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THE 
 
 MARRIAGE IN CANA OF GALILEE, 
 
THE MARRIAGE 
 
 IN 
 
 CANA OF GALILEE. 
 
 HUGH MACMILLAN, D.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "bible TEACHINGS IN NATURE," " THE TRUE VINE," 
 " TWO WORLDS ARE OURS," &C. &C. 
 
 gTottbon : 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1882. 
 
 The Right of Translation and Reproductiofi is Reserved. 
 
|[*oniJon : 
 R Clay, Sons, and Tayi.ot:. 
 
 t'l.KAD STREET HILL, E.G. 
 
WHOSE SWEET COMPANIONSHIP 
 
 HAS REALISED FOR ME 
 
 THE IDEAL OF MARRIAGE, 
 
 I LOVINGLY 
 
 DEDICATE THIS BOOK. 
 
>'' — ^- — '^^^ 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 From a very early period, the Church has 
 recognised the importance and significance of 
 the Miracle of Cana. Of the fifty-two marble 
 sarcophagi originally found in the Catacombs of 
 Rome, and now preserved in the Museum of 
 St. John Lateran, no less than sixteen have 
 carved upon them a rude representation of Jesus 
 touching with a rod, two, three, four, five, or 
 six waterpots standing on the ground — the 
 number varying according to the skill of the 
 artist, or the space at his disposal. In the 
 frescoes and mosaics of numerous churches and 
 consecrated buildings, the incident has been 
 depicted in a great variety of ways ; and 
 Tintoretto exhausted his genius, in giving 
 
Viii PREFACE. 
 
 expression to its wonderful beauty, in his great 
 picture in the church of Santa Maria della 
 Salute in Venice. With commentators in all 
 ages, the Miracle of Cana has been a favourite 
 and fertile theme for exposition ; and numberless 
 books exist in which it is treated with more or 
 less ability and insight. But notwithstanding this 
 vast multiplication by art and literature of 
 the incident, I have looked in vain for some 
 work in which the whole subject has been gone 
 into with that minuteness of detail which it 
 deserves. I know of no separate treatise dealing 
 with the miracle exclusively ; although such may 
 exist. I have invariably found the exposition 
 of it mingled with that of other subjects. And 
 in this way it has been impossible to do ade- 
 quate justice to it, and bring out the great 
 wealth of suggestive thought which it contains. 
 
 What I have not found, I have therefore 
 endeavoured to the best of my ability to supply. 
 And I venture to hope that, however inadequate 
 my treatment of the subject may appear, the 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 method which I have adopted will commend itself 
 to the good judgment of my readers. 
 
 I have long held the opinion that the credibility 
 of miracles can be shown most effectively, not 
 by the abstract consideration of the question, 
 but by the evidence which their own character- 
 istics afford. If the doubter is ever to be con- 
 vinced of the reality of the wonderful vv^orks 
 which our Lord performed, I believe it can only 
 be by an attentive and earnest examination 
 of the miracles themselves, individually and as 
 a whole. No miracle will more thoroughly reward 
 a careful study than that which meets the inquirer 
 at the very threshold. It is the " gate beautiful " 
 by which he enters the sacred temple of Divine 
 truth. It is the illuminated initial which 
 represents, in a pictorial form, the nature and 
 design of the Kingdom of Heaven as revealed 
 unto men. It is an acted parable of the whole 
 Gospel ; a type and image of all the work of 
 Jesus, opening up a vista of light far into the 
 ways of God. 
 
 b 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This is the point of view from which I have 
 tried to look at the record of the miracle in the 
 following pages. And although, on a subject 
 so v^ery familiar, and so often expounded, it is 
 impossible not to repeat what has been well 
 said before, and to travel along ruts of thought 
 which the study of many minds has deepened, 
 still, I think that I have succeeded in indi- 
 cating some new lines of suggestion, which may 
 be profitably followed out. At all events, I 
 have discovered in it beauties and meanings 
 previously unknown to myself, and have arrived 
 at a more profound conviction of Its Inherent 
 and essential truthfulness, as well as its im- 
 portance and significance than I had ever felt 
 before. It is in the hope that I may succeed 
 in making others partakers with me of this 
 happy experience that I now issue this 
 monograph. 
 
 HUGH MACMILLAN. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. TAGE 
 
 I. THE SCENE AND ASSOCIATIONS 
 
 OF THE MARRIAGE ...... I 
 
 II. THE FAILURE OF THE WINE ... 29 
 
 III. THE MOTHER OF JESUS 52 
 
 IV. OUR LORD'S HOUR 74 
 
 V. THE SIX WATERPOTS 103 
 
 VI. THE HELP OF THE SERVANTS . . 13^ 
 
 VII. THE SECRET NATURE OF OUR 
 
 LORD'S WORK IS^ 
 
 VIII. THE BEST KEPT TO THE LAST . . 190 
 
 IX. THE BEGINNING OF MIRACLES . . 215 
 
t^ 
 
 THE 
 
 MAEEIAGE IN CANA OF GALILEE 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE SCENE AND ASSOCIATIONS OF THE 
 MARRIAGE. 
 
 "And the third day there was a marriage in Can a of 
 Gahlee ; and both Jesus was called, and his disciples to 
 the marriage." — John ii. i, 2. 
 
 /^^UR Lord performed His first miracle in the 
 ^^ neighbourhood of His early home. Among 
 the quiet, green hills of Galilee, which shut in 
 for so many years of absolute obscurity the 
 beauty and fragrance of His life — as a violet is 
 hid so close and deep by its foliage, that heaven 
 may not see its own fair hue in it — He emerged 
 into fame, to be the wonder and the mystery of 
 His day. The precise spot where this manifes- 
 
 ; 
 
2 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 tation of Himself to the people took place cannot 
 now be ascertained. Two places claim the 
 distinction of being the Cana of the gospel — 
 the one a ruined and deserted village, called 
 Khurbet Cana, about half-a-day's journey to the 
 north-west of Nazareth ; and the other, called 
 Kefr Kenna, lying much nearer, on the present 
 main road from that town to Tiberias and the 
 lake district. The great weight of evidence 
 derived from name, site, history, and present 
 remains, is on the side of the latter place, which 
 is still one of the most prosperous villages in 
 Galilee. Like Nain, its situation is exceedingly 
 picturesque. It is perched on the slope of a low 
 hill, at the head of several valleys forming 
 natural roadways leading down on the one side 
 to the sea-coast, and on the other to the Lake 
 of Galilee. In front is a rich bottom, which 
 becomes a lake or a swamp in the rainy season. 
 In this respect Cana resembles the villages of 
 Italy, which are nearly all built upon isolated 
 heights, rising up from extensive marshy plains, 
 not only for the sake of security, but also for 
 the purer air and wider outlook. Its Greek 
 
I.] CANA OF GALILEE. 3 
 
 name, which has no Hebrew, Chaldee, or 
 Aramaic form, means a reed ; and was doubt- 
 less derived from the reeds which still grow in 
 abundance in the marshy plain below, and utter 
 their mournful wail as the spring winds pass 
 through them. Several well-known places in 
 Italy are similarly named for the same reason — 
 as Cannae, Canneto, and Canossa. Cannes, the 
 famous winter residence for invalids on the 
 Mediterranean, has a like origin ; and canach, 
 our Gaelic word for the cotton-grass that waves 
 its soft white plumes in marshy places, and is 
 associated with so many tender allusions in 
 Highland poetry, comes from the same root. 
 The name was somewhat common in Palestine, 
 for like physical causes produced like uses of 
 language. Several obscure upland villages so 
 called rose and perished without a record. 
 There was a Cana near Mount Tabor, another 
 near Tyre, and a third in Judea ; which last, in 
 the days of the evangelist, was well-known as 
 the place where, in a sanguinary battle with the 
 Arabs, Antiochus perished with his whole army. 
 To distinguish the scene of the miracle from 
 
 B 2 
 
4 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 the scene of this great disaster to the Jewish 
 arms, John added the name of the province, and 
 called it Cana of Galilee. 
 
 The houses of the modern village are em- 
 bosomed among orchards of pomegranate trees, 
 whose dark-green foliage and scarlet blossoms 
 form in April a scene of enchantment. Asso- 
 ciated as this tree is with the tender poetry of 
 the Song of Solomon, and in Eastern legends 
 with the marriage rite, its presence in Cana is 
 an interesting reminiscence. Other memorials of 
 its former sacred history may be seen in the 
 village. The fig-tree still casts its grateful 
 shadow over the white roadways, in remem- 
 brance of that under which Jesus saw in mystic 
 vision the guileless Nathanael, who was a native 
 of the place ; and at the foot of the hill there 
 is a deep, cool well, the only one in the neigh- 
 bourhood, from which the water used at the 
 marriage feast must have been drawn. Remains 
 of ancient edifices testify to the hoary antiquity 
 of the site and its former importance. The 
 foundations of an early church and monastery, 
 erected by Syrian Christians in commemoration 
 
I.J CANA OF GALILEE. 5 
 
 of the marriage feast, may still be traced. The 
 buildings were entire long before the Moslem 
 power was established in Galilee ; and various 
 pilgrims from the West visited them from time 
 to time during a period of nine hundred years. 
 Our own English St. Willibald, who was a 
 palmer in 722, stayed one day in Cana, and 
 prayed in the church ; and, four hundred years 
 later, another English pilgrim, Sswulf, saw and 
 reported regarding the convent, called after the 
 ruler of the feast " Holy Architriclinos," the 
 only building in Cana then that was not wholly 
 destroyed. 
 
 With the beauty of this romantic spot the 
 beauty of the miracle performed in it exqui- 
 sitely harmonizes. The public ministry of Jesus 
 opened not only amid the loveliest scenery of 
 GaHlee, but also in bright and joyful circum- 
 stances appropriate to that scenery. It has an 
 idyllic character, strikingly contrasted with the 
 gloom of its close. It is the fair, calm morning, 
 with the dew fresh upon the flowers, and the 
 sun gilding the mountain-tops, ere the toils and 
 sorrows of later days overshadowed the land- 
 
6 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 scape of life, and made it dark and desolate. 
 On the fields and hill-slopes, the scenes many 
 centuries before of the idyls of King Solomon, 
 He drew the attention of His followers to the 
 beauty of the clustering lilies, and used them 
 as an illustration for His lesson of trust in God ; 
 and pointed to the birds that twittered among 
 the trees, or flitted across the violet sky, bidding 
 the disciples partake of their free, joyous, natural 
 life, under the care of a gracious providence, 
 taking no thought for the morrow. And in the 
 homes and haunts of men, He shared in their 
 simple, innocent enjoyments, and helped, by His 
 own purity and gladness of spirit, to purify and 
 gladden their homely lives. It is sweet to think 
 that our Saviour, made in all things like unto 
 His brethren, like every child of man, began His 
 career in the bright home of Eden, and had 
 communion with His Father among the trees of 
 the garden of the fairest region of the Holy 
 Land, ere the cherubim and the flaming sword 
 of His substitutionary work drove Him into the 
 wilderness to suffer and to die. Against the 
 peaceful, blue background of the commencement 
 
T.] CAN A OF GALILEE. 7 
 
 the stormy skies of the closing ministry are 
 painted, bringing out with pathetic power the 
 dark depths of their shadows. 
 
 With this joyous idyUic period of the opening 
 ministry the marriage-feast of Cana is in entire 
 harmony. Jesus had just left His early home in 
 Nazareth, never to return to it. It was, in all 
 likelihood, broken up at this time by the death 
 of Joseph, the head of the household ; for no 
 mention is made of him at the marriage-feast. 
 His mother and her family may have taken up 
 their abode in the quiet village of Cana, accord- 
 ing to a plausible tradition. With the sweet 
 influences and hallowed memories of His old 
 home-life still cHnging to Him, still crowding 
 tenderly about His heart. He would find, amid 
 the simple gladness of the unknown home at 
 Cana, a brief resting-place of love, ere He went 
 out into the loneliness and darkness of the 
 world. It was meet that His love for the world 
 should rest upon the ground of His own experi- 
 ence of domestic love ; that His infinite self- 
 sacrificing charity for the human race should 
 have its root in the ties and sanctities of the 
 
8 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 family circle. The marriage-feast of Cana was 
 the appropriate outcome of the quiet, hidden 
 home-life in Nazareth ; and all the life of Jesus 
 was a development in the proper order — first the 
 natural, then the social, and then the spiritual. 
 His spiritual religion involved no denial of the 
 natural piety of the heart. His mother was 
 beside Him when He wrought His first miracle ; 
 and towards her, in her lonely widowhood. His 
 heart went out with a more yearning solicitude. 
 About the whole scene there is a wonderful air 
 of domesticity ; the sentiment is altogether 
 human. Bethlehem reveals to us the majestic 
 event of the incarnation, amid the family details 
 and the birth-day greetings of an ordinary 
 home ; Cana discloses to us the secrets of super- 
 natural power amid simple household rites and 
 social joys. And these domestic associations are 
 in perfect unison with the intimate relationships 
 between God and man, and between man and 
 man, established by the coming of Jesus into 
 our nature and sojourning on our earth, and 
 with the blessed titles of Divine kinship which 
 He has deigned to employ. The places of the 
 
I.] CAA^A OF GALILEE. 9 
 
 soul in the Gospels that have a spiritual and 
 supernatural interest, because of their connection 
 with the mighty deeds and words of Jesus, have 
 also a deep attraction for the heart ; and, to 
 adapt the lines of the poet, — 
 
 " God's Word, which seems to sense above 
 The simpleness of human love, 
 To the love-sharpened hearing tells 
 Of little or of nothing else." 
 
 There are water-marks in the narrative of the 
 first miracle which establish its genuineness beyond 
 all reasonable doubt. The details of time and 
 place and persons are so minute and circumstantial 
 that only an eye-witness could have recorded 
 them. We find nothing that looks in the least 
 degree like invention; indeed, the minute inven- 
 tion of the fiction-writer of the present day — 
 one of the latest acquirements of modern art — 
 would have been an anachronism at this period. 
 Had the narrative been mythical it would have 
 had a miisty atmosphere about it, confounding all 
 chronology and geography ; there would have 
 been an absence of dates, a confusion of places, 
 a blending of events far distant from each other 
 
lO THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 in time and space, which would clearly show the 
 want of an attesting means of knowledge. Al- 
 though the evangelist in his gospel does not 
 profess to give us a complete biographical sketch 
 of our Lord — an exhaustive exposition of the 
 incidents of His life — we find, nevertheless, that 
 it is composed both generally and particularly 
 with a most remarkable symmetry. There is a 
 correspondence of part with part, a minute 
 adaptation of details which prove the literal 
 accuracy of its contents. And while the historical 
 elements are used as means to an end ; while the 
 incidents are grouped together, not because of 
 their chronological, but because of their spiritual 
 associations — because of the subtle harmony of 
 thought and purpose that runs through them — 
 we see notwithstanding that this moral and 
 spiritual unity is not secured at the expense of 
 historical truth. The narrative of the first miracle 
 at Cana proceeds in a simple and exact sequence. 
 The evangelist tells us that the event took place 
 on the third day — that is, from the last day 
 mentioned in the previous chapter — when Jesus 
 returned from the fords of the Jordan to His 
 
I.] CANA OF GALILEE. 1 1 
 
 usual place of abode in Galilee. The distance 
 to Cana from the spot where John was baptizing 
 was about sixty miles. Jesus could walk it in 
 three days ; and in all likelihood the incidents 
 recorded in the first chapter of St. John's Gospel 
 happened during the homeward journey. The 
 disciples whom He called were previously disciples 
 of John the Baptist, and had doubtless been with 
 their master where he was doing his work. If 
 this was the case we see a natural fitness 
 between the reference to Jacob's history in our 
 Lord's words to Nathanael and the locality 
 where He uttered them ; which would in all 
 likelihood be near Bethel, the scene of the 
 patriarch's vision of God, and one of the places 
 they would pass on the w^ay northwards. 
 
 It is a striking illustration of the Johannean 
 method, which exhibits more a logical than a 
 chronological sequence of incidents, which pre- 
 sents a revelation of the spiritual and eternal 
 in the forms of time and sense, that the miracle 
 at Cana should be mentioned immediately after 
 the baptism of our Lord in the Jordan, and 
 should be succeeded by the purification of the 
 
12 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 temple and by the interview with Nicodemus. 
 These incidents are closely co-related and have 
 an intimate bearing upon each other. He who 
 was Himself purified by baptism proceeds there- 
 upon to purify the home, the house of God, 
 and the individual personal life. His own con- 
 secration He imparts to marriage, which is the 
 source of natural life ; to the temple, which is the 
 source of religious life ; and to the ruler of the 
 Jews who comes to Him for spiritual life. He 
 connects the consecration of His own life with 
 the ordinance of baptism, and thus fulfils all 
 righteousness, not by a Divine method peculiar 
 to Himself, but according to the rites and cere- 
 monies prescribed to us. He changes water into 
 wine in connection with the waterpots of the 
 Levitical institutions ; and with the observance 
 of the primary law of nature which God had 
 established from the beginning. He purifies and 
 ennobles the religious life in connection with the 
 temple of Jerusalem, which was the Divinely- 
 appointed centre of the Jewish faith. He speaks 
 of the new birth in connection with the pure, 
 moral, and religious life of one who was a typical 
 
I.] CAKA OF GALILEE. 1 3 
 
 representative Jew, who embodied in himself 
 all the religious culture and training of the Old 
 Testament economy. He thus proceeds to carry 
 out His designs upon the lines already laid 
 down ; and shows us that the religion which 
 He came to reveal was only an elucidation and 
 unfolding of the truth that was contained in the 
 religion in which the covenant people had been 
 educated — that, in short, God's truth is one in 
 all ages and circumstances. 
 
 It is not without deep significance that it is 
 said that the disciples were with Jesus at the 
 marriage. They were invited because they were 
 with their Master, and out of respect to Him ; 
 and they are commonly supposed to have been 
 the five whom He had so lately called to His 
 side from their worldly pursuits — Andrew and 
 Peter, Philip and John and Bartholomew, who 
 was no other, in all likelihood, than Nathanael. 
 Originally disciples of John the Baptist, as I 
 have said, they were educated in a severe ascetic 
 school. The forerunner of Jesus was essen- 
 tially a desert prophet, living like Elijah, whose 
 life-work he imitated, amid lonely wastes tenanted 
 
14 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 only by the ruins of a guilty and desolated past. 
 He stood apart from the ties and the interests 
 and the haunts of men. His life was a continual 
 fasting for the sins of the people, an acted 
 parable of the repentance which was his solemn 
 witness and loud watchword to the nation. 
 Receiving their deepest impressions of what was 
 right from such a teacher, taught by him to 
 regard a life removed from all family relations 
 and sympathies, and spent in continual fasting 
 and prayer, as the specially holy and prophetical 
 life, how must they have regarded the New 
 Teacher to whom the Baptist himself-' had pointed 
 them, as One so much mightier than he that he 
 was not worthy to unloose the latchet of His 
 shoe } Would they not expect to find in Him, 
 in an exaggerated degree, the same qualities 
 which they admired in John — the same rigid, 
 penitential austerity, the same lonely, ascetic 
 manner of life .-* Deriving His origin immediately 
 from Heaven, would He not be still -more with- 
 drawn from the things of earth ; not conversing 
 familiarly with His disciples, not condescending 
 to speak words of friendly admonition to soldiers 
 
I.J CANA OF GALILEE. 1 5 
 
 and publicans, as even the recluse Baptist did, 
 but standing sternly aloof from all as a Being 
 of more than mortal mould, belonging to a 
 higher sphere ? Such would be the expectations 
 they would naturally form at first regarding One 
 to whom they were drawn by an attraction, the 
 secret of which was not known to themselves. 
 It would be almost with a revulsion of feeling, 
 therefore, that the disciples would follow Jesus, 
 not into the burning wilderness and scarred 
 ravines by the Dead Sea which John haunted, 
 but to the lovely gardens and gentle declivities 
 of green hills around the village of Cana ; not 
 to the locusts and wild honey of the desert fast, 
 but to the festivities of a homely rustic wedding. 
 They looked for a holier life and a more abso- 
 lute retirement from the world ; and they were 
 brought nearer to the world than they were 
 before, and taught that true piety consists not 
 in the voluntary desertion of society, but in the 
 far harder and higher task of living a pure and 
 holy life in society; not in the proscription of 
 any part of our nature or of our life, but in the 
 right use of every power and faculty which God 
 
1 6 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 has given to us. There was a time to feast as 
 well as a time to fast. During the absence of 
 the bridegroom, his friends might mourn and fast ; 
 but now that he was with them, they were called 
 upon to feast and rejoice. 
 
 Jesus was no hermit, no ascetic. He denounced 
 that unreal virtue, that imaginary devotion — con- 
 sisting in fastings and self-mortifications for their 
 own sake and on the plea that as such they are 
 specially acceptable to God — which has been 
 canonized by Protestants as well as by Roman 
 Catholics as a higher type of perfection. He 
 constantly warned His followers against the ten- 
 dency of religion, as mere religion, to call enjoy- 
 ment evil, and to put a ban upon the good things 
 which God has created for our use, as if there 
 was a curse inherent in them. He came to show 
 that all life is potentially divine, has a vital 
 relationship with Heaven, and that its various 
 forms " do not differ in their inherent capacity for 
 spiritual use, but in their opportunities for its 
 manifestation." He came to destroy nothing that 
 is purely natural and human, nothing that be- 
 longed to the order which He Himself had first 
 
I.l ■ CAN A OF GALILEE. 1 7 
 
 created and pronounced to be very good; but, 
 on the contrary, to rescue it from the impurity 
 and disorder of sin, and surround it with a halo 
 of Divine holiness, the true aureole of the saint. 
 And everything that aimed at separating human 
 beings from the common work and life of the 
 world, and sending them into deserts physical, 
 mental, or moral, on the pretence of brooding 
 over the eternal interests of their souls, He 
 denounced as distinctly inhuman. This more 
 excellent way He taught by example as well as 
 by precept. He is the one perfect example of 
 devotion and self-sacrifice; and yet He came 
 " eating and drinking," mixing freely with the 
 world, abiding with all kinds of people wherever 
 they were providentially settled, hallowing by 
 His presence their feasts and social gatherings, 
 and seeking by all possible means to consecrate 
 all the experiences and occasions of life. Not to 
 separate them from the world, but from their 
 sins ; not to lead them into the desert, but into 
 a new life, was His mission. 
 
 It is not without deep significance that the 
 ministry of Jesus opens upon a scene of human 
 
 . C 
 
1 8 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap 
 
 happiness. John is the only one who brings out 
 this beautiful connection. The other evangelists 
 place Jesus at once amid scenes of human 
 wretchedness and sin ; and the first miracles which 
 they record are miracles of healing and comfort- 
 ing, as if the relief of trouble were His only work. 
 This is in accordance with the idea of religion 
 which has principally prevailed. It has been 
 uniformly and almost exclusively associated with 
 sorrow and death. Men have regarded it as a 
 lamp burning dimly in a sepulchre. But Jesus 
 taught men to associate it with joy and gladness, 
 and to regard it as the sunshine of life. He gave 
 them to understand that it is of the very essence 
 of religion to connect their thoughts of God with 
 every pleasure they enjoy ; that "to be happy is to 
 have in free and active exercise those faculties of 
 the soul by which it delights in the Lord." It is 
 not in hours of depression and gloom that we are 
 most in sympathy with the nature of God and of 
 heaven, but in our hours of happiness. God 
 Himself is essential happiness ; and therefore when 
 we enjoy that which is alone true substantial 
 bliss we are nearest to Him and most like Him, 
 
I.] CAA^A OF GALILEE. 1 9 
 
 and we instinctively connect our present joys 
 with those to come — the brighter future to which 
 we look forward being only the full unfolding of 
 what we have already in the bud. 
 
 And how greatly do we need this lesson of Cana , 
 still ! Piety is still half afraid of mirth, and mirth ^ 
 still suspects piety. The Church to a great extent 
 has lost the position which she once held as the 
 sanctifier of social life in the sphere of common 
 joy and amusement. And in private life we 
 are all naturally disposed to make God the com- 
 panion of our sorrows ; but i^w comparatively 
 connect their sense of happiness with thoughts of 
 God, and feel that their enjoyments are enhanced 
 by the consciousness of His presence and blessing. 
 We flee to Him as our refuge when troubles assail 
 us, and abandon Him when all is well again ; just 
 as we hasten to take shelter under a porch in a 
 sudden storm, only to leave it when the blue sky 
 shines out. To seek God, therefore, in our hap- 
 piness is the surest evidence of the genuineness of 
 our piety — that we seek Him by preference and 
 choice, and not merely when we cannot do with- 
 out Him or when all other resources fail. In the 
 
 C 2 
 
20 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 kingdom of heaven all sorrow is but a means to 
 joy — all sorrow ends in everlasting joy. Several 
 sections of the Christian Church impressively 
 show that in their estimation holy happiness is a 
 higher thing than even holy sorrow, by the 
 substitution of a festival for a fast when the 
 two observances happen on the same day. And 
 in accordance with the same true instinct, Jesus 
 manifests the glory of His incarnation more 
 ^completely in ministering to the fulness of human 
 happiness in Cana, than in relieving the desolation 
 of human sorrow in Capernaum. 
 
 Further, it is not without profound significance 
 that Jesus' first appearance to the world should 
 have been in connection with a marriage. This 
 fact is a standing protest against the tendency of 
 religion, as mere religion, to make it a virtue to 
 abstain from marriage. This tendency is peculiar 
 to no age or country. It existed in our Lord's 
 day among the Jews ; it was denounced by St. 
 Paul in the Christian Church as one of the most 
 pernicious doctrines of its false teachers. It has 
 received the countenance of the Roman Catholic 
 Church, which, although on the one hand it has 
 
CA.VA OF GALILEE. 
 
 made the rite of marriage a sacrament, and thus 
 invested it with unwarranted sanctities, has on 
 the other hand despised the ordinance in the 
 enforced ceHbacy of its clergy, and failed, even in 
 the case of the laity where it is allowed, to give 
 domestic life its proper dignity and honour. Our 
 Lord had no sympathy with these short-sighted 
 commandments of men, which if carried out 
 universally and to the full extent would extin- 
 guish religion itself with the extinction of the 
 human race. He honoured marriage ; He recog- 
 nised the necessity which God Himself acknow- 
 ledged when He said that even in paradise, where 
 man was in the enjoyment of the glorious society 
 of the Trinity and of all the holy angels, "it 
 is not good for man to be alone." Marriage is 
 a law of nature for mankind, a most necessary 
 law ; and therefore, just because of its naturalness 
 and necessity, it has the most distinct hall-mark 
 of the Divine appointment and approval upon it. 
 It is the source of all human relations, and the 
 means by which the Church is formed and 
 replenished and kept up generation after genera- 
 tion. It lies at the very root of the Christian 
 
22 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 religion and the Christian Hfe ; and it is the 
 type of a heavenly mystery — a symbol of the 
 most intimate and endearing union that exists 
 between Christ and His own people. The sacred 
 writers, in their constant use of images borrowed 
 from the human household, connected their 
 hi^rhest revelations of God with the homeliest 
 exhortations to purity of domestic union ; and 
 asserted that the relation of the particular 
 husband and wife to each other had its foun- 
 dation in their higher relation to Christ Jesus. 
 What occasion, then, so fitting for the Son of God 
 to show His Divine power of blessing and hallow- 
 ing humanity as that of a marriage.? He came 
 to purify this human fountain, that all the streams 
 flowing from it might be pure; to exalt and en- 
 noble this primary relation by His blessing, that all 
 other relations springing from it might be ennobled. 
 Marriage is the best and simplest test by 
 which a religious sect or community can be 
 tried. According as it conforms or fails to con- 
 form to the Divine law in this primary relation of 
 life, so ought it to stand or fall in the estimation 
 of the world. It is a remarkable circumstance 
 
I.] CAN A OF GALILEE. 23' 
 
 that every religious enthusiast who fancies that 
 he is inspired to proclaim a new faith, whenever 
 he succeeds in impressing his convictions upon 
 others, begins to tamper with marriage. The 
 Mohammedanism of the East, the Mormonism of 
 the West, proclaim themselves to be systems of 
 imposture by their abuse of this all-important 
 relation. The spiritual-wife communities which 
 have sprung out of the religious excitement and 
 revivalism of America are based upon radical 
 errors, and are as injurious to human nature as 
 they are false to God. On the side of sensualism 
 or on the side of asceticism, every false religion 
 is sure to err fatally. Nature uniformly revenges 
 the outrage upon her law in every case. Looking 
 at the matter then from this point of view, we see 
 a reason in the very nature of things why Christ's 
 first public manifestation of Himself should be 
 in connection with a marriage. What all other 
 religions have defiled or abused, it was His 
 peculiar mission to exhibit in its true light, and 
 to purify and enforce by Divine sanction. The 
 religion of Jesus can justify itself by this one 
 test, that it alone of all other religions gives to 
 
2i THE MARRIAGE IN [ckap. 
 
 woman her true position in society, and makes 
 marriage all that God meant it to be when He 
 formed Eve out of the side of Adam, and said, 
 " Therefore shall a man leave his father and his 
 mother and shall cleave unto his wife ; and they 
 shall be one flesh." 
 
 Further still, it is a significant circumstance 
 that our Lord's first miracle should have been 
 wrought in connection with an event the brightest 
 and most innocent in human life. He associated 
 Himself first with what was most like His own 
 kingdom in purity. On what scene of earth could 
 heaven open more suitably than upon this happy 
 home in Cana and this joyful bridal feast t We 
 are told that Jesus was the friend of sinners — 
 that those poor outcasts of society between whom 
 and the blessedness of love a great gulf had 
 opened up, wept out the stains of their pollution 
 at His feet, and drew new life out of His sympa- 
 thetic heart. But it was not to sinners like these, 
 who were transgressing the pure and holy laws 
 which regulate the relations of humanity, that He 
 gave his first and special manifestation of Himself, 
 but to those who were keeping these laws and 
 
L] CANA OF GALILEE. 25 
 
 exercising aright the natural affections which He 
 had implanted in their hearts. Heaven always 
 comes nearest to the purest home. The love of 
 God blossoms out of the love of man ; and the 
 glad, righteous exercise of our domestic affections 
 is the very discipline by which the heart is 
 educated for God, and trained to keep the first 
 and great commandment. Its best field of 
 growth is the home, that spot which " to the 
 virtuous is a paradise still extant — a paradise 
 unlost ; " and loving the husband or wife, the 
 brother or sister, the father or mother, whom 
 we see, with pure hearts fervently, we are 
 enabled to love the Lord our God, whom we 
 see not, supremely. In this manifestation of 
 Jesus to those who were keeping the Divine law 
 of purity and love, we see a principle upon 
 which God has uniformly acted. He selected His 
 own home and parentage, not among the profli- 
 gate outcasts of Israel, but among the pure and 
 virtuous, however lowly was their lot ; for His 
 reputed father was a just man and one that feared 
 God, and His mother Mary was of unblemished 
 descent from the royal line of David, and was 
 
26 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 of spotless character and devout faith. He chose 
 for His disciples men who were looking for 
 the kingdom of God and ready to enter it ; 
 men who were prepared by the teaching of 
 John to welcome the Messiah, and who were 
 decidedly the flower, not of one class only, but 
 of the various classes of Jewish society. He 
 ordained St. Paul by a heavenly consecration to 
 be His apostle — a man not only the most 
 eminently endowed by human learning and ability 
 for the work, but who, as touching the righteous- 
 ness of the law, was blameless. And in all His 
 conduct and relations and dealings with men He 
 showed that the best preparation for the recep- 
 tion of the Gospel is the keeping of the law ; 
 that a pure life and a tender conscience are the 
 most fitting qualifications for the exercise of that 
 faith which alone can save the soul. The 
 Gospel prefers to receive men at their best, not 
 at their worst, and to gather into its treasury 
 of grace not the wrecks of human life, but the 
 rich spoils of its youth and strength, its intellect 
 and joy. The kingdom of heaven is indeed like 
 a sower going forth to sow the seed of eternal 
 
1.] CANA OF GALILEE. 2/ 
 
 life, not ill the waste, neglected common, but 
 in the carefully inclosed and cultivated field ; or 
 like a merchantman seeking, not worthless 
 baubles, but goodly pearls, and exchanging them 
 ail for the pearl of great price. 
 
 It is a suggestive circumstance that the first 
 miracle took place at the village where dwelt 
 the disciple of whom our Lord said, ''Behold 
 an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile." 
 This disciple had the blessedness of the pure in 
 heart who see God. In him the Jacob spirit of 
 the supplanter had been transformed into the 
 spirit of the Israelite — the prince of God. 
 Having no selfish aims to hide, no doubts to 
 suppress, the vision that appeared to Jacob of 
 old at Bethel, appeared to him at Cana in a 
 higher and more significant form. He who 
 manifested Himself to the sleeping patriarch in 
 a dream of the night, at the top of the ladder, 
 revealed Himself to Nathanael in waking reality 
 at the foot, in the form of a servant minister- 
 ing to the necessities of others, and enriching 
 the common enjoyments of human life by His 
 blessing. He who appeared to Jacob in a 
 
28 THE MARRIAGE, &-r. [cii. i. 
 
 fleeting vision for the purpose of establishing 
 a covenant relationship with a particular family 
 and nation, has opened up by His incarnation 
 a free intercourse between God and man, be- 
 tween the seen and the unseen, and established 
 a constant communion between heaven and 
 earth. That which was a special experience has 
 become to every Christian an abiding reality. 
 The promise to the Israelite indeed was fulfilled 
 at Cana, and by virtue of his guilelessness he 
 saw in the miracle wrought there, the heavens 
 opened and the angels of God ascending and 
 descending upon the Son of Man. The purity 
 of Nathanael was thus not merely the quality 
 which enabled him to apprehend the true nature 
 of the miracle, but one of the primary reasons 
 why the miracle was wrought. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE FAILURE OF THE WINE. 
 
 "And when they wanted wine." — John II. 3. 
 
