be a mere accident that the "beginning of His signs" was made at a marriage in Cana of Galilee. The Prayer Book justly infers the dignity and pureness of marriage from the fact that "Christ adorned and beautified with His presence" that "holy estate."
Jews in the first century, like Christians in later times, and perhaps like the "natural man" at all times, expected an ascetic ordering of life to mark a great religious teacher; but Christ disappointed this expectation. "The Son of Man came eating and drinking" was His own description of His life. In view of the fact that the sub-Apostolic Church was invaded by a powerful wave of ascetic sentiment, which has left clear tokens of its action on the sacred writings, and colours all the literature of the early centuries, it must be allowed, to indicate the overmastering impression made by the Lord's life and teaching on His contemporaries, that the Gospels preserve a record of both, which is so wonderfully free from ascetic tendencies.
