All their deepest impressions had been received from John. Would not
He whom John declared to be greater than himself exhibit all His
characteristics in a higher degree? They had first seen Jesus in the
desert. Might not that be His favourite home? Would not He be more of
a solitary, more of an ascetic, than His predecessor? Would not He,
whose origin was said to be heavenly, be more withdrawn from the
things of earth, than the man who said he was not worthy to unloose
the latchet of His sandal? This was a reasonable supposition. There
was another, which would strike many as even more reasonable. The
Christ was associated with thoughts of royalty. He might be the very
reverse of John; not one who could converse familiarly with disciples;
not one who could speak words of friendly admonition to publicans and
soldiers; but one who would walk aloft, asserting the dignity of His
descent, claiming to rule the people, impatient of even seeming to
belong to them.
On the third day came a sign which showed how far either of these
expectations corresponded to the truth. There was a marriage in Cana
of Galilee, and Jesus was sitting there beside His mother. This is the
appearance He made to those disciples who had heard Him described by
such magnificent titles,--to those disciples who had learnt to look
upon the desert life, the life that is withdrawn from all family
relations and sympathies, as the specially holy and prophetical life.
And yet it is clearly no august regal marriage which is taking place
at Cana. A homely, rustic wedding,--one in which there is feasting and
merriment, but no pomp. To this He is bidden; and those fishermen who
had joined Him are bidden too. They are called His disciples. They had
but lately seen Him or known Him, but they are already fast bound to
Him. As His disciples they go with Him, not into a far-off desert, but
to a wedding-feast in a little town.
Here is surely the sign of a change,--a change the very reverse,
perhaps, of what we were looking for. We are coming nearer to the
common earth, to those bonds which connect the inhabitants of earth
with each other, to those which touch all earthly feelings and earthly
interests. The next incident surely does not weaken this impression.
The wine at the feast is said to have failed. We might easily have
formed some vague notion of a festival that was different from all
others, marked by no vulgar events; at least we might have wished that
these should be kept out of sight--that we should not be informed of
them. St. John, the divine, the theologian, does not indulge us in
this wish. He is determined that we should understand it to have been
an ordinary wedding-feast, at which men drank as at others. '_The
mother of Jesus saith unto Him, They have no wine._' Whatever meaning
we may discover in the words when we know who spoke them and to whom
they were spoken, they are plain words, the announcement of the
plainest fact. Some interpreters suppose that Mary only intended to
say, 'Let us withdraw, that the deficiency may not be apparent.' I
like their honesty, their determination to find the simplest sense
they can; but if we consider what _must_ have been the intercourse
between Mary and her Son for so many years; if we remember that a
crisis had come in His life, which must have appeared to her the
fulfilment of all her expectations concerning Him; if we remember that
He was now gathering about Him a set of disciples; it surely is most
reasonable to suppose that these words expressed her desire that He
should, and her belief that He would, put forth some unwonted power
which had been latent in Him hitherto. The old Scriptures told how
Elisha had used his divine powers for the relief of ordinary
necessities,--to heal, for instance, the waters which might have
poisoned the sons of the prophets. Was it strange that a devout reader
of these Scriptures should think that her Son might prove He had
divine endowments in like manner? It belongs to the very nature of a
woman, to the finest part of her nature, to think that power is best
exerted in individual cases, for individual needs. What we are apt to
regard as too mean and minute occasions for a divine might, she
measures by a wiser and more loving rule. The distinctions of little
and large are forgotten, as they ought to be, when the Eternal is in
question. The most blessed of women ought to have exhibited this
tendency in its highest degree. In doing so, she was not degrading Him
whom she loved and reverenced most; she was judging rightly for what
ends His powers on earth would nearly always be put forth.
But yet there _was_ a weakness in this feminine eagerness. There was a
thought that a mere circumstance or necessity could determine the
exercise of an internal energy. And this is what He appears to rebuke
in the next sentence. '_Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour
is not yet come._' A comparison of this passage with one in the
seventh chapter of our Gospel, in which Jesus uses a similar
expression to His brethren when they urged Him to go up to the feast
at Jerusalem that He might make Himself known openly, shows that He
designed to tell His mother that no events or outward motives could
decide when it was right for Him to do a work,--that the Spirit which
He had received without measure was regulating His acts--that He must
be always doing His Father's business. Such an intimation, conveyed to
the one who in all this world knew Him best, who had most inward
sympathy with Him, was no discouragement to her faith,--rather was
certain to awaken it. The power would come forth, not in obedience to
her call, but to a more lofty, more divine, impulse. She could say,
therefore, to the servants, without hesitation or anxiety,
'_Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it_.'
