It was precisely to bring this information, in the only way in which it could be brought to any human being, that we are told the man John was sent from God. And because the whole mind of the Prophet was possessed with this conviction, he was able to receive the communication which told him that a Man, without any signs of royalty, without any signs of prophetical dignity, One who had apparently been born and brought up in Galilee, One who had given no proof that He possessed any power of commanding the services of multitudes or of individuals,--was that Christ in whom all the characteristics of King and Prophet were to meet. This Man, he says, this carpenter's son, was He of whom I spake, '_He that cometh after me is preferred before me; for He was before me_.' Possibly a better translation of the last clause might be found, but the one we have is good enough; it conveys the sense of the original, though it be a little diluted. The next verse, as I said last Sunday, is naturally connected with this. Both, I believe, must be taken as part of John's witness. Here is that divine Word of God, out of whom all grace has issued. Each right and true man has had some grace, denoting him to be of divine origin. In Him dwelt that fulness of grace and glory, of which these were the scattered rays. Then the Evangelist comments upon this witness, and connects it with what he had said in the fifteenth verse. '_For the law was given through Moses, but the grace and the truth became through Jesus Christ._' Outward law, literal commands, tables of stone, had been given through a mere man, a mere servant or messenger. But all the grace and the truth, which were the essence of the law, which could not be expressed in letters, but only in the lives and acts of human beings,--these became parts of any man's character through Jesus Christ. For these belonged to the nature of God Himself,--these constituted His being. In Himself they could not be seen: '_No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father_.' He it is who in all ages has brought forth the divine perfection, in distinct qualities, and has exhibited them to men, and in men.