down. And when thou hast done all thy office, take thy place, that thou mayest be
merry with them, and receive a crown for thy well ordering of the feast."
92 THE WATER MADE WINE.
the freedom of remonstrance which he allows himself with the host
seems almost decisive of his position ; for such would hardly have found
place but from an equal. To him, as having the function of tasting and
distributing the wine, the Lord commanded that which he had made to
be brought, even in this little matter recognizing and honoring the estab-
lished order and usages of society, and giving to every man his due.
And now " when the ruler of the feast had tasted the water which was
made wine, and knew not whence it was, he called the bridegroom," we
need not suppose actually summoned him from his place, but he called
to him,* with something of a festive exclamation, not unsuitable to tho
season, " Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine, and wh&
men have well drunk, then that which is loorse .-f but thou hast kept the
good wine until now."
Many interpreters have been very anxious to rescue the original
word, which we have given by " well drunk," from involving aught of
excess, as though, did it imply that, we must necessarily conclude that
the guests at this marriage festival had already drunken too much, that
this was one of the iemulenta convivia, which St. Cyprian speaks of as
too often disgracing a marriage,:}: with all the difficulties, of Christ being
present at such an abuse of God's gifts, and, stranger still, ministering
by his divine power to a yet further excess. But there is no need of
such anxious dealing with the word.§ The ruler of the feast is but
alluding to the corrupt customs and fashions too current among men,
not to aught which was necessarily going on before his eyes — nay, to
something which certainly was not so, for such the Lord would liave as
little sanctioned by his presence, as he would have helped it forward by
a wonder-work of his own. The speaker does no more than refer to a
common practice, and in so doing, notices its cause, namely, that men's
palates after a while are blunted, and their power of discerning between
good and bad lost ; and that then an inferior wine passes current with
them, as it would not have done before. There is no special application
* Maldonatus: Non quod ad se venire jusserit, quod minimc fuissct urbanum, sed
quod recumbentem appellans interrogaverit, quid optimum vinum in finem rcservasset.
+ 'EAn(T!7(o implies at once worse and weaker. We have in English the same use
of "small." Perhaps "poorer" would Be the nearest word. Pliny in like mamier
(^H. N.,\. 14, c. 14,) speaks of the meanness of some, qui convivis alia quam sibimet
ipsis ministrant, aut procedente mensd subjiciunt.
t De Hah. Virg., c. 3.
§ Augustine indeed goes further than any, for he makes not merely the guests, but
the ruler of the feast himself to have "well drunk" indeed. The Lord not merely
made wine, but, he adds {De Gen. ad Litt., 1. 6, c. 13) tale vinum, quod ehrius etiam
conviva laudaret.
THE WATER MADE WINE. 93
to the guests present — except in the minds of them who would mar, if
by any means they could, the image of a perfect Holiness, which offends
and rebukes them.
Of a piece with this is their miserable objection, who find the miracle
incredible, since, if the Lord did not actually minister to an excess
already commenced, yet, by the creation of " so large and perilous a
quantity of wine," (for the quantity was enormous,*) he M'ould have
put temptation in men's way ; — as though tlie secret of temperance lay
in the scanty supply, and not in the strong self-restraint ! In like man-
ner, every gift of God, every large abundance of the vineyard, might be
said with equal truth to be a temptation, and so in some sort it is, (com-
pare Luke xii. 16,) a proving of men's temperance and moderation in
the midst of abundance.f But man is to be perfected, not by being kept
out o/" temptation, but rather by being victorious in temptation. And
for this large giving, it was only that which we should look for. He, a
King, gave as a king. No niggard giver in the ordinary bounties of his
kingdom of nature, neither was he a niggard giver now, when he brought
those his common gifts into the kingdom of his grace, and made them
directly to serve him there. (Cf. Luke v. 6, 7.) •
But these words, " Every man at the heginning doth set forth good
wine ; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse : but thou
hast kept the good wine until now," setting forth, as in the letter they do,
only a trivial practice of a poor worldly economy, have oftentimes had
a higher meaning found for them. It has been excellently noticed how
these very words may be used for the setting forth the difTerence be-
tween the manner and order of the world's giving and of Christ's giving.
