And touch with unseen fingers keys
That thrill with nature's minstrelsies.
A thousand leaves burst into song,
A thousand murmurs slip along
From bough to bough, and, as they pass,
A quiver through the waving grass
Answers in sympathy and love
The rippling wealth of life above.

Dear heaven! it can never be
The city hath lain hands on me?
Alas! I waken up to hear

The sound of streets within my ear,

To see beneath me crowds that throng
In double lanes, and rush along
After a thousand bubbles blown,
Each keeping well in view his own.

A dream-no more-of woodlands green
That came to me; for having seen
A band of children, gay and bright,
Pass down the street in evening light,
The hawthorn blooms and ferns they bore
Made all my fancy dream once more
Of woods with wealth of leaves, where they,
The children, had been all the day.
ALEXANDER ANDERSON.

I. A LESSON FOR YOUNG MEN AND
MAIDENS.

Read Proverbs xxxi. 10-31; John ii. 1-11.

T is necessary to a right understanding of this interesting narrative that we have some knowledge of the way a marriage was celebrated in the days of our Lord. On the evening of his marriage day, the bridegroom, accompanied by his groomsmen, the children of the bride-chamber, as our Lord calls them, went to the house of the bride, and, amid great demonstrations of joy, conducted her to her future home. We have many references in the Scriptures to the hilarity of the bridal procession, and to the protracted festivities that followed it. So far back as Laban's day we find that churl complaining that Jacob did not give him the opportunity of sending away Rachel with songs and tabret and harp. The prophet Jeremiah speaks of it as a sign of the divine anger, that the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, were no more heard in the streets of Jerusalem. And, in His parable of the ten virgins, our Lord makes the whole scene to rise like life itself before our eyes. "While the bridegroom tarried in coming to claim the bride, the virgins, her companions, all slumbered and slept. And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; goye out to meet him. Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps." In the bridegroom's house, meantime, a sumptuous feast was prepared to which a great company of friends and neighbours were invited, and at which the festivities

XXVIII-5

were usually lengthened out for a week and sometimes for as many as fourteen days. Music, songs, riddles, wagers, and merry conversation formed a long-remembered feature at Samson's marriage feast. These and such-like things, with the most generous eating and drinking, filled up the four, or seven, or fourteen days, as the case might be, of a Jewish marriage feast.

The marriage at Cana, however, was a marriage among the poorer classes of the people, the classes to which Mary the mother of Jesus belonged, and among which her children had all been brought up. Most likely the bridegroom, or the bride, or both, were not far-off relations of her humble Nazareth household.

This happy bridegroom then had Jesus Christ at his marriage, either because he himself belonged to Mary's family, or because he had married a wife who did. And a marriage so contracted will secure the divine presence and blessing still. Yes, and more than that, if you so contract and so marry you may count on God's presence and His blessing more surely than though you had been married in Cana and had had Christ at the ceremony and at the supper-table after it. For I have no assurance that that marriage in Cana was, after all, "a marriage in the Lord." I do not know that it came up to Paul's ideal of a New Testament marriage, even though Paul's master was present, and by His divine power purveyed for the feast. That only is a marriage in the Lord, when two of God's children have been created and kept for one another, and have both asked and received His fatherly consent to love and

serve one another, for a lifetime, as man and wife. Our Lord's very presence, with all His disciples around Him, would not make that a true marriage which was otherwise contracted and otherwise consummated. If you would have Jesus Christ in the fulness of His grace and power at your marriage, and would also, reciprocally, have a place at His, take good heed that you marry into the family of God. And since it has been so often found that neighbourhood and opportunity have had so much to do with this important matter, choose your neighbourhood and your neighbours wisely, and let God's gracious providence direct the opportunity. And you cannot make any mistake as to who are and who are not Christ's true kindred, for He is every day stretching forth His hand toward them, saying unto you, "Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and mother."

II. A LESSON FOR TOTAL ABSTAINERS. Read Rom. xiv. 7-23; 1 Cor. viii. 9-13. Michael's address to Adam.-Paradise Lost, XI.

:

THE extraordinary abuse of strong drink, in our day, has led many worthy people to look at the marriage of Cana with some misgiving, if not secret aversion; and efforts have been made at their instigation to show that the wine our Lord supplied to the governor of that feast was not true wine at all. But we are not left to this passage alone, to learn the mind of our Master as to the moralities of meats and drinks, in His kingdom. The doctrine of Jesus Christ on this whole subject is delivered in a hundred passages of the New Testament, he that runs may read it, and when it is read it is this temperance in all things is one of the plainest of Christian virtues, and total abstinence from some things is another. And these two virtues stand related to each other in this way: a Christian man is temperate when, in the possession of all the comforts or even luxuries of this life, he yet uses them so as never to fall into excess, but so partakes of meats and drinks, and all other like gifts of God, as to make and keep himself a better man, a better servant of God, and a closer follower of Jesus Christ. The truly temperate man lives among the satisfactions and embellishments and luxuries of this life uncontaminated, simple, severe, master of himself, and master of all those seductive things that so often master others. Total abstinence, on the other hand, is a virtue of quite another nature. To abjure