I believe, my brethren, that all these passages in the story just as
much belong to the sign, are quite as essential elements of it, as
anything which follows. Nothing can be more simple or brief than the
passage which comes next. '_There were set there six water-pots of
stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two
or three firkins apiece. Jesus saith unto them, Fill the water-pots
with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And He saith unto
them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they
bare it. When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was
made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew
the water knew:) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, and
saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine;
and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast
kept the good wine until now._' It cannot have escaped you how
carefully St. John informs us that not even the ruler of the feast,
the taster of the wine himself, knew whence the wine came; he merely
makes an idle, merry observation about it. Most of those who sat round
him were probably just as ignorant and as little concerned about the
matter as he was. The servants may have wondered at what they saw; but
their wonder had so little to do with the intention of the act that
the Apostle does not stop to notice it. Very little, then, of the
notion which we affix--honestly and etymologically affix--to the word
_miracle_ has any application here. There was no effort to produce
surprise; if surprise was produced, it led to no conviction. Not one
of those who tasted the water that was made wine, _simply on that
ground_ believed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God.
What, then, was signified by this act? What force lay in it? I can
only beg St. John to tell us. He says, '_This beginning of signs did
Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth His glory; and His
disciples believed on Him_.' What glory did He manifest? In all
fairness and reason, we must again consult the writer of the words
about the sense which he puts upon them. He had said, '_And the Word
was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the
glory as of the only-begotten of the Father,) full of grace and
truth_.' I said, when we met with this passage in the last chapter,
that it was evidently the text of the whole Gospel. The Gospel would
either show how the Word made flesh manifested His glory to those
among whom He dwelt, and how that glory was as of the only-begotten
Son full of grace and truth, or it would fail of its purpose, it would
belie its name. Of the Word it has been said before, '_that all things
were made by Him: that in Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of
men_.' The manifestation of His glory, we might surely then expect,
would include a manifestation of Him as one who exercised creative
power, as one in whom the Life that quickens all things dwells
inexhaustibly. One might expect that this Life, if it was exhibited
upon _things_, would still be in some very remarkable sense an
illumination of _men_. But one would be certain that that illumination
_could_ not be outward to the eye. As life is internal, as all its
movements and operations are secret, though its effects are so
palpable; so the Light which proceeds from this Life--that which is
emphatically the Light of _men_, as distinguished from mere
animals--must be light penetrating into the inner being, filling the
heart, reason, and conscience, scattering darkness in _them_,
preparing _them_ hereafter,--since the Light is not put into any one
to be hid under a bushel, but to be set upon a candlestick,--to show
forth what had so marvellously affected and changed them, to the
world.
Now, if we consider the sign in Cana of Galilee with these thoughts in
our minds,--which we have not invented for ourselves, but derived
straight from the Evangelist,--I cannot doubt that all its different
aspects will come out very harmoniously before us.
The first aspect of it is that which is brought before us in our own
Marriage Service. Christ is said to have 'adorned and beautified the
holy estate of matrimony with His presence and first miracle that He
wrought in Cana of Galilee.' This has been the conclusion at which the
reason of the most thoughtful men has arrived, and to which the
instinctive feeling in all has responded. If Jesus was the Word made
flesh, if the order of the world was established by Him, then His acts
upon earth would be done for the purpose of vindicating this order. By
them He would claim it as His. By them He would say that it did not
belong to the evil one. Marriage, as one of the fundamental parts of
this order, as one of the earliest institutes of humanity, as one that
had suffered most from abuse, would be one of the first over which He
would assert His dominion. And because the ordinance is one in which
all are interested, we should look for the assertion to come in some
distinct and yet very general way; not, I mean, in a broad
proclamation, or in a maxim which is forgotten speedily or frittered
away in the application to each individual instance; not again in some
case clothed with circumstances that take it out of the common range
of cases, not the wedding of a king or of a saint, but one of which
every peasant as well as every king might say, 'This tells me to whom
_I_ must look to bless my wedlock, because He is the Author of it.'
Then, again, that part of the story which refers to the mother of
Jesus becomes, I think, clearer when we contemplate it in this light.
Romanists are puzzled by it, Protestants exult in it, because it seems
to put a kind of slight upon the Virgin. But Protestants and Romanists
agree that Jesus had a divine Father and a human mother. If this act
was one of the manifestations of Him as the Son of God, can anything
be more natural or consistent than that it should be introduced by
words which declare that He could not be in subjection to any earthly
authority, while yet the act itself was an act of ministry to even the
commonest necessities of the sons of earth? Is not this apparent
contradiction the accomplishment of His work, the exhibition of Him in
His complete character? He will _not_ be the servant of His creatures,
not even of His mother; He obeys the Will, which all are created to
obey. He _will_ be the servant of His creatures: He is come into the
world for that end. He is doing the will of His Father when He is
stooping to the lowest of all.
