His face combines all the fineness of
the finest woman's face, with all the strength of the strongest man's,
and more, immensely more, all the purity and tenderness and power of
_God's_ face. It _is_ God Himself in human form coming a-wooing to
earth, and we call His name Jesus. This conception is the very
atmosphere of John's Gospel.

Jesus is the witness of the Father to men. He knew the Father. He knew
Him by closest intimacy. He lived with Him. He came down to _tell_ what
He knew. He wanted others to know too. He wanted them to know _even as_
He knew. _Telling_ is the whole of Jesus; telling men of the Father.

His mere presence, His character, His warm sympathy, His practical
helpfulness, His words, His actions, most of all His dying and His
rising, all these were a _telling_, a witnessing, a wooing; telling the
Father's love, telling the damnableness of our sin by giving His very
life blood to get it out of us; so telling us how we might really know
the mother-heart of the Father.

Jesus the Dividing Line.

There are several contrasts between the first three Gospels and John's.
It is very striking to notice one in particular in this connection. One
reading the first three Gospels for the first time is impressed with the
fact of Jesus' _rejection_. This stands out peculiarly and dominantly.
It was the great fact, told most terribly in the death of Jesus. It was
the thing that stood out sharpest in the generation to which Jesus
belonged, the generation for whom these three Gospels were written at
the first.

But John wrote his story for an after-generation, a generation that had
not known the man Jesus by personal touch and observation. And so it was
for all after-generations. And John makes it very clear that Jesus was
rejected, _and_ accepted.

He was indeed _rejected_; that fact stands out as painfully here as in
the others. He was rejected by the little inner clique that held the
national reins, and held them with fevered tenacity, and drove hard. And
the reason for it is made to stand out as plainly as the fact. The envy
and jealousy, the intense bitterness and viciousness and devilish
obstinacy back of the rejection stand as boldly out to all eyes as to
Pilate's.

But the other side stands out sharply too. Jesus was _accepted_. He was
accepted by all classes, by the cultured, and the scholarly, by
thoughtful studious leaders and officials of the nation. He was accepted
by the great middle classe