XVII.

THE FIRST MIRACLE.

I. THE GLORY OF THE VIRGIN MOTHER.

"This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him.”—John ii. 11.

THIS was the "beginning of miracles" which Jesus did, and yet he was now thirty years of age. For thirty years he had done no miracle; and that is in itself almost worthy to be called a miracle. That he abstained for thirty years from the exertion of His wonder-working power is as marvellous as that He possessed for three years the power to exert. He was content to live long in deep obscurity. Nazareth, with its quiet valley, was world enough for Him. There was no disposition to rush into publicity: no haste to be known in the world. The quiet consciousness of power which breathes in that expression, "Mine hour is not yet come," had marked His whole life. He could bide His time. He had the strength to wait.

This was true greatness-the greatness of man, because also the greatness of God: for such is God's way in all He does. In all the works of God there is a conspicuous absence of haste and hurry. All that He does ripens slowly. Six slow days and nights of creative force before man was made: two thousand years to discipline and form a Jewish people : four thousand years of darkness, and ignorance, and crime, before the fullness of the time had come, when He could send forth His Son: unnumbered ages of war before the thousand years of solid peace can come. Whatever contradicts this Divine plan must pay the price of haste-brief duration. All that is done before the hour is come decays fast. All precocious things ripened before their time, wither before their time: precocious fruit, precocious minds, forced feelings.. "He that believeth shall not make haste."

We shall distribute the various thoughts which this event suggests under two heads.

I. The glory of the Virgin Mother.

II. The glory of the Divine Son.

I. The glory of the Virgin Mother.

In the First Epistle to the Corinthians St Paul speaks of

That

the glory of the woman as of a thing distinct from the glory of the man. They are the two opposite poles of the sphere of humanity. Their provinces are not the same, but different. The qualities which are beautiful as predominant in one are not beautiful when predominant in the other. which is the glory of the one is not the glory of the other. The glory of her who was highly favored among women, and whom all Christendom has agreed in contemplating_as the type and ideal of her sex, was glory in a different order from that in which her Son exhibited the glory of a perfect manhood. A glory different in degree, of course: the one was only human, the other more than human, the Word made flesh; but different in order too: the one manifesting forth her glory-the grace of womanhood; the other manifesting forth His glory-the wisdom and the majesty of manhood, in which God dwelt.

Different orders or kinds of glory. Let us consider the glory of the Virgin, which is, in other words, the glory of what is womanly in character.

1. Remarkable, first of all, in this respect, is her considerateness. There is gentle, womanly tact in those words, "They have no wine.” Unselfish thoughtfulness about others' comforts, not her own: delicate anxiety to save a straitened family from the exposure of their poverty: and moreover, for this is very worthy of observation,, carefulness about gross, material things: a sensual thing, we might truly say

wine, the instrument of intoxication: yet see how her feminine tenderness transfigured and sanctified such gross and common things; how that wine which, as used by the revellers of the banquet, might be coarse and sensual, was in her use sanctified, as it was by unselfishness and charity: a thing quite heavenly, glorified by the ministry of love.

It was so that in old times, with thoughtful hospitality, Rebekah offered water at the well to Abraham's way-worn servant. It was so that Martha showed her devotion to her Lord even to excess, being cumbered with much serving. It was so that the women ministered to Christ out of their substance-water, food, money. They took these low things of earth, and spiritualized them into means of hospitality and devotion.

And this is the glory of womanhood: surely no common glory: surely one which, if she rightly comprehended her place on earth, might enable her to accept its apparent humiliation unrepiningly; the glory of unsensualizing coarse and common things, sensual things, the objects of mere sense, meat and drink and household cares, elevating them,

by the spirit in which she ministers them, into something transfigured and sublime.

The humblest mother of a poor family who is cumbered with much serving, or watching over a hospitality which she is too poor to delegate to others, or toiling for love's sake in household work, needs no emancipation in God's sight. It is the prerogative and the glory of her womanhood to consecrate the meanest things by a ministry which is not for self.

2. Submission. "Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it." Here is the true spirit of obedience. Not slavishness, but entire loyalty and perfect trust in a person whom we reverence. She did not comprehend her Son's strange repulse and mysterious words; but she knew that they were not capricious words, for there was no caprice in Him: she knew that the law which ruled His will was right, and that importunity was useless. So she bade them reverently wait in silence till His time should come.

Here is another distinctive glory of womanhood. In the very outset of the Bible submission is revealed as her peculiar lot and destiny. If you were merely to look at the words as they stand, declaring the results of the Fall, you would be inclined to call that vocation of obedience a curse; but in the spirit of Christ it is transformed, like labor, into a blessing. In this passage a twofold blessing stands connected with it. Freedom from all doubt; and prevailing power in prayer.

