to the word nazora, "despicable;" or it may merely have implied "Nazareth, that obscure and ill-reputed town in its little untrodden valley-can anything good come from thence?" The answer is in the same words which our Lord had addressed to John and Andrew. Philip was an apt scholar, and he too said, "Come and see."

To-day, too, that question-"Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?"—is often repeated, and the one sufficient answer-almost the only possible answer-is now, as it then was, "Come and sec." Then it meant, come and see One who speaks as never man spake; come and see One who, though he be but the Carpenter of Nazareth, yet overawes the souls of all who approach Him-seeming by His mere presence to reveal the secrets of all hearts, yet drawing to Him even the most sinful with a sense of yearning love; come and see One from whom there seems to breathe forth the irresistible charm of a sinless purity, the unapproachable beauty of a Divine life. "Come and see,' said Philip, convinced in his simple faithful heart that to see Jesus was to know Him, and to know was to love, and to love was to adore. In this sense, indeed, we can say "come and see" no longer; for since the blue heavens closed on the visions which were vouchsafed to St. Stephen and St. Paul, His earthly form has been visible no more. But there is another sense, no less powerful for conviction, in which it still suffices to say, in answer to all doubts, "Come and see." Come and see a dying world revivified, a decrepit world regenerated, an aged world rejuvenescent; come and see the darkness illuminated, the despair dispelled; come and see tenderness brought into the cell of the imprisoned felon, and liberty to the fettered slave; come and see the poor, and the ignorant, and the many, emancipated for ever from the intolerable thraldom of the rich, the learned, and the few; come and see hospitals and orphanages rising in their permanent mercy beside the crumbling ruins of colossal amphitheatres which once reeked with human blood; come and see the obscene symbols of an universal degradation obliterated indignantly from the purified abodes; come and see the dens of lust and tyranny transformed into sweet and happy homes, defiant atheists into believing Christians, rebels into children, and pagans into saints. Ay, come and see the majestic acts of one great drama continued through nineteen Christian centuries; and as you see them all tending to one great development, long predetermined in the Council of the Divine Will-as you learn in reverent humility that even apparent Chance is in reality the daughter of Forethought, as well as, for those who thus recognise her nature, the sister of Order and Persuasion--as you hear the voice of your Saviour searching, with

the loving accents of a compassion which will neither strive nor cry, your very reins and heart-it may be that you too will unlearn the misery of doubt, and exclaim in calm and happy confidence, with the pure and candid Nathanael, "Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel!"

The fastidious reluctance of Nathanael was very soon dispelled. Jesus, as He saw him coming, recognised that the seal of God was upon his forehead, and said of him, “Behold a true Israelite, in whom guile is not." "Whence dost thou recognise me?" asked Nathanael; and then came that heart-searching answer, "Before that Philip called thee, whilst thou wert under the fig-tree, I saw thee.”

It was the custom of pious Jews-a custom approved by the Talmud-to study their crishma, or office of daily prayer, under a fig-tree; and some have imagined that there is something significant in the fact of the Apostle having been summoned from the shade of a tree which symbolised Jewish ordinances and Jewish traditions, but which was beginning already to cumber the ground. But though something interesting and instructive may often be derived from the poetic insight of a chastened imagination, which can thus observe allegories which lie involved in the simplest facts, yet no such flash of sudden perception could alone have accounted for the agitated intensity of Nathanael's reply. Every one must have been struck at first sight, with the apparent disproportionateness between the cause and the effect. How apparently inadequate was that quiet allusion to the lonely session of silent thought under the fig-tree, to produce the instantaneous adhesion, the henceforth inalienable loyalty, of this "fusile Apostle" to the Son of God, the King of Israel! for the true explanation of this instantaneity of conviction, we must look deeper; and then, if I mistake not, we shall see in this incident another of those indescribable touches of reality which have been to so many powerful minds the most irresistible internal evidence to establish the historic truthfulness of the Fourth Gospel.

But

There are moments when the grace of God stirs sensibly in the human heart; when the soul scems to rise upon the eagle-wings of hope and prayer into the heaven of heavens; when caught up, as it were, into God's very presence, we see and hear things unspeakable. At such moments we live a lifetime; for emotions such as these annihilate all time; they

"Crowd Eternity into an hour,

Or stretch an hour into Eternity."

At such moments we are nearer to God; we scem to know Him and

be known of Him; and if it were possible for any man at such a moment to see into our souls, he would know all that is greatest and most immortal in our beings. But to see us then is impossible to man; it is possible only to Him whose hand should lead, whose right hand should guide us, even if we could take the wings of the morning and fly into the uttermost parts of the sea. And such a crisis of emotion must the guileless Israelite have known as he sat and prayed and mused in silence under his fig-tree. To the consciousness of such a crisis—a crisis which could only be known to One to whom it was given to read the very secrets of the heart-our Lord appealed. Let him who has had a similar experience say how he would regard a living man who could reveal to him that he had at such a moment looked into and fathomed the emotions of his heart. That such solitary musings-such penetrating, even in this life, "behind the vail"-such raptures into the third heaven during which the soul strives to transcend the limitations of space and time while it communes, face to face, with the Eternal and the Unseen-such sudden kindlings of celestial lightning which seem to have fused all that is meanest and basest within us in an instant and for ever-that these supreme crises are among the recorded experiences of the Christian life, rests upon indisputable evidence of testimony and of fact. And if any one of my readers has ever known this spasm of divine change which annihilates the old and in the same moment creates or re-creates a new-born soul, such a one, at least, will understand the thrill of electric sympathy, the arrow-point of intense conviction, that shot that very instant through the heart of Nathanael, and brought him, as it were, at once upon his knees with the exclamation, “Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel!"

