HWDKWgg TRANSFERRED TO MAIN LIBRARY YALE UNIVERSITY LINONIAN AND BROTHERS LIBRARY Books must be returned within three weeks from the date of issue. Detention involves a fine of ten cents a week per volume. Overdue books and books needed for special use must be returned on call, under penalty of ten cents a day per volume. All books nrust be returned at least two weeks before Commencement. Date of Issue Date of Issue Date of Issue SEP 2 7 19 06 MAY 6 - 1908 m i? ^ftn0 JAN 2 6-1909 MAR 2 5 1911 NOV 4- 1911 OCT iq mi HGV 2 - 1912 - MAY 3- 1913 .-si.-, a VS15. \ JAN 9 1924 j)£C I i ,1924 DEC 12- i«25 " JAN J 1 uyv' iVjrtft ± J ^"b BY REV. WILLIAM M. TAYLOR, D.D.,LL.D. LIMITATIONS OF LIFE, and other Sermons. With a fine portrait on steel, of the author. Crown octavo, cloth. Fourth Edition SI. 75 CONTRARY WINDS, and other Sermons. Crown octavo, cloth. Third Edition: 1.75 THE PARABLES OF OUR SAVIOUR expound ed and illustrated. 4th Edition, Cr. 8vo, cloth. 1.75 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR expounded and illustrated. Crown octavo, cloth 1.75 LIFE OF JOHN KNOX. With a fine portrait on steel, from a p inting of Lord Somerville's. lvol. 12mo. Second Edition 1.25 *st*Any of the above sent by mail, postpaid, to any part of the United States or Canada, on receipt of price by A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON, New York. THE MIEACLES OE OUE SAYIOUE EIPOUNDED AND ILLUSTRATED BY WILLIAM M. TAYLOE, D. D., LL.D., PASTOR OF THE BROADWAY TABERNACLE, NEW YORK CITY. NEW YORK A. C. ABMSTEONG & SON 1890 Copyright, 1890, By A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON. PREFACE The generous reception given to my book on the Para bles, has encouraged me to issue this companion volume on the Miracles of our Saviour, the rather, as there seemed to be room for a fresh treatment of these suggestive themes. The " Notes " of Trench, like everything which came from their author's hand, are able, thorough, scholarly, and will always hold a very high place in the estimation of students. But the homiletic element in them is meagre, and in these days, when the question how to turn biblical subjects to the best account, in the pulpit, for the meeting of the necessities of our modern life, is attracting so much attention, there is a call for something more direct and practical than the archbishop has supplied. The recent volume of Professor Laidlaw, of Edinburgh, is evidence of that call and will do much to meet it; but before it was is sued the manuscript of the following pages had passed out of my hands, and arrangements had been made for their publication. On such a subject, however, there is no com petition, but only co-operation between brethren. My aim throughout has been expository and practical j-y PREFACE. rather than apologetic. What appeared to be needful in the latter department I have put into the introductory chapter, but in the remainder of the book I have given more prominence to the parabolic teaching of the Miracles as "signs," than to their reality and evidential value as works of Divine power. Those who saw them performed might be most impressed by the latter, but to us now the former has become their most interesting feature and we have come to regard them as forming themselves a part of the Eevelation which at first they introduced and endorsed. We do not mlly interpret them, unless we take this part of their sig nificance into account, and therefore it has been my object to view each as an illustration in the department of nature of some feature of the Divine operation in the domain of grace. That which some despise as spiritualizing, is in truth only a fuller exposition. I have not attempted any classification of the Saviour's miracles, because after Westcott, that is quite unnecessary, and because, taking each just as it comes and putting it in its own surroundings we get a fuller view of its teaching than we could otherwise obtain. Let me only add, that such as it is, I lay the work " at the feet of Jesus," praying that he may bless it to the edifi cation and strengthening of every reader. We M. Taylor. 5 West 35th Street, New York. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTORY I £. THE BEGINNING OF MIRACLES AT CANA OF GALILEE 28 II. THE HEALING OF THE NOBLEMAN'S SON . 46 JII. THE FIRST MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT OF FISHES 60 IV. THE HEALING OF THE DEMONIAC IN THE SYNAGOGUE 73 V. THE HEALING OF SIMON PETER'S MOTHER- IN LAW 86 VI. A SUNSET SCENE IN CAPERNAUM .... 98 VII. THE CLEANSING OF THE LEPER . . . I IO VIII. THE CURE OF THE PARALYTIC 122 IX. THE IMPOTENT MAN AT THE POOL OF BETHESDA 134 X. THE MAN WITH THE WITHERED HAND. . 1 48 XI. THE HEALING OF THE CENTURION'S SER VANT. l6l XII. THE RAISING OF THE WIDOW'S SON AT NAIN 174 XIII. CURES OF THE DEAF AND DUMB . . . .187 v vi CONTENTS. XIV. THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST. . . . 202 XV. THE HEALING OF THE GADARENE DEMO NIAC 212 XVI. THE RAISING OF JAIRUS' DAUGHTER . . 230 XVII. THE HEALING OF THE WOMAN WHO TOUCHED THE GARMENT ..... 243 XVIII. TWO MIRACLES ON THE BLIND .... 256 y XIX. THE FEEDING OF THE FIVE THOUSAND . 268 I/'XX. CHRIST WALKING UPON THE WATERS. . 282 XXI. THE SYRO-PHCENICIAN WOMAN .... 295 XXII. THE FEEDING OF THE FOUR THOUSAND. 307 XXIII. THE DEMONIAC BOY 319 XXIV. THE COIN FOUND IN THE FISH . . . . 331 XXV. THE TEN LEPERS 343 XXVI. THE OPENING OF THE EYES OF A MAN BORN BLIND • • • 355 ' XXVII. THE RAISING OF LAZARUS FROM THE DEAD 371 XXVIII. SABBATH DAY MIRACLES 387 XXIX. THE OPENING OF THE EYES OF BARTI- M^US 4OO XXX. THE WITHERING OF THE FRUITLESS FIG- TREE. ............ 413 XXXI. THE HEALING OF THE EAR OF MALCHUS. 426 XXXII. THE SECOND MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT OF FISHES ............ 438 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. INTRODUCTORY. "Ye .Wen of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Naz areth, a man approved of God among you by miracles, and wonders, and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also fcnow. 'J~Ac?s ii. 22. In entering upon a series of discourses on the records of the miracles of our Lord Jesus Christ which we find in the gospel narratives, some preliminary matters have to be considered.* My object in these discourses will be mainly exegetic and practical, rather than apologetic, yet we cannot, especially in these days, forget that the miracles of the New Testament are, by many, regarded as a serious hindrance to their acceptance of its truth, and so it is not possible to enter upon their study without taking notice of the objections which have been brought against them. But first let us clearly set before you the place which an investigation into the possibility and credibility of the gospel miracles occupies in the order of our exami nation into the evidences of Christianity. It is often al leged that the defenders of the faith are guilty of disingen- uousness, inasmuch as at one time they use the inspira- * For a fuller treatment of the whole subject discussed in this lecture, see the author's " The Gospel Miracles in Their Relation to Christ and Christianity.'7 Randolph & Co., New York. 1 2 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. tion and authority of Scripture for the purpose of prov ing the reality of the miracles ; while at another, they employ the reality of the miracles for the purpose of es tablishing the inspiration and authority of Scripture. But this is not the case. Here is the order of our enquiry. Taking up these ancient books, just as we would any other production's, the first question that faces us is, by whom were they written 1 The next, at what date was each composed ? and the next, have they come down to us as their authors wrote them. Then having settled these questions, as far as possible, there emerges this enquiry : are they credible records of actual occurrences? And it is at this point that the discussion over the miracles begins. Objectors allege that the very presence of the records of miracles in the gospel narratives gives a le gendary character to them and takes them out of the cate gory of veritable history °, and defenders contend that though miracles be apparently inconsistent with the unifor mity of the operation of what are called natural laws, and with the common and ordinary experience of men, yet their performance by such an one as Jesus Christ approved himself to be, is fully in accord with the fitness of things, and has been so established by the weightiest testimony, that it does not take away from the general trustworthi ness of the narratives in which they are described. Before we go further, therefore, we have to settle which of these assertions is correct, that is to say, we have to determine whether these miracles were real or not. Then, supposing that we come to the conclusion that they were real, the next question is : what do these miracles say regarding the person and mission of Him by whom thev were performed? Thus there is no such vicious circle followed by us as the assailants of the gospel allege, but a strictly logical process is carried on, and each subject INTRO D UC TOR V. 3 of investigation comes naturally in the place which prop erly and of right belongs to it. But we cannot fairly be called to settle all of these questions when we are dealing with one, and so here I must be allowed to assume as having been already proved, that the four gospels were written by the men whose names they bear, that they were in existence before the close of the first century, and that they are to-day in our hands substantially as they were when they came from those of their authors. Now with these things held as proved, let us open the New Testament and see if from what it contains we can work our way to the definition of a miracle. In his sermon on the day of Pentecost Peter describes the Lord Jesus to his hearers, as " a man approved of God among them by miracles, and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know," or as the revisers have more exactly rendered the words, " a man approved of God ¦ unto you, by mighty works," (or as they have it in the margin, powers,) " and wonders and signs which God did by him in the midst of you." Here you observe are three terms descriptive of one and the same kind of effects. The first (Swa/nEis) signifies powers' and looks specifically to the agency by which they were produced, an agency defined exactly in the words " which God did by him in the midst of you." The second (ripara) denotes wonders, and has regard to the state of mind pro duced on the spectator by the sight of them. They were of such a nature, so entirely out of the common course of things, and so thoroughly transcending merely human powers that the beholders of them were astonished at them. The third (ffTjjueia), signs, has particular reference to their significance as being the seals by which God au thenticated him who wrought them ; and as being them selves also a symbolical or parabolical part of the revelation 4 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. which he brought to men. A fourth term descriptive of the miracles occurs only in the gospel by John and there always on the lips of the Lord Jesus himself. It is (i'pya) " works," as in the saying, {t though ye believe not me, believe the works :'' and again u if I had not done among them works which none other man did, they had not had sin." Taken in connection with the emphatic assertion of the deity of Jesus Christ, in the opening sec tion of John's gospel, this description of the miracles is most suggestive, as indicating that what by men were regarded with wonder as indicating mighty power, were in the estimation of the Lord himself simply works requiring no more exertion at his hands than that which was common or ordinary with him as divine. Now what were these doings of Christ that are thus variously denominated ? They were such as these : the stilling of a tempest by a word, the healing of disease by a touch ; the raising of the dead to life by a command ; the feeding of a multitude by the breaking to them of five loaves and two fishes ; the walking on the lake without any material support, and the like — all of them works which no merely human power could perform, no opera tion of the laws of nature, so called, can account for, and no legerdemain can either counterfeit or explain. Now in these particulars regarding them coupled with the words used by Peter, "which God did by him in the midst of you," we have the materials for a definition, and so we understand a miracle to be — a work out of the us ual sequence of secondary causes and effects, which can not be accounted for by the ordinary operation of these causes, and which is produced by the agency of God through the instrumentality of one who claims to be his representative, and in attestation of the message which as such he brings. Now let us observe very clearly from INTRODUCTORY. 