The man, not knowing what he did, gave utterance to a far larger and
deeper thought than he meant. The world does indeed give its best and
its fairest at the beginning, its -'good wine" first, but has only baser sub-
stitutes at the last. " Wheti men have well drunk," when their spiritual
* The Attic fierpriTfis (=/Ja5os=72 |£(7rai=72 sextarii) =8 gallons 7-365 pints,
imperial measure ; so that each of these six vessels, containing two or three finrpnTai
apiece, did in round numbers hold about twenty gallons or more.
t Calvin answers the objection excellently well : Nostro vitio fit, si ejus benignitas
irritamentum est luxurise ; quin potius haec temperantiae nostrae vera est probatio, si in
media affluentia parci tamen et moderati sumus. Cf. Suicer's Thess., s. v. ojvog. It
is instructive to notice the ascetic tone which Slrauss takes, (Leben Jesu, v. 2, ji. 229,)
when speaking of this Luxuswunder, as he terms it, contrasted with that which he as-
sumes when he desires to depreciate the character of John the Baptist: but truly he is
of that generation that call Jesus a winebibber, and say that John has a devil ; with
whom that which is godlike can in no form find favor. Some of Woolston's vilest
ribaldry (Fourth Discourse on the Miracles of our Saviour, p. 23, seq.) is spent upon
this theme.
94 THE WATER MADE WINE.
palate is blunted, when they have lost the discernment between moral
good and evil, then it puts upon them what it would not have dared to
offer at the first — coarser pleasures, viler enjoyments, the swine's husks.
The world is for them that worship it, even as that great image which
the Babylonian king beheld ; (Dan. ii. 31 ;) its head, indeed, may show
as fine gold, but its material grows ever baser, till it finishes in the iron
and clay at the last. And so it comes to pass that
" To be a prodigal's favorite, then, worse lot !
A miser's pensioner,"
this is the portion of them that have entered on the service of sin and of
the world. But it is very otherwise with the guests of Christ, the hea-
venly bridegroom. He ever reserves for them whom lie has bidden " the
good loine" unto the last.* In the words of the most eloquent of our di-
vines, "The world presents us with fair language, promising hopes, con-
venient fortunes, pompous honors, and these are the outside of the bowl ;
but when it is swallowed, th$se dissolve in an instant, and there remains
bitterness and the malignity of coloquintida. Every sin smiles in the
first address, and carries light in the face, and honey in the lip, but
when we ' Jiave well drunk,' then comes ' that ivhich is worse,' a whip
with six strings, fears and terrors of conscience, and shame and displea-
sure, and a caitiff disposition, and diffidence in the day of death. But
when after the manner of purifying of the Christians, we fill our water-
pots with water, watering our couch with our tears, and moistening our
cheeks with the perpetual distillations of repentance, then Christ turns
our water into wine, first penitents and then communicants — first waters
* Thus H. de Sto Victore (De Arc. Morali, 1. 1. c. 1) . Omnis namque homo, id
est, carnalis primum vinum bonum ponit, quia in sua delectatione falsam quandam dul-
cedinem sentit ; sed postquam furor mali desiderii mentem inebriaverit, tunc quod de-
terius est propinat, quia spina conscientiae superveniens mentem, quam prius falso dc-
lectabat, graviter crucial. Sed Sponsus noster postremo vinum bonum porrigit, dum
mentem, quam sui dulcedine amoris replere disponit, quadam prius tribulationum com-
pimctione amaricari sinit, ut post gustum amaritudinis avidiiis bibatur suavissimum po-
culum caritatis. Corn, a Lapide : Hie est typus fallaciae mundi, qui initio res speciosas
oculis objicit, deinde sub iis deteriores et viles inducit, itaque sui amatores decipit et
illudit. An unknown author (Bernardi 0pp., v. 2, p. 513) : In futurft, enim vita aqua
omnis laboris et actionis terrenae in vinum divina3 contemplationis commutabitur, im-
plebunturque omnis hydrise usque ad summum. Omnes enim implebuntur in bonis
domfts Domini, cum illae desiderabiles nuptiae Sponsi et spons
turque in summS. laetitia omnium clamantium Domino et dicentium ; Tu bonum vinum
serv&sti usque adhuc. I know not from whence this line comes,
lUe merum tardJi, dat tamen ille merum ;
but it evidently belongs to this miracle.
