man and one woman, and blessed them there. Jesus, at Cana, as His first public act, hallowed and sanctified marriage and the home as the type, the beginning of His Kingdom among men. As that sanctity is preserved, so shall His Kingdom come; as it is violated, so do the spirits of darkness hold high revel over sin's greatest triumph.

Finally, this miracle stands, as plainly and ind'sputably a miracle.

This is the day of evasions and attempted explanations regarding all the supernatural events of the Bible. The trend of much of the so-called religious teaching of to-day is toward the removal of the miraculous, both in character and action, from the Gospel, and the relegating of both the Gospel and its Founder to a place, the highest indeed, but still a place among the religious teachers and systems of the ages.

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The miracles of healing, and of restoration of bodily function are, in this view, explained as simply the result of superior knowledge of the laws of life, of which it is said contemporary vital science is even now gaining great insight.

But here is a miracle inexplicable upon such a supposition; a miracle entering into the domain, as nearly absolute as anything earthly can be, of natural law, where, as in the kindred miracle of the stilling of the tempest, the Power that created, simply controls, and the Infinite masters the finite.

The Christianity of the Church glories in the miracle. It is the seal of her divine authority.

Her gospel begins in a miracle. It does not start with a philosophy and reason into an exponent of that theory, in the Christ. It begins in the Incarnation; the

Not a man,

infinite miracle of the Word made Flesh. although perfect in His humanity; not a teacher, merely, among men, though the greatest of the Masters. He who was born of the Virgin Mother, is God, and because He is God, the miracle is the natural accident of His being.

It needs no explanation, for He who wrought it is above all human understanding. It violates no law of nature, for He who overtops nature, made all the vast machinery of her laws.

By what process our Lord effected this miracle, no man is wise enough to say. But the wisest student of nature cannot tell how the moisture of the earth is drawn through stem and tendril, and transuted into the juice of the ripened grape, or what mysterious alchemy produces the fermentation that ripens the rich wine. By a word, He who framed all this process of nature, acccomplished the same result in a moment, and we call it a miracle.

But the Divine Imminence is equally in all of the life and existence about us, and in us. Who, in its final reduction, can explain the commonest fact of life? What makes the heart beat? What makes the sun shine? What makes the tree grow, and fills the flower with the glory of color, and the mystery of perfume? What is thought, or force, or time? Ah! the mystery, the miracle, the unsounded depths, are all about us.

But back in these far off years, One stands, who, in the glory of His God-hood, spake, and nature fawned, obedient to His word; who, in the depths of His humiliation, wept, and from His tears came comfort for the weary hearts of time; who, in the anguish of His passion, died, and in His death, vanquished the power

of sin; who in the glory of His resurrection lives, and by His life sets Hope, a beacon in the sky of time, and tells of Immortality.

In Him shines forth the only revelation that can give meaning to the dark enigma of life; from Him shines forth the only light that can dissipate the shadows of doubt and pierce the gloom of death; at His feet lies the faith of the best and noblest of our life; and in the face of the Epiphany of His Eternal Glory, like His disciples at Cana, the true heart, and the earnest spirit, believe on Him, the Son of God.

THE THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY,

TEXT: "And behold, there came a leper and worshipped Him, saying, Lord, if Thou wilt Thou canst make me clean.

And Jesus put forth His hand, and touched him, saying, I will, be thou clean."-St. Matt. vIII, 2, 3.

By the RT. REV. MAHLON N. GILBERT, D. D., LL. D., Bishop Coadjutor of Minnesota.

A

T first sight, in considering the healing of this leper we seem to swing away from the contemplation of an act at all universal or world-wide in its character, to look upon one intensely and peculiarly local and Jewish.

The very disease here spoken of is scarcely known except in a mild form among ourselves; only those who have seen it in Eastern lands can realize its full horror and loathsomeness. And not even then unless they place themselves in intelligent sympathy with the ancient Hebraistic point of view, and understand the mysterious dread and utter abhorrence which surrounded the one so dreadfully afflicted. He was an accused thing, under the ban of God, the Pariah, the unapproachable.

The wretch writhing under the dread disease was lost to the world. His home was the caves among the rocks, his food the scanty pittance which he could gather in the fields, or by the roadsides. Leprosy was held to be the mark of awful sin, the manifestation of God's special displeasure. Even if he recovered, he could

not be restored without an elaborate ritual, which was supposed to cleanse him from the taint of the disease,and to reconcile him to God. How horrible this all seems as we read and think upon it, yet we must realize it if we desire to fully appreciate all that the Saviour's touch and healing implied.

To approach, to look upon him, to bend over him, to reach out the hand and touch him, required no common courage. There was such pollution in the act that the one doing it became ritually unclean. For a man to step across the awful chasm which yawned between the leper and society, to minister to his wants, to show him the way back to health and home, was braver than to face death on the battle-field. To the beholder it would be an evidence of utter recklessness, an open defiance of all tradition and all law.

Yet Christ, the Son of Man, hesitated not for a moment. He did not come to set at naught the law, made sacred by Moses' decree and by long ages of use. It was not that. It was only a declaration, of which His wonderful life was so full, of the higher law which was from henceforth to govern the world; that higher law, of the sympathy of the great Father with all manner of suffering and sorrow, that higher law which was to take the place of the narrow rule of Hebrew ritual, of the possibility of the restoration of every outcast by the acceptance of the help of the Saviour.

To one actuated by the sense of such a sublime mission there could be no defilement. Christ did not hesitate for a moment for fear of any taint attaching to Himself. He did not contract impurity, He imparted purity. The force of His perfect humanity was a fountain of