pattern John is weaving for us to trace these true blue
threadings.

But there's more here, much more, that adds greatly to the pattern.
There are faithful disciples _and precious intimate friendships_ outside
the circle of these future leaders. Take only a moment for these as we
push on.

There's that night visitor of the early Jerusalem days. Aristocrat,
ruler, scholar, with all the supercautiousness that these qualities
always grain in, Nicodemus actually left the inner circle of
temple-rulers who were as sore to the touch as a boil over John's
drastic cleansing, and comes for a personal interview. His utter
sincerity is shown in the temper of his remarks and questions, and shown
yet more in the openness of Jesus' spirit in talking with him. For this
is a trait in Jesus' dealings,--openness when He finds an opening door.
It _must_ be so, then and now. He can open up only where there is an
opening up to Him. Openness warms and loosens. The reverse chills and
locks up.[65]

It is in another just such situation but far more acute, that this man
speaks out for Jesus in an official meeting of these same rulers.
Timidly? have you thought, cautiously? Yet he spoke out when no one else
did, though others there believed in Jesus. A really rare courage it was
that told of a growing faith.[66] And the personal devotion side of his
faith, evidence again of the real thing, stands out to our eyes as we
see him bring the unusual gift of very costly ointments for the
precious body of his personal friend.[67] It's a winsome story, this of
Nicodemus. May there be many a modern duplicate of it.

In utter social contrast stands the next bit of this sort following so
hard that the contrast strikes you at once. It's a half-breed Samaritan
this time, and a woman, and an openly bad life. The Samaritans were
hated by Jew and Gentile alike as belonging to neither, ground between
the two opposing social national millstones. Womanhood was debased and
held down in the way all too familiar always and everywhere. And a moral
outcast ranks lowest in influence.

But true love discerns the possible lily in the black slime bulb at the
pond's bottom and woos it into blossoming flower, till its purity and
beauty greet our delighted eyes. Under the simple tact of love's true
touch, out of such surroundings grows a faith, through the successive
stages of gossipy curiosity, cynical remark, interest, eagerness, guilty
self-consciousness that would avo