THE WATER MADE WINE. 95
of sorrow and then the wine of the chalice ; for Jesus keeps
the best wine to the last, not only because of the direct reservation of
the highest joys till the nearer approaches of glory, but also because
our relishes are higher after a long fruition than at the first essays, such
being the nature of grace, that it increases in relish as it does in frui-
tion, every part of grace being new duty and new reward."*
The Evangelist expressly, and, as it would seem, pointedly, ex-
cludes from all historic credit the miracles of Christ's infancy, of which
so large a crop is to be found in nearly all the apocryphal Gospels.
For, of course, he would not say merely that this was the first miracle
which Jesus did in Cana, but that this miracle in Cana was the first
which he did ; it was for him the " beginning of miracles."-\ The
statement is not unimportant, nor unconnected with one of the main pur-
poses with which the Gospel of St. John was written, which was to re-
pel and remove all unreal notions concerning the person of his Lord, —
notions which nothing would have helped more to uphold than those
merely phantastic and capricious miracles, — favorites, therefore, with
all manner of Docetic heretics, — which are ascribed to his infancy.:}:
But in this work of his he " manifested forth his glory," words that
could be used of no lesser than the Son ; for all others would have ma-
nifested forth the glory of another, but he his own. And this, because
the word ''glory" is to be taken emphatically ; it is not merely his ex-
cellent greatness, but his divinity : for the glory {86^a) is a divine attri-
bute ; it is comprehended and involved in the idea of the Logos as the
absolute Light : as such he rays forth light from himself, and this efflu-
ence is " his glory." (John i. 14 ; Matt. xvi. 27 ; Mark viii. 38.) This
" glory" during the time that the Son of God sojourned upon earth, for the
most part was hidden ; the covering of the flesh concealed it from men's
* J. Taylor, Life of Christ. With this may be fitly joined that exquisite poem,
with which every one is familiar, in The Christian Year, that upon the second Sun-
day after Epiphany, suggested by this miracle, the Gospel of that day, and which is the
unfolding of the same thought.
+ Thus Tertullian (De Eapt., c. 9,) calls it, prima rudimenta potestatis suae. And
this day has been called Dies natalis virtutum Domini.
t This statement of St. John has ever been used in the Church as a decisive testi-
mony exclusive of all these ; thus by Epiphanius, {Har., 51, § 20,) from whose words
it would appear that some Catholics were inclined to admit these miracles of the In-
fancy, as affording an argument against the Corinthians, and in proof that it was not
at his baptism first that the Christ was united to the man Jesus. And Euthymius (in
loc.) finds in St. John's words a distinct purpose on the part of the Evangelist to ex-
clude all wonders that were recorded as going before. St. John, he says, Icropxiacv
a'oTo, j(^pr](n^svov et; rd jiri tnarevsiv toi; Acyo^lvoif naiSiKots davjiatJi toU X.pi
Chktsostom, Horn. 16 ; 20 ; 22 in Joh.; and Thilo, Cod. Apocryph., p. Ixxxiv. seq.
