knew until revealed to her by an angel from God. We think of them as
faithful to Him, and ready for any service to which He might call them,
in the fisherman's home of Salome, or the carpenter's home of Mary.
Mary's character has been summed up in the words, "pure, gentle and
gracious." Salome must have had something of the same nature, which we
find again in her sons.

If Salome and Mary were sisters, our interest in James and John deepens,
as we think of them as cousins of Jesus. This family connection may have
had something to do with their years of close intimacy; but we shall
find better reason for it than in this kinship. There was another
relation closer and holier.

We wonder whether Jesus ever visited Bethsaida, and played with His
cousins on the seashore, and gathered shells, and dug in the sand, and
sailed on Gennesaret, and helped with His little hands to drag the net,
and was disappointed because there were no fish, or bounded with glee
because of the multitude of them.

We wonder whether James and John visited Jesus in Nazareth, nestled
among the hills of Galilee. Did they go to the village well, the same
where children go to-day to draw water? Did James and John see how Jesus
treated His little mates, and how they treated Him--the best boy in
Nazareth? Did the cousins talk together of what their mothers had taught
them from the Scriptures, especially of The Great One whom those mothers
were expecting to appear as the Messiah? Did they go together to the
synagogue, and hear the Rabbi read the prophecies which some day Jesus,
in the same synagogue, would say were about Himself?

Jesus was the flower of Mary's family, the flower of Nazareth, of