ved on Him." To us this first of signs is merged in the last, in
His death. The joy, the self-sacrifice, the holiness, the strength and
beauty of human character which that death has produced in the world, is
the great evidence which enables many now to believe in Him. The fact is
indubitable. The intelligent secular historian, who surveys the rise and
growth of European nations, counts the death of Christ among the most
vital and influential of powers for good. It has touched all things with
change, and been the source of endless benefit to men. Are we then to
repudiate Him or to acknowledge Him? Are we to act like the master of
the feast, who enjoyed the good wine without asking where it came from;
or are we to own ourselves debtors to the actual Creator of our
happiness? If the disciples believed on Him when they saw Him furnish
these wedding guests with wine, shall we not believe, who know that
through all these ages He has furnished the pained and the poor with
hope and consolation, the desolate and broken-hearted with restoring
sympathy, the outcast with the knowledge of God's love, the sinner with
pardon, with heaven, and with God? Is not the glory He showed at this
marriage in Cana precisely what still attracts us to Him with confidence
and affection? Can we not wholly trust this Lord who has a perfect
sympathy guiding His Divine power, who brings the presence of God into
all the details of human life, who enters into all our joys and all our
sorrows, and is ever watchful to anticipate our every need, and supply
it out of His inexhaustible and all-sufficient fulness? Happy they who
know His heart as His mother knew it, and are satisfied to name their
want and leave it with Him.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] Modern topography inclines to identify this Cana, not, as formerly,
with Kafr-Kenna, but with Kanet-el-Jelil, some six miles N.E. of
Nazareth. It is called Cana of Galilee to distinguish it from Cana in
Asher, S.E. from Tyre (Joshua xix. 28).

VI.

_THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE._

"After this He went down to Capernaum, He, and His mother, and His
brethren, and His disciples: and there they abode not many days. And
the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to
Jerusalem. And He found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep
and doves, and the changers of money sitting: and He made a scourge
of cords, and cast all out of the temple, both the sheep and the
oxen; and