s as ourselves, but they overcame them in consideration of what
they had seen in Jesus, or even only heard of him. They could not
comprehend him in his moral elevation and holiness, except as the Logos,
the Word, the Son of God. If we follow them, we are safe; if not, we can
no doubt say much in excuse, but we place ourselves in the strongest
opposition to history. We may say that men have never seen any divine
idea, any divine word, any divine thought of any kind realised on earth;
nay, that man can never have the right to pass such a deifying judgment,
of his own sovereign power, on anything lying within his actual
experience. We so easily forget that if God is once brought near to
humanity, and no longer regarded as only transcendent, humanity must, at
the same time, be thought and brought nearer to the divine. We may
acknowledge this and still maintain that others, like the apostles and the
philosophers of Alexandria after them, must have felt the same difficulty,
perhaps even more strongly than we, who never were eye-witnesses nor
Platonic philosophers. Yet they still insisted that Jesus in his life,
conduct, and death demonstrated that human nature could rise no higher
than in him, and that he _was_ all and _fulfilled_ all that God had
comprised in the Logos "man." Jesus himself declares, when Peter first
called him the son of God, that flesh and blood had not revealed it unto
him, but his Father which is in heaven (Matthew xvi. 17). And this was
perfect truth and applies to us also.

We may go through the whole Fourth Gospel, and we shall find that it
remains incomprehensible, except from the standpoint that we ascribe to
the author. When we read (i. 18), "No man hath seen God at any time; the
only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared
him," shall we then think only of the son of the carpenter, the bodily
Jesus, and not rather of the Word that was in him, and that was as near to
the Father as He to himself; that was in the bosom of the Father, and that
declared to us the Father, who was in the beginning? Has not Jesus himself
stated (iii. 13) that no man hath ascended up to heaven except him who
came down from heaven, that is from God, and that no one has seen the
Father, save he which is of God, that is the Son (vi. 46)? These are, of
course, figurative expressions, but their meaning cannot be doubtful. When
Nathanael called Jesus, Rabbi, King of Israel, and Son of God, his ideas
may