excusable three hundred years ago by the manners of that day, was bold and brave in the lips of the Reformers, with whom the struggle was one of life and death, and who might be called to pay the penalty of their bold defiances with their blood. But the same fierceness of language now, when there is no personal risk in the use of it, in the midst of hundreds of men and women ready to applaud and honor violence as zeal, is simply a dastardliness from which every gen erous mind shrinks. You do not get the Reformers spirit by putting on the armor they have done with, but by risking the dangers which those noble warriors. risked. It is not their big words, but their large, brave heart, that makes the Protestant. O, be sure that he whose soul has anchored itself to rest on the deep, calm sea of Truth, does not spend his strength in raving against those who are still tossed by the winds of error. Spasmodic violence of words is one thing, strength of conviction is another. When, O, when shall we learn that loyalty to Christ is tested far more by the strength of our Sympathy with Truth than by the intensity of our hatred of error! I will tell you what to hate. Hate Hypocrisy; hate Cant; hate intolerance, oppression, injustice; hate Pharisaism;-hate them as Christ hated them, with a deep, living, Godlike hatred. But do not hate men in intellectual error. To hate a man for his errors is as unwise as to hate one who, in casting up an account, has made an error against himself. The Romanist has made an error against himself. He has missed the full glory of his Lord and Master. Well, shall we hate him, and curse, and rant, and thunder at him? Or shall we sit down beside him, and try to sympathize with him, and see things from his point of view, and strive to understand the truth which his soul is aiming at, and seize the truth for him and for ourselves, "meekly instructing those who oppose themselves"? Our subject to-day is the glory of the Divine Son. In that miracle, "He manifested forth His glory." Concerning that glory we say: 1. The glory of Christ did not begin with that mira. cle; the miracle only manifested it. For thirty years. the wonder-working power had been in Him. It was not Diviner power when it broke forth into visible manifestation, than it had been when it was unsuspected and unseen. It had been exercised up to this time in common acts of youthful life-obedience to his mother, love to his brethren. Well, it was just as Divine in those simple, daily acts, as when it showed itself in a way startling and wonderful. It was just as much the life of God on Earth when He did an act of ordinary human love or human duty, as when He did an extraordinary act, such as turning water into wine. God was as much, nay, more, in the daily life and love of Christ, than He was in Christ's miracles. The mira cle only made the hidden glory visible. The extraor dinary only proved that the ordinary was Divine. That was the very object of the miracle. It was done to manifest forth His glory. And if, instead of rousing men to see the real glory of Christ in His other life, the miracle merely fastened men's attention on itself, and made them think that the only Glory which is Divine is to be found in what is wonderful and uncommon, then the whole intention of the miracle was lost. Let us make this more plain by an illustration. To the wise man, the lightning only manifests the electric force which is everywhere, and which for one moment has become visible. As often as he sees it, it reminds him that the lightning slumbers invisibly in the dew drop, and in the mist, and in the cloud, and binds together every atom of the water that he uses in daily life. But to the vulgar mind the lightning is something unique, a something which has no existence but when it appears. There is a fearful glory in the lightning, because he sees it. But there is no startling glory and nothing fearful in the drop of dew, because he does not know, what the Thinker knows, that the flash is there in all its terrors. So, in the same way, to the half-believer a miracle. is the one solitary evidence of God. Without it he could have no certainty of God's existence. But to the true disciple a miracle only manifests the Power and Love which are silently at work everywhere, as truly and as really in the slow work of the cure of the insane, as in the sudden expulsion of the legion from the demoniac, as divinely in the gift of daily bread, as in the miraculous multiplication of the loaves. God's glory is at work in the growth of the vine, and the ripening of the grape, and the process by which grape-juice passes into wine. It is not more glory, but only glory more manifested, when water at His bidding passes into wine. And be sure that if you do not feel, as David felt, God's presence in the annual miracle,that it is God, which in the vintage of every year causeth wine to make glad the heart of man,-the sudden miracle at Capernaum would not have given you conviction of His presence. "If you hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will you be persuaded though one rose from the dead." Miracles have only done their work when they teach us the glory and the awfulness that surrounds our common life. In a mira cle, God for one moment shows Himself, that we may remember it is He that is at work when no miracle is seen. Now, this is the deep truth of miracles, which most men miss. They believe that the life of Jesus was Divine, because He wrought miracles. But, if their faith in miracles were shaken, their faith in Christ would go. If the evidence for the credibility of those miracles were weakened, then to them the mystic glory would have faded off His history. They could not be sure that His Existence was Divine. That love, even unto death, would bear no certain stamp of God upon it. That life of long self-sacrifice would have had in it no certain unquestionable traces of the Son of God. See what that implies. If that be true, and miracles are the best proof of Christ's mission, God can be recognized in what is marvellous-God cannot be recognized in what is good. It is by Divine power that a human being turns water into wine. It is by power less certainly Divine that the same being witnesses to truth forgives His enemies.- makes it His meat and drink to do His Father's will, and finishes His work. We are more sure that God was in Christ when He said, "Rise up, and walk," than when He said, with absolving love, "Son, thy sins be forgiven thee;" more certain when He furnished wine for wedding guests, than when He said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." O, a strange, and low, and vulgar appreciation this of the true glory of the Son of God, the same false conception that runs -- -- through all our life, appearing in every form,- God in the storm, and the earthquake, and the fire, no God in the still small voice. Glory in the lightning-flash, no glory and no God in the lowliness of the dew-drop. Glory to intellect and genius, no glory to gentleness and patience. Glory to every kind of power, to the inward, invisible strength of the life of God in the soul of man. none "An evil and an adulterous generation seeketh after a sign." Look at the feverish eagerness with which men crowd to every exhibition of some newly discov ered Force, real or pretended. What lies at the bottom of this feverishness but an unbelieving craving after signs?-some wonder which is to show them the Divine Life, of which the evidence is yet imperfect? As if the bread they eat and the wine they drink, chosen by God for the emblems of his sacraments because the commonest things of daily life, were not filled with the Presence of His love; as if God were not around their path, and beside their bed, and spying out all their daily ways. It is in this strange way that we have learned Christ. The miracles which were meant to point us to the Divinity of His Goodness have only dazzled us with the splendor of their Power. We have forgotten what His first wonder-work shows, that a miracle is only manifested glory. 2. It was the glory of Christ again to sanctify, that is, declare the sacredness of all things natural. All natural relationships, all natural enjoyments. All natural relationships. What He sanctified by His presence was a marriage. Now, remember what had gone before this. The life of John the Baptist |