This marriage feast must have been of special interest to John, if, as is supposed, the family was related to Mary and probably to him. This would seem to be her first meeting with Jesus since He bid her farewell in Nazareth, and left the home of thirty years, to be such no longer. Did not Mary, mother-like, call John aside from the festive scene and say to him, "What has happened at the Jordan? tell me all about it." I seem to hear John saying to her; "It is a wonderful story. Of some 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 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.