men's eyes: but in this miracle, this work of his power, St. John would say, it broke through this its fleshly covering, and manifested itself to the spiritual eyes of his disciples; they "beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father."* And as a consequence, "his disciples believed on him." The work, besides its more immediate purpose, had a further end and aim, the confirming their faith, who already believing in him, were therefore the more capable of receiving increase of faith, of being lifted from faith to faith, from faith in an earthly teacher to faith in a heavenly Lord.t It was said at the outset, that this first miracle of our Lord's had its inner mystical meaning. The first miracle of Moses was the turning of water into blood, (Exod. vii. 20,) and that had its own fitness, for the law was a ministration of death and working wrath; but the first * The Eastern Church, as is well known, counted the Baptism of Christ, being his recognition before men and by men in his divine character, for the great manifesting of his glory to the world, for his Epiphany, and was wont to celebrate it as such. But the Western, which laid not such stress on the Baptism, saw his Epiphany rather in the adoration of the Magians, the first fruits and representatives of the heathen world. At a later period, indeed, it placed other great moments in his life, moments in which his divine majesty gloriously shone out, in connection with this festival; such, for instance, as the Baptism, as the feeding of the five thousand, and as this present miracle, which last continually affords the theme to the later writers of the Western Church for the homily at Epiphany, as it gives us the Gospel for one of the Epiphany Sundays. But these secondary allusions belong not to the first introduction of the feast, so that the following passage should have prevented the editors of the new volume of St. Augustine's sermons, (Serm. Inediti, Paris, 1842,) from attributing the sermon which contains it (Serm. 38, in Epiph.) to that father: Hodiernam diem Ecclesia per orbem celebrat totum, sive quod stella præ ceteris fulgens divitibus Magis parvum non parvi Regis monstravit hospitium, sive quod hodie Christus primum fecisse dicitur signum, quando aquas repente commutavit in vinum, sive quod à Joanne isto die creditur baptizatus et Patris consonâ voce Dei filius revelatur. The same mark of a later origin is about several other sermons which they have printed as his. In his genuine, he knows only of the adoration of the wise men as the fact which this festival of the Epiphany commemorates. This is plainly the true explanation, (in the words of Ammonius, роσłńкην ¿déžavtó tiva tñs els avtòv ñíotews,) and not that, which Augustine, (De Cons. Evang., 1. 2, c. 17,) for the interests of his harmony, upholds, that they are here called "disciples" by anticipation; because subsequently to the miracle they believed; (non jam discipulos, sed qui futuri erant discipuli intelligere debemus ;) as one might say, The apostle Paul was born at Tarsus. Yet as Moses has here, where he stands in contrast to Christ, a mutatio in deterius, so in another place, where he stands as his type, he has, like him, a mutatio in melius, (Exod. xiv. 25,) changing the bitter waters to sweet; and so not less Elisha (2 Kin. ii. 19-22); however the more excellent transmutation, which should be not merely the rectifying of qualities already existing, but imparting of new qualities, was reserved for miracle of Christ was the turning of water into wine, and this too was a meet inauguration of the rest, for his was a ministration of life; he came, bringing joy and gladness, the giver of the true wine that maketh glad the hearts of men.-There is, too, another prophetic aspect under which this turning of the water into wine has been often contemplated, another, though in truth but a different aspect of the same,—that even so should Christ turn the poorer dispensation, the weak and watery elements of the Jewish religion, (Heb. vii. 18,) into richer and nobler, the gladdening wine of a higher faith. The whole Jewish dispensation in its comparative weakness and poverty was aptly symbolized by the water, and only in type and prophecy could it tell of him of the tribe of Judah, who should come "binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt unto the choice vine;" of whom it is said, "he washed his garments in wine and his clothes in the blood of grapes" (Gen. xlix. 11; cf. John xv. 1); but now by this work of his he gave token that he had indeed come into the midst of his people, that their joy might be full.* the Son; who was indeed not an ameliorator of the old life of men, but the bringer in of a new life-not a reformer, but a regenerator. * Corn. à Lapide: Christus ergo initio suæ prædicationis mutans aquam in vinum significabat se legem Mosaicam, instar aquæ insipidam et frigidam, conversurum in Evangelium gratiæ, quæ instar vini est, generosa, sapida, ardens, et efficax. And Bernard, in a pre-eminently beautiful sermon upon this miracle, (Bened. Ed., p. 814,) has in fact the same interpretation: Tunc [aqua] mutatur in vinum, cùm timor expellitur à caritate, et implentur omnia fervore spiritûs et jucundâ devotione; cf. De Divers., Serm. 18, c. 2; and Eusebius (Dem. Evang. 