uld say for many, along with himself,
"We beheld His glory," and recognised that it was Divine glory, such as
none but an Only-begotten in the image of His Father could manifest.
This glory dawned upon believing men, and gradually encompassed them in
the brightness and beauty of a Divine revelation, by the appearance
among them of the Incarnate Word, "full of grace and truth" (ver. 14).
Not the works of wonder which He did, not the authority with which He
laid the angry waves and commanded the powers of evil, but the grace and
truth which underlay all His works, shone into their hearts as Divine
glory. They had previously known God through the law given by Moses
(ver. 17); but coming as it did through law, this knowledge was coloured
by its medium, and through it God's countenance seemed stern. In the
face of Jesus Christ they saw the Father, they saw "grace," an eye of
tender compassion and lips of love and helpfulness. In the law they felt
that they were seeing through a dimmed glass darkly; they became weary
of symbols and of forms in which often they saw but flitting shadows.
What must it have been for such men to live with the manifested God; to
have Him dwelling among them, and in Him to handle and see (1 John i. 1)
the "truth," the reality to which all symbol had pointed? "The law was
given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ."[6]

And to those who acknowledge in their hearts that this is Divine glory
which is seen in Christ, the glory of the Only-begotten of the Father,
He gives Himself with all His fulness. "As many as received Him, to them
gave He the right to become children of God." This is the immediate
result of the acceptance of Christ as the Revealer of the Father. In Him
we see what true glory is and what true sonship is; and as we behold the
glory of the Only-begotten, sent to declare the Father to us, we
acknowledge the unseen Father, and His Spirit brings us into the
relationship of children. That which is in God passes into us, and we
share in the life of God; and this through Christ. He is "full" of grace
and truth. In all He is and does, grace and truth overflowingly manifest
themselves. And "of His fulness have all we received, and grace upon
grace."[7] John read this off his own experience and that of those for
whom he could confidently speak. What they had seen and valued in Christ
became their own character. The inexhaustible fulness of grace in Christ
renewed in them grace according