of the Romanists themselves, that there is more or less of reproof and repulse in these words; and they themselves are obliged to admit that there is the appearance of such; but at the same time they deny the reality. Christ so spake, they say,* to teach, not her, but us, that they were higher respects than those of flesh and blood, even the everlasting interests of God's kingdom, which moved him to the choosing the present moment for the first putting forth of his divine power. This is most true, that it was to teach this; but to teach it first to her, who from her wondrous position as the mother of the Lord, was in chiefest danger of forgetting it. "She had not yet," says Chrysostom, "that opinion of him which she ought, but because she bare him, counted that, after the manner of other mothers, she might in all things command him, whom it was more fitting for her to reverence and worship as her Lord."

Yet whatever amount of rebuke was intended, any harshness which the reply may have in the reading we cannot doubt was mitigated by the manner of its speaking, by the way, too, in which the Lord suffered a near compliance with her request to shine through the apparent refusal. For when she said to the servants, "Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it,” it is plain that she saw in his seeming denial a real granting of her desire. Undoubtedly there is something obscure in that command following immediately as it does the words of Christ, “Mine hour is not yet come." For these words, and above all, when taken in connection with those that precede them, seem to put off not merely for a brief period, -for a few minutes, or for an hour,-the manifestation of his glory as the Messiah, but to put it off altogether till some later period of his ministry. Indeed, this "hour" is generally, and especially in the language of St. John, the hour of his passion, or of his departure from the

nùs repellens ejus intempestivam festinationem, dixit. Quid mihi et tibi est, mulieri nondum venit hora mea, expectans eam horam quæ est à Patre præcognita. He means by the compendii poculum, the cup of wine which should not be the result of the slower and ordinary processes of nature, but made per saltum, at a single intervention of divine power, therefore compendiously. Cf. 1. 3, c. 11, and Chrysostom, (Hom. 21 in Joh.): Εβούλετο . . . ἑαυτὴν λαμπροτέραν ποιῆσαι διὰ τοῦ παιδός, therefore was it that Christ σφοδρότερον ἀπεκρίνατο.

* Maldonatus: Simulavit se matrem reprehendere, cùm minimè reprehenderet, ut ostenderet se non humano, non sanguinis respectu, sed solâ caritate, et ut sese, quis sit, declaret, miraculum facere. St. Bernard had gone before him in this explanation: it was, he says, for our sakes Christ so answered, ut conversos ad Dominum jam non sollicitet carnalium cura parentum, et necessitudines illæ non impediant exercitium spirituale.

Hom. 21 in Joh. The true parallel to this passage, and that throwing most light on it, is Matt. xii. 46-50.

world, (John vii. 30; viii. 20; xii. 23, 27; xvii. 1,*) though in a single instance, (John vii. 6,) it may have, as here, a nearer signification. But it is plain that the Blessed Virgin understood them differently, and, as the sequel showed, rightly. "Mine hour is not yet come;" not till the wine is wholly exhausted will his time arrive; as yet it was only failing: then will be the time to act, when by its complete failure, manifest to all, the miracle will be above suspicion. Otherwise, in Augustine's words, he might seem rather to mingle elements than to change them.t When all other help fails, then and not till then has Christ's "hour" arrived. Luther here notes, and presents to us for an example, the faith of Mary, who from this apparent repulse could yet draw forth an assurance that her petition, whatever may have been the error of pressing it too hastily, or other fault that clung to it, should yet in due time be heard-so that, with entire confidence of this, she said unto the servants, "Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it," evidently believing not merely that he would comply with her request, but in some degree guessing at and even indicating the manner.

Very beautiful is it here to observe the facility with which our Lord yields himself to the supply, not of the absolute wants merely, but of the superfluities of others. Yet it is not so much the guests whom he has in his eye, as the bridal pair, whose marriage-feast, by the unlooked-for short-coming of the wine, was in danger of being exposed to mockery and scorn.‡ And the gracious Lord has sympathy with all needs with the finer as well as the commoner needs of our life. For all the grace, and beauty, and courtesy of life are taken account of in Christianity, as well as life's sterner realities; and the spirit of Christ, in himself and in his disciples, does not slight or despise those any more than these. We may contrast this his readiness to aid others, with the strictness with which he refused to come to the help of his own extremest needs. He who made wine out of water, might have made bread out of stones. But he will do nothing at the suggestion of Satan, though all at the suggestion of love.§

* It is ὁ καιρός there, ἡ ὥρα here.