 A LL the beauty and gladness of the world 
 -^-^ come out in marriage. We see this in the 
 humblest object that has life. The minute lichen 
 on the wall concentrates whatever grace of form 
 and brightness of colour it possesses on those parts 
 of its organism which are connected with the 
 continuation of the species. In spring the lowly 
 moss assumes a richer tint of green, and puts 
 forth its graceful orange capsules, when those 
 vital processes upon which the propagation of 
 the plant depends take place. The mushroom, 
 product of decay as it is, so dim and unsightly 
 in its vegetative part, develops a wonderful beauty 
 in its fructification ; for the white stem and the 
 crimson or yellow cap, with its elegant ivory 
 
30 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 eills underneath, — which it bears when mature, 
 — is, so to speak, its bridal bower. And higher 
 up in the scale of life, the blossom, the forerunner 
 and source of the fruit and seed from which 
 another existence is to spring, crowns the vege- 
 table world with a halo of glory. All the wealth 
 and beauty with which the summer sun has 
 dowered the plant become conspicuous in the 
 nuptial hour. 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne took in his hand one 
 day a half-opened rose without blemish ; and, 
 smiling with a heartfelt joy, remarked, " This is 
 perfect ; on earth only a flower is perfect." It 
 is by reason of what it signifies and foretells that 
 the flower is so lovely. Its fair hue and exquisite 
 shape, its rich perfume and delicate honey, are 
 Nature's beautiful analogy of the marriage-feast. 
 The plant is lifted above itself, transfigured into 
 a higher nature, during this happy time ; for 
 the blossom is the part of the plant that comes 
 nearest to the animal. It breathes not after the 
 manner of plants, but after the manner of animals. 
 Like us, it inhales oxygen and exhales carbonic 
 acid gas. Like us, it therefore gives out heat ; 
 
II,] CANA OF GALILEE, 31 
 
 for the flower is the warmest part of the plant. 
 Like us, too, it needs sleep to recruit its ex- 
 hausted energies, for the daisy closes its eye 
 when the sun sets ; and has ancestry and kindred, 
 for plants can only be arranged into a true 
 natural system of classification according to the 
 character and relationship of their blossoms. 
 And the two lobes of the seed deep hidden 
 within the heart of the flower, full of starch, 
 sugar, or oil to suckle the young plant which 
 they inclose between them, and prepare it to 
 begin its new life, is the vegetable counterpart 
 of the mother's bosom. Scientific men tell us 
 that the beautiful colours of flowers and their 
 rich odours are contrivances to aid in their repro- 
 duction. They have found that flowers fertilised 
 by the wind are dull and inconspicuous ; while 
 those to which insects have access are distin- 
 guished by their gaily-coloured petals. Perceiving 
 the brighter flowers more easily than the less 
 brilliant, they have fertilised the former to the 
 neglect of the latter ; and thus, by the survival 
 of the most beautiful, the fields are adorned with 
 a brightness which increases as the ages roll on. 
 
32 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 Thus we see how intimately beauty and gladness 
 are associated with the nuptial hour in the 
 vegetable kingdom. 
 
 And the same rule obtains in the animal world. 
 The season of pairing is distinguished by an 
 added charm of beauty and joy. The dull 
 crawling caterpillar blossoms into the blazoned 
 butterfly ; the glow-worm trims its tiny lamp ; a 
 richer crimson comes upon the robin's breast ; 
 and the woods that were silent all the rest of the 
 year break forth into that most delicious of all 
 music, the warble of birds. Bright-coloured 
 scales and plumage, increased beauty of form 
 and hue, the development of ornaments more or 
 less striking, are identified in the animal world 
 with the marriage episode. All that gives the 
 peculiar brightness and gladness to the fields 
 and woods in spring is thus literally but the deep 
 breathing of the spirit of love in Nature. Nor 
 is it different in the human world. That the 
 dearest sanctities and sweetest amenities of human 
 life should be connected with the growth and 
 realisation of the conjugal affections, is part of the 
 same Divine order. Poetry and music, a love of 
 
II.] CANA OF GALILEE. 33' 
 
 beauty, generous thoughts and tender feelings — 
 an elevation and purification of the entire nature 
 -are developed by the sweet agency of a 
 happily-placed affection, and are to human life 
 what the show and fragrance of its blossom are 
 to the plant, and the brightness of its plumage 
 and the sweetness of its song are to the bird. 
 Such thoughts surely give our conception of 
 love a glory of meaning we never guessed 
 before. How far down, how high up does the 
 principle go 1 It touches the whole earth to 
 grace and beauty. It seems to make very real 
 to us the thought of a Father's heart beating 
 in all things. 
 
 It is not, then, a mere caprice but a profound 
 and far-reaching impulse that induces the bride 
 to adorn herself with her jewels and to wear her 
 brightest robes at the hymeneal altar. It is not 
 a mere dictate of fashion, but an instinct that 
 runs throughout all nature, that causes the pro- 
 fuss and joyful marriage feast to be spread when 
 the union of those who love each other is con- 
 summated. It has the same significance as the 
 glory and gladness of spring, which is the great 
 
 D 
 
34 - THE MARRIAGE IN [chap 
 
 marriaore feast of Nature. The outward circum- 
 stance is always made commensurate with the 
 dignity of that which it accompanies and invests. 
 None are too humble or poor to make an effort 
 to provide as liberal an entertainment as their 
 means will allow, and to surround the happiest 
 event in life with an appropriate display of cir- 
 cumstantial significance. The ceremonies con- 
 nected with an Oriental marriage, even among 
 the lowest classes, were imposing and protracted. 
 They began after sunset, when the shades of 
 night were beginning to fall. In the gathering 
 darkness the bridal procession was formed ; and 
 the bride, accompanied by the village maidens, 
 dressed in her fairest robes, wreathed with flowers, 
 and muffled from head to foot in the thick 
 Eastern veil, was escorted from her father's house. 
 The path was lighted with the ruddy glare of 
 torches, and the footsteps of the party kept 
 time with the music of song and flute. The 
 bridegroom, at the head of a similar procession, 
 composed of his youthful friends, went forth to 
 meet his bride, and conveyed her in triumph to 
 their future home ; or, if that was too small a 
 
II.] CANA OF GALILEE. 35 
 
 place to receive all the guests, to some suitable 
 apartment in the village provided for the purpose. 
 The feast that followed lasted for a period vary- 
 ing from two days In the case of the poor to 
 seven days in the case of the rich. So was it 
 doubtless at the marriage in Cana of Galilee. 
 The scene of it was a simple thorpe or village, 
 far away from the grandeur of large cities, in 
 the heart of the lonely hills. There was no 
 great family dwelling in the place ; the people 
 were all simple peasants and tillers of the ground. 
 The marriage was therefore a homely rustic one. 
 So humble and obscure was it that neither the 
 name of the bridegroom nor that of the bride 
 has been preserved to us. And yet the occasion 
 was made as bright and important as possible. 
 A marriage feast was provided, and the merri- 
 ment and festivity would be in pleasing contrast 
 to the monotonous toil and care of ordinary life, 
 and would therefore be all the more thoroughly 
 enjoyed. 
 
 For the entertainment of the guests, in 
 accordance with the custom of the country, 
 wine was supplied, the produce in all Hke- 
 
 D 2 
 
30 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 lihood of their own industry in the vineyards 
 around — 
 
 "Where the kneeling hamlet drains 
 The chalice of the grapes of God." 
 
 Here men by their false scruples and ascetic 
 notions have introduced a difficulty which does 
 not exist in the simple narrative. Fierce polemics 
 have intruded within the sacred inclosure of the 
 marriage festival, and all its fair flowers of 
 innocence have been trodden into the mire of 
 controversy. And the strife is all the more 
 deplorable that it is entirely gratuitous ; for with 
 the miracle of Cana the question of total absti- 
 nence has in reality nothing to do. That question 
 must be argued upon other grounds, St. Paul 
 furnishes the proper principle for its advocacy, 
 and I shall take occasion to allude to it a little 
 further on. There can be no doubt that the 
 wine used at this feast was the ordinary wine of 
 the country, whose properties would be precisely 
 the same as those of all other natural unfortified 
 wines. The miracle took place shortly before the 
 Passover, which is celebrated in the early spring 
 
II.] CANA OF GALILEE. 37 
 
 in the month Nisan, six or seven months after 
 the vintage ; so that the wine consumed at the 
 feast could not in the very nature of things have 
 been an unfermented variety. Our Lord did not 
 forbid the use of it ; He saw no reason to do 
 so ; nay, in all hkelihood He partook of it in 
 common with the rest of the guests, and thus 
 helped to reduce the supply. But we may be 
 sure that He who, though He came eating and 
 drinking, was no wine-bibber or gluttonous man, 
 would not sanction an undue or excessive use 
 of what in itself was lawful and innocent. His 
 presence and example would exercise a con- 
 trolling and sanctifying influence over the festivity. 
 No one present would have a feeling that he 
 was taking part in a forbidden or hazardous 
 indulgence. Indeed the sense of temptation or 
 risk, as we know it in such a connection, would 
 not exist at all. Wine in Bible lands and times 
 was not an occasional luxury as it is with us, 
 but a part of the daily food of the people. It 
 was a simple natural beverage, widely different 
 from the strong brandied wines that we use, but 
 capable of producing intoxication if drunk to 
 
3 8 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 excess. Such wine was among the first obla- 
 tions to the Divinity. " Melchizedek, king of 
 Salem brought forth bread and wine : and he 
 was the priest of the most high God." Through 
 all the most ancient records of the human race, 
 we can trace a conformity between the chief 
 articles of subsistence and the sacrifices to Heaven. 
 Wine and bread, in conformity with this principle, 
 are the essential elements in the holy supper, 
 because they are the essential elements in 
 the support of human life in Eastern countries. 
 And this fact itself reduces the temptation to 
 excess to a minimum. What justifies the use 
 of wine at the marriage feast is what justifies its 
 use at the holy sacrament. In the one case it 
 is a symbol of the element of life laid on the 
 altar of God, which sanctifies every gift, in token 
 that the whole life that is thus nourished is 
 sacred to God ; in the other it is a symbol of 
 the marriage joy, — that fairest, richest joy which 
 life produces when its hopes are crowned with 
 fruition as the vine yields the blood of its 
 grapes when the object of its existence is 
 fulfilled, and which is meant to make all the 
 
II.] CAA^A OF GALILEE. 39 
 
 relations that spring from marriage happy. All 
 therefore who would advocate the abstinence 
 cause must not press the wine of Cana into 
 their service, for it is altogether irrelevant. The 
 abstinence cause is a truly noble one, resting on 
 sound and incontestable arguments of simple 
 expediency. Every one must wish it v/ell, whether 
 he practises abstinence or not, as it pleads for 
 virtues most unequivocally desirable in the present 
 age, and which conduce to the support and 
 nurture of all good tendencies in our nature. 
 But it will only be weakened and damaged 
 fatally by any attempt to support it by argu- 
 ments which are inconsistent with truth. It 
 would be well to remember always that our 
 Lord Himself did not lay down strict and in- 
 flexible laws of abstinence as to man's ordinary 
 habits. He Himself was a law to His people 
 in these things, so that they might come to 
 think what would be pleasing to Him ; and love 
 would prompt restrictions when needful which 
 absolute laws could not establish. 
 
 There is indeed, if we look at the matter a 
 little more closely, a natural harmony, as it were, 
 
40 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 between the fruit of the vine and the bridal 
 festivity. The richest juices of the vine-plant 
 are prepared and stored up in those parts of its 
 structure which are specially associated with the 
 propagation of the species. The water of the 
 dew and the shower is changed into wine in the 
 exquisite goblets of the grape-cluster, in order 
 that the seeds contained in them may be enabled 
 to fulfil their function. For aught that we know 
 the reproduction of the vine might have been 
 accomplished without these exquisitely moulded 
 and tinted globes of wine at all — by dry, hard, 
 woody fruits, as in other plants. But we cannot 
 suppose that He who has in all cases adapted 
 the means to the end with the utmost nicety, 
 can have bestowed this beautiful provision upon 
 the vine without some adequate reason, first in 
 its own existence, and then in the richer blessing 
 of human beings and other creatures. We can- 
 not suppose that this apparent superfluity is not 
 a real necessity, ministering more effectually to 
 the reproductive function of the plant, giving in- 
 creased vitality to the seed and a greater facihty 
 for germination. And is this thing not an analogy 
 
II.] CAJVA OF GALILEE. 41 
 
 of marriage ? That rite can take place without 
 any festivity, just as plants may be propagated 
 without beautiful blossoms, or seeds formed 
 without rich fruits, just as all the uses of the 
 world might be fulfilled without the seemingly 
 extravagant beauty with which they are adorned. 
 But God loves not poverty or meagreness — a 
 mere utilitarianism ; He has accompanied the 
 natural provisions of the world, and abundantly 
 exceeded them, by that which appeals to the 
 higher wants and capabilities of our nature ; and 
 therefore it is as natural that wine should form 
 part of the festivities of marriage as that beauty ^y 
 and gladness should crown the accomplishment kJ 
 of the common purposes of the world. 
 
 Understanding thus the importance attached 
 to wine on such an occasion, interpreted by the 
 common Jewish saying, " Without wine there is 
 no joy," we can realise what a calamity it must 
 have been when the supply of it failed. How 
 this happened we are not informed. It could 
 not have been owing to the improvidence of the 
 bridegroom or the intemperance of the guests. 
 It may hai^e been caused by the poverty of the 
 
42 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 host, and the party being larger than he had 
 expected ; for in the East a nuptial feast may 
 be attended not only by those who are specially 
 invited, but also by as many as choose to come 
 and bring presents to the newly-wedded pair. 
 Perhaps the presence of Jesus and His disciples 
 had unexpectedly increased the number of the 
 guests. Whatever may have been the reason, 
 the sudden stoppage of the wine must have been 
 a cause of intense mortification to the providers 
 of the feast, and must have cast a deep gloom 
 over the happy occasion. In the East, where 
 the exercise of hospitality even to lavishness is 
 carried out passionately even by the poorest, any 
 failure in a duty so sacred would be felt as a 
 bitter and indelible disgrace. And this feeling 
 of mortification which want produces has a wide 
 meaning and application. We can all sympathise 
 with it from what we have seen or experienced. 
 We have all the desire to appear prosperous in 
 the eyes of others. It is this desire which 
 induces us to labour for those distinctions of 
 rank, wealth, and fame with which the idea of 
 happiness is usually associated. It is more the 
 
II.] CANA OF GALILEE. 43 
 
 value that these things have in the eyes of others, 
 than any blessedness which they confer upon the 
 individual possessor, that lends attractiveness to 
 them and makes them so eagerly sought after. 
 What struggles are constantly made by persons 
 in society to keep up appearances — to maintain 
 before the world the semblance of the position 
 and well-being which they think ought to be 
 theirs ! Sacrifices and self-denials, the meanest 
 and most painful, will be made in private, if only 
 the show of substantial happiness can be exhibited 
 to the public. Individuals will lose anything 
 rather than their hold upon the good opinion 
 which the world cherishes towards those who are 
 well off. They are ashamed of everything that 
 would lift the veil and disclose the real wretched- 
 ness behind. Poverty itself is hard to bear, but 
 the disclosure of it is a thousand times worse. 
 Its physical privations might be willingly endured, 
 if it could be made to wear a smiling mask of 
 abundance and ease before the world. 
 
 Now why is this } Is it because poverty is 
 itself a disgrace } Are narrow circumstances, in 
 which any one may be providentially placed, 
 
44 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 themselves a legitimate cause of shame ? Every 
 one acknowledges that the distinctions of life 
 have very often no relation to personal merit, 
 and that the best of men may be poor and 
 obliged to live in a humble position. But how- 
 ever we may try to reason ourselves out of the 
 feehngs of shame and distress which the dis- 
 covery of our want produces, these feelings will 
 continue to exist and to embarrass us. No 
 argument of logic or common sense will avail 
 against them. No truism about virtuous provi- 
 dential poverty will banish the moral feelings of 
 distress, far worse, as I have said, than the 
 experience of its physical privations, which it 
 produces. There must surely be some adequate 
 reason for this universal experience. There is ; 
 and it may be traced deep down, as it has been 
 well said, to the underlying fact that man w^as 
 made for happiness, and that consequently with- 
 out it he feels himself to have fallen from his 
 natural place, and to have lost the perfection of 
 his being. Poverty and privation are associated in 
 men's minds with the loss of happiness, and there- 
 fore "they virtually imply a charge of loss of the 
 
II.] CANA OF GALILEE. 45 
 
 true dignity and perfection of human nature." 
 This charge is instinctively felt to be a moral 
 one, and the shame which it produces is an 
 unconscious witness to the primeval blessedness 
 and the present defection of man. 
 
 That man should be in want of anything that is 
 necessary to his well-being, that he should ever 
 hunger or thirst, is owing to sin. There was no 
 scarcity in the Eden life ; and all the earth was 
 appointed to serve man so long as he continued 
 to serve God, and to pour the fulness of its bless- 
 ings into his cup so long as he continued to offer 
 the fulness of his homage to the Lord of nature. 
 But man's sin changed Eden into a wilderness, 
 whence no blessing can be got except by the 
 sweat of the face. We cannot indeed trace the 
 connection in every case between individual 
 want and individual sin, any more than we can 
 trace the connection between individual suffering 
 of any kind and individual guilt. When a bridge 
 has been carried away by a sudden flood, it 
 would be useless to inquire by what exact 
 particles of water the ruin was caused. It was 
 the momentum of the whole stream that did it ; 
 
4^ THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 the action of each drop of water communicating 
 itself to the next in order, until the accumulated 
 force at some point of resistance inflicts the 
 damage. And so, when a man suffers from pro- 
 vidential poverty, it would be wrong as well as 
 useless to ask if this man sinned or his parents, 
 that he should be in such distress. It was the 
 whole stream of human sin causing human pri- 
 vation and misery, bearing with particular violence 
 against his special case, because of some special 
 weakness that inflicted the distress. But while 
 there is no ground for self-blame in this particular 
 instance, the poor man nevertheless feels ashamed 
 of his want, because he unconsciously but 
 rightly attributes it to a loss of what was once 
 the heritage of man, which he forfeited by his 
 sin. It is a perpetuation in the whole human 
 race of the feelings of shame which our first 
 parents experienced when their eyes, were opened 
 after their fatal moral lapse, and they saw their 
 nakedness, — the nakedness not merely of their 
 bodies, but also of their souls and their circum- 
 stances, their loss of that happiness for which 
 they were made. 
 
II.] CANA OF GALILEE. 47 
 
 Viewed in this light it is a most striking co- 
 incidence, bearing indeed all the marks of Divine 
 intention, that our Lord's first miracle should 
 have been wrought in connection with circum- 
 stances of want and privation. Our Lord's first 
 pubHc utterance in the Sermon on the Mount 
 was also connected with human want. He 
 began His preaching of the Gospel by holding 
 forth the blessedness of the poor in spirit. The 
 kingdom of heaven meets humanity where the 
 law had left it stripped and destitute. It reaches 
 the simplest and most elementary condition ; 
 and just as Jesus Himself in His own person and 
 life, as our representative and surety, took up 
 our condition at the low wretched point to which 
 the sin of mankind had reduced it, — ^just as He 
 came poor and naked into our world, so our 
 spiritual life must begin at the low miserable 
 point to which sin has brought us, and take its 
 start of glorious development from nakedness 
 and poverty and shame. It was in the empty, 
 barren wilderness that Christ conquered tempta- 
 tion, and brought back the blessedness of the 
 forfeited inheritance ; it is in the desolate, 
 
4.8 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 poverty-stricken wilderness of the soul that we 
 must conquer sin and Satan in His strength, and 
 win in His triumph the blessings of heav^en. 
 
 What an expressive symbol is the failure of 
 the wine at the marriage feast of the failure of 
 the world's joy ! It was the highest and happiest 
 human occasion, and yet the sense of want 
 intruded itself. What a testimony to the in- 
 sufficiency of even the richest feast of worldly 
 attainment or experience ! Not only do sin and 
 folly make a waste in human life, and reckless 
 indulgences paralyse the very faculty of enjoy- 
 ment, but even what is best in human life fails, 
 — the sweetest wine of the heart stops suddenly 
 or runs to the dregs. Not only does the 
 prodigal who wastes his substance in riotous 
 living inevitably come to want, in that far coun- 
 try to which he has wandered frorn God and 
 from righteousness, but even the moral and the 
 upright who use the world, as not abusing it, 
 and husband carefully and wisely its happy 
 resources, even they too, amid the dearest 
 sanctities of home, exhaust sooner or later the 
 world's capacity of enjoyment. W^e cannot 
 
II.] CANA OF GALILEE. 49 
 
 prolong the festive entertainment from the be- 
 ginning to the end of life. We have no perpetual 
 principle of gladness in ourselves, and there is 
 no perennial fountain without from which we can 
 always drink and be satisfied. Ever and anon 
 some change takes place, and the supply upon 
 which we counted fails, and with empty cups and 
 aching hearts we have to confess that we have 
 no wine. Joy ends in sorrow, desire in disap- 
 pointment, effort in failure, love in death. 
 Marriage itself, the crowning bliss of life, with 
 all its dear ties and affections, comes to a close ; 
 and they who have wives are enjoined to be as 
 though they had none, seeing that the wedded 
 state is but the shadow of good things to come, 
 a preparation for that enduring condition of 
 redeemed humanity in which there shall be 
 neither marrying nor giving in marriage, but all 
 shall be as the angels of God. 
 
 What a precious thought it is then that Jesus 
 comes to us at every crisis of want, meets us at 
 the low point of our failure and poverty, and 
 provides for us what we ourselves cannot supply! 
 He who was our guest, partaking of our good 
 
 E 
 
so THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 things, sharing in the fulness of their enjoyment 
 while they lasted, and in the sadness of their 
 failure when they came to an end, now becomes 
 our host, and bestows upon us His things, which 
 are of higher quality, and whose overflowing 
 abundance will never fail. He not only gives us 
 more of our own human good, but He gives us 
 something that is far better, — the very wine of 
 heaven that makes glad the heart of man, the 
 joy that is unspeakable and full of glory. 
 
 The wedding miracle teaches the twofold lesson, 
 that those may find Jesus in their want who 
 neglected Him in their fulness, and that out of 
 the very poverty of their life spent in sin He 
 can bring forth the riches of His grace, and make 
 all earthly losses to become heavenly gains ; and 
 also that His blessing can change all the water 
 of our joy into the wine of heaven, and com- 
 munion w^ith Him will keep our happy festive 
 life pure and sweet and satisfying to the very 
 end. The incident is but an acted parable of 
 the Gospel, a miniature of man's fall and restora- 
 tion. The bridal feast recalls the happy, innocent 
 Eden life ; the failure of the wine, the empty 
 
II.] CANA OF GALILEE. 5 1 
 
 wilderness to which man was banished because 
 of his sin. The presence and the miracle of 
 Jesus speak to us of God sharing not only the 
 innocent, happy Eden hfe, but also the sinful, 
 wretched life of the wilderness — going out with 
 man into the waste and the want, to be afflicted 
 in all his afflictions, so that by the wonderful 
 miracle of His grace He might make the wilder- 
 ness and the solitary place to be glad, and bring 
 back once more the joyful abundant life of 
 paradise. 
 
 E 2 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE MOTHER OF JESUS. 
 
 ''And the mother of Jesus was there. . . . The mother 
 of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine." — John ii. i, 3. 
 
 T T is a circumstance of which we are apt to 
 lose sight that this is the first time that the 
 mother of Jesus is introduced to us by St. John. 
 Were we left to depend upon his Gospel alone 
 for our information, we should never have known 
 that our Saviour was born into the world a little 
 child, in the natural helplessness of a human 
 infant, that He lay on the bosom of a human 
 mother, and that He had grown up with her 
 through childhood and boyhood to the age at 
 which He was baptized in the Jordan, and began 
 Himself to proclaim the kingdom of heaven. 
 St. John strikes the highest note at first in his 
 Gospel, — introduces Jesus straight from heaven 
 
CH. III.] THE MARRIAGE, &^c. 53 
 
 at once in His Divine character as the Son of 
 God. He says, "In the beginning was the Word, 
 and the Word was with God, and the Word 
 was God." What a contrast, then, between these 
 sublime words and those with whicn the second 
 chapter of his Gospel opens — " And the mother 
 of Jesus was there ; " " And His mother saith 
 unto Him, They have no wine " ! In these few 
 simple words, so far as the Gospel of St. John is 
 concerned, are compressed all the marvellous 
 things connected with the human birth, infancy, 
 childhood, and manhood of Jesus, — the whole 
 wonderful story of the Incarnation. 
 
 It was the mother of Jesus who directed His 
 attention to the failure of the wine at the feast. 
 The evangelist recorded the circumstance because 
 he evidently intended it to be carefully noticed. 
 The story of the miracle might have been told 
 without any mention of Mary at all. But how 
 much we should have lost by such an omission ! 
 The miracle acquires an added interest and sig- 
 nificance when we find that it was wrought at 
 the suggestion of a mother and in her presence, 
 and was the result of the promptings of human 
 
54 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 love. The first influence that reaches the senses 
 of a child is from the mother ; and whatever 
 miracles of blessing have been done in the world 
 may be traced to the impulses and suggestions 
 received from a mother's lips and a mother's 
 heart. How true it is that " she who rocks the 
 cradle sways the world " ! How far the life and 
 the words of a true mother go to make for us a 
 faith in heaven that, working by love, can remove 
 mountains and accomplish seeming impossibili- 
 ties ! Jesus was like all human beings in this 
 respect. He too stood in the smile and lay as 
 a child in the arms of a gentle and loving 
 mother. He too was wrapped up in the very 
 mantle of maternal affection, and was taught 
 the piety which has its root in love. And now 
 that He has grown to man's estate, and has 
 entered upon His great life-work, it is fitting that 
 He should receive the first call to the exercise 
 of His power from His mother. From the posi- 
 tion which she occupied in the house, and her 
 interference with its domestic arrangements, she 
 had a deep personal sympathy with the embar- 
 rassment of the host, in the failure of the 
 
III.] CAA'A OF GALILEE. 55 
 
 provision which he had made for the entertainment 
 of his guests. She was concerned for the credit 
 of those who were in all likelihood her near 
 relatives ; and she trusted instinctively to the 
 same sympathy in the heart of her Son, and 
 therefore she said to Him, " They have no wine." 
 God had honoured her above women in making 
 her the mother of our Lord's natural life ; and 
 now He was about to honour her still further in 
 making her the mother, so to speak, of His public 
 ministerial life. Through her the glory of the 
 Only-begotten of the Father assumed a human 
 form ; through her the first manifestation of that 
 glory was made to men. 
 
 Were the story of the miracle an invention, we 
 may be sure that the episode of the mother 
 would not have been introduced. An imaginary 
 Christ would have no mother suggesting to Him 
 what He should do ; — that would have been 
 deemed beneath His dignity. On the contrary, 
 He would have stood forth alone, and with the 
 halo of Divine unapproachable majesty around 
 His brow, would have changed the water into wine 
 at once by a single word. The real Christ Vv^as 
 
56 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 a sympathetic man, with the tender weakness 
 that is more beautiful than all our strength. It 
 was no mere supernatural being who performed 
 the miracle, having no connection with human 
 relations, and standing aloof from all human 
 experiences, but a man born of a woman, united 
 to us by blood relationship, with a human heart 
 budding and blossoming with all beautiful human 
 affections. And how full of far-reaching meaning 
 is this intimate connection of Christ's first miracle 
 with His human ties and associations ! He took 
 not on Him the nature of angels, for that nature 
 was unsuited for redemptive purposes. An angel 
 is a unit, created directly by God without parent- 
 age or family relationship. Angels are sons of 
 God, but they are not sons of one another. They 
 have an individual but not a corporate existence ; 
 and therefore the Saviour could not assume the 
 angelic nature, enter into a federal relation with 
 these isolated self-contained beings, and become 
 their substitute and representative. "Forasmuch 
 then as the children were partakers of flesh and 
 blood. He also Himself likewise took part of the 
 same." We have got a Redeemer out of our own 
 
III.] CAJVA OF GALILEE. S7 
 
 bosom, out of the depths of our own personal 
 being and human life. Human nature allowed 
 Him to be born of a human mother, descended 
 from human ancestry, linked by blood relationship 
 with the human family, and thus to become the 
 head and representative of a renewed race. 
 From first to last He connected His mighty works 
 with His human ties and affections. It was in 
 the midst of those who were dear to Him that He 
 wrought them. His mother instigated His first 
 miracle; His mother received His last human re- 
 cognition and message of love. At the marriage 
 of Cana, in the height of human joy, He was 
 surrounded by happy human friends ; on the cross 
 of Calvary, in the height of human woe. He did not 
 appear hanging a solitary form between earth and 
 heaven as art represents Him, and as He appears 
 to the soul that gazes upon the Crucified as its 
 one only hope, but encompassed by the friend- 
 ships and affections of those, whose soul-absorbing 
 grief was the surest attestation of His real share 
 in our common nature. Once only, in the agony 
 of the garden, is He separated as it were a stone's 
 cast from those whom He loved ; and His human 
 
58 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 longing for human sympathy then breaks out in 
 the touching complaint, " Could ye not watch 
 with Me one hour?" In all this, we have the 
 precious assurance on the one hand that, whatever 
 may be our degradation and sin, God Himself in 
 the person of Christ has become the brother of 
 us all ; and on the other, that by virtue of our 
 human birth each of us becomes one of the seed 
 of the woman, and thereby is brought within the 
 scope of a gracious economy of redeeming love. 
 Let our natural relationship to Jesus, "our brother 
 born," therefore, result through our faith and love 
 in the higher relationship of grace for which it is 
 the preparation. Let Him who is the Redeemer 
 of our common nature become the Redeemer of 
 our several persons. And theji the relationship 
 which rests upon a participation of our flesh and 
 blood, and a sharing of our infirmities, will render 
 possible a nearer and more blessed communion 
 with Him than angels or archangels can ever 
 know. 
 
 It is difficult to find out the full import of the 
 words of Mary, "They have no wine." Some 
 regard them as a mere remark dropped in the 
 
lu.j CANA OF GALILEE. 59 
 
 course of conversation, drawing attention to what 
 had happened, without any further meaning or 
 design ; others suppose that Mary used them as a 
 delicate hint that they should retire before the 
 deficiency could be made known to all the guests. 
 It was the presence of Jesus and His disciples 
 that had unintentionally contributed to the 
 failure of the wine; it would be becoming there- 
 fore that they should withdraw in time, so that 
 the disgrace might be averted. These explana- 
 tions, however, do not satisfy all the require- 
 ments of the case. The words are plain, and 
 announce a plain fact ; they must, therefore, be 
 interpreted in the simplest sense. There can be 
 no doubt that Mary expected some unusual 
 manifestation of her Son's power in the circum- 
 stances. She drew attention to the want of wine 
 for the very purpose of exciting His sympathy 
 with their entertainers, and stimulating Him to 
 do something to remove the trouble that had 
 fallen upon them. Whether she had any idea 
 of a miracle like that which Jesus afterwards 
 wrought we cannot tell ; but it is certain from 
 the reply of Jesus, which would otherwise have 
 
6o THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 no meaning, that in the words, "They have no 
 wine," she was giving Him some hint, distinct or 
 vague, to do something out of the usual hne of 
 things to meet the sudden difficulty which had 
 arisen. There was no wine, nor any ordinary 
 means of procuring it ; her remark was therefore 
 an appeal for some extraordinary channel of 
 supply. She thought that this was a favourable 
 opportunity of displaying His wonderful power. 
 She had watched His course for thirty years, 
 "wearing the white blossom of a blameless life," 
 in the humble home at Nazareth, and she recog- 
 nised in that sinless development something that 
 was more than human. She knew that a crisis had 
 happened in His life ; that He Who had previously 
 courted the quiet shade had now come out into 
 the full blaze of publicity, and had gathered 
 disciples around Him who acknowledged Him as 
 Rabbi and Lord. She had heard of what had 
 taken place at His baptism, and how not only the 
 great prophet, with whose fame the whole land 
 was filled, had announced Him to be the coming 
 Messiah, but even an audible voice from heaven 
 claimed Him as the Son of God. All this must 
 
III.] CANA OF GALILEE. 6l' 
 
 have profoundly interested and excited her. The 
 memories of early years, of the heavenly an- 
 nouncement and marvellous manner and remark- 
 able associations of His birth, which had been 
 allowed perhaps to slumber in her heart, overlaid 
 by the simple ordinary incidents of the home life 
 in Nazareth for so long a period, were aroused to 
 a high-strung expectation. What might not be 
 done by one whose antecedents were of so un- 
 usual a character, whose whole life was a silent 
 miracle of beauty, and who was now about to 
 display His latent glory .'* The sacred Scriptures 
 told her how Elisha had used his miraculous 
 power in the relief of common necessities, multi- 
 plying the widow's pot of oil, and changing the 
 bitter waters of Jericho into sweet ; and was 
 there not a likelihood that her Son should prove 
 the reality of His Divine endowments in the same 
 manner } 
 
 But mingled with this desire for the manifesta- 
 tion of her Son's glory there were perhaps 
 elements of a more selfish kind. She would not 
 have been the true woman that she was, as it 
 has been well said, if she had not something 
 
62 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 of a personal pride in the expectation of His 
 mighty achievements. It was natural for her, 
 as for every mother, to wish that the greatness 
 of her Son should be recognised by others — that 
 others should honour Him as she knew He de- 
 served to be honoured. A desire, moreover, 
 very human, to bask as His nearest and dearest 
 in the reflected light of His glory, would not be 
 altogether unfelt by her, though it would be 
 tempered and purified by the awful mystery that 
 enshrouded Him. We cannot but suppose also 
 that as a mother she would be anxious to keep 
 Him as her Son as long as possible — to retain 
 in the new and startling circumstances her old 
 motherly influence over Him. Hitherto, for thirty 
 long years, she had known Him only as the 
 obedient, loving child, fulfilling day by day, 
 with stainless grace and sweetness, the domestic 
 duties of His humble home, and giving all due 
 filial love and reverence to both His parents. 
 And though things were now changed, she could 
 not but think of Him still, as "one who 
 would be always ready to carry out her wishes 
 and anxious to consult her pleasure." And in 
 
III.] CANA OF GALILEE. 6^ 
 
 this, so far as ordinary domestic matters were 
 concerned, she was right. She should never 
 cease to count upon His filial love and reverence 
 in the things belonging to the natural life. If 
 any one on earth could move Him to exert His 
 miraculous power to help her friends at the 
 bridal feast, it would certainly have been His 
 mother. But just as He assured her when she 
 found Him in the Temple in the midst of the 
 doctors, in the twelfth year of His age — with her 
 mother's heart full of anxiety about Him — that 
 He must be about His Father's business ; so now 
 He told her that a higher motive even than a 
 mother's authority must regulate the manifesta- 
 tions of His heavenly glory : " Woman, what 
 have I to do with thee } " The rebuke is 
 kindred to that which He administered after- 
 wards to Salome, the mother of Zebedee's sons, 
 when she wished to interfere in His ministerial 
 acts, by requests on her own account. The gifts 
 and blessings of Heaven, He told her, are be- 
 stowed not according to a capricious favouritism, 
 but according to a fixed principle of Divine 
 Government, a regular method of Divine procedure. 
 
