those thirty years of the Nazareth-Life. What she had learned, what she must have learned, was absolute confidence in Jesus. What she had to unlearn, was the natural, yet entirely mistaken, impression which His meekness, stillness, and long home-submission had wrought on her as to His relationship to the family. It was, as we find from her after-history, a very hard, very slow, and very painful thing to learn it; [2 Luthardt rightly calls it the commencement of a very painful education, of which the next stage is marked in St. Luke viii. 19, and the last in St. John xix. 26.] yet very needful, not only for her own sake, but because it was a lesson of absolute truth. And so when she told Him of the want that had arisen, it was simply in absolute confidence in her Son, probably without any conscious expectancy of a miracle on His part. [3 This meets the objection of Strauss and others, that Mary could not have expected a miracle. It is scarcely conceivable, how Calvin could have imagined that Mary had intended Jesus to deliver an address with the view of turning away thought from the want of wine; or Bengel, that she intended to give a hint that the company should break up.] Yet not without a touch of maternal self- consciousness, almost pride, that He, Whom she could trust to do anything that was needed, was her Son, Whom she could solicit in the friendly family whose guests they were, and if not for her sake, yet at her request. It was a true earth-view to take of their relationship; only, an earth-view which must now for ever cease: the outcome of His misunderstood meekness and weakness, and which yet, strangely enough, the Romish Church puts in the forefront as the most powerful plea for Jesus' acting. But the fundamental mistake in what she attempted is just this, that she spake as His Mother, and placed that maternal relationship in connection with His Work. And therefore it was that as, on the first misunderstanding in the Temple, He had said: 'Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?' so now: 'Woman, what have I to do with thee?' With that 'business' earthly relationship, however tender, had no connection. With everything else it had, down to the utter self-forgetfulness of that tenderest commendation of her to John, in the bitterest agonies of the Cross; but not with this. No, not now, nor ever henceforth, with this. As in His first manifestation in the Temple, so in this the first manifestation of His glory, the finger that pointed to 'His hour' was not, and could not be, that of an earthly parent, but of His Father in Heaven. [1 Godet aptly says. 'His motto henceforth is: My Father and I.'] There was, in truth, a twofold relationship in that Life, of which none other but the Christ could have preserved the harmony.
This is one main point, we had almost called it the negative one; the other, and positive one, was the miracle itself. All else is but accidental and circumstantial. No one who either knows the use of the language, [2 Comp. the passages from the classics quoted by Wetstein in his Commentary.] or remembers that, when commending her to John on the Cross, He used the same mode of expression, [a St. John xix. 26.] will imagine, that there was anything derogatory to her, or harsh on His part, in addressing her as 'woman' rather than 'mother.' But the language is to us significant of the teaching intended to be conveyed, and as the beginning of this further teaching: 'Who is My mother? and My brethren? And He stretched forth His hand toward His disciples, and said, Behold My mother and My brethren!' [b St. Matt xii. 46-50.]
And Mary did not, and yet she did, understand Him, when she turned to the servants with the direction, implicitly to follow His behests. What happened is well known: how, in the excess
of their zeal, they filled the water-pots to the brim, an accidental circumstance, yet useful, as much that seems accidental, to show that there could be neither delusion nor collusion; how, probably in the drawing of it, the water became best wine, 'the conscious water saw its God, and blushed;' then the coarse proverbial joke of what was probably the master of ceremonies and purveyor of the feast, [a Ecclus. xxxii. 1 2.] intended, of course, not literally to apply to the present company, and yet in its accidentalness an evidence of the reality of the miracle; after which the narrative abruptly closes with a retrospective remark on the part of him who relates it. What the bridegroom said; whether what had been done became known to the guests, and, if so, what impression it wrought; how long Jesus remained; what His Mother felt, of this and much more that might be asked, Scripture, with that reverent reticence which we so often mark, in contrast to our shallow talkativeness, takes no further notice. And best that it should be so. St. John meant to tell us, what the Synoptists, who begin their account with the later Galilean ministry, have not recorded, [1 On the omission of certain parts of St. John's narrative by the Synoptists, and vice versa, and on the supposed differences, I can do no better than refer the reader to the admirable remarks of Canon Westcott, Introduction to the Study of the Gospels, pp. 280 &c] of the first of His miracles as a 'sign,' [2 According to the best reading, and literally, 'This did, beginning of signs, Jesus in Cana.' Upon a careful review the Rabbinic expression Simana (taken from the Greek word here used) would seem to me more fully to render the idea than the Hebrew Oth. But the significant use of the word sign should be well marked. See Canon Westcott on the passage.] pointing to the deeper and higher that was to be revealed, and of the first forth-manifesting of'His glory.' [3 In this, the first of his miracles, it was all the more necessary that He should manifest his glory.] That is all; and that object was attained. Witness the calm, grateful retrospect upon that first day of miracles, summed up in these simple but intensely conscious words: 'And His disciples believed on Him.'
