Then comes John’s second heart-breaking verse; but it is just a bit more heart-breaking in what it says.  Listen:  He came to His own home, and they that were His own kinsfolk received Him not into the house but kept Him standing out in the cold and storm of the wintry night.

One of you men goes home to-night.  It’s your own home, shaped on your own personality through the years.  It’s a bit late.  You’ve had a long hard day.  You’re tired.  It’s stormy.  The wind and the rain chill you as you turn the corner.  And you pull your coat a bit snugger as you quicken your steps and think of home, warmth and comfort, loved ones, and rest for body and spirit, too.

As you come to the door you reach for your latch-key, and find, in the busy rush, you seem to have forgotten it, somehow.  So you ring the bell or knock.  And suppose—­be patient with me a bit, please.  Suppose your loved ones know you’re there.  You even see a hand drawing aside the edge of the window shade, and two eyes that you know so well peer out through the crack at you; then the shade goes to again.  Yes, they know you’re there.  But the door, your own door, doesn’t open.  How would you feel?

And some one says to himself, “That’s not a good illustration.  That thing couldn’t happen.  It isn’t natural.”  No:  you’re right.  It isn’t natural.  It could not happen to you.  I am sure it could not happen to me.  If it could I’d be heart-broken. But this is what happened to Him! This is what John is saying here.  He came to His own front door, and they whose very image revealed their close kinship to Him, received Him not into the home, but kept the door fast in His face.

Then there’s a later translation.  This old King James version bears the date of 1611, I think.  And the English Revision is dated 1881, I believe.  And this American Standard Revision I am using has 1901 on its title page.  But there’s a later revision.  It bears a yet later date, 1915, April 27.  But it is a shifting date.  Each translator fixed his own date.

This latest translation runs something like this:  He comes to His own.  That’s you and myself.  We belong to Him.  He gave His breath to us in Eden.  He gave His breath to you and me at our birth.  He gave His blood for us on Calvary.  We belong to Him.  The image of His kinship is stamped upon us.  We may not acknowledge it, but that can’t change the fact.

He comes to His own, and His own—­and here, as the scholars would say, there are variant readings.  Let me give you one or two I have found.  Here is one:  He comes to His own, and His own—­puts a chair outside the door on the top-step.  It’s a large armchair with a cushion in, perhaps.  And then His own talks about Him through the crack of the door, or likelier, the window.  It’s reckoned safer to keep the door fast.

Listen to what he says:  “He’s a wonderful man this Jesus; great teacher, the greatest; the greatest man of the race; His philosophy, His moral standards are the ideals; wonderful life; great example.”  They fairly exhaust the language in talking about this Man.  But notice.  It seems a bit queer.  The man they’re talking about is outside the door.  His own claim is left severely outside.