64 THE MARRIAGE IN [cpiap. 
 
 Few passages in Scripture have called forth 
 more learned exposition than these words of our 
 Lord to His mother. As first sight they seem 
 harsh and repellent. There is a sound of human 
 impatience in them which we cannot associate 
 with the gentleness of Jesus. But our English 
 version and our usage of the term " woman " are 
 to blame for this. In those days *' woman " was 
 a title of respect ; and what more honourable 
 name could be given at any time to designate her 
 who is the complement and helpmate of man ? 
 When the true dignity of woman is recognised 
 and felt, that is the best name by which she can 
 be known. Emperors have called their queens by 
 this name ; and Jesus Himself, in the last and 
 tenderest words which He addressed to Mary on 
 earth, said to her, " Woman, behold thy Son •! " 
 It was a name, therefore, that, in the soft, gentle 
 Aramaic which Jesus used, conveyed no harsh- 
 ness or discourtesy, but, on the contrary, might 
 have been given in the most loving moment to 
 the most beloved. He avoided calling Mary His 
 mother for the same reason that He refused to 
 acknowledge David as His father. He w^as. 
 
III.] CAA^A OF GALILEE. 65 
 
 indeed, the son of Mary by natural birth, as He 
 was the son of David by natural descent. But He 
 was henceforth to be known among men no longer 
 as the son of Mary, but as that which His bap- 
 tism had sealed Him — the Son of the Eternal 
 Father. "What have I to do with thee .?" is an 
 unfortunate rendering of our Lord's words. The 
 original is a common phrase in the East, often 
 used in the Bible when a suggestion is set 
 aside and all further discussion of it waived, 
 and has nothing of the seeming severity or dis- 
 courtesy which our version implies. It is, on the 
 contrary, perfectly consistent with the most deli- 
 cate and thoughtful consideration. And were we 
 present at the interview, we should doubtless have 
 seen on our Lord's face an expression of gentle- 
 ness, and heard from His lips a tone of tenderness, 
 which would still further soften the effect of His 
 words. That Mary's feelings were not hurt, we have 
 sure evidence from her saying immediately to the 
 servants, " Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it." 
 But notwithstanding this, the words of 
 Jesus, which sound strange to us, had a real 
 strangeness, and were exceptional and significant. 
 
 F 
 
66 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 We must not forget that it was the beloved 
 disciple, who took Mary to his own home after 
 the crucifixion, who records the words, having 
 probably heard them from the lips of Mary her- 
 self . And he would not have mentioned an 
 occurrence which, on the face of it, seems so 
 little flattering to the mother of our Lord, if he 
 did not realize its exceptional significance. He 
 knew that this was the sublime turning-point in 
 the life of his Master. Entering upon His sacred 
 office, even His relation to His mother, so far as 
 His public ministry was concerned, must be 
 regarded as dissolved. He must reject her inter- 
 ference with Him in His work. He must speak 
 and act in the name of the Father alone ; and 
 be recognised in His outward relations, as well 
 as in His inward feelings, as impelled by a 
 supreme regard for His Father's will. ' The Son 
 had now become the Lord, even of His mother ; 
 and her own happiness could only be secured 
 by believing in and obeying Him. By Mary her- 
 self He was to be regarded, not as moved and 
 guided by her, but as revealing to her as well as 
 to others the Father in heaven. 
 
Ill ] CANA OF GALILEE. 6/ 
 
 Jesus could not get into human relations with 
 us except by human birth. He needed for this 
 purpose a human mother. This was no mere 
 accident in His case ; and the higher essential 
 significance of the tender relationship, was that 
 through it we might be brought into the Divine 
 relationship, and receive the adoption of sons in 
 the household of God. The connection between 
 Mary and Jesus, as mother and Son, was meant 
 to be the foundation upon which the higher 
 and more enduring connection of faith might be 
 formed. The outward relation through human 
 ties was of value only as it led to the inward 
 vital union of Heavenly love. The knowledge 
 through the flesh was to prepare Mary to know 
 Jesus no more after the flesh. It was necessary, 
 therefore, that once for all she should learn this 
 great truth at the marriage-feast of Cana. As 
 regards His great work and mission, as regards 
 His eternal being, she could claim no closer re- 
 lationship with Jesus than any other person at 
 the feast — than any other human being. The 
 reason why He came into the world was to do 
 the Father's will Himself, and to help others to 
 
 F 2 
 
 c 
 
6S THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 do it ; and to accomplish this purpose effectually 
 He assumed human nature, and entered into an 
 intimate blood relationship with men. The nearest 
 to Him, therefore, is the likest to Him in this 
 respect. His true mother is not the woman who 
 bore Him ; His true brothers and sisters are not 
 those who had a family likeness to Him, and 
 grew up together with Him in the same house ; 
 but those who, having, it may be, no outward 
 relationship or nearness to Him, yet show that they 
 have the inward relationship of faith and love by 
 doing the common Father's will. He came not 
 to be owned by one human mother exclusively, or 
 to be appropriated by a few brothers and sisters 
 because they were her children, and to be limited 
 to one small household ; but that everywhere 
 and at all times multitudes whom no man can 
 number, of men and women, might forget their 
 own people and their father's house — might 
 forsake father and mother, wife and children, 
 and house and lands, in order that through this 
 self-sacrifice of faith and love they might become 
 the sons and daughters of the Almighty, and 
 the King of kings might greatly desire their 
 
III.] CAiYA OF GALILEE. 69 
 
 beauty. "And He answered them, saying, Who 
 is my mother, or my brethren ? And He looked 
 round about on them which sat about Him, and 
 said, Behold my mother and my brethren ! For 
 whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is 
 my brother, and my sister, and mother." This 
 decisive lesson was doubtless hard for Mary to 
 learn. It could not have been imparted in a 
 manner more tender and sympathetic ; and yet 
 it was not in human nature to receive it without 
 wincing. Mary could not forego without a 
 struggle of feeling her claims upon the son whom 
 she had brought into the world, and nursed and 
 loved with all a mother's tenderness. This vital 
 change in the old relations must have done some 
 violence to the old motherly feeling of Mary. 
 She was now beginning to realize the profound 
 significance of Simeon's prophecy at the dedica- 
 tion of her Child in the Temple, — "Yea, a sword 
 shall pierce through thy own soul also " ; and to 
 know that not without pain and sorrow, self-denial 
 and self-sacrifice, in some faint measure like His 
 own, could she have the honour and the blessedness 
 of being the mother of the Saviour of the world. 
 
70 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 And this fact, that it was through the human 
 motherhood of Mary that the higher relationship 
 of the Divine Hfe was made known to her, teaches 
 us, too, the great truth that all the ties of flesh 
 and blood are means of discipline and preparation 
 for the more enduring ties of Heaven. It is a 
 striking thought that, instead of inflicting at once 
 the sentence of death upon man's sin which He 
 had threatened, God made provision for the con- 
 tinuance of human life, and ordained that Eve 
 should be the mother of all living. Marriage, 
 while it is the antithesis of it, perpetuates death 
 in the world ; but it is graciously appointed by 
 God to be the means of bringing men into the 
 higher Divine fellowship which removes the curse 
 and abolishes death. It is through the relations 
 to which marriage gives rise — father, mother, 
 child, brother, sister, — that God connects the 
 world of toil and suffering and death most closely 
 with Himself In these relations He applies the 
 most gentle but the most powerful instruments 
 conceivable, to raise man from the depths of the 
 fall, and carry on the spiritual education of 
 the race. At the marriage-feast of Cana we are 
 
III.] CANA OF GALILEE. 7 1 
 
 brought into contact with the most intimate and 
 endearing connections of life. We see there 
 first the husband and wife, who forsake father 
 and mother in order to form this closer and 
 tenderer union — to become one flesh. And does 
 not this forsaking of the lower tie to form a 
 higher one point further on, even to the for- 
 saking of that higher tie itself, in order that the 
 highest of all may be formed in that place where 
 there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage, 
 but all are as the angels of God ? Does not 
 marriage bring home to the heart of husband 
 and wife respectively that each of them is some- 
 thing better than a mere self, that he or she is 
 part of a higher and more precious whole ; and 
 thus, does it not become a type of the union 
 between the Church and her Lord ? We see 
 next mother and Son — the relationship that results 
 from marriage — and next to it, the closest and 
 tenderest that human nature knows. And Jesus, 
 type and example of that relationship at its best 
 and purest, here shows to us that even in His 
 life-time its beautiful earthly significance had 
 passed away ; and that although the love between 
 
72 . THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 Himself and His mother was never quenched or 
 impaired, a change had come upon it symboh'cal 
 of the change which removal to another world 
 produces. Its lower sense endearments were ab- 
 sorbed and transfigured into its higher spiritual 
 ends. By instituting between herself and Jesus 
 this most wonderful relationship of parent and 
 Child, her own relationship to God was illustrated 
 to her; and in the sorrow which pierced through 
 her own heart, she could realize something of 
 the sorrow of the great Father over the sin and 
 misery and death of His children. In the pain 
 of child-bearing and child-rearing and, perhaps 
 worst of all, child-relinquishing, she had the key 
 to many of the deepest mysteries of grace, which 
 would have otherwise baffled her intellect. 
 
 Doubtless there were in the company of 
 guests at the bridal-feast, though they ar^ not 
 specially mentioned, the brothers and sisters of 
 Jesus. And is not that relationship, which has 
 almost all the intimate, habitual domestic inter- 
 course of affection which marriage itself enjoys, 
 a discipline of love, disentangling it from sense, 
 and freeing human nature from its selfishness } 
 
III.] CANA OF GALILEE. 73 
 
 Does it not speak to us of that more than 
 brother's love by which we know that we have 
 passed from death unto Hfe ? Then there were 
 at the feast other relatives, friends and neigh- 
 bours, who are brought within the charmed circle 
 of blood and association, that they may the 
 more effectually bear one another's burdens, and 
 so fulfil the law of Christ. All these ties of family 
 and of friendship are so many consecrated 
 channels through which the life-blood of religion 
 may flow from heart to heart. While they have 
 temporary purposes to fulfil in the flesh, their 
 higher reference is to the Spirit in man, and 
 they fall under the powers of the world to come. 
 The bonds of natural blood are meant to be 
 the discipline through which may be formed the 
 sacred links which bind in one the members of 
 Christ and the heirs of God — those who love the 
 Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and truth, and who 
 love one another with an affection which neither 
 life nor death can change. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OUR LORD'S HOUR. 
 
 ''Jesus saith unto her Woman, what have I to do with 
 thee' mine hour is not yet come. His mother saith unto 
 the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it." — 
 John II. 4, 5. 
 
 13 OMAN CATHOLIC commentators have 
 ^^ tried hard to free our Lord's words to 
 His mother from the sb'ghtest shadow of blame. 
 But in this they have failed ; for the most candid 
 of them have been obliged to admit, what 
 indeed is evident on the very surface, that how- 
 ever gentle and loving was our Lord's address 
 to Mary, there was a tone of rebuke in it. 
 There was a weakness in her feminine im- 
 patience, a temporary forgetfulness of the higher 
 character of Jesus and of the relation in which 
 she stood to Him, an ignorance in her expectation 
 that a mere circumstance or necessity could 
 
CH. IV.] THE MARRIAGE, &-c. 75 
 
 determine the exercise cf His supernatural power, 
 — which clearly prove to us that she did not 
 possess the immaculate nature which the Roman 
 Catholic Church ascribes to her. And therefore, 
 though I do not agree with those ultra- 
 protestants who regard this incident as wisely 
 recorded for the purpose of guarding us before- 
 hand against the sin into which that Church has 
 fallen, I cannot help looking upon it in this 
 relation as very imiportant and significant. Our 
 Lord's peremptory refusal of Mary's interference 
 in the things that concerned His public mission, 
 and His assertion that, on the ground of the 
 spiritual interests of His kingdom, He had nothing 
 to do with her as His mother — and she stood in 
 no nearer relationship to Him and exercised no 
 more influence over Him than any other human 
 being — strike at the very root of the doctrine 
 and practice of the intercession of the Virgin. 
 Mariolatry arose from the desire to find in 
 Christianity not only the sanctification of man- 
 hood, but also the sanctification of womanhood, 
 — the motherly as well as the fatherly element 
 in God. In the humanity of Christ Jesus these 
 
76 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 two ideas inhere ; and in Him there is neither 
 male nor female, but the unity and perfection of 
 human nature, and the sum and realization of all 
 human relations. Jesus Christ Himself is the 
 expression of the love of God, of the fatherly and 
 motherly nature in Him. But this great truth 
 was lost sight of in the dark ages ; and the 
 strange idea arose that even Christ Himself was 
 what God was formerly conceived to be, a stern 
 and angry Judge, needing intercession and ap- 
 peased with difficulty. The manhood in Him, 
 from its very sinlessness, was supposed to be 
 implacable ; and therefore the pitying, compas- 
 sionate womanhood was personified by His 
 mother, who acted the part of intercessor be- 
 tween Him and a guilty world. She was a human 
 being, having all a human being's experience of 
 sin, its temptations, trials, and sorrows ; having 
 the consciousness of weakness in herself, teaching 
 her how hard it is not to sin, which would 
 necessarily make her compassionate towards 
 others. We all know how, step by step, she 
 has been raised from that position of participation 
 in human sin and sorrow to an exemption from 
 
IV.] CANA OF GALILEE. 77 
 
 the human lot and an elevation above all human 
 frailty. We can trace this gradual ascent in the 
 pictures of her which exist in the Roman Catholic 
 Church from the earliest times, representing her 
 first as alone ; then with the infant Saviour in 
 her arms ; then with Christ crowning her ; then 
 kneeling before Him ; then sitting a little lower ; 
 then on a level with Him. And now there is 
 a tendency to place her above Him ; for 
 throughout Christendom there are far more 
 churches dedicated to Mary than to her Divine 
 Son. In the Eternal City it is not the one God 
 of Jews and Christians who is worshipped ; it is 
 not He whom Christians believe to be God blessed 
 for ever, incarnate in the flesh of man. God the 
 Father is almost unknown, and God the Son 
 has ceased to be an object of adoration. The 
 former is represented in the pictures in the 
 churches as an old man, and the Saviour is uni- 
 formly exhibited as a little child ; and both are 
 made subservient to the glorification of the Virgin 
 Mary, who is clothed with the incommunicable 
 attributes of the Godhead. 
 
 But there is a Nemesis in this last monstrous 
 
78 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 development of Mariolatry. It will in the end 
 defeat the very purpose for which it exists. By 
 making the doctrine of the immaculate con- 
 ception of the Virgin an essential article of the 
 Roman creed, and thus paying Divine honours 
 to her, she is removed further from the sym- 
 pathies of men, and the attraction of her inter- 
 cession will ultimately be weakened. What made 
 her worship so alluring was the mistaken idea 
 that just because she was a tender human being 
 — a loving, sainted mother — having the know- 
 led£[;e of sin, she would be less severe towards 
 the frailties of men. But this charm she will 
 lose by her deification. The same process of 
 moral deterioration will take place in the minds 
 of her votaries regarding her, which took place 
 in the minds of the worshippers, first of the 
 Father, and then of the Son. She, too, in the end 
 will come to be regarded as a stern and im- 
 placable judge, having no sympathy with men, 
 because she is herself withdrawn from the possi- 
 bilities of their frailties ; and the confiding trust- 
 fulness with which prayers are now offered to 
 her will cease to be felt. Indeed the change 
 
IV.] CANA OF GALILEE. 79 
 
 has already taken place, and the supposed mother 
 of the Virgin, called St. Anne, is now invoked 
 to entreat her daughter to ask her Son to be 
 propitious to the suppliant. Where is to be the 
 end of such mediatorship ? May not the Virgin's 
 grandmother be also brought in 'i And if the 
 Virgin is to be regarded as conceived without 
 sin, must not her mother also — and so on — back 
 to Adam ; and thus the doctrine of the fall and 
 of original sin be done away with altogether, and 
 with it the standing-ground and necessity of the 
 Church .-* How simple and satisfactory the truth 
 itself which is thus so strangely perverted ! " For 
 we have not an high priest which cannot be 
 touched with the feeling of our infirmities ; but 
 was in all points tempted like as we are, yet with- 
 out sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the 
 throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and 
 find grace to help in time of need." 
 
 What did Jesus mean by saying, " Mine hour 
 is nat yet come " .-* This is a phrase which we 
 meet often in the Gospel of St. John. It is 
 almost peculiar to this Evangelist, and is one of 
 those key-words or phrases which he so often 
 
8o THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 uses to unlock the profoundest mysteries. We 
 are not to understand by it that Jesus deemed 
 the occasion unworthy of His interference ; that 
 the want of wine was not a sufficient reason for 
 working a miracle. He who numbers the very 
 hairs of our head and marks the fall of every 
 sparrow to the ground, estimates by a wiser and 
 more loving rule the occasions which we imagine 
 \ to be too humble and trifling ; and in the affairs 
 of the Eternal all distinctions of greatness and 
 littleness are lost sight of. His own dignity 
 redeems the smallest things from their insignifi- 
 cance, and invests them with a share of His own 
 majesty, just as the minutest flower growing 
 under the shadow of a lofty mountain partakes 
 of its grandeur. In the present instance He 
 looked at the matter, not from His own point of 
 view, but from that of others. He knew that 
 the happiness of a poor but pious couple, if they 
 should be spared the mortification of a breach of 
 hospitality on their wedding day, depended upon 
 His interference. There was, besides, a moral 
 lesson to be taught to the disciples, which re- 
 quired to be enforced by something out of the 
 
IV.] CANA OF GALTLEE. 8 1 
 
 usual course. Only some such mighty work as 
 He did perform could harm.onise the striking- 
 contrast in their minds between the teaching of 
 the Baptist and His own example. He was in- 
 deed reluctant to perform the miracle. With 
 Him there was no lavish or gratuitous display 
 of His supernatural power. We can trace this 
 reluctance in all His miracles. None of them 
 were performed without adequate cause. He in- 
 terfered only when His help was absolutely 
 necessary. We infer this from the fewness of 
 the miracles which He wrought, the orderly con- 
 ditions under which He performed them, and the 
 economical way in which He made His super- 
 natural assistance go so far as to accomplish the 
 object in view, and no farther. There was 
 nothing of the magician or thaumaturgist about 
 Jesus. Notwithstanding this reluctance, however. 
 He was moved by the powerfully determining 
 motives that existed in the case to work the 
 necessary miracle on this occasion. But the 
 appropriate time for it had not as yet come. 
 
 Our Lord's hour was the time fixed by the 
 Father to whose holy will, of which He had 
 
 G 
 
82 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 always immediate intimation, He was profoundly 
 submissive. No outward event or motive could 
 decide when it was right for Him to do a mighty 
 work. Partaking of our human nature, He must 
 have felt the full force of the natural and sinless 
 impulses — the feeling of pity, the promptings of 
 benevolence and kindness, the desire to help and 
 please — that actuate us. But we do not find that 
 He followed exclusively in any one instance these 
 proper human impulses. The Spirit which He 
 had received without measure could alone regulate 
 His actions. He waited obscure and inactive for 
 thirty long years until the hour appointed by 
 His Father had come for beginning His public 
 ministry ; and when He entered upon His career, 
 all its actions and incidents were regulated solely 
 by reference to the Father's predetermined pur- 
 pose. He kept silence, or spoke ; He wrought a 
 mighty work, or refused to do so ; He went into 
 the city, or retired into the solitude, in exclusive 
 obedience to the Divine intimation. He hid 
 Himself from death because His hour had not 
 yet come ; He exposed Himself to it at the 
 appointed time. We are here on the brink of a 
 
IV.] CANA OF GALILEE. Z^ 
 
 great mystery which we cannot fathom. The 
 consciousness no less than the nature of super- 
 natural power is hidden in a darkness which our 
 philosophy cannot penetrate. 
 
 Some suppose that when Mary said, " They 
 have no wine," the supply, though about to fail, 
 was not yet exhausted, and Jesus waited till the 
 vessels were all empty before interfering, on the 
 ground that man's extremity is God's opportunity. 
 But whatever might have been the immediate 
 subordinate reference of Christ's words, there can 
 be no doubt that their ultimate reference was 
 to that point of His life most decisive of all, 
 the hour of His glorification. The Lord's time, 
 that lay within and beyond all particular times, 
 was the time of His exaltation as a Prince and 
 a Saviour. This was the state to which Jesus 
 ever looked forward as that in which He should 
 be able to do all for the world which He had 
 pledged Himself to do. But the way to that 
 vantage-ground lay through the valley of the 
 shadow of death. The hour in which He was to 
 be glorified was also the hour in which His 
 earthly career should be finished. Everything 
 
 G 2 
 
84 THE MARRIAGE IN [ch^p. 
 
 that helped to make Him better known among 
 men and to advance His cause ; every display of 
 His greatness and goodness, every miracle which 
 He wrought, prepared the way for His final 
 hour. It was with Himself as it is with one of 
 those lilies, whose mode of growth — on account 
 of the deep spiritual mysteries contained in it — 
 He bade us consider. In the lily the act of 
 flowering is the prelude to and the cause of 
 death. It is the dying plant that blossoms. 
 When it puts forth its flower in which all its 
 beauty culminates, its vital force is exhausted, 
 and it immediately begins to fade and die. And 
 every process in its economy by which the hour 
 of its blossoming is hastened is a prophecy of 
 and a preparation for its decease. And so was 
 it with Him who is the Rose of Sharon and the 
 Lily of the Valley. During the thirty years of 
 His obscure life in Nazareth, He had done nothing 
 to excite the attention or provoke the hostility 
 of the Jews. He grew, wc are told, in favour 
 with God and man. The world smiled upon 
 Him so long as He did not set Himself in oppo- 
 sition to it, by introducing a better faith and a 
 
IV.] CANA OF GALILEE. 85 
 
 holier life. But when He began to proclaim and 
 manifest His divine nature and mission, He at 
 once began to arouse the hatred and jealousy 
 of the world. And in proportion as His glory 
 grew and revealed itself to man, so in proportion 
 did the desire of the wicked increase to rid the 
 world of His presence. 
 
 Jesus therefore connected the hour of His 
 greatest triumph with the hour of His greatest 
 defeat. His glory and His death were always 
 associated together in His mind ; and everything 
 that tended to promote the one only hastened 
 and made more sure the other. In the height 
 of His glory on the Transfiguration Mount, He 
 spoke with the celestial visitors of the decease 
 which He should accomplish at Jerusalem. And 
 on the occasion of His triumphal entrance into 
 the holy city, when the Greek proselytes desired 
 to see Him, and He realized all the glorious 
 significance of the incident, He uttered the 
 parable of the seed quickened and multiplied by 
 its death, and indicated its fulfilment in Himself 
 by the exclamation " Now is my soul troubled ; and 
 what shall I say ? Father, save me from this hour." 
 
S6 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 This note of warning that the end was drawing 
 nigh was sounded in His ears from the very 
 commencement of His pubHc career. He alone 
 of all mankind was oorn expressly to die. He 
 alone had a perfect foreknowledge of all that 
 awaited Him in the future. His whole life was 
 therefore one long walk through the valley of 
 the shadow of death. The horizon of His mind 
 was filled long before with visions of the cruel 
 and humiliating scenes which constituted His 
 passion. And we can easily conceive how greatly 
 this foreknowledge must have aggravated the 
 burden of His sufferings. Made in all things like 
 unto His brethren, He had that human shrink- 
 ing from death which is always strongest in the 
 most refined nature. Though He had the strength 
 of the Godhead to support Him, He started 
 back ever and anon, and needed to encourage 
 Himself by recalling the object of His suffering 
 and the reward that was set before Him, And 
 when we remember thus how constantly the last 
 and most painful scenes of His life were present 
 to the forethought of Jesus, we have a more vivid 
 sense of the willingness of His self-oblation. He 
 
IV.] CANA OF GALILEE. 8/ 
 
 saw the hour before Him; and notwithstanding 
 all the pain and shame which it involved, not- 
 withstanding the shrinking of His own human 
 nature from it, He walked steadily onwards 
 towards it, resolute to do the Father's will and 
 accomplish through His suffering and death the 
 salvation of the world. 
 
 In the festal joy of the marriage of Cana we 
 can detect an undertone of the same foreboding 
 sorrow which we can hear in the later scenes 
 of His life. Far off, in this sunny hour seemed 
 the darkness of Gethsemane and the Cross ; but 
 they cast their shadows before them. He knew 
 the inevitable connection between the miracle 
 which He was about to work and His hour of 
 doom. He foresaw that the very first public 
 act which would introduce Him in His power 
 and greatness to the world would hasten on the 
 crisis of His fate ; would commence the vindic- 
 tive opposition of His enemies which would 
 ultimately triumph in His death. Over the 
 happy bridal feast of Cana the shadow of the 
 crucifixion rested as truly as over the last sor- 
 rowful supper in the upper room at Jerusalem, 
 
88 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 with its memorials of His broken body and 
 shed blood. And therefore we need not wonder 
 that He should hesitate before performing an 
 act which involved such tremendous issues. We 
 need not wonder that He should pause before 
 taking- the first step on a path that led to 
 Calvary — that He should have the same human 
 apprehension, the same counting of the awful 
 cost, which caused Him later on to cry, " Father, 
 save me from this hour," and made Him put 
 away for one brief moment the cup proffered 
 to His lips in Gethsemane with the entreaty, 
 '' If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." 
 His mother knew nothing of all this. She knew 
 not what was implied in her request, most 
 natural as it was to a mother's heart, that He 
 should begin His public ministry by doing 
 some signal work which would reveal His true 
 greatness to the eyes of men. She had no idea 
 that He was to be a suffering Messiah, that 
 His life was to be short and full of sorrow. 
 Doubtless she pictured long years before her in 
 which the triumph and success of her Son 
 would be her greatest happiness. But Jesus in 
 
IV.] CAA^A OF GALILEE. 89 
 
 His gentle words of rebuke, " Woman, what 
 have I to do with thee ? mine hour is not yet 
 come," struck a note of warning which He 
 meant to vibrate long in her heart, like the 
 memorable saying of Simeon in the Temple. 
 He prepared her for what was in store for them 
 both, and what would inevitably be hastened 
 by the miracle which He was now about to 
 perform. This is her first appearance in the 
 Gospel of St. John ; and it is a striking thought 
 that we never hear of her again in it until 
 she stands beside the Cross. She is associated 
 with the two occasions only, as if to show the 
 profound relations between them. 
 
 And is not this prophecy of sorrow in the 
 midst of earth's highest joy, this foreshadowing 
 of the Cross by the first manifestation of 
 Christ's glory, typical of what is a common 
 human experience } What did the marriage in 
 Cana itself indicate but the commencement of 
 the most serious part in the drama of life, in 
 which self-sacrifice is continually necessary } 
 What did it foretell but the hour of the young 
 couple's death } Marriage is nature's preparation 
 
90 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 for death. Death empties the world, and marriage 
 is ordained to replenish it. The happiest hour 
 of life is thus intimately connected with the 
 saddest. It is the beginning of the end. The 
 human plant in its blossoming indicates its ap- 
 proaching decay. In the wedding song there is 
 a refrain of woe, which reminds us of the design 
 for which the institution exists, and the fate in 
 which it must end. And so with all the glories 
 of man. They are as the flower of the grass 
 which proclaims the inevitable withering and death. 
 Triumph and success, if they come at all, usually 
 come late in life ; and they are associated with 
 ebbing strength and failing desire, which rob 
 them of nearly all the pleasure that they bring. 
 The things we toil and long for, during many 
 years of privation, we commonly get when the 
 free fresh heart of youth that would have truly 
 enjoyed them, is .ours no longer, and the friends 
 whose loving smiles would have given them all 
 their value have left us for ever. To the beloved 
 dead the hero that is crowned too late for them 
 is still uncrowned ; and no matter what our after 
 successes may be, what we were when the friend 
 
IV.] CANA OF GALILEE. 91 
 
 of our bosom left us lonely on the earth, we are 
 still and must always be. Earth's glories come 
 to us with sad auguries, like the soft sunny 
 smiles of September skies, which gild the fading 
 leaves with a mockery of May, while winter 
 peeps like death behind to shut the farewell scene. 
 Blessed are we if, when we feel like Jesus the 
 nearness of our glory to the end of all here, and 
 are saddened by the thought, we can at the same 
 time look forward like Him to the glory that shall 
 follow, and to which this suffering is but the way ! 
 If Death stands at the end of every vista of human 
 bliss, he cannot close up or darken the path so as 
 to prevent our seeing beyond, and recognising, in 
 the light that streams past him from another 
 world, that the most precious thing in every 
 possession is a promise, in every love a prophecy, 
 and in every joy a foretaste of immortal bliss. 
 
 The scene between Jesus and His mother re- 
 minds us forcibly of the interview which He had 
 afterwards with the Syro-Phoenician woman. The 
 resemblance between the two incidents is very 
 close. In both cases a petition is at first refused 
 and then granted — a repulse is converted into a 
 
92 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 welcome ; and faith draws from a hindrance in- 
 terposed by Jesus Himself an assurance that the 
 prayer will be answered. Mary, like the Syro- 
 Phoenician woman, believed in the supernatural 
 power of Jesus. Her faith was a necessary ele- 
 ment in the miracle ; for without that preparation 
 of the recipient mind which fits it for extraor- 
 dinary gifts — that miracle within which rises to 
 meet the miracle without, and renders all things 
 possible to him that believcth — Jesus could do 
 no mighty work. But her faith, though strong, 
 needed to be made still stronger, and purified of 
 certain weak and sinful elements that mingled 
 with it ; and therefore He placed a difficulty in 
 the way, that in the recoil she might gather 
 spiritual force to overcome it, and in the over- 
 coming, all the impure elements in her faith might 
 be removed ; as water that is polluted in its still- 
 ness acquires a snowy whiteness when passing 
 over a weir. When He treats us in the same 
 manner ; when He answers us not a word as in 
 the case of the Syro-Phoenician woman ; when He 
 says to us in His providence, as He said to 
 Mary, "Mine hour is not yet come," we must 
 
IV.] CANA OF GALILEE. 93 
 
 believe that His silence or apparent refusal is * 
 for the purpose of trying our faith, and that 
 while apparently casting us off, He is waiting to 
 be gracious all the time. Let us not fret or be 
 impatient, therefore, but fill up the waiting inter- 
 val as He Himself would have us do. Let our 
 importunate inward prayer be accompanied with 
 unceasing outward effort. " Whatsoever He saith 
 unto you, do it." And then He will bless us up 
 to the fulness of His own loving heart. His 
 answer to our request will gather interest from 
 the delay and preciousness from the difficulty of 
 getting it ; and we ourselves will be better pre- 
 pared to enjoy and use it aright. 
 
 With purified faith and enlarged spiritual in- 
 sight, Mary entered into her Son's design. She 
 was brought by the gentle discipline to which He 
 subjected her into sympathy with Him ; was lifted i 
 above herself by the inspiration of the same spirit 
 that animated Him. She now realized that He 
 was about to do some wonderful work. At first 
 the thought might have been vague and indistinct, 
 but doubtless now it had matured to a strong 
 assurance. And she seemed to comprehend that 
 
94 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 in the performance of this mighty work human 
 means were necessary. She did not expect, so 
 far as we can see, that Jesus would perform a 
 miracle by a mere word of power, by an im- 
 mediate act of sovereign will. She believed that 
 second causes and intermediate instruments were 
 necessary. And therefore she said to the ser- 
 vants, " Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it" 
 And this circumstance of itself proves the great- 
 ness of her faith ; for it is easier to rely simply 
 upon the omnipotence of God for the accomplish- 
 ment of some mighty work, than to expect that 
 the mighty work will be brought about by causes 
 which the dictates of reason and the established 
 course of nature pronounce inadequate for its 
 production. Her faith rose with the greatness 
 of the occasion, and was a powerful- factor in 
 changing the settled order of nature. 
 
 I have remarked that we see at the marriage- 
 feast of Cana representatives of all the different 
 relations of domestic and social life — husband and 
 wife, mother and son, in all probability brother 
 and sister, friends and neighbours, host and guests, 
 master and disciples. And here, to complete 
 
IV.] CANA OF GALILEE. 95 
 
 the list, the servants are introduced to our notice. 
 " His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever 
 He saith unto you, do it." We are not, however, 
 to suppose that these vi^ere the ordinary domestics 
 of the house. In the primitive mountain village 
 of Cana there was in all likelihood no hired 
 labour. The members of each humble house- 
 hold did their own work unassisted. And we 
 have reason to believe that the house in which 
 the marriage took place was no exception. The 
 people were too poor to afford the luxury of paid 
 domestic service. The servants were doubtless 
 friends, who volunteered for the occasion to 
 minister to the wants of the guests, and to 
 attend to the arrangements of the marriage. 
 We are confirmed in this supposition by the 
 name given to them in the original, which is not 
 doulos, the ordinary word for servants in the 
 New Testament, meaning always a bond-man, 
 one who is in a permanent relation of servitude 
 to another, but diakonos, a deacon. The Church 
 got hold of this term in after ages, and applied 
 it, like so many other ecclesiastical terms borrowed 
 from the heathen vocabulary, to a Christian use, 
 
g6 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 to signify a special office in connection with the 
 Christian ministry. But at first it was a pure 
 classical word, used to designate those who 
 attended to the wants of guests at feasts and 
 marriages. The dotilos—'&v^ bond-man — however, 
 was the normal servant in the richer households 
 of the land, doing all the menial work. Liberty 
 and voluntariness, which enter so essentially into 
 our ideas of the relation, had no existence in 
 the ancient world. There was no distinct 
 labouring class such as we have ; slavery was 
 the normal condition of the underling, and 
 hired service was regarded as incompatible with 
 freedom. 
 
