body and spirit, too.

As you come to the door you reach for your latch-key, and find, in the
busy rush, you seem to have forgotten it, somehow. So you ring the bell
or knock. And suppose--be patient with me a bit, please. Suppose your
loved ones know you're there. You even see a hand drawing aside the edge
of the window shade, and two eyes that you know so well peer out through
the crack at you; then the shade goes to again. Yes, they know you're
there. But the door, your own door, doesn't open. How would you feel?

And some one says to himself, "That's not a good illustration. That
thing couldn't happen. It isn't natural." No: you're right. It _isn't_
natural. It could not happen to _you_. I am sure it could not happen to
_me_. If it could I'd be heart-broken. _But this is what happened to
Him!_ This is what John is saying here. He came to His own front door,
and they whose very image revealed their close kinship to Him, received
Him not into the home, but kept the door fast in His face.

Then there's a later translation. This old King James version bears the
date of 1611, I think. And the English Revision is dated 1881, I
believe. And this American Standard Revision I am using has 1901 on its
title page. But there's a later revision. It bears a yet later date,
1915, April 27. But it is a shifting date. Each translator fixed his own
date.

This latest translation runs something like this: He _comes_ to His own.
That's you and myself. We belong to Him. He gave His breath to us in
Eden. He gave His breath to you and me at our birth. He gave His blood
for us on Calvary. We belong to Him. The image of His kinship is stamped
upon us. We may not acknowledge it, but that can't change the fact.

_He comes to His own, and His own_--and here, as the scholars would say,
there are variant readings. Let me give you one or two I have found.
Here is one: He comes to His own, and His own--puts a chair outside the
door on the top-step. It's a large armchair with a cushion in, perhaps.
And then His own talks about Him through the crack of the door, or
likelier, the window. It's reckoned safer to keep the door fast.

Listen to what he says: "He's a wonderful man this Jesus; great teacher,
the greatest; the greatest man of the race; His philosophy, His moral
standards are the ideals; wonderful life; great example." They fairly
exhaust the language in talking about this Man. But notice. It seems a
bit queer. The man they're talking