^ Whenever we make a grateful review, let it mean instant commitment to a better future. If the mercies of God have blessedly beset us, let us not build " Three Tabernacles," that we may abide; but rather, like Paul, call the places where our mercies meet us "Three Taverns," then push on, thank God, and take courage. Every attainment is to be a footing for new attempts, and every goal a point of departure. " A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for ? " ^
3. It was the glory of sanctifying all things natural. — Remember what had gone before this. The life of John the Baptist was the highest form of religious life known in Israel. It was the life ascetic. It was a life of solitariness and penitential austerity. He drank no wine : he ate no pleasant food : he married no wife : he entered into no human relationship. It was the law of that stern and, in its way, sublime life, to cut 'out every human feeling as a weakness, and to mortify every natural instinct, in order to cultivate an intenser spirituality — a life in its own order grand, but indisputably unnatural.
(1) It was Christ's glory to declare the sacreduess of all natural relationships. The first public act of His life was to go with His disciples to a marriage. He consecrated marriage, and the sympathies which lead to marriage. He declared the sacred- ness of feelings which had been reckoned carnal, and low, and human. He stamped His image on human joys, human connec- tions, human relationships. He pronounced that they are more than human — as it were sacramental : the means whereby God's
^ M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every -Day Living^ 15.
138 THE FIRST SIGN
presence comes to us; the types and shadows whereby higher and deeper relationships become possible to us.
(2) It was His glory to declare the sacredness of all natur 1 enjoyments. It was not a marriage only, but a marriage-feast, to which Christ conducted His disciples. Now we cannot get over this plain fact by saying that it was a religious ceremony ; that would be mere sophistry. It was an indulgence in the festivity of life; as plainly as words can describe, here was a banquet of human enjoyment. The very language of the master of the feast about men who had well drunk tells us that there had been, not excess of course, but happiness there and merry-making. Neither can we explain away the lesson by saying that it is no example to us, for Christ was there to do good, and that what was safe for Him might be unsafe for us. For if His life is no pattern for us here in this case of accepting an invitation, in what can we be sure it is a pattern ? Besides, He took His disciples there, and His mother was there ; they were not shielded, as He was, by immaculate purity. He was there as a guest at first, as Messiah only afterwards : thereby He declared the sacredness of natural enjoyments.
^ He comes, the Man of Sorrows, with the gift of joy in His hand. It is not an unworthy object — not unworthy, I mean, of a Divine sacrifice — to make men glad. It is worth His while to come from Heaven to agonize and to die, in order that He may sprinkle some drops of incorruptible and everlasting joy over the weary and sorrowful hearts of earth. We do not always give its true importance to gladness in the economy of our lives, because we are so accustomed to draw our joys from ignoble sources that in most of our joys there is something not altogether creditable or lofty. But Christ came to bring gladness, and to transform its earthly sources into heavenly fountains ; and so to change all the less sweet, satisfying, and potent draughts which we take from earth's cisterns into the wine of the Kingdom; the new wine, strong and invigorating, "making glad the heart of man."i
(3) Christ saves not /rom, but in, life's common paths. He shares the joy at Cana, the sorrow at Bethany. Heaven and hohness are not here or there. They are where Jesus is, and Jesus walks the ordinary levels of life. The ascetic life of
^ A. Maclaren.
ST. JOHN II. II 139
abstinence, of fasting, austerity, singularity, is the lower and earthlier form of religion. The life of godliness is the glory of Christ. It is a thing far more striking to the vulgar imagination to be religious after the type and pattern of John the Baptist — to fast — to mortify every inclination — to be found at no feast — to wrap ourselves in solitariness, and abstain from all social joys ; yes, and far easier so to live, and far easier so to win a character for religiousness. A silent man is easily reputed wise. A man who suffers none to see him in the common jostle and undress of life easily gathers round him a mysterious veil of unknown sanctity, and men honour him for a saint. The unknown is always wonderful. But the life of Him whom men called " a gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners," was a far harder and a far heavenlier religion.