“The same who turned water into wine?”

“There are lots of stories about him.  We know plenty of them.”

“It is said that Herod’s murder of the innocents was on his account.”

When the crowd heard that, they were quiet, and looked at the new arrival with a sort of awe.  And so old Herod had taken him for the Messiah-King!

A feeling of reverence spread among the people.  For Jesus stepped into the river.  The prophet dipped his vessel in the water and poured it over his lightly-bent head.  The edges of the clouds in the heavens shone with the crimson light of evening.  The eyes of the bystanders were riveted by a white speck which showed itself in the windows of heaven, first like a flower-bloom and then like a fluttering pennon.  It was a dove that flew down and circled round the head of him who had just been baptized.

“My dearly beloved son!”

The people whispered; “Whose voice was it that said:  ’My dearly beloved son’?”

“Didn’t it refer to him over whom the water has just been poured?”

A shudder seized many of them.  It was just as if he was presented to men by the invisible God!

“We will ask him himself whose son he is,” they said, and pressed towards the river.  But he had gone away, and the twilight of the desert lay over the stream.

The same night Mary sat in her room at Nazareth, and sewed.  She kept looking out of the window, for she would not go to bed till Jesus returned.  When he had gone out of the door two days ago, he had turned to her again, looked at her, and said: 

“Mother, I go to my Father.”

She thought he was going to the cemetery to pray at Joseph’s tomb, as he often did.  For in the city of the dead solitude may be found.  When he returned neither on the first day nor on the second, she began to feel anxious.  She waited up the whole night.

The next morning the little town rang with the news:  “The carpenter has been seen with the preacher.  He has been baptized.”

“That’s just like him.  One enthusiast keeps company with another.”

“It would be more correct to say with false prophets.  For what else is it when a man declares that he can wash away sin with a dash of water?”

Thereupon a Sidonian donkey-driver, who had come down the street; “That’s excellent!  You Israelites can do so much with your ablutions.  That would be a capital thing!”

“Ah! what things one hears!  Everything points to the speedy destruction of the world.”  And one whispered in his ear, “I tell you, frankly, ’twould be no great misfortune.”

“Now John has caught it.  Do you know what he’s always shouting?”

“The young carpenter, his apprentice?  He’s never said anything that matters.”

“Do you know what he’s always exclaiming?  He strides through the streets, and his hair flies in the wind.  He spreads out his hands before him, and says:  ‘The word has become flesh!’”