given any company wine. To some he refused even the bread they requested
at his hands. Because he gave wine to the wedding-guests, shall man dig
a pit at the corner of every street, that the poor may fall therein,
spending their money for that which is not bread, and their labour for
that which satisfieth not? Let the poor man be tempted as God wills, for
the end of God is victory; let not man tempt him, for his end is his
neighbour's fall, or at best he heeds it not for the sake of gain, and
he shall receive according to his works.

To him who can thank God with free heart for his good wine, there is a
glad significance in the fact that our Lord's first miracle was this
turning of water into wine. It is a true symbol of what he has done for
the world in glorifying all things. With his divine alchemy he turns not
only water into wine, but common things into radiant mysteries, yea,
every meal into a eucharist, and the jaws of the sepulchre into an
outgoing gate. I do not mean that he makes any change in the things or
ways of God, but a mighty change in the hearts and eyes of men, so that
God's facts and God's meanings become their faiths and their hopes. The
destroying spirit, who works in the commonplace, is ever covering the
deep and clouding the high. For those who listen to that spirit great
things cannot be. Such are there, but they cannot see them, for in
themselves they do not aspire. They believe, perhaps, in the truth and
grace of their first child: when they have spoiled him, they laugh
at the praises of childhood. From all that is thus low and wretched,
incapable and fearful, he who made the water into wine delivers men,
revealing heaven around them, God in all things, truth in every
instinct, evil withering and hope springing even in the path of the
destroyer.

That the wine should be his first miracle, and that the feeding of the