Then John begins a new paragraph. He goes back to tell just how the thing was done. Listen: the Word, this wondrous One, became a man, one of ourselves, and pitched His tent in close amongst our tents.There's only a stretch of canvas between Him and any of us. He wanted to get close, close enough to help, yet never infringing upon the privacy of our tents, only coming in as He was invited. But He has remarkable ears. A whisper reaches Him at once. And He is out of His tent into ours to help at the faintest call. That was why He pitched His tent in amongst ours, to be one of ourselves, and to be at hand in our need.

And then a touch of awe creeps into John's spirit as he writes, and the light flashes out of his eye with the intensity of an old picture surging to the front of his imagination again. There was more than a tent here, more than a man. Out of the man, out through the tent doorway, and tent canvas, flashes a wondrous, soft, clear light, that transfigures canvas and tent and man. John's face glows as he writes, "and we beheld His glory."

I suppose he is thinking chiefly of that still night on white Hermon. This despised Man had called the inner three away from the crowd, in the dark of night, and had gently drawn aside the exquisite drapery of His humanity, and let some of the inner glory shine out before their eyes. So the way was lightened for them as their feet were turned with His down towards the dark valley of the cross. I suppose John is thinking chiefly of this.

But this is not all, I am very sure. There's more, even though this may have been most. Glory is the character of goodness. It is not something tacked on the outside. It is some native thing looking out from within. So much of what we think of as glory and splendour in scenes of magnificence is a something in the externals, the outer arrangements. Splendid garbing, brilliant colours, dazzling shining of lights, seats removed a distance apart and up, magnificent outer appointments, -- these seem connected in our thought with an occasion and a scene being glorious.

But John is using the word in its simple true first meaning. Glory is something within shining out. It is the inner native light that goodness gives out. "We beheld His glory." I think John must have been thinking of Nazareth. Thirty out of thirty-three years were spent in homely Nazareth. Ten-elevenths of Jesus' life was spent in -- living, simply living the true pure strong gentle life amid ordinary circumstances, homely surroundings. This was the greatest thing Jesus did short of dying. He lived. Next to Calvary where the glory shined out incomparably, it shined out most in Nazareth. He hallowed the common round of life by living an uncommon life there. This was a revealing of His glory. So He revealed the inner spirit of simple full obedience to His Father's plan for His earth-life.

If we would only rise to His level! The way up is down. We are likest Him when we live the true Jesus-life regardless of where it is lived, on the street, in the house, amidst the ideals -- or lack of ideals -- of those we touch closest. It was a wondrous glory John beheld. And the crowd -- no wonder that crowd couldn't resist Jesus. They can't even yet, when He is lived.

Then John goes on quietly to explain about that glory, how it came. He says it was "glory as of an only begotten of a father." The common versions with which we are familiar, the old King James, the English and American revisions, all say "the," "the only begotten of the Father." I suppose the translators wanted to make it quite clear that Jesus was in an exceptional way the very Son of God. And so they don't translate quite as John put it. They try to help him out a little in making his meaning clear.

But you will notice that this old Book of God never needs any helping out in making the truth quite clear. When you can sift through versions and languages down to what is really being said, you find it said in the simplest strongest way possible.

Here John is saying, "glory as of an only begotten from a father." It is a family picture, so common in the East. Here in the West, the unit of society is the individual. The farther west you come the more pronounced this becomes, until here in our own land individualism seems at times to run to extremes. Custom in the East is the very reverse of this. There the unit of action is not the individual, but the family. The family controls the individual in everything. We Westerners think we can see where it runs to such extremes as to constitute one of the great hindrances to progress there.

In the East, if a young man is to be married, he has actually nothing to do with it, except to be present in proper garb when the time comes. The fact that he should now be married, the choice of his bride, the betrothal, the time, all arrangements and adjustments, -- all this is done by the families. The two that we Westerners think of as the principals have nothing to do, except to acquiesce in the arrangements of their elders. It is strictly a family affair.

Even so all that belongs to the family, of wealth, fame, inheritance, distinction, vests distinctly in the head of the family, the father. He stands for the whole family. And so, too, all of this descends directly from the father at his death to his eldest son. In some parts the father retires at a certain age, either really or nominally, and all becomes vested technically in his eldest son. And if the son be an only begotten son, then literally all that is in the father comes into the son. All the fame, the inheritance, the traditions, the obligations, the wealth, in short all the glory of the father comes of itself, by common action of events, to the son.

Now this is what John is thinking of as he writes, "we beheld His glory, glory as of an only begotten of a father." That is to say, all there is in the Father is in Jesus. When you see Jesus, you are seeing the Father. The whole of God is in this Jesus. This is what John is saying here.