5 this definition, that a miracle is not a violation of what are popularly called the laws of nature. If from the operation of precisely the same secondary causes an effect entirely opposite to that invariably produced by them were to result, that would be a violation of a law of nature. But a miracle is not such an effect. It is a work due to the introduction and operation of a new cause. When a boy throws a stone up into the air there is a counter action of the force of gravity, so far as the stone for the time is concerned ; but there is no violation of the law of gravitation, for the simple explanation is, that another force generated in the will, and exerted by the muscular energy of the boy, has come into operation and performed its work, while the force of gravity is really as operative as it ever was. In like manner a miracle does not violate nature j but is the result of a new force coming in, to pro duce a new effect. Neither, again, according to our definition, is a miracle- the suspension of a law of nature. For recurring to the illustration which I have just employed, even while the stone thrown by the boy was ascending into the air the force of gravity continued, and the law of gravitation remained the principle on which the relation of bodies to each other in the universe is regulated. The suspension of any law throughout the universe, even for the briefest time, would, unlessprevented in some way by Omnipotence, produce the most disastrous results. But a miracle is not such a suspension. It is the production in a single in stance of a new effect, by the intervention in that instance of a new cause adequate to its production. But at this point we are met by two very serious ob jections, which must be answered and removed before we can go farther. It is alleged by many in these days that such an intervention is impossible ; and David Hume 6 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. affirmed, in his day, that even if such a thing as a mira cle could be wrought, it would be impossible to prove that it had been performed. Let us look at each of these assertions, and the grounds on which they are made. First it is affirmed that such an intervention of a new cause, as is implied in our definition of a miracle, is impossible, inasmuch as the absolute uniformity of the operation of the laws of nature has been established by the investigations of scientific men. Now, I do not presume to deny the uniformity of the operation of the laws of nature, but I venture to ask two questions, the answers to which may throw a flood of light upon the matter in hand. What in this connection do we mean by " laws " ? and what by " nature " ? What do we mean here by laws ? In his work on " The Beign of Law," the Duke of Argyll has enumerated no fewer than five senses in which the term " law " is used by good and reputable writers. But for our present purpose it will be sufficient to distinguish between the two which are most commonly confounded. In its physical sense a law is a convenient formula for the expression of the fact that certain antecedents are invariably followed by certain consequents. It is thus a human inference from the ob servation of a certain class of phenomena, and as Sir John Herschel long ago remarked, " the use of the word in this connection has relation to us as understanding, rather than to the universe as obeying certain rules." They are, as Dr. James Martineau calls them, "nothing else than bundles of facts," and so, as every one can see, they have no causal force in them. They do not, they cannot enforce themselves. But laws in the moral sense are ordinances to be obeyed ; and so many are led to in troduce that principle of obligation which has place in its meaning in the ethical department into its significance INTRODUCTORY. 7 in the physical, and thus make the word denote ordi nances which nature is bound to obey. But, as we have just seen, this is not the case. The laws of nature are simply the formulated expressions of the methods, so far as men have been able to discover them, in which the forces in nature work. And whence are these forces ? If you put the question to science, she can give no answer. But in her doctrine of the conservation of energy, she tells us that the sum of the actual and potential energies in the universe is a constant and unalterable thing, unaffected by the mutual interaction of these forces ; and in her doc trine of the correlation of forces, she teaches that one force may be transmuted into another ; and so she pre pares the way for the acceptance of the doctrine enunci ated by Alfred Wallace, that all force is at last resolvable into will force, and that there is behind the operation of all secondary causes a sustaining, controlling, and guiding energy in the will of a supreme intelligence. Now in this view of the matter, what men call the force of gravity, is just the power of God putting itself forth in the regu lation, according to certain principles, of the relation of material bodies to each other ; and what they call elec tricity is the power of God exerting itself, on certain other conditions, and in certain other circumstances. The same is true of attraction and cohesion in chemistry, and in general that which in physical things makes a cause to be a cause, the nexus which secures that certain conse quents shall always follow certain antecedents, is always and everywhere the power of God. Now, that being the case, where is the impossibility of a miracle, as we have defined it ? If the uniformity of a law be sustained all the time by God, how can it be impossible for him, in a single instance, and for a purpose worthy of himself, to deviate from that uniformity ? Must we believe that by 8 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. the maintenance of these usually uniform modes of putting forth his power, the Deity has bound himself, in no cir cumstances and for no purpose whatsoever, to do anything different from what he has been commonly observed by men to do. If law be God's usual action, and miracle God's unusual action in exceptional individual cases, is not the one just as possible as the other ? But let us ask again what precisely we mean by " nature," in the phrase that has become so popular, " the laws of nature " ? If it be restricted to merely physical phenomena, then it must be confessed that we have in these, taken by themselves, no experience of any variation in the uniformity of nature. But if within the domain of nature we include human nature, then we can no longer make any such admission. For in that we come into contact with a new sort of power, namely, that of the soul of man, which does continually intervene among the forces of nature, and either by combining some of them with others, or by the exercise of its own direct and immediate agency upon one or other of them, does produce effects out of the usual sequences of physical antecedents and consequents. All the triumphs of mechanics, of science, and of art, have been won through the bending by man of the forces of nature to his service We are constantly reaching results which the forces of nature, left to their own operation, never would have pro duced, and if we can do that, may not God do the same, in a higher degree and in a wider sphere; so as to produce effects that shall be not merely supernatural but also superhuman ? The truth is that if we admit that God exists, and is in any intelligible sense the upholder and sustainer of all things, then there is no ground on which we can consistently say that miracles are impossible. Nature and the supernatural alike depend on the power INTR OD UC TORY. 9 of God, and miracles are only manifestations in an unusual way of the same energy by which the common and or dinary processes of nature are maintained. So we see how those who repudiate the supernatural in the form of the miracles, have been driven by the force of inexorable logic, into either the agnosticism, which says it does not know anything about God, or the atheism which denies his existence altogether. But I enter into no argument with the apostles of these negations now. I merely note the fact that the denial of the possibility of miracles is closely connected with the darkness of these dreary voids, and repeat the affirmation that if we admit the existence and personality of God, as the governor of the universe, there is no longer any valid reason for denying that mir acles are possible. It may be said, however, that the doctrine of evolu tion which has lately found so much favor among scien tific men, is conclusive against the possibility of such divine deviations from the usual order of things as we have described miracles to be. That doctrine, as you are aware, is to the effect that all things had their origin in a primordial germ, just as the tree has its origin in the seed, and that what we see and what we are, are the re sults of a process of development or growth. Now, in the first place, let it be noted that this hypothesis is held by some, who believe as we do in the existence and person ality of God. They regard evolution as simply the divine method of creation. They believe that the primordial germ was called into existence, and that its development is superintended by, the divine intelligence. They admit also that the origin of life is to be attributed to the intervention of God. Now these admissions are no more than we require to establish the possibility of miracles, for they concede such a divine interposition as 10 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. we have defined a miracle to be. But the hypothesis is held by others in an atheistic sense, and they use it for dispensing altogether with the agency of God in the uni verse. Now, in that form, we must affirm that it is alto gether inadequate to account for the phenomena which the universe presents, for while it may be conceded that nature may in its several departments be so explained as to present a gradual development from the lower to the higher in these departments, yet there are gulfs in it which evolution cannot bridge. One of these is that which lies between dead matter and living creatures. Haeckel indeed believes in spontaneous generation as the origin of life ; but though it would make much for his favorite hypothesis, Huxley has vigorously asserted that no case of real spontaneous generation has ever been estab lished. But evolution declares that the forces now in oper ation are precisely the same as those which have been at work in all ages, and so if spontaneous generation does not occur now, there is a presumption amounting almost to certainty that it never occurred. Here then is a break in the chain of evolutionary continuity, requiring for the production of life such an intervention as a miracle is. A similar gulf exists between the highest of the lower ani mals and man as a self-conscious moral being, and as one has well said, " It is nothing but assumption on the part of science to lay the principle of continuity across these gulfs, and to conclude that this explains all, without the interposition of creative power." So with these gaps in the evolutionary process, as believed in by its adherents, gaps which cannot be filled up save by the interposition of some cause acting upon the chain from without, it is idle for its votaries to allege, as some of them do, that miracles are impossible. The appearance of life is a miracle, so far as evolution is concerned, as really as any INTRODUCTORY. 11 of the mighty works of the Lord Jesus were miracles ; and so they cannot consistently object to the possibility of their occurrence. But passing now to the question of the credibility of miracles, we are met by the famous argument of David Hume, wherein he attempts to show that no amount of evidence can establish the truth of a miracle. That ar gument may be summarized under these two propositions, " It is contrary to experience that a miracle should be true, but it is not contrary to experience that testimony should be false," and the fallacy lurking under it is effectually exposed when we put the questions, whose experience ? tvhose testimony ? Is it my experience as an individual ? or the experience of men generally? or the special experi ence of those who were contemporaries of the Lord Jesus Christ in Galilee and Judea, when he lived upon the earth ? If it be my individual experience that is meant, that has no bearing on the case. If it be the experience of men in general, then of course it is contrary to that ex perience that miracles should be wrought, for if that were not so, miracles would be no miracles, since it is of their very essence that they should be out of the common course of nature as known and observed by men generally. But if it be the experience of the contemporaries of Jesus, that is the very matter about which the debate is, and to as sert that miracles are contrary to that, is to take for granted the very thing to be proved. Again whose testi mony, according to experience, is found to be false ? Is it the testimony of such men as those who bear witness to the miracles of our Lord ? Nay, verily, for the falsehood of such witnesses would be a greater moral miracle than any of the physical miracles of Christ. But that you may not think that I do injustice to this famous argu ment, let me quote two sentences of the essay in which 12 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. it is advanced. The first relates to experience and the second to testimony. As to experience Hume says: "A mir acle is a violation of the laws of nature, and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the case, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined, and if so, it is an undeniable con sequence that it can not be surmounted by any proof whatever from testimony." But we repudiate the defini tion of a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature, and we beg you to notice how quietly Hume slips in the word "unalterable" before experience, thereby setting out with an assertion which involves in it a mere begging of the question, for if the experience which establishes the uniformity of the laws of nature is unalterable, there is an end of the matter. Moreover, how do we get to know what the general experience of men in respect to the course of nature is ? Our own personal experience indeed comes from personal observation, but, as we have just seen, our individual experience has little bearing on the case, and for our knowledge of the experience of men in general we have to depend on human testimony; and so the whole force of the argument amounts to this, that we must investigate the testimony of those who bear wit ness to the genuineness of the miracles of Jesus as hav ing been performed before their own observation, and see whether that be enough to sustain their allegation that such works were wrought by him. It simply puts testi mony against testimony ; the testimony of those who af firm that they saw these miracles, against that of those who were not present and who declare that in all their experience they never saw such wonders wrought by any one. To refuse to examine that testimony or to give it the weight which of right belongs to it on any such grounds INI^RODUCTORY. 