5. What special propriety was there in the selection of this particular work to introduce and inaugurate the whole train? It is evident from St. John's impressive words that he finds a strong significance and a profound fitness in the form His Master chose for the beginning of His signs. He can recall many other signs in which Christ manifested forth His glory ; but he seems to see a special reason why this, and no other in that wondrous series, came first. He recognized that it was in harmony with the whole tenor of the revelation of the Incarnate Word that this should be His first miracle. For it gives us the key to all the miracles of our Lord.
(1) No other miracle has so much prophecy in it, no other would have inaugurated so fitly the whole work of the Son of God, which was characterized throughout as an ennobling of the common, a turning of the water of earth into the wine of heaven. We recall the first miracle of Moses, the turning of water into blood, symbolic of that law which, as St. Paul said, was "a ministration of death." Here the Saviour's first miracle, a ministration of life, symbolized the turning of the thin and watery elements of Jewish faitli into that richer and nobler Christianity which makes saints out of sinners, and a new Paradise of God out of the wilderness of earth.
(2) The turning of water into wine was a sign of the character of all the works of goodness and wisdom under the Christian dispensation, by which humanity, suftering from the effects of sin, was to be raised into higher states of truth and righteousness. It combines in itself all the elements of Christ's miracles. It is a work of mercy; it is an emblem of a higher
^ H. Macmillan, The Marriage in Cana, 218.
ST. JOHN II. II 131
spiritual blessing; and it; is a prophecy and a specimen of that new genesis, under which all things shall be restored to the primeval goodness and blessedness. Like an illuminated initial letter, which contains in itself an illustrated epitome of the contents of the whole chronicle, it appropriately begins the series of Christ's beneficent works by a beautiful picture of the nature and design of them all.
(3) In this first miracle we can see what was the motive always of Christ's miracles. He did not work miracles to win men's belief in His mission. On the contrary, we are told that it was one of His temptations, a temptation constantly resisted by Him, to use His power for this object without any other motive. It was the reproach He cast upon the people that except they saw signs and wonders they would not believe. He would never work a miracle merely for the sake of manifest- ing His glory. Whenever the unsympathetic, ignorant crowd clamoured for a sign; whenever with ill-concealed dislike they cried, " How long dost thou make us to doubt ? Show us a sign from heaven, that we may believe," He was silent. To create a mere compulsory consent in minds which had no sympathy with Him was never a sufficient motive. Was there a sick child tossing in fever, was there a blind beggar by the roadside, was there a hungry crowd, was there even the joy of a feast inter- rupted : in these He could find a worthy occasion for a miracle ; but never did He work a miracle merely for the sake of removing the doubts of reluctant men. His miracles were His kingly acts, by which He suggested what man's true life in God's Kingdom should be and will be. They were the utterance of what was in Him, the manifestation of His glory, the glory of One who came to utter the Father's heart to His strayed children.
Dear Friend ! whose presence in the house,
Whose gracious word benign. Could once, at Cana's wedding-feast,
Change water into wine, —
Come, visit us, and when dull work
Grows weary, line on line, Revive our souls, and make us see
Life's water glow as wine.
132 THE FIRST SIGN
Gay mirth shall deepen into joy,
Earth's hopes shall grow divine, When Jesus visits us, to turn
Life's water into wine.
The social talk, the evening fire,
The homely household shrine. Shall glow with angel-^dsits when
The Lord pours out the wine.
For when self-seeking turns to love, Which knows not mine and thine,
The miracle again is wrought. And water changed to wine.^
IL
The Glory Manifested.
"And manifested his glory."
This word glory ^ whether in its Greek or its Eoman shape, had a very definite meaning in the days of the Apostles. It meant the admiration of men. The Greek word is derived from a root signifying to seem, and expresses that which a man seems or appears to his fellow-men. The Latin word for glory is expressly defined by Cicero to mean the love, trust, and admiration of the multitude ; and a consequent opinion that the man is worthy of honour. Glory, in fact, is a relative word, and can be used only of any being in relation to other rational beings, and their opinion of him. What the Eomans thought glorious in their days is notorious enough. No one can look upon the picture of a Roman triumph without seeing that their idea of glory was force, power, brute force, self-willed dominion, selfish aggrandizement. But this was not the glory which St. John saw in Christ, for His glory was full of grace, which is incompatible with self-will and selfish- ness. The Greek's meaning of glory is equally notorious. He called it wisdom. We call it craft — the glory of the sophist, who could prove or disprove anything for gain or display ; the glory of the successful adventurer, whose shrewdness made its market out of the stupidity and vice of the barbarian. But this is not the