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were a help to the contemporaries of Jesus. The study of Jesus' life
cannot ignore this fact, nor make little of it. It is fair to insist,
however, that the question is one of evidence, not of metaphysical
possibility. Men are wisely slow to-day to claim that they can tell what
are the limits of the possible. If the question is one of evidence, it is
in an important sense true that the evidence for miracle in the life of
Jesus is appreciable only when that life is viewed in its completeness.
The miracles attributed to Jesus may be studied, however, for the
disclosure which they give of his character, and of his relation to common
human need. So it is with this first sign at Cana. Jesus had just heard
the call to be Messiah, and in his lonely struggle in the wilderness had
given a loyal answer to that call, and had set out to do his Father's
business in his Father's way. He who by the Jordan still carried the marks
of struggle, so that the Baptist saw in him the suffering Saviour of
Isaiah liii., now returned to the ordinary daily life in Galilee, and as a
guest at a wedding feast he commenced that ministry of simple human
friendliness (Matt. xi. 19; compare Mark ii. 15-17; Luke xv. 1, 2), which
set him in sharp contrast alike with John's asceticism and with the
ritualism and pedantry of the Pharisees.

104. His human friendliness is all the more worthy of note, inasmuch as on
his return to Cana Jesus did not take up again the old relations of life
as they existed before his baptism. This is clear from his reply to his
mother when she reported the scarcity of wine (John ii. 3-5). While it is
true that the title by which Jesus addressed Mary was neither
disrespectful nor unkind (John xix. 26), the reply itself was a warning
that now he was no longer hers in the old sense. A new mission had been
given him, which henceforth would determine all his conduct, and in that
mission she could not now share. Here is one of the many indications
(compare Mark iii. 21, 31-35; Luke ii. 48) that Mary did not understand
her son nor his work until much later (John xix. 25; Acts i. 14). That
with such a clear sense of his new and serious mission Jesus' first
official act was one of kindly relief for social embarrassment is most
significant. He chose to show his divine authority to his new disciples in
a way that brought joy to a festal company. Little as the disciples were
likely to appreciate it at the time, it was beautifully indicativ