26. He That Hath Seen Me Hath Seen The Father

MORE than once there flowed from Jesus' lips expressions, declarations, words, which still in reading them make you tremble, and shrink back, except you worship Him.

As for instance, when Jesus says to you, and to every one: "He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me" (Matt. 10:37).

Imagine some one in our days at a public gathering daring to say anything like this. Every hearer would count him insane. Or still worse, if some one entered your room, and in your presence thus addressed your child - would you not be bent upon finding the surest means of keeping this corrupter of your child away from him for the future?

Yet Jesus spake thus; and you yourself impress it upon your child that, this is true, and must be so, because you worship Him.

And in the same way with what Jesus answered Philip: "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father," there is the selfsame difficulty.

Whoever spoke like this, you would at once endeavor to render harmless by putting him away among the insane, except you yourself worshiped and adored God in Him.

Choice there is none.

Against a man of such blasphemous pretension, public opinion among any people not dead to religion would demand measures of protection. But your heart gives an echo that says Amen to this striking word of Jesus, because you yourself worship Him. It all depends on this.

The Sanhedrim, the vociferous Jews in the court-square at Jerusalem, acted logically from their point of view when they saw in Jesus a blasphemer and cast Him out - so long as they themselves did not worship Him.

As long as their eye was closed against Jesus' divine Majesty, they could not do otherwise. And their fault, their sin, their mortal guilt was not that they cast Jesus out, but that they did not see God in Him. That is to say, their mouth was full of talk about God, but when in Jesus God appeared before them, they knew Him not and denied that it was God.

Such is still the case.

In times when the religious capacity of observation is illumined, thousands again see God in Jesus, who were not aware of it before. And, again, in times like ours when this religions capacity of observation is limited and weakened, the masses die to the faith, and soothe themselves by heaping honorary titles upon Jesus, such as: "the ideal-man," "the example of true piety," "the hero of faith," "the martyr of a sacred cause." Altogether words - and again words - to hush the conscience, and to evade the inevitable consequence of an acknowledgement of His Deity, that with Thomas they kneel down and in ecstatic adoration exclaim: "My Lord and my God."

Voltaire fell into the frenzy of daring, when "L'Infame" flowed from his reckless pen. And yet, Voltaire was braver than these irresolute spirits; and so far as the root of the matter is concerned they stand where Voltaire stood.

They also do not believe that he who saw Jesus saw God. Only, they take no chance by saying how Jesus Who dared to claim this must be judged.

This seeing of God in Jesus is the highest act to which the spirit of man can come.

Many accept this while they are still children, but do not think about it much as they grow older. As for the rest, they leave this conviction uncultivated and do not apply it to their later developed consciousness, but leave it alone as something alien.

You should not judge these people too severely. Many are not able to do more. Their hand reaches no farther, and they no doubt have a sensation of moral uplift from this immature conviction.

But the thrice blessed, who have been initiated into an intimate and more ardent piety, can not rest content with this. They ponder and meditate, and undergo sensations and experiences of soul which cause them to enter more deeply into the mystery than is ever possible, without this activity of soul, by mere analysis of doctrine.

To them seeing is something other than sight with the sensual eye, because this is not the richest, not the clearest, not the fullest seeing.

God saw before we saw, without the eye of sense, purely spiritually and immediately.

When God imparted the gift of sight to man, by creating him after the Divine Image, it could not be otherwise than that in man, too, this sight originally must also have been spiritual, internal and immediate. And only because God clothed man with a body also, and placed him in a material world, did He form for him the eye by which to see this world.

But for this purpose alone; for nothing else. And therefore this material eye could not do service for any other perception than for that of this visible world. In behalf of the other, deeper, much richer and far more extensive world, which is not visible, this bodily eye is of no avail. For this, man received another eye, the eye of the soul, to which the eye of the body, as a subordinate instrument, only renders auxiliary aid.

Hence there are two worlds: the spiritual world and the visible world, and in connection therewith, two kinds of eyes: the eye of the soul and the eye of the body, and consequently two kinds of sight, the seeing immediately by the spirit, and the seeing mediately through the eye; a seeing inwardly, and a seeing outwardly.

