The Pulpit Commentary — John — Volume 1 — Section 219

nro so immensumbly beneath him that he far ns to any that the interesting diacoarso can neither augment their earthly exhile.- of Jesus during the rcpe.Ht inclined the rntion nor tnko part in sncb carnal and guests to believe that, though their thirst muncfane considemtionR. Snoh ideas may had been quenched with pure water, it was have crowded ~be imagination of the sons of veritable and precious wine. This Reuss Zobedeo, of Philip too and of Nathanael. call un wrcro1t d'absurdite: To suppose, Alreacly they may have been losing in a maze with Ewald and Lange, that it was a miraclo of mystery the Divine humanity, the intense upon the minds of tho guests, who believed and tender sympathy of Jesus with om they had drunk wine, when in reality tboy everyday lifo, the profound interest felt in had only tasted water, is, as Weiss admits, our earthly career. They may have needed another form of the natural explanation. to be taught somo great lesson of the blending Why, moreover, should the didactic energy of of the sacred with the secular, of the water of Jesus not more frequently have produced a purification with the true, strong, fragrant like impression? The hypothesis of Strauss wine of the kingdom. They may have is far more rational. viz. that we have here needed, at this momont, the prosaio return the mythopreic tendency at full work. to ordinary life over which their new Lord Sl!eiag that Moses sweetened the bitter would preside, and from which be would waters, ancl transformed the Nile into bloocl, never stand aloof. ( 6) All this is, more- and that Elijah multiplied the oil in the over, highly nccentunted by the peculiar widow's cruse, so Strauss contended that cbnrncter of this sign. It was a creative the Messiah must have done the like, and act. The idea that it was merely a hasten- that this "miracle of lu.xmy " is one of the ing by his will of the natural processes by glorifying myths by which Jesus is supposed which water is always being transformed to have transformed the water of Jewish into wine by the vine, seems contradicted ceremonial into the wine of the kingclom of by the fact that the vine does not trans- grace. This theory is refuted by the enor- form water iuto wine, but combines with mous difficulty of :finding any party in the the water other substances, cunningly and Church, or of discovering any tendency in wondrously mixing with it the organio the Christian community or outside in the compounds which it subtracts from the air Hellenic schools, which could have evolved and soil, and which are necessary for the such an event-so capable of being misin- purpose. Water which has become wine terpreted-and that too out of a moral is not transubstantiatecl into wine. The consciousness diametrically opposed to imch water is still there ; but there nre added to it an idea of Messiah. Certainly a v~tly other elements and compounds. 'fhe lesson preponderating element of the gospel is is undoubtedly taught that he who performed clean contrary to such an idea. of the Christ. this prodigy called certain elements and Apart from there being some historic fact forces into being by the simple fiat of his underlying the story, it seems incredible that will Evolutione.ry hastening of natural it should have been invented by ChrIBtian, processes do not in the least apply. If that or Gnostic, or Hebrew tradition. The same took place which the disciples (John among may be said of Baur's hypothesis and of them) saw and handled and tasted, then we Keim's, (1) that the pseudo-John invented have an undeniable act of oreatiou. There the miracle to embody the idea of contrast was then no other antecedent to this new between the disciples of John the Bo.ptist and category of existence except the will of Christ. of Christ; or (2) that the saying of J eswi, This is the obvious iutention of the historia.n. " Shall the children of the bridechamber Other explanations are offered. The ra- fast while the Bridegroom is with them? " tionalistic hypothesis of a quiet auci pious needed embodiment in some concrete fact ; fraud on the part of Mary is too gross for or that of Beuss, who supposes that the belief. Tho mere mngic, or sleight of hnnd, author, having invented o. series of imagi- is so utterly foreign to tho narrative that, nary iuterviews and testimonies, must need though Renan seems to favour it, the entire oe.p them witho. miracle. Thoma. sees in the pie.co assigned to the " miracle " renders it 1·eproscutation the evangelist's sublimation uttorly inconceivable. Some have gone so of the banqnot iu the house of Levi, under  80 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOim. [en, u. 1-21i.