perform by the simple remark, "They have no wine." We read that "there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there: and both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage. And when they wanted wine," [or, literally translated, "when the wine began to fail,”] “the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine."

Perhaps I should explain that Cana of Galilee was a few miles north-east of Nazareth, a place that was most familiar to our Lord, and situated between Nazareth and the Lake or Sea of Gennesareth. It is described by a modern traveller (the site of it being perfectly well ascertained, and even its name retained) as a pretty Turkish village, gracefully situated on two sides of a hollow of fertile land, with surrounding hills, and covered with oaks and olivetrees. It is still a small village, but the mosque is there instead of the Christian temple.

Mary states then the fact which led to the performance of this miracle: "They have no wine." Some have been anxious to ascertain why she said so. It has been suggested that the couple that were married were Mary's own immediate relatives, and that she felt for their poverty. The Virgin Mary was a poor sinner by nature, and became a saint, not by the fact that she was the mother of the Lord's humanity, but by the fact that she was a subject of the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit of God. Mary had the pride of humanity, the vanity of a weak woman, and she thought and felt that poverty was a shame, and that wherever there was poverty, there, if possible, it should be hidden. And yet the holy gospel teaches us that poverty is beautiful, that the gospel came first to the poor; and certainly the Sun of righteousness, like the sun in the firmament, sends his beams into the casement of the poor man's cottage as fully as into the oriel-window

of the great man's hall. Mary fancied poverty was a shame, and she says to the Saviour, "They have no wine." Perhaps, too, she meant by that, "We had better not stop; the wine they have is so little, it will not serve the company that are already come, and perhaps we had better retire, and not draw upon that which is already altogether insufficient." At all events, it is plain that it was a sense of poverty that caused Mary to make the remark.

Notice our Lord's reply: "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" The Roman Catholic Church has exhausted all its ingenuity and talent, and has written much, in order to show that this does not mean what it means. And many other divines have imitated the Roman Catholic Church in this respect with other parts of the Bible. It is plain that in the answer of our Lord there was no disrespect. The word "woman," in fact, in ancient Greek, rovar, is equivalent to "lady." To prove this, you have only to read the words used on the cross, "Woman, behold thy son;" an expression of respect mingled with affection. The words "what have I to do with thee?" scem to us Protestants, when we read our Protestant Bibles, to denote that Jesus had required no partnership in his sufferings, and could have no partnership in the expressions of his mighty power. But the Roman Catholic Church has translated it, "Woman, what is to thee, and to me?" which is utterly unintelligible; it conveys no meaning at all. The Greek words are, tí ¿poì xaì coì, (what to me, and to thee)? and every one who knows the elements of the Greek grammar, knows that this is an idiom, that, like all other idioms, it has its peculiar signification, and that literally translated into our tongue, it means, "What have I to do with thee?" or, "What hast thou to do with me?" Among other passages in which the same words occur, I may name Judges xi. 12; 1 Kings xvii. 18; 2 Kings ix. 18; Mark

v. 7. I might enumerate ten different parts of the Bible, speaking of the Septuagint version of the Old Testament and the Greek New Testament, in which the words rì èpo zal ooì occur-five times in the singular, and in the plural five times more. I have looked at every one of these instances in the Roman Catholic Bible, and I find that nine times the words are translated exactly as we translate them, but in the tenth instance (John ii. 4) they are rendered, "What is to thee, and to me?" Certainly this looks suspicious-that the Roman Catholic Church should pursue the same interpretation which we adopt in nine cases, and only in the tenth should deviate, and assume a new and strange translation. Can we be called uncharitable, if we suspect that she felt that, as she would not bring her worship up to the height of God's word, she would dare, in her awful blindness, to bring down God's word to the level of her worship.

It is plain to us, then, that our Lord here taught a very great lesson-that Mary had no partnership in his glory, nor might have any share in his extraordinary sorrow; that even the tears of a weeping mother might not mingle with the shed blood of a dying and atoning Son; that he must tread the wine-press alone, and that not even a mother must be with him to participate in his agony, or to lay claim to a single gleam of that glory which exclusively belongs to him. Does not this seem prophetic? Does it not seem to imply that some portion of his church would rise in which Ave Marias should supersede the more glorious ascription, "Abba, Father," and the intercession of a glorified saint should be made to take the place of the intercession of the glorious and the almighty Son? I will give you a remarkable instance of this. The present Pope of Rome has issued, on the subject of the immaculate conception, an encyclical letter from Gaeta, where he was

lately a prisoner and an exile. To show how true is the Apocalyptic description, "They repented not of their sins and their blasphemies," I will read what the present pope has written, and what was read in the course of 1849 in every Roman Catholic church throughout the world. "We also," says Pope Pius IX., "repose all confidence in thisthat the blessed Virgin, who has been raised by the greatness of her merits above the choirs of angels up to the throne of God, and has crushed, under the foot of her Son, (the head of the old serpent,) and who, placed between Christ and the church, full of grace and sweetness, has ever rescued the Christian people from the greatest calamity, from the snares and attacks of all her enemies, taking pity on us with that immense tenderness which is the habitual outpouring of her maternal heart, to drive away from us, by her instant and all-powerful protection before God, the sad and lamentable misfortunes, the cruel anguish, the pains and anxieties which we suffer, and turn aside the scourges of Divine wrath which afflict us by reason of our sins, to oppose and divert the frightful streams of evil with which the church is assailed on all sides." The pope continues to say, "You know perfectly well, venerable brethren," addressing the archbishops, bishops, and prelates of the Romish Church throughout the world, "that the foundation of our confidence is in the most holy Virgin, since it is in her that God has placed the plenitude of all good, in such sort, that if there be in us any hope, if there be any spiritual health, we know that it is from her we receive it, because such is the will of Him who willed that we should have all by the instrumentality of the Virgin Mary." Such are the deliberate sentiments of Pope Pius IX., literally translated from the Latin, which I have now before me.

I have said then that this clause, «What have I to do

But our

with thee?" is prophetic; and certainly it is so. Lord gives a reason for what he said, and adds, "mine hour is not yet come." I do not think that the expression "hour" here is used in that solemn sense in which it is used in another portion of the gospel, where our Lord exclaims, "Father, the hour is come." The word may be rendered fairly and justly "opportunity;" and all that our Lord seems to me to teach by the expression is simply this: "The moment for me to perform the miracle is not yet arrived; the wine only begins to fail, I will wait till it is exhausted; if some of the wine remain in the vessels, the impression I desire to produce by the miracle may be dissipated; they might say it was the wine that was left, and not wine instantly created by my mighty power; therefore, Mary, wait; you do not know, you must not interfere; I know the moment when it will be most for the good of the creature, and most for the glory of me."

It is said, "And there were set six water-pots of stone," or, as it might be translated, "water-jars of stone." I cannot but notice here a hidden feature that shows the perfect reality of the story. When a story is concocted, you may detect points in it which will show that it is a fiction, that it does not cohere. Now these water-pots of stone were large jars which were brought in to every festival, and the guests drew water out of them for the washing of their hands before they sat down to their meal. The order was given, "Fill the water-pots with water;" and this shows that the guests must have washed their hands, and that the water was nearly drawn out of the vessels; they were quite full at the beginning, and it must have been toward the close of the festival that our Lord wrought the miracle, and replenished the jars with wine. It was said at the beginning that the wine began to fail at the close of the feast, and it is shown by the water being