1. 9, c. 8): Zúμßohov i тò ñaρadoždv μυστικωτέρου κράματος, μεταβληθέντος ἐκ τῆς σωματικωτέρας ἐπὶ τὴν νοερὰν καὶ πνευ ματικήν εὐφροσύνην τοῦ πιστικοῦ τῆς καινῆς Διαθήκης κράματος. Augustine is in the same line, when he says (In Ev. Joh., Tract. 9): Tollitur velamen, cùm transieris ad Dominum,....et quod aqua erat, vinum tibi fit. Lege libros omnes propheticos, non intellecto Christo, quid tam insipidum et fatuum invenies? Intellige ibi Christum, non solùm sapit quod legis, sed etiam inebriat. He illustrates this from Luke xxiv. 25-27. Gregory the Great (Hom. 6 in Ezek.) gives it another turn: Aquam nobis in vinum vertit, quando ipsa historia per allegoriæ mysterium, in spiritalem nobis intelligentiam commutatur.-Before the rise of the Eutychian heresy had made it clearly unadvisable to use such terms as κράσις, ἀνάκρασις, μίξις, to designate the union of the two natures in Christ, or such phrases as Tertullian's Deo mixtus homo, we sometimes find allusions to what Christ here did, as though it were symbolical of the ennobling of the human nature through its being transfused by the divine in his person. Thus Irenæus (1. 5, c. 1, § 3) complains of the Ebionites, that they cling to the first Adam who was cast out of Paradise, and will know nothing of the second, its restorer: Reprobant itaque hi commixtionem vini cœlestis, et solam aquam secularem volunt esse. So Dörner (Von der Person Christi, p. 57) understands this passage: yet it is possible that here may be allusion rather to their characteristic custom of using water alone, instead of wine mingled with water, in the Holy Communion: the passage will even then show how Irenæus found in the wine and in the water, the apt symbols of the higher and the lower, of the divine and human. And apart from all that is local and temporary, this miracie may be taken as the sign and symbol of all which Christ is evermore doing in the world, ennobling all that he touches, making saints out of sinners, angels out of men, and in the end heaven out of earth, a new paradise of God out of the old wilderness of the world. For the prophecy of the world's regeneration of the day in which his disciples shall drink of the fruit of the vine new in his kingdom, is eminently here;-in this humble feast, the rudiments of the great festival which shall be at the open setting up of his kingdom-that marriage festival in which he shall be himself the Bridegroom and his Church the bride, that season when his "hour" shall have indeed "come." Irenæus* has an interesting passage, in which he puts together this miracle and that of the loaves, and, as I think, contemplates them to gether as a prophecy of the Eucharist, but certainly sees them as alike witnesses against all Gnostic notions of a creation originally impure. The Lord, he says, might have created with no subjacent material the wine with which he cheered these guests, the bread with which he fed those multitudes; but he rather chose to take his Father's creatures on which to put forth his power, in witness that it was the same God who at the beginning had made the waters and caused the earth to bear its fruits, who did in those last days give by his Son the cup of blessing and the bread of heaven.t Con. Hær., 1. 3, c. 11; Chrysostom in like manner, in regard to the Manichæans, Hom. 22 in Joh. The account of this miracle by Sedulius is a favorable specimen of his poetry: Prima suæ Dominus thalamis dignatus adesse Virtutis documenta dedit; convivaque præsens In vinum convertit aquas; dimittere gaudent Dulcia non nato rubuerunt pocula musto. Implevit sex ergo lacus hoc nectare Christus, Quippe ferax qui Vitis erat, virtute colonâ Omnia fructificans, cujus sub tegmine blando In very early times it was a favorite subject for Christian art. On many of the old sarcophagi Jesus is seen standing and touching with the rod of Moses, the rod of might which is generally placed in his hand when he is set forth as a worker of wonders, three vessels resting on the ground,-three, because in their skilless delineations the artists could not manage to find room for more. Sometimes he has a roll of writing in his hand, as much as to say, This is written in the Scripture; or the master of the feast is somewhat earnestly rebuking the bridegroom for having kept the good wine till last; having himself tasted, he is giving him the cup to convince him of his error. (MUNTER, Sinnbild.d. Alt. Christ., v. 2, p. 92.) II. THE HEALING OF THE NOBLEMAN'S SON. JOHN iv. 46-54. THERE is an apparent contradiction in the words that introduce this miracle. It is there said that Jesus "went into Galilee, for he himself testified that a prophet hath no honor in his own country," and yet Galilee was