Sunday evenings in the college chapel Author:Francis Greenwood Peabody Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WORK AND REVELATION But the servants which drew the water knew. — John II, 9. j HIS sentence seems to have slipped almost by accident into the record.... more » It is printed in our translation between two parenthesis marks, as though it were not an essential part of the story. The writer seems to feel called to explain how the miracle of which he writes came to be known. The guests, he says, for whose sake it happened, did not notice that a miracle had been performed. They took the gift of God and thought it a gift from man. "Thou hast kept the good wine until now," they said jestingly to the bridegroom. Even the ruler of the feast "tasted the water that was made wine and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew.)" While they were doing the work of the feast, they came to recognize the guest of the feast. They filled the water pots as he bade them, but when theydrew the water it was wine. What began as a servant's task ended as a Divine revelation. They knewwhatthose whom they served failed to learn. The bridegroom's friends received the wine, but the bridegroom's servants received the Messiah. The guests departed as ignorant as they came, but the servants which drew the water knew. One should not look for fanciful meanings in the legends which soon gathered round the early days of the great teacher. Perhaps the writer meant no more than to claim the witness of the servants for the truth of the miracle. If any one doubted, let him ask the servants who did the bidding of Jesus, for they had positive evidence that the water had been made wine. It seems like the unsophisticated report of one who fancied, as many fancy still, that to be a Messiah one must be a magician, and that the power to convert souls from sin is shown by the power to convert water ...« less