But if this be our judgment of two parts of the sign, it must, I
think, greatly modify, if not alter altogether, the apprehensions
which we have formed of the third part, that which concerns the
turning of the water into wine. We cannot regard the main
characteristic of the marriage and the marriage-feast as being their
commonness, their similarity to what is going on in every part of the
world--to what is going on among ourselves; and then make the essence
of that which our Lord did at the feast consist in its uncommonness,
in its unlikeness to everything that is done elsewhere--to everything
that is done among ourselves. We must abandon one habit of feeling or
the other. Which we shall abandon depends, it seems to me, upon the
strength or the weakness of our faith in St. John's assertion, that in
Him who sat at that feast was life and that all things were made by
Him. If we take those words literally, if we suppose the Evangelist to
mean what he says, then we must assume that what happened then was but
an instance of the working of a universal law. We shall conclude that
all living processes--be they slow or rapid, be they carried on in the
womb of nature or through the intervention of human art--have their
first power and principle in Him, that without Him nothing could
become that does become. Such a belief undoubtedly carries us into
great depths and heights. It increases the wonder with which we regard
every dynamical discovery. But it does not interfere with any
discovery. It gives solemnity and awfulness to the investigations of
science. It forbids trifling in them. It stimulates courage and hope
in them. It makes all superstitious dread of them sinful. The Word,
who is the Light of men, will Himself teach those who seek humbly and
diligently to enter into those operations of life of which He is the
first Mover.
But there are other thoughts connected with this word _Life_, which it
is impossible to sever from it in any case, and which suggest
themselves more directly than any others when the subject is a
wedding-feast and the turning of water into wine. Life has a relation
to joy, which is as close as the relation of death to sadness. Our
minds become confused upon this point. We talk of the burden of life.
We talk of death as delivering us from this burden. But these are
careless expressions, against which the conscience of man rebels. The
Scripture is in harmony with the conscience. It speaks of our carrying
about with us a burden of _death_ from which we need to be delivered.
If it ever speaks of the moment of departure from the world as a
moment of deliverance, it is because, as the poet says, 'Death itself
there dies.' In creating the wine, then, which is said in the old
Scriptures to make glad the heart of man, which had been a symbol of
joy as well as of life to the heathen--the symbol of high inspirations
even when it was actually acknowledged to be the cause of the lowest
animal degradation--the Son of Man was claiming to be the Giver of all
joy, to be the Redeemer of all joy, even in its humblest earthliest
forms, from that which had made it base and inhuman. In what sense the
Source of Joy was also the Man of Sorrows, St. John will tell us in
due time. There is something which binds this very story of the feast
at Cana to His deepest sorrow. Mary has not appeared before in this
Gospel; she never appears again till we meet her beside the cross. She
knew that a sword was to pierce through her soul, at the very time
when she was asking her Son to prove Himself the Lord of nature and
the Giver of delights to man. One work did not interfere with the
other. He could not be really the Word made flesh unless He fulfilled
both.
And now, then, we may understand why we are told so expressly in the
text that '_He manifested forth His glory, and that His disciples
believed on Him_.' Who were these disciples? One of them must have
been that Andrew who told his own brother Simon, '_We have found the
Christ_.' One would have been that Philip who said to Nathanael, '_We
have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and the Prophets, did
write_.' One would have been that Nathanael who said, '_Rabbi, thou
art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel_.' Not one of these
had received a sign or a miracle to impart to them these convictions.
The witness of John concerning the Light, met by the witness in their
own hearts, the manifestation to those hearts that Jesus was the Light
of whom they had heard,--this was their preparation for the
marriage-feast and for what passed there. Because they _had_
acknowledged Jesus and _had_ become His disciples, with a feeble,
imperfect, confused knowledge of course, but with a desire of the
knowledge which they should receive from continual converse with Him;
_therefore_ the sign of the water being made into wine had a meaning
for them which it had not for others; _therefore_ it was to them a
manifestation of His glory; _therefore_ it gave them a belief in Him,
as answering to John's testimony, which they had not had before. An
outward exercise of power strengthened their belief in a power which
lay entirely beyond the region of their senses. They were sure that a
sign had been given them that He who blesses marriage, He through whom
all things live, He from whom all men derive their light and joy, was
actually dwelling among them.