13 as Hume has advanced, or indeed on any grounds whatever, is inconsistent with the very first principles of the inductive philosophy which is connected with the name of Bacon, and to the application of which we owe the whole of our modern scientific progress. These principles are, on the one hand, that nothing which claims to rest on facts is to be rejected without examination; and on the other, that everything which is proved to be inconsistent with facts is to be dis carded, no matter how ingeniously it may be advanced or how eloquently it may be expounded. "It may be so," said Sir Isaac Newton, when some one brought to his attention a fact which at first-sight seemed to be inconsist ent with his theory, " there is no arguing against facts." But the miracles are set forth as facts, and as such it is unscientific and unphilosophical to reject them without investigation. But the second sentence which I shall quote from the essay of Hume relates to testimony, and is to this effect : " It is nothing strange that men should lie in all ages." Well, there have been untruthful men in all ages ; but have such men been at all like those who give their at testation to the genuineness of the miracles of Christ ? That is the question ; and when we bring it to that point, we have no fear for the issue in the case of a candid and unprejudiced investigator. Thus this famous argument, where it is not a begging of the question, is simply an enforcement of the duty to examine most exactly and minutely the evidence by which the miracles of Christ are supported, that we may see whether or not that is sufficient to establish the assertion that he was " ap proved of God unto men, by miracles and signs and won ders which God did by him in the midst of them." Now the first witness whom we call is Jesus Christ him- 14 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. self. It is undeniable that he himself laid claim to the pos session of supernatural power. Thus when the disciples of John the Baptist came to him in their master's name to ask, " Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another ? " He answered : " Go and tell John what things ye have seen and heard ; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, and the dead are raised." * Again to the Jews he said: " I have greater witness than that of John; for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me." f And in the Gospel by John, we have at least three other declarations to the same effect from his lips.j Now we may fairly ask if such an one, as all through these nar ratives he is represented to be, would make such a claim, if it was ill-founded and untrue ? If it was, then he must have been either a deceiver or have been himself deceived. We cannot reject his testimony without impugning either his moral integrity, or his intellectual soundness. If he were a deceiver, then he can no longer be regarded as a pat tern of excellence, but rather as one of the basest of men, since in Him the practice of dishonesty was combined with the clearest perceptions of the right, the true, and the good. Nay, more, if he were a deceiver, we have to face the question, how came the purest morality that the world has ever seen, from one who was himself dishonest ? If we admit that his miracles were genuine, then we have an entirely homogeneous character in Jesus, and everything in it is harmonious with all the rest ; but if we affirm that in claiming to work miracles he knowingly declared what was untrue, then we have in him a moral anomaly, * Lute vii. 19-23. t John v. 36. % John s. 37, 38 ; xiv. 11 ; xvi. 24. INTRODUCTORY. 15 which is more inconceivable in the department of human ity, than a miracle is in that of physical nature, and hav ing before proved that a miracle is possible, we may surely now draw the inference, that if such an one as Jesus was did actually declare that he performed miracles, it is far more consistent with right reason to suppose that he was speaking the truth, than it is to believe that he was uttering a deliberate and predetermined falsehood. But if he was not a deceiver, was he the victim of de lusion ? Was he a visionary enthusiast, who believed that he possessed a power which he really had not ? Now in answer to that I may simply say that no one can peruse these gospels without coming to the conclusion that, speaking of him now only as a man, the mind of Jesus was pre-eminently healthy, and that his intellect was ad mirably balanced. There is no evidence of the existence in him of a morbid exaggeration of any one faculty to the detriment of the rest. On the contrary there was in him a wonderful harmony of opposites. In point of intellect ual ability he must be placed far above all the philoso phers of antiquity ; and in the matter of practical wis dom, not one of them may be compared with him. He looked all round every question, and saw, with unerring precision and at once, the principle by which it was to be settled. He was never carried away by impulse or moved by caprice, but his emotions rose out of his judg ment and were as sound as their source. The proofs of this are to be found on every page of the gospels, to such an extent, that even at the sacrifice of their own consist ency, those who refuse to admit his claims, are compelled to acknowledge the truth of all that we have said regard ing him. Even Renan has said that "his admirable good sense guided him with marvellous certainty ; " that "his leading quality was an infinite delicacy," and that 16 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. " he laid with rare forethought the foundations of a church destined to endure." * Now we may safely ask, if such a man — judging him by no higher than a human standard — was likely to become the victim of his own hal lucinations ? Recollect that the narratives which declare that he claimed to work miracles do at the same time make manifest that he possessed what one has called "the most clear, balanced, serene and comprehensive intellect known to history," and then the dilemma appears as before. Either we must receive this description of his intellectual character and along with that acknowledge the truthfulness of his claim to work miracles; or if, on the ground of his suffering from delusion, we refuse to allow that claim, then we must reject the common idea of his intellectual soundness. We can not hold by both. So here again, we have to make our choice between the acceptance of physical miracles, and that of a psycho logical impossibility, and we do not hesitate a moment in determining which we shall accept. We accept Hume's criterion here and boldly affirm that the testimony of Jesus to his own miracles is of such a kind that its false hood would be more miraculous than the miracles them selves. Nay, more, we declare that if such testimony is to be set aside, it will be impossible to establish any thing by means of human evidence, and all history is utterly discredited. So much for the testimony of Jesus himself. We pro ceed now to put the apostles upon the stand. But before asking them what they have to say, there are two pre liminary facts which must be taken into account. The first is, that they had perfect opportunities for investigating the wondrous works to the performance of * Renan's "Life of Jesus," English People's Edition, pp. 108, 207, 209. INTRODUCTORY. 17 which they gave testimony. The miracles of Jesus were not wrought in secret. These things were " not done in a corner," neither did they require darkness for their per formance. But they were wrought in open day, before enemies and friends alike, and the fullest opportunity of investigating them was given to the world. Let any one read the ninth chapter of John's gospel, and he will be able to judge whether it is likely that the men who could use such means as the rulers of the Jews employed in ex amining into the case of the man who was born blind would leave Christ's other miracles unsifted. Whatever else maybe said, therefore about the miracles of Jesus, it cannot with truth be alleged that no proper opportunity of in vestigating them was enjoyed by his contemporaries, among whom must be reckoned his own chosen followers. Then, in the second place, we must remember that the apostles were competent to pronounce judgment upon the miracles. I grant, indeed, that the majority of the twelve were plain men of little education and with no great social position. I grant also that if the wonderful works of Jesus had been performed on substances with which they were not familiar, or had borne any resem blance to the experiments of the laboratory, or if, in working them, he had used any material agents with whose properties they were not perfectly acquainted, then their testimony, however valuable it might have been in establishing the fact that he did the wonders, would still have been insufficient to prove that these wonders were true miracles. But he employed means which were perfectly within the sphere of their knowledge, and produced effects entirely beyond anything which these means themselves could accomplish. Thus every man knows quite well what a human touch can do and what is beyond its power. It does not require a commission of IS THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. philosophers to enlighten us on that matter, for in such a case one man knows just as much as another. But Jesus, by a touch cleansed the leper, opened the eyes of the blind, and unstopped the ears of the deaf, and hence when he did so he wrought a miracle, on which every man of ordinary discernment was competent to pronounce an opinion. His wonderful works were all of the same character. They were such that if they were well au thenticated as facts, their miraculous character was at once apparent. But to authenticate them as facts did not require more than the average intelligence and com mon sense of men, and therefore the testimony of the disciples cannot be rejected or discredited on the ground that they were incompetent to examine the miracles and pronounce upon them. Now that the disciples do give testimony to these mir acles as facts is patent to every one who reads their speeches and writings. But can we believe them when they thus speak and write ? If we cannot, then in their case, as in their Master's, they were either the victims of their own credulity, or they were themselves imposing on the credulity of others. In plain Saxon phrase, they were either fools or knaves, if they were not trustworthy witnesses*. Were they the victims of their own credulity? Who can rest in such a theory regarding them ? Take Peter for example. Read his letters, and you will be struck with the thoughtfulness of his words and the wis dom of his counsels ; and as you peruse the first portion of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles you will be com pelled to admire not only the earnestness and the acute- ness of his appeals, but also the skill which he manifested in the management of affairs. Whatever else he may have been, plainly he was no fool. Now he gives no un certain testimony on the point before us. On the day of INTRODUCTORY. 19 Pentecost he described Jesus of Nazareth to the Jews as " a man approved of God among them by miracles and wonders and signs which God did by him, in the midst of them, as they themselves also knew," and when writing a letter in his old age, ho reiterated his assertion, saying, " We have not followed cunningly devised fables, but were eye-witnesses of his majesty." Is it likely that a man of this mould could be so imposed upon, that he should adhere thus pertinaciously to this testimony ? What again shall we say of such an one as Thomas ? Here was a man who would accept of no evidence but that of his own senses, and who was determined to sift every matter to the. uttermost. Whatever others might be disposed to do, he would not receive anything save on his own per sonal experience, yet in the case of the greatest of all the miracles, even he was satisfied, and was constrained to say, " My Lord and my God." There too was Philip, who, as is evident from his in terrupting question in the valedictory discourse, " Lord we know not whither thou goest and how can we know the way ? " had much of the disposition of Thomas in him, and was not willing to rest in that which he did not clearly apprehend, and yet he too was satisfied. Then, to mention no more, there was John, the author of the Fourth Gospel, who was far from being intellectually feeble, so far, indeed, that the record which he has given, for all so simple as, at first, it looks, has taxed the great est minds of every succeeding age to understand and in terpret it. No one can attentively read his pages without seeing the stamp of reality in every line of them and he has said, " that which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of Life, that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you." 20 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. We know too little of the intellectual qualities of the other apostles to be able to speak positively concerning them, but taking those whom I have named as a fair spec imen of them all, I am surely entitled to affirm that such men as they were cannot be regarded as blindly credulous followers of one by whom they were cunningly deluded. But if they were not deluded did they delude others ? If they were not fools were they knaves ? The supposi tion that they were so is altogether incompatible with the character which they uniformly manifested. Even their enemies gave testimony to the rectitude of their conduct. They stood out from among those by whom they were surrounded as men of truth and purity. They were often enough before rulers or governors indeed, but never for " matters of wrong or wicked lewdness." They were simple in manner, pure in speech, truthful in char acter, upright in conduct, and there was found even by their adversaries no occasion against them, except it were in the matter of their Lord. The well-known letter of Pliny to the Emperor Trajan gives an account of the mode of life of the early Christians generally at the end of the first and the beginning of the second century, and describes them as having " pledged themselves that they would commit no thefts nor robberies, nor adulteries, nor break their word, nor deny a trust when called upon to deliver it up." But of these excellent ones the apostles were the earliest and the best, and so if they were im postors we are asked to believe that a system which even its enemies have acknowledged to be the purest which the world has ever seen was founded by men who yet were all the while systematically and deliberately propa gating falsehood. Besides, what conceivable motive could they have had INTRODUCTORY. 