The first is freedom from all doubt. The Virgin seems to have felt no perplexity at that rebuke and seeming refusal; and yet perplexity and misgiving would seem natural. A more masculine and imperious mind would have been startled; made sullen, or have begun at once to sound the depths of metaphysics, reasoning upon the hardship of a lot which can not realize all it wishes: wondering why such simple blessings are refused, pondering deeply on Divine decrees, ending perhaps in skepticism. Mary was saved from this. She could not understand, but she could trust and wait. Not for one moment did a shade of doubt rest upon her heart. At once and instantly, "Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it." And so, too, the Syrophenician woman was not driven to speculate on the injustice of her destiny by the seeming harshness of Christ's reply. She drew closer to her Lord in prayer. Affection and submissiveness saved them both from doubt. True women both.

Now there are whole classes of our fellow-creatures to whom, as a class, the anguish of religious doubt never or

rarely comes. Mental doubt rarely touches women. Soldiers and sailors do not doubt. Their religion is remarkable for its simplicity and childlike character. Scarcely ever are religious warriors tormented with skepticism or doubts. And in all, I believe, for the same reason the habits of feeling to which the long life of obedience trains the soul. Prompt, quick, unquestioning obedience: that is the soil for faith.

I call this, therefore, the glory of womanhood. It is the true glory of human beings to obey. It is her special glory, rising out of the very weakness of her nature-God's strength made perfect in weakness. England will not soon forget that lesson left her as the bequest of a great life. Her buried Hero's glory came out of that which was manliest in his character-the Virgin's spirit of obedience.

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The second glory resulting from it is prevailing power with God. Her wish was granted. "What have I to do with thee," were words that only asserted His own perfect independence. They were not the language of rebuke. Messiah He gently vindicated His acts from interference, showing the filial relation to be in its first strictness dissolved. But as Son He obeyed, or to speak more properly, complied. Nay, probably His look had said that already, promising more than His words, setting her mind at rest, and granting the favor she desired.

Brethren, the subject of prayer is a deep mystery. To the masculine intellect it is a demonstrable absurdity. For says logic, how can man's will modify the will of God, or alter the fixed decree? And if it can not, wherein lies the use of prayer? But there is a something mightier than intellect and truer than logic. It is the faith which works by love-the conviction that in this world of mystery, that which can not be put in words, nor defended by argument, may yet be true. The will of Christ was fixed, what could be the use of intercession? and yet the Virgin's feeling was true; she felt her prayer would prevail.

Here is a grand paradox, which is the paradox of all prayer. The heart hopes that which to reasoning seems impossible. And I believe we never pray aright except when we pray in that feminine childlike spirit which no logic can defend, feeling as if we modified the will of God, though that will is fixed. It is the glory of the spirit that is affectionate and submissive that it, ay and it alone, can pray, because it alone can believe that its prayer will be granted; and it is the glory of that spirit, too, that its prayer will be granted. 3. In all Christian ages the especial glory ascribed to the

Virgin Mother is purity of heart and life. Implied in the term “Virgin." Gradually in the history of the Christian Church the recognition of this became idolatry. The works of early Christian art curiously exhibit the progress of this perversion. They show how Mariolatry grew up. The first pictures of the early Christian ages simply represent the woman. By-and-by we find outlines of the mother and the child. In an after-age the Son is seen sitting on a throne, with the mother crowned, but sitting as yet below Him. In an age still later, the crowned mother on a level with the Son. Later still, the mother on a throne above the Son. And lastly, a Romish picture represents the eternal Son in wrath, about to destroy the earth, and the Virgin Intercessor interposing, pleading by significant attitude her maternal rights, and redeeming the world from His vengeance. Such was, in fact, the progress of Virgin-worship. First the woman reverenced for the Son's sake; then the woman reverenced above the Son, and adored.

Now the question is, How came this to be? for we assume it as a principle that no error has ever spread widely that was not the exaggeration or perversion of a truth. And be assured that the first step towards dislodging error is to understand the truth at which it aims. Never can an error be permanently destroyed by the roots, unless we have planted by its side the truth that is to take its place. Else you will find the falsehood returning forever, growing up again when you thought it cut up root and branch, appearing in the very places where the crushing of it seemed most complete. Wherever there is a deep truth, unrecognized, misunderstood, it will force its way into men's hearts. It will take pernicious forms if it can not find healthful ones. It will grow as some weeds grow, in noxious forms, ineradicably, because it has a root in human nature.

Else how comes it to pass, after three hundred years of reformation, we find Virgin-worship restoring itself again in this reformed England, where least of all countries we should expect it, and where the remembrance of Romish persecution might have seemed to make its return impossible? How comes it that some of the deepest thinkers of our day, and men of the saintliest lives, are feeling this Virgin-worship a necessity for their souls; for it is the doctrine to which the converts to Romanism cling most tenaciously?

Brethren, I reply, Because the doctrine of the worship of the Virgin has a root in truth, and no mere cutting and uprooting can destroy it: no thunders of Protestant oratory: no platform expositions: no Reformation societies. In one