riage feast of Cana, that we need the presence of our Lord. Hence I must correct a very common misapprehension. When we are placed in affliction, or trial, when we have lost the near and the dear, or when our property has been swept away, at such a time we are very willing to say, "This is God's doing;" but is it not strange, when joyful things come, and bounding hearts testify that they have come, when prosperity sheds its splendours upon us, and hope draws us forward to scenes of increasing happiness, that we then think "this is our own doing"? If we are in affliction, we begin to pray, I speak of Christians, but strange that in prosperity we should never think of beginning to praise. Does it not indicate the original sin of our hearts, that we associate God and wrath together, instead of associating God with every thing that is beautiful and holy, beneficent and bright? We come to think Christianity is a capital thing for burials, but that it will do bridals no good at all; we come to suppose that the gospel is most appropriate when we weep, but that it is not fit to be put in the same category with rejoicing. My dear friends, you mistake it; it sweetens and sanctifies, not saddens, Let the happiest; and it sustains, and cheers, and I notice in this parable, that our Lord g ame not to destroy society, but to descend to its depths, and sweeten, and cement, and Sanctify it. He came not like the Goth to raze the Socialist and the Communist to dis but, like the Christianity of which Alpha and the Omega, to illumi spire, and to sanctify. He did or like organize, he is the ate, to in not come to build in the wilderness a huge Convent for all Christians to withdraw from the World and dwell in, but he did better; he came to uphold, to sanctify, and sweeten human life, human joy, and human sorrow; he came, not to put an end to common life, but he came to bring the gospel into its hidden recesses and its deepest depths, to make all its paths beautiful, all its voices harmony. Christianity does not call upon you who are tradesmen to shut up your shops, but to be Christian shopmen; it does not call upon you not to marry, but to marry in the Lord; nor to lay aside your titles, as a recent denomination does, but to be Christian peers and peeresses; it does not call upon you to detach yourselves from society, in order to avoid its evil, but to go into the midst of society, and meet its hostility, master its evils, and make it reflect the glory, the beneficence, and the goodness of God. Hence, the first act of the ministry of Jesus was not isolation from society, but going right into the heart of society, beginning at its root and centre, in order to bless, to beautify, and make it good. We gather, too, from this parable, that our Lord (and this is perhaps one of the most remarkable proofs of his prescience, or, in other words, of his Divinity) had, in many things that he said and did, an ulterior reference. Thus what he said about the virgin Mary, as I will explain to you, had a clear ulterior, practical reference. So had also the fact that his first miracle was performed at a wedding. He knew that a section of his professing church would rise which would say that marriage is prohibited in some, and that celibacy is a holier, purer, and nobler state. All this is destroyed, neutralized, swept away, by the fact that the marriage instituted in Paradise has been reconsecrated in Cana of Galilee. I allege, therefore, that there is not a holier thing on earth than the domestic roof, and there is not a more divine nook of humanity than a Christian family. Mary introduces the miracle which Jesus was about to 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 olive trees. 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 case C |