 Using the word servants in the sense in 
 which the word was understood in ancient 
 times, it is most interesting to • see them 
 taking part in the first of those wonderful 
 works which were destined to revolutionise 
 society, not by a violent re-arrangement of 
 classes or orders, but by the peaceful gradual 
 renewing and re-ordering of individual hearts. 
 They did His bidding at the marriage-feast ; and 
 He said to them and to their class, " Henceforth 
 
IV.] CAA^A OF GALILEE 97 
 
 I call you not servants, but friends : for the 
 servant knov^^eth not what his Lord doeth ; but 
 all things that I have heard of my Father, 1 
 have made known unto you." The Hebrew law, 
 while it recognised the institution of slavery, 
 rectified many of its abuses, and never per- 
 mitted the Jews to forget the wholesome lesson 
 of sympathy, derived from the fact that they 
 themselves were bondmen in Egypt. But it was 
 left to Christianity to remove this curse from 
 humanity altogether. The law of Christ has 
 effected a wonderful transformation in ail the 
 relations and dependencies of life. It has 
 entered into states, and changed serfs into 
 freedmen ; it has entered homes, and changed 
 slaves into servants. It places on the basis of 
 a common brotherhood in Christ all human 
 relations and duties. It enables the extremes 
 of society to kneel down together before the 
 memorials of a Saviour's love, and there eat 
 the same spiritual meat and drink the same 
 spiritual drink, and in finest sympathy of heart 
 and soul pray that they all may be one. It 
 assures us that in Christ Jesus there is neither 
 
 H 
 
98 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 bond nor free. It looks upon all Christians, 
 whatever their earthly distinctions, as heirs of 
 God and joint-heirs with Christ ; and enjoins 
 them to love one another as Christ hath loved 
 them. 
 
 In my visit to the Protestant cemetery at 
 Florence I was greatly interested in two modest 
 tombstones that scarcely rose above the grassy 
 sod, near the beautiful marble monument to our 
 great English poetess Mrs. Browning. These 
 tombstones were placed, the one over the grave 
 of an English general who served in India, and 
 coming to Florence for his health died there ; 
 and the other over the grave of his man-servant 
 who had grown grey in his service and had 
 shortly predeceased him. Together the two old 
 men had gone down the hill of life ; almost 
 together they had wasted away and died ; and 
 now they take the last long sleep side by side. 
 On the tombstone of the general there is a 
 quiet record of his rank and Christian virtues ; 
 and on that of his servant are the touching 
 words which St. Paul wrote in his exquisite 
 letter to Philemon, enjoining him to treat his 
 
IV.] CANA OF GALILEE, 99 
 
 restored runaway slave Onesimus, " not now as 
 a servant, but as a brother beloved." These 
 words the general before he died had ordered to 
 be carved upon the tomb of his servant. 
 The great poetess who sleeps near remarked 
 in one of her works, that "the spade of the 
 sexton pats us all even ; " and Job had 
 said ''the small and the great are there, 
 and the servant is free from his master." 
 But there is far more in this pathetic inscription 
 on the tomb of the servant than the mere 
 forced equality which the tomb produces — the 
 mere obliteration of the distinctions of life in 
 the grave. There is implied in it Christian love 
 and holy fellowship, and union unto everlasting 
 life in the common Saviour, It was not death 
 that made these two, master and servant, equal ; 
 but love stronger than death; the faithful attach- 
 ment and devoted service of long years given 
 by the one, and the deep gratitude and 
 respect and affection given by the other in 
 return ; and above all, the common faith and 
 love of both in Christ Jesus. They were there- 
 fore lovely in life, and in death they were not 
 
 H 2 
 
lOO THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 divided. It does one good in a commercial age 
 and nation like this, when money is made to 
 answer all things, and the relations of social 
 life are regulated by the principles of the 
 market place, to come across a record of such 
 disinterested affection and Christian devotion as 
 this. It brought home to me very vividly the 
 beautiful significance of the Apostle's words, and 
 made me wish ardently that this, instead of 
 being a solitary instance, remarkable for its 
 peculiarity, should be a common experience ; and 
 that all the relations of master and servant, 
 employer and employed, could be based upon 
 the same Christian law. 
 
 For surely whatever the ungodly world may 
 do, those who name the name of Christ 
 ought to regard each other, in the first in- 
 stance, as brothers beloved, and then, on the 
 basis of that relationship, observe the distinc- 
 tions and fulfil the duties of ordinary life. 
 The Christian master is a brother beloved to 
 his servant before his mastership ; and the 
 Christian servant is a brother beloved to his 
 master before his servitude. It is not first 
 
IV.] CAN A OF GALILEE. lOI 
 
 master and servant, and then brother beloved, 
 but first brother beloved, and then master and 
 servant. The higher relationship must take 
 precedence of the lower — the enduring of the 
 temporary. The tie of master and servant 
 concerns only this life, and has reference only 
 to the lower nature of man. But the tie of 
 faith and love in Christ Jesus which binds 
 them together has respect to the spirit, and 
 falls under the powers of the world to come. 
 And thus giving the right place and the full 
 power to the higher relationship, the lower 
 must necessarily be purified of all its sinful 
 and selfish elements, and made all that it 
 ought to be. If a master looks upon his servant 
 as a brother beloved, he will treat him as a 
 brother ; he will give him his due ; he will act 
 towards him in all things in a loving, con- 
 siderate spirit. And if the servant looks upon 
 his master as a brother beloved, he will regard 
 his interests as if they were his own. He will 
 be faithful to his trust and devoted to his service. 
 And such a servant will earn the distinction 
 mentioned in those wonderful words : " Blessed 
 
I02 THE MARRIAGE, &-c. [cH. iv. 
 
 are those servants, whom the lord when he 
 Cometh shall find watching : verily I say unto 
 you, that he shall gird himself, and make them 
 to sit down to meat, and will come forth and 
 serve them." 
 
CHAPTER Y. 
 
 THE SIX WATERPOTS. 
 
 "And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after 
 the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two 
 or three firkins apiece." — John il. 6. 
 
 y)ERSONAL cleanliness is not usually a charac- 
 •^ teristic of the inhabitants of a warm climate. 
 In those countries where it is most needed, there it 
 is often most neglected. The Egyptians were dis- 
 tinguished above all the nations of antiquity for this 
 quality. They anticipated in their fastidious deli- 
 cacy and ceremonial purity the habits of modern 
 and northern Europe. By the Israelites during 
 their sojourn in Egypt the same taste was doubtless 
 acquired ; and we may trace the frequent cleansings 
 of the person, which were enjoined under the Mosaic 
 economy, to the lessons taught by the Egyptian 
 priesthood. Cleanliness and godliness were com- 
 bined in the sacred institutions of the two races. 
 
r04 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 We must distinguish, however, between the 
 washings that were distinctively reh'gious and 
 those which were for mere ordinary purposes of 
 purification. In the arid and dusty regions of the 
 East, frequent ablutions would be needed for the 
 cleansing and refreshment of the body. It was a 
 common practice after a journey to wash the feet, 
 which were imperfectly protected by open sandals, 
 and to present to guests water for doing so. Bathing 
 in streams and rivers was also a frequent habit. 
 But these ablutions had nothing religious about 
 them ; they might be performed or not, according 
 to the option of individuals. Under the Levitical 
 law, however, there were certain washings which 
 had an important religious significance, and were 
 enforced by sanctions of a very solemn character. 
 The Egyptians attached a sacred import to bathing 
 in the river Nile, which they worshipped as a deity. 
 But bathing had no place in the religious ordin- 
 ances of the Jews ; not because there was scarcely 
 a stream in the Holy Land suitable for bathing 
 during the summer, the season in which it would 
 be chiefly desired, but specially because it did not 
 satisfy the requirements of the law. To symbolize 
 
v.] CAN A OF GALILEE. 105 
 
 the cleansing of the soul from sin, not bathing in 
 the ordinary sense, but the more active form of 
 washing was required. There must be, not the 
 mere passive immersion of the body in a bath or 
 stream, but the active use of the purifying elemxcnt ; 
 the co-operation of man's own energy with the 
 cleansing properties of the water. Not mere clean- 
 liness, not the mere refreshment of the body, but 
 moral purification was the object which the Jewish 
 law had in view ; and therefore it imposed no 
 ordinances of washing in connection with meals, or 
 the proprieties of domestic and social life, but con- 
 fined its prescriptions to matters of a strictly 
 religious nature. For this reason, too, the various 
 rites of washing had a distinctive expiatory refer- 
 ence ; and by their association with sacrifices and 
 offerings, the Jew was taught to discern to its full 
 extent the connection between the outward sign 
 and the inward source of impurity. 
 
 One of the most remarkable vessels of the taber- 
 nacle was the laver of brass, which stood in the 
 court between the altar of burnt-offering and the 
 door that led to the holy place. It was composed 
 of the metal lookins^-o-lasses of the women ; that 
 
I06 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 which reflected an image of the person and concen- 
 trated attention upon personal defects or beauties, 
 being thus converted into that which would remove 
 all deformities and produce a true comeliness. It 
 declared plainly by its presence before the door of 
 the holy place the truth that without perfect purity 
 no one could draw nigh unto God. It was used by 
 the priests alone ; and they were required to wash 
 their hands and feet in it every time that they went 
 into the tabernacle of the congregation. Any 
 accidental sullying of these exposed members, any 
 casual contact with death in any form, any little 
 imperceptible speck of dust unavoidably contracted 
 in the march through the wilderness, was sufficient 
 to make the priests defiled, and so unfit to serve 
 God in His holy place. And whether they were 
 aware of their soiled condition or not, had they 
 attempted to approach the inner sanctuary without 
 previously having gone through the prescribed 
 process of purification, they would expose them- 
 selves to the penalty of death. 
 
 The laver was perpetuated into the Temple of 
 Solomon, and doubtless existed in the restored 
 Temple of Herod in the days of our Lord; but 
 
v.] CANA OF GALILEE. 10/ 
 
 after the Babylonish captivity its use was to a 
 large extent superseded by a variety of unauthor- 
 ised washings introduced into the sphere of daily 
 life. Cups and platters, brazen vessels and beds, 
 were washed as a matter of ritual observance. 
 Minute regulations were laid down in the Mishna 
 as to the formal washing of the hands before meals, 
 and several other acts of ablution which the 
 tradition of the elders had added to the law of 
 Moses. Our Saviour denounced these unwarranted 
 Pharisaical observances as perversions of the spirit 
 and design of the Divine commandment, tending 
 to draw away men's thoughts from spiritual realities 
 to mere bodily exercises which profited nothing, and 
 to connect impurity with outward actions only, and 
 not with inward desires and feelings — with the food 
 that entered into the body rather than with the moral 
 things that proceeded out of a man's heart. 
 
 The six waterpots of stone in the house at Cana 
 were meant to be in the private dwelling what the 
 laver was in the Temple service. They were not 
 used like common water-vessels to contain the 
 ordinary supply of the household for drinking or 
 cooking purposes ; they were consecrated exclu- 
 
Io8 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 sively for ceremonial rites — for the washing of cups, 
 and platters, and couches, and of the hands and 
 persons of the family and their visitors. The ex- 
 planation which St. John thinks it necessary to give 
 of the use of these jars, shows that he had clearly 
 before his mind the case of readers of his gospel 
 who were not familiar with Jewish customs. We 
 are struck with several peculiarities of these water- 
 pots. They were not made by the potter out of clay, 
 but were hewn by the carver out of the compact 
 limestone of which the rocks in the neighbourhood 
 were formed. They were constructed of stone as 
 the ecclesiastical canon enjoins fonts to be, since 
 that material is less liable to impurity. In all 
 likelihood, therefore, they were not closed-up jars 
 with a narrow orifice, as they are usually repre- 
 sented in paintings, like the wine amphoras of clay 
 which we see among the ruins of ancient cities, 
 such as Pompeii and Rome ; but large massive 
 stone basins or tazzas, with wide mouths, like those 
 which the Greeks and Romans constructed of 
 marble, alabaster, or porphyry for their numerous 
 lustrations, of which we see splendid specimens 
 in our great art museums, and especially in the 
 
v.] CAN A OF GALILEE. 109 
 
 Vatican sculpture gallery. This shape would 
 approximate more closely to that of the sacred 
 laver in the Temple, which they would doubtless 
 take as a model for these domestic utensils, in- 
 tended to form a link of connection between the 
 ceremonies of public and private worship. 
 
 Owing to their large size and great weight 
 they were not movable, but w^ere fixed in one 
 spot, in the hall or vestibule, or near the entrance 
 of the house, in a position analogous to that of 
 the laver in the Temple, which was also a fixture. 
 Indeed, whenever the laver is noticed it is always 
 accompanied with the addition " and his foot," 
 or the solid base upon which it rested. There 
 was no provision made for carrying it, like the 
 other vessels of the sanctuary ; it had no rings or 
 staves attached to it. Of course as a fact it was 
 borne from place to place along with the taber- 
 nacle in the journeyings of the Israelites in the 
 wilderness ; but as a type, the studious omission of 
 any notice in its case of the usual means of car- 
 riage, and the emphasis laid upon its possession of 
 a base, would indicate that it had a fixed definite 
 place, and was not to partake of the migratory 
 
no THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 character of the other parts of the sanctuary. This 
 circumstance, as Mr. Soldan has well shown, was 
 meant to be typically significant, doubtless, of the 
 fixedness and full accomplishment of the work of 
 regeneration on earth. The other vessels of the 
 sanctuary were types of heavenly things, and they 
 were carried about to indicate that they were tem- 
 porary symbols of everlasting realities ; but the 
 laver typified a work which should take place only 
 on earth. Here only can the soul be purified from 
 its stains. The passage from this world to the next 
 can effect no moral change. A corrupt nature 
 translated to heaven — were such a thing possible — 
 would remain corrupt still. In this life, therefore, 
 the process of regeneration must be completed ; 
 and cleansed here, the soul is cleansed for evermore. 
 The material type exhausts its spiritual meaning on 
 earth, and therefore the vessel is described without 
 rings or staves as a fixture, and without the vails 
 or coverings which the other vessels possessed to 
 indicate that their higher meaning and use were 
 concealed in this world. Our Lord Himself, when 
 teaching Nicodemus the truths connected with 
 regeneration, speaks of them as "earthly things," 
 
v.] CANA OF GALILEE. 1 1 1 
 
 — things that take place on earth. And there can 
 be no doubt that the waterpots which served the 
 same purpose in the private ritual of the Jews were 
 made fixtures after the example of the laver, 
 although those who introduced these waterpots 
 may have had no idea of the typical significance 
 of the circumstance. 
 
 Another thing that strikes us is the enormous 
 capacity of these waterpots. Those at the mar- 
 riage feast are said to have been capable of con- 
 taining from sixteen to twenty-four gallons each. 
 In this respect, too, they imitate to a certain 
 extent the laver and the brazen sea of Solomon, 
 whose dimensions were enormous. The frequent 
 ablutions of the Mosaic and of the subsequent 
 traditional law required a large supply of water. 
 Vessels so massive as these must have lasted for 
 many generations ; and there is a probability 
 that some trace of them, or of others like them, 
 of the same date, may have survived down to a 
 comparatively late period. Dr. Clarke, the great 
 traveller, mentions that during his visit to Cana, 
 he saw among the ruins of the church built by 
 the Empress Helena over the spot where the 
 
112 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 marriage-feast was supposed to have been held, a 
 number of large massive stone pots, lying about 
 unheeded, as ancient relics with whose original 
 use the inhabitants were not acquainted. We 
 are told, however, that later travellers found 
 these relics utilised by the resident Greek monks, 
 who exhibited an old stone vessel as one of the 
 identical pots which contained the miraculous 
 wine. It was shown, among others, to Lamar- 
 tine. But that there should be even one re- 
 maining in the place is not consistent with the 
 tradition, that in the time of the Crusades the 
 whole six jars were brought to France, where one 
 of them is still said to exist in the museum of 
 Angers. The whole story, however, is a monkish 
 fabrication, got up to foster the relic-worship of a 
 corrupt Church. It is something more than a 
 mere accident that has consigned to forgetfulness 
 or surrounded with doubt all objects connected 
 with the earthly pilgrimage of our Lord. They 
 are lost in obscurity or oblivion, because of our 
 proneness to pay that adoration to the thing, which 
 is due only to Him by whom all things were created, 
 and who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. 
 
v.] CANA OF GALILEE. IT3 
 
 The guests at the marriage feast had made use 
 of the waterpots at the threshold when they 
 entered the house. Each removed the dust and 
 the stains of travel by this ceremonial washing. 
 And large as was the quantity of water which 
 the pots contained, the company was so numerous 
 that the whole six were emptied. This was the 
 condition in which they were when Jesus had 
 recourse to them. He did not find fault with the 
 existence of these pots, or with the ceremonial 
 observances connected with them, although on 
 other occasions He had denounced the whole 
 system of traditional will-worship which they re- 
 presented. We have every reason to believe that 
 the family of Cana was an exceptionally pious 
 one. The members of this household were doubt- 
 less among the few who waited for the consola- 
 tion of Israel. Jesus embodied all their highest 
 thoughts and hopes ; and therefore when He laid 
 the spell of His presence upon them their hearts' 
 loyalty was stirred, and they were ready to follow 
 Him. They conformed to the popular customs ; but 
 these customs doubtless meant more to them than 
 to others. They penetrated with a deep spiritual 
 
 I 
 
114 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 insight beneath the outward forms and ceremonies 
 in which the majority of their countrymen sought 
 a substitute for the religion of the heart. In the 
 Jewish usages regarding certain kinds of food, 
 and certain ritual ablutions, they discerned some 
 glimpse of God's design to separate their souls 
 from sin and to purify their nature. And not 
 satisfied with the mere mechanical observance, 
 they must have longed, in their more quickened 
 moods, for some Divine power to make and keep 
 them, not ceremonially, but really, pure. As 
 touching the righteousness of the law, the house- 
 hold of Cana were blameless ; but, doubtless, in 
 the continual washings of the waterpots at their 
 threshold, they were continually confessing their 
 shortcomings and imperfections, and seeking a 
 truer righteousness than they could work out by 
 their own merits. For this reason, probably, while 
 Jesus rebuked so severely the ceremonial washings 
 of the Pharisees, who had a scrupulous anxiety 
 to cleanse the outside of the cup and platter, 
 although their inward part was full of excess, 
 extortion, and all uncleanness. He had not a word 
 to say against the use which the family of Cana 
 
v.] CANA OF GALILEE. 115 
 
 made of their waterpots. In their case He em- 
 ployed, not the destructive, but the constructive 
 argument. He showed them a more excellent 
 way, and employed their waterpots as the vehicles 
 of His miracle. 
 
 There is a profound significance in this last \ 
 fact, of which we are apt to lose sight. Jesus 
 might have performed His miracle in some other 
 way, apart from those waterpots altogether. 
 There are many conceivable modes besides this 
 which He might have made use of. But the fact 
 that He connected His miracle of grace with these 
 vessels of the law shows to us in a striking manner 
 the principle upon which He uniformly proceeds 
 in His operations. In the natural world, He 
 makes the green leaf of spring to shoot out of 
 the faded leaf of autumn, and all vegetable life 
 to grow out of the mould of vegetable deca}'. In 
 the human world. He makes use of things already 
 in existence for His new purposes. To Moses 
 He appeared in the indigenous bush of the desert ; 
 and, with the shepherd's rod which he held in his 
 hand, He enabled him to accomplish the signs and 
 wonders through which the deliverance of Israel 
 
 I 2 
 
Il6 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 was effected. In the construction of the taber- 
 nacle He employed the gold, silver, precious 
 stones, and other valuable materials of which the 
 Israelites had spoiled the Egyptians. Many of 
 the laws and customs given to His own people 
 were cast into the mould of Egyptian laws and 
 customs. The Israehtes spoiled the Egyptians 
 not only of their material, but even of many of 
 their spiritual things ; and the careful student 
 will discover a very close resemblance between 
 many of the rites and ceremonies in the Jewish 
 and Egyptian religions. The Israelites took 
 possession of the cities and fields of the 
 Canaanites, after the conquest and division of 
 Palestine, and employed all the resources and 
 advantages of the country, which the aboriginal 
 inhabitants had perverted into means of wicked- 
 ness, into means of grace for the w^orship and 
 service of a holy nation, a royal priesthood, a 
 peculiar people, zealous of good works. The 
 prophetical aspirations of the Jews, their ex- 
 pectations of the Messiah, took shape and 
 utterance from the circumstances of their political 
 history. They were run into the mould of 
 
v.] CANA OF GALILEE. n/ 
 
 current events. The promises of the future 
 were not painted on empty air, but were arrayed 
 in the substantial forms of the present. The 
 young man at Dothan saw with his natural eye 
 the chariots and horsemen of Ben-hadad sent 
 to capture his master ; and Elisha opened his 
 spiritual eye to see horses and chariots of fire, 
 encamped round the mountain to guard them. 
 
 Our Saviour's birth came into ordinary human 
 nature ; our Saviour's life into ordinary human 
 history ; and the great salvation which He wrought 
 was accomplished through the treachery, false 
 witness, and crucifixion of man. When Chris- 
 tianity became the dominant religion, it absorbed 
 and utilised all that was excellent in the previous 
 religions. The gold which had been employed in 
 the service of false gods was cleansed from its 
 pollution, and helped to construct the golden 
 candlesticks of the Christian Church. The frank- 
 incense and myrrh which had been burned as 
 incense upon the altar of polytheism, or employed 
 to embalm the mummy of a dead religion, were 
 used, like the spikenard of Mary, to anoint the 
 person of our Lord and to shed their fragrance 
 
llS THE MARRIAGE IN [cha?. 
 
 upon His atoning death. The action of the Magi, 
 in bringing their gifts to the feet of the infant 
 Jesus, was significant of all the religions before 
 Christ bringing what was truest, purest, and 
 most enduring in them, to be made still more pre- 
 cious and enduring by the excelling glory of the 
 gospel. The very materials of the pagan temples 
 were taken to construct and adorn the Christian 
 churches. The temple of Diana at Ephesus con- 
 tributed some of its most precious marbles to the 
 formation of the Church of St. Sophia at Con- 
 stantinople; and the candlestick removed out of 
 its place in Ephesus, according to the threatening 
 of the Lord of that church, helped to construct 
 another candlestick in Western Europe, on which 
 the light of truth shone for a time more brightly. 
 In the city of Rome, there is not a single ancient 
 church which does not owe its form and materials 
 to those of som.e temple or heathen court that 
 formerly existed on its site ; and the visitor will 
 find, in nearly all the churches, pillars, vases, or 
 mosaics taken from the shrines of Jupiter, or 
 Minerva, or Neptune. The military roads, which 
 the Romans made for the passage of their armies, 
 
v.] CANA OF GALILEE. II9 
 
 facilitated the journeyings of the apostles in their 
 peaceful mission of preaching the gospel to every 
 creature. The conquests of Alexander and Csesar 
 made the crooked places straight and the rough 
 places smooth for the grander conquests of the 
 Cross. The Roman law was a schoolmaster that 
 led the nations to Christ ; and the world-wide 
 Roman empire prepared the way of the Lord, for 
 the establishment of that kingdom which shall 
 extend from sea to sea, and from the river even 
 unto the ends of the earth. The very course 
 which the gospel took in converting the world 
 was determined by the demand of the Roman 
 army for tents in their encampments, and conse- 
 quently by the wanderings of St. Paul the tent- 
 maker in search of his ordinary work. In short, 
 we find it to be a universal principle in religion, 
 to accommodate itself to a state of things already 
 existing — to make a heavenly use of ordinary 
 things — ^just as the spirit of man makes the bodily 
 organs to minister to its spiritual wants, and 
 mints the very waste or dross of the body which 
 is carried away by the breath into speech, the 
 coinage of the soul. He who in^ the natural 
 
I20 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 world gathers up the fragments and allows nothing 
 to be wasted, working up the refuse of one 
 effete substance into the glory of another active 
 substance, has also utilised in the spiritual world 
 all the right products of human thought, and the 
 good results of human experience, and "out of 
 the forms of the alien or the false has produced 
 the power of the true." 
 
 That the first miracle of the gospel should rest 
 as its basis upon the ceremonialism of the law is 
 a striking proof of the closeness and subtilty of 
 the connection that exists between all parts of 
 revelation, as one harmonious scheme of grace. 
 Augustine pertinently says: "Novum testamen- 
 tum in vetere latet ; vetus e novo patet." The 
 New Testament is concealed in the Old ; the Old 
 Testament is revealed in the New. The waterpots 
 at the feast were massive stone vessels, calculated 
 to last for a very long time, and to stand almost 
 any amount of wear and tear. They were like 
 the solid tables of stone engraved by the finger of 
 God, which were treasured up in the ark of the 
 testimony. And in this respect they typified the 
 enduring nature of the Jewish economy. No 
 
v.] CANA OF GALILEE. 121 
 
 doubt in its external forms this economy has 
 passed away, but in its essential elements it still 
 survives, and is brought forward into permanent 
 union with the Christian dispensation. The old 
 and the new covenant are not two antagonistic 
 systems, placed in sharpest contrast, but comple- 
 mentary, so that every characteristic of the one 
 finds its counterpart and corresponding reality in 
 the other. Jesus Himself was foretold by Jewish 
 prophecy ; and His incarnation was the fulfilment 
 of the whole course of Jewish history. When He 
 appeared. He assumed the flesh and relations of a 
 Jew, was born under the law of Moses, honoured 
 all its ordinances, and lived all His days a Jew, 
 He taught that those who sat in the seat of 
 Moses should be duly reverenced ; He declared 
 that He was sent only to the lost sheep of the 
 house of Israel. His disciples were Jews, and 
 men believed that in Him the God of Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob had fulfilled the promises made 
 to the fathers. The apostles worshipped in the 
 temple ; and the Hebrew Christians continued to 
 cultivate the ancient ritual. Their veneration 
 for the customs of Moses had not been lessened 
 
122 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 by their realisation of the Messiahship of Jesus. 
 And the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 showed to them that they were compassed about 
 with a great cloud of witnesses, and that so far from 
 being separated from the glorious past, and obliged 
 to forego all part or lot in the venerable and 
 sacred memories of their race, they by their faith 
 and endurance were following in the right way 
 the example of, and were brought into truest 
 fellowship with, their most illustrious ancestors. 
 Judaism may therefore be regarded as the vessel 
 that contained Christianity, the poorer element of 
 the law being converted into the richer element of 
 the gospel. All the institutions and ideas which 
 distinguished the Jewish dispensation still remain 
 in all their integrity, but are invested with a higher 
 meaning and a more spiritual interpretation. In 
 this respect some have seen a typical significance 
 in the number of the waterpots at Cana. The 
 number six is regarded as symbolical of a pre- 
 paratory state — before seven, the number of per- 
 fection — as the six days of labour are preparatory 
 to the Sabbath of rest. The Jewish dispensation 
 v/as thus preparatory to the Christian, the law to 
 
V.J CANA OF GALILEE. 1 23 
 
 the gospel, the letter to the spirit, as the six 
 waterpots were preparatory to the miracle of 
 Cana. 
 
 'But the connection of the waterpots with the 
 first miracle of Christ conveys in a symbolical 
 form a yet deeper truth. The guests at Cana 
 were not only keeping the natural ordinance of 
 God in all its purity, but they were also obeying 
 as far as they knew the religious law of God 
 given in His holy Word. They were at a mar- 
 riage ; and previous to the feast they washed 
 their hands in the water appointed for their 
 purification. The kingdom of heaven therefore 
 first opened not only upon what was best in 
 the natural moral life, but also upon what was 
 best spiritually in human attainment at the 
 time. The waterpots represented the best side 
 of the Jewish faith and life — all that man had 
 succeeded in reaching hitherto in his honest 
 striving after obedience to Divine revelation. 
 But the emptiness of these waterpots declared 
 their insufficiency. Just as the natural joy of 
 life typified by the wine came to an end, so the 
 religious hope typified by the water also failed. 
 
124 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 The very number and vast capacity of the 
 waterpots indicated their unsatisfyingness. How- 
 ever frequent or copious the ablutions prescribed 
 by the Pharisaic law, they could not effect their 
 true purpose. The laver of the tabernacle and 
 temple had to be resorted to again and again 
 by the priests, the cleansing processes under the 
 Levitical law had to be continually repeated ; 
 for the worshippers were never purged thereby — 
 the " conscience of sins " still remained. 
 
 As the water employed in all the ceremonial 
 cleansings is a mineral substance, having no organic 
 life, its purification is only superficial and tran- 
 sitory ; so the law which it represented could make 
 nothing perfect ; its righteousness was only out- 
 ward, affecting the conduct, but not penetrating 
 to the source of corruption, not touching the 
 heart. It was appropriate, therefore, that Jesus 
 should meet this want and remedy it ; that the 
 felt insufficiency of the highest attainments of 
 the law should form the lowest starting-point 
 of the first miracle of the gospel. The waterpots 
 had proclaimed only the need of washing ; Jesus 
 would now reveal the way and impart the power. 
 
v.] CANA OF GALILEE. 1 25 
 
 He would show that not by an outward ceremony, 
 but by an inward life, a man was to be effectually 
 purified ; and that Hfe He was about to com- 
 municate. Wine was the symbol of it ; and 
 this is an organic substance, the product of life. 
 It is taken internally. It communicates directly 
 with the vital powers ; it stimulates them to 
 throw off every symptom of disease, every source 
 of impurity. Life is the great purifying principle. 
 Local disease can best be removed by strength- 
 ening the general constitution ; and the more 
 life, the more healing and cleansing power. What 
 penetrates to the life and affects it must necessarily 
 be a more effectual purifying agent than what 
 only touches the skin. In this respect, therefore, 
 we see the profound significance of changing the 
 water of the waterpots of the law into the wine 
 of grace — changing the outward purification of 
 the dead ceremony into the inward purification 
 of the gospel of life. 
 
 But there is more still in the transformation. 
 The wine was the symbol of a still more effectual 
 cleansing power. It spoke eloquently in its ori- 
 gin — being the sacrifice of the vine, the life-blood 
 
126 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 of the grape, crushed out of it when trodden 
 under foot of man in the winepress — of that aton- 
 ing- blood of Him who is the True Vine poured 
 forth on the Cross, which cleanseth from all sin. 
 For this reason, our Lord employed it in the Holy 
 Supper, which signifies our communion and fel- 
 lowship with Him in His sufferings and death. 
 The divers washings and purifyings of the Jews 
 were associated, I have said, with expiatory sacri- 
 fices ; but the processes were separate — the altar 
 of burnt-offering was distinct from the laver. But 
 in the miracle of Cana they are combined ; the 
 water is changed into wine, and that wine is the 
 symbol of the shed blood of the Redeemer. 
 Over the joyous marriage festival at the com- 
 mencement of His career, as I have already said, 
 rested the shadow of Gethsemane and Calvary. 
 Jesus came not by water only, but by water 
 and blood. The fountain of life in Christ crucified 
 is com.bined with the cleansing stream of death 
 and judgm.ent. In the death of His own Son 
 God has judged and condemned sin in the flesh ; 
 and in Him we have been plunged into the deep 
 waters of death, in order that the body of sin 
 
v.] CANA OF GALILEE. 12/ 
 
 might be destroyed. We owe our cleanness, and 
 subsequent fitness for God's presence, to the 
 blessed fact of our having been buried with Him 
 in this costly baptism, and raised with Him 
 from it to newness of life. And just as the 
 miracle of the conversion of water into wine 
 was one act, done once effectually for all, in 
 striking contrast with the continual ineffectual 
 washings of the Levitical law, so by one offering 
 Jesus hath perfected for ever them that are 
 sanctified. He that is washed by this inward 
 process of regeneration needeth not save to wash 
 his feet. His nature is purified, and he needs 
 only to cleanse himself from the defilements 
 which he contracts in his walk through the 
 world. 
 
 Our Lord Himself explained this significance 
 of the miracle in His discourse to Nicodemus. 
 There is a close and intimate connection between 
 these two incidents. The one did not follow the 
 other immediately in chronological order; but 
 there is a subtle connection of inward spiritual 
 significance between the two, for the sake of 
 which I believe the inspired writer was guided 
 
128 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 to associate them together. Just as the sermon 
 upon Christ, as the bread of the soul, followed 
 immediately in explanation of the inward spiri- 
 tual meaning of the miracle of the loaves and 
 fishes, so our Lord's address to Nicodemus about 
 the new birth and the new life followed imme- 
 diately, in explanation of the inward spiritual 
 meaning of the conversion of water into wine at 
 Cana. The blessing of the marriage, the source 
 of all human relations, and the means by which 
 the Church is formed and replenished, is followed 
 by the teaching of the new birth, as the source 
 of a holy life here and a heavenly life hereafter. 
 It was virtually of the conversion of the water 
 of the law into the wine of the gospel that Jesus 
 spoke to Nicodemus. He was a representative 
 Jew — a Pharisee, a ruler — being, according to 
 human estimation, a righteous man. He had 
 been washing his hands, and cleansing himself 
 all his life, in the waterpots of the Levitlcal 
 ceremonies and institutions, and fancied that he 
 was clean. He recognised Jesus only as a 
 teacher come from God, conscious that he had 
 something to learn from Him, but ignorant that 
 
v.] CANA OF GALILEE. 1 29 
 
 he was totally corrupt and needed salvation, 
 Cut Jesus tells him that all this cleansing is only 
 superficial. He must go back to the beginning ; 
 he must be born again, not of water only, but 
 of the Spirit — not of formal observances only, 
 but of spiritual powers — else he cannot enter 
 into the kingdom of heaven. He must have a 
 new nature to fit him for the new creation of 
 God. The mere washing in the outward forms 
 and observances will not avail : he must take 
 into his soul the wine of spiritual life, the very 
 life-blood of the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 The waterpots of Cana, notwithstanding their 
 massive size and enduring material, have long 
 ago disappeared, and not a vestige of them re- 
 mains. The manner of purifying which pertained 
 to them has been changed ; but at the gospel 
 feast which the marriage of Cana represents, with 
 its continual presence of the Lord, and its 
 continual relays of guests and disciples in each 
 generation, there is still a fountain opened for 
 sin and un cleanness, at which we are commanded 
 to wash. The Church is the bride, the Lamb's wife, 
 which He has united to Himxself by faith, and 
 
 X 
 
130 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 which He is sanctifying and cleansing with the 
 washing of water by the Word, in order to pre- 
 sent her to Himself a glorious Church without 
 spot or wrinkle or any such thing. And the two 
 great ordinances of the Church, baptism and the 
 Lord's supper, speak to all its members of the 
 need of cleansing, and the effectual means 
 provided for the purpose. The baptismal font 
 in the lowly chapel, and the baptistery connected 
 with the magnificent cathedral, alike remind us 
 of the great truth which our Lord taught the 
 ruler of the Jews. And the sacramental wine 
 on the Lord's table, as oft as we partake of it, 
 tells us in the most solemn and emphatic manner, 
 that not by the outward washing of water, but 
 by eating the flesh and drinking the blood of 
 Christ, can we be partakers of His life and of His 
 holiness. Let these two ordinances be to us in 
 a far higher and truer sense, as becometh the 
 Gospel, what the waterpots were to the Jews, 
 -/ thetraeans and seals of our spiritual purification, 
 of the entire consecration of all that we are and 
 all that we have to the service of " Him who 
 loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own 
 
v.] CANA OF GALILEE. 131 
 
 blood, and made us kings and priests unto God." 
 Let us connect the water of the baptismal font 
 with the wine of the Lord's table, the cleansing 
 of regeneration with the Divine provision of our 
 souls. Let the miracle of their perfect blending 
 together be wrought in us. Let the blood that 
 cleanses us from all sin be drink indeed to our 
 souls, so that all through our Hfe we may sit at 
 the marriage feast of Jesus, and sup with Him 
 and He with us. 
 
