midst of that great nation there was a little company of men
who, accompanying one another from the beginning of their lives, had
been searching after this God and trying everywhere if they could find
Him. And one day they heard that down by the river which ran through
their country, which was sacred to them from the multitude of old
national associations, there was a great teacher come, who was declaring
that for which the human soul was forever reaching after, the need of
escaping from sin and entering upon and leading a higher life. This
little company went down and met two disciples of John the Baptist, and
learned from them everything that they had to teach them. Their souls
were stirred by that which he had to say. But one day, while he was
teaching them, it seemed as if they had come to an end of that which he
could teach them. He looked up, and there upon the hill just above the
river there was passing one upon whom the gaze of the fishermen by the
river immediately kindled, and he lifted his hand and said, "He is the
one who is to teach you now. You must go after him. Behold the Lamb of
God, which taketh away the sin of the world." Great and mysterious
words, that filled in that which men had believed in all the records
they had read and the thinking they had done before! And they turned
away from John and went after this new teacher and, following to His
house, there they abode with Him during that day and the days that
followed after. Little by little, as we read the story of their being
with him, we can see them taken into His power, we can see how there was
a certain fascination in His presence which laid hold upon them. It
seemed at first to be purely human, to be the way in which one strong
man takes possession of his fellow-man and compels him to rely upon him.
It was upon purely human ground. It was in the manifestation of the
excellence of this human nature of ours that they believed in Jesus and
gradually became His disciples. Little by little it so commanded them
that at last the moment came when it was impossible for them to separate
themselves from Him; and one day, when the people were turning away from
Him when He was preaching and saying things that it was hard for them to
understand, He looked around upon them and said, "Are you going also,
will you leave me now?" And then there burst forth from the lips of one
of them, the most strong and characteristic act of the little company,
those great wo