plies, "If
in your law they are called gods to whom the word of God came,
charge ye him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the
world with blasphemy, because he says he is the Son of God?"
Christ's language in the Fourth Gospel

8 Schoettgen, in John iii. 13.

may be fairly explained without implying his actual pre existence
or superhuman nature. But it does not seem to us that John's
possibly can be. His miracles, according to the common idea of
them, did not prove him to be the coequal fac simile, but merely
proved him to be the delegated envoy, of God.

We may sum up the consideration of this point in a few words.
Christ did not essentially mean by the term "heaven" the world of
light and glory located by the Hebrews, and by some other nations,
just above the visible firmament. His meaning, when he spoke of
the kingdom of God or heaven, was always, in some form, either the
reign of justice, purity, and love, or the invisible world of
spirits. If that world, heaven, be in fact, and were in his
conception, a sphere located in space, he never alluded to its
position, but left it perfectly in the dark, keeping his
instructions scrupulously free from any such commitment. He said,
"I go to Him that sent me;" "I will come again and receive you
unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also." The references
to locality are vague and mysterious. The nature of his words, and
their scantiness, are as if he had said, We shall live hereafter;
we shall be with the Father; we shall be together. All the rest is
mystery, even to me: it is not important to be known, and the
Father hath concealed it. Such, almost, are his very words. "A
little while, and ye shall not see me; again, a little while, and
ye shall see me, because I go to the Father." "Father, I will that
they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am." Whether
heaven be technically a material abode or a spiritual state it is
of little importance to us to know; and the teachings of Jesus
seem to have nothing to do with it. The important things for us to
know are that there is a heaven, and how we may prepare for it;
and on these points the revelation is explicit. To suppose the
Savior ignorant of some things is not inconsistent with his
endowments; for he himself avowed his ignorance, saying, "Of that
day knoweth no man; no, not even the angels which are in heaven,
neither the Son, but the Father." And it adds an awful solemnity,
an indescribab