At each turn, this conversation becomes more profound and awful. The next verse leads us into a depth into which we may well tremble to look, and yet from which it is most unsafe to turn away:--'_I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father_.' Jesus had spoken of His Father as the root of all His loving acts,--of the wisdom, and truth, and love which were expressed in His words and in Himself. If there is a root to which all good that appears in a human life can be referred, must there not be a source to which all evil is referred? Can it be the same? If healing, restoration, life, are from the Father of Jesus, from what father come murderous thoughts,--the wish to destroy the Son of Man? To fly from any thought which presses closely upon the conscience to some external truism,--even if it is one which has been proved to be inapplicable,--is the ordinary desire of us all. '_They answered and said unto Him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham._' The question is about the paternity of certain purposes in their minds. These purposes were near to them, to their very selves. They determined their acts and their habits. Did they take _these_ by descent from the father of the faithful? Were these his progeny? Of course, they would have answered, as many of us would have answered, 'That is using words in a double sense. You mean one kind of fatherhood, we mean another.' No! it was they who were guilty of this duplicity. They were calling Abraham their father, in the notion that they were deriving some _spiritual_ privileges from him. If they only intended that they could trace up their pedigree, according to the flesh, to him, let them say that frankly to themselves. It was just what our Lord was urging them, in this part of His conversation, to do. But if he was their parent in any other sense, then let them remember what he was, what he did. The living and true God spake to him, and called him. He heard the voice; he yielded to it. That same voice was speaking to them. He was '_telling them the truth_;' and therefore '_they sought to kill Him_.'