it is only because they have been forcibly severed from the whole complex of Christ's life and doctrine, and presented to the contemplation of men apart from these; it is only because, when on his head are 'many crowns' (Rev. xix. 12), one only has been singled out in proof that He is King of kings and Lord of lords. The miracles have been spoken of as though they borrowed nothing from the truths which they confirmed, but those truths everything from the miracles by which they were confirmed; when, indeed, the true relation is one of mutual interdependence, the miracles proving the doctrines, and the doctrines approving the miracles,' and both held together for us in a blessed unity, in the person of Him who spake the words and did the works, and through the impress of highest holiness and of absolute truth and goodness, which that person leaves stamped on our souls ;-so that it may be more truly said that we believe the miracles for Christ's sake, than Christ for the miracles' sake. Neither when we thus affirm that the miracles prove the doctrine, and the doctrine the miracles, are we arguing in a circle: rather we are receiving the sum total of the impression which this divine revelation is intended to make on us, instead of taking an impression only partial and one-sided.

2

1 See Pascal, Pensées, 27, Sur les Miracles.

Augustine was indeed affirming the same, when, against the Donatists, and their claims to be workers of wonders, he said (De Unit. Eccles. 19): Quæcunque talia in Catholicâ [Ecclesiâ] fiunt, ideo sunt approbanda, quia in Catholicâ fiunt; non ideo manifestatur Catholica, quia hæc in eâ fiunt.

THE MIRACLES.

1. THE WATER TURNED INTO WINE.

JOHN ii. I-II.

"THIS beginning of miracles' is as truly an introduction to all other miracles which Christ did, as the parable of the Sower to all other parables which he spoke (Mark iv. 13). No other miracle has so much of prophesy in it; no other, therefore, would have inaugurated so fitly the whole future work of the Son of God. For that work might be characterized throughout as an ennobling of the common, and a transmuting of the mean; a turning of the water of earth into the wine of heaven. But it will be better not to anticipate remarks, which will find their fitter place when the miracle itself shall have been considered.

And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee'-on the third day, no doubt, after that on which Philip and Nathanael, as is mentioned just before (i. 43), had attached themselves to Christ. He and his newly-won disciples, of whom one was a native of Cana (see xxi. 2), would have journeyed without difficulty from the banks of Jordan to Cana' in two days, and might so have been

1 Among the happiest of Robinson's slighter rectifications of the geography of Palestine (Biblical Researches, vol. iii. pp. 204-208), although one which is still by some called in doubt (see the Dict. of the Bible, s. v. Cana), in his reinstatement of the true Cana in honours long usurped by another village. In the neighbourhood of Nazareth are two villages,

present at the marriage,' or marriage festival, upon the third day after. And the mother of Jesus was there.' The silence of Scripture leaves hardly a doubt that Joseph was dead before Christ's open ministry began. He is last expressly mentioned on occasion of the Lord's visit as a child to the Temple (Luke ii. 41); which, however, he must for a certain period have overlived (ver. 51). And both Jesus was called and his disciples.' These, invited with their Master, and, no doubt, mainly to do honour to their Master, in all likelihood are not the Twelve, but only those five whose calling has just before been recorded, Andrew and Peter, Philip and Nathanael (Bartholomew ?), and the fifth, probably the Evangelist himself; who will thus have been an eye-witness of the miracle which he relates.1

one Kefr Kenna, about an hour and a half N.E. from Nazareth; the other, Kâna el-Jelil, about three hours' distance, and nearly due north. The former is now always shown to travellers as the Cana of our history, though the name can only with difficulty be twisted to the same, the 'Kefr' having first to be dropped altogether, and in Kenna, the first radical changed, and the second left out; while ‘Kâna el-Jelîl' is word for word the 'Cana of Galilee' of Scripture, which exactly so stands in the Arabic version of the New Testament. The mistake, as he shows, is entirely modern, only since the sixteenth century Kefr Kenna having thus borne away the honours due rightly to Kâna el-Jelîl. Till then, as a long line of earlier travellers and topographers attest, the latter was ever considered as the scene of this miracle. It may have helped to win for the mistake an easier acceptance, that it was manifestly for the interest of guides and travellers who would spare themselves fatigue and distance, to accept the other in its room, it lying directly on one of the routes between Nazareth and Tiberias, and being far more accessible than the true. The Cana of the New Testament does not occur in the Old, but is mentioned twice by Josephus (Vit. §§ 16, 64; Bell. Jud. i. 17, 5). The Old Testament has only Kanah in Asher (Josh. xix. 28), S.E.

of Tyre.

A late tradition adopted by the Mahometans (D'Herbelot, Biblioth. Orient. s. v. Johannes), makes St. John himself the bridegroom at this marriage; who, beholding the miracle which Jesus wrought, forsook the bride, and followed Him. Thus the Prologue to St. John, attributed to Jerome (Joannem nubere volentem a nuptiis per Dominum fuisse vocatum), but with no closer reference to this miracle. According to Nicephorus it was not St. John, but Simon the Canaanite, who on this hint followed Jesus; but Kavarirng attached to his name (Matt. x. 4), and probably the only foundation for this assumption, does not mean 'of Cana;' any more than it means of Canaan;' which our Translators

Him, as was seen long ago, we may pretty confidently recognize in the second but unnamed disciple, whom the Baptist detached from himself, that he might attach him to the Lord (John i. 35, 40). It is in St. John's favourite manner to preserve an incognito of this kind (cf. xiii. 23; xviii. 15; xix. 26, 35), thus seeking to draw away all attention from himself the teller, and fix it on the events which he is telling.

None need wonder to find the Lord of life at this festival; for He came to sanctify all life,-to consecrate its times of joy, as its times of sorrow; the former, as all experience teaches, needing above all such a consecration as only his presence, bodily or spiritual, can give. He was there, and by his presence there struck the key-note to the whole tenor of his future ministry. He should not be as another Baptist, a wilderness preacher, withdrawing himself from the common paths of men. His should be at once a harder and a higher task, to mingle with and purify the daily life of men, to bring out the glory which was everywhere hidden there.' How precious is his witness here against an indolent and cowardly readiness to give up to the world, or to the devil, aught which, in itself innocent, is

writing 'the Canaanite,' as though Kavarirns=Xavavaing, must have assumed. It is rather a term equivalent to nλwrns, the title given him elsewhere (Luke vi. 15; Acts i. 13); see, however, on this point Greswell (Dissert. vol. ii. p. 128 sqq.). Once a 'zealot,' his zeal for freedom, which had then displayed itself in stormy outbreaks of the natural man, now found its satisfaction in Him who came to make free indeed.

1 Augustine, or another under his name (Serm. xcii. Appendix): Nec dedignatus est conversationem hominum, qui usum carnis exceperat. Nec secularia instituta contempsit, qui ad hæc venerat corrigenda. Interfuit nuptiis, ut concordiæ jura firmaret. Tertullian, in his reckless method of snatching at any argument, finds rather a slighting of marriage than an honouring it in the fact that Christ, who was present at so many festivals, was yet present only at one marriage. Or this at least he will find, that since Christ was present but at one marriage, therefore monogamy is the absolute law of the new covenant. His words are characteristic (De Monog. 9): Ille vorator et potator homo, prandiorum et cœnarum cum publicanis frequentator, semel apud unas nuptias cœnat, multis utique nubentibus. Totiens enim voluit celebrare eas, quotiens et esse.