I have been the more careful in considering this subject, my brethren,
because St. John records it as the _beginning_ of the signs which
Jesus did. It is not recorded in the other Evangelists. It is told
here as if the whole scene had come back to the mind of the old
Apostle; as if he had been at that feast, and felt himself transported
there again from his chamber at Ephesus. I think there must have been
a reason why that day was brought again to his remembrance, why he was
enabled to describe it so briefly yet with such distinctness. People
in that age, as we know from St. Paul's Epistles, as we might have
guessed if we had not this decisive information, were prone to set
great store by the powers which had been bestowed upon the Church to
manifest the presence of the Holy Spirit within it. From magnifying
the powers, they had passed, by a natural process, to magnify the
outward effects of these powers; then, to exult in them because they
were strange and peculiar. St. Paul had urged the Corinthians to
remember that all gifts were bestowed for use, and not for show; that
it was better to speak five words which could be understood and might
be profitable, than to speak a thousand words in an unknown tongue,
unless it were interpreted. In spite of these exhortations, the _sign_
was no doubt gradually losing itself in the _miracle_. The unseen
Presence, which could not be recollected without a sense of awful
responsibility, was far less thought of than the display which could
be made in the eyes of the ignorant. Whenever such a temper begins to
prevail, we may be sure that tricks, impostures, lies in the name of
Christ and of God, will spread rapidly; the spirit of falsehood will
creep into the heart which has confessed its allegiance to the Spirit
of truth. Ephesus, we know from the Acts of the Apostles, had been a
favourite home of the magician and the enchanter. In the first fervour
of their belief in Him who is the way and the truth and the life, the
Christians had burnt their books and abjured their lying trade. But
St. Paul, as he told the elders of the city, dreaded that after his
departure grievous wolves might come in among them. There was no
sheep's clothing these wolves were more likely to wear than this.
Reverence for Christ's miracles might be made an excuse for practising
all old heathen arts and enchantments in His name. How suitable a work
for the aged disciple of Christ to lay his axe to the root of this
deception! How fitting a thing was it for him to say, 'You talk of the
miracles of the Christ. I remember the first of them all. I remember
what it taught me then, what it teaches me still. It was not an
enchantment; it was not a wonderment. It was a sign of His presence in
whom is all grace and truth, who was manifested that He might put down
all falsehoods whatsoever, and who will put them down at the last.'
It was the beginning of signs. I do not say that our examination of it
will save us from the trouble of examining each new sign as it comes
before us. By rigorously adhering to that name, as St. John does, we
assume that each has a signification of its own. We shall find them
all very different from this in their circumstances, in some of their
internal characteristics. But I believe that if we follow out the line
of thought into which I have endeavoured to lead you this afternoon,
and if we make St. John's first chapter the expounder of his object in
every subsequent narrative, we shall be delivered from innumerable
difficulties by which the study of miracles generally, and of each
particular miracle is beset. To those who tell us that a Church which
can work miracles is a true Church--to those who speak of miracles
done with a serious purpose in former days, or of miracles done for
the amusement of men that crave for some new thing in our days--we may
make the same answer. The Scriptures teach us to care for no miracles
except so far as they are signs. Of what are your miracles signs? Do
they signify that the Word who was made flesh is not continually
acting in the affairs of men now? If so, they contradict those signs
which we confess to be true signs, those which have signified to us
and to our forefathers that all life is in Him, that all light is from
Him. Or _do_ they say this? Then they say what every marriage is
saying just as clearly; what our ordinary food and wine, what the
growth of trees and flowers, what the plough of the husbandman and the
laboratory of the chemist are such pledges of as your miracles can
never be. God may perform wonders to break the chains of sense, to
make us aware that He is always at work. We are sure that He will not
enact wonders to rivet the chains of sense upon us, to turn away our
thoughts from Him to some low earthly agent. Only a wicked and
adulterous generation seeks for such wonders, for such signs. The
signs which will be given to it, if it does not repent, are signs of
fire and of blood, the slaughter of the first-born, the cry in the
Temple, 'Let us depart.' But if we receive the beginning of signs
which Christ gave us in Cana of Galilee, all common things will become
sacraments of His presence. The husband and the wife will confess that
He has united them. We shall receive the water and the wine both as
His gifts. He will drink the new wine with those who come at His
bidding to give thanks for the blood which He poured out for the
redemption of the world.
DISCOURSE VI.
THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE.
[Lincoln's Inn, 5th Sunday in Lent, March 9, 1856.]
ST. JOHN II. 16.
_Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of
merchandise._
The first three Gospels have been sometimes called the _Galilæan_
Gospels; the fourth, the _Jerusalem_ Gospel. The distinction would be
a very false one, if it implied that our Lord's relation to Jerusalem
was not present to the minds of the earlier Evangelists, or that St.
John overlooked His relation to Galilee. In the ninth chapter of St.
Luke's Gospel, we are told that Jesus set His face to go to Jerusalem.
All the chapters which follow refer to events which took place in that
journey, and contain discourses relating to the end of it, and to the
city itself. In the thirteenth, we hear of His sending a message to
Herod, that a prophet could not perish out of Jerusalem; in the
nineteenth, of His looking down upon Jerusalem and weeping over it.
The climax of the narrative, not only of St. Luke, but of St. Matthew
and of St. Mark, is the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, to be hailed as
a king, to die as a malefactor. On the other hand, St. John presents
his Master to us in the midst of Galilæan disciples. He carefully
omits any allusion to the birth at Bethlehem; he records the first
manifestation of His power and nature as given at Cana.