III.

One other form of glory was manifested by Christ at Cana; and it differs altogether from those which we have been considering. We cannot imitate Him as the Master of nature, or as Ruler in the realms of grace; these splendours belong to Him, in His unshared, unapproachable Majesty and Perfection, as our Redeemer and our God. But at Cana of Galilee He also manifested a glory which falls within our compass of imitation; He shone at that humble board with a moral glory; the glory of His condescending and tender charity.

No one of His miracles is more clearly marked by the tenderness and delicacy of His condescension than this. Condescension, as we all know, may be one of two things. It may be an awkward compromise between pride and a sense of duty, or it may be from first to last the impulse of love. Of the former, history and ordinary life will supply more examples than enough; the latter is found nowhere in a perfection which can compare with that of the Gospel history. Remark that condescension implies a real superiority, whether of character or position, or both, from which the advance is made; and then consider what this superiority was in the case of our Lord, and that He was always and necessarily conscious of it. This continuous and vivid consciousness of His true relation to the beings with whom He spent His life, is startlingly illustrated by St. John, when He narrates the washing of the disciples' feet on the eve of the Passion: "Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His Hands, and that He was come forth from God, and went to God; He riseth from supper, and laid aside His garments; and took a towel, and girded Himself.

"a

After that He began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded." a Who does not feel the contrast between that Divine consciousness of being Almighty and Eternal, and an action in which men could see nothing but abasement, but which was perfectly ennobled by the motive which dictated it? "He began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded."

b

Nor would our Lord's sense of His true place in the scale of being have been restricted to any particular times or actions in His human life. When He took His place at the feast of Cana, He knew Who and What He really was. Yet He also knew that, in the estimation of the people, He was placing Himself far below His forerunner, John the Baptist. The Baptist had a deserved reputation for austere sanctity, and a corresponding influence with the people. His ascetic life as a hermit, who shunned the haunts of men, and preached penitence to those who sought him in his wild retreat near the Jordan, attracted while it awed the minds of his countrymen. Our Lord, too, was a Preacher of repentance, and His insistence upon the sterner side of religion was at least not less emphatic than St. John's. But He had part in all that was not sinful in humanity, and not only in one department or aspect of human excellence. Thus while, on the one hand, He taught the evangelical counsels of perfection, He appeared on the other at the publican's board in Capernaum, and at the marriage feast of Cana. And as some modern critics have charged Him with preaching an impossible asceticism, so others have maintained that by the miraculous supply of wine at Cana He was sanctioning a low revel, a degrading debauchery; even as the men of His day declared that He was a “glut

a St. John xiii. 3-5.

b St. Matt. iii. 1-5.

с

tonous man, and a winebibber," after all. In this generation as in that the children sit in the market-place, and call unto their fellows, saying, "We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented." But meanwhile Wisdom is justified of her true children, who see in Christ's condescending charity at Cana a ray of that Love which redeemed the world. He is present, in all senses, as one of the guests; and His conduct at the feast was marked by the tenderest consideration for the feelings of the poor family, who were making the best of their brief day of festive joy. He saved them from the disappointment of being unable to entertain their friends; He added somewhat, we may well believe, to their household store besides; but He did this in such a manner as to hide His Hand, and to lay them at the moment and before the guests under no embarrassing sense of obligation towards Himself. Had He worked the miracle immediately and publicly, when His Mother first asked His aid, it might have been otherwise. But "His hour" for working it in His own way 66 was not yet come; and when He did work it, no one present knew what He was doing. His grace and bounty were only discovered afterwards and in their effects.

What is this but the glory of God's own bountiful Providence? Man, when he would assist his brother man, too often parades his benevolence; God gives us all that we have so unobtrusively, that most of us altogether forget the Giver. We are the spoiled children of His love; we credit chance, or good fortune, or our own energy or far-sightedness, with the blessings which come only from Him. Yet He does not on that account inflict upon us the perpetual sense of our indebtedness. As

a St. Matt. xi. 19.

b Ib. 17.

c Ib. 19.

a

it was in the beginning of human history, so it is now, and ever shall be, with this law of His love. Yet, Divine as He is in this, He is also human and imitable, so that we may copy Him. There are many duties of charity which are necessarily public; they belong to certain positions; they are valuable as stimulants and examples. But there are many also which are essentially private; and these, we may be sure, are the most welcome to our Lord, Who would not that a man's left hand should know what his right hand was doing in the cause of his fellows. The best of us, my friends, have not to stoop far in order to meet the worst; we know this, if we place ourselves with sincerity in the Presence of the Son of Man. But the better we can assist our brethren, without letting them suspect that we are helping them, the more may we hope to share in that moral glory which characterizes the Divine Providence in His dealings with all of us, and which our Lord Jesus Christ manifested throughout His human life, but never more truly than at Cana in Galilee.

a St. Matt. vi. 3.

SERMON XXIV.

THE CONQUEST OF EVIL.

(THIRD SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY.)

ROM. XII. 21.

Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

AMONG the sacred writers, St. Paul is remarkable for

his sympathy with human nature and thought; a sympathy which was probably a natural endowment, enriched by the power of the Spirit of Christ. When less sensitive minds would speak and pass on, suspecting no disturbance of thought or feeling within the soul of the listener, St. Paul's sympathetic insight anticipates the exact effect of his language, and enables him, when necessary, to correct it. Thus, in the case before us, he has been inculcating several difficult duties as belonging to a serious Christian life. Christians, he says, are to think of themselves soberly and honestly; each is to remember that, as a member of the Holy Body of the Redeemer, he owes much towards all around him. All is to begin and end with love; love is to be sincere and practical; men are to make the most of their individual gifts for the sake of others; they are to be cheerful, active, enthusiastic, patient, prayerful, large-hearted, sympathetic, unambitious. They may not be self-asserting;