his own country, and immediately after we are told that the Galilæans "received," 19% or gave him honorable welcome. This however is easily got rid of; yet not as Tittmann, and some of the older expositors propose, by making St. John, in fact, to say that the Lord went into Galilee, though he had testified that a prophet was unhonored at home; for there is no compelling the words to mean this; nor yet by understanding "his own country" as Judæa, and then finding in this saying of his an explanation of his retiring from thence into Galilee. This is Origen's explanation, whom some moderns follow. But the Lord's birth at Bethlehem in Judæa being a fact not generally known, the slight esteem in which he was there held, could not have had in this its ground. Rather we must accept "country" as the place where he had been brought up, namely, Nazareth, and then there is here an explanation of his not returning thither, (with a direct allusion to the testimony which he himself had borne in its synagogue, "No prophet is accepted in his own country," Luke iv. 24,) but going in preference to Cana, and other cities of Galilee; "and the * 'Edé§avro, Benevolè et honorificè exceperunt: so often elsewhere. + IIarpis, cf. Matt. xiii. 54, 57; Mark vi. 1, 4; Luke iv. 16. Chrysostom (Hom. 35 in. Joh.) has this right view of the meaning, with the exception, indeed, of understeading by "his own country," Capernaum (Luke x. 15) rather than Nazareth; paprúpnoe will then have the sense of a plusq. perf., of which there are several instances in the New Testament. Galilæans," as St. John, with an emphasis, relates, received him," though the Nazarenes, the people of his own immediate city, had re jected, and would have killed him.* In treating of this miracle, the first question which occurs is this, namely, whether we have here the same history as that of the servant (rais) of the centurion related by St. Matthew (viii. 5), and St. Luke (vii. 2), and here repeated with only immaterial variations. Irenæust would seem to have looked at them as one and the same history; and Chrysostom and others note such an opinion as held by some in their time, though they themselves oppose it. And this rightly, for there is almost nothing in its favor. Not merely the external circumstances are greatly different; that centurion being a heathen, this noblemant in every probability a Jew; that one pleading for his servant, this for his son; that intercession finding place as the Lord was entering Caper * There is another view of the passage possible, namely that St. John, recording (ver. 43) Christ's return to Galilee, is explaining why he should have first left it, (ver. 44,) and why he should have returned to it now, (ver. 45.) He left it, because as he had himself testified, (μaprúpnoe, a first aorist for a plusq. perfect,) a prophet is unhonored in his own country, but he returned to it now, because his countrymen, the Galilæans, having seen the signs that he did at Jerusalem, were prepared to welcome, and did welcome him, in quite another spirit from that which they manifested at his first appearance; "So (ver. 46) Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee." This is Neander's explanation, (Leben Jesu, p. 385,) and Jacobi's, in the Theol. Stud. und Krit., 1836, p. 906. + Con. Hær., 1. 2, c. 22. Filium Centurionis absens verbo curavit dicens, Vade, filius tuus vivit. Yet Centurionis may well be only a slip of the pen or the memory. In modern times only Semler that I know, has held the same opinion. The term ẞaoiλikós tells rather against that view; since it is little probable that any military office is denoted by it. The exact meaning of the word here never can be exactly fixed; even Chrysostom (Hom. 35 in Joh.) speaks uncertainly about it, and only suggests a meaning; showing that even in his day it was not to be explained by the familiar usage of them with whom Greek was a living language. Three meanings have been offered. Either by the ẞaoihikós is meant one of those that were of the king's party, the royalists, in which case the term would be muck the same as Herodian, designating one of those that sided with the faction of the Herods, father and son, and helped to maintain them on the throne (Lightfoot); or, with something of a narrower signification, the Baoiλikós may be one especially attached to the court, aulicus, or as Jerome (In Esai. 65) calls this man, palatinus (Regulus qui Græce dicitur ẞaothikós, quem nos de aulâ regiâ rectius interpretari possumus palatinum); thus in the margin of our Bibles it is "courtier;" or else, though this seems here the least probable supposition, Baotλikós may mean one of royal blood; so in Lucian the word is four times applied to those who are actually kings, or are related to them. Perhaps no better term could be found than that of our English version, "nobleman," which has something of the doubtfulness of the original expression, and while it does not require, yet does not deny that he was of roval blood |