We scarcely hear of Nathanael again. His seems to have been one of those calm, retiring, contemplative souls, whose whole sphere of existence lies not here, but

"Where, beyond these voices, there is peace."

It was a life of which the world sees nothing, because it was "hid with Christ in God; but of this we may be sure, that never till the day of his martyrdom, or even during his martyr agonies, did he forget those quiet words which showed that his "Lord had searched him out and known him, and comprehended his thoughts long before." Not once, doubtless, but on many and many a future day, was the promise fulfilled for him and for his companions, that, with the eye of faith, they should "see the heavens opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man."

CHAPTER XI,

THE FIRST MIRACLE.

"ON the third day," says St. John, "there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee." Writing with a full knowledge and vivid recollection of every fact that took place during those divinely memorable days, he gives his indications of time as though all were equally familiar with them. The third day has been understood in different manners: it is simplest to understand it as the third after the departure of Jesus for Galilee. If He were travelling expeditiously He might stop on the first night (supposing him to follow the ordinary route) at Shiloh or at Shechem; on the second at En-Gannim; on the third, crossing the plain of Jezreel, He could easily reach Nazareth, and finding that His mother and brethren were not there, might, in an hour and a half longer, reach Cana in time for the ceremonies of an Oriental wedding. It is well known that those ceremonies began at twilight. It was the custom in Palestine, no less than in Greece,

"To bear away

The bride from home at blashing shut of day,"

or even later, far on into the night, covered from head to foot in her loose and flowing veil, garlanded with flowers, and dressed in her fairest robes. She was heralded by torchlight, with songs and dances, and the music of the drum and flute, to the bridegroom's home. She was attended by the maidens of her village, and the bridegroom came to meet her with his youthful friends. Legend says that Nathanael was on this occasion the paranymph, whose duty it was to escort the bride; but the presence of Mary, who must have left Nazareth on purpose to be present at the wedding, seems to show that one of the bridal pair was some member of the Holy Family. Jesus too was invited, and His disciples, and the use of the singular (ékλýŋ) implies that they were invited for His sake, not He for theirs. It is not likely, therefore, that Nathanael, who had only heard the name of Jesus two days before, had anything to do with the marriage. All positive conjecture is idle; but the fact that the Virgin evidently took a leading position in the house, and commands the servants in a tone of authority, renders it not improbable that this may have been the wedding of one of her nephews, the sons of Alphæus, or even of one of her daughters, "the sisters of Jesus," to whom tradition gives the names Esther and Thamar. That Joseph himself was dead is evident from the completo

silence of the Evangelists, who after Christ's first visit to Jerusalem as a boy, make no further mention of his name.

Whether the marriage festival lasted for seven days, as was usual among those who could afford it, or only for one or two, as was the case among the poorer classes, we cannot tell; but at some period of the entertainment the wine suddenly ran short. None but those who know how sacred in the East is the duty of lavish hospitality, and how passionately the obligation to exercise it to the utmost is felt, can realise the gloom which this incident would have thrown over the occasion, or the misery and mortification which it would have caused to the wedded pair. They would have felt it to be, as in the East it would still be felt to be, a bitter and indelible disgrace.

Now the presence of Jesus and his five disciples may well have been the cause of this unexpected deficiency. The invitation, as we have seen, was originally intended for Jesus alone, nor could the youthful bridegroom in Cana of Galilee have been in the least aware that during the last four days Jesus had won the allegiance of five disciples. It is probable that no provision had been made for this increase of numbers, and that it was their unexpected presence which caused the deficiency in this simple household. Moreover, it is hardly probable that, coming from a hasty journey of ninety miles, the little band could, even had their means permitted it, have conformed to the common Jewish custom of bringing with them wine and other provisions to contribute to the mirthfulness of the wedding feast.

Under these circumstances, therefore, there was a special reason why the mother of Jesus should say to Him, "They have no wine." The remark was evidently a pointed one, and its import could not be misunderstood. None knew, as Mary knew, who her Son was; yet for thirty long years of patient waiting for this manifestation, she had but seen Him grow as other children grow, and live, in sweetness indeed and humility and grace of sinless wisdom, like a tender plant before God, but in all other respects as other youths have lived, preeminent only in utter stainlessness. But now He was thirty years old; the voice of the great Prophet, with whose fame the nation rang, had proclaimed Him to be the promised Christ; He was being publicly attended by disciples who acknowledged Him as Rabbi and Lord. Here was a difficulty to be met; an act of true kindness to be performed; a disgrace to be averted from friends whom He loved-and that too a disgrace to which His own presence and that of His disciples had unwittingly contributed. Was not His hour yet come? Who could tell what He might do, if He were only made aware of the