CHAPTER XXII.

THE FIRST DAYS OF THE MINISTRY.

NE of the features of the history, which will strike every thoughtful mind, is its surprises. What happens is so different from what we should have expected; but when we come to consider it, what really happens,-we can often see, and so we learn to take always for granted,—has a profounder appropriateness, a higher spiritual grandeur, than our anticipation. We should not have expected that this gracious youth, just proclaimed Messiah, and declared the Beloved Son, and filled with the Spirit, would have been immediately led into the wilderness to undergo the forty days' fast. As little should we have expected that after the mysterious initiation of the forty days' fast, and the first great spiritual achievement of the victory over the great Enemy of Mankind, His life would pass straight from this tremendous strain to scenes of calm idyllic beauty.

After the forty days were over, "Jesus returned to Bethabara, beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing." And now it is that the prophecy of

John rises to its highest strain. The object of prophecy was to point forward to the Christ, and to declare the nature of His person and His work.

John is enabled to identify the Messiah, and to point Him out to all who were expecting His advent; he also utters some remarkable declarations as to His person and His work :

"He that cometh from above is above all; he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth, he that cometh from heaven is above all. . . . . He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God. The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand" (John iii. 31-35).

"No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him" (John i. 18).

"Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (John i. 29, 36).

"The same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost" (John i. 33).

"Of his fulness have all we received, and grace upon grace" (John i. 16).

In these words we recognise that the last and greatest of the Prophets speaks in no ambiguous words :

I. Of the eternal Sonship and mission unto the world.

II. Of the Great Sacrifice.

III. Of the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The office of John was to prepare the way for the Christ, and we find that his ministry had been so effectual that he sends his disciples to Jesus and

they become His disciples even before He has called them :

"The next day John seeth Jesus coming to him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (John i. 29). And "Again, the next day after, John stood and two of his disciples, and looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God! And the two disciples followed Jesus. Then Jesus turned and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? They said unto him, Rabbi (which is to say, being interpreted, Master), where dwellest thou? He saith unto them, Come and see. They came and abode with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour."

"One of the two," he tells us, "was Andrew," and the other, doubtless, was John, who, as usual in his Gospel, refrains from naming himself. Of the nature of the momentous interview we are told nothing, but of the result of it :

"Andrew first findeth his brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias; and he brought Simon to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona, thou shalt be called Cephas (which is, by interpretation, [Peter], a stone)." The day following, Jesus "was minded to go forth into Galilee, and he findeth Philip and saith unto him, Follow me. . . . . Philip findeth Nathanael [otherwise called Bartholomew] and saith unto him, We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and the Prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. . . . . Nathanael answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel."

Thus the first step of the Messiah is to begin to

gather a body of disciples; and these five,-Andrew and John, and Simon, Philip, and Bartholomew, all of them apparently originally disciples of John,— become the first believers and adherents of the Messiah, the nucleus of the Church of Christ.

A

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE FIRST MIRACLE.

FTER two days thus spent at Bethabara the third day Jesus left the company of John, whom apparently he never saw again, and went forth to commence his own work. He did not go up to the Holy City to assert his office before the High Priest and Sanhedrim. He did not go down to commercial Capernaum to preach to the crowds of his countrymen. "There was a marriage at Cana of Galilee," probably of some relation of the Holy Family, for "the mother of Jesus was there," and her subsequent conduct is like that of one who was familiarly acquainted with and interested in the domestic arrangements. "And both Jesus was called, and His disciples to the marriage." And this is not a mere incident between the Temptation and the next great event in the history,-this is the next great event, for here He wrought His first miracle; and the marriage feast was not the mere accidental scene and occasion of the miracle, but the miracle rose out of and received its significance from the marriage feast.