In John’s reading in the Old Testament it seems strange to us that some things made a deeper impression on him than did others, and that he understood some things so differently from what we do, especially about the Messiah’s kingdom.  He noticed the things about His power and glory, but seems to have misread or overlooked those about the dishonor, and suffering and death that would come upon Him.  We read in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, how He was to be “despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, ... wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, ... brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before his shearers, ... and make His grave with the wicked.”  We know that all this happened.  We think of a suffering Saviour.  We wonder that John did not have such things in his mind.  But in this he was much like his teachers, and most of the Jews.  Though, as we have imagined, his family and some others were more nearly right than most people, even they did not have a full knowledge or correct understanding of all that the Old Testament Scriptures taught, concerning these things.

But at last John learned more concerning Christ than any of them.  We are yet to see how this came to pass.  For the present we leave him in Bethsaida, increasing in wisdom and stature.  So is also his cousin in Nazareth, of whom let us gain a more distinct view before He is revealed to John as the Messiah.

CHAPTER VIII

Jesus the Hidden Messiah

“There has been in this world one rare flower of Paradise—­a holy childhood growing up gradually into a holy manhood, and always retaining in mature life the precious, unstained memories of perfect innocence.”—­H.B.  Stowe.

The aged Simeon in the Temple, with the infant Jesus in his arms, said, “Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart, O Lord, ... in peace; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation”—­the expected Messiah.  But it was not for Him to proclaim His having come.  The aged Anna could not long speak “of Him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem,” or anywhere else.  For awhile the shepherds told their wonderful story, and then died.  The angels did not continue to sing their hymn of the Nativity over the plains of Bethlehem.  The Wise Men returned to their own country.  Herod died, and none thought of the young child he sought to kill.  The hiding in Egypt was followed by a longer hiding of another kind in Nazareth.  The stories of those who gathered about the infant cradle were soon forgotten, or repeated only to be disbelieved.  Mary, and her husband Joseph—­who acted the part of an earthly father to the heaven-born child—­carried through the years the sacred secret of who and what Jesus was.