 K 2 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE HELP OF THE SERVANTS. 
 
 "Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water, 
 and they filled them up to the brim. And he saith unto 
 them. Draw out now and bear unto the governor of the 
 feast. And they bare it."— John li. 7, 8. 
 
 T N the miracle of Cana, the help of the servants 
 ^ was an essential factor. Their faith was 
 necessary. The mother of Jesus had prepared the 
 way by her sympathy with her Son's design ; and 
 now the servants were ready to obey implicitly the 
 instructions of Jesus. It was not without reason 
 that Mary had said to them, " Whatsoever He saith 
 unto you, do it." She expected that something 
 very remarkable, something out of the ordinary 
 course, would be done — something that might 
 provoke at first incredulity and opposition ; and 
 therefore she guarded them against any shock or 
 surprise. And well did they learn the lesson. 
 They might have objected to what seemed so 
 
CH. VI.] CAA'A OF GALILEE. 133 
 
 foolish and capricious a proceeding as pouring 
 water into empty vessels. Why should they have 
 been taken away from the useful work in which 
 they were engaged, ministering to the necessities of 
 the guests, to perform this work of supererogation ? 
 The guests had all already washed their hands, 
 and therefore no more water was required for ritual 
 purposes. And yet they received and obeyed the 
 command in respectful silence. They did not stop 
 to argue or question. They did not seek any 
 explanation. They made haste and delayed not 
 to keep Christ's commandment. Something in 
 His look, in His voice, in His manner, awed and 
 impressed them with the consciousness of a higher 
 world. They felt instinctively that they were in 
 the presence of One who had only to order and it 
 should be done. There may have been a sudden 
 unveiling to them of the indwelling glory of the 
 supernatural, which He usually concealed beneath 
 the appearance of an ordinary man — the Shekinah 
 in the earthly tabernacle, and from which, as from 
 a never-intermitting fountain, proceeded the out- 
 ward miracle-working power, as shown in distinct 
 acts. Such a display of the glory of the Only- 
 
134 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, as 
 flashed out before the disciples on the mount of 
 transfiguration, — as caused the multitude, who came 
 to seize Him in the garden of Gethsemane, to fall 
 back to the ground appalled and helpless, may 
 have been given to them. But whatever aid they 
 may have received from the presence of Jesus 
 Himself, there can be no doubt that their silent 
 and unhesitating obedience, in the midst of so 
 much that was fitted to excite incredulity and even 
 ridicule, was a signal proof of their faith. It rose 
 with the greatness of the occasion and with the 
 emergency of the crisis. These servants were now 
 to be employed as instruments in altering the 
 settled order of nature ; and in such a remarkable 
 crisis, it might have been necessary that they 
 should have been wrought up to the highest pitch 
 of confidence in Him who "hath chosen things 
 which are not to bring to nought things that are." 
 The first miracle of our Lord thus brought out the 
 great fact that the faith of man lies at the founda- 
 tion of all the work of God for him ; that faith is 
 an essential element in every miracle of grace. 
 Human unbelief restrains the Almighty Arm ; but 
 
vi.J CANA OF GALILEE. 135 
 
 faith is the miracle within that overcomes all 
 incredulity of reason and opposition in the heart, 
 and thus prepares the way for the miracle without 
 that removes mountains in the world. Man's 
 acquiescence must go along with God's omni- 
 potence. His people must be made willing in the 
 day of His power. His miracles are not displays 
 of arbitrary force capriciously exerted. They are 
 conditioned by moral considerations, and can be 
 wrought only in accordance with the strict laws 
 which regulate the spiritual world. The forces of 
 heaven, like the electric forces of earth, uniformly 
 choose the path of least resistance, and require 
 good conductors for their beneficent transmission. 
 
 But besides human faith, human work was also 
 needed in the miracle of Cana. The help of the 
 servants was, in its own way, as necessary for the 
 performance of the miracle as the power of Jesus. 
 They had to fill the waterpots with water, and 
 to draw out and give to the governor of the feast. 
 The initial process and the final result were alike 
 accomplished through their labour. From begin- 
 ning to end, all through, they had to assist Jesus 
 in doing His mighty work. The miracle was thus 
 
136 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 wrought in accordance with the wise law of labour 
 which God had imposed, that in the sweat of his 
 face man shall eat bread. And just as the 
 natural wine in the vineyard is the result of the 
 cooperation of the forces of nature and the toils 
 of man, so the miraculous wine of Cana was the 
 joint product of Christ's Divine power and of 
 human skill and labour. And here, in this first 
 act of the new creation, we see the immense dif- 
 ference between it and the first act of the old 
 creation. At the old creation God said, " Let 
 there be light." The light brought order out of 
 the confusion and life out of the death of the 
 world. It commenced that wonderful process of 
 vivifying and arrangement which has made the 
 world what it is. It flashed forth in the beau- 
 tiful forms and hues of nature, and it took shape 
 in the vine, which is a living embodiment of sun- 
 light — a tree of light as well as of life. And all 
 this by a mere word costing nothing. But when 
 God came to redeem the world — to restore the 
 creation which sin had disordered and destroyed, 
 to make all its old things new — He came Himself 
 under the laws and limitations which He had 
 
VI.] CANA OF GALILEE. 13/ 
 
 ordained, under the sentence of toil and sorrow 
 and death which He had pronounced upon it. It 
 was with the sorrow of His soul and the sweat of 
 His face that He began and carried on His new 
 creation. The mighty miracles, with which He 
 rolled back the curse, were works that came under 
 the same law of toil and care and pain to which 
 all man's work is subjected. St. Matthew sig- 
 nificantly says, after recording several wonderful 
 miracles, that "Himself bore our infirmities and 
 carried our sorrows." 
 
 The first miracle which He wrought struck 
 the keynote of all that followed. We see 
 in it, if we search deeply enough, signs of 
 the toil and travail of soul through which He 
 accomplished all His work of redemption. It was 
 a festal occasion ; but underneath its happiness we 
 see the shadow of the curse and the cross — below 
 the glad tones of the epithalamium we hear the 
 sad refrain of the solemn requiem. We see the 
 curse in the want of wine, and the cross in the 
 saying of Jesus, " Mine hour is not yet come." 
 Jesus felt deeply for the young couple, in the 
 sudden gloom that had come over their joy 
 
138 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 through the failure of the wine ; and it was out 
 of this sympathy that the miracle, like a rainbow 
 on a dark cloud, blossomed. And in the pre- 
 monition of His own hour of death, which the 
 miracle brought vividly before Him and helped 
 to accomplish, we see that it was not without 
 sorrow of soul that Jesus performed the wonder- 
 ful act. And in this travail the servants partici- 
 pated. They did all they could to assist Him ; 
 and suffering with Christ in the toil and sorrow 
 that went before the miracle, they reigned with 
 Christ in the triumph that followed. In the first 
 creation God wrought alone, unaided by man or 
 angel; but in the new creation He required the 
 help of men and angels. Angels strengthened 
 and ministered to Him, and human beings helped 
 Him by their faith and labour. Not by His own 
 word and power merely, but also by human effort 
 and suffering, is His new creation rising to its 
 ultimate perfection. He gives to each human 
 being the opportunity and the honour of being a 
 fellow-worker with Him, in the field of his own 
 heart and life, and in the field of the world. The 
 cross is ours as well as Christ's, and the joy that 
 
VI.] CANA OF GALILEE. 1 39 
 
 was set before Him is set before us too. It is the 
 sword of the Lord and of Gideon that conquers. 
 It is the song of Moses and of the Lamb that cele- 
 brates the victory. " To him that overcometh 
 will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I 
 also overcame, and am set down with my Father 
 in his throne." 
 
 But while we see this deeper meaning in the help 
 of the servants, we cannot suppose that the act 
 which they performed was an irrelevant thing — an 
 accidental or capricious choice, for which any other 
 act would have done equally well. There must 
 be a fitness in the proceeding becoming an all-wise 
 and all-gracious Providence, dealing with reason- 
 able creatures, with favoured friends and servants. 
 As the whole miracle is manifestly an acted 
 parable, may we not consider this subordinate 
 feature of it, the command of Jesus to the servants 
 to fill the waterpots with water, to be of an 
 emblematical nature } The emptiness of these 
 ceremonial vessels was significant of the emptiness 
 of the Jewish rites. They had in themselves no 
 efficacy ; they could make nothing perfect. The 
 Jewish law without Christ was like a cipher — 
 
140 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 which however added to one another in a row — 
 however multiplied — gives no increase in value. 
 However often it was obeyed — however frequently 
 its rites were performed — no real spiritual benefit 
 accrued. The prescribed purifications only pro- 
 claimed the need of cleansing; the way in which 
 they were carried out kept before the minds of the 
 worshippers what was wanted rather than what 
 v/as supplied. The empty waterpots, standing in 
 a row at the threshold of the house, resembled the 
 sacrifices and ceremonies of the Levitical institu- 
 tion. They spoke of realities in the spiritual 
 world which they symbolised ; but it was in these 
 reahties, and not in the mere mechanical rites 
 themselves, that the purifying efficacy resided. In 
 themselves, they were destitute of power to remove 
 the stain of sin ; they had no real, intrinsic 
 tendency to make the man who faithfully observed 
 them a better man — a new creature. No doubt 
 these typical rites could remove typical uncleanness. 
 Ceremonial defilements, which excluded men from 
 the outward worship of God, could be taken away 
 by ceremonial observances, which sanctified "to 
 the purifying of the flesh." But as regards interior 
 
VI.] CAA'A OF GALILEE. I4I 
 
 and spiritual uncleanness — the pardon of sin and 
 the purification of the soul — these outward rites 
 were altogether powerless. The taint contracted 
 by the touch of a dead body, rendering the flesh 
 unclean, could be removed by the washing of the 
 waterpots ; but they had no water to wash away 
 the evil thoughts and feelings which are the sign 
 of death in the soul, which reveal the mortal 
 corruption of our spiritual nature, and by which 
 not the flesh, but the spiritual consciousness of 
 men is made unclean. In regard to these, we 
 must use the words which our immortal dramatist 
 put into the lips of Lady Macbeth — " Here's the 
 smell of the blood still ; all the perfumes of Arabia 
 will not sweeten this little hand." 
 
 But the emptiness of the waterpots declaies 
 not only the inherent insufficiency of the Levitical 
 ceremonies, but also the induced insufficiency 
 occasioned by the Pharisaism of the Jews. They 
 had emptied the institutions of the law of all 
 their meaning by their abuse of them. They 
 had made them powerless by their unbelief and 
 selfishness — their formal perfunctory obedience 
 — to instruct and benefit. As a man by pouring 
 
142 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 into a full cup succeeds, by his superfluous effort, 
 in displacing some of the water that is already 
 in it, so by their works of supererogation, by their 
 traditions of the fathers, they, instead of lending 
 additional sanctions to the law of God, had only 
 made it void, of none effect. Those waterpots 
 themselves were human inventions, command- 
 ments of men, superfluous and unauthorised 
 additions to the ceremonial law ; and the effect 
 of them was to draw away the attention, from the 
 inner purity of the soul, to the outward purity of 
 the body, obtained by the mere washing of the 
 hands — to teach that purity is determined not by 
 what is within, but by what is without. 
 
 A further thought is suggested by the empti- 
 ness of the waterpots. It tells us that the 
 institutions of Judaism are now emptied of the 
 significance they once possessed. They have 
 served their purpose, in sustaining the religious 
 life of a chosen race, through whose instruction 
 and discipline all nations were to be blessed. 
 They introduced into their thought and language 
 types and emblems of religious truth, without 
 which the revelation of God to the world would 
 
VI.] CANA OF GALILEE. 143 
 
 have been hardly intelHgible. They were the 
 shadows of heavenly things ; witnesses of grand 
 and enduring realities behind the veil. But the 
 fulness of time has come, and they have passed 
 away. They belonged to the childhood of religion, 
 which is only able to realise things through such 
 mediums — by the teaching of such object-lessons, 
 such a picture alphabet ; and now the full-grown 
 religious man, trained by them in his pupilage, has 
 discarded them in passing to the higher school of 
 Christianity, where he has a firmer grasp and a 
 fuller possession of the truth. And these inar- 
 ticulate symbols, no longer used, emptied of all 
 present purpose and prophetic meaning, are in the 
 system of revelation what the empty bud-scales 
 are in the natural world ; those coverings which 
 once sheltered and nourished the leaves and 
 flowers imprisoned within them, but which fall off 
 and strew the ground when the foliage and blos- 
 soms are fully developed in summer. They are 
 empty waterpots at the threshold of God's house, 
 which we pass by with a backward glance, as we 
 enter into the holiest place of living realities 
 within the rent veil. 
 
144 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 The action of Jesus, therefore, in filling the 
 waterpots with water, indicates that Jesus came 
 not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it ; not to 
 break off from the old rites, but to fill them 
 with meaning and power. He restored the true 
 sense of the law in the wonderful sermon on the 
 Mount ; and He satisfied its requirements by His 
 own obedience. He filled up the law in His 
 teaching, and He fulfilled the law in His life. 
 He put into the letter of the word its proper 
 significance. The want which the waterpots 
 proclaimed He supplied ; the element of which 
 they were empty He imparted. He connected 
 these waterpots with the enduring spiritual dis^ 
 pensation of the Gospel : and showed that, how- 
 ever the form might vary, however the measure 
 of man's knowledge of religious truth might 
 vary, religious truth itself remained invariable 
 through all ages. The institutions of Judaism 
 belong to Christianity in this sense. They are 
 old, effete forms of the same truth. Their 
 temporary purpose has long been served, but 
 they have still their permanent place and 
 position in revelation. They are ours now in a 
 
VI.] CANA OF GALILEE. US 
 
 truer and higher sense than they ever belonged to 
 the Jews. The grand numeral has been added to 
 the ciphers, and their value is untold. We have 
 the tabernacle fulfilled in the tabernacling of 
 Christ in our flesh ; the ark of the covenant in 
 the union of God and man in Him ; the altar 
 of burnt-offering in the atonement of the cross ; 
 the altar of incense in Christ's continual interces- 
 sion at the right hand of the throne on high ; 
 the golden candlestick in the light that His Spirit 
 imparts to our darkened souls ; the table of 
 shewbread in the spiritual food with which He 
 satisfies our hunger after righteousness; and the 
 laver in the blood that streamed from His pierced 
 side, which cleanseth from all sin. The law came 
 by Moses, but grace and truth, living reality, 
 came oy Jesus Christ. 
 
 And as He did Himself so He commanded 
 others to do. He would have His servants fill 
 the water-pots with water, invest the letter of 
 the word with its sacred significance, put the 
 element of truth into the empty form. As 
 it has been well said, it is the duty of the 
 Church and its members in obedience to the 
 
 L 
 
146 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 Divine command, and in imitation of Christ's 
 example, to fill up the full measure of the true 
 meaning of God's law, and to fulfil it by teaching 
 and doing what it really requires. And how 
 useful are the forms and aspects of the old cove- 
 nant, which Christ filled with meaning, in com- 
 prehending the spiritual truths of the Gospel. 
 They are moulds in which to cast our conceptions 
 of heavenly things. We understand the doctrines 
 of grace more clearly, when we see them in the 
 light shed upon them by the old rites and cere- 
 monies. We not only put the Gospel into the 
 symbolic institutions, but we also take it out of 
 them, and it acquires in the process a new and 
 richer meaning. 
 
 In our version it would seem as if the servants 
 had done more than they were told. Jesus com- 
 manded them only to fill the water-pots with 
 water, and they filled them up to the brim. But 
 in the original it is the same word that is used 
 in both cases, and it signifies to fill to over- 
 flowing. The servants only did what they were 
 asked to do. As regards the mere working of 
 the miracle, this command would remove all 
 
VI.] CANA OF GALILEE. 1 47 
 
 appearance of deception. It was not a small 
 quantity of water that was poured in, remaining 
 down at the bottom of the pots concealed from 
 view, where it might have been mingled with the 
 dregs of the wine of the feast by sleight of hand, 
 and so have imparted to it a slight flavour and 
 colour of wine which might have passed muster. 
 The water-pots were filled to the brim ; the 
 quantity v/as so enormous that there could be 
 no possibility of collusion ; there could be no 
 shadow of suspicion as to the nature of the 
 original element. The water was seen before the 
 eye of the spectator in the very mouth of the 
 vessels — bright, clear, sparkling in the sunlight — 
 reflecting the objects around. But there were 
 higher reasons than this for filling the water- 
 pots up to the brim. By some, it is considered 
 an objectionable feature in the miracle, that all 
 this enormous quantity of water should have been 
 converted into wine, as if Christ were placing 
 temptation in the way of men, and encouraging 
 them in riot and dissipation ; and they try to 
 get rid of the stumbling-block by the supposition 
 that the wine possessed no intoxicating power, 
 
 L 2 
 
148 THE MARRIAGE IN Tchap. 
 
 was a perfectly harmless beverage even if drunk 
 to excess. But we are not shut up to the con- 
 clusion that all the water in the water-pots was 
 changed into wine. The force of the words would 
 favour the idea rather, that only the water that 
 was drawn from the vessels underwent the mar- 
 vellous transmutation, and that the process took 
 place in the transition. 
 
 But even admitting the notion, which is all 
 but universal, that the whole contents of the 
 six jars were turned into wine, we are not 
 obliged to infer that all that immense quan- 
 tity of wine was consumed at the feast. In- 
 deed we have every reason to believe — both 
 from the character of the company, and the 
 restraining influence of Christ's presence and 
 example, that only a small portion would be 
 disposed of on this occasion; and the rest ii\ 
 all likelihood would be stored up for future use. 
 May we not look upon this miraculous wine as 
 a present made by Jesus to the young couple — 
 in conformity with the practice of the people 
 of the place to bring useful gifts to a newly- 
 wedded pair, and thus help them in beginning 
 
VI.] CANA OF GALILEE. 149 
 
 their housekeeping ? As Elisha multipHcd the 
 widow's pot of oil, filled all the vessels which she 
 brought to overflowing from the contents of the 
 one vessel, and as this most abundant supply was 
 sold to the merchant to pay her debt, and to be 
 a provision for future need ; so we may suppose 
 this greater than Elisha changed the water in 
 the water-pots of Cana into wine, and gave the 
 vast quantity to the young couple, not only for 
 the present entertainment of their guests, to dis- 
 charge the obligations of hospitality, but also 
 for their own future use. 
 
 And on this supposition we should see no 
 difficulty or objection in the enormous quan- 
 tity of wine made. It is only what we might 
 have expected at the hands of Jesus. He 
 was no mean, niggardly giver. He did things 
 in a royal way. The miracle symbolises not 
 only the qualitative, but also the quantitative 
 excellence of the Gospel. It strikes the key- 
 note of Christ's ministry as a generous ministry, 
 of His redemption as a plenteous redemption. 
 He came not merely to give us new life, but 
 also more abundant life ; not only to change our 
 
ISO THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 nature, but to make it richer, fuller, wider. " Where 
 sin abounded His grace did much more abound " ; 
 or as it should be more correctly rendered, Where 
 sin multiplied, grace did over-abound ; the term 
 is superlative, not comparative. He loved much, 
 and therefore He gave much. All His gifts were 
 the utterances of the largest and most generous 
 heart that ever beat, the expressions of thoughts 
 and feelings too deep for words, too deep even 
 for tears. With Him there was never any cautious 
 calculation. The profusion, the generosity, the 
 very waste of His love meets us everywhere in 
 the story of His life. His sacrifice of Himself 
 stands forth before the universe as the very type 
 of prodigality and extravagance. The satisfaction 
 which He rendered to the offended justice of 
 God was no bare equivalent for human sin. It 
 was more than plenary ; it was superabundant. 
 And the peace which He gives is like a river ; 
 and the righteousness which He imparts is as 
 the waves of the sea. We see the lavishfulness 
 of His generosity in the field of nature. More in 
 every department is produced than is needed. 
 Everywhere the river of life overflows its banks. 
 
VI. ] CANA OF GALILEE. 151 
 
 The fruit-tree is loaded with blossoms in spring, 
 of which but a small quantity comparatively 
 is required to form the fruit in autumn. We 
 owe our daily bread itself to this extravagance 
 of nature ; for if the corn produced only a suffi- 
 cient number of seeds barely to perpetuate the 
 species, there would be no annual miracle of the 
 multiplication of the loaves in the harvest. All 
 the ministrations of nature to our physical wants 
 are adorned with a plenitude of superfluous beauty, 
 which seems, if she contemplated no higher end, to 
 justify the utilitarian question : "To what purpose 
 is this waste } " In the face of all this, what poor 
 and dishonouring ideas do the best of us cherish 
 of the grace of God. We are constantly putting 
 upon it the limits and disabilities of our own 
 selfish nature. We are straitened in ourselves ; 
 and we measure the fullness of the great Giver of 
 every good and perfect gift, not by the sea-like 
 depths of His infinitude, but by the cistern-like 
 shallows of our own straitened being. And this 
 indisposition of the mind to shape to itself such 
 disinterested and unbounded goodness is the great 
 obstacle of faith, which it is the great purpose of 
 
152 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 the Gospel to remove, by not only revealing to 
 us the unsearchable riches of Christ Jesus, but 
 also making us willing to receive them. And as 
 He Himself thus fills every receptacle of His grace 
 to the brim ; as He supplies our need, not accord- 
 ing to the limit of our thoughts and desires, but 
 exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask 
 or think, according to the riches of His glory, 
 so He would have us imitate Him in this god- 
 like virtue. He commands us as His servants to 
 fill everything within our power to the brim with 
 the fullness of our love, the freeness of our gener- 
 osity. " Give," He says, " and it shall be given 
 unto you ; good measure, pressed down, and 
 running over, shall men give unto your bosom." 
 At what precise point the wonderful transub- 
 stantiation took place — whether it was in the filling 
 of the water-pots with water, or in the transferring 
 of their contents into smaller vessels — v/e are 
 not told. There is a veil over this as over all 
 creative acts, and we cannot trace beginnings. 
 Severn, the friend of Keats, painted in Rome 
 a picture of the Marriage of Cana ; but he did 
 not complete it. He represents the servants in it 
 
VI.] CANA OF GALILEE. 153 
 
 pouring the water out of one vessel into another. 
 The water issues from the vessel clear as crystal ; 
 but in the arc formed by its descent it is refracted 
 into a red colour. The painter was always very 
 proud of showing to visitors this trick of his art ; 
 and I among the number admired the picture. 
 But whatever might be thought of this feature, 
 there could be no doubt that the painter caught 
 the true idea of the transformation. We have 
 every reason to believe, as I have already said, 
 that the water was changed into wine when it was 
 drawn out by the servants. In this respect the 
 miracle of Cana would follow the analogy of pre- 
 vious and subsequent miracles. The barrel of 
 meal and the cruse of oil in the home of the 
 widow of Zarephath was multiplied by Elijah, not 
 all at once, but day by day, as the necessities of 
 the household required it during the famine. The 
 oil in the widow's pot was increased, under Elisha's 
 mediation, not in the pot itself, but when she 
 poured it, one after another, into the vessels bor- 
 rowed to receive it. Jesus Himself afterwards, in 
 His miracle of the loaves and fishes, did not pro- 
 duce at once from the provision of the lad, which 
 
154 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 served as the nucleus and starting-point of the 
 miracle, the whole quantity required to satisfy the 
 hunger of the multitude, but multiplied it as it 
 was passed on from hand to hand by the disciples. 
 And thus it was, we may well suppose, in the 
 present case. What the servants drew out of the 
 water-pots as water, they received into their 
 vessels as wine. The miracle was therefore the 
 crowning reward of human toil in all its stages, 
 initiatory and final. Not only was it needful 
 that the servants should pour water into the 
 pots, but also that they should draw the water out 
 of them, before the miracle could be performed. 
 Man had to do his utmost, to exhaust his 
 strength and skill, to labour to the very end 
 in the sweat of his face, ere the Divine power, 
 without which these efforts would be useless, 
 could be put forth to work out the appropriate 
 blessing. There was a demand made to the very 
 last upon the faith of the servants. Their faith 
 ^was exercised in filling the vessels with water 
 without any purpose, so far as they could see. 
 It was still further exercised by their being called 
 upon to draw out the water, without any use, so 
 
VI.] CANA OF GALILEE. 1 55 
 
 far as they could know. And the faith thus 
 severely tried, overcoming all obstacles of belief 
 in their own souls, overcame all obstacles in 
 nature. And in the miracle of the fruit of the 
 vine, the promise was literally fu'lfilled in their 
 experience : " To him that overcometh will I give 
 to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of 
 the paradise of God." 
 
 And the feature in all the miracles that I 
 have adduced — that only what was used was 
 changed or multiplied — teaches us the Divine 
 lesson that the gifts of Heaven, however precious 
 in themselves, are blessed to us only when we 
 rightly use them. The corn will only yield a 
 harvest to us when we till the ground and sow it ; 
 and all faculty is like seed which, if planted in 
 good and honest work, will grow and expand and 
 bless thousands with its shadow and fruit. The 
 water that is drawn out by prompt obedience and 
 simple trust in God is changed into wine. The 
 shepherd's rod in the hand of Moses, dry and life- 
 less, stiff and unbending, cast upon the ground at 
 the command of God, becomes a serpent, endowed 
 with higher life, instinct with vigour, bending in 
 
156 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 all directions. And so used in the service of God. 
 acting in faith and obedience to His will, our 
 talent, however humble, our opportunity, how- 
 ever commonplace and ordinary, will be changed 
 into something more powerful, more precious, 
 higher in the scale of life and worth. It will 
 become vital and flexible, and accomplish pur- 
 poses which in its original state we could never 
 have dreamt of. What astonishing things have 
 weak and obscure men, men of one talent only, 
 done in the world, by doing thoroughly the one 
 thing that they could do ; by laying out their 
 time and faculty to the best advantage ; by seizing 
 the opportunity they had, instead of waiting for 
 a great one ; and doing what lay nearest to their 
 hand, instead of longing for some mighty thing 
 to do or secret thing to know. And what won- 
 derful things in the Christian field have those 
 who were despised by their fellow-creatures done, 
 merely by doing what their hands found to do in 
 the service of God with all their might. We are 
 the servants of Him who changed the rod which 
 Moses threw upon the ground into a serpent, and 
 the water which the servants of Cana drew into 
 
vi.l CANA OF GALILEE. 157 
 
 wine; and we are called upon to use the things 
 that are in our hands, not as things merely to Idc 
 received and enjoyed, but as instruments which 
 God has given to be ennobled in His service. Our 
 work, among the common trivialities and household 
 duties of life, may seem to ourselves and others 
 no more than the mere emptying of water from 
 vessel to vessel, a profitless task-work, like that 
 of the fabled Danaids ; but if we do it faithfully, 
 not as unto men, but as unto the Lord, we know 
 that our labour will not be in vain in the Lord. 
 The contrast between the results we shall achieve 
 and the apparent inadequacy of the means, will 
 show of a truth that the Lord is working with us, 
 and confirming the word with signs following. 
 
CHAPTER VIL 
 
 THE SECRET NATURE OF OUR LORD'S WORK. 
 
 "■ When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that 
 was made wine, and knew not whence it was (but the 
 servants which drew the water knew)." — John li. 9. 
 
 TT TE should have expected that Jesus in His 
 first miracle would create something 
 altogether new. Human beings are always craving 
 for that which is wonderful and superhuman ; and 
 they think that when God appears among them, 
 it must be in modes altogether different from 
 those to which they are accustomed — that He will 
 bring with Him directly a sign from heaven. 
 True, God's thoughts are not our thoughts, nor 
 are our ways His ways ; for as the heavens are 
 higher than the earth, so are His ways higher than 
 our ways and His thoughts than our thoughts. 
 But this truth obviously refers not to the method. 
 
CHAP. VII.] THE MARRIAGE, &-c. 1 59 
 
 but to the manner and the degree of His operations 
 — to the largeness and generosity of His plans, as 
 compared with the narrowness and selfishness of 
 ours. We are made in the image of God, and 
 there must therefore be a consonance between our 
 modes of working and those of God ; else, what 
 becomes of the argument from design in nature, 
 or of God's appeals to us as reasonable creatures 
 in grace, '' Come and let us reason together." And 
 hence when the Son of God came to declare His 
 great message to the world, He did not bring down 
 with Him a mysterious revelation from heaven. 
 He did not begin far away from us, with some- 
 thing marvellously deep and high, as though He 
 wanted to baffle us and excite our wonder, but 
 simply directed our attention to the common things 
 about our path and in our homes — to the fowls 
 of the air and the flowers of the field, and the 
 daily bread of our households. 
 
 And so likewise when He began that won- 
 derful miracle-working of His, which was 
 designed to make all things new, to be a 
 prophecy and a specimen of the new genesis 
 under which there shall be no more want, or 
 
l6o THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 sorrow, or death, because there shall be no 
 more sin — He did not originate new forms and 
 forces of matter; but simply removed the limita- 
 tions and disabilities of the things already existing, 
 and by the display of heavenly power imparted 
 a special glory to common things. He came not 
 as a Creator but as a Redeemer. The first creation 
 was perfect. He saw everything that He had 
 made, and behold it was very good. It could not 
 be improved in the way of addition. It needed 
 only to be freed from the encumbering weight 
 which human sin had laid upon it — so that its 
 own intrinsic beauty and order might be plainly 
 manifested. The work of Jesus, therefore, in the 
 new creation, was not an addition to nature, or 
 an arbitrary contravention of nature, but consisted 
 in the removal of hindrances to its proper har- 
 monious activity, bringing it back to the primitive 
 perfection and blessedness. Not one of His 
 miracles involved an act of creative power. Not 
 one of them added a single particle or a single 
 ounce to the matter and the weight of the globe. 
 The materials which He made use of were already 
 at hand, either in the earth, the air, or the water, 
 
VII.] CANA OF GALILEE. l6l 
 
 and He wrought among them — as we ourselves 
 work in nature — as the chemist works in his 
 laboratory, only in a higher way, as became 
 His more exalted dignity, without disturbing the 
 order of nature. At Cana He did not introduce 
 some heavenly beverage unknown to men, some 
 drink of the angels — but simply produced the 
 common wine of the country — the very same kind 
 of wine which the guests had previously been 
 drinking at the marriage feast, only of better 
 quality. And this wine was not formed in the 
 empty jars ; they were filled with water ; and this 
 water was changed into wine by the use of forces 
 of which there had been no previous knowledge, 
 but which did not therefore imply the violation of 
 any force or law of the universe, or the creation 
 of a single substance which was not already in 
 existence. 
 
 But having thus shown that the wine of Cana 
 was not a new creation — but was identical with 
 the common wine of the people — the further 
 question remains, Wliat kind of wine was it ? 
 The miracle took place a few days before the 
 Passover, as St. John tells us; and this festival 
 
 M 
 
l62 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 usually fell on the 30th of March. The wine 
 that was drunk at the feast must, therefore, as 
 I have said, have been kept for six or seven 
 months from the previous vintage. It must, in 
 consequence, have undergone the process of fer- 
 mentation, for, without this, no organic juice 
 could have been preserved for such a length of 
 time. Fermentation is a natural process, which 
 takes place in all watery solutions of vegetable 
 substances containing saccharine matters ; and 
 depends entirely upon the growth of a micro- 
 scopic fungus called the yeast-plant, which 
 develops with extreme rapidity into myriads of 
 minute cells or vesicles, and while doing so 
 resolves the sugar in solution into alcohol and 
 carbonic acid gas. The spores, or seeds, of this 
 fungus exist in enormous quantities everywhere ; 
 and no vegetable juice can be exposed to the 
 air for however short a time without receiving 
 some of them ; and if the temperature and 
 other conditions be suitable, they begin at 
 once to grow and multiply, thereby producing 
 fermentation and liberating alcohol. Even in 
 ripe grapes, while they are hanging on the vine. 
 
VII.] CAA^A OF GALILEE. 163 
 
 this yeast-fungus is often developed, causing 
 vinous fermentation. It is impossible, therefore, 
 to produce an infusion of grapes from which 
 these ubiquitous germs are absent — unless the 
 juice is boiled, and the vessel hermetically sealed ; 
 and even then, so tenacious are they of life, 
 we cannot be sure that we have got rid of them, 
 as Pasteur's recent researches abundantly testify. 
 And wherever these germs are present, the pro- 
 cess of fermentation begins, and is carried on 
 with greater or less rapidity according to the 
 temperature. In a warm climate it goes on with 
 extraordinary vigour. There is no such thing, 
 therefore, as unfermented wine. The juice of the 
 grape when immediately squeezed out may be 
 so called ; but if it is kept for a few days under 
 ordinary conditions it inevitably undergoes the 
 vinous fermentation. The common Hebrew terms 
 employed to designate different kinds of wine 
 indicate that they possess intoxicating qualities. 
 Tirosh, the word for new wine, is derived from a 
 root which signifies to take possession of — to go 
 to the head — a meaning which obviously implies 
 its power of inebriation. Specimens of the wine 
 
 M 2 
 
1 64 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 made in the Holy Land have frequently been 
 analyzed by experts ; but not one has been 
 found which did not contain from ten to nearly 
 twenty per cent, of alcohol, and these wines are 
 identical with those used in ancient times, and 
 are made according to the old methods, from the 
 pure juice of the grape. All these considerations 
 prove beyond doubt that the wine of the feast 
 was fermented wine, \vhich would intoxicate if 
 drunk to excess. And the wine which our Lord 
 produced was of the same kind, only of superior 
 quality. It was " good wine," as the governor of 
 the feast testified when he tasted it ; not a 
 mere vegetable infusion, but possessing all the 
 properties of a well-made and well-preserved 
 wine. I h^ve no special theory to support, being 
 actuated only by a sincere desire to ascertain the 
 truth in the matter ; and therefore a candid and 
 unbiassed consideration of all the facts involved 
 shuts me to this conclusion. 
 
