Page:Lazarus, a tale of the world's great miracle.djvu/67

Rh blindness of his brain and soul. Yet around the Lord there had seemed to hover a faint shimmer as of glory emanating from His presence. With infinite tenderness and pity He had gazed on the Jewish rabbi, so mortified and abased; then, sadly and with deep persuasiveness, the voice had risen once more out of the darkness and rolled in waves across the still water of the lake, like strains of floating music:

"If I have told you earthly things and ye believed not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?"

Then, gazing full at Nicodemus, Jesus had pronounced words which neither he nor any other man, having once heard them, could forget: "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved. He that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God."

Each word had stung Nicodemus's soul as with a lash; he, too, had loved darkness. Fear, physical fear of derision first and of death afterwards had kept him from openly confessing his belief in Jesus as the