The _prima facie_ view of this passage undoubtedly is that the writer is speaking as one of a group of eye-witnesses. But there are two ways in which this inference is turned aside. 1. Harnack[34] and some others take it as referring not to bodily but to mystical vision. 2. Others, again, think of the writer as speaking in the name of a whole generation, or of Christians generally. In regard to the first of these explanations we note that the word θεᾶσθαι is used twenty-two times in all the New Testament, including the present passage; and in every one of bodily and not of mental or spiritual vision. And whatever sense we may put upon seeing or hearing, it is difficult to explain such a strong expression as ‘that which ... our hands have handled,’ where the writer seems to go out of his way to exclude any ambiguity, in any other sense than of physical handling. In regard to the second explanation we observe that there is a contrast between ‘we’ and ‘you,’ between teachers and taught. The teachers are in any case a small body; and they seem to rest their authority, or at least the impulse to teach, on the desire to communicate to others what they had themselves experienced. I have therefore little doubt that the _prima facie_ view of the passage is the right one. The writer speaks of himself as a member of a small group, like that of the Apostles, but a group that may include all who had really seen the Lord and who afterwards took up the work of witnessing to Him. The other passage, John i. 14, is more ambiguous: ‘the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth.’ If this had stood alone, it might have seemed an open question whether ‘we beheld’ was not used in a vague sense of Christians generally—or even of the human race, as ‘tabernacled among us’ just before might mean ‘among men.’ But the more specific reference would be more pointed; and it is favoured by the analogy of the passage of which we have just been speaking as well as of those which follow.