21 for persevering in this course of deception ? From the time of Pentecost forward all their ideas of earthly glory were abandoned, and they became convinced that the Kingdom of God was not of this world ; yet from that same date their testimony was of the clearest and most unwavering character. They could not look for riches, or honor, or power of an earthly sort, but only for perse cution, reproach, and a violent death. Yet none of these things moved them, but they took joyfully the spoiling of their goods, and counted not their lives dear unto them, that they might be Christ's witnesses wherever they went. Surely a strange phenomenon, if the testi mony which they bore to him was false ! Nor is this all. Among such a company of deceivers, if they were deceivers, it might have been expected that at least one of them should turn against the rest and seek his personal safety by exposing their falsehood. Yet that was never done. The nearest approach to anything of that kind was in the case of Judas ; but as one has very quaintly put it : " He was so struck with remorse at the thought of giving up his lies and becoming an honest man, that he went and hanged himself." Such is an outline of the testimony in behalf of the miracles of Christ, and if you want a judicial summing up before you give your verdict, then take it as given by one of the ablest of the Scottish theologians of a former generation. " The history of mankind," says Dr. Hill, in his well-known Lectures in Divinity, " has not preserved a testimony so complete and satisfactory as that which I have now stated. If, in conformity to the exhibitions which these writings give of their character, you suppose their testimony to be true, then you can give the most natural account of every part of their conduct, of their conversion, their steadfastness, their heroism. But if, not- 22 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. withstanding every appearance of truth, you suppose their testimony to be false, inexplicable circumstances of glaring absurdity crowd upon you. You must suppose that twelve men of mean birth, of no education, living in that humble station which placed ambitious views out of their reach and far from their thoughts, without any aid from the state, formed the noblest scheme which ever entered into the mind of man, adopted the most daring means of executing that scheme, and conducted it with such address as to conceal the imposture under the semblance of sim plicity and virtue. You must suppose that men guilty of blasphemy and falsehood, united in an attempt the best contrived, and which has in fact proved the most success ful, for making the world virtuous; that they formed this singular enterprise without seeking any advantage to themselves, with an avowed contempt of loss and profit, and with the certain expectation of scorn and persecu tion; that although conscious of one another's villainy, none of them ever thought of providing for his own secu rity by disclosing the fraud, but that amidst sufferings the most grievous to flesh and blood they persevered in their conspiracy to cheat the world into piety } honesty and benevolence. Truly," adds the Reverend Principal, " they who can swallow such suppositions have no title to object to miracles." * It is fair to say, before I go farther, that the adver saries of the miracles have sought to weaken the force of these considerations by insisting on certain apparent discrepancies between the narratives of the different evangelists in their accounts of the same miracles, but these will be taken up and dealt with by us when we come to speak of the miracles seriatim. Meanwhile, accepting the proof of the reality of the * Hill's Lectures in Divinity, Vol. I, pp. 47, 48. INTRODUCTORY. 23 miracles as sufficient, let us go on to consider the question, what testimony they themselves give to the position and claims and teachings of Him by whom they were per formed. Going back once more to the words of Peter on the day of Pentecost, we learn on his authority that God approved Jesus of Nazareth " by miracles, and signs and wonders," and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews affirms that the great salvation which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, was confirmed by them that heard him, " God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost." Now from these and other passages to the like effect, which might be quoted, we deduce the conclusion that miracles were the attestations by God of the commission of Him who represented himself as bear ing a message from God to men. They were the creden tials of the legate of the Most High, and endorsed the statements of the ambassador by whom they were per formed. Their testimony thus was not immediately and directly to the doctrine taught by the messenger, but rather to the messenger himself, and through him they stamped his message as from God. It has been often said, in deed, that power cannot in the nature of things confirm truth. But whether it can or not depends entirely on whose power it is. Now in this instance, as we have seen, it is the power of God, and the moral perfection of Deity vouches for the truth of the claims of him at whose word the divine power is put forth, and through that for the truth of the doctrines which he teaches. We con cede most frankly that the claims of Jesus and the doc trines which he taught are true, altogether independently of the miracles, just as a man is innocent or guilty, alto gether independently of his being proved to be either the one or the other. The effect of evidence is not to make 24 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. him innocent or guilty, but to make plain which of the two he is. And in like manner the miracles do not make the claims of Jesus or his doctrines true, but they are the attestation of God that his claims are well founded and his teachings divine. The signature at the bottom of a letter does not in itself guarantee the truth of the contents of the epistle. It only tells me who the writer is, and for my estimate of his statements I must fall back upon what I know of his character. In like manner the power of the miracle taken by itself does not assure me either of the truthfulness of the claims put forth, or of the doctrines taught, by him through whose instrumentality they are performed. For that I must fall back on the character of Him whose power really wrought them, and considering that He is God, I may be well assured that He would not affix the seal of His confirmation to anything that is false, or sanction a claim to speak in His name which is not truthfully advanced. Thus viewed miracles are the outward and visible confir mation given by God to one who claims to possess an in ward and spiritual commission from God, a commission, which from the very nature of the case we cannot investi gate, since it belongs to a region that is beyond the reach of our observation. The prophet declares that he speaks in God's name the things which God has commanded him to utter. That is to say he affirms that an intellectual and spiritual miracle has been wrought upon him, by virtue of which he communicates God's truth to men. But the reality of that mental miracle, if wc may so call it, we have no direct means of testing, and therefore it is attested to us by the performance, at the prophet's word, of another miracle, this time in the department of physical nature, and such as we can investigate for ourselves. So by the genuineness of the visible miracle that of the invisible mira- INTRODUCTORY. 25 cle is confirmed to us. But an illustration will make our meaning perfectly clear. When on the occasion referred to by three of the evangelists (Matt. ix. 1-8 ; Mark ii. 1-13 ; Luke v. 18-26) Jesus said to the paralytic, " Son, thy sins are forgiven thee," He made an assertion the verification of which was impossible by his hearers, be cause forgiveness when it is given is bestowed in that spiritual domain which lies beyond human inspection. Therefore the bystanders said, " Why doth this man speak blasphemies ? Who can forgive sins but God only ? " as if they had exclaimed, " That is a safe state ment for you to make, for who can tell whether he is for given or not ? and how are we to investigate a matter of that sort 1 " But the Lord, fully aware of their objections, said, " Why reason ye these things in your hearts ? Whether is easier to say to the sick of the palsy, thy sins are forgiven, or to say, Arise, take up thy bed and walk ? But that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power (or authority) on earth to forgive sins (he saith to the sick of the palsy) Arise take up thy bed, and go unto thy house. And he arose, and straightway took up the bed, and went forth before them all; insomuch that they were all amazed, and glorified God, saying, we never saw it in this fashion."- * Now observe where the evidential power of the miracle came in here. Jesus admits that only God can forgive sins, and the argument which he draws from the healing of the poor diseased man may be thus amplified. " It is true that none can forgive sins but God ; but it is also true that none can heal this disease of the palsy by a word, but God, if therefore I do that latter work here before your eyes, you have a proof that I am entitled to perform that other work — the for giving of sins — which belongs to a department beyond *Mark ii. 1-12. 26 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. the range of your observation or investigation. The two works, each in its own province, are such as only God can perform, therefore by my performance of the one I give you confirmation of my authority to do the other." But what is true of this one miracle in its relation to the claim made by Jesus, that he had power on earth to forgive sins, is true of the miracles of Jesus as a whole, in their relation to all the claims which he advanced, and all the doctrines which he taught, affixing to them both the official and authoritative seal of God. But while at the first the miracles were wrought mainly as authentications and confirmations of the commission and teachings of Christ and his apostles, they had another and quite different value, as being themselves parts of the revelation which our Lord made, and para bolical illustrations of the great salvation which he preached. Their evidential function was mainly for the conviction of those who witnessed them at the time when they were wrought ; but their spiritual teaching is for all time. They furnish us with illustrations of the deep spiritual necessities of men, which the mission of Christ into the world was designed to meet. They show us from manifold points of view how the great salvation of the gospel is to be received, and how it works in those who do receive it. They give us a wonderful revelation of the heart of God, and alike by the circumstances in connection with which they were wrought, by the manner in which they were performed, and by the consequences which followed on their having been performed they set before us spiritual truths of the deepest importance. In this sense, as Westcott has most aptly said, " they are a treasure rather than a bulwark." And yet when they are thus regarded and interpreted they become evidences of another sort, attesting the love of God, and revealing INTRODUCTORY. 27 the nature of his salvation to sinners of every degree and in every age. We have aforetime regarded them apolo getically, but now we propose to view them parabolically, and, as we proceed from one to another in our exposition, we shall grow in our appreciation of them as bringing, at one time, God nearer to us, and at another, us nearer to God, and as giving us a clearer insight into some of the deepest spiritual experiences of the human heart. As types in the department of nature, of the Lord's working in that of grace, we shall find them exceedingly suggest ive and intensely practical, and my prayer is that He at whose word of power they were performed may keep us f.'om all mere fanciful interpretations, and lead us into their true and full significance. And now, having reached the close of my introduc tory argument, let me conclude by making one personal appeal and beseeching you to accept of the great salva tion which has been proclaimed by Christ, and confirmed by God, through his miracles. Here is now the alternative set before us, salvation through faith in him who is the divinely attested Son of God, or everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power, as the punishment of rejecting him. Take heed how you decide between these two, for it is your eternal welfare that trembles in the balance. Beware, I beseech you, of the guilt and doom of those concerning whom Jesus himself thus spoke, "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin ; but now they have no cloak for their sin. He that hateth me hateth my Father also. If I had not done among them the works that none other man did, they had not had sin, but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father." * * John xv. 22-24. THE BEGINNING OF MIRACLES AT CANA OF GALILEE. John ii. 1-11 . The note of time in the first verse of this narrative sends us back to the incidents which are recorded in the immediately preceding context. The " third day," there fore, must be counted from the interview between the Lord Jesus and Nathanael at " Bethany beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing." This, according to the method of reckoning then followed, would give one clear day be tween the leaving of Jordan by the Lord and his five disciples, John, Andrew, Peter, Philip and Nathanael, and their arrival at Cana of Galilee. We are not told why they went thither. It could not have been, how ever, because the invitation to the marriage feast had been sent to Jesus and his followers before they left the Jordan, because the fact that disciples had begun to join themselves to Jesus was not then known at Cana, and they were bidden as well as he, and apparently, also, at the same time with him. The probability seems to be, that the Lord and the others accompanied Nathanael to his home, which was at Cana of Galilee, and that on reaching their destination, they found that Mary and the other members of her family — for the brethren of Jesus are mentioned in the twelfth verse in such a way 28 • THE BEGINNING OF MIRACLES AT CANA. 20 as to suggest that they were of the company — were al ready in the village at a wedding feast. The peculiarity of the expression, " the mother of Jesus was there," as contrasted with that which says, " both Jesus was called and his disciples to the marriage," seems to indicate just such an order of events as I have described, and it is easy to conjecture how it came about. The appearance in a small hamlet of so many men, one of whom was an inhabitant of the place, would soon be known, and when it was discovered that one of them was nearly related to one of the principal guests, that would lead most naturally to the invitation of them all. The presence of Mary and of the brethren of the Lord, if these last were really pres ent, may be accounted for on the supposition that she was either a near relative or an intimate friend of those in whose house this feast was given, and that is confirmed by the position of prominence which she seems to have occupied among the guests, and the respect which was paid to her direction by the servants. The proximity of Cana to Nazareth is also entirely ac cordant with this view of the case. It is, no doubt, true that some difference of opinion has emerged as to which of two sites is to be identified with Cana of Galilee, but neither of these is more than a few miles from Nazareth, and frequent communication might easily be maintained between dwellers in it and those in either of them. The traditional site is now called Kefir Kana, and is about four miles northeast of Nazareth, but in 1838 Dr. Edward Robinson found a place called Kana-el-Jelil, which is the very name given in the narrative before us, and which is about nine miles north of Nazareth, and this is now generally favored by Biblical geographers.