[Illustration:  RAISING THE DAUGHTER OF JAIRUS H.  Hofmann Page 99]

This is the first we know of this distinction in the apostolic band.  We almost hear the nine saying, “Why is this?” Can it be that, in that hour, at the door of this house of mourning, there was awakened the feeling of jealousy which afterward appeared?  Did it inspire in the three a sense of superiority, and ambition to be higher in position than the rest in the kingdom of their Lord?  Did James and John especially hope for promotion above the nine, and even the ten including Peter?  So it will appear.  But all this was to pass away when the band better understood the nature of their Lord’s kingdom, and possessed more of His spirit.

The death-chamber was too sacred a place for numbers, even for the nine, whose admittance would be more fitting than that of the hired mourners whom Jesus excluded with them.  He had His own wise reasons for the choice of the three.  We do not wonder that John was one of them.  With all his manifest failings—­which he at last overcame—­he was the most like his Master.  In that death-chamber the Lord was to show His “gentleness and delicacy of feeling and action” such as John could understand, and with which he could sympathize.

“And taking the child by the hand, He saith unto her, Talitha, cumi.”  We are glad that Mark has preserved for us the very words that must have thrilled the heart of John.  They had been interpreted, “My little lamb, my pet lamb, rise up.”  In them was a lesson for John.  They were a revelation of his Master’s tenderness toward childhood.  It was a needed lesson, which he finally learned.

As John and Peter saw the returning life of the little maid, and heard their Master’s command “that something should be given her to eat,” they thought not of the time when they should stand together again near the same spot with the same Master, Himself risen from the dead, and hear Him utter another command, “Feed My lambs.”

As they with James followed their Lord out from the death-chamber—­such no longer—­and heard His charge “that no man should know” what had happened, the very secrecy drew more distinctly the line of the inner circle about the three.  It was not to be erased during the Lord’s earthly sojourn with the twelve.

CHAPTER XVI

John a Beholder of Christ’s Glory

“We beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the
Father.”—­St. John i. 14.

“We were eyewitnesses of His majesty.  For He received from God the
Father honor and glory ... when we were with Him in the holy
mount.”—­2 Peter i. 16-18.

“As brightest sun, His face is bright;
His raiment, as the light, is white,
Yea, whiter than the whitest snow. 
Moses, Elias, spake with Him. 
Of deepest things, of terrors grim,
Of boundless bliss, and boundless woe,
Of pangs that none but Christ may know.