things I heard, and some I both saw and heard. You know of the ministry
of your cousin Elizabeth's son John--of his preaching and baptizing.
Jesus was baptized by him. Immediately they both had a vision of 'the
Spirit of God descending upon Him; and lo! a voice from heaven saying,
This is My beloved Son.' Then John was certain who Jesus was. He told
the people about the vision, saying, 'I saw and bear record that this
is the Son of God.' And one day when my friend Andrew and I were with
him, he pointed us to Jesus saying, 'Behold the Lamb of God,' whom we
followed, first to His abode on the Jordan, and then here to Cana. We
were disciples of John, but now are _His_ disciples, and ever shall be.
You know, aunt Mary, how from childhood I had thought of Him as my
cousin Jesus, and loved Him for His goodness. From what my mother has
told me, which she must have learned from you, there has been some
beautiful mystery about Him. It is all explained now. Hereafter, I shall
love Him more than ever, but I shall think of Him, not so much as my
cousin Jesus, as the Messiah for whom we were looking, and as the Son of
God."

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