trouble which threatened to interrupt the feast? Might not some band of hymning angels, like the radiant visions, who had heralded His birth, receive His bidding to change that humble marriage-feast into a scene of heaven? Might it not be that even now He would lead them into His banquet-house, and His banner over them be love?

Her faith was strong, her motives pure, except perhaps what has been called "the slightest possible touch of the purest womanly, motherly anxiety (we know no other word) prompting in her the desire to see her Son honoured in her presence." And her Son's hour had nearly come: but it was necessary now, at once, for ever, for that Son to show to her that henceforth he was not Jesus the Son of Mary, but the Christ the Son of God; that as regarded His great work and mission, as regarded His Eternal Being, the significance of the beautiful relationship had passed away; that His thoughts were not as her thoughts, neither His ways her ways. It could not have been done in a manner more decisive, yet at the same time more entirely tender.

"Woman, what have I to do with thee?" The words at first sound harsh, and almost repellent in their roughness and brevity; but that is the fault partly of our version, partly of our associations. He does not call her "mother," because, in circumstances such as these, she was His mother no longer; but the address" Woman (Γύναι) was so respectful that it might be, and was, addressed to the queenliest, and so gentle that it might be, and was, addressed at the tenderest moments to the most fondly loved. And "what have I to do with thee?" is a literal version of a common Aramaic phrase (mah lî velák), which, while it sets aside a suggestion and waives all further discussion of it, is yet perfectly consistent with the most delicate courtesy and the most feeling consideration.

Nor can we doubt that even the slight check involved in these quiet words was still more softened by the look and accent with which they were spoken, and which are often sufficient to prevent far harsher utterances from inflicting any pain. For with undiminished faith, and with no trace of pained feeling, Mary said to the servants-over whom it is clear she was exercising some authority-“ Whatever He says you, do it at once."

to

The first necessity after a journey in the East is to wash the feet, and before a meal to wash the hands; and to supply these wants there were standing (as still is usual), near the entrance of the house, six large stone water-jars, with their orifices filled with bunches of fresh green leaves to keep the water cool. Each of these jars contained two

or three baths of water, and Jesus bade the servants at once fill them to the brim. They did so, and He then ordered them to draw out the contents in smaller vessels, and carry it to the guest who, according to the festive custom of the time, had been elected " governor of the feast." Knowing nothing of what had taken place, he mirthfully observed that in offering the good wine last, the bridegroom had violated the common practice of banquets. This was Christ's first miracle, and thus, with a definite and symbolic purpose, did He manifest His glory, and His disciples believed on Him.

It was His first miracle, yet how unlike all that we should have expected; how simply unobtrusive, how divinely calm! The method, indeed, of the miracle-which is far more wonderful in character than the ordinary miracles of healing-transcends our powers of conception; yet it was not done with any pomp of circumstance, or blaze of adventitious glorification. Men in these days have presumptuously talked as though it were God's duty-the duty of Him to whom the sea and the mountains are a very little thing, and before whose eyes the starry heaven is but as one white gleam in the "intense inane "-to perform His miracles before a circle of competent savans! Conceivably it might be so had it been intended that miracles should be the sole, or even the main, credentials, of Christ's authority; but to the belief of Christendom the son of God would still be the Son of God even if, like John, He had done no miracle. The miracles of Christ were miracles addressed, not to a cold and sceptic curiosity, but to a loving and humble faith. They needed not the acuteness of the impostor, or the self-assertion of the thaumaturge. They were indeed the signs— almost, we had said, the accidental signs of His divine mission; but their primary object was the alleviation of human suffering, or the illustration of sacred truths, or, as in this instance, the increase of innocent joy. An obscure village, an ordinary wedding, a humble home, a few faithful peasant guests-such a scene, and no splendid amphitheatre or stately audience, beheld one of Christ's greatest miracles of power. And in these respects the circumstances of the First Miracle are exactly analogous to the supernatural events recorded of Christ's birth. In the total unlikeness of this to all that we should have imagined-in its absolute contrast with anything which legend would have invented-in all, in short, which most offends the unbeliever, we see but fresh confirmation that we are reading the words of soberness and truth.

A miracle is a miracle, and we see no possible advantage in trying to understand the means by which it was wrought. In accepting the