96 THE WATER MADE WINE.
eyes : but in this miracle, this work of his power, St. John would say.
it broke through this its fleshly covering, and manifested itself to the
spiritual eyes of his disciples ; they " beheld his glory, the glory as of
the onlv begotten of the Father."* And as a consequence, "Ms disci-
ples lelieved on Ai/ra." The work, besides its more immediate purpose,
had a further end and aim, the confirming their faith, who already be-
lievinof in him, were therefore the more capable of receiving increase of
faith, — of being lifted from faith to faith, from faith in an earthly teacher
to faith in a heavenly Lord.f
It was said at the outset, that this first miracle of our Lord's had its
inner mystical meaning. The first miracle of Moses was the turning
of water into blood, (Exod. vii. 20.) and that had its own fitness, for the
law was a ministration of death and working wrath ;X but the first
* The Eastern Church, as is well known, counted the Baptism of Christ, being his
recognition before men and by men in his divine character, for the great manifesting
of his glory to the world, for his Epiphany, and was wont to celebrate it as such. But
the Western, which laid not such stress on the Baptism, s^w his Epiphany rather in
the adoration of the Magians, the first fruits and representatives of the heathen world.
At a later period, indeed, it placed other great moments in his life, moments in which
his divine majesty gloriously shone out, in connection with this festival ; such, for in-
stance, as the Baptism, as the feeding of the five thousand, and as this present miracle,
which last continually afibrds the theme to the later \vriters of the Western Church for
the homily at Epiphany, as it gives us the Gospel for one of the Epiphany Sundays.
But these secondary allusions belong not to the first introduction of the feast, so that
the following passage should have prevented the editors of the new volume of St. Au-
gustine's sermons {Serm. Inedili, Paris, 1842,) from attributing the sermon which con-
tains it (^Serm. 38, in Epiph.,) to that Father : Hodiemam diem Ecclesia per orbem
celebrat totum, sive quod Stella prae ceteris fulgens divitibns Magis parvum non parvi
Resris monstravit hospitium, sive quod hodie Chrisms primum fecisse dicitur signnm,
quando aquas repente commutavit in vinum, sive quod h. Joanne isto die creditur bap-
lizatus et Patris consona voce Dei fiiius revelatur. The same mark of a later origin is
about several other sermons which they have printed as his. In his genuine, he knows
only of the adoration of the wise men as the fact which this festival of the Epiphany
commemorates.
t This is plainly the true explanation (in the words of Ammonius, ::po(T6fiKnv tic^av-o
rtjra Tijs tis avTov -icrsas,) and not that, which Augustine, (De Cons. Etang., 1. 2, e.
17,) for the interests of his harmony, upholds, that they are here called " disciple^' by
anticipation ; because subsequently to the miracle they believed ; (non jam discipuios,
sed qui fiamri erant discipuli intelligere debemus ;) as one might say. The apostle Paul
was bom at Tarsus.
X Yet as Moses has here, where he stands in contrast to Christ, a mutatio in deterius,
so in another place, where he stands as his type, he has, like him, a mutatio in melius,
(Exod. xiv. 25,) changing the bitter waters to sweet : and so not less Elisha (2 Kin. ii.
19 — 22) ; however the more excellent transmutation, which should be not merely the
rectifying of qualities already existing, but imparting of new qualities, was reserved for
THE WATER MADE T\^NE. 97
miracle of Christ was the turning of water into wine, and this too was
a meet inauguration of the rest, for his was a ministration of life ; he
came, bringing joy and gladness, the giver of the true wine that maketh
glad the hearts of men. — There is, too, another prophetic aspect under
which this turning of the water into wine has been often contemplated,
another, though in truth but a different aspect of the same, — that even
so should Christ turn the poorer dispensation, the weak and watery ele-
ments of the Jewish religion, (Heb. vii. 18,) into richer and nobler, the
gladdening wine of a higher faith. The whole Jewish dispensation in
its comparative weakness and. poverty was aptly symbolized by the wa-
ter, and only in type and prophecy could it tell of him of the tribe of
Judah, who should come " binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's
colt unto the choice vine :" of whom it is said, " he washed his gar-
ments in wine and his clothes in the blood of grapes" (Gen. xlis. 11 ; cf.