 And I see no reason why it should be un- 
 w^elcome to any one. I cannot imagine why any 
 one should make the production by our Saviour 
 of a beverage which, if abused, would lead to 
 
VII.] CANA OF GALILEE. 1 65 
 
 intoxication, a stumbling-block which must be 
 removed out of the way at all hazards and by 
 means the most unwarranted. Is it not in strict 
 harmony with what we see throughout creation ? 
 God might have made a world free from all 
 danger and temptation, without poisons, narcotics, 
 and intoxicants — where nothing would be injurious 
 to man. But in such a case the whole significance 
 of our earthly life would be changed. There would 
 be no exercise of human freedom, no opportunity 
 of choice between good and evil, of exercising 
 caution, prudence, self-restraint. There would be 
 no testing of man's moral nature, and therefore no 
 cultivation of his highest characteristic. He would 
 be treated simply as a child, and his actions would 
 have no moral value ; virtue would be compulsory 
 and therefore no virtue. But He who planted the 
 tree of knowledge of good and evil even amid the 
 unsullied beauties of Eden, has surrounded us in 
 nature and in our daily life with things, which, if 
 unwisely used, will seriously injure us physically 
 and morally, in order to test our character, to 
 educate our self-determining power ; until ulti- 
 mately our choice of what is good, in spite of 
 
1 66 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 solicitations to what is harmful, will become easy 
 and even unconscious. Those who object to our 
 Saviour's production of a substance which, if 
 improperly used, would lead to serious physical 
 and moral consequences, must go further, and 
 object to the presence of all other things in the 
 world which may be abused, and thus produce 
 evil. Nay, the same objection would need to 
 be applied to the Gospel itself — for its doctrines 
 too may be perverted to lasciviousness — and the 
 grace of God may be made the minister of sin. 
 Such persons forget that it is not the existence of 
 fermented wine in the world that is the objection ; 
 but the abuse of it by men. There is no passage in 
 the Bible that condemns such wine itself or the 
 manufacture of it ; its condemnation is directed 
 rather against excess and intoxication than against 
 the substance which is the occasion of the excess. 
 Were the substance itself disapproved of, it would 
 not, under the Mosaic law, have formed the usual 
 drink-offering that accompanied the daily sac- 
 rifice and the presentation of the first-fruits. 
 Tithe would not have been enjoined to be paid of 
 it, and consumed before tlie Lord in the temple ; 
 
VII.] CAN A OF GALILEE. 1 6/ 
 
 and a promise of plenty would not have been 
 attached to the faithful payment of the priestly 
 dues in this as in other articles. We should not 
 certainly in such a case, have been invited to 
 buy the blessings of grace under the emblems 
 of wine and milk, without money and without 
 price. 
 
 Our modern drunkenness has invested every- 
 thing connected with wine with such terrible 
 associations, that it may well be to many an 
 object of loathing, and they may wish it were 
 altogether obliterated off the face of the earth. 
 But it was not so in earlier days and in eastern 
 countries. Wine, as the late Dean Stanley has 
 clearly shown, was the symbol of joy as well as 
 of life among the ancients, by whom it was very 
 rarely abused. A colossal golden vine was 
 carved as an architectural ornament over the 
 portico of the Jewish temple. In the Jewish 
 church there was no festival so gay and free as the 
 Feast of Tabernacles, when the people gathered the 
 fruit of the vineyard and enjoyed themselves in 
 their green bowers. Our Lord's deepest and most 
 suggestive parable was based upon it ; and 
 
l68 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 nothing is more striking than the frequency with 
 which the figure of the vine occurs in the paintings 
 on the walls of the Roman Catacombs, expressing 
 the joyous and festive character of the primitive 
 Christian faith. If the object were bad in itself 
 it would not have occupied so prominent and im- 
 portant a place in the social customs and religious 
 observances of the holiest people. Are we not 
 in danger, when we thus denounce the substance 
 itself, of forgetting that the evil of the world is not 
 in things but in souls .-* The evil associated with 
 wine is not inherent in it, but has been put into it 
 by man's misconduct. From our abuse of it 
 has gone forth the pollution that has given to it 
 an outward likeness to sin. It is fraught with 
 suggestions of temptation to us, but it was 
 originally meant to be suggestive only of inno- 
 cent cheerfulness and festive joy. Those who 
 are tempted by it ought indeed to avoid it 
 entirely ; and Christians, on the ground of expe- 
 diency, and in obedience to the higher law of 
 Christian charity, which has Christ for its model 
 and inspiration, may do well, in this country, 
 where it is the besetting sin, to abstain from 
 
Vll.l CAN A OF GALILEE. 1 69 
 
 its use, in order to help the weak to become 
 strong, and the slave to become free. And on 
 this ground of expediency the question should be 
 always allowed to rest. Our modern drunkenness 
 is a problem too complicated to be solved by 
 any mere proscriptions and negations. There are 
 many perplexing causes lying at the root of it, 
 which require much patience and wisdom to find 
 out, and much self-denial and practical benevo- 
 lence to cure. 
 
 How the transformation of the water into wine 
 was effected it is useless to inquire. We may 
 investigate the outside of the mystery, but the 
 heart of it is a sacred shrine into which no human 
 foot can penetrate, which is possessed alone by 
 the awful glory of God. It is customary to 
 regard the miracle of Cana as an extraordinary 
 acceleration of the natural and human forces 
 which bring about the production and preparation 
 of wine in ordinary circumstances — as doing 
 instantaneously what it takes long months to 
 accomplish in the vineyard and in the manu- 
 factory. The natural vine changes the dew and 
 the rain of heaven into the juice of the grape ; 
 
I/O THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 and man makes use of another natural process, by 
 which living plants convert by their growth, and 
 the fermentation which consequently ensues, the 
 juice thus formed into wine. But this analogy, 
 though it shows to us that the miracle is in 
 harmony with the ordinary operations of God's 
 providence, being distinguished mainly by the 
 rapidity with which the result is achieved, does 
 not enable us to understand how it is actually 
 wrought. Indeed, the common natural work in 
 the vineyard is, in its own way, quite as myste- 
 rious and incomprehensible as the miracle at the 
 marriage-feast. Who shall explain the function 
 which the green leaf of the vine or of any other 
 plant performs .'' That function is absolutely 
 unique ; it takes place nowhere else on the face 
 of the earth. It is the most important in all 
 nature. Every other object destroys organic 
 matter ; the green leaf alone creates it. The 
 action of the green leaf in organising dead matter 
 in the air and in the soil is the starting-point of 
 all life. It alone keeps up the supply of living 
 matter, which the life of the world uses and 
 destroys. It combines the impalpable elements 
 
VII.] CAN A OF GALILEE. 17 ^ 
 
 in a form suitable to the nourishment of 
 plants and animals ; while these plants and 
 animals are continually resolving this prepared 
 material into its original inorganic constituents. 
 Without the agency of the green leaf, therefore, 
 the world would be a lifeless desert. 
 
 But how the green leaf thus mediates between 
 the dead earth and the various forms of life, how 
 it imparts a new character and new properties to 
 inorganic fo^rces, we cannot tell. It is all a pro- 
 found mystery, how the green leaf of the vine 
 prepares the sap, which builds up the substance 
 of the plant, out of inorganic substances in the 
 earth and air, of which water is the chief, by a set 
 of elaborate combinations of the forces of the uni- 
 verse. And the process of assimilation, by which 
 this sap is still further transmuted into the nobler 
 juices which fill the grapes, has as yet baffled the 
 researches of the chemist and the physiologist. 
 There is an abundance of theories and hypotheses, 
 but no sure satisfactory explanation. And if we 
 cannot thus comprehend the natural process, 
 which is so familiar to our observation that we 
 have become utterly insensible to its intrinsic 
 
172 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 wonderfulness, how shall we attempt to compre- 
 hend the miraculous process, which took place 
 once, and once only, in the history of the world ? 
 It is surely not more mysterious to change water 
 into wine, by the agency of the Son of God, than 
 it is to change dead matter into living, by the 
 agency of the green leaf. It would be a blind 
 unbelief indeed, that would deny to the Creator 
 of all things, the exercise of a power which He 
 has delegated to the humblest of Hi3 creatures. 
 Of one thing only we may be sure, that the miracle 
 did not violate or suspend any force or law of the 
 universe ; and ignorant as we are of the way in 
 which God works in the natural world, we have 
 no reason to suppose that His working in the 
 supernatural, must differ from that of His 
 ordinary providence in any essential point. 
 
 In the preparation of the juice of the grape 
 from the rain and the dew of heaven, the agency 
 of the vital force of the plant is necessary. The 
 life of the vine, in the unnoticed miracle of every- 
 day nature, must impart to the air and the light 
 and the water the new properties which they pos- 
 sess, when raised into the substance of the grape. 
 
VII.] CANA OF GALILEE. 1 73 
 
 And so in the performance of the miracle of 
 Cana we have the agency of Life — the highest of all 
 life. As Crashaw strikingly says, " The conscious 
 water saw its God and blushed." We see here 
 the direct and immediate interposition of Him who 
 is the True Vine. He dispenses with the agency 
 of the natural vine, because He himself is in 
 reality all that it represents ; in its ripest and com- 
 pletest development, what the natural vine is only 
 partially and imperfectly. He is the plei'oma, or the 
 fullness of the vine, and fulfils whatever its name \ 
 in its highest, widest, deepest sense signifies. The / 
 natural vine takes several months to convert the 
 water of the earth and air into wine in its grapes. 
 Jesus is the True Vine, because He does it instan- 
 taneously. The natural vine works by round- 
 about complicated processes. Jesus is the True 
 Vine, because by the simple exercise of His will, 
 overleaping all the intervening steps of the tardier 
 process. He accomplished the result at once. 
 
 But more than this is implied in the fact that 
 He is the True Vine ; for the word true means 
 not only that He is the ideal of which the natural 
 vine is only a subordinate realization, but also 
 
1/4 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 that He is the unconcealed vine. Alethmos, the 
 Greek word, comes from lanthano^ to be hid, and 
 a, not. The natural vine is the clothing of 
 second causes which hides the Almighty Arm — the 
 shadow cast by the reality which conceals it from 
 view. Familiarity has so dimmed our eyes that we 
 see nothing in the growth of the vine but a com- 
 mon phenomenon of nature. We are conscious 
 only of its ordinary appearance and common use. 
 It has no higher significance to us. But He who 
 dwelt in this bush came out from behind the 
 shadow that hid Him, and we hear His articulate 
 explanation, in the parable, of what the natural 
 vine really is — *' I am the true vine." And we see in 
 the miracle the laying bare of His Almighty Arm ; 
 so that we may know that it is He Who gives the 
 sap to the vine, makes it what it is, and do what 
 it does, by the ordinary processes of nature. He 
 gives us the most convincing proof that He truly 
 is what the vine appears to be, by showing to us 
 the naked power itself in operation, producing the 
 result without the instrumentality of the natural 
 object. He thus, by His rare and extraordinary 
 act, opens our eyes to behold the wonderful things 
 
vii.l CAAA OF GALILEE. 175 
 
 that may be always seen in every vineyard, 
 corn-field, or forest ; and teaches us to see in the 
 commonest natural phenomena the evidences of 
 His working. 
 
 One of the most remarkable things about the 
 miracle was the quiet, unostentatious way in which 
 it was performed. Jesus did not invoke the name 
 of His Father ; He did not even speak, as on many 
 other occasions. In silence He put forth His Divine 
 power, and the water became wine. There was 
 no pomp of circumstance. The attention of the 
 guests was not arrested. There was no wondering 
 pause in the festivities. The merriment went on 
 as if nothing unusual was occurring. There was 
 no sense of a crisis. Unobtrusively the miracu- 
 lous wine took its place among the ordinary 
 refreshments on the table, and could not be dis- 
 tinguished from them. It was not kept sacred 
 like the shewbread, or the pot of manna, or 
 regarded as a curiosity to be treasured by itself. On 
 the contrary, it was given to be drained from ordi- 
 nary cups, and to mingle with the ordinary food 
 at the feast. The Evangelist is careful to inform 
 us that not even the ruler of the feast, the first 
 
1/6 THE MARRIAGE IN [citap. 
 
 taster of the wine, h-imself knew whence the wine 
 came, but supposed naturally that it formed 
 part of the choice stores of the bridegroom, 
 which he had reserved for a later stage of the 
 festivities. Only the servants knew what had 
 happened ; and if they were astonished, as they 
 must have been, they did not express their wonder 
 by any outward signs sufficient to draw upon 
 them the gaze of those at the table, and the 
 Evangelist does not stop to notice it. There is a 
 strange calmness and secrecy about the whole in- 
 cident. We miss in it what we have been taught 
 to look for in a miracle — the outward show, th^ 
 surprise, the awe, the consciousness of the near- 
 ness of a heavenly power, the interruption to the 
 common business of life. We hear it said that 
 miracles were wrought as evidential signs of the 
 kingdom of heaven ; to produce conviction in 
 men's minds that Jesus was indeed what He 
 claimed to be. And yet, here, most of those who 
 were present were utterly ignorant that a miracle 
 had been wrought at all ; and so far as they were 
 concerned it was thrown away. May we not 
 reason therefore, that the desigrn of the miracle 
 
VII.] CANA OF GALILEE. 1/7 
 
 was not evidential, in the sense of exciting the 
 surprise of the spectators ? The attitude in which 
 we place Jesus, as doing mighty works for the pur- 
 pose of proving His Divine authority as a miracle- 
 worker, making supernatural claims, and desiring 
 to submit them to the investigation of the incre- 
 dulous, is one which He Himself never assumed ; 
 and which is clearly contradicted by the facts, that 
 when the people were sceptical, Jesus could do 
 no mighty works because of their unbelief, by the 
 obscurity in which most of these mighty works 
 were done, and by the secrecy which He strictly 
 enjoined upon all who got the benefit of them. 
 
 And in this respect the first miracle gives the 
 key to the character of the whole series. What 
 is said of it — that the ruler of the feast who tasted 
 the water that was made wine knew not whence 
 it was, but took it for ordinary wine — may be 
 said of Christ's whole life and work on earth ; 
 which purified and ennobled the elements of the 
 world and of humanity, but in a manner so 
 natural, so gradual, so quiet, that it did not sur- 
 prise or startle the spectators. He revealed Him- 
 self to men in His human form — not in a sudden 
 
 N 
 
17^"^ THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 blaze of Divine glory, but amid the common sur- 
 roundings of ordinary life. At His birth there 
 were no signs given of His greatness, except those 
 of a supernatural kind ; and these only to a few 
 simple shepherds, and strangers from a distant 
 land. The name which He bore was a common 
 one in Israel, and was pronounced without any 
 feeling of sacredness. For thirty years He was 
 known only as the son of Joseph the carpenter. 
 And at the commencement of His ministry. He 
 did not cry, nor lift up, nor cause His voice to be 
 heard in the streets. He did not lead men away 
 into the wilderness, like John the Baptist, to feed 
 on locusts and wild honey, and thus to make Him- 
 self a wonder throughout the land ; but He came 
 to men and abode with them, sharing with them 
 all the common wants and experiences of life. 
 And His most wonderful works were done, not 
 in conspicuous places for ostentation, but in quiet 
 spots, in far-away villages, for the benefit of the 
 poorest and humblest ; and so far from being 
 startling and overpowering deviations from the 
 ordinary operations of nature and providence, 
 they uniformly took their departure from the 
 
VII.] CANA OF GALILEE. T 79 
 
 common and the ordinary, so that it is difficult 
 to tell where the line of demarcation between the 
 natural and the supernatural occurs. There was 
 no show about His life ; even in the midst of its 
 miracles it was marked by nothing that was 
 specially exciting. It was eminently natural and 
 quiet. It was this absence of all appeal to the 
 senses that offended the prejudices of the Jews 
 and led to His rejection. They would not believe 
 that One whose parents and friends and whole 
 manner of life were so well known to them, who 
 had nothing apparently of what they thought was 
 Divine about Him, who sought to establish His 
 rule over men, not by dazzling conquest, but by 
 love and sorrow and self-sacrifice, could be their 
 Messiah. 
 
 And we all know how the kingdom which He 
 thus brought into the world without observa- 
 tion, spread without noise, unaccompanied by 
 worldly pomp or greatness. Not by ostentatious 
 miraculous acts, but by faith and love and quiet 
 human devotion, it found its silent way into all 
 parts of the world, producing there a new influx 
 of life and beauty ; as an arctic summer steals into 
 
 N 2 
 
l8o THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 the very bosom of winter, and ere the ice and 
 snow have passed ' away, bright verdure creeps 
 over the earth, and hosts of briUiant flowers laugh 
 in the sunshine as if by magic. And to every 
 believing, expectant soul it comes in the same way 
 still. The fruits and effects of the new heavenly 
 life which it produces are seen of men, but the 
 life itself is hid with Christ in God. And the 
 answers which are given to believing prayer 
 are not startling interpositions of the Divine 
 arm. God does not send them visibly from 
 heaven, like the sheet let down to Peter at Joppa, 
 but by the ordinary means and ways of His 
 providence, so hidden among the common events 
 of life that it requires no small faith and patience 
 to recognise them. The same Divine law of 
 secrecy applies to the institutions of God's king- 
 dom. We know not how the Bible grew to com- 
 pleteness as the inspired Word of God ; how the 
 canon of either the Old or the New Testament 
 was formed under the guidance of Divine provi- 
 dence. We cannot tell how the Lord's Day came 
 to supersede the Jewish Sabbath, and to establish 
 itself as an essential part of the Gospel dispensa- 
 
VII] CANA OF GALILEE. l8l 
 
 tion ; for there is no express formal enactment of 
 it in the New Testament. So too with the sacra- 
 ments of the Church — the signs and seals of God's 
 kingdom : they all came not with observation. 
 We cannot separate between the Jewish Passover 
 and the Christian Communion, or indicate when 
 the one rite merged into the other, in our Lord's 
 Supper in the upper chamber at Jerusalem. The 
 sacrament of infant baptism is not definitely men- 
 tioned and formally prescribed in the New Testa- 
 ment — appearing only in a few historic glimpses 
 and occasional modes of speech that are subtle 
 implications of the fact ; although the rite very 
 early took its place as an accepted element of the 
 Christian organization. All these institutions of 
 God's house are like the seed cast into the ground, 
 which germinates and grows up in a mysterious 
 manner — man knoweth not how. 
 
 The very essence of God's kingdom is secrecy. 
 It is the kingdom of Him whose glory it is to 
 conceal a matter. The dawning of the day cometh 
 not with observation. Who can divine the precise 
 moment when the day and the night part, and 
 the little line of grey light appears on the eastern 
 
1 82 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 horizon, which is the boundary between the world 
 of Hfe and the world of death, fraught with such 
 profound significance, and destined slowly to 
 broaden and brighten until it orbs itself at last 
 in the risen sun ? Who can tell when the languid 
 blue of the afternoon sky deepens into the dim 
 and unfathomable twilight, and the sunset gold 
 is quenched in the light of the rising stars ? Who 
 has marked the footsteps of spring in the subdued 
 and pensive February woodland, though all are 
 conscious of the stimulus of growth, the quickened 
 pulse, the brooding, solemn feeling of a creative 
 influence, an energy of love, over all the waiting 
 earth ? The dawning of the year cometh not 
 with observation. Without haste, without noise, 
 without miracle, save that greatest of all — the 
 miracle of perpetual order and undeviating law, — 
 v/ith a secret and subtle gradation of growth which 
 no human eye can catch, the copse grows dense 
 with purple buds, the willow plumes its leafless 
 wands with silk, the fields become transfigured 
 with daisies, and the banks are brightened with 
 the mimic sunshine of myriads of primroses, as 
 the beauty of nature passes on to its fullest 
 
vir.J CANA OF GALILEE, 1 8 
 
 development. We need to be reminded of truths 
 like these ; for, like the Jews of old, we too crave 
 for signs and wonders. We do not see God in 
 His ordinary works, or own Him in His ordinary 
 providence. If things come about by natural 
 means, we cease to believe them Divine. If we 
 can account scientifically for any fact, then the 
 mystery has gone out of it, and it has nothing of 
 God to tell us. Strange perversity and ignorance 
 of mind that sees God only in the loud and 
 startling and wonderful, and refuses to recognise 
 Him in the common and quiet and orderly ar- 
 rangements of nature and providence ! This is 
 the spirit of the savage, who hears God in the 
 thunder and sees Him in the lightning and the 
 storm and the volcano, and finds Him not in the 
 beaten paths of men, in the dew and the sunshine 
 and the opening flowers. 
 
 I know nothing more comforting, among all 
 the doubts and anxieties caused by the recent 
 discoveries and speculations of science, than the 
 suggestions which arise from the fact, that our 
 Lord's first miracle was wrought in such a 
 quiet, unobtrusive, natural way that it seemed 
 
l84 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 to most of those present an ordinary occurrence. 
 What though science is showing to us more 
 and more clearly that God is working in nature 
 by uniformitarian methods, and not by cata- 
 clysms and abrupt transitions ? What though 
 it should reduce the field of the miraculous, and 
 bring much of what we thought were the wonders 
 of God's special and supernatural dispensations 
 within the cycle of natural law ? Such a con- 
 clusion, could it be satisfactorily established, ought 
 not to shake the faith of any one in God's direct 
 and immediate administration, or in any of the 
 great verities of His revealed truth. Such 
 a natural, quiet, orderly, uniform method of 
 procedure would be in entire harmony with what 
 Jesus Himself has revealed of the character of 
 the kingdom of God in nature and in grace. We 
 should in such a case cease to look here or there 
 for signs and wonders, for miracles and revolu- 
 tions, and realize more vividly even than we do 
 now, wdth adoring awe, that " the kingdom of God 
 Cometh not with observation." 
 
 " {But the servmits which dj^eiv the watei'- knezv)" 
 The very typography of this sentence is sugges- 
 
VII.] CANA OF GALILEE. 185 
 
 tive. It is contained in a parenthesis. It expresses 
 an inner truth — conveys a hidden wisdom. It is 
 a kernel in a shell which must first be cracked, 
 a precious ointment in an alabaster box, which 
 must first be broken. Walls of difficulty must be 
 overleaped ere one can get into the green pastures 
 and fi-uitful fields which they inclose. Brackets 
 of sense hide, as it were, the supernatural revela- 
 tion from those whose eyes are hidden so that they 
 cannot see. Without is the general company, 
 the guests at the table partaking of the feast, 
 ignorant that anything unusual is occurring in the 
 midst of them. Within are the chosen few whose 
 eyes are opened to see the Almighty arm laid 
 bare, and put forth from behind the veil of 
 ordinary providence. Like the elders of Israel 
 the servants saw God, and did eat and drink. 
 What was hidden from the guests, even from the 
 ruler of the feast, was revealed to the servants. 
 And this, because of their faith, because of the 
 important and all-essential work which their faith 
 led them to perform. The guests who took no 
 part in the work of preparation for the miracle — 
 who did not contribute their own share of faith 
 
1 86 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 and labour, were not aware that the heavens had 
 been opened, and the ladder of communication 
 between heaven and earth set up in the midst of 
 them. Their hands were idle, and therefore 
 their eyes were veiled. Only the servants knew, 
 and they knew because they had helped Christ to 
 perform the miracle by drawing the water, by 
 doing what they had to do. The revelation came 
 to them through their work, and was the reward of 
 it. The secret of the Lord was with them because 
 they had done the will of God. They co-operated 
 with Him in the miracle, and therefore they were 
 able to enter to some extent into the mys- 
 tery of His processes, and comprehend in some 
 measure the wonder of His methods. 
 
 And is not this true of all work which is a 
 revelation } It is not in idle speculation, in mere 
 theorising and musing, in standing looking on 
 with folded hands, that we understand the plans 
 and purposes of God, but when we enter into 
 the field and work along with Him. God reveals 
 Himself to us in and through our work. It is in 
 doing the will of God that we know the doctrine 
 that it is of God. Our action helps us to clearer and 
 
VII.] CANA OF GALILEE. 1 8/ 
 
 fuller discoveries of His nature and methods than 
 all our speculations and reveries. Thought raises 
 clouds and vapours over the mind, and creates a 
 mood to which miracles seem impossible ; action 
 clears away the mists and doubts and makes all 
 things possible. The difficulties which the idle 
 mood suggests, vanish v/hen confronted by resolute 
 action. And just as in the case of our bodily 
 senses, the hand aids and exalts the powers of 
 all the other senses, so does the doing of God's 
 will enable us to see and hear with greater profit 
 and insight. Doing God's will puts a spiritual 
 telescope into our hand, whereby we can see the 
 things that are unseen and eternal, which the 
 mere eye of speculation could never see ; or a 
 spiritual microscope, which enables us to see 
 wonderful things in God's law, which the mere 
 eye of curiosity could never discern. The man 
 who preaches the Gospel to others knows through 
 that preaching more of its mystery and power. 
 The teacher who instructs others becomes wiser 
 himself by so doing. Engaging in the work of 
 converting souls, we can sympathize with the 
 Divine Son, who left the Father's house and 
 
iSS THE MARRIAGE IN [chap 
 
 came into our sinful world to seek and to save 
 that which was lost. We share His sorrow and 
 we enter into His joy. We can hardly indeed be 
 said to have a belief in any of the Divine realities 
 — in God Himself — till we have begun to live 
 for them. And therefore the fact that only the 
 servants who drew the water knew that a won- 
 derful miracle had been wrought, is characteristic 
 of the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ, which can 
 only be fully known to those who practically 
 obey it. The revelation given through work in 
 the first miracle, is typical of all revelations, 
 which are given only to the servants of the Lord 
 who do His pleasure. Our Lord's reply in His 
 last discourse, to the words of Judas, " Lord, 
 how is it that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto 
 us and not unto the world?" "If a man love 
 Me, he will keep My words ; and My Father 
 will love him, and We will come unto him and 
 make our abode with him," — a reply in which 
 He shows that the power of receiving a Divine 
 revelation depends upon active obedience, which 
 rests upon personal love — is thus only a fuller un- 
 folding and a wider application of what is implied 
 
VII.] CANA OF GALILEE, l8g 
 
 in the account of the first miracle, when it is said 
 that the ruler who tasted the water that was 
 made wine knew not whence it was, but the 
 servants which drew the water knew. 
 
 The ignorance of the ruler of the feast is also 
 typical in another sense. How often do we drink 
 of God's natural wine without knowing whence it 
 is, without thinking that the Giver is beside us. 
 Miracles as wonderful as that of Cana are wrought 
 for us every day ; but we are insensible to the 
 wonder that is in them ; they are to us mere 
 ordinary commonplace occurrences. We have 
 been accustomed to them. Familiarity has blinded 
 our eyes ; and we are like the cattle who eat in 
 the pasture without knowing the glory that is 
 in the grass, and the splendour that is in the 
 flower, and drink of the stream without lifting 
 our eyes to the eternal hills from whence it 
 flows. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE BEST KEPT TO THE LAST. 
 
 "The governor of the feast called the bridegroom, and 
 saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth 
 good wine ; and when men have well drunk, then that 
 which is worse : but thou hast kept the good wine until 
 now."— John ii. 9, 10. 
 
 TN primitive times the person at whose charge 
 an entertainment was given, was chief 
 manager of it. He distributed to every guest 
 his portion. Those to whom particular respect 
 was due were helped to the best parts, and to a 
 larger share than the rest of the guests ; as the 
 mess of Benjamin, the beloved brother of Joseph, 
 was five times as large as that of the other 
 brethren. In after times this custom was laid 
 aside as illiberal and invidious, and the guests 
 were allowed to help themselves as they pleased. 
 But at these entertainments of a later age, 
 
CH. VIII.] THE MARRIAGE IN CAN A. 1 91 
 
 especially at those provided at the common expense, 
 a master or governor was elected by lot or by 
 the suffrages of the guests, whose business it 
 was to determine the laws of good-fellowship, 
 and to see that every man was duly supplied 
 with the food and wine that he wished. The 
 guests were obliged to be in all things conform- 
 able to the commands of this important func- 
 tionary. At the marriage of Cana, we find that 
 this custom which was universal among the 
 Greeks and Romans, was observed. The governor 
 of the feast was called an arcJiitriclinos , meaning 
 literally one who presided over an entertainment, 
 where there were three sets of cushions arranged 
 for the guests to recline upon at table. He was 
 not a servant who had charge of the dishes and 
 provisions, and was appointed to serve the guests, 
 but a friend of the bridegroom, and was appointed 
 by him as the chairman of the banquet, to insure 
 that all things should be done properly and In 
 order. This Is clearly proved by the authority 
 which he Is seen to possess, the freedom of his 
 conduct at the feast, and the terms of equality 
 and Intimacy upon which he stood to the bride- 
 
192 " THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 groom. Lightfoot supposes that he was a kind 
 of chaplain, whose duty it was to pronounce the 
 blessings, appointed by the law, upon the wine 
 that was consumed during the seven days of the 
 marriage-feast. At the opening of the marriage 
 ceremony among the Jews, the priest took a 
 glass of wine in his hand, and said, " Blessed art 
 Thou O Lord our God, King of the Universe, 
 the Creator of the fruit of the vine." He 
 repeated this prayer at the table before the wine 
 was dispensed to the guests. But whatever might 
 have been the precise nature of his duties — that 
 the position of the ruler of the feast was a most 
 important one, is indicated by the fact, that the 
 name of his office was given to the Christian 
 convent, erected in Cana by the Empress Helena, 
 w^hich was known far on in the middle ages as 
 the " Holy Architriclinos." 
 
 Our Lord, with the true courtesy which led 
 Him always to accommodate Himself to the 
 feelings of others, without descending from His 
 own dignity, or sacrificing His own principles, 
 recognised the position and authority of the ruler 
 of the feast. He treated him with all due defer- 
 
VIII.] CANA OF GALILEE. 193 
 
 ence. To him therefore, as the president of the 
 banquet, whose duty it was to taste and distribute 
 the wine to the guests, our Lord commanded 
 that which He had made to be brought. Ignorant 
 of the origin of the miraculous wine, and sur- 
 prised at the superior quaUty — the ruler of the 
 feast summoned the bridegroom to his side, and 
 in a gay bantering tone in harmony with the 
 festive occasion, said, " Every man at the begin- 
 ning doth set forth good wine, and when men have 
 well drunk, then that which is worse ; but thou 
 hast kept the good wine until now." There is 
 no reason to conclude from this remark that the 
 guests had been indulging to excess ; that this 
 marriage-feast was an orgy such as festivities 
 were too apt to become. As already observed, 
 we have a guarantee in the presence of our Lord 
 that the mirth and its accompaniments would be 
 kept in moderation ; and we may be certain that 
 He would not sanction an abuse of the common 
 bounties of God's providence, much less supply 
 the means for still further abuse. The phrase 
 " well-drunk " to which objection of this kind is 
 commonly taken, is a very harmless one. It does 
 
 O 
 
194 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 not mean to become intoxicated, but to partake 
 largely and heartily. And the allusion is simply 
 to a fact of common experience, that the delicate 
 perception of quality in a beverage is apt to be 
 impaired by large, though not necessarily undue, 
 indulgence in it. At first the palate distinguishes 
 with the utmost nicety the quality of the wine ; 
 but afterwards as more of it is drunk, the keen 
 edge of the taste is blunted, and it cannot dis- 
 tino-uish between the different kinds, so that an 
 inferior wine at this stage might be substituted 
 for a superior one, without the guests being any 
 the wiser. The extraordinary pitch of perfection 
 to which the sense of taste may be educated, is 
 shown by the experience of those who are em- 
 ployed, in docks and warehouses, to discriminate 
 between samples of different kinds of wine and 
 tea ; but these men use the utmost caution in 
 the exercise of their peculiar gift. They are care- 
 ful only to employ a very small quantity of the 
 article experimented upon ; and they confine 
 their trials within very narrow limits. Excess 
 or familiarity destroys the sensitiveness of the 
 nerves, and tends to deaden the impressions pro- 
 
VIII.] CANA OF GALILEE. 1 95 
 
 duced upon them. So alive are some musicians 
 to this physiological fact, that they will not touch 
 an instrument that is out of tune, lest their sense 
 of harmony should be impaired. Advantage of 
 this common experience has often been taken in 
 matters of business by unscrupulous men. Many 
 a seller of wine would not hesitate to replace 
 an expensive article by a cheap and inferior 
 one, when his "customer had drunk sufficiently to 
 confuse his powers of discrimination. Indeed the 
 ruler of the feast speaks as if it were a matter 
 of notoriety, a universal practice at entertainments, 
 to produce the best wine first ; in some instances 
 no doubt from mean and sordid motives, but in 
 others from a desire, commendable in itself, that 
 the good things provided might be properly 
 appreciated, and not thrown away upon men 
 whose taste had been vitiated by indulgence. 
 
 But this economy of the world, reads to us, 
 in the application made of it at the marriage 
 feast, a most significant spiritual lesson. Re- 
 ferring to Christ, it acquired like the prophecy 
 of Caiaphas, and the anointing of Mary of 
 Bethany, a deeper and wider meaning than the 
 
 O 2 
 
19^ THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 ruler himself was conscious of. For it is charac- 
 teristic of everything said of and done to Jesus — 
 that it partakes of His own grandeur, and gains 
 somewhat of the power of His mysterious charac- 
 ter and history. It is the arc or small part of 
 the curve that implies the infinite circle. One 
 great truth has been already illustrated. We 
 have seen how in the Bible the poor, dead water 
 of the law passed by His word into the richer, 
 living element of grace. Another truth equally 
 important remains to be shown — and the ruler 
 of the feast gives utterance to it — that in human 
 life, the world gives its best first, while Jesus 
 gives His best last. By these two symbols of 
 the water-pots and the proverb of the ruler of 
 the feast, the one inarticulately acted, the other 
 unconsciously spoken, we are assured that Jesus 
 
 t not only gives us a richer feast than we our- 
 I 
 selves could have provided, but keeps that feast 
 
 for us pure and sweet and satisfying to the very 
 
 end. This interpretation is one that has been 
 
 put upon the words of the ruler of the feast by 
 
 almost every commentator, from the days of St. 
 
 Augustine ; and the very commonness of it 
 
VIII.] CAA'A OF GALILEE. 197 
 
 shows how natural it is — how instinctively the 
 mind and heart apprehend it. Its familiarity 
 should not lessen its impressiveness. It will 
 bear continual repetition, for each new genera- 
 tion the old experiment is repeated, and the 
 old result is illustrated with new force. 
 
