here. His citizenship is in heaven. He may be tempted; he may err; he may fall: but still, in his darkest aberrations, there will be a something that keeps before him still the dreams and aspirations of his best days; a thought of the Cross of Christ, and the self-consecration that it typifies; a conviction that that is the Highest, and that alone the true Life. And that if it were only that would make him essentially different from other men, even when he mixes with them, and seems to catch their tone,-among them, but not one of them. And that Life within him is Christ's pledge that he shall be yet what he longs to be, a something severing him, separating him, consecrating him. For him, and for such as him, the conse cration prayer of Christ was made. "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world: Sanctify them through thy Truth: Thy Word is Truth.” XVIII. [Preached January 23, 1853.J THE FIRST MIRACLE. I. THE GLORY OF THE VIRGIN MOTHER. JOHN ii. 11. "This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilée. and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him.” 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 fulness 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. I. The Glory of the Virgin Mother. In the First Epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul speaks of the glory of the woman as of a thing distinet 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 quali ties which are beautiful as predominant in one are not beautiful when predominant in the other. That 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 con templating as the type and ideal of her sex, was glory in a different order from that in which her Son exhib ited the glory of a perfect manhood. A glory different in degree, of course: the one was only human, the other more than human different in order, too: glory, the grace of festing forth His glory, But the Word made flesh. the one manifesting forth her womanhood; the other mani the Wisdom and 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. 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 hospi tality, 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 com prehended 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 hospi tality which she is too poor to delegate to others, or tailing 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 |