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.