John XV. 1); but now by this work of his he gave token that he had
indeed come into the midst of his people, that their joy might be full.*
the Son ; who was indeed not an ameliorator of the old life of men, bnt the bringer in
of a new life — not a reformer, but a regenerator.
* Com. a. Lapide : Christos ergo initio suae praedicationis mutans aqoam in vinum
significabat se legem Mosaicam, instar aqucB insipidam et frigidam, conversurum in
EvangeHum gratiae, qas instar vini est, generosa, sapida, ardens, et efficax. And Ber-
nard, in a pre-eminently beautiiiil sermon upon this miracle, (Bened. Ed., p. 814,)
has in fact the same interpretation: Tunc [aqua] mutatur in vioum, cum timer expel-
litur k caritate, et implentnr omnia ferrore spiritils et jucunda devotione ; cf De Di-
vers., Serm. 18, c. 2 ; and Eusebius (Dem. Erang. 1. 9, c. 8) ; Ec/i/JoXov ?»< -o -aoaco^dv
livaTtKCDTepov xpa^aroi, fieraffXiiOevTos ix rrji cmiiaTiKorripas £5rt rriv vocpav xa'i rret'/zarnrnJ'
eixj^pocvvnv Tov TKrriKov r$s Kaivijs AiaB^Km Koajiaroi. Augustine is in the same line, when
he says {In Ev. Joh., Tract. 9) : TolUtur velamen, ciun transieris ad Dominum, . . .
et quod aqua erat, vinum tibi fit. Lege libros omnes propheticos, non inteUecto Christo,
quid tarn insipidum et fatunm invenies ? InteUige ibi Christum, non solum sapit quod
legis, sed eiiam inebriat. He illustrates this from Luke xxiv. 25 — 27. Gregory the
Great, {Rom. 6 in Ezek.,) gives it another turn : Aquam nobis in vinum vertit, quando
ipsa historia per aUegoriae mysterium, in spiritalem nobis inteUigentiam commntatur. —
Before the rise of the Eutychian heresy had made it clearly unadvisable to use such
terms as xpacis, dvaKpaai;, /iifi?, to designate the union of the two natures in Christ, or
such phrases as Tertullian's Deo mixtus homo, we sometimes find allusions to what
Christ here did, as though it were symbolical of the ennobling of the human nature
through its being transfused by the divine in his person. Thus Ireneeus (1. 5, c. 1, §
3) complains of the Ebionites, that they cling to the first Adam who was cast out of
Paradise, and will know nothing of the second, its restorer : Reprobant itaque hi com-
mlxtionem vini coelestis, et solam aquam secularem volunt esse. So Domer {Von der
Person Christi, p. 57,) understands this passage : yet it is possible that here may be
allusion rather to their characteristic custom of using water alone, instead of wine min-
gled with water, in the Holy Communion : the passage will even then show how Ire-
naeus found in the wine and in the water, the apt symbols of the higher and the lower,
of the divine and human.
98 THE WATER MADE WINE.
And apart from all that is local and temporary, this miracle may be
taken as the sign and symbol of all which Christ is evermore doing in the
world, ennobling all that he touches, making saints out of sinners, angels
out of men, and in the end heaven out of earth, a new paradise of God
out of the old wilderness of the world. For the prophecy of the world's
regeneration, of the day in which his disciples shall drink of the fruit of
the vine new in his kingdom, is eminently here ; — in this humble feast,
the rudiments of the great festival which shall be at the open setting up
of his kingdom — that marriage festival in which he shall be himself the
Bridegroom and his Church the bride, — that season when his " hour^'
shall have indeed "come.^'
Irenaeus* has an interesting passage, in which he puts together this
miracle and that of the loaves, and, as I think, contemplates them to-
gether as a prophecy of the Eucharist, but certainly sees them as alike
witnesses against all Gnostic notions of a creation originally impure.