* Dr. Wm. * The suggestion of " Reineh "-only a mile and a half from Naz areth, Toy Lieut. Conder,^lacks confirmation. 30 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. M. Thomson, whose authority on a matter of this kind stands deservedly very high, has said that he sees " no reason to question the identification" made by Dr. Rob inson. He tells us, moreover, that " there is not now a habitable house " in the place, that "the immediate neigh borhood is so wild as to have become a hunting ground," and that a week before his visit to it his guide " had shot a large leopard amongst its ruined houses.'' * Alas, how changed from the day on which our blessed Lord mani fested his glory there by this first of all his miracles ! . It was a marriage feast, and, therefore, a time of glad ness, for among the Jews such occasions were kept with peculiar rejoicings. The parties were usually formally betrothed to each other a considerable time — sometimes as long as twelve months — before the actual ceremony of marriage. On the occasion of the betrothal, the bride groom gave to the bride a piece of money or a letter, it being expressly stated, in either case, that he thereby es poused her. From that moment in the eye of the law they were reckoned as if they had been actually married, but the bride still remained in her father's house. On the evening appointed for the ceremony proper, the bride was led from the home of her girlhood to that of her hus band, with great processional splendor. To borrow the description of Edersheim, " First came the merry sounds of music, then they who distributed among the people wine and oil, and nuts among the children, next the bride, covered with the bridal veil, her long hair flowing, sur rounded by her companions, ' the friends of the bride groom ' and < the children of the bride-chamber.' All around were in festive array; some carried torches or lamps on poles; those nearest had myrtle branches * "Central Palestino and Phoenicia," by Wm. M. Thomson, D D pp. 304-5. THE BEGINNING OF MIRACLES AT CANA. 31 and chaplets of flower's. Every one rose to salute the procession or join it; and it was deemed almost a religious duty to break into praise of the beauty, the modesty or the virtues of the bride. Arrived at her new home, she was led to her husband. Some such formula as, 'Take her according to the Law of Moses and of Israel,' would be spoken, and the bride and bridegroom crowned with garlands. Then a formal legal instrument was signed then, after the prescribed washing of hands and benediction, the marriage supper began, the cup being filled and the solemn prayer of bridal benedic tion spoken over it." * In the case before us, all these parts of the usual pro gramme had been carried out, and the feast had been going on for some time before our Lord and his disciplesi appeared upon the scene. It was no uncommon thing, in those days, for such a festival to last for a whole week; but it is quite impossible to determine either how long this one had been begun before Jesus and his followers joined it, or at what precise stage in its progress the deficiency in the supply of wine became apparent. All that is re corded is that " when the wine failed, the mother of Jesus said unto him, they have no wine." Either from the poverty of the hosts, or because more guests than had been anticipated had arrived, or for some other reason too unimportant to be specified, enough wine had not been pre- ided for the occasion, and the exposure of that would have been a bitter mortification to all concerned. But why did Mary come to Jesus with such informa tion ? Her words were certainly meant as an appeal to him for help out of the difficulty. But surely that which she sought was not, as Bengel has suggested, to give * Edersheim's " Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah./' vol. i. p. 354. 32 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. him a hint to take his leave along with his disciples, and so set an example that would lead to the breaking up of the party before the deficiency was publicly discov ered. Neither was it, as Calvin has imagined, that he mio-ht be led to fill up the time by some interesting dis course, and so take away the attention of the guests from that which was giving her so much concern. The appeal in her words, like that which was afterwards sent to Jesus by the sisters of Bethany when their messenger said to him, " Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick," was a simple statement of the need, leaving it to himself to meet it as he chose. And if it be asked what specially she herself had in mind at the moment, we may perhaps come near to the right answer by looking back over her past experiences and connecting them with the reports of recent occurrences, which she must have heard from the disciples, who accompanied her Son. None knew Jesus as she did. The circumstances attendant on his birth had long been pondered in her heart. She remem bered the homage of the shepherds, and the adoration of the wise men from the far East. She had not forgotten the thrill that tingled through her that day when, after she had found him in the midst of the teachers at Jeru salem, he said to her, " Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business ? " She knew by all these tokens, and by other tokens which could be given only to her self, that he had come into the world on a special mission, and she had watched his progress all through his youth ful career, waiting with an expectancy, all the more eager that it was silent, for the day when the nature ot that mission should be manifested to the world. And now she had heard from the disciples, in the intervals of the feast, of the marvellous things that had taken place with in the last few days at the Jordan. The testimony of THE BEGINNING OF MIRACLES AT CANA. 33 John the Baptist to the glory attendant on his baptism, and to the fact that he was the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world ; the greeting which he gave to Simon ; the call which he addressed to Philip ; the evidence which he furnished to Nathanael of his perfect knowledge both of his general character and of his de votional meditation under the fig-tree, together with the strange, and, as yet, largely incomprehensible forecast which he had given of the future of his work, in the words, " thou shalt see heaven opened, and angels as cending and descending on the Son of Man " — all these would be told her by the zealous disciples. What won der, then, if she began to feel that now at length the time of his showing forth to Israel had come, and that perhaps he might inaugurate it there and then by some work of love and power % We may not say, indeed, that possibly he had already performed some miracles during his life of seclusion at Nazareth, for the assertion of the Evangelist that this was the beginning of miracles with him is altogether inconsistent with such an idea. But Mary was a Jewess, and, like her people generally, she "required a sign." Perhaps, too, she had just such ma terial ideas of the Messiah's Kingdom as were clung to by th.e Apostles down to the very day of the Ascension ; and so there may have been in her application at this time, a desire to hasten on his public revelation of him self, with perhaps a little secret satisfaction at the antici pation of the earthly glory which she thought would come to herself when his royalty should be recognized. Now, if this were indeed the case, we can easily un, derstand not only why she made this application unto him, but also why he met it as he did. For he said unto her, " Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come." The words have to our ears 34 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. a tone of abruptness, and almost of harshness in them, but, as Farrar has said, " that is the fault partly of our version, and partly of our associations." Thus much at least is certain. There was no lack of respect or affec tion in the use of the word "woman," for the same term was employed by him as he hung upon the cross, when, with the utmost tenderness and consideration for her, he committed her to the care of the beloved disciple as to that of a son. He did not call her " Mother," indeed, and as perhaps this may have been the first occasion on which he failed to address her by that name, she may have been deeply moved by its absence, but, as we shall immediately see, his very purpose at this time was to tell her that henceforth there could be no human inter ference, not even that of one who had been so dear to him as she had been, with the ordering and directing of his life. For the phrase, " What have I to do with thee ? " literally, " What is there to thee and to me ? " wherever it occurs, " marks," as Westcott well says, " some divergence between the thoughts and ways of the persons so brought together." Thus far, Jesus had been subject to Mary as a human son to a human mother. But now they had come to the parting of the road which they had so long traversed side by side. Henceforth he is to know no earthly relationship in the sense of being swayed by it or subordinate to it ; but lie is to be guided solely by his Messianic intuition as the Son of God. From this time forward the tie of consanguinity which bound him to mother and brothers and kinsmen, was to be swallowed up in that which united him to his people as a whole, and " whosoever would do the will of his Father in heaven, the same should be his brother and sister and mother." No merely personal considerations now were to have force with him. His life was not to o THE BEGINNING OF MIRACLES AT CANA. 35 be regulated by regard to earthly relatives. He " must work the work of him that sent him." He "must be about his Father's business." However painful it might be to them both, he had come to the point from which she could not accompany him farther, and he must be free from all suggestions and interference on her part. To quote again from Westcott, " the phrase, What is there to thee and to me ? here serves to show that the actions of the Son of God, now that he has entered on his divine work, are no longer dependent in any way on the sugges tion of a woman, even though that woman be his mother. Henceforth, all he does springs from within, and will be wrought at its proper season. The time of silent disci pline and obedience was over."* The words " mine hour is not yet come " have been taken in different senses by different interpreters, but, however understood, they carry forward the meaning which we have just given to the expression that precedes them. Some take the " hour " here as that so often re ferred to in the later chapters of this book, namely, the crisis of his death and resurrection, and would make the reference something like this : "I see that you are thinking of the foundation and proclamation of my King dom, but we are not come to that point yet. Much has to be done and suffered before we reach that goal, and I obtain my throne, and when I do, it will not be at all what you now imagine." But that is far-fetched. Oth ers think that they can see from references scattered over this fourth gospel traces of the fact that Jesus had fore- planned his life, as it were in two parallel columns — one marking the time and the other designating the work that specially belonged to it. As each hour was thought of by him, the work to be done in it came up before him. * " Speaker's Commentary,'' in loco. 36 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. As each work which he had to perform suggested itself to him, the hour for its performance was remembered by him, and so he went on through his public ministry un til he had exhausted both columns, and could write at the bottom of the time one, "Father, the hour is come," and at the bottom of that which registered the works, " I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." Many, therefore, would make the expression here mean, " Have patience, the time has not yet come for me to do any thing. I will do something by-and-by." This view I prefer on the whole as being at once the simplest and the most satisfactory, while, as you may see by compar ing the narrative in chapter seventh, verses 8-10, it is not without a parallel in the history of our Lord. It is as if he had said, " All in good time. Everything in its own season, but the time for doing any thing here is not yet come. Wait till the hour has struck." Thus, though he felt it needful, very tenderly, yet very decidedly, to check the spirit which his mother manifested in her attempt to