human sorrow; he came, not to put an end to common life, but he came to bring the gospel into its hidden recesses and its deepest depths, to make all its paths beautiful, all its voices harmony. Christianity does not call upon you who are tradesmen to shut up your shops, but to be Christian shopmen; it does not call upon you not to marry, but to marry in the Lord; nor to lay aside your titles, as a recent denomination does, but to be Christian peers and peeresses; it does not call upon you to detach yourselves from society, in order to avoid its evil, but to go into the midst of society, and meet its hostility, master its evils, and make it reflect the glory, the beneficence, and the goodness of God. Hence, the first act of the ministry of Jesus was not isolation from society, but going right into the heart of society, beginning at its root and centre, in order to bless, to beautify, and make it good.

We gather, too, from this parable, that our Lord (and this is perhaps one of the most remarkable proofs of his prescience, or, in other words, of his Divinity) had, in many things that he said and did, an ulterior reference. Thus what he said about the virgin Mary, as I will explain to you, had a clear ulterior, practical reference. So

had also the fact that his first miracle was performed at a wedding. He knew that a section of his professing church would rise which would say that marriage is prohibited in some, and that celibacy is a holier, purer, and nobler state. All this is destroyed, neutralized, swept away, by the fact that the marriage instituted in Paradise has been reconsecrated in Cana of Galilee. I allege, therefore, that there is not a holier thing on earth than the domestic roof, and there is not a more divine nook of humanity than a Christian family.

Mary introduces the miracle which Jesus was about to perform by the simple remark, “They have no wine." We read that "there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there: and both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage. And when they wanted wine, [or, literally translated," when the wine began to fail," ] the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine."

Perhaps I should explain that Cana of Galilee was a few miles north-east of Nazareth, a place that was most familiar to our Lord, and situated between Nazareth and the Lake or Sea of Gennesareth. It is described by a modern traveller

(the site of it being perfectly well ascertained, and even its name retained) as a pretty Turkish village, gracefully situated on two sides of a hollow of fertile land, with surrounding hills, and covered with oaks and olive trees. It is still a small village, but the mosque is there instead of the Christian temple.

Mary states then the fact which led to the performance of this miracle: "They have no wine." Some have been anxious to ascertain why she said so. It has been suggested that the couple that were married were Mary's own immediate relatives, and that she felt for their poverty. The virgin Mary was a poor sinner by nature, and became a saint, not by the fact that she was the mother of the Lord's humanity, but by the fact that she was a subject of the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit of God. Mary had the pride of humanity, the vanity of a weak woman, and she thought and felt that poverty was a shame, and that wherever there was poverty, there, if possible, it should be hidden. And yet the holy gospel teaches us that poverty is beautiful, that the gospel came first to the poor; and certainly the Sun of righteousness, like the sun in the firmament, sends his beams into the case

с

ment of the poor man's cottage as fully as into the oriel-window of the great man's hall. Mary fancied poverty was a shame, and she says to the Saviour, "They have no wine." Perhaps, too, she meant by that, "we had better not stop; the wine they have is so little, it will not serve the company that are already come, and perhaps we had better retire, and not draw upon that which is already altogether insufficient." At all events, it is plain that it was a sense of poverty that caused Mary to make the remark.

Notice our Lord's reply: "Woman, what have I do with thee?" The Roman Catholic church has exhausted all its ingenuity and talent, and has written much, in order to show that this does not mean what it means. And many other divines have imitated the Roman Catholic church in this respect with other parts of the Bible. It is plain that in the answer of our Lord there was no disrespect. The word "woman," in fact, in ancient Greek, yuvai, is equivalent to lady." To prove this, you have only to read the words used on the cross, "Woman, behold thy son;" an expression of respect mingled with affection. The words "what have I to do with thee?" seem to us Protestants, when we read

66

our Protestant Bibles, to denote that Jesus had required no partnership in his sufferings, and could have no partnership in the expressions of his mighty power. But the Roman Catholic church has translated it," Woman, what is to thee, and to me?" which is utterly unintelligible;, it conveys no meaning at all. The Greek words are, Ti èpoi kai ooi (what to me, and to thee)? and every one who knows the elements of the Greek grammar, knows that this is an idiom, that, like all other idioms, it has its peculiar signification, and that literally translated into our tongue, it means, "What have I to do with thee?" or, "What hast thou to do with me?" Among other passages in which the same words occur, I may name Judges xi. 12; 1 Kings xvii. 18; 2 Kings ix. 18; Mark v. 7. I might enumerate ten different parts of the Bible, speaking of the Septuagint version of the Old Testament and the Greek New Testament, in which the words i eμoi kai ooì occur; five times in the singular, and in the plural five times more. I have looked at every one of these instances in the Roman Catholic Bible, and I find that nine times the words are translated exactly as we translate them, but in the tenth instance (John