have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at Thy word we will let down the net," they caught a multitude. When our Lord is going to give a blessing, generally He gives a command first. When He says to you, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved" (Acts xvi. 31), so you shall. And when He says, "Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven" (S. Luke vi. 37), so you shall-men and women, boys and girls, all of you. When He says, Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," so He will. That is the lesson. So He will, so He will.

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And the next point I want you to think of this morning is this: His commands are to be obeyed, and not questioned. He said to these servants-I do not know whether they were the hired servants, or from the house; probably they were hired for the occasionbut He said to them, " Fill the waterpots with water," which was a very strange thing to do. It was so very extraordinary. It was not a feast of purification— then there would have been some reason for filling these great, huge waterpots with water-but it was a wedding feast, and they did not want water; what they wanted was wine. But they did not question it. They had got a hint. And who gave them the hint? Our Blessed Lady gave them the hint. She said to them, "Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it." "Whatsoever "-" don't you question it. Do as He tells you." So they did; they did not question itthey filled them up to the brim.

And so, dear brethren, if our Lord gives us a command, we are not to question the extraordinary character of the command; for instance, a drop of water to

convey the Spirit! How could a drop of water convey the Holy Ghost? He tells us we must be Baptized with water and the Spirit (S. John iii. 5): " Go ye into all the world and Baptize." But fancy a drop of water poured upon an infant! What good can it do to the infant? Or take the other great Sacrament. How can matter convey spirit? How can a little bit of bread and a drop of wine become the Body and Blood of Christ, and be held up to God as the Sacrifice on Calvary? But He said, "This do "; and when He gives the command we do not question it. Never question what the Master orders. Did the Master order it? He did. It must be done. It is quite enough

"Their's not to reason why,

Their's but to do and die."2

And another point I want you to notice is this: neither must we say, What good can it possibly do?" The servants might have thought-most certainly if our Blessed Lady had not told them what to do-What good can it do to fill these water-jars with water? Would it not be very much better, in order to save the embarrassment of not having enough wine at a marriage feast, to go out and borrow a skin or two of wine from somebody and bring it in? That is common sense. But to fill these huge jars with water! What good can it do?

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And so it always is the question, dear brethren-it is the question of to-day. People are always asking the same question: Now what good on earth can it do?" "What good will your religion do us at all?" "What good can taking the Sacrament do anybody?" Do let us use common sense. Be practical-we are

practical men and women.

In the life we have to live

what good can it possibly do for people to go and take the Sacrament? " Have you never heard that? It is always the same! It is a practical age. "It would be very much better if you people," they tell us clergy, "were to drop all this Sacramentalism, which is folly. What we want is better wages, better sanitation, better living-that is the question. We want what is practical; not your telling us to take the Sacrament. What good will it do anybody?" The Master says it it is enough. Do you think for one moment that better wages, better sanitation, better circumstances can make a man happy? The unhappiest man I ever knew had £150,000 a year. Only Jesus, only Jesus, can do dying sinners good." To take the Sacrament is to obey the Master. To touch Him, to have communion with Him, is the joy of Heaven on earth.

Well, then, the second part of my discourse is this: Let us be servants : let us be servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. Are you not at least when you read the Epistles are you not surprised to find Paul, Peter, James and John-do you know what they call themselves? They are so proud of it-they all call themselves "Servants of the Lord Jesus Christ." I know they were Apostles, and Martyrs, and Saints; but what they like to call themselves, when they speak of themselves, is "Servants of the Lord Jesus Christ." It would be so nice at Mass this morning if you could look right up to the Saviour and say, Behold, O Lord, how that I am Thy servant, and the son of Thine handmaid; Thou hast broken my bonds in sunder (Ps. cxvi. 14). Filling waterpots with water is not what you would call intellectual, is it? It is not

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intellectual business. Anybody could fill a waterpot with water. It is not intellectual at all. It is what we should call menial-menial service. But menial service done for the Master becomes the service of the Chosen Himself in Heaven. No service that you can do is menial if it is done for the Lord of lords, the King of kings, Who is over all things from the beginning.

And another point is this: they did it so well. They filled them up to the brim. It was not half done. You know perfectly well whether the servants that wait upon you love you by the way they do you service. It is not so much what is done as the way in which it is done. That is just the point: it is the way it is done. They filled them up to the brim "-they did it right zealously.

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I know this year (I am talking to those who love the Catholic Faith) we shall have what we call our Feasts of Obligation. And you will say, "Well, of course a Catholic must hear Mass on the Feasts of Obligation." Obligation! Is that the way to serve the Master? You are quite right—it is the rule of the Church-you are quite right; but it is the way in which you do it. You shuffle into church late, and file in with the congregation, and then file out again! I do not call that up to the brim," do you? Or you say, "Well, look here, I have to go to Mass to-day, because it is a Feast of Obligation-I must go, I must go." I do not call that "up to the brim." It is the way it is done. A young fellow said to me, "I suppose I must go to Confession at Easter? "Yes," I said, "I think you must." But if he goes like that it is not "up to the brim," is it? How much better it would be for him to love to go, to like to go that he may lay down his

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sins at the Feet of the Lord Who bought him: "Up to the brim !

Well, I must not delay here. Then the Lord blessed the water-of course, simply; He did not do anything, but He blessed the water into wine. Waterpots are not made for wine. Stone jars were not made for wine-skins are made for wine-stone jars are made for water; but those stone jars contained the very best from our Lord, just as the bread in the wilderness was the best ever eaten. And you say, "How do you know that?" Because "they did all eat, and were filled" (S. Matt. xv. 37). People never eat bread to the full unless it is very good! So out of the stone jars came the best wine. "I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase" (1 Cor. iii. 6). Paul may preach, Apollos may preach; but God gives the increase. And that is an encouragement to myself, for my words may be weak as water, but if God blesses them they may be turned into the wine of the consolation of the Gospel.

And then, last of all, dear brethren, these servants of the Lord, they knew more (except our Lord and our Blessed Lady) than anybody else at the Feast. They did not know where the wine came from, but the servants who drew the water-they who did the menial work-they knew; they knew more than the rest. And don't you see how that Gospel applies to us? They who do most work for our Saviour know most about Him. You say to me, "I should like to know and serve my Master better." And I say to you, "You do some good work for Him, and you will know Him. Simply for His dear sake, because He made you and died for you, you go and do some good work.