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.