So the author of a sermon in the Appendix to St. Augustine (Serm. 92): Hâc responsione interim debemus advertere quod de nuptiali vino pars aliqua adhuc fortè resederat. Ideo nondum erat Domini plena hora virtutum, ne miscere magis elementa quàm mutare videretur [ne aqua vino admixta crederetur: Grotius]. Maldonatus: Cur ergo miraculum fecit, si tempus non venerat? Non venerat, cùm mater petivit ; venerat cùm fecit, modico licet intervallo. So Cyril, Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euthymius. Hilary (De Trin., 1. 3, § 5): Sponsus tristis est, familia turbatur, sollemnitas nuptialis convivii periclitatur.

§ Augustine (Serm. 123, c. 2): Qui poterat talia facere, dignatus est indigere. Qui fecit de aquâ vinum, potuit facere et de lapidibus panem.

"There were set there six water-pots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece." Every thing is here narrated, as Chrysostom* observes, so as to exclude any possible semblance of collusion. They were water-jars, not wine-vessels, so that none could say that very probably there was a residue or sediment of wine remaining in them, which lent a flavor to water poured on it, and so formed the thinnest kind of wine-even as the same is witnessed against in the praise which the ruler of the feast bestows upon the new supply. (ver. 10.) The fact of these vessels being at hand is no less accounted for: it was not by any premeditated plan, but they were there in accordance with the customs and traditionary observances of the Jews in the matter of washing; for this seems more probable than that this "purifying" has reference to any distinctly commanded legal observances. The purifying was such as the Jewish doctors had enjoined and made necessary. (Matt. xv. 2; Mark vii. 2-4; Luke xi. 39.) The quantity, too, which these vessels contained, was enormous-not such as might have been brought in unobserved; but each of these water-pots contained "two or three firkins apiece." And at the beginning they were empty; so that the servants who, in obedience to the commandment, had filled the water-pots with water, and who knew what liquid they had poured in, were themselves, by this very work which they had done, witnesses of the reality of the miracle. Else it might only have appeared, as in fact it did only appear to the ruler of the feast, that the wine came from some unexpected quarter; "He knew not whence it was, but the servants which drew the water,"—that is, not the water now made wine, but who had drawn the simpler element, which Christ chose to use as the substratum on which he should afterwards exercise his miraculous powers, “knew."

Like most other acts of creation, or more strictly, of becoming, this of the water becoming wine, is withdrawn from sight, and that which is poured into the jars as water is drawn out as wine; but the actual process of the change we labor in vain to conceive. And yet in truth it is in no way stranger, save in the rapidity with which it is effected, than that which is every day going forward among us, but to which use and custom have so dulled our eyes, that commonly we do not marvel at it at all:

*Hom. 22 in Joh.

The Vulgate rightly, Qui hauserant. De Wette: Welche das Wasser geschöp fet hatten. So the Ambrosian Hymn :

Vel hydriis plenis aquæ
Vini saporem infuderis,
Hausit minister conscius

Quod ipse non impleverat.

and because we can call it by its name, suppose that we have discovered its secret. He who does every year prepare the wine in the grape, causing it to drink up and expand with the moisture of earth and heaven, to take this up into itself, and transmute into its own nobler juices, did now gather together all those his slower processes into the act of a single moment, and accomplish in an instant what ordinarily he does not accomplish but in many months. This analogy does not indeed help us to understand what the Lord did now, but yet brings before us that in this he was working in the line of (above, indeed, but not across, or counter to) his more ordinary workings, which we see daily around us, the unnoticed miracles of every-day nature. That which this had of its own peculiar, and taking it out from the order of these, was the power and will by which all the intervening steps of these tardier processes were overleaped, and the result obtained at once.*

It has been sometimes debated whether "the ruler of the feast" was himself one of the guests, who either by general consent or the selection of the host was set over the banquet; or a chief attendant only, charged with ordering the course of the feast, and overlooking the ministrations of the inferior servants. This last is the view taken by Chrysostom and others; but the analogy of Greek and Roman usagest seems rather to point him out as himself one of the invited guests, who was invested with this office for the time; and the passage from the Son of Sirach quoted below,§ shows that a like custom was in use among the Jews.

