t is perhaps even more to the purpose, we have
affirmations of the same truth made by Jesus Himself: "Before Abraham
was I am"; "I and the Father are one"; "The glory which I had with Thee
before the world was"; "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." Who
that listens to these sayings can marvel that the horrified Jews
considered that He was making Himself equal with God and took up stones
to stone Him for blasphemy? Who does not feel that when Jesus allowed
this accusation to be brought against Him at the last, and when He
allowed Himself to be condemned to death on the charge, He must have put
the same meaning on His words that they put? Otherwise, if He did not
mean to make Himself equal with the Father, would He not have been the
very first to unmask and protest against so misleading a use of
language? Had He not known Himself to be Divine, no member of the
Sanhedrim could have been so shocked as He to listen to such language or
to use it.

But in reading this Gospel one cannot but remark that John lays great
stress on the miracles which Christ wrought. In fact, in announcing his
object in writing it is especially to the miracles he alludes when he
says, "These signs are written that ye might believe." In recent years
there has been a reaction against the use of miracles as evidence of
Christ's claim to be sent by God. This reaction was the necessary
consequence of a defective view of the nature, meaning, and use of
miracles. For a long period they were considered as merely wonders
wrought in order to prove the power and authority of the Person who
wrought them. This view of miracles was so exclusively dwelt upon and
urged, that eventually a reaction came; and now this view is
discredited. This is invariably the process by which steps in knowledge
are gained. The pendulum swings first to the one extreme, and the height
to which it has swung in that direction measures the momentum with which
it swings to the opposite side. A one-sided view of the truth, after
being urged for a while, is found out and its weakness is exposed, and
forthwith it is abandoned as if it were false; whereas it is only false
because it claimed to be the whole truth. Unless it be carried with us,
then, the opposite extreme to which we now pass will in time be found
out in the same way and its deficiencies be exposed.

In regard to miracles the two truths which must be held are: first, that
they were wrought to make known the character an