The Marriage in Cana in Galilee. By Hugh Macmillan, D.D.
(Mac- millan and Co.)—Dr. Macmillan expounds the circumstances of this miracle with much care, with a good-sense and a sound judgment that are but rarely at fault, and with some happy illustrations supplied by his knowledge of natural processes. It is almost inevitable that a writer dealing in this way with a single subject should sometimes find in the narrative, or the language in which it is told, more than is really there. Dr. Macmillan is not quite free from this fault; but on the whole, he is eminently sensible and moderate. We would especially select for notice the admirable treatment of the total. abstinence question, as it touches upon the incident (Dr. Macmillan, however, somewhat minimises the force of aseuettetrt, "When men have well drunk "), the remarks on the evidential use of miracles, and on miracles in general. From the latter we may give a brief extract :— " I know nothing more comforting, among all the doubts and anxieties caused by the recent discoveries and speculations of science, than the suggestions which arise from the fact that our Lord's first miracle was wrought in such a quiet, unobtrusive, natural way, that it seemed to most of those present an ordinary occurrence. What though science is showing to us more and more clearly that God is working in Nature by uniformitarian methods, and not by cataclysms and abrupt transitions! What though it should reduce the field of the miraculous, and bring much of what we thought were the wonders of God's special and supernatural dispensations within the cycle of natural law ? Such a conclusion, could it be satisfactorily established, ought not to shake the faith of any one in God's direct administration, or in any of the great verities of his revealed truth."
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