that the blaze of His glory was manifest to every seeing eye that looked upon Him.
2, There would be several facts which would stand out with peculiar prominence before St. John's mind when he thought of the glory of the Divine Word as manifested in the human life of Jesus Christ.
(1) He might probably have in mind, for example, that vision which was granted to St. Peter, St. James, and himself, when the Lord was transfigured on the Mount. He who had been taken apart by Christ, and had seen the fashion of his Lord's visage changed, so as to shine bright as the light, and His raiment to become white and glistering, — that visage, which was so marred more than any man, made for the while fairer than the fairest, and those poor garments changed for the vesture of angels, — he who had witnessed (whether in the body, or out of the body) such a transfiguration as this might well say that even in the midst of His humiliation the glory of the Incarnate Word had been seen by him.
(2) Or again, the Evangelist might have in his thoughts those works of wonder, and at the same time of mercy, whereby the Lord had given evidence from time to time of the advent of a new power in the world. He might remember how the blind had received their sight, how the deaf had been made to hear, how the sick had been healed, and the lepers cleansed, nay, how the dead had risen up as if from sleep when bid to do so by the voice of Christ; he who had witnessed for the space of three years and more such works as these must have been blind indeed if the veil of human flesh had quite prevented him from recogniz- ing the glory which was ever manifesting itself forth in acts of Divine goodness and power.
(3) Or still further, it may be that in using such language as that of the text, St. John had reference to those two great events to which the mind of any disciple who was taunted with worshipping a crucified Lord would instinctively turn, namely, the Resurrection and the Ascension. We can easily understand how the patent fact of the crucifixion should have appeared, to those who knew no more of Christ, to have reduced His claims to an absurdity, how the Cross should have proved a stumbling-block
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to one class of minds and folly to another, — there is nothing to surprise us in this, — but the death of their Master would imply to His disciples no destruction of the faith, because they knew that He who was dead and buried rose again from the dead, and ascended into Heaven. And how could St. John above all, who had been first of the disciples at the empty sepulchre, and had been one of the company from whose presence the Lord was taken up, — how could he fail to testify that, however much the weakness of human flesh, the acknowledged truth that Jesus Christ had died, might seem to Jews and Greeks a fatal obstacle to the faith, it was very different with those who had beheld the glory of Christ, declared to be the only begotten Son by the Eesurrection from the dead and the Ascension to the right hand of God ?
3. "We beheld his glory." That is the Apostle's deliberate answer ; that is his description of the process which gained them conviction. " We beheld." They used the help both of eyes and of mind ; for the word suggests that they saw as men see when they let their minds follow their eyes — when they watch and think and learn as they look. The Apostles had had no brief and unsteady sight of the Master. They had had time given them to rest their gaze upon Him, and to continue looking, as He moved, as He spoke, as He went up and down with them. In many moods and varied scenes, in hope and in fear, in exaltation and in depression, by day and by night, alone and in a crowd, as a Prophet in the glare of the public sun, as a Friend in the secrecy of confidence, in a thousand incidents unforeseen and surprising — in all they had been close, very close, to Him, and had looked with all their eyes, and had hung upon Him with all their souls, and had meditated over all that they saw, and had pondered and had brooded, and had done this slowly, by degrees, habitually, moving forward step by step to this great conclusion. So they had seen ; in this sure and tested study of Him, they had lived and walked ; and what was it they found by so looking ?
4. Of one thing they were convinced. That which they found in Him was something that had not been in the world at all before Jesus came. It was not merely a higher form of that which had been already in others, even in the highest — in the Baptist, or in Moses. As they had known all that the Baptist
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could do, so, too, they had felt all that Moses could bring them. He had brought them a great gift. He had given them a law from God. But this peculiar grace and life which they now had received came into the world in Jesus Christ, and in Him only. So strange, so new, so marvellous, so incomparable was this deep secret on which they had found themselves gazing. And what was it, then, this secret ? How could it be told, this discovery ? " Well," the Apostle says, " it was nothing short of the supreme vision of all visions. It was (and we, as we waited and watched, became more and more certain of it) — it was the disclosure, the unveiling of God Himself. It was in character, in substance, in reality, God's own glory. Whatever men have found God to be, whatever our fathers of old time felt God to be, as He shone in upon their hearts through the splendour of the Shekinah in the Tabernacle of Moses, that same thing Jesus showed Himself to be to us who so closely studied and loved Him. We saw Him, saw Him long, saw Him very near, saw Him very carefully; and what we saw in Him was the glory of God — the glory as of the only begotten Son of the Almighty Father."