to you the whole
story about this twice-described personality. "He came" John says.
That's the whole thing. First the _He_ fills your eye, and then what He
did--_came_. And as you step off a bit for better perspective, and
change your personal position this way and that to get the best light,
you find the picture standing out before your awed eyes.

It is a Man coming down the road with face looking into yours. He is
truly a man, every line of the picture makes that clear to you. But such
a man as never was seen before, with the rarest blending of the kingly
and the kindly in His bearing. The purest purity, the utmost
graciousness, the highest ideals, the gentlest manner, nobility beyond
what we have known, and kindliness past describing,--all these blend in
the pose of His body and most of all in the look of His face. And He is
in motion. He is walking, walking towards us, with hands outstretched.

This is John's picture of Jesus. He came to H