intrude the claims of her earthly relationship into the sphere of his Messianic work, he did not deny her request, but in that " not yet " there was a promise of a coming blessing, which she immediately prepared to receive. She did not fully understand her Son, but whether she understood him or not, she had learned implicitly to trust him, and her faith here was akin to that of the alien woman, who out of a rebuff made a new plea, for in the very terms of that which was a present postponement she saw an approach ing benefit. Therefore, turning to the servants, who evidently treated her with special deference, she said, " Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it." How long it was before he said anything to them does not appear ; but some may feel a little surprise at his performing the THE BEGINNING OF MIRACLES AT CANA. 37 miracle so soon after he had said, "Mine hour is not yet come," and it may be a relief to them to remind them of some things just similar in his career. When his brothers went up without him to the Feast of Tab ernacles, as narrated in the seventh chapter of this gos pel, he said to them, (verse 8) " Go ye up unto this feast. I go not up yet unto this feast, for my time is not yet come." And then we have the following state ment, " When he had said these words unto them he abode still in Galilee. But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret." And, if any be still troubled, I may simply quote the comment of Westcott, to this effect, " There is no inconsistency between this declaration of Christ, that ' his hour was not yet come,' and the fulfil ment of the prayer, which followed immediately. A change of moral and spiritual conditions is not measured by length of time." * Among the necessary furniture of a Jewish house were water-pots for the numerous washings — both of the hands and of vessels — which were required by their law, as it had been supplemented by tradition, and so, at a feast like that of which we are now speaking, we are not sur prised to find, in a convenient place, six of these stone jars of great size. They held two or three firkins apiece, " making an aggregate, when the whole six were full, of from sixty to a hundred gallons, according as we reckon the firkin as the common Palestinian bath," or that of Sepphoris. These water-pots were replenished when necessary, not by being taken to the well, but by the emptying into them of other smaller vessels, which had been filled elsewhere. Pointing to them, Jesus said unto the servants, " Fill the water-pots with water," and, in * " Speaker's Commentary," as before. 38 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. the zeal of their obedience, " they filled them up to the brim." Then he asked them to " draw out " from the water-pots so replenished, and " bear " the result " to the governor of the feast." This was an official whose posi tion corresponded somewhat to that of the chairman of a banquet among ourselves, but his duties were consider ably more onerous. He was chosen from among the guests, and as it was a point of etiquette that the bride and bridegroom, though in their own house, were to be absolved from all responsibility as hosts, it was the duty of the governor to superintend the feast, to examine and taste everything that came to the table, to take order that every one was served, and to look after the putting of the dishes on the table and their removal from it. He was expected, also, to guide the conversation of the com pany, and to discourage every thing like intemperance. If he saw any one in danger of becoming excited, he was to watch his opportunity, and mingle water with his wine. It was his, too, to preserve order and decorum, and when any one transgressed the bounds of good be havior, he had a simple remedy by which he was enabled to restore quiet, without being under the necessity of naming any particular person, for he broke a glass before the company, and the moment they heard the noise there by produced they returned to the observance of propriety. Such was the man to whom the Lord commanded the servants to take what they had drawn from the water- pots ; but, to their surprise, in drawing 'it they found that it was wine, the good quality of which, when he had tasted it, so impressed the governor, that he jocularly said to the bridegroom, " 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." The word translated "have well THE BEGINNING OF MIRACLES AT CANA. 39 drunk," is very strong, and literally means, " have be come drunken," but as Godet has said, " it is not neces sary to attenuate its meaning, in order to remove from the guests at the marriage feast every suspicion of intem perance. For the saying is used in a proverbial sense, and does not apply to the actual company." * It has been usual, in commenting on these words, to give them a spiritual application, and to say that the way of the world is to produce its best first, and at the last to bring forth its worst in the form of remorse and anguish of soul, while the way of God is just the reverse, and he brings his people through trials first, reserving for the last the purest spiritual enjoyment, and for the last of all that which is best of all, the pure and perennial blessedness of heaven. But though all that is true, there was nothing of it in the mind of the speaker here, for he was giving only a proverbial saying, which he sportively remarked had been not only falsified but reversed on the present occasion, and it is better in interpreting his words to take literally what was literally meant. The miracle was performed either while the water was in the jars or while the servants were in the act of draw ing it off, and it is absolutely needless to speculate on the manner in which it was wrought. It was a miracle, and therefore it is inexplicable, though there was poetic sublim ity in the description given of it by him who wrote " the conscious water saw its God and blushed." But though we can say nothing of the mode in which it was wrought, ii is right to take note of the evidence of its reality which is furnished in the narrative. Observe, then, the follow* ing particulars. Real water was placed in the pots. The Lord Jesus himself did not touch one of the vessels. The water was poured in and the wine was drawn out by the * Godet on John, vol. ii. p. 12. 40 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. servants. There was no collusion between him and them, and they saw all that there was to be seen. The water was put where it was not usual to put wine, and so noth ing in the vessels from which the wine was drawn could give that which was drawn from them the flavor or ap pearance of wine. The wine was tasted and judged by one who knew neither how it was produced nor whence it came. Now let all these circumstances be put to gether and judged as we should judge of the evi dence in a court of law, and it will be impossible to come to any other conclusion than that this was a real transmutation of water into wine, and that it was effected by the power of God. AH mere naturalistic explanations fail to account for it, and so we do not won der when we read that " his disciples believed on him." They believed on him before. Just as the Samaritans believed on him at first because of the saying of the woman, so they had believed on him on the testimony of John. But now they could say, " Now we believe, not because of John's saying, but we have, seen his wonderful works ourselves and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world." So much for the exposition of the narrative. But now, in concluding, let us look at the spiritual significance of the miracle itself. This is suggested to us in the eleventh verse, " This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory," and to have a right conception of what these words suggest, we must read them in connection with those others in the first chapter, which we have elsewhere called the text of the fourth gospel.* " The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the * See " The Limitations of Life and Other Sermons," p. 22. THE BEGINNING OF MIRACLES AT CANA. 41 only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." The changing of the water into wine was thus one of the earliest out-flashings of the glory of Godhead, through the incarnation of the Word, which John brings before his readers, in support of the assertion which it is the purpose of his gospel to prove. We have already seen that it was a work which only divine power could pro duce. But the power is not the only, if it be even the central glory of the miracle, for it clearly symbolizes the change which by his advent into the world the Lord Jesus Christ was to produce upon individuals and upon society. Out of the water-pots of the law he brought that which may well represent the blessings of the gospel. The mission of Moses to Pharaoh was signalized by the changing of water into blood, but the advent of Christ into the world finds its emblem in the changing of water into wine. The one indicated judgment, the other sym bolized joy and gladness. That which is already valua ble in human society is made by the gospel more valua ble than ever, and is increased so as to become the possession of multitudes, who but for the influence of Jesus would never have enjoyed it at all. The water of earthly fellowship is transmuted into the wine of spiritual communion, and in this regard the very magnitude of the quantity of wine produced becomes a most interesting and suggestive thing, indicating, as it does, the great capacity of the gospel for ministering to the highest enjoyment of mankind. As the bread of ordinary food in the miracle of the loaves became, so here the wine of ordinary drink becomes sacramental at the wonder-working touch of Jesus. Both alike are lifted by him into a symbolism that connects them with himself and his relationship to the world which he came to bless. As the one hnks itself on to the words, "I am the Bread of Life," so the other 42 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. is allied to the far-reaching saying, " I am the true Vine." That is for me the significance of the miracle at Cana. Add to this the fact that the first appearance of our Lord after his baptism was at & feast and you will see at once the difference between the gospel and the message even of such an one as John the Baptist. John was an ascetic, keeping to the wilderness. Jesus came into the homes of the people even in their merry-makings. To heal the leper, he touched him; to elevate feasts, he took part in them; and thereby left an example for us; for while as Christians, we are not to be of the world, we must still be in it, and by our remaining in it help to purify and ennoble it. The measures of meal are not to be changed by religiously keeping the leaven from com ing into contact with them, but by the hiding of the leaven in them. And so we are to cleanse the world by our contact with it, not only in its business, but at its feasts. Only remember that to do that we must maintain our Christian character there, for by that alone we can influ ence for good those whom we shall meet. Then, again, as this was a marriage feast, we cannot forget that in the beautiful words of the marriage ser vice Christ " hallowed and adorned " that divine insti tution " by his presence and first miracle that he wrought in Cana of Galilee." At the very beginning of the Old Testament we find the primeval law that one man should be the husband of one wife, and here, at the very outset of his ministry, we have Christ giving his countenance to marriage, thereby showing at what a distance he stood from those who, already in the days of Paul, had begun to forbid men to marry, and had cast reproach upon the holiest and most helpful relationship of life. At all our feasts, therefore, let us see to have Christ present, and to be ourselves Christians. Above all, at our marriage THE BEGINNING OF MIRACLES AT CANA. 43 feasts let us send our first invitation to him, for when marriages among us shall be entered into in that spirit, there will be fewer divorces in the land. And now let me say a few words as to the bearing of this narrative on the matter of temperance. Here we must be specially on our guard against running into " the falsehood of extremes." On the one hand, those who have adopted the opinion that it is a positive sin to drink wine in any quantity as a beverage, have come to the conclusion that the wine of this miracle was not in any degree intoxicating. Now, I cannot but respect the motives of all who are seeking earnestly to grapple with the terrible evil of our modern intemperance. But few things do greater harm to a good and noble — and I will even call it a holy — cause, than to attempt to sustain it by an untenable argument, because, when the antag onist has exposed the badness of the argument, he sup poses that he has found a good reason for opposing the cause ; and just this has been the result in the case be fore us. The wine here produced was the common wine of the country, or, more specifically, just such wine as was usually furnished at marriage feasts, only much better in quality. Now, no one can read the account of the duties of the governor at such a feast on ordinary occasions, or give a correct interpretation to the words of the gov ernor of the feast here, without coming to the conclusion that the wine was such as, if taken in excess, would have produced intoxication. We must not, we dare not, even in support of a good cause, give any other than the true and honest interpretation of the statements of Scripture, and so we must dismiss the idea that this wine was not in any degree exhilarating, but was only grape syrup, and with that must go the other opinion, that it is a positive sin to drink wine in any, even the smallest, quantity. 