The Lord, he says, might have created with no subjacent material the
wine with which he cheered these guests, the bread with which he fed
those multitudes; but he rather chose to take his Father's creatures on
which to put forth his power, in witness that it was the same God who
at the beginning had made the waters and caused the earth to bear its
fruits, who did in those last days give by his Son the cup of blessing
and the bread of heaven. f
* Cun. Hcer., 1. 3, c. 11 ; Chrysostom in like manner, in regard to the Mani-
chaeans, Horn. 22 in Joh.
t The account of this miracle by Sedulius is a favorable specimen of his poetry ;
Prima sua; Dominus thalamis dignatns adesse
Virtntis docnmenta dedit ; convivaqne praesens
Pascere non pasci veniens, mirabile ! fusas
In vinum convertit aquas ; dimittere gaudent
Pallorem latices ; mutavit Ifcsa [laeta ?] saporem
Unda snum, largita merum, mensasque per omnes
Dnicia non nato rubnerunt pocula musto.
Implevit sex ergo lacus hoc nectare Christns,
Q.uippe ferax qui Vitis erat, virtute colona
Omnia frnctificans, cujus sub tegniine blando
Mitis inocciduas enutrit pampinus uvas.
In very early times it was a favorite subject for Christian art. On many of the old
sarcophagi Jesus is seen standing and touching with the rod of Moses, the rod of
might which is generally placed in his hand when he is set forth as a worker of won-
ders, three vessels resting on the ground, — three, because in their skilless delineations
the artists could not manage to find room for more. Sometimes he has a roll of
writing in his hand, as much as to say, This is written in the Scripture ; or the master
of the feast is somewhat earnestly rebuking the bridegroom for having kept the good
wine till last ; having himself tasted, he is giving him the cup to convince him of his
error. (Mc.\ter, Sinnhild. d. Alt. Christ., v. 2, p. 92.)
11.
THE HEALING OF THE NOBLEMAN'S SON,
John iv. 46 — 54.
There is an apparent contradiction in the words that introduce this
miracle. It is there said that Jesus " went into Galilee, for he himself
testified that a prophet hath no honor in his own country," and yet
Galilee was his own country, and immediately after we are told that the
Galilseans "received,"* or gave him honorable welcome. This how-
ever is easily got rid of j yet not as Tittmann, and some of the older
expositors propose, by making St. John, in fact, to say that the Lord
went into Galilee, though he had testified that a prophet was unhonored
at home ; for there is no compelling the words to mean this ; nor yet
by understanding "his own country" as Judsea, and then finding in
this saying of his an explanation of his retiring from thence into Gal-
ilee. This is Origen's explanation, whom some moderns follow. But
the Lord's birth at Bethlehem in Judoea being a fact not generally
known, the slight esteem in which he was there held, could not have
had in this its ground. Rather we must accept " country "f as the
place where he had been brought up, namely, Nazareth, and then there
is here an explanation of his not returning thither, (with a direct allu-
sion to the testimony which he himself had borne in its synagogue,
"No prophet is accepted in his own country," Luke iv. 24,) but
going in preference to Cana, and other cities of Galilee ; " and the
* 'ESt^avTo, Benevolo et honorific^ exceperunt : so often elsewhere.
t Ilarpif, cf. Matt. xiii. 54,55; Mark vi. 1,4; Luke iv. 16. Chrysostom {Horn.
35 in Joh.) has this right view of the meaning, with the exception, indeed, of under-
standing by "his own country," Capernaum (Luke x. 15,) rather than Nazareth;
il^apTvprjae will then have the sense of a plusq. perf , of which there are several instances
in the New Testament.
100 THE HEALING OF THE NOBLEMAN'S SON.
Galilaeans," as St. John, with an emphasis, relates, " received him,"