meat

the natural and legitimate use of any or drink, to mortify any appetite of the body or any affection of the heart, for a moral or a religious reason is assuredly a far nobler virtue than to live even in the most temperate use of these pleasant things. At the same time, it must always be remembered that it is entirely the motive and the will with which all our acts of self-denial are done that give them their value in the sight of God, and their place among the moralities of his kingdom. The morality or immorality of all our habits and practices, both ascetic and self-indulgent, is ultimately to be tested by a standard that goes to the very core and bottom of the human heart. To deny ourselves marriage, or a meat or a drink for Christ's sake, as so many men and women have done in all ages of the Church, is surely a far nobler and more martyr-like grace than without care, or consideration, or a cross, to enjoy to indulgence all these permitted things. Nor will he, who is either unable or unwilling to take up that cross, expect the corresponding crown. But, on the other hand, that the very noblest and most selfsacrificing service in the cause of Christ and the ripest attainments in evangelical morality and personal holiness are incompatible with a married life, or with the most genial, joyful, and, indeed, luxurious lot, can no more be contended, since Christ countenanced the lengthened festivities of a marriage with His blessed presence, and by His divine power contributed so bountifully thereto. Solomon, indeed, says that it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting, as also that sorrow is better than laughter. And most men will agree with the preacher in his experience. But that, too, depends on whose house the mirth goes on in, on who makes the mirth and who leads the laughter. There was no little mirth and laughter in Cana of Galilee that week, and yet I feel sure that if Solomon in his bitterest and most misanthropical mood had been there, he would have been the last to leave the feast.

The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and He took this open and unmistakeable way of altogether repudiating for Himself and His followers the Johannine morality of self-denial and corporal mortification. Our Lord was preparing the way for the bringing in of far deeper views of the real evil of human life than had ever yet obtained when He, as a first step, thus openly and conclusively set aside the whole ascetical system of John and the Essenic monks. Our Saviour's

conception of life and religion was infinitely deeper and loftier, infinitely more inward and spiritual, than it was possible for the Baptist's to be, and accordingly, while finding much that was worthy of all praise in John personally, he yet set aside as a delusion and a snare all his eremite ideals and ascetical methods, and introduced in room of them a moral ideal and a spiritual method far more full of true self-denial and inward mortification. At one stroke, that day in Cana, our Lord for ever set aside John's whole system of solitude and celebacy and abstinence from meat and drink, with the whole rubric of morose morality and superficial sanctification, that these things tended to produce. These things, our Lord was continually teaching, never touch the real root of moral evil in a Nay, so far from that, some of the worst vices of the human heart thrive best when they put on the cloak of a severe and self-imposed morality. Jesus Christ continually directs the thoughts of all his disciples to what constitutes the true life of religion and morality, the intense inwardness, fine spirituality, and keen severity of God's holy law, and then teaches them to value and employ outward rules and ascetical and self-mortifying practices, only so far as they harmonize with and experimentally assist that divine life that has its seat and sphere not in the body of a man, but in his soul.

man.

III-A LESSON FOR THE UNDECIDED.

Read 1 Kings xviii. 21; Psalm cxix. 112.
Dr. Newman's sermon, "Dispositions for Faith."

"THIS beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory, and his disciples believed on him." Probability," says Butler, "is to us the very guide of life." That is to say, the whole of human life, and every step of it, is taken by us on a balance of probabilities; we continually decide and act on what seems to us most likely to be true and safe. But, then, probabilities are balanced in the mind; and what is probable, and likely, and certain, and necessary to one mind may be the very opposite to another. Now, it was the previous state of the disciples' minds that made them so easy of belief in Jesus Christ compared with others. There was, to them, a strong antecedent probability that manifestations of divine power would some time or other accompany and authenticate divine truth. It had always been so in the past history of their nation, and the probability was that the same thing would hold true at the present crisis. Nay, if what the Baptist had

said of their Master was at all true-and it must be true, it could not be a lie-what might they not expect to see of deeds and hear of doctrines, if He was indeed the Lamb of God that should come into the world? And thus the moral and religious character of the disciples, their sense of sin, their fear of death and judgment, their hunger for a Redeemer, and their waiting faith in Jehovah's prophets; all this worked together to make Christ's mightiest works credible, and even probable, to them; likely, and even necessary; and then those mighty works of His shed back a new certainty into their minds that their Master was indeed the Christ and the Son of God. Probability is to us the guide of life; but it cannot be too much pressed upon us that probability and improbability, doubt and certainty, dislike and desire, hope and fear are all just as the mind is that entertains them. What is certain to one man is doubtful to another; what is probable to my mind is improbable to yours; and what I love and long for you hate and hide away. In short, in all things, but in religion above all things, the mind is as the heart beneath it is; and the will is as the inclinations are on which the will hangs. And thus the very laws of nature, the very constitution and principles of the human mind, shut us up under this solemn truth, that we are as responsible for our faith as we are for our works; for what we think of Christ and believe about Him and look for from Him, as we are for how we obey His and His Father's commandments. This, indeed, is the work of God, that we believe on Jesus Christ, whom God hath sent.

