but seen only by opened eyes. There He is seen as a Man of Fire,
ablaze with light, intently watching, with tender but omnipotent touch
waiting, ever waiting; with a patience unknown except in Him, still
waiting.[10]

But John's earlier Gospel picture is of the _Brooding-Jesus_. The word
"brooding" here takes in its fine deep significance. Jesus is seen here
as a brooding Lover, by the warmth of His wooing love drawing out the
warmth of an answering love. This is peculiarly and distinctively the
picture of John's Gospel. There is _a Man walking towards you_ in these
pages. Turn where you will there He is, and always facing you, with a
gentle eagerness in His face and in the bend-forward of His body.

There is always a warmth, a gentle radiating comforting drawing warmth
in His presence. This is the thing you feel most, the warmth. But it
isn't the only thing. There's the purity. There are ideals that seem out
of reach in their great height. There's the insistence on these ideals,
rigid stern absolutely unbending insistence. You _see_ these. You can't
help it. You feel them tremendously. They seem to leave you clear out
of reckoning, they are so high up. But there's the warmth, drawing
arousing wooing, irresistible.

You come to find that the warmth of that presence is as irresistible as
the ideals and the insistence are unbending. And the warmth woos you. It
warms you, till there come the intense admiration of the ideals, and
then the eager reaching of the whole being up towards them.

This is John's picture of the brooding wooing Jesus. This is God, in
human garb as He comes to us in John's pages. Jesus is God brooding over
us to woo out of us the love and purity, the purity and love, that He
woos into us by the touch of His own warm presence.

John's little book is put together as simply as his sentences. And as
you take it up, it falls apart almost of itself, so simple and natural
are its divisions. We had a look at the opening paragraphs of the
Gospel, those eighteen brief verses that open the doorway into all the
Gospel holds for us. _There_ is given chiefly John's simple vivid
tremendous picture of _a Person_, coming with swift long stride and
outreached hands.

Now we turn to the second part of the book. It runs from the nineteenth
verse of the opening chapter on through to the end of chapter twelve. It
is devoted to _the great winsome wooing_ of this great human Person.
Here we see Him on His wooing erran