evidence for it—and it is for each man to be fully persuaded in his own mind, and to accept or to reject at his pleasure, perhaps even it may prove to be at his peril-we are avowedly accepting the evidence for something which transcends, though it by no means necessarily supersedes, the ordinary laws by which Nature works. What is gained— in what single respect does the miracle become, so to speak, easier or more comprehensible-by supposing, with Olshausen, that we have here only an accelerated process of nature; or with Neander (apparently), that the water was magnetised; or with Lange (apparently), that the guests were in a state of supernatural exaltation? Let those who find it intellectually possible, or spiritually advantageous, freely avail themselves of such hypotheses if they see their way to do so to us they seem, not “irreverent," not "rationalistic," not "dangerous," but simply embarrassing and needless. To denounce them as unfaithful concessions to the spirit of scepticism may suit the exigencies of a violent and Pharisaic theology, but is unworthy of that calm charity which should be the fairest fruit of Christian faith. In matters of faith it ought to be to every one of us a very small thing to be judged of you or of man's judgment; " we ought to believe, or disbelieve, or modify belief, with sole reference to that which, in our hearts and consciences, we feel to be the will of God; and it is by His judgment, and by His alone, that we should care to stand or to fall. We as little claim a right to scathe the rejector of miracles by abuse and anathema, as we admit his right to sneer at us for imbecility or hypocrisy. Jesus has taught to all men, whether they accept or reject Him, the lessons of charity and sweetness; and what the believer and the unbeliever alike can do, is calmly, temperately, justly, and with perfect and solemn sincerity-knowing how deep are the feelings involved, and how vast the issues at stake between us-to state the reason for the belief that is in him. And this being so, I would say that if we once understand that the word Nature has little or no meaning unless it be made to include the idea of its Author; if we once realise the fact, which all science teaches us, that the very simplest and most elementary operation of the laws of Nature is infinitely beyond the comprehension of our most exalted intelligence ; if we once believe that the Divine Providence of God is no far-off abstraction, but a living and loving care over the lives of men; lastly, if we once believe that Christ was the only-begotten Son of God, the Word of God, who came to reveal and declare His Father to mankind, then there is nothing in any Gospel miracle to shock our faith: we shall regard the miracles of Christ as resulting from the fact of His

Being and His mission, no less naturally and inevitably than the rays of light stream outwards from the sun. They were, to use the favourite expression of St. John, not merely "portents" (TÉρaTa), or (τέρατα), powers (Suváμes), or signs (onueîa), but they were' works (epya), the ordinary and inevitable works (whenever He chose to exercise them) of One whose very existence was the highest miracle of all. For our faith is that He was sinless; and to borrow the words of a German poet, 66 one might have thought that the miracle of miracles was to have created the world such as it is; yet it is a far greater miracle to have lived a perfectly pure life therein." The greatest of modern philosophers said that there were two things which overwhelmed his soul with awe and astonishment, "the starry heaven above, and the moral law within; " but to these has been added a third reality no less majestic-the fulfilment of the moral law without us in the Person of Jesus Christ. That fulfilment makes us believe that He was indeed Divine; and if He were Divine, we have no further astonishment left when we are taught that He did on earth that which can be done by the Power of God alone.

But there are two characteristics of this first miracle which we ought to notice.

One is its divine unselfishness. His ministry is to be a ministry of joy and peace; His sanction is to be given not to a crushing asceticism, but to a genial innocence; His approval, not to a compulsory celibacy, but to a sacred union. He who, to appease His own sore hunger, would not turn the stones of the wilderness into bread, gladly exercises, for the sake of others, His transforming power; and but six or seven days afterwards, relieves the perplexity and sorrow of a humble wedding feast by turning water into wine. The first miracle of Moses was, in stern retribution, to turn the river of a guilty nation into blood; the first of Jesus to fill the water-jars of an innocent family with wine.

And the other is its symbolic character. Like nearly all the miracles of Christ, it combines the characteristics of a work of mercy, an emblem, and a prophecy. The world gives its best first, and afterwards all the dregs and bitterness; but Christ came to turn the lower into the richer and sweeter, the Mosaic law into the perfect law of liberty, the baptism of John into the baptism with the Holy Ghost and with fire, the self-denials of a painful isolation into the self-denials of a happy home, sorrow and sighing into hope and blessing, and water into wine. And thus the "holy estate" which Christ adorned and beautified with His presence and first miracle in Cana

of Galilee, foreshadows the mystical union between Christ and His Church; and the common element which he thus miraculously changed becomes a type of our life on earth transfigured and ennobled by the anticipated joys of heaven- a type of that wine which He shall drink new with us in the kingdom of God, at the marriage supper of the Lamb.

CHAPTER XII.

THE SCENE OF THE MINISTRY.

CHRIST's first miracle of Cana was a sign that He came, not to call His disciples out of the world and its ordinary duties, but to make men happier, nobler, better in the world. He willed that they should be husbands, and fathers, and citizens, not eremites or monks. He would show that he approved the brightness of pure society, and the mirth of innocent gatherings, no less than the ecstacies of the ascetic in the wilderness, or the visions of the mystic in his solitary cell.

And, as pointing the same moral, there was something significant in the place which He chose as the scene of His earliest ministry. St. John had preached in the lonely wastes by the Dead Sea waters; his voice had been echoed back by the flinty precipices that frown over the sultry Ghôr. The city nearest to the scene of His teaching had been built in defiance of a curse, and the road to it led through “the bloody way." All around him breathed the dreadful associations of a guilty and desolated past; the very waves were bituminous; the very fruits crumbled into foul ashes under the touch; the very dust beneath his feet lay, hot and white, over the relics of an abominable race. There, beside those leaden waters, under that copper heaven, amid those burning wildernesses and scarred ravines, had he preached the baptism of repentance. But Christ, amid the joyous band of His mother, and His brethren, and His disciples, chose as the earliest centre of His ministry a bright and busy city, whose marble buildings were mirrored in a limpid sea.

That little city was Capernaum. It rose under the gentle declivities of hills that encircled an earthly Paradise. There were no such trees, and no such gardens, anywhere in Palestino as in the land