CHAPTER III. THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. "Two brothers freely cast their lot The cost of conquest counting not: They deem the battle won."—7. H. Newman. JOHN was the son of Zebedee, a fisherman of either Bethsaida or Capernaum, and of Salome, who is said by Papias (one of St. John's own pupils) to have been either the sister of the Blessed Virgin, or the daughter of her husband Joseph by a former marriage. He had a brother named James, who seems to have been a year or two older than himself, and they were both brought up to assist their father and his hired servants in fishing upon the lake of Gennesaret. This lake is formed by the spreading out of the river Jordan at the feet of the mountains of Galilee, and it is very beautiful, often as clear as glass, and reflecting the tall hills and rocks above it, though sometimes, when a fierce wind sweeps down on it from the narrow clefts among the hills, it is all torn and tossed up, and dashes about in foam and spray. It is full of delicious fish, and many persons got their livelihood by fishing from their boats, spreading out long nets, with weights at the bottom to keep them upright under water, and then drawing them up when the fish had become entangled in the meshes. In the time of St. John, the hills and valleys of Galilee were closely filled with people. There were little villages nestling in the green valleys, or perched on hill tops, always with walls of rough stone to guard them, and there were larger cities, some on the lake side and some on the hills. Many of the fishermen, farmers, and the like, were of the old tribes of Zebulon and Naphthali, to whom Galilee had first been given; and there were besides rich men in the cities who paid court to Herod Antipas, the half-Jewish, half-Edomite prince, who had only a fourth part of the power of his terrible father, Herod the Great. Also there were in every chief place Roman soldiers, to keep guard over the country for the Emperor Tiberius Cæsar, and Roman tax-gatherers, who employed publicans under them to collect tribute for the Government. The common people spoke Syriac, the rich and noble spoke Greek, and the Romans Latin, but as everybody knew a little Greek, it was the language in which business was managed by persons of different nations. As Zebedee does not seem to have been a very poor man, his sons would probably have been taught Greek as well as to read their own Hebrew Scriptures and understand the rules of the law, and every year, after they were thirteen years old they would go up to Jerusalem for the three great feasts, before and after harvest and after the vintage. There they would see the beautiful city rising on her own mountain, and crowned by the gilded pinnacles of her marble temple. They would be admitted to the court, surrounded with marble cloisters, and there watch the burning of the sacrifices on the great altar, attended to by priests in white garments, and by bands of Levites, who, standing on the steps, chanted the Psalms with all the glory of stately music; and in front of the Holy Place, where none save priests might enter, could be seen the great golden vine, whose clusters of molten grapes were of the height of a man. And yet no one could really and thoughtfully dwell on the religion of the Jews, and be happy about himself. God had given a law so perfect that no one could keep it, and the threats against those who broke it had been proved to be in awful earnest. Dull, selfsatisfied people were apt to fancy that they were keeping it perfectly, but this could never be with the deeper souls who had a finer sense of the purity of the standard to which they ought to attain. All the old confessions of holy men of old did but show that they too felt that their guilt needed to be taken away, and that they looked forward to some great sacrifice to be made by a mighty King, who would gain the victory over all that was evil, and bring with him peace and glory. There was at the time John was growing up, a feeling that this great Deliverer was soon to be looked for, and every one watched for signs of His coming, but they were apt to think much more of the great kingdom that was promised than of the freedom from sin, and though the prophecies declared that the Anointed, the Messiah or Christ, as they were wont to call their Deliverer, must suffer as well as reign, no one attended to this sadder part of the prediction. When John was between twenty and twenty-five years old, it was reported in Galilee that a priest, who had been brought up in the deserts, was preaching in a wonderful manner on the banks of the Jordan, and that all men were going to hear him. Many Galileans went, and among them the young John, and there, among the rocks and thickets of the deep ravine of the swift Jordan, stood the spare form of the priest, John the son of Zacharias, wrapped in a coarse dark garment of such camel's hair as was used for the tents of the Arabs. To all who came to him, he showed their sins. He let no one rest in the fancy that his own way of keeping the law was the right one, but held up before them its beautiful but terrible purity, and their own shortcomings, and then, when their hearts were beating with pain and shame, and longing to do better, he washed them in the pure rapid stream, as a token of their repentance and desire to cleanse themselves. But would that water purify their souls as it purified their bodies? Alas! no. It gave no forgiveness, no strength to do better. That must be left for the great Deliverer, the Messiah. Many had hoped that the Baptist was the Messiah, but he clearly declared that he was not, and that he was only the voice that the prophet Isaiah had declared should foretell His coming and closely precede it. He even declared that his own light should grow dim and pass away before the surpassing brightness that was coming; and at last one day when his hearers, and John among them, were crowding round him, he said, "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world." He added that One was standing among the throng Whom they knew not, Whose very shoes he himself was not worthy to unloose, but that he had not been aware of Who that Holy One was until, submitting to baptism, He had been marked out by the tokens of the descending Dove and the voice from heaven. The crowd dispersed, and Who this Person was had not been understood; but the next day, as John (as it seems) and a much older man, Andrew, his father's partner in fishing, were standing with the Baptist, he pointed to a single figure passing by, and again said:-"Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world." It was JESUS of Nazareth, the carpenter, a kinsman both of the Baptist and of John, Whom, if they had already known Him, they had never thought of as the Deliverer. Nevertheless, they joined Him, and at His invitation, went with Him to the place where He was passing the night, and there they became so impressed by the holiness and heavenliness that breathed around Him, that from that time they never doubted that such ineffable goodness could alone belong to the Messiah, however different He was in other respects from the Messiah of their imagination. Andrew went in search of his own brother Simon, and of two more Galilean neighbours, who had likewise come out to hear the Baptist, and fully believed |