44 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. But then, on the other hand, we must beware of run ning into the opposite extreme. There was a difference between this ordinary Palestinian wine and those alco holic mixtures which are classed in our day under the generic name of wine, and so the presence of Christ at this feast, and his changing of water into the wine com mon in Palestine in his day, cannot be held as justifying " the ordinary drinking usages of American society to day, with its bars, its wine-shops, its saloons, its beer- gardens, its fiery wines, and strong liquors, and all their attendant evils." * Nothing, either in Scripture or outside of Scripture, justifies these things, and we must use every proper means to do away with them. The true ground on which to advocate total abstinence in these days is to appeal to the drunkard to abstain for his own deliverance, while we expose the sin of his intemperance, and con demn him, in all love, but yet with all decidedness, as much as the drink. Then, inasmuch as he must not be required to abstain alone, we ought to appeal to Christians to imitate the sacrifice of Christ, and to give up their wine out of love to those to whom it is a stum bling-block, saying, like Paul, "If meat make my brother to stumble, I will eat no flesh for evermore, that I make not my brother to stumble." " It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor to do anything whereby thy brother stumbleth."f That is a ground from which no man can be dislodged. I have never known a Christian who did not feel in some degree the force of such an appeal, and the more he had of the Spirit of Christ, the more ready ho was to respond to it. Then we can and ought to appeal to the young, on the ground of the danger that lurks in their use of alcoholic * Abbot's Commentary in loco. t I Cor viii. 13; Rom xiv. 21. THE BEGINNING OF MIRACLES AT CANA. 45 drinks. We can say to them, that if there be two possi ble courses of conduct, one of which is attended with danger and the other with none, prudence dictates that the dangerous course should be avoided and the safe one followed. The only way to turn the edge of that appeal would be to say that there is no danger in the use of these modern drinks. But no one who has the use of his eyes would say that, for the victims of intemperance meet us on every hand. Therefore let every one take the safe course, and so preserve himself from evil, as well as help to deliver the land from that curse which is eating like a cancer into its cities. That is the ground I have always taken in regard to this question, and I see no reason to change it now. Certainly no reason to sub stitute for it, what I must call an unnatural and incorrect exposition of this miracle. I say nothing now on the legislative department of the subject, for that has no place in the exposition of this miracle, and there can be no effective legislation till public opinion is strong enough to sustain and to enforce it. II. THE HEALING OF THE NOBLEMAN'S SON. John iv. 4-3-54. Between the two miracles wrought by our Lord at Cana of Galilee, some important events in his life oc curred. Foremost among these was his visit to Jerusa lem, to attend the first Passover of his public ministry. It was on that occasion that he purged the temple courts of " those that sold oxen, and sheep, and doves," and also of " the changers of money." Then, too, he had his memorable conversation with Nicodemus, who came to him by night, inquiring into the nature of that teach ing which, as he believed, had been so clearly endorsed as divine by the miracles which he wrought. From Jerusalem he passed into the rural portion of Judea, whence, on his route to Galilee, he went through Sama ria, and there, at Jacob's Well, met the woman of Sychar, to whom he revealed himself as the Messiah. At the urgent entreaty of the men of the city to which she belonged, he remained among them for two days, preaching the gospel of the kingdom with marvellous success, and after that he came again to Cana. At Jeru salem he did some remarkable miracles, which are not particularly recorded, but which must have produced most impressive results. This is evident, first, from the 46 THE HEALING OF THE NOBLEMAN' S SON. 47 reference made to them by Nicodemus, when he said,* " Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher sent from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him ; " and, second, from the statement made in the narrative now before us,f to the effect that " the Galileans received him, having seen all the things that he did at Jerusalem at the feast." It thus appears that, so far from seeking to make a sensation, by heaping miracle upon miracle in their narratives of the life of Christ, the Evangelists have given only a few of the more important of his wonderful works, having regard in their selection not so much to the supernatural element in them, as to the spiritual lessons which they taught, or to the characters of those on whom and for whom they were performed, or to the discourses to the delivery of which they led, and of which sometimes they formed the texts. This fact is of special value, from its bearing on the mythical and legendary hypotheses, by which some have sought to account for the stories of the miracles which are contained in the gospels, and it has not always received the measure of attention to which it is entitled. Myths and legends are said to be formed by accretion, but here the latest of the four Evangelists has deliber ately omitted the records of some miracles to which, yet, he refers as having produced very striking results, a pro cedure altogether unaccountable if his gospel had been formed after the manner outlined either by Strauss or by Renan. But how does it come that the Evangelist here gives as a reason for Christ's returning to Galilee at this time the proverb to which he thus refers, in the forty-fourth verse : " For Jesus himself testified that a prophet hath no honor in his own country" ? Would not that have * John iii. 2. t John iv. 45. 48 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. been a good explanation rather of his staying away from Galilee, than of his going to it ? Why, then, is it par ticularly specified in this place ? The question is not without difficulty, and different reasons have been as signed for the apparent anomaly. Some would solve the problem by alleging that "his own country" here must be understood of Judea. But such a view is utterly unten able in face of the fact that the Lord used the same pro verb on another occasion, with direct allusion to his rejection by the men of Nazareth, " where he had been brought up." * Others, therefore, going to an opposite extreme, would take " his own country" as equivalent to Nazareth alone, and so would regard the verse as giv ing the reason why, when he returned to Galilee, the Lord did not go to Nazareth, but to Cana. This, how ever, is nothing better than a makeshift ; and does not commend itself in any degree to our acceptance. A third expedient has been resorted to by those who take the word "for" as equivalent to " although," and tell us that the meaning is that Jesus returned to Galilee, although he quite well knew, and had actually testified, "that a pro phet hath no honor in his own country." But that vio lently cuts the knot, and does not in the least unloose it. Besides, the business of the true expositor is to give the meaning of the language before him, not to alter its terms ; to explain the passage with which he is dealing, not to explain it away. We must, therefore, search for some other principle of interpretation, which shall har monize at once with the terminology of the verse, and with the place in which we find it here. Now, where so many different explanations have been given, dogmatism would be out of place, but one may offer his opinion, to be taken for what it is worth. It is this, Jesus knew * Luke iv. 24. THE HEALING OF THE NOBLEMAN S SON. 49 that a prophet, or great man, beginning his public career among his own people, in a country district like that of Galilee, is almost invariably disregarded, if not, indeed, despised, by those who have known him from the first ; but that if he have left his native district, and gone to the metropolis of the land, and there made for himself a name, then, on his return to those whose provinee or whose town he has made for the time illustrious, he is likely to be received by them with every demonstration of enthu siasm. Hence, his plan was to commence his public ministry at Jerusalem. There, and not in Galilee, his earliest revelations of the glory of the Word that was in him incarnate were to be made, and after that, when Galilee had become resonant with the reports of his greatness, he would return and manifest his glory to his former school-fellows and neighbors. This may have been in his mind when on the occasion of his first miracle at Cana he said to his mother, "Mine hour is not yet come." In any event, very soon after that miracle, and without followingit up by any other Messianic appearances, he went up to Jerusalem, where the works which he did made such a sensation that he could return to Galilee with the certainty of his being enthusiastically welcomed. This is accordant with all that we know of human nature, and is quite in keeping with the statement made in the forty-fifth verse : " Then, when he was come into Gali lee, the Galileans received him ; having seen all the things that he did at Jerusalem at the feast, for they also went unto the feast." His Galilean reputation had no effect at Jerusalem ; but his Jerusalem reputation put all Galilee, for the time, upon his side, with the solitary ex ception of Nazareth. Such, as it seems to me, is the simple explanation of that which at first sight seems so anomalous. 50 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. Among other places in Galilee to which the fame of his wonderful works had spread was Capernaum, a city which, whether, with Robinson, we identify it with the modern Khan Minyeh, or, with Thomson, with Tell Hum, was situated on the western side of the Lake of Tiberias, near to or close upon the shore, and not far from its northern extremity. It was a place of considerable im portance, having collectors of customs, and probably also a custom-house, within its limits, and it was garrisoned by Roman soldiers. It was not far from Tiberias, where Herod had a palace, and its distance from Cana must have been somewhere about twenty miles. In this place, at this time, there dwelt a certain " nobleman," or, as the word is rendered in the margin of the revised version, " king's officer." The original term (BaffiXiKO?) signi fies of or belonging to a king, and it may designate either an officer about the court, or a man of rank connected with the court of Herod. He was neither a Roman sol dier nor a representative in any way of the Roman power, and so the probability, almost the certainty, indeed, is that he was not a Gentile, but a man of Jewish birth. But however high his rank, he was not on that account exempted from " the ills that flesh is heir to," for his son — then, as seems probable from the terms employed concerning him, a child of tender years — was lying ill of a fever, and evidently at the point of death. In these circumstances, having heard of what Christ had done in Jerusalem, and of his return to Cana, nothing was more natural than that he should make speedy and urgent application to him for the healing of his child. What will not a fond parent do for the life of his son ? So he travelled all the way from Capernaum to Cana, and " be sought the Lord that he would come down and heal him." There was thus far, you observe, no sense of spiritual THE HEALING OF THE NOBLEMAN' S SON. 51 need in the man's heart. He went to Jesus, just as to day friends will bring a beloved relative who is danger ously ill, from some rural district to a famous city physi cian or surgeon, in the hope of thereby saving his life. True, hehad a belief in the reality of the miracles that had been already wrought by Jesus, and in his power to work another for the healing of his child, but that was all. Still that faith had in it the germ of something higher and better, and so he of whom it was said, "A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench," took measures for its further development. And, singularly enough, this was accomplished in his case, as in that of the Syrophcenician woman, by what seems at first like a denial of that which was requested. For the Lord said unto him, " except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe." These words are by some explained in this way : Jesus had just come from Sama ria, where, though he had done no miracle, the men of Sychar believed on him " because of his own word," and the contrast between them — among whom, to use his own figure, " the fields were white already to the harvest," and there was a great spiritual readiness to receive the truth at his lips — and the people of his own Galilee, who were chiefly interested in him as a miracle worker, was so great that he could not but mark it with what was in the nature of a reproof, or at least was an observation to their disparagement. To get this interpretation out of the words, however, we must put the emphasis on the ye, "Except ye see," but as the pronoun is not found in the original, I think it preferable, with Edersheim, to put the main stress on the word " see," " Except ye see," and then it will appear that " what the Saviour reproved was not the request for a miracle, but the urgent plea that he should come down to Capernaum," [for the purpose of 52 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. performing it] " which the father afterward so earnestly repented. That request argued ignorance of the real character of the Christ, as if he were either merely a rabbi endowed with special power, or else a miracle- monger. What he intended to teach this man was, that he, who had life in himself, could restore life at a dis tance as easily by the word of his power, as readily as by personal application. A lesson this of the deepest importance as regarded the person of Christ ; a lesson, also, of the widest application to us, and for all circum stances, temporal and spiritual. When the ' court-officer ' had learned this lesson, he became ' obedient unto the faith,' and ' went his way,' presently to find his faith both crowned and perfected. And when both ' he and his house ' had learned that lesson, they would never after ward think of the Christ either as the Jews did, who simply witnessed the miracles, or unspiritually. It was the completion of that teaching which had first come to Nathanael, the first believer of Cana. So also is it when we have learned that lesson that we come