"_received Him not_." They not only keep Him out of His own possessions,
but do their worst in putting Him out of life. And the little book
closes in its last two chapters with His receivers being received into
the sweetest intimacies of tested triumphant love and into the inner
secrets of rarest resurrection power.

This is the most heart-breaking of all of John's heart-breaking
sentences. John had a hard time writing this Gospel of his. He was not
simply writing a book; that might have been fairly easy. But he was
telling about a friend of his, _the_ friend of his life, his one dearest
Friend. And when he remembers how they treated Him his eyes fill up, and
his heart beats till it thumps, and his quill sticks into the paper in
sheer reluctance to tell the story.

I think likely in the original manuscript, John's own first copy, the
writing was a bit shaky and uneven here. The dew of his wet eyes drops
and blurs the words a bit as he puts down, "He came to His own, and . .
they who were His own . . _received . . Him . . not_."

One day a young student was crossing the quadrangles of one of the old
Scottish Universities towards his quarters in the dormitory. He was not
feeling well. His eyes had troubled him and made his work very
difficult. On the advice of a friend he sought the judgment of an expert
in the treatment of the eyes. The specialist made a very thorough
examination and then informed the young student tactfully but plainly
that he would lose his eyesight, surely and not slowly.

Lose his eyesight? A sudden terrific actual blow between his eyes could
not have stunned his body more than this stunned brain and heart. Lose
his eyesight! All his plans and coveted ambitions seemed slipping clean