A sign it was, from whatever point we view its meaning, as previously indicated. For, like the diamond that shines with many colours, it has many meanings; none of them designed, in the coarse sense of the term, but all real, because the outcome of a real Divine Life and history. And a real miracle also, not only historically, but as viewed in its many meanings; the beginning of all others, which in a sense are but the unfolding of this first. A miracle it is, which cannot be explained, but is only enhanced by the almost incredible platitudes to which negative criticism has sunk in its commentation, [4 Thus Schenkel regards Christ's answer to Mary as a proof that He was not on good terms with His family; Paulus suggests, that Jesus had brought the wine, and that it was afterwards mixed with the water in the stone-vessels; Gfrorer, that Mary had brought it as a present, and at the feast given Jesus the appropriate hint when to have it set on. The gloss of Renan seems to me even more untenable and repulsive.] for which there assuredly exists no legendary basis, either in Old Testament history, or in contemporary Jewish expectation; [1 Against this view of Strauss, see Lucke, u. s. p. 477.] which cannot be sublimated into nineteenth-century idealism; [2 So Lange, in his 'Lifeof Christ,' imagining that converse with Jesus had put all in that higher ecstasy in which He gave them to drink from the fulness of Himself. Similar spiritualisation, though by each in his own manner, has been attempted by Baur, Keim, Ewald, Hilgenfeld, and others. But it seems more rational, with Schweizer and Weisse, to deny the historical accuracy of the whole, than to resort to such expedients.] least of all can be conceived as an after-thought of His disciples, invented by an Ephesian writer of the second century. [3 Hilgenfeld, however, sees in this miracle an evidence that the Christ of the fourth Gospel proclaimed another and a higher than the God of the Old Testament, in short, evidence of the Gnostic taint of the fourth Gospel.] But even the allegorical illustration of St. Augustine, who reminds us that in the grape the water of rain
is ever changed into wine, is scarcely true, save as a bare illustration, and only lowers our view of the miracle. For miracle it is, [4 Meyer well reminds us that 'physical incomprehensibility is not identical with absolute impossibility.'] and will ever remain; not, indeed, magic, [5 Godet has scarcely rightly marked the difference.] nor arbitrary power, but power with a moral purpose, and that the highest. [6 If I rightly understandthe meaning of Dr. Abbott's remarks on the miracles in the fourth Gospel (Encycl. Britan. vol. x. p. 825 b), they imply that the change of the water into wine was an emblematic reference to the Eucharistic wine, this view being supported by a reference to 1 John v. 8. But could this be considered sufficient ground for the inference, that no historic reality attaches to the whole history? In that case it would have to be seriously maintained, that an Ephesian writer at the end of the second century had invented the fiction of the miraculous change of water into wine, for the purpose of certain Eucharistic teaching!] And we believe it, because this 'sign' is the first of all those miracles in which the Miracle of Miracles gave 'a sign,' and manifested forth His glory, the glory of His Person, the glory of His Purpose, and the glory of His Work.
THE ASCENT: FROM THE RIVER JORDAN TO THE MOUNT OF TRANSFIGURATION THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE, 'THE SIGN,' WHICH IS NOT A SIGN. CHAPTER V.
(St. John ii. 13-25.)
It has been said that Mary understood, and yet did not understand Jesus. And of this there seems fresh evidence in the circumstance that, immediately after the marriage of Cana, she and the 'brethren of Jesus' went with Him, or followed Him, to Capernaum, which henceforth became 'His own city,' [a St. Matt. iv. 13; ix. 1; St. Mark ii. 1.] during His stay by the Lake of Galilee. The question, whether He had first returned to Nazareth, seems almost trifling. It may have been so, and it may be that His brothers had joined Him there, while His 'sisters,' being married, remained at Nazareth, [b St. Mark vi. 3.] For the departure of the family from Nazareth manyreasons will, in the peculiar circumstances, suggest themselves. And yet one feels, that their following Jesus and His disciples to their new home had something to do with their understanding, and yet not understanding, of Him, which had been characteristic of Mary's silent withdrawal after the reply she had received at the feast of Cana, and her significant
