These he gives himself credit for as springing from his zeal for religion, or he merely pities himself for them as the remains of indwelling sin. He has not courage to say, 'These spring from another father, not from the Father in heaven. So far as I identify myself with them, I become the child of a father in hell.' But he goes on assuming he is God's child. He tells other men that they are only children in the secondary signification; that is to say, he cherishes in them the most dangerous of all falsehoods. He prevents them from turning to their true Father, and seeking of Him a true and divine life. These Jews qualified the assertion, that they were all God's children, even in the lowest, most unreal, sense of that word. These were so who '_were not born of fornication_.' Children not born in lawful wedlock they seem to have thought of as having some dark, infernal parentage. It must have been most startling to them when the words at last came forth which appeared to fix that parentage upon themselves. '_Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but He sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not. Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God._' The Jews were proud of not worshipping false gods. The true God, then, what was He? The moment truth confronted them, they shrunk from it. They were proud of not worshipping evil gods. The good God, then, what was He? The moment goodness confronted them, they hated it, and wished to extinguish it. They shrunk from the Man who did not speak His own words, but God's. They hated the Man who did not show forth His own goodness, but God's. Whence came this mind in them, this will, this spirit? Jesus tells them plainly. 'There is a mind, a will, a spirit, which from the beginning has been a man-slayer--has compassed the destruction of the man in each man. There is a mind, a will, a spirit, who has been from the beginning a liar, who would not stand in the truth.'