^ Marcus Doda. ^ J. Rendel Harris, Union loith Ood, 12.
126 THE FIRST SIGN
It is difficult to understand how a poet could have been so blin^ir as not to know that such nameless and appropriate gifts never come except from God, and from good women. But even when we lay the charge of want of insight at the poet's door, we are checked by One who says, " Have I been so long time with you, and hast thou not known me ? Have I never looked in at thy window, or left gift at thy door ? " Yet oftentimes the expression of the conscious heart has never been raised so high as even to the " Dear Anonymous " of the poet. It is a part of God's loving way with us that His criticism of our blindness towards Him is a gradual revelation; He can always make us ashamed when He wants to.^
3. Now consider the significance of this incident. It was a sign.
There are four chief names given to our Lord's miracles. One of these is wonders. In it their marvellous character is recognized. But it is very remarkable that this word is never applied to a miracle without one of the others to qualify and explain it. It seems as if, to the sacred writers, the marvel was the aspect of the miracle on which they thought it least important to dwell. Another name is works. This is one often used by our Lord Himself, and specially recorded by St. John. To the Master and the beloved disciple the miracles were works of mercy. They were part of that great mission for which our Lord had come to earth — the removal of sorrow and suffering, and so the leading of all to Himself for salvation. Another of these titles is a word meaning power. It is often applied to our Lord's miracles, and is once or twice translated " miracle " in our English Version, but more often " mighty work." It exhibits the miracles as acts of power, thus showing them to be the apparent suspension by God of the ordinary laws of nature. The fourth name given to them is signs. This is the word used in the text, and generally by St. John, where " miracle " occurs in the Authorized Version. It is perhaps the most significant and spiritual of all these designa- tions. For it shows the miracles to be the signs of something else, to have something behind them to wliich they are intended to point. It is hardly necessary to ask what that is. It is the Divinity of Him who wrought them.
(1) This is the day of evasions and attempted explanations
^ J. Rend el Hams.
ST. JOHN II. II 127
regarding all the supernatural events of the Bible, The trend of much of the so-called religious teaching of to-day is toward the removal of the miraculous, both in cliaracter and in action, from the Gospel, and the relegation of both the Gospel and its Founder to a place, the highest indeed, but still a place among the religious teachers and systems of the ages. The miracles of healing, and of restoration of bodily function are, in this view, explained as simply the result of superior knowledge of the laws of life, of which it is said contemporary vital science is even now gaining great insight. But here is a mu'acle inexplicable upon such a supposition; a miracle entering into the domain, as nearly absolute as anything earthly can be, of natural law, where, as in the kindred miracle of the stilling of the tempest, the Power that created, simply controls, and the Infinite masters the finite.
(2) What is a miracle ? Bishop Gore, in his Bampton Lectures, has defined a miracle as " an event in physical nature, which makes unmistakably plain the presence and direct action of God working for a moral end." God, we know, is always present and working in Nature, and man was meant to recognize and praise Him in the ordinary course of events; but, in fact, man's sin has blinded his spiritual eye, he has lost the power of seeing behind physical order. The prevalence of law in nature, which is its glory and perfection, has even led men to forget God and deny His presence. Now in a miracle God so w^orks that man is forced to notice a presence which is no mere blind force, but a loving personal will; God breaks into the common order of events, that He may manifest the real meaning of nature. Hence miracles are God's protests against man's blindness ; protests in which He violates a superficial uniformity in the interests of deeper law.
(3) On the Christian hypothesis, Christ is a new nature. "The Word was made flesh," and as a new nature it is surely to be expected that He will exhibit new phenomena; a new vital energy will radiate from Him, for the very springs of universal life are in Him. So in Christ we naturally expect the material body to exhibit a far higher degree of subservience to spirit than was ever known before. For be it remembered, Christ's miracles were not meaningless portents; they were redemptive acts, object-lessons teaching the same lessons of love and mercy
128 THE FIRST SIGN