But there are other thoughts connected with this word _Life_, which it is impossible to sever from it in any case, and which suggest themselves more directly than any others when the subject is a wedding-feast and the turning of water into wine. Life has a relation to joy, which is as close as the relation of death to sadness. Our minds become confused upon this point. We talk of the burden of life. We talk of death as delivering us from this burden. But these are careless expressions, against which the conscience of man rebels. The Scripture is in harmony with the conscience. It speaks of our carrying about with us a burden of _death_ from which we need to be delivered. If it ever speaks of the moment of departure from the world as a moment of deliverance, it is because, as the poet says, 'Death itself there dies.' In creating the wine, then, which is said in the old Scriptures to make glad the heart of man, which had been a symbol of joy as well as of life to the heathen--the symbol of high inspirations even when it was actually acknowledged to be the cause of the lowest animal degradation--the Son of Man was claiming to be the Giver of all joy, to be the Redeemer of all joy, even in its humblest earthliest forms, from that which had made it base and inhuman. In what sense the Source of Joy was also the Man of Sorrows, St. John will tell us in due time. There is something which binds this very story of the feast at Cana to His deepest sorrow. Mary has not appeared before in this Gospel; she never appears again till we meet her beside the cross. She knew that a sword was to pierce through her soul, at the very time when she was asking her Son to prove Himself the Lord of nature and the Giver of delights to man. One work did not interfere with the other. He could not be really the Word made flesh unless He fulfilled both.