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_.