How the mother-heart of Mary must have throbbed as she listened to her nephew John’s story of Jesus on the Jordan.  How it must have gone out toward him, because of his thoughts about her son, and his love for Him.  How grieved she must have been as she thought of her own sons who did not believe as John did concerning their brother Jesus.  The time was to come when Jesus would make her think of John, not so much as a nephew, as a son.

In that festive hour, Mary too learned the lesson that human relationships to Jesus, however beautiful, were giving way to other and higher.  The words He had spoken to her at the feast, like those He had uttered in the Temple in His boyhood, and the things that had happened on the Jordan, showed her that henceforth she should think, not so much of Jesus as the Son of Mary, as the Son of God.

In thoughts she must have revisited the home of Elizabeth, whose walls, more than thirty years before, had echoed with her own song, “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.”

CHAPTER XII

John and Nicodemus

     “There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the
     Jews:  the same came unto Him by night.”

     “We speak that we do know, and bear witness of that we have
     seen.”—­John iii. 1, 2, 11.

     “There is Nicodemus, who visited Jesus by night—­to the
     astonishment of St. John—­but who was soon afterward Jesus’
     friend.”—­John Watson.

“The report of what passed reads, more than almost any other in the gospels, like notes taken at the time by one who was present.  We can almost put it again into the form of brief notes....  We can scarcely doubt that it was the narrator John who was the witness that took the notes.”—­Alfred Edersheim.

Three incidents mentioned by John only comprise all we know of Nicodemus.  In each of them he refers to him as coming to Jesus by night.  That visit seems to have made a deep impression on John.  We may think of Him as present at the interview between the Pharisee and the “Teacher come from God.”

We are not told why Nicodemus came at a night hour.  Perhaps he thought he could make sure of a quiet conversation, such as he could not have in the daytime.  Perhaps he did not want to appear too friendly to Jesus until he knew more about Him, though he already had a friendly feeling toward Him.  Perhaps he was afraid of the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish Court.  Most of its members hated Jesus and had commenced their opposition to Him, which was continued during His life, and resulted in His death.  Not so felt Nicodemus, though a member.  At a later day he opposed their unjust treatment of Him.  If he did not think of Jesus as the Messiah, he yet thought of Him as a prophet, “a teacher come from God.”  He was anxious to know more.  So cautiously and timidly he sought Jesus in the night.