* Augustine (In Ev. Joh., Tract. 8): Ipse enim fecit vinum illo die in nuptiis in sex illis hydriis quas impleri aquâ præcepit, qui omni anno facit hoc in vitibus. Sicut enim quod miserunt ministri in hydrias, in vinum conversum est opere Domini, sic et quod nubes fundunt, in vinum convertitur ejusdem opere Domini. Illud autem non miramur, quia omni anno fit: assiduitate amisit admirationem. And again (Serm. 123, c. 3): Quæ aqua erat, vinum factum viderunt homines et obstupuerunt. Quid aliud fit de pluviâ per radicem vitis? Ipse illa fecit, ipse ista; illa ut pascaris, ista ut mireris. So also De Gen. ad Litt., 1. 6, c. 13. Chrysostom (Hom. 22 in Joh.): Δεικνὺς ὅτι αὐτός ἐστιν ὁ ἐν ταῖς ἀμπέλοις τὸ ὕδωρ μεταβάλλων, καὶ τὸν ὑετὸν διὰ τῆς ῥίζης εἰς οἶνον τρέπων, ὅπερ ἐν τῷ φυτῷ διὰ πολλοῦ χρόνου γίνεται, τοῦτο ἀθρόον ↳ Tử yáμç elpyáσaro. Cf. Gregory the Great, Moral., L 6, c. 15.

So by Severus; by Juvencus, who calls him summum ministrum; by Kuinoel, and others.

† This ἀρχιτρίκλινος will then answer very much to the συμποσιάρχης among the Greeks, and the rex convivii, or magister convivii, or modimperator, of the Romans. It was his part, in the words of Plato, naidaɣwyɛiv ovμñóσιον. (BECKER's Charicles, τ. 1, p. 465.) He appears here as the προγευστης. The word αρχιτρίκλινος is late, and of rare occurrence; Petronius has triclinarches.

§ Sirac. xxxii. 1, 2: "If thou be made the master of a feast (ʼnyoúμevoç), lift not thyself up, but be among them as one of the rest; take diligent care of them, and so sit down. And when thou hast done all thy office, take thy place, that thou mayest be merry with them, and receive a crown for thy well ordering of the feast."

Indeed the freedom of remonstrance which he allows himself with the host seems almost decisive of his position; for such would hardly have found place but from an equal. To him, as having the function of tasting and distributing the wine, the Lord commanded that which he had made to be brought, even in this little matter recognizing and honoring the established order and usages of society, and giving to every man his due. And now 66 when the ruler of the feast had tasted the water which was made wine, and knew not whence it was, he called the bridegroom," we need not suppose actually summoned him from his place, but he called to him,* with something of a festive exclamation, not unsuitable to the season, "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."

Many interpreters have been very anxious to rescue the original word, which we have given by "well drunk," from involving aught of excess, as though, did it imply that, we must necessarily conclude that the guests at this marriage festival had already drunken too much, that this was one of the temulenta convivia, which St. Cyprian speaks of as too often disgracing a marriage, with all the difficulties, of Christ being present at such an abuse of God's gifts, and, stranger still, ministering by his divine power to a yet further excess. But there is no need of such anxious dealing with the word.§ The ruler of the feast is but alluding to the corrupt customs and fashions too current among men, not to aught which was necessarily going on before his eyes-nay, to something which certainly was not so, for such the Lord would have as little sanctioned by his presence, as he would have helped it forward by a wonder-work of his own. The speaker does no more than refer to a common practice, and in so doing, notices its cause, namely, that men's palates after a while are blunted, and their power of discerning between good and bad lost; and that then an inferior wine passes current with them, as it would not have done before. There is no special application

* Maldonatus: Non quod ad se venire jusserit, quod minimè fuisset urbanum, sed quod recumbentem appellans interrogaverit, quid optimum vinum in finem reservâsset.

'Elúoow implies at once worse and weaker. We have in English the same use of "small." Perhaps "poorer" would be the nearest word. Pliny in like manner (H. N., 1. 14, c. 14) speaks of the meanness of some, qui convivis alia quam sibimet ipsis ministrant, aut procedente mensâ subjiciunt.

De Hab. Virg., c. 3.

§ Augustine indeed goes further than any, for he makes not merely the guests, but the ruler of the feast himself to have "well drunk" indeed. The Lord not merely made wine, but, he adds (De Gen. ad Litt., 1. 6, c. 13) tale vinum, quod ebrius etiam conviva laudaret.