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