 The gay world to the young presents the ap- 
 pearance of a feast, where everything is provided 
 that can please the eye and satisfy the sense. 
 The glamour of novelty is over everything ; and 
 the guest is eager to drain the tempting cup. 
 There is bliss in the first draught ; the heart is 
 thrilled with new and nameless emotions ; alluring 
 visions flit before the fancy's eye ; present joy 
 and boundless possibilities of good to come 
 create a scene of enchantment. But ere long 
 the glow vanishes, like the bright hues of the 
 rainbow, into the coldness and gloom of the cloud. 
 Experience strips off the beautiful disguise and 
 reveals the nakedness beneath. Enjoyment itself 
 has brought satiety ; the luxuries pall upon the 
 taste ; and long ere the cup is drained to its dregs, 
 the soul turns from it with dislike. There is not 
 a more miserable creature than the man to whom 
 
198 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 the world has given all its blessings and has no- 
 thing more to promise. What must have been the 
 moral condition of Tiberius Caesar, the undis- 
 puted master of the world, when he could begin 
 a letter to his senate from Capri, where he in- 
 dulged in the most insane excesses, with these 
 awful words, " May the gods and goddesses 
 doom me to a worse perdition than that which I 
 daily suffer, if I know what to write to you ! " 
 Picture the state of the nobleman, who after a 
 long course of dissipation, in which he had 
 drained the world's cup of enjoyment to the very 
 dregs, said, looking down upon the Thames at 
 Richmond from his windows, " O that weary 
 river, it will keep flowing on and on, and I so 
 tired of it all ! " There are many in our 
 large cities leading a gay and fashionable life, 
 who have so worn out their capacity of enjoy- 
 ment, so exhausted every source of pleasure, 
 seen so complete an end of all perfection, that 
 their life is a miserable vacuity. They have no 
 interest in life. They are weary of everything, 
 and most of all of themselves. The cup that 
 was at first so sweet became common, and then 
 
VIII.] CAA'A OF GALILEE. 1 99 
 
 utterly tasteless and insipid. The wine which 
 they drank at first with such eagerness and 
 relish, which thrilled them with such delightful 
 feelings and inspired them with such blissful 
 dreams that earth seemed a paradise, became 
 water, then vinegar, and finally wormwood and 
 gall. In every poet's song, in every philosopher's 
 argument, the vanity of the world's pleasure is 
 the most interesting chapter, for it is that which 
 finds a response in every human bosom. Every \ 
 individual will testify that the novelty of this \ 
 world's pleasures constitutes their greatest charm ; / 
 that they please most at the first. Every repe- ; 
 tition of them tends to diminish their sweetness ,' 
 and power — and at last, if indulged in to excess, 
 they produce only satiety and disgust. 
 
 Take the case of the drunkard. Why does 
 a man get intoxicated } Is it not because he 
 is dissatisfied with the mean low life of world- 
 liness and drudgery which he usually leads, and 
 pants after a higher life and a freer atmosphere } 
 It is only by drinking the poisonous cup, he 
 imagines, that he can escape from the miseries 
 of his position, from the cares and sorrows which 
 
200 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 dwarf his nature to their own low level, and live 
 for a brief interval in an ideal world. The long- 
 ing for stimulants is indeed a perverted spiritual 
 appetite — an unceasing longing of the soul for 
 God — for higher and purer happiness than the 
 hard round of daily life can give. Man believes 
 the tempter's words, " Ye shall be as gods." 
 And at first he does feel godlike in capacity and 
 in happiness. He is raised above the world, and 
 feels that all its woes and wants are beneath 
 him. But this hour of elation passes aw^ay ; 
 reason and sensibility vanish ; and the miserable 
 victim awakens from the degraded sleep of drunk- 
 enness, with a grievous sense of bodily discomfort, 
 and, worst of all, with a profound feeling of shame 
 and self-contempt. Such are the effects which one 
 drunken revel produces ; but they are still more 
 painfully seen in the case of the confirmed 
 drunkard. It is long since he drank all the 
 good wine which his lust could give him ; and 
 now he is drinking the bitter dregs of the 
 wretched wine which biteth' like a serpent and 
 stingeth like an adder. There was a time v.hen 
 the tottering frame was instinct with health and 
 
VIII.] CAJVA OF GALILEE. 20I 
 
 vigour, and the palsied hand had a grasp of 
 iron, and the bloated and distorted face was full 
 of comeliness and intelligence. There was a time 
 when the fiery cup in which he now seeks to 
 drown for a brief space his wretchedness — and 
 which he abhors from his inmost soul, even while 
 his unquenchable appetite compels him to drink 
 it — inspired him with joy, cheered him with 
 bright hopes, and imparted a v/ild beauty 
 and syren sweetness to life. It was then the 
 good wine ; it is now that which is worse. 
 There is nothing but misery and ruin of body 
 and soul in the cup now. 
 
 Nor is it otherwise with the avaricious man ! 
 How precious was the first piece of money that 
 came into his hands long ago as the reward of 
 personal industry! How endless did its capabili- 
 ties appear! Was there anything which that 
 wonderful coin could not purchase I There was 
 nothing selfish or covetous in the feeling of elation 
 which its possession produced ; on the contrary, 
 it was a pure and natural instinct. It was a 
 medal of merit, a solid equivalent for frugal 
 hours and self-denying labours, a tangible and 
 
202 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 enduring memorial of many happy days. The 
 wine at that stage when he began to feel the 
 pride of possession, and to realize that he too 
 was an independent sharer in the world's wealth, 
 was very pleasant. But as he drank deep of 
 the golden cup the first fresh glow of happiness 
 disappeared. Successful in his business — the in- 
 crease of his wealth grew with such uniform 
 steadiness that he came to regard it as a matter 
 of course, and it awoke in his heart no thrill of 
 satisfaction. His cares and anxieties grew with 
 his fortune ; his wants expanded with the means 
 of gratifying them ; and the greater his gains the 
 less pleasure did they yield. He felt, in the very 
 abundance of the world's good things, that they 
 bore no more relation to the real wants of his 
 nature than a bag of pearls to a man dying of 
 thirst. What a wide difference between his feelings 
 now, and the proud and pleasing sensations ex- 
 perienced long ago, when the first reward of his 
 industry was placed in his hands ! This is the in- 
 evitable consequence of the love of riches. It is 
 first the good wine and then that which is worse. 
 A further confirmation of the words of the 
 
viii.J - CANA OF GALILEE. 203 
 
 governor of the feast may be seen in the case 
 of the ambitious man. Fame and power and 
 honour may be fascinating in the prospect, may 
 be sweet even in possession for a short time ; 
 but they afford, according to the universal 
 testimony of those who speak from experience, 
 but a poor compensation for the days of toil 
 and nights of care by which they are purchased. 
 The heart is filled at first with exultation at the 
 homage of the crowd. It is grand, a nation's 
 love, a people's benison. But the power is soon 
 felt to be a mockery, the praise becomes bur- 
 densome. Memory reverts with mournful regret 
 to a time when one simple flower in childhood's 
 hand was fairer than all the splendour, and gentle 
 smiles and loving words could give a deeper and 
 purer joy than all the triumph. The glorious 
 pageant is but a blackened brand with all the 
 fire outburned. The first draught of ambition's 
 cup is indeed the sweetest ; all that follows is 
 often bitterness and loneliness. The fruit is fair 
 to the eye, but in the mouth it crumbles into ashes. 
 It lures but to disappoint ; it tempts but to betray. 
 And there is surely no exception in the case 
 
204 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 of him who is distinctively called a lover of 
 pleasure. He listens to the alluring voice which 
 says, " Take thine ease, eat, drink, and be 
 merry." Life is made for enjoyment ; youth is 
 the season of pleasure. Why meet so early with 
 the monkish law of repression and austerity, the 
 passions and desires that were meant to be 
 gratified ? Let the spring-tide of youthful life 
 overflow its banks, for too soon and too surely 
 will the ice of age lock up the generous current. 
 The pleasures of sense appealing v/ith all their 
 charms to a heart filled with the longings of 
 youth, speak with a magician's power. But 
 soon these pleasures fill the bones with pain 
 and the heart with woe. A continual round of 
 excitement produces its consequent reaction in 
 low spirits and melancholy. The flagging senses 
 are goaded into unnatural activity ; strong ex- 
 citements are needed to kindle that sensation of 
 pleasure which once the simplest things could 
 yield. The bodily frame is driven beyond endur- 
 ance, and the penalty at length comes in a ruined 
 constitution, an incurable disease. Who can help 
 him who has wasted all his powers until he has 
 
%iu.] CANA OF GALILEE. 205 
 
 not a sense left to enjoy with ; who has ex- 
 hausted his nervous system and ossified his heart, 
 so that he can never again have a pure and 
 right feeling, by a long course of revelry or 
 lust ? Sin and sensuality have their martyrs as 
 well as truth and righteousness ; and many a 
 feeble and emaciated form ripened long ere its 
 time for the grave, proclaims in saddest tones that 
 " the wages of sin is death." The good wine has 
 first been deeply drunk and now the worse comes. 
 Such is the bright feast of the gay world which 
 fascinates so many to their ruin. We have 
 seen how in this life unsanctified pleasures leave 
 grievous stains and painful stings behind ; rich 
 as is their foliage, and fair their blossom, the 
 fruit they produce is a nauseous dead sea-apple. 
 But it is only when we regard them in the light 
 of eternity, weigh them against the things of 
 heaven, that we come to know truly their utter 
 vanity and worthlessness. David was sorely per- 
 plexed at the prosperity of the wicked ; but when 
 he went into the sanctuary, when he ascended the 
 mount of vision, he saw from that elevated stand- 
 ing-point the end of their course, and immediately 
 
206 THE MARRIAGE IN [CHA^ 
 
 his difficulties vanished. He knew then that 
 the ungodly rich, who fared sumptuously every 
 day, and had all that heart could wish of out- 
 ward blessings, had their good things in this 
 life, while their evil things awaited them after 
 death ; and he exclaims, " How are they 
 brought into desolation, as in a moment ! they 
 are utterly consumed with terrors. As in a 
 dream when one awaketh ; so, O Lord, when 
 Thou awakest. Thou shalt despise their image." 
 Well did Isaiah say, " And the harp and the 
 viol, the tabret and the pipe and wine are in 
 their feasts, but they regard not the work of the 
 Lord, neither consider the operation of His 
 hands. Therefore hell hath enlarged herself; 
 and their glory, and their multitudes, and their 
 pomp, and he that rejoiceth shall descend into 
 it." Let no young man sit down at this feast, 
 with the idea which is so persistently taught 
 to each new generation, that the knowledge of 
 evil will prove an ultimate gain to him, that a 
 course of sensual indulgence is an essential part 
 of a young man's education, preparing him for 
 after-life by making him wiser and stronger. 
 
VIII.] CAA'A OF GALILEE. 20/ 
 
 giving him a truer knowledge of the world, and 
 a more real and practical sense even of the 
 value of morality and religion. That is the old 
 half-truth of the tempter. " Ye shall be as gods, 
 knowing good and evil." No doubt those who 
 have got all that their lust could give them, 
 have a conviction deeper and more intense than 
 could be gained in any other way, of the utter 
 folly and misery of a course of pleasure. But 
 what is the use of such wisdom, so dearly 
 bought, seeing that it comes only when all 
 action is over, and the evil has been done past 
 remedy. The lesson has ruined the learner 
 before it has been learned. The last state oi 
 that man is indeed worse than the first. 
 
 " Every man at the beginning doth set forth 
 good wine, and when men have well drunk, then 
 that which is worse." In one respect only, the ana- 
 logy between the conduct of the ruler of a feast 
 and that of the world does not hold good. The 
 one acts voluntarily ; the other by stern necesssity, 
 by an inevitable law. The entertainer of a feast 
 may have an ample supply of the best wine in 
 his cellar, while from motives of economy, or 
 
208 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 prudence, he gives the worst wine to his guests 
 when they have well drunk, knowing that in that 
 state they are incapable of judging of the quality 
 of the wine. But the world on the other hand 
 is compelled by a stern necessity to give the 
 worst wine in the end to those who have drunk 
 deeply of its cup, for it has no other kind at its 
 disposal. Its wine is always the same ; and the bit- 
 terness of its taste and the inferiority of its quality 
 entirely depend upon how deeply we drink of it. 
 Let us now turn to the other picture, to the con- 
 duct of our Lord as opposed to that of the world. 
 He is represented as an entertainer, who sets be- 
 fore His guests His common or worst things at 
 the beginning, and His best things at the close of 
 the feast. We find a striking illustration of this 
 truth in the life of our Lord Himself, who was 
 made in all things hke unto His brethren. He 
 was emphatically the man of sorows — as if 
 there were no other ; and yet the legacy which 
 He left to His disciples was His own joy — 
 " that my joy may be in you and that your joy 
 may be full." There was a joy set before Him, 
 a joy in reserve as well as in experience, for 
 
viii.] CANA OF GALILEE. 209 
 
 the sake of which He endured the cross, de- 
 spising the shame. He drank the poorest wine 
 first and then the best. He humbled Himself 
 and became obedient unto death, even the 
 cursed death of the cross ; wherefore God hath 
 highly exalted Him and given Him a name 
 which is above every name. And as with the 
 Master, so with the disciples ; they drink of 
 His cup and are baptized with His bap- 
 tism. The law of His kingdom is first the 
 cross, and then the crown; first suffering, and 
 therefore glory. His blessings are not like 
 random sunbursts through the clouds, or the 
 irregular overflowings of an intermittent spring, 
 but form part? of a gradually unfolding series. 
 They are bestowed in proportion as our neces- 
 sities arise, and our faculties expand. We are 
 progressively prepared for them ; step by step 
 we are led on from one degree of holiness and 
 happiness to another ; and at every step so 
 great is the bliss enjoyed, and so delightful are 
 the prospects unfolded of the wonderful scheme 
 of grace, that the believer is tempted to ex- 
 claim, " Thou hast kept the good wine until now." 
 
 P 
 
2 JO THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 The gospel is spread out before us like a 
 rich feast, of which we are freely invited to 
 partake ; but there is an established order in 
 which the provision must be used. We cannot 
 anticipate or forestall what is suitable for each 
 stage. Here and now we cannot get the best 
 of what God has in store for us. The horizon of 
 grace expands before us the nearer we approach 
 it, disclosing new beauties ; the cup of salvation 
 widens and deepens the more we drink of it, 
 and the sweeter the draught becomes. How 
 wonderfully do the necessities and experiences 
 of our own life bring out of the exhaustless 
 fulness of God new and undreamt-of blessings, 
 suitable to our case, causing us to exclaim, *' Oh, 
 how great is the goodness which Thou hast 
 laid up for them that fear Thee ! " Even 
 in dark days of privation and loss, we have 
 the higher pleasures of self-denial, and the 
 prouder joys of victory over temptation and evil, 
 the pleasantness of pain incurred for duty, and 
 the beauty of self-sacrifice when it springs from 
 principle. We have pleasures which are inde- 
 pendent of outward circumstances, which com.- 
 
VIII.] CANA OF GALILEE. 211 
 
 pensate for the loss, and disqualify for the 
 pursuit, of earthly pleasures, and which endure 
 undiminished to the end ; the more they are 
 cultivated and enjoyed, the more they enlarge 
 the capacity and the sense of enjoyment. This 
 is good wine, but the best awaits us. Our 
 Heavenly Father does much for us here; but 
 He has placed us in a relation to Himself 
 which implies and requires that He should do 
 far more. He keeps back His richest gifts, for 
 we have not powers capable of receiving them 
 now ; cur nature is not purified enough, our 
 capacities are not sufficiently enlarged, to take 
 in the glory that shall yet be revealed in us. 
 
 On the lovely shores of the Lago di Garda 
 in Northern Italy, I have read how the peasants 
 make a precious white wine which they call 
 vino santo. They leave the grapes in the vine- 
 yard long after the rest of the vintage has been 
 gathered in, and converted into wine. And when 
 at last they are sufficiently ripened to suit their 
 purpose, the clusters are carefully cut off, each 
 by itself, in the early morning, while the dew is 
 still sparkling on the golden grape bubbles in 
 
 p 2 
 
212 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 the fresh brilliant sunlight of October. Over 
 each gathered cluster the priest makes the sign 
 of the Cross, and invokes the blessing of 
 Heaven. Brought into the winepress, the grapes 
 are left there in the cool shade untouched until 
 Christmas Day ; and then, with many mystic 
 ceremonies, the Holy Wine is prepared from 
 them, which thus possesses many magical vir- 
 tues, and is drunk in times of unusual solemnity, 
 and administered in last illnesses as a viaticum. 
 In like manner does Jesus prepare for us the 
 vino santo of Heaven. Through all the fleeting 
 seasons of life, which bring fruition and decay to 
 all other things, the precious clusters that are to 
 reward all our patience and labour, are silently 
 and slowly growing, and developing more and 
 more of their fulness and sweetness. They 
 require the accumulated influences of all our life 
 to mature them thoroughly. The sign of the 
 Cross must be impressed upon each of them. 
 Only through sorrow and death — through the 
 fellowship of Christ's sufferings — can we store 
 them up. And while we are enduring the trials 
 of our earthly lot, He is busy garnering up 
 
VIII.1 CANA OF GALILEE. 213 
 
 for us, within the veil, love's heavenly vintage, 
 and looking forward with longing to the time 
 when He will drink the viiio santo with 
 us in the kingdom of God. His joy and His 
 glory v/ill not be complete till all His guests 
 v/ill be gathered together to the marriage supper 
 of the Lamb in the celestial banqueting-house. 
 There will be then a festival of gladness, of 
 which all earthly joys, however deep and pure, 
 are but faintest images. All the water will be 
 changed into wine, and every vessel will be filled 
 to the brim. The table will never be withdrawn ; 
 the company will never separate ; the banner of 
 love that floats over them will never be furled ; 
 the pleasures will never fade or pall upon the 
 taste. Then, while evey beaming chalice is 
 brimming over with bliss, and Christ Himself in 
 all the riches of His grace, and all the affluence 
 of His glory, is satisfying the mighty longings 
 of eternity — the meaning of the promise given 
 to the disciples in the days of His flesh will be 
 known in its fullest significance, " Not as the 
 world giveth, give I unto you ; " and every joyful 
 heart will acknowledge, with adoring gratitude to 
 
214 THE MARRIAGE IN CANA. [cH. viii. 
 
 Him who sits upon the throne, *' Thou hast 
 kept the good wine until now." 
 
 "Such is the world's gay garish feast, 
 In her first charming bowl 
 Infusing all that fires the breast, 
 And cheats the unstable soul. 
 
 "And still, as loud the revel swells, 
 The fever'd pulse beats higher, 
 Till the sear'd taste from foulest wells 
 Is fain to slake its fire. 
 
 " Unlike the feast of heavenly love, 
 Spread at the Saviour's word, 
 For souls that hear His call, and prove 
 Meet for His bridal board. 
 
 " Why should we fear youth's drought of joy 
 If pure would sparkle less ? 
 Why should the cup the sooner cloy 
 Which God hath deigned to bless ? 
 
 "Ever the richest tenderest glow 
 Sets round the autumnal sun — 
 But there sight fails : no heart may know 
 The bliss when life is done. 
 
 " Such is Thy banquet, dearest Lord ; 
 Oh give us grace, to cast 
 Our lot with Thine, to trust Thy word 
 And keep our best till last." 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF MIRACLES. 
 
 " This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of 
 Galilee, and manifested forth His glory; and his disciples 
 believed on him." — John ii. ii. 
 
 T TPWARDS of forty apocryphal gospels have 
 ^^ been written, to gratify the craving in the 
 minds of men to learn something more than is 
 revealed by the evangelists about the early life 
 of our Lord. These gospels are distinguished 
 by a childishness which deprives them of all 
 dignity. The contrast between them and the 
 inspired Records is most striking ; and is one 
 of the strongest arguments in favour of the 
 authenticity of the latter. These forged docu- 
 ments abound in descriptions of miracles of the 
 most capricious and fantastic character, said to 
 have been wrought by our Lord, during His 
 childhood and youth, in the mere wantonness of 
 power — to benefit favourites, or as contrivances 
 
2l6 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 for revenge. The true Gospels, with that sober- 
 ness and calmness which are such marked 
 characteristics of them, tell us explicitly that 
 the marvel wrought at the marriage of Cana, 
 at the commencement of Christ's public ministry, 
 in the thirtieth year of His age, was the 
 beginning of His miracles. It hardly, indeed, 
 requires this express announcement to deprive 
 of all historic credit the numerous miracles of 
 Christ's infancy and youth which the apocryphal 
 gospels contain. Their own silliness and want of 
 purpose and consistency sufficiently indicate their 
 spuriousness, and show to us what we might have 
 expected if the Gospels had been mere myths in- 
 stead of true history ; what kind of supernatural 
 works men in the exercise of their own imagina- 
 tions would have attributed to the Son of God. 
 
 The evangelists do not represent Jesus as a 
 youthful prodigy. There is no idealising of 
 His early years, no attempt to show that He 
 lived as a child a supernatural life full of 
 wonders. On the contrary, the few glimpses 
 given of that period show to us that His growth 
 from infancy to manhood was eminently quiet. 
 
IX.] CAA'A OF GALILEE. 217 
 
 natural, harmonious. His life slowly matured 
 into fulness under the same influences of home, 
 and nature, and society, which develop that of 
 any ordinary child. Each stage was perfect in 
 itself, and perfectly balanced with that which 
 preceded and followed. He was perfect as a 
 child, perfect as a boy, perfect as a youth, per- 
 fect as a man. There was no abnormal develop- 
 ment at any period ; nothing at any age out of 
 keeping with what is characteristic of that age. 
 He did not evince when a child a wisdom which 
 properly belonged to later years ; nor did He do 
 things w^hen a boy which only a full-grown man 
 could have performed. He followed the Divine 
 order of human growth, as a plant follows the 
 Divine order of vegetable unfolding, first the 
 blade, and then the ear, and then the full corn 
 in the ear. And hence, the reserve of the Scrip- 
 ture narratives regarding the first twelve years 
 of our Lord's life, and their total silence regard- 
 ing the next eighteen — the very years which 
 the apocryphal writings have crowded with the 
 greatest number of mythical stories — commend 
 themselves to us as in strict harmony \vith this 
 
2l8 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 quiet, natural growth in wisdom as in stature, and 
 in favour with God and man. We have an in- 
 stinctive conviction that what the evangelists tell 
 us is true, that our Lord's supernatural life began 
 only when He entered upon His public ministry 
 — in the full bloom of manhood, and the full 
 maturity of all His powers ; that previous to 
 that crisis He did no miracle. The long years 
 of quiet passiveness, waiting and ripening, were 
 years of preparation for a short period of action 
 the most int^^nse and concentrated that the world 
 has ever witnessed, whose every word and deed 
 have moulded the history of the universe for ever. 
 All beginnings have a wonderful interest to us. 
 There is a peculiar pleasure in tracing a broad 
 deep river, that bears upon its bosom the comr 
 merce of a nation, to its source far up among 
 the mountains, in a little well whose overflowing 
 waters a child's hand could stop ; or in -going 
 back to the origin of a mighty nation like the 
 Roman, in the drifting ashore, at the foot of the 
 Palatine Hill, of the ark that contained the infant 
 founders. Institutions, social or benevolent, that 
 have been established for ages, derive a fresh charm 
 
IX.] CANA OF GALILEE. 219 
 
 from the consideration of their first feeble com- 
 mencement, and the contrast between what they 
 were then and what they are now. There is a 
 mystery about a cloud coming all at once into 
 the blue sky, a star appearing suddenly amid 
 the twilight shades, a spring welling up in the 
 midst of a sandy plain. It seems as if something 
 new were being created before our eyes. A 
 sense of awe comes over us, as if brought into 
 contact with another world. I have had this 
 curious feeling when coming unexpectedly upon 
 the habitat of a very rare plant. It exists no- 
 where else ; there is no trace or sign of its 
 presence in all the neighbourhood ; and coming 
 suddenly upon it in the midst of the common, 
 familiar vegetation of the region, 1 felt as if 
 standing in the presence of a profound mystery, 
 of something that God had created and preserved 
 all these long ages, making the spot on which it 
 grows holy ground, a place where a new and 
 special revelation is given of Him who dwelt in 
 the bush. Everything indeed, as it has been 
 well said, is a miracle when first witnessed ; our 
 ignorance of its cause gives it a miraculous aspect 
 
220 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 and fills us with wonder. Familiarity with it 
 produces clearer knowledge, refers it to its proper 
 place, and takes away the feeling of wonder and 
 mystery connected with it, and hides its relation 
 to the unseen and eternal. This peculiar charm 
 of novelty belongs especially to the origin of 
 sacred institutions — to the beginning of the gospel 
 of Jesus Christ, the performance of the first 
 miracle, the formation of the Christian Church, 
 and the production of the New Testament 
 writings. The thought that there was a time 
 when these things had no existence, that for 
 thirty years Jesus wrought no miracle, that the 
 first believers in the gospel in Judea, Corinth, 
 and Rome had no New Testament, gives a vivid- 
 ness to the feelings with which we regard them, 
 brings back the freshness that has evaporated 
 with long familiarity. The miracle of Cana comes 
 into the midst of the previous natural life of 
 Jesus like a star out of the blue profound, like 
 a well out of the dry mountain side, like a rare, 
 unknown flower appearing among the common 
 indigenous plants of a spot. It brings us out 
 of the narrow wall that hems us round, to the 
 
IX.] CANA OF GALILEE. 221 
 
 verge of God's infinity, where we can look over 
 into the fathomless gulf. It is the first act of 
 the new creation, in which a new life-potency 
 entered into what at the time existed, and called 
 forth a new development. It gave to the stream 
 of the world's course a new motion and a new 
 direction, without which it would have become 
 a stagnant bog — a dead sea. It is the base of 
 that wonderful miracle structure of the gospel, of 
 which the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the pinnacle. 
 The question occurs to us why should such 
 an important miracle, the first which our Lord 
 performed, have been noticed only in the Gospel 
 of St. John. The other evangelists confine their 
 attention principally to what happened in Galilee, 
 while St. John mainly describes the ministry of 
 our Lord in Judea. And yet the synoptical 
 Gospels omit all reference to Cana of Galilee, 
 while the Gospel of St. John gives it special 
 prominence. The reason may be that the miracle 
 of Cana was performed before St. Matthew, the 
 first of the evangelists, was called to the disciple- 
 ship. St. John was the only evangelist therefore 
 who could have had personal knowledge of the 
 
222 THE MARRFAGE IN (CHAP. 
 
 miracle ; and writing a considerable time after 
 the narratives of the others had been in possession 
 of the Church, he would naturally desire to record 
 what they had omitted, not merely for the purpose 
 of filling up the blank spaces, but with the 
 specific and distinctly announced design of showing 
 the typical significance of Christ's mighty works. 
 He was guided by the Spirit to select, among 
 the many miracles which Jesus performed, those 
 which were specially signs, and were connected 
 with the profound spiritual discourses which were 
 uttered immediately afterwards. More than the 
 other evangelists, St. John seems to have regarded 
 the miracles as ** the tolling of the bell of the uni- 
 verse," that the attention of a busy, preoccupied, and 
 unspiritual world might be directed to the sermon 
 which Jesus immediately preached. The main 
 idea of the miracles of St. John's Gospel, therefore, 
 is to teach, not to prove ; and the wonder in 
 them is God's token and signal that He is about 
 to speak. The external circumstances and physical 
 features of the miracles chiefly seized hold of 
 the minds of the other evangelists, and were 
 described by them with dramatic force and vivid- 
 
IX.] CANA OF GALILEE. 223 
 
 ness ; and this objective mode of treatment is 
 what we should have expected from disciples who 
 had not been admitted into the inmost sanctuary 
 of Christ's nature and teaching. Whereas to 
 St. John, on the other hand, the scenic character 
 of the miracles was lost sight of in the realisation 
 of the profound doctrinal teaching, of which the 
 outward circumstances and features of the incident 
 were but the mere dramatic clothing ; and this 
 subjective treatment is what we should have 
 anticipated from the disciple who leaned upon 
 the bosom of Jesus, and who knew, as none of 
 the others did, the thoughts of His infinite mind, 
 and the beatings of His loving heart. It was 
 necessary for St. John to regard the miracles in this 
 light ; for, as Maurice has well pointed out, 
 Ephesus, where he wrote his Gospel, was the home 
 of the enchanter and the magician ; and though 
 the Christians of that city, in the fervour of their 
 first love, had burnt their magical books and re- 
 nounced their occult practices, they still suffered 
 from the effects of the old leaven. And we 
 know from the Pauline Epistles that the early 
 Christian Church was infected with the old heathen 
 
224 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 arts and enchantments, and was prone, like Simon 
 Magus, to value more the outward miraculous 
 powers by which the presence of the Holy 
 Spirit was manifested than the inward spiritual 
 graces. As St. Paul, therefore, by precept 
 strove to purify his converts from this thauma- 
 turgic leaven, declaring that miraculous gifts were 
 bestowed for spiritual use, and not for display 
 in the eyes of the ignorant ; so St. John, in the 
 miracles which he recorded in his Gospel, drew 
 attention not to what was extraordinary in them, 
 but to what was significant, and showed that 
 they were not strange and peculiar things to call 
 forth men's wonder on their own account, not 
 enchantments and prodigies, but signs of His 
 presence in whom is all grace and truth. 
 
 The miracle of Cana is worthy of the place 
 which it holds, because it indicates with the 
 utmost clearness this principle of selection. As 
 the first act of the new creation, it shows what 
 the nature of that creation is to be. The first 
 of a series always gives the key to the character 
 of the whole. We find this in nature. The 
 first introduced animals or plants of any class 
 
IX.] CAiXA OF GALILEE. 225 
 
 have been combining types; that is, have united 
 in themselves the characters of several families 
 now distinct and widely separated. In the 
 earliest fauna and flora one class stood for 
 many. The earliest families combined the cha- 
 racters of several families or classes, and stood 
 as their representatives, until these families or 
 classes were separately introduced. The ferns 
 foretell, in their structure and habit, the more 
 fully developed flowers that are to make their 
 appearance at a later stage. It is as if nature 
 sketched out her work in general terms, and 
 then elaborated each subordinate idea in separate 
 families. We have the same law in the indi- 
 vidual organism. The first leaf which the plant 
 produces is the type upon which the whole 
 plant is constructed ; and foliage, flower, and 
 fruit are but modifications of the primordial 
 leaf So in human history ; in the earliest times 
 human life was typical, and the earliest chapters 
 of the Bible are full of such typical lives. 
 Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Esau, Joseph, are repre- 
 sentative men, foreshowing, in their own personal 
 character, conduct, and relations, "the essential 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 nature of large phases and long periods of 
 human development." We read the wanderings 
 of the Israelites in those of Abraham, and the 
 discipline of the Jews in that of Jacob. The 
 pilgrim Abraha-m was reproduced in Jacob ; and 
 the pilgrim character of the founder of the 
 Jewish nation was reproduced in the nation 
 itself; and the pilgrim nation is represented in 
 the Church, which cherishes the blessed hope of 
 resting when its wanderings are over in Abraham's 
 bosom. There is a remarkable likeness between 
 the history of each individual man and the 
 history of the race out of which he springs. 
 Each individual represents the experience of the 
 race. Each leaf is a miniature of the whole 
 tree, as the whole tree is but a development and 
 modification of the single leaf This law, that 
 the first notes of the song suggest all that is 
 necessary to make the harmony complete, which 
 we see so widely illustrated in nature and 
 human history, is clearly indicated in the first 
 miracle of our Lord. That first miracle enters 
 into all the other miracles which Jesus did. 
 The turning of water into wine was a sign — 
 
IX.] CANA OF GALILEE. 22/ 
 
 which the word used for miracle in the narrative 
 means — of the character of all the works of 
 goodness and wisdom under the Christian dis- 
 pensation, by which humanity, suffering from the 
 effects of sin, was to be raised into higher states 
 of tr'ith and righteousness. It combines in itself 
 all the elements of Christ's miracles. It is a 
 work of mercy ; it is an emblem of a higher 
 spiritual blessing ; and it is a prophecy and a 
 specimen of that new genesis, under which all 
 things shall be restored to the primeval good- 
 ness and blessedness. Like an illuminated initial 
 letter, which contains in itself an illustrated 
 epitome of the contents of the whole chronicle, 
 it appropriately begins the series of Christ's 
 beneficent works by a beautiful picture of the 
 nature and design of them all. 
 
 In the first place, it links the work of the 
 second Adam with the work of the first. Adam 
 was placed in Eden, in the midst of an abun- 
 dance of the world's good things when they 
 were truly good, and by his sin changed 
 Paradise into a wilderness of want and woe. 
 Christ came into this wilderness which man's sin 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 had made, and by His holy obedience changed 
 it into a paradise. He recovered by His poverty 
 what man had lost in his plenitude, triumphed 
 in adversity as man had fallen in prosperity. 
 And in this connection it is interesting to notice 
 that our Lord proceeded directly from the wilder- 
 ness of temptation to the marriage of Cana. 
 These two things are co-related. It was because 
 He suffered in the wilderness that He triumphed 
 at the feast ; because He endured the hunger and 
 privation of the one that He procured the 
 abundance of the other. He who refused to 
 convert stones into bread in the wilderness to 
 satisfy His own want, at the suggestion of Satan, 
 was able, in obedience to His Father's will, to 
 minister richly to the wants of the guests at 
 Cana. Because He Himself would not eat the 
 forbidden fruit, He was entitled to give to His 
 disciples and followers to eat of the tree of life 
 which is in the midst of the Paradise of God. 
 
 In the second place, the miracle of Cana 
 shows to us the restoration of nature as well as 
 of human nature. Through man's sin the curse 
 of barrenness was pronounced upon the ground ; 
 
IX.] CANA OF GALILEE. 229 
 
 through the work of Christ that curse is removed, 
 and the primeval blessing of fruitfulness is re- 
 stored. The miracle of Cana is the beginning of 
 that reign of abundance upon the earth which 
 the prophets have foretold in such glowing 
 imagery. Israel's hope was, that when the 
 Messiah would come they should be gathered 
 together in the garden of Eden, and should eat 
 and drink and satiate themselves all the days of 
 the world. Papias, the Bishop of Hierapolis, in 
 describing the glories of the Messiah's kingdom, 
 said that every vine should have ten thousand 
 stems, and every stem ten thousand branches, 
 and every branch ten thousand shoots, and 
 every shoot ten thousand bunches of grapes, of 
 which every branch would yield twenty-five 
 firkins of wine. This is indeed an enthusiastic 
 and extravagant image, but it suitably indicates 
 the expectations of men's hearts connected with 
 the effect of the work of Christ upon the world. 
 The influence of the new creation will be ex- 
 tended, beyond the limits of man's moral natui^, 
 to the realm of external nature ; and as that 
 realm participated with man in the effects of 
 
230 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 the fall, so shall it participate with him in the 
 effects of redemption. The miracle of Cana is 
 a pledge in hand of the accomplishment of that 
 promise, the fulfilment of that expectation. It 
 is the first step of a process which will 
 eventually bring about the glorious results 
 which it foretells, the firstfruits of a gracious 
 power which does not stop with the miracle, but 
 goes on to unfold itself more and more in the 
 line of the miracle, and to make all things 
 new. What Jesus wrought in the miracle in- 
 tensively, He works out on the wider field of 
 the world and in the course of the ages ex- 
 tensively ; so that what took place in one small 
 home, will yet take place in every field and 
 vineyard and home all over the earth, and the 
 beautiful words of Cowper will prove true over 
 the whole of nature — 
 
 "The reproach 
 Of barrenness is past. The firuitful field 
 Laughs with abundance ; and the land, once bare. 
 Or fertile only in its own disgrace, 
 Exults to see its thistly curse repealed." 
 
