"there is one
Who makes the joy the last in every song."

The assertion in the old legendary description of his person and habits,
that he was never known to smile, I regard as an utter falsehood, for to
me it is incredible--almost as a geometrical absurdity. In that glad
company the eyes of a divine artist, following the spiritual lines of
the group, would have soon settled on his face as the centre whence
radiated all the gladness, where, as I seem to see him, he sat in the
background beside his mother. Even the sunny face of the bridegroom
would appear less full of light than his. But something is at hand which
will change his mood. For no true man had he been if his mood had never
changed. His high, holy, obedient will, his tender, pure, strong heart
never changed, but his mood, his feeling did change. For the mood must
often, and in many cases ought to be the human reflex of changing
circumstance. The change comes from his mother. She whispers to him that
they have no more wine. The bridegroom's liberality had reached the
limit of his means, for, like his guests, he was, most probably, of a
humble calling, a craftsman, say, or a fisherman. It must have been a
painful little trial to him if he knew the fact; but I doubt if he heard
of the want before it was supplied.

There was nothing in this however to cause the change in our Lord's mood
of which I have spoken. It was no serious catastrophe, at least to him,
that the wine should fail. His mother had but told him the fact; only
there is more than words in every commonest speech that passes. It was
not his mother's words, but the tone and the look with which they were
interwoven that wrought the change. She knew that her son was no common
man, and she believed in him, with an unripe, unfeatured faith. This
faith, working with her ignorance and her fancy, led her to expect the