first. A miracle it is, which cannot be explained, but is only enhanced by the almost
incredible platitudes to which negative criticism has sunk in its commentation, 58 for
which there assuredly exists no legendary basis, either in Old Testament history, or in
contemporary Jewish expectation;59 which cannot be sublimated into nineteenth-century
idealism;60 least of all can be conceived as an after-thought of His disciples, invented by
an Ephesian writer of the second century. 61 But even the allegorical illustration of St.
Augustine, who reminds us that in the grape the water of rain is ever changed into wine,
is scarcely true, save as a bare illustration, and only lowers our view of the miracle. For
miracle it is,62 and will ever remain; not, indeed, magic,63 nor arbitrary power, but power
with a moral purpose, and that the highest.64 And we believe it, because this 'sign' is the
first of all those miracles in which the Miracle of Miracles gave 'a sign,' and manifested
forth His glory - the glory of His Person, the glory of His Purpose, and the glory of His
Work.
58. Thus Schenkel regards Christ's answer to M ary as a proof that He was not on good
terms with His family; Paulus suggests, that Jesus had brought the wine, and that it was
afterwards mixed with the water in the stone -vessels; Gfrörer , that Mary had brought it as
a present, and at the feast given Jes us the appropriate hint when to have it set on. The
gloss of Renan seems to me even more untenable and repulsive.
59. Against this view of Strauss, see Lücke, u. s. p. 477.
60. So Lange, in his 'Life of Christ,' imagining that converse with Jesus had put all in that
higher ecstasy in which He gave them to drink from the fulness of Himself. Similar
spiritualisation - though by each in his own manner - has been attempted by Baur, Keim,
Ewald, Hilgenfeld, and others. But it seems more rational, with Schweizer and Weisse , to
deny the historical accuracy of the whole, than to resort to such expedients.
61. Hilgenfeld, however, sees in this miracle an evidence that the Christ of the fourth
Gospel proclaimed another and a higher than the God of the Old Testament - in short,
evidence of the Gnostic taint of the fourth Gospel.
62. Meyer well reminds us that 'physical incomprehensibility is not identical with
absolute impossibility.'
63. Godet has scarcely rightly marked the difference.
64. If I rightly understand the meaning of Dr. Abbott's remarks on the miracles in the
fourth Gospel (Encycl. Britan. vol. x. p. 825 b), they imply that the change of the water
into wine was an emblematic reference to the Eucharistic wine, this view being supported
by a reference t o 1 John v. 8. But could this be considered sufficient ground for the
inference, that no historic reality attaches to the whole history? In that case it would have
to be seriously maintained, that an Ephesian writer at the end of the second century had
invented the fiction of the miraculous change of water into wine, for the purpose of
certain Eucharistic teaching!