 The miracle of Cana occupies its proper posi- 
 
IX.] CANA OF GALILEE. 23 1 
 
 tion as the beginning of Christ's miracles, because 
 it links the gospel dispensation, now about to 
 be inaugurated, with all the dispensations that 
 went before. Each of these dispensations was 
 less complete than that which succeeded. Moses 
 sweetened the waters of Marah, rectified the 
 qualities which already existed in the well, pre- 
 cipitated its brackish elements to the bottom, 
 a type of the ameliorating effect of the work of 
 Moses upon the bitter spring of human sin. 
 But Jesus changes the water thus sweetened 
 into wine, imparts new qualities altogether to it. 
 Moses reformed the old life of man ; Jesus re- 
 generated it. A dead tree wrought the miracle 
 at Marah — emblem of a law which could make 
 nothing perfect, and could only work an outward 
 reformation ; the living Saviour wrought the 
 miracle of Cana. It was therefore meet that 
 the miracle of Cana, taking its departure from 
 the waterpots of the Levitical law, should be 
 the beginning of an ascending series — ascending 
 from ceremonial to spiritual, and ultimately from 
 spiritual to celestial. Man had turned the 
 original wine of God's grace into water ; sin 
 
232 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 had embittered it ; but the love of Christ turned 
 it into wine. In striking contrast, too, does it 
 stand to the first miracle of Moses, which con- 
 verted into blood the sacred waters of that river 
 which is the vital artery of Egypt, symbol of 
 the ministration of death which the law inau- 
 gurated. The changing of the water of purifica- 
 tion into the wine of gladness was a meet 
 inauguration of that gospel of grace, which came 
 not merely that we might have life — a bare, 
 meagre life, recovered from the punishment of the 
 law and reduced to its simplest elements — but 
 that we might have a more abundant life, a 
 higher and richer life than even the keeping 
 of the law would have bestowed upon us. The 
 miracle of Cana is moreover an advance, not 
 only upon the ceremonial ablutions of the 
 Mosaic economy, but also upon the baptism of 
 repentance of Christ's immediate forerunner. 
 Jesus came to what was best and highest in 
 the religious life of men, and provided for us 
 within the forms and aspects of what had gone 
 before, of the Mosaic dispensation and the 
 ministry of John the Baptist, a new enrichment 
 
ix.J CAA^A OF GALILEE. 233 
 
 and exaltation of our life. He passed from the 
 baptism of the Jordan to the marriage feast of 
 Cana, in token that what we draw from Him is 
 not for ceremonial outward application, but for 
 inward purity and gladness. 
 
 Further still, the miracle of Cana occupies its 
 appropriate place, as the beginning of Christ's 
 miracles, on account of the transcendent import- 
 ance of the occasion with which it is associated. 
 In this respect it is not only the first in the 
 order of time, but also the first in the order of 
 rank. As a human institution, marriage stands 
 at the head of all others. It onVinated in Para- 
 
 fa" 
 
 dise ; it survived the wreck of the fall. It is 
 the origin and end of all living things. The life 
 of the world, the existence of the Church, depend 
 upon this primary fundamental ordinance. As 
 the type of a heavenly mystery, it stands first in 
 importance and significance. It represents, as it 
 has been well said, the union of those attributes 
 of love and power in God from which creation 
 had its birth and has its continuance. It repre- 
 sents the union of the Divine influences and 
 human experiences in the soul of man which 
 
234 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 forms the kingdom of heaven within us. It 
 represents the union of the Saviour and the 
 Church of Christ and the individual behever which 
 is the consummation of the work of redemption 
 and the highest fehcity of heaven. The emblem 
 of bride and bridegroom was commonly used, 
 throughout the prophetical books of the Old 
 Testament, to describe the relation between God 
 and His people ; it is, throughout the New Testa- 
 ment, applied to Christ and the Church. Under 
 the image of a marriage feast, taking its cue 
 from the occasion of the miracle of Cana, the 
 accomplishment of Christ's work is most charac- 
 teristically prefigured. No other part of God's 
 order of the world has suffered so much from 
 the abuse of man as marriage. The very Church 
 itself has dishonoured, and religion denounced 
 it. In proportion, then, to the dignity of the 
 ordinance is the dignity of the miracle which 
 indicates its order and rectifies its abuses, and 
 by which Jesus claims it as His own, restored 
 to the purity and blessedness of its first insti- 
 tution. We can thus see an adequate reason 
 for this being the first miracle of Jesus; and 
 
IX 1 CANA OF GALILEE. 235 
 
 we can understand, besides, why the miracle 
 should have assumed the particular form which 
 it did, should have been wrought, not in special 
 circumstances which would take it out of the 
 range of ordinary cases, but in circumstances 
 of universal application. 
 
 But finally, the miracle of Cana is not only 
 first in order of time, but also first in order of 
 rank, on account of the intrinsic difficulty con- 
 nected with it. Of course, in one sense, there 
 can be no gradation in the miracles of Jesus. 
 Wrought by Him w^ho had all power on earth 
 and in heaven, they all stood on the same plane. 
 But in another sense, we can discern degrees of 
 difficulty in them ; and they rise by successive 
 steps to a climax. From the human point of 
 view, the miracles which Christ wrought upon 
 irrational nature are more remarkable than the 
 miracles of healing, since in the latter the co- 
 operation of the human powers of faith and imagi- 
 nation, the exercise of will and hope, is possible, 
 which is entirely wanting in the passive, inert 
 condition of the former. The line of demarca- 
 tion between health and disease is a variable 
 
2Z^ THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 and indefinite line ; and no one can tell when or 
 where the one condition merges into the other ; 
 therefore the cure of a disease may participate 
 in this indefiniteness. But the boundaries of the 
 physical world are more fixed and distinct. 
 Water does not shade imperceptibly into wine ; 
 the inorganic kingdom into the organic. Nature, 
 if let alone, may work a spontaneous cure ; but 
 nature alone will never change water into wine. 
 By Strauss, therefore, the miracle of Cana was 
 considered the very acme of the miraculous, 
 since it involves a qualitative transmutation of 
 an elementary substance. It is thus seen to 
 occupy appropriately the post of honour as the 
 initial work of Christ. And this position is still 
 further suitable to it, because it connects the 
 miracles of Christ, which have predominantly a 
 relation to man's body and spirit, with the 
 miracles of the Old Testament, which chiefly 
 moved within the sphere of external nature, and 
 were wrought to demonstrate the weakness of 
 the nature-powers and the nature-worship of 
 heathendom. In the miracle of Cana, the Divine 
 power passed from the subordinate sphere of 
 
IX.] CANA OF GALILEE. 237 
 
 nature, which is part of Christ's dominion, to 
 the higher sphere of man's nature — from the 
 amehoration of the wilderness of the world, to 
 the improvement of the wilderness of man's 
 heart and life. 
 
 The repetition of the name of the village at 
 the close of the account of the miracle is a 
 singular circumstance. This is the only example 
 of it in St. John's Gospel in connection with a 
 miracle. No doubt in other connections there 
 are frequent repetitions. In passage after passage, 
 ''the eagle of God," as St. John was called, 
 seems to wheel round and round certain signifi- 
 cant thoughts and words. And as these repeti- 
 tions were made for the sake of emphasis, so we 
 may suppose that Cana of Galilee is twice men- 
 tioned to draw special attention to the place 
 which was so highly honoured. Perhaps a sense 
 of the contrast between the obscurity and 
 humbleness of the stage upon which it was per- 
 formed and the greatness of the miracle may 
 have been in the consciousness of the evangelist. 
 A native of Cana looked down upon the 
 neighbouring town of Nazareth ; and he might 
 
2^S THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 have said the same thing regarding his own 
 home, " Can any good thing come out of it ? " 
 No other event signaHsed the history of this 
 Httle mountain village. Its name occurs nowhere 
 else in the Bible. It is the radiance of the 
 miracle alone that brings it out of the gloom 
 of oblivion, and crowns it with an immortal halo. 
 One other incident indeed is connected with the 
 place which one is apt to forget. The second 
 Galilean miracle was wrought there ; not indeed 
 as the scene of its effect, but as the place of 
 its power. It was when Christ had returned to 
 Cana from Jerusalem, where He had gone to 
 keep the passover, that the nobleman of Caper- 
 naum besought Him to heal his son ; and there 
 the Divine power went forth — which, quicker than 
 the lightning's flash, in distant Capernaum at once 
 rebuked the fever and restored the child. Here 
 was an extraordinary instance of "action at a 
 distance ; " a phenomenon which even in the phy- 
 sical world puzzles the scientific man. The same 
 miraculous power, which changed water into wine 
 on the former occasion, changed the ravages of 
 disease into the harmonious operations of health 
 
IX.] CANA OF GALILEE. ^39 
 
 on this occasion ; and Jesus proved Himself to 
 be equally the Lord of nature and of man. 
 Cana is thus identified with and consecrated by 
 the supernatural. It was exalted to heaven by 
 the mighty works done in it. Heaven and 
 earth on that mountain elevation seemed to come 
 nearer to each other, and to coalesce more com- 
 pletely than at any other place. Nathanael, in 
 his own native village, saw the promise made 
 to him fulfilled — the heavens opened and the 
 angels ascending and descending upon the Son 
 of man. In that Bethel revelation of the reality 
 of Jacob's vision, he saw greater things than 
 what astonished and convinced him at first — 
 the Saviour's supernatural vision of him when 
 he sat beside his home in Cana, under the 
 shadow of the fig-tree, the favourite place of 
 secret devotion to the pious Israelite. 
 
 We should have expected that such a wonder- 
 ful miracle would have produced a profound 
 impression upon the spectators — that it would 
 have called forth looks and exclamations of 
 astonishment. But there is no mention made of 
 such an impression ; v/e hear no sounds of 
 
240 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 triumph. The calmness and composure with 
 which the marvel is told is remarkable, and is 
 itself an evidence of its authenticity — so different 
 would it have been in the case of a spurious 
 wonder. Scripture, in its unerring wisdom, leaves 
 a blank for the imagination to fill, in regard to 
 the immediate outward effect of the miracle. 
 But it proceeds to tell us the abiding spiritual 
 effect. That effect was twofold. It showed forth 
 the glory of the Worker, and it called forth the 
 faith of the beholder. 
 
 The first effect was to show forth the glory of the 
 Worker : "and manifested forth His glory." This 
 word "glory" is one of the words peculiar to the 
 Gospel of St. John — words which bear upon them 
 the Divine signature, and raise the thoughts to the 
 unseen and eternal. It is a word that, like a star, 
 burns with its own light, and sheds its radiance 
 over every sentence in which it occurs. It means 
 literally a shining presence, the lightening forth 
 of that which is always. The glory of Christ is 
 inherent and eternal. He is the absolute light 
 who radiates light from Himself The glory 
 which He had with the Father, before the world 
 
IX.] CAN A OF GALILEE. 241 
 
 was, He did not lay aside when He became 
 incarnate, but like the sun hidden by a cloud — 
 or a star by the daylight — it was a veiled efful- 
 gence, not so much requiring an effort for its 
 manifestation, as a restraint to hinder its beam- 
 ing forth before eyes that could not bear the 
 sight, or that might profane it. In the earthly 
 tabernacle of Jesus there was the constant 
 presence of the Shechinah. Ever and anon we 
 read that glimpses of it appeared to those who 
 were admitted into closest fellowship with Him ; 
 and again and again were they commanded to 
 tell no man what they had seen and heard. On 
 one occasion it is said that the disciples "were 
 amazed, and as they followed they were afraid." 
 It was the awful beauty of the Godhead flash- 
 ing out upon them that produced this impression ; 
 and doubtless it was the same revelation that 
 caused the crowd, that came to seize Him 
 in the garden of Gethsemane, to fall back to 
 the ground. The confession of Peter was elicited, 
 more by the overpowering effect of His constant 
 presence, than by any exceptional displays 
 of miraculous power. And when the Sun cf 
 
 R 
 
242 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 Righteousness shone forth in all His glory, 
 without any cloud to intercept His rays, on the 
 Mount of Transfiguration, it is significantly said 
 that " He was transfigured before them;" as if 
 this were but one signal instance of what was a 
 common experience to Jesus — a special manifes- 
 tation to man of a glory known to Himself, and 
 always seen by heavenly eyes. After His ascen- 
 sion, this glory was the permanent disclosure of 
 His presence when He appeared to man on 
 earth. It was thus that He dazzled and blinded 
 the eyes of St. Paul on the way to Damascus, 
 and caused the beloved disciple to fall down at 
 His feet, as one dead, in Patmos. It was a glory 
 not assumed for the occasion, but the glory 
 which He ever had ; once veiled by the condi- 
 tions of His humiliation, but now revealed with- 
 out a shadow. Of this perpetual, indwelling, 
 essential glory of Jesus, the miracle of Cana 
 was a manifestation. It was a bright ray shining 
 through the cloud — a sparkling overflow of an 
 inward never-intermitting fountain. 
 
 In this respect the miracles of Jesus are 
 unique. It is never said of the wonderful works 
 
IX.] CANA OF GALILEE. 243 
 
 which the prophets before Christ and the apostles 
 after Him performed, that they manifested forth 
 their glory. These messengers of God were 
 mere instruments in the Divine hand ; and the 
 mighty works which they wrought were meant 
 to show forth His glory, and illustrate His 
 power and grace. But Christ wrought His 
 miracles immediately and directly by His own 
 inherent and underived power, and therefore 
 they manifested forth His own glory. They 
 directed attention to His person as the visible 
 manifestation of the invisible God. They were 
 the halo of Divinity around His sacred head. 
 St. John, by calling them " works," implies that 
 they were just such acts as might have been ex- 
 pected from Him being what He was ; the natural, 
 inevitable acts of Him whose name is " The 
 Wonderful," whose very existence is the highest 
 miracle of all. Previously to the conversion of 
 water into wine, the servants and guests re- 
 garded Him as only an ordinary man. There 
 was nothing in His conversation or appearance 
 to distinguish Him from other men. No doubt 
 He had acquired a reputation for His consistent 
 
 R 2 
 
244 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 and unvarying goodness, but the qualities which 
 He displayed had nothing superhuman about 
 them, so far as the bridal company could judge. 
 His glory was so far hidden from their view by 
 His perfect humanity. But now His hour had 
 come ; and when the water in the vessels which 
 the servants drew became wine, the astonishing 
 transmutation disclosed the Divine Presence ; 
 and from His looks and tones, as from the 
 windows of an illuminated fane, streamed forth 
 upon the spectators the unspeakable glory of 
 God. 
 
 How marvellously were blended the human 
 and the Divine in Jesus ! " How the God 
 appears when the man is most conspicuous ! " 
 It is He, who sits weary and thirsty beside the 
 well of the patriarch, who reveals Himself and is 
 acknowledged as the Messiah. It is He, who 
 falls asleep from sheer exhaustion in the boat, 
 who bids the winds and the waves be still, and 
 conquers on the other shore the powers of evil. 
 It is He, who weeps bitter tears by the grave of 
 His friend, who causes the gates of death to 
 open and release their prisoner. Ever the balance 
 
ix.l CAN A OF GALILEE. 245 
 
 of His humiliation is readjusted by some sur- 
 passing vision of His glory. Over the cradle of 
 His infant weakness are the illuminated heavens, 
 and the wonderful star of Bethlehem. Angels 
 minister to Him after the hunger of the tempta- 
 tion. At His baptism, — though purer than the 
 water itself, and though His righteousness 
 made that of His baptizer appear like a limpid 
 lake that shows black as ink beside the snow 
 on its shore, — the exhibition of His voluntary 
 abasement for our sakes drew from His Father 
 that peculiar confession of His love, '' This is 
 my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," 
 and bound together by new bonds of endear- 
 ment the persons of the glorious Trinity. And 
 here, in the miracle of Cana, the peasant guest 
 called to the marriage feast manifested Himself 
 as the Divine Creator. He who accepted human 
 hospitaHty, and shared in the scanty supply of 
 the feast, gave to His entertainers, both in 
 quantity and quality, what their own poverty 
 failed to provide. 
 
 The glory of Jesus was not shown by the 
 mere miracle ; it is not the miraculous that is 
 
246 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 specially Divine. A miracle is in reality a 
 limitation of God rather than a glorification of 
 Him, just as the Incarnation — the supreme 
 miracle — was a humiliation of Jesus, a putting 
 aside of His infinitude, in order that we might 
 apprehend Him within the limits of our own 
 nature and life. A miracle is a window that 
 limits the view which it enables us to see — a 
 toning down of the light into the shades of 
 afternoon, which permits us to look upon the 
 sun whose radiance would be intolerable to us 
 at noon. It is not God doing more than in 
 nature, but doing less. It is God emptying Him- 
 self — becoming for our sakes less Divine as it were 
 — sharing the limitation and imperfection of our 
 action — that we may truly see Him. There is 
 more true glory in the ordinary operations of 
 nature, in the ever constant order of the world, 
 than in any miraculous work. How much wonder 
 and loveliness were overpassed in the miracle of 
 Cana ! The gradual unfolding of the tender 
 greenness and graceful shape of the foliage; the 
 slow disclosure of the hidden sweetness and 
 fragrance of leaf and blossom and fruit ; the 
 
IX.] CANA OF GALILEE. 247 
 
 elaboration of the wine, first in the vessels of 
 the yellow stem and branches, and through the 
 intricate cells of the leaves, then through the 
 odorous blossoms, and lastly in the transparent 
 goblets of the golden or purple grapes ; all this 
 wonderful series of ever changing but ever lovely 
 forms and colours, into which the dews and 
 showers of heaven are metamorphosed in their 
 passage into wine in the vineyard, was ob- 
 literated. And instead of the long feast of 
 beauty for almost every sense, spread over a whole 
 summer, there were only a few firkins of wine 
 created at once, to gratify a single sense, during 
 a few hours', or a few days', social enjoyment. 
 
 But for what was thus lost there was ample 
 compensation made. The Divine nature of Jesus 
 reveals itself in the, so to speak, imperfection of 
 the miracle. That which was constant ceases for 
 a while, that its constancy may be realised ; that 
 which was all-pervading is partially withdrawm, in 
 order that men may awake to the consciousness of 
 its presence ; a vacuum is made by the miracle, 
 to show the presence of a ubiquitous element. 
 Nature is set aside, that the supernatural may 
 
248 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 be seen. The beauty of the veil is drawn up 
 out of sight, that the overpowering beauty of 
 the object which it concealed may be clearly 
 shown. That which was obliterated, in what 
 seemed a dead course of things in the vineyard, 
 is found in a living Person. The attention 
 usually given to the objects of nature, and to 
 the ordinary ways of God's providence, is con- 
 centrated upon Jesus. The True Vine, by whose 
 living power the water is changed at on*e 
 into wine, displays a greater glory in the act 
 than the natural vine in all its long course of 
 development. The loss of the natural beauty in 
 the miracle, a beauty which is relative, passing, 
 and perishing, is truly a great gain when it 
 reveals to us the higher moral beauty of the 
 altogether lovely One, a beauty that is absolute, 
 perfect, self-sustained ; and a limited process of 
 creation may well be obliterated without regret^ 
 when in its place we find Him in whom creation 
 and the Creator meet in reality, in whom God 
 unites and reconciles all things that are in 
 heaven and in earth. For the humiliation and 
 limitation of the miracle, as part of the humilia- 
 
IX.] CANA OF GALILEE. 249 
 
 tion and limitation of the Incarnation, God 
 highly exalts Jesus, and gives Him a name 
 which is above every name. 
 
 But not only. did the miracle of Cana manifest 
 forth the glory of our Lord's person; it also 
 manifested forth the glory of His work. Some 
 have not hesitated to call in question the propriety 
 of the miracle, on the ground that it seems 
 to be without a moral end, without any urgent 
 necessity ; not an emanation of mercy, but the 
 providing of a superfluous, if not even a noxious, 
 indulgence at a feast. And the attitude of 
 others towards it is more apologetic than com- 
 mendatory ; so many things about it requiring 
 in their estimation to be qualified or explained 
 away. All these objections vanish when we at- 
 tentively consider the miracle ; and out of the 
 cloud of dust which they have raised about it, 
 it emerges purer and grander in its own Divine 
 simplicity. It had indeed a high moral purpose 
 to serve. It illustrates not only the power but 
 the character of Jesus, and the nature of His 
 mission. It shows His wonderful unselfishness, 
 ministering to the enjoyments of others, when 
 
250 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 He refused to satisfy His own necessities ; His 
 tender sympathy, not alone with the wants and 
 woes, but also with the joys and festivities 
 of men ; His willingness to help in time 
 of need ; His approval of the pure affec- 
 tions, and innocent enjoyments, and natural 
 ties of life. Instead of disdaining the com- 
 mon things of the world, it was wrought for 
 the very purpose of imparting to them heavenly 
 glory. It makes joy sacred ; it makes marriage 
 honourable ; it consecrates our daily life and our 
 common home. It sheds a new glory upon the 
 world of nature, and show^s that it is not an 
 alien realm, but an integral part of the Father's 
 kingdom. It reveals to us wonders that the open 
 eye and loving heart may ahvays see in the 
 smallest and most familiar things. It gives 
 solemnity and awfulness to the investigations of 
 science, for it tells us that without the Word of 
 God was not anything made that was made. 
 
 The wine of Cana is the type and image of all the 
 work of Jesus. The water of earthly things, with 
 their utilitarian uses, passed by His blessing into the 
 wine of heavenly symbols. Everything in Nature's 
 
IX.] CANA OF GALILEE. 251 
 
 great ''chamber of imagery," that before spoke 
 of the fall and the curse, is now consecrated to 
 a new symbolism, as typical of life, renewal, and 
 blessedness. Christianity has put its own higher 
 thoughts and meanings and purposes into the 
 common language of men. It exalts the signifi- 
 cance of the old Greek and Latin words which it 
 uses. God, man, faith, charity, righteousness, 
 paradise, convey ideas formerly altogether un- 
 known, or imperfectly understood. The gospel 
 permanently enriches and expands every tongue 
 into which it is translated. Sibree, in his work 
 on Madagascar, informs us that, by the introduc- 
 tion of Christianity into the island, many Mala- 
 gasy words, such as those employed as equivalents 
 for "grace," ''faith," "righteousness," "justifica- 
 tion," &c., have been purified and raised to a 
 higher level. They have now a fulness and mean- 
 ing which they never conveyed to the natives 
 in their heathen condition. The very symbolism 
 of heathendom which Christianity adopts, it 
 invests with a purer and grander significance. 
 The cross, formerly a common pagan symbol of ob- 
 scenity, an instrument of the lowest shame, is now 
 
252 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 a sceptre of power, an emblem of the kingly might 
 of self-sacrificing love ; so that an apostle can say, 
 " God forbid that I should glory, save in the 
 cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." The palm 
 speaks of a nobler victory, the anchor of a surer 
 hope, and the crown of a heavenly glory. Orpheus 
 becomes Christ, who, by the magic music of His 
 gospel, subdues and attracts all creation to Him. 
 Pagan sarcophagi were used for the burial of 
 Christians ; and we find, in the Catacombs of 
 Rome, the subjects of a pastoral or pagan char- 
 acter, carved upon them, invested with a higher 
 symbolical meaning, and adapted to the Christian 
 system. 
 
 In a still more wonderful manner was the 
 v/ater contained in the waterpots of the Old 
 Testament changed into the wine of the kingdom 
 of heaven. The Epistle to the Hebrews, from begin- 
 ning to end, is but one long explanation of this 
 miracle of grace — this transfiguration and transmu- 
 tation of the whole earlier religious history of the 
 Jews into typical representations of the fresh world 
 of faith and hope and love, which is opened up 
 by the Christian dispensation. And He who at 
 
IX.] CANA OF GALILEE. 253 
 
 Cana changed the baser element into the nobler, 
 the weaker into the stronger, can effect a similar 
 change in human hearts and lives by His trans- 
 forming grace. We who are weak shall becom.e 
 strong; we who are earthly shall become heavenly ; 
 we who are passing and perishing shall have life 
 eternal. He who gives us first water, without 
 which we cannot live, afterwards counsels us to 
 buy of Him wine and milk : " Ho, every one that 
 thirsteth, come ye to the waters ; and he that 
 hath no money, let him buy wine and milk 
 without money and without price." He gives 
 us first the necessaries and then the luxuries of 
 the Christian life. It is not a mean life of 
 privation that He gives, but a rich and noble 
 life. " I am come," He says, " that ye might 
 have life, and that ye might have it more 
 abundantly." And all His dealings with us, even 
 our sorrow and losses, are designed to make our 
 life richer, larger, fuller. 
 
 In these various ways then, by its direct effects, 
 and its symbolical teachings, the miracle of Cana 
 manifested forth the glory of Christ's person and 
 work. The glory shone through the cloud of 
 
254 THE MARRIAGE IN 
 
 [CHAP. 
 
 obscurity which had so long enveloped Him, in the 
 manner of that still and peaceful light which He 
 chose as the highest and holiest symbol of Himself ; 
 that force in nature which is so quiet, and calm, 
 and regular, that it seems more the hiding than the 
 manifesting of His power. It burst forth, through 
 the sheath of His humble appearance and circum- 
 stances, like some rare and radiant blossom, that 
 emerges out of common foliage, with strange 
 suddenness and unexpectedness to the unobser- 
 vant eye ; whereas the flower was from the first in 
 preparation, an integral part of the idea of the 
 plant, and the practised eye could discern its 
 embryo, even when the leaf-buds had scarcely 
 begun to open. 
 
 The second effect of the miracle was to call 
 forth the faith of the spectators : ''His disciples 
 believed on Him." We are not to suppose that 
 f this was the beginning of their faith, and that 
 i it was the miracle that produced it. The previous 
 chapter tells us that the disciples who were 
 present at the marriage feast, John, Andrew, 
 Philip, Simon, and Nathanael, had accepted Him 
 as the Messiah upon the testimony of John the 
 
IX.] CANA OF GALILEE. 255 
 
 Baptist, and upon the evidence of what they 
 themselves had seen and heard in their first inter- 
 course with Him. The witness of John and 
 the personal authority of Jesus wrought a deep 
 conviction in their minds. The discipleship of 
 John had prepared them for the discipleship of 
 Jesus. The former had opened up questions of 
 sin and salvation which were fully answered by 
 the latter. Jesus cast the unearthly spell of His 
 purity and beauty upon them, and drew them 
 to His side as the magnet draws the iron. 
 They forsook all and followed Him. Every 
 longing of their higher nature, every hope of 
 their nation and of their own immortal spirits, 
 was met and fulfilled in Him. They believed, 
 nut as the result of any display of supernatural 
 power, but before any miracle had been done. 
 But this first faith of the disciples, notwithstand- 
 ing its appearance of suddenness and maturity, 
 was crude and imperfect. It was just such a 
 faith as we should expect in mere beginners. 
 The mirror was not sufficiently burnished to 
 catch the full clear image of Christ ; the facets 
 of their minds were not adequately cut and 
 
256 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 polished to refract all the superhuman radiance 
 that played upon them from the Sun of 
 Righteousness. They recognised in Jesus of 
 Nazareth, the son of Joseph, the fulfilment of 
 Old Testament prophecy, and of their own 
 Messianic hopes, but not the Divine Son of 
 God ; and the value of their faith consisted, not 
 in its maturity or accuracy, but in the fact that 
 however imperfect it brought them into intimate 
 personal association with Him, in whose society 
 it would blossom and ripen into fulness of 
 knowledge. Were it not for this preparedness 
 as the result of previous belief, the miracle of 
 Cana, wrought as it was so quietly and naturally, 
 would not have produced such a profound im- 
 pression upon the disciples. But brought thus 
 into a state of quickened sympathy with Him, 
 made spiritually en rapport with Him, they under- 
 stood the significance of the miracle, and their 
 faith was rewarded and confirmed by it. They 
 knew more perfectly v/ho He was, and confided 
 in Him more implicitly. The miracle was 
 wrought in themselves ; the water cf their pre- 
 vious weak faith was changed into the wine of 
 
IX.] CANA OF GALILEE. 257 
 
 a nobler, devoted faith, which, working by love, 
 purified their hearts, and ena.bled them to overcome 
 every obstacle and temptation as they followed 
 Jesus in the way. 
 
 " His disciples believed on Him." We see 
 the gradual process of their training. The 
 testimony of John the Baptist, whose disciples 
 they had previously been, had led them to 
 com.e to Christ ; personal intercourse with 
 Christ converted them from followers into dis- 
 ciples ; and then a miracle, as a sign of Divine 
 power and grace, changed disciples into believers. 
 That phrase, " believed on Himi," is almost pecu- 
 liar to the writings of the beloved disciple. 
 Only in two places does it occur in all the 
 synoptical Gospels ; and the Apostle Paul, whose 
 vocabulary it more closely resembles than that 
 of any other Scripture writer, but very rarely 
 uses it. It denotes the absolute transference of 
 trust from one's self to another. To believe on 
 or in a man means so much more than simply 
 to beHeve him. In believing a man we confide 
 in the mere truthfulness of his lips ; we believe 
 that he is incapable of telling a falsehood. But 
 
258 THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 in believing on or in a man, we trust the man's 
 whole being and life, we confide in himself. 
 The disciples of Jesus not only believed 
 the words of Jesus, from whose lips no guile 
 could come; they believed in Himself as the 
 fulfilment of all their hopes and expectations, 
 their highest ideal of the truth, A deeper confi- 
 dence than they could have in themselves they 
 had in Him. He was to them indeed all that 
 He claimed to be, — '* He that should come." 
 
 Jesus never wrought a miracle for directly 
 evidential purposes. He appealed to men's con- 
 sciences and hearts, and not to their senses. 
 If they could only be persuaded by His doing 
 some wonderful work, then He refused to 
 gratify them. He disapproved of the kind of 
 faith which could only be produced by miracles. 
 " Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not 
 believe." He wished Himself to be His own 
 evidence — wished to secure men's confidence 
 and love by what He was, more than by 
 what He did. " Beheve Me," was His first 
 injunction, and only when His personal influ- 
 ence failed to produce any impression upon 
 
IX.] CAN A OF GALILEE. 259 
 
 men of blunted spiritual sensibilities, did He 
 substitute, '* or else believe Me for the very work's 
 sake." It was not for the purpose of creating 
 astonishment, but for the confirmation of faith 
 and love, that He wrought miracles. Only 
 when He had previously drawn out some sign 
 of personal trust in Himself did He proceed to 
 deepen that trust by some mighty work of a 
 suitable kind ; and the merely astonishing 
 element in it was always absorbed in the 
 higher object of revealing His own true nature, 
 as the Lord of heaven and earth, who came 
 to redeem the world which He had made 
 from the evil that had come upon it. And 
 this fact, that Jesus Himself gave a subordin- 
 ate place to the faith produced by miracles, 
 and that the first disciples believed without 
 any miracle, shows to us that we are not 
 placed at a spiritual disadvantage by the cessa- 
 tion of these outward signs and wonders. We are 
 apt indeed to think that a miracle would pro- 
 duce in our minds the conviction which the 
 ordinary means of grace we possess too often 
 fail to create. We crave for a sign from heaven, 
 
26o THE MARRIAGE IN [chap. 
 
 and fancy that it would be easy to enter the 
 kingdom of God through the gate of the senses, 
 and under the guidance of wonder and awe. 
 We have an instinctive longing for some 
 natural, sensible approach to God. But this 
 is a delusion. Without personal holiness no 
 man shall see the Lord ; and only by that 
 moral and spiritual process which assimilates us 
 to the Divine likeness can we approach and 
 realise Him. To the pure in heart alone is He 
 visible — and only in proportion to their purity. 
 
 To such a process a miracle would be a hin- 
 drance and not a help. It would draw away 
 the attention from spiritual to sensible things, 
 and would be, as it has been well said, like an 
 astronomer taking a candle to see the stars. A 
 m.iracle would dazzle our eyes by the little circle 
 of light which it produced immediately around 
 us — enabling us to see the objects at our feet ; 
 but this earthly light would prevent us from 
 seeing the calm eternal w^orlds beyond. The 
 infinite heights of heaven can only be seen hy 
 the light which emianates from themselves. The 
 miracle might produce a temporary impression, 
 
IX.] CAN A OF GALILEE. 261 
 
 by displaying to us something of the greatness 
 and power of God, but it would undoubtedly 
 hinder us from entering into that permanent 
 union of faith and love with Him which can 
 alone save the soul. It would lead to a tran- 
 sient, superficial acquaintance with some of His 
 attributes, but it would hide from, us the know- 
 ledge of Himself; and we should be in the 
 position of those who are represented as appeal- 
 ing to Christ for admission into heaven, on the 
 plea that they have eaten and drunk in His 
 presence, and He has taught in their streets, while 
 He repudiates them by saying, " I never knev/ 
 you." And therefore, although the recorded 
 miracles of Scripture had, and still have, their 
 3wn most important and most necessary pur- 
 pose to serve as evidential works, we can 
 ;ruly say that God has " provided some better 
 thing for us." If we believe in Jesus, we shall 
 see greater things than the disciples saw in the 
 marvel of Cana. We ourselves shall become nev/ 
 creatures ; and all that is truest and m.ost signifi- 
 cant in the miracle will come within our own 
 experience. Our knov\^ledge and belief, beginning 
 
262 THE MARRIAGE J.N CANA. !CH. ix. 
 
 in the letter, will pass on to the spirit. And the 
 miracle of grace in our own hearts and lives will 
 accomplish, in our case, v/hat the miracle of Cana 
 accomplished in the case of the disciples ; it will 
 manifest forth the glory of Jesus, and our faith 
 in consequence will become clearer, more vital, 
 and enduring. 
 
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