as His words conveyed. Given the perfect man, who is Lord of Nature, surely the wonder lies in the limitation of His power, and not in any manifestation of it. Given the required conditions of spiritual life, nothing which does not involve contradiction is impossible. To Him who could work, not merely on nature, but on that substance — spirit and life — which underlies and makes nature, changing water into wine, and stilling a storm, were works as surely according to unvarying law as the natural growth of the vine and the calming of the tempest. We have often to attain results laboriously and painfully, because we work, not on sub- stance, but merely on surface appearances or phenomena, while the Spiritual Man worked directly. The more we contemplate the personality of Jesus Christ and His moral authority and purpose, the more we shall find that His miracles were according to the law of His being ; or, to use an expression of Athanasius, they were " in rational sequence." And if, as Dr. Sanday says, we thus take the personality of our Lord as the true rationale of miracle, " many things will be clear to us that would not be clear otherwise."
I say, that miracle was duly wrought
When, save for it, no faith was possible.
Whether a change were wrought i' the shows o' the world,
Whether the change came from our minds which see
Of the shows o' the world so much as and no more
Than God wills for His purpose, — (what do I
See now, suppose you, there where you see rock
Eound us ?) — I know not ; such was the effect,
So faith grew, making void more miracles
Because too much: they would compel, not help.
I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee
All questions in the earth and out of it.
And has so far advanced thee to be wise.^
4 It was the beginning of His signs. " This beginning of his signs did Jesus." Here at this wedding-feast He felt Himself impelled to take the step which altered the whole character of His life. For from a private person He became by His first miracle a public and marked character with a definite career.
* Browning, A Death in the Desert,
ST. JOHN II. II 129
" To live henceforth in the vortex of a whirlwind ; to have no leisure so much as to eat, no time to pray save when others slept, to be the gazing-stock of every eye, the common talk of every tongue ; to be followed about, to be thronged and jostled, to be gaped upon, to be hunted up and down by curious vulgar crowds ; to be hated, and detested, and defamed, and blasphemed ; to be regarded as a public enemy ; to be watched and spied upon and trapped and taken as a notorious criminal " — is it possible to suppose that Christ was indifferent to all this, and that without shrinking He stepped across the line which marked the threshold of His public career ? The glory that here shed a single ray into the rustic home of Cana must grow to that dazzling and perfect noon which shone from the Cross to the remotest corner of earth. The same capacity and willingness to bless mankind which here in a small and domestic affair brought relief to His embarrassed friends, must be adapted to all the needs of men, and must undauntedly go forward to the utmost of sacrifice. He who is true King of men must flinch from no responsibility, from no pain, from no utter self-abandonment to which the needs of men may call Him. And Jesus knew this. In those quiet hours and long, untroubled days at Nazareth He had taken the measure of this world's actual state, and of what would be required to lift men out of selfishness and give them reliance upon God. " I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me " — this was even now present to His mind. His glory was the glory of absolute self-sacrifice, and He knew what that involved. His kingship was the rendering of service no other could render.
If All beginnings have a wonderful interest for us. There is a pecuhar pleasure in tracing a broad deep river, that bears upon its bosom the commerce of a nation, to its source far up among the mountains, in a little well whose overflowing waters a child's hand could stop; or in going back to the origin of a mighty nation like the Eoman, in the drifting ashore, at the foot of the Palatine Hill, of the ark that contained the infant founders. Institutions, social or benevolent, that have been established for ages, derive a fresh charm from the consideration of their first feeble commencement, and the contrast between what they were then and what they are now. There is a mystery about a cloud coming all at once into the blue sky, a star appearing suddenly amid the tmlight shades, a spring welling up in the midst of a
ST. JOHN — 9
130 THE FIRST SIGN
sandy plain. It seems as if something new were being created before our eyes. A sense of awe comes over us, as if brought into contact with another world. The miracle of Cana comes into the midst of the previous natural life of Jesus like a star out of the blue profound, like a well out of the dry mountain-side, like a rare, unknown flower appearing among the common indigenous plants of a spot. It brings us out of the narrow wall that hems us round, to the verge of God's infinity, where we can look over into the fathomless gulf. It is the base of that wonderful miracle structure of the gospel, of which the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the pinnacle.^