The next words are only a part of this promise. '_Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death._' Why the translators, who have been careful in adhering to the common rendering of λόγος thus far, should suddenly have forsaken it here, and dilute it into 'saying,' I cannot conjecture. Certainly they have done much to make the whole passage unintelligible by that wilfulness. _He_ has taken pains to distinguish the _speech_ or _saying_ which enters the ear from the _word_ which is lodged in the heart, and is to be cherished there. That His word brings life, because in Him the Divine Word is Life, He has asserted again and again. When the man loses his hold on that word, death overtakes him; if he hold it fast, he is united to that which is stronger than death; and he shall not taste of death. When it comes to his soul and body, he shall defy it. He shall rise above it, and they shall be raised with him. '_Then said the Jews unto Him, Now we know that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and thou sayest, If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death. Art thou greater than our father Abraham, which is dead? and the prophets are dead: whom makest thou thyself? Jesus answered, If I honour myself, my honour is nothing: it is my Father that honoureth me; of whom ye say, that He is your God: yet ye have not known Him; but I know Him: and if I should say, I know Him not, I shall be a liar like unto you: but I know Him, and keep His saying._' The sense of eternity, of a relation to the eternal God,--to a Father of spirits, had almost forsaken these Jews. The sense of time,--of a series or succession of years,--had displaced every other in their minds; they could contemplate nothing, except under conditions of time. To the mere trader,--to him who lives in calculating when so much money will become due--any conditions, except those of time, seem impossible. He laughs at those who hint at any other. But the reverence for ancestry,--the affection that binds us to a family and a nation, does not belong to time. It brings past and present into closest proximity; it leaps over distinctions of costume and circumstance, to claim affinity with the inmost heart of those who lived generations ago. For all family feeling, and all national feeling, has its root in a living God; therefore it defies death; it treats death as only belonging to the individual.