His words imply that He has a right to speak of these things also, that He is _able_ to speak of them. On what ground could a power so amazing rest? He goes on to declare the ground of it: '_For no man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven_.' Of all paradoxes, this appears to be the greatest. And yet if the heart of this ruler--if the heart of any man--has been delivered from the oppressive fears and superstitions that connect themselves with the thoughts of a distant heaven in _space_, which looks coldly and drearily down upon earth--of a distant heaven in _time_, which stands aloof from all human sympathies; if ever the belief in heaven has been regarded as a spring of hope and energy to the sons of men; if ever they have learnt not to think of earth as a place in which they were to cozen and lie for threescore years and ten, and heaven as a place to which some might escape, if they made compensations to the Ruler of it for the evils which they had done in the other region of His government; that deliverance, those better and nobler thoughts have come from the paradox which is uttered in this verse. Poor people--utterly bewildered by all they have heard from divines and masters in Israel about heaven, and the way in which they are to obtain heaven--have taken this sentence home to their hearts,--that the Son of Man, He who suffered for them and with them on earth, is He who has ascended into heaven, and who is always in heaven. They have entered into the kingdom of heaven with those spirits which were born of the divine Spirit, as they entered into the kingdom of earth when they were born of the flesh; they have seen the kingdom with the spiritual eye which God has opened, as clearly as they have seen the trees and flowers of earth with the fleshly eye which He has opened. How He opens that eye, and what He reveals to it when it is opened, the next words will tell us. '_And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved._'