An ideal perception, of which we even now have such a clear sense that nothing is more common than the saying: "You see that I am right," - "the seeing" referring to something that has been said, argued, explained, and not to something that has been shown to the eye of sense.

To see the Father in Jesus was, from the nature of the case, no primitive action of the sensual eye. God is a Spirit. He who in Jesus would see the Father, must therefore in Jesus see that Spirit which is God.

And therefore there can be no other meaning here than of a spiritual sight with the eye of the soul.

First you may only become aware that in Jesus there is something spiritual, much as in other holy persons. By further study of His inner Self, you perceive that what is spiritual in Jesus stands at a higher level than with any one else, and that in Him it is clearer, fuller, richer.

But this does not as yet explain Jesus to you, "higher, richer, fuller spirituality" than in others, even the best, does not as yet say enough. There discloses itself in Jesus a still more unfathomable depth, so that at length you must acknowledge that in Him the spiritual lives and glows more richly than you could ever picture it in your imagination. In Jesus it exceeds what was deemed possible, it surpasses the conceivable, and thus your spiritual observation of Jesus passes over into the infinite. You make no more distinctions. From the background of His being eternal perfection shines out toward you. And now everything shifts before the eye of your soul. Unconsciously you have passed from the finite into the infinite, and thus you feel that it is God Himself Whom you perceive through Jesus and in Jesus - and you kneel down, and you worship.

Yet this experience of yours is not independent of what your eye of sense sees in the Incarnated Word. In thus scrutinizing Jesus you do not separate His spirit from His personal appearance. You do not eliminate the body in order to penetrate to the soul. You take Jesus as He was, spoke, appeared and labored.

It is a complete manifestation, a whole, a mystery that stands before you.

And as, even among ordinary people, sometimes a moment comes when they appear radiant, and their face, their eye, around their lips, in their word, their appearance, their act, allow their soul to shine through, so that through their outward form you look into their inward being-so it was with Jesus, only infinitely more strongly, and with Him at all times.

His appearance must have been overwhelming. The impression which He made must have been full of surprise. And when you think what soulfulness there was in His holy eye, what impressiveness in the features of His face, what sympathy and power in His finely modulated voice, you feel at once that the physical appearance of Jesus was no hindrance to a perception of the Divine in Him, but rather a vehicle by which to approach it. It was as though through Jesus, God Himself came out into the visible world, inviting and alluring all who saw Jesus, to admire and to worship God in Him.

If when Jesus appeared on earth, man had been as he was before the fall in paradise, in Jesus every one would at once have recognized God to the full.

But with the darkened eye of the soul of sinful man this was not possible. God was there in Jesus, but the world could not see it. There was a veil before the eye of the soul, and only when God Himself lifted this veil, did man see Deity in Jesus.

This eye in the soul is not a separate thing. It is rather the sum-total of all the powers in the soul which enable it to become aware of, to perceive, to discover and to enjoy. This spiritual sight is a feeling, a perceiving, with all the powers that slumber in the soul. It is a waking up of the entire human nature that is within us, which, created after the Image of God, goes back to that original Image, clearly perceives the relation between the Image and the original, between the original and the impression, imprints it upon its own sense of self, and so knows God with an inward knowledge.

So alone has the human nature in Jesus grasped and known God to the full. In each and every one of us is not human nature as a whole, but this nature in one variation, in one special, definite form. In Jesus, on the other hand, this human nature itself was embodied. Therefore was He called the Son of Man. And because of this, Jesus was not only God, but as man also He alone of all others entirely grasped and understood the Father.

"No man knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him."

Thus you can not of yourself, and when left to yourself, with your inner soul-perception grasp God, and with the eye of your soul see God. Jesus could and can do this well, but not you. And for you the way thereto is opened only when you go to Jesus, when you become adopted in Jesus' fellowship, so that you become a living member of this mystical Body of which Jesus is the Head. And then you not only see God in Jesus, but God also comes to make tabernacle in you through the Holy Ghost.

For this indwelling of God in your soul is for you the disclosing of the Divine mystery to your own hidden self within your inmost hidden parts.

"Philip, have I been so long a time with you, and do you still say: Show me the Father?

"He that hath seen me he hath seen the Father" - in me and through me, your Savior!