"I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him. "Philip saith unto Him, Lord shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. "Jesus saith unto him. Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?" [Sidenote: The meaning of Jesus's answer.] Is not this answer very simple and very clear? Is there any good reason for mistaking this answer? You hear it said very often of a young man that he is the very image of his father. If you should some day say to a young man, "I should like very much to see your father," what should you think the father looked like, if the young man were to answer, "He that has seen me has seen my father"? {31} Could you possibly in reason help thinking that the father and the son were alike? We know what manner of man Jesus was. Jesus possessed a body of flesh and bones; or, as John the Beloved, said, "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." Besides, Jesus was so much like other men that His own people could not see anything different in Him. When Jesus went into His own country and taught in the synagogue, the people were astonished. "Whence hath this man this wisdom," they asked, "and these mighty words? Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?" To His own people Jesus was but an ordinary man. [Sidenote: The testimony of Paul.] But the disciples of Jesus learned to understand what Jesus meant by His teaching about God. Said Paul, "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He hath appointed Heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." [Sidenote: The truth about God.] It is not necessary, then, to go a round-about way to find out the nature of God. The simple explanation is the true one. The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob--the supreme God of this world--is a person. He possesses a body of flesh and bones. His Son is so much like Him that {32} He could say in truth, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Jesus was the express image of God's person. [Sidenote: God is our Father.]