to know alike the meaning and the blessedness of believing in Jesus." * But though the words, " Except ye see signs and won ders ye will not believe," have the appearance, and, to a certain degree, the reality of reproof, they yet contain in them an implied promise that a miracle was about to be performed, and so the courtier was not silenced by them. On the contrary, he became all the more urgent, and ex claimed, " Sir, come down ere my child — " or, for the word in the original is the diminutive of endearment — my dear little one " die." He was afraid the Lord would be too late. Not only had he not attained to the faith that Christ could heal his child at a distance by a * Edersheim " Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah," vol. i. pp. 425, 426. THE HEALING OF THE NOBLEMAN'S SON. 53 word, but he had not the faintest idea that he could raise him from the dead. He supposed that if the child died, not even Christ could do anything for him, and therefore he was specially urgent that ho should set out with him for Capernaum at once. When it is felt to be a case of life or death with one dear to us, we cannot think of procrastination — nay, at such a time, even the modern methods of communication by telegraph and telephone are all too slow for us, and we can brook no delay. Ah ! if we were only as prompt, and earnest, and urgent in the matter of the soul as we are in that of the body, how much better would it be with us all ! To the pleading pathos of this pressing appeal the Lord answered, " Go thy way, thy son liveth," and then, as the nobleman believed what Jesus said, his anxiety, his urgency, his importunity gave way to a profound peace, and he went calmly to his lodging for the night. On the following morning he started on his return to Capernaum, and on the way he was met by his servants, who, in their eager joy to tell him the good news at the earliest possible moment, had come, we know not how far, to say to him, " Thy son liveth." This elicited from him the enquiry when he began to amend, indicating that he had expected only a prolonged convalescence, but when they auswered, "yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him," the absolute perfection of the cure, and the correspondence of the time of its occurrence with that when Jesus said to him, " thy son liveth," put the copestone on his faith, so that himself believed, and his whole house. Now see the three degrees of faith in this man's his tory. First, he believed in the truth which he had heard about Christ. Credible witnesses had told him of what 54 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. they had seen at Jerusalem, and others reported to him that the Lord had come to Cana. He believed them and therefore went to Cana, and made application for the cure of his son. Second, he believed the words of Christ addressed to himself, so that after he heard him say " thy son liveth," he had no further anxiety about the life of his child. Third, he believed in or on Christ him self, as indeed the Christ promised to the fathers and the spiritual redeemer of men. And that is the full develop ment of faith. Henceforth, nothing that any one could say would shake this man's confidence in Christ. He believed in him absolutely and implicitly, and could trust him in all places, in all cases, and at all times, and in this faith his household, having had the same evidence of the absolute trustworthiness of Jesus, as he had en joyed, joined, so that, we may well believe, the night of his return to his home was one of glad and grateful con secration of all the members of the family to him who had thus manifested his glory to them through the healing of the child. And now, having taken this passage in detail, we are in a position to see how utterly they mistake, who re gard the narrative on which we have been commenting as referring to the same miracle as that recorded in the opening section of the seventh chapter of the gospel by Luke, which we commonly entitle the healing of the Centurion's servant. There is only one point in which the two histories agree, and that is, that in both the cure was wrought at a distance, but in every other respect they differ. In this the suppliant was connected with the court of Herod ; in that he was an officer of the Ro man army ; in this the nobleman came directly and per sonally to Christ ; in that the request of the Centurion was presented on his behalf by the elders of the Jews ; THE HEALING OF THE NOBLEMAN'S SON. 55 in this the diseased one was a son ; in that he was a ser vant ; in this the disease was fever ; in that it was palsy ; in this Jesus was at Cana ; in that he was at Ca pernaum ; in this the faith of the applicant was so weak that he requested Christ to go to the place where the sick one was and heal him ; in that it was so strong that the applicant could say " Trouble not thyself, for I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter under my roof, . . . . but say the word and my servant shall be healed ; in this a faith weak at first was stimulated into strength ; in that a strong faith was rewarded and eulo gized. To insist, therefore, that the two records must refer to the same persons, and then on the ground of the discrepancies between them, as so regarded, to declare that both the narratives are unhistorical and unreliable, is a method of procedure which must be pronounced to be disingenuous, dishonest and contemptible, and yet it is one to which the antagonists of the gospel have not hesi tated to stoop. They first make the difficulty by per verting the history, and then they plead the difficulty as a reason for rejecting the history. But let this exposure suffice, and now as we approach the conclusion of our exposition, let us put once more into prominence before you, the one great lesson which our Lord designed to teach by the manner in which this miracle was performed. The Jews of his day were al most without exception looking for a Messiah, who should reign among them in splendor, break the power of their earthly oppressors, and be in the midst of them a visible and present help in time of need. They wanted to see signs and wonders, and, most of all, they wanted to see their Messiah as visibly present with them in all time of extremity. They thought that if he was not thus be- 56 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. side them and in their sight, he could do nothing for them ; just as this nobleman supposed that Jesus could cure his son only by going down to Capernaum and com ing into physical contact with the boy ; and just as some among ourselves to-day suppose that the evils of the world can be arrested, counteracted, and finally over come, only by his visible and personal reign upon the earth. But he declined to go down to Capernaum that he might teach, primarily this courtier, and, secondly, the Jews of his day, and all the readers of this gospel, that his physical presence is not required for the forth-putting of his might. He would have them know that in his wondrous personality, the Omnipotence and the Omni presence of Deity, indeed Deity itself, was united to hu manity, that by the exercise of his divine will he could work wonders anywhere, and that by virtue of his om nipresence, he was really equally near to any emer gency of necessity, and could meet it, though unseen by those around. He was at Capernaum to work this cure, though in his human visibility he never left Cana. But that is only one hemisphere of the globe of truth in this matter, and we must complete it by adding to it this other, namely, that we need not travel from one place to another in order to make our requests to Christ. He is not here or there, on earth, but everywhere, and we can reach him with our cry for help anywhere. This man travelled a long day's journey to make his case known to Christ, but we need not now do anything of that kind, for just as his divine power was at Capernaum, though his bodily presence was at Cana, so his divine ear is everywhere, though his presence in glorified humanity is in heaven. Nor let us lose sight of the fact, that the craving among so many modern Christians, for our Lord's visible personal return to earth, is just a repetition in THE HEALING OF THE NOBLEMAN'S SON. 57 another form of this nobleman's prayer when he asked that Jesus would go down to Capernaum to heal his son. We do not need his visible presence to cope with the evils of our times any more than this nobleman needed it at Capernaum for the cure of his boy. He is here already, fulfilling his own promise, " Lo I am with you alway even unto the end of the world," and in that spir itual presence he is really and truly nearer to his people as a whole than he would be were his throne set up in some special locality of earth, where alone he could be seen and applied to by any one for assistance. So it is a weak faith that is continually crying that the Lord may personally come to earth, and we need to learn from this narrative to trust in his own assurance that he is already here, and go our way to do his will in the preaching of his gospel for the conversion of men. But another thing strikes us in this miracle, especially when we read the record of it in connection with the narratives of other miracles in the gospel narratives, and that is the difference in the Saviour's method of dealing with different persons. He had no one invariable plan which he followed in his treatment of applicants and en quirers. With the Centurion he took one course ; with this nobleman he followed another. I think I may risk the statement that no two of his recorded miracles were granted to those who applied for them in precisely the same way ; and as to enquirers, you have but to contrast his conversation with Nicodemus, with that which he had with the rich young man, to be convinced that, knowing what was in men, he dealt with each according to his char acter and disposition. To the Pharisee, who imagined that he was a model in character and life, he said, " Ye must be born again ; " and to the youth who was wedded to his possessions, he said, " If thou wilt be perfect, go and 58 THE MIRACLES OF OUR SAVIOUR. sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven." Now from this characteristic feature in the Saviour's treatment of those who came to him two inferences follow. The first is, that those who undertake to guide enquir ers should seek to vary their methods with different classes of men. That which may be effectual with one, may be very wide of the mark with another. Therefore there should be a separate study of each case, with the view of discovering the general character, disposition, past habits, and present condition of each, and measures should be taken with each accordingly. The skilful physician, beginning with a diagnosis, prescribes what he thereby learns is needed ; and no one but a spiritual quack would think of dealing with all enquirers in one fashion. Then, on the other side, this variation in Christ's methods with different individuals, ought to keep timid ones from being discouraged, because their experience does not run parallel to that of somebody else, of whom they have read or heard. Few branches of Christian literature are more helpful than that of Christian biography when properly used ; but there is this danger in it, that the reader is apt to think that there must be something abnormal in him because he has not had precisely the same experience as that which is described in the work before him. Now the simple truth is that he is neither the better nor the worse for that in itself. He is only different, and Christ has respected his individuality in his treatment of him. The great thing is that we let Christ do with us as he chooses, and then he will choose to save us. Nay, even his very denials of the things which we ask may be the means which he uses to give us something better than we ask, and so to strengthen our faith in himself. Only let us believe and obey his word and trust in himself — then THE HEALING OF THE NOBLEMAN'S SON. 59 his salvation will be our continuous possession, and his service will be our constant joy. There is is a tradition, or opinion, I can hardly tell which, that this nobleman was Chuza, Herod's steward, which may well enough have been the case, and if it was, we can understand how it came that Joanna, his wife, was prominent among those Gallilean women, who, as Luke informs lis,* ministered to Christ of their sub stance. That is conjecture, but this is true : where Christ has been the healer, he is honored as the Lord, and they who have been blessed by him, are devoted to him. We must freely receive from him, before we shall freely give to him. We say much of consecratien to Christ, and that in its own order is all important. But there can be no consecration to Christ until we have received from Christ. Begin then and open your hearts now, that they may be filled with himself. * Luke viii. 3. III. THE FIRST MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT OF FISHES. Zuke v. 1-11. We mark three stages in the course of the first disci ples of the Lord Jesus, from the time when they were adherents of John the Baptist, till that of their formal ordination to the Christian apostleship. First, Andrew and John had Jesus pointed out to them by the Fore runner, as " the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world," and after spending a night with him, be came convinced that he was the Messiah of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write. This led to the introduction of Peter to the Lord, and that was followed, according to the deeply interesting narrative contained in the first chapter of the fourth gospel, by the addition of Philip and Nathanael to the little band of converts. After that it would appear that these five adherents of the new prophet, went with him from the Jordan to Galilee, and then returned to their ordinary occupations. The second stage is signalized by the call addressed to them to follow Jesus, and their giving up for his sake their secular occupation and receiving from him the as surance that he would make them " fishers of men," ac cording to the account contained in Matthew iv. 18-22, and Mark i. 16-20, supplemented by the narrative of the THE FIRST MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT OF FISHES.