So true is it that it is with the heart that man believeth unto righteousness. Men just see what they bring eyes to see, and they just hear what they bring ears to hear; and in like manner they believe or disbelieve, love or hate, just as their hearts are. At the marriage-feast in Cana the bridegroom and the bride were sufficient for one another; the governor of the feast was absorbed in his duties; the servants were attending to what they were commanded, and the guests were delighted above measure because they drank better and more abundant wine at the end of the feast than they had had at the beginning. But there were some men there that day whose god was not their belly. There were some guests at that feast who had not come to eat and drink and dance. They had come to this marriage in order to be beside Jesus of Nazareth. It was only yesterday that they had found Him of whom Moses in

the law and the prophets did write, and they had no heart left for any one else. They sat silent at the hilarious feast, and forgot to eat or drink, as, continually looking at their Master, they pondered in their hearts the heart-burning words, "THE LAMB OF GOD WHICH TAKETH AWAY THE SIN OF THE WORLD." And, after the miracle, they were to themselves and to one another like men possessed. "We beheld his glory," says one who was present, "the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."

Now, if you had been at that marriage, what part would you have taken in it? And where would your eyes and your heart have been? Would they have been with the bridegroom in his strength, and with the bride in her beauty, and with the guests at their replenished table or would your eyes and your heart have been with the disciples as they secretly worshipped their manifested Master? Would you have been found drinking that mantling wine, blessing yourself over its goodness and abundance or would you have drunk it as if it were an awful sacrament, all the time full of a holy joy that you had been chosen to sit beside Him who made it, and to be one of His first disciples ? You may know what you would have done at Cana by what you do every day here. For the Son of God manifests His divine glory still. Not in the same way, indeed, but in ways not less glorious, not less impressive, not one whit less commanding and less convincing than when He turned water into wine, and multiplied the loaves, and said to Lazarus, Come forth! He who made all things, and without whom was not anything made that was made, still upholds them. By Him all things consist. He stands among the foundations of the earth, and says, I bear up the pillars of it. He still turns water into wine in every sunny vineyard; He still multiplies the loaves in every harvest-field; it is He who maketh all things beautiful and fruitful in their season. And lest all these things, through their familiarity, should escape you, lest they should all fail to lead you to think of Him who makes them all, He comes still nearer you. He besets you behind and before by His providence, and all but lays His very hand upon you. And with what result? "His disciples believed on Him." Are you among them? Have you believed on their Master through their word? If you have believed, He will increase your faith, He will help your unbelief. If you once truly believe, you will find more faith

easy. And faith worketh by love. If your love is only warm enough, neither the creeds of the Church nor the commandments of her Head will be felt by you to be grievous. And if you once aright believe, your faith will, like that of John and Peter, grow every day. You will be on the outlook for Christ in your own life, and in the life of the Church, and in the life of the world continually. "On Thee do I wait all the day," will be your words to Him. And, consequently, you will discover Him in a thousand things that love alone, and a faith that worketh by love alone, will see. And He, finding such a heart in you, will come unto you, and will manifest Himself unto you in a way He will not unto the world. Indeed, He will. Only let your saying be to every law of nature, to every ordinance of revelation, and to every means of grace, Saw ye Him whom my soul loveth?

IV. A LESSON FOR YOUNG DISCIPLES.
Read Prov. ix. 9; Matt. xxv. 29.

John Foster's Notes on Deuteronomy xv. 5; Robert
Browning's "Christmas Eve," IV.

THE immediate intention of our Lord in the miracle at Cana was to relieve the distress of his mother and her poor kindred, but the ultimate design and evangelical issue of the miracle was to confirm the faith of his lately enlisted disciples. And accordingly, John adds emphatically that, "His disciples believed on Him." His disciples believed because they were His disciples, and were on that account predisposed to believe. The truth is they had believed already. They were present at the marriage because they had believed. They were there, not friends of the bride or bridegroom, but as the disciples of Jesus the Christ. And, being disciples already, they were naturally con firmed in their faith by this new manifestation of their Master's glory.

as

I do not read that Jesus made any new disciples at the marriage of Cana. I do not read that either the bridegroom, or the bride, or the governor of the feast, or any of the guests, or any of the servants believed on our Lord because of this His first miracle. His disciples alone believed. They had their first faith increased. They had their remaining unbelief helped. This miracle mightily fortified the faith they already had. They had left all to follow Christ, and, naturally, they were disposed to accept any testimony to their Master's Messianic position and divine power. You may say, if you please, that they were committed to Christ and were