You remind me that I have omitted the most important of all those
sayings of Christ which are associated with miracles—the passage in
which he comments on the feeding of the Four Thousand and on that of the
Five Thousand, as two separate acts, apparently implying their
miraculous nature. I have not forgotten it; but I reserved it to the
last because it is, as you justly say, the most important and the most
difficult of all; but I believe it to be susceptible of explanation.
Let us first have the facts before us. In the Gospels of St. Matthew
(viii. 15) and St. Mark (xvi. 6) Jesus is introduced as bidding the
Disciples “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of
Herod” (or, as Matthew, “the Sadducees.”) Upon this the disciples, as
usual, interpret the words of Jesus literally; they suppose that, since
they have forgotten to bring bread with them (for they had but one loaf)
their Master wishes to warn them to beware of leaven during the
approaching feast of Passover or unleavened bread. Hereupon Jesus, in
order to shew them that He was not speaking literally, rebukes their
dull and literalizing minds as follows:—
Mark viii. 17-21.
“Why reason ye because ye have no bread? Do ye not yet perceive?...
When I brake the five loaves among the five thousand, how many
baskets full of broken pieces took ye up?” They say unto him,
“Twelve.” “And when the seven among the four thousand, how many
baskets full of broken pieces took ye up?” And they say unto him,
“Seven.” And he said unto them, “Do ye not yet understand?”
Matthew xvi. 8-12.
“Why reason ye among yourselves because ye have no bread? Do ye not
yet perceive neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand
and how many baskets took ye up? Neither the seven loaves of the
four thousand and how many baskets ye took up? How is it that ye do
not perceive that I spake not to you concerning bread? But beware of
the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Then understood they how
that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the
teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Now before I proceed further I must point out to you that these words
are not found in St. Luke’s Gospel. For my own part I am disposed to
believe them to be genuine, though not quite in the exact form in which
we now find them. I think St. Luke may have omitted them because he
found some difficulty or obscurity in them; or because he did not know
of them; or perhaps because he did not know of, or did not accept, the
feeding of the Four Thousand, to which they refer. But suppose we are
forced to give them up as altogether spurious, that is to say, as not
being genuine words of Jesus, though genuine parts of the first and
second Gospels; what is the consequence? Simply that we shall be reduced
to St. Luke’s version of the words, which is as follows (Luke xii. 1):
“Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy.” Can we
say that St. Luke has herein omitted words that are essential to the
life of Christ, or that we have lost anything of the highest importance,
or even that we have lost a very “characteristic saying” of Jesus in
omitting the statistical comparison which St. Luke omits? I think not.
But now let us assume that Jesus uttered these words or something like
them. I think you would perceive that they could be interpreted
metaphorically, if you could only comprehend how the accounts of the
miraculous feeding of the Four Thousand and of the Five Thousand
(obviously literal as they now stand in our Gospels) could be referred
to as spiritual incidents. In order to answer this question we must now
pass to the narratives of the two miracles themselves. I suppose even
those who accept them literally would admit that they are emblematic,
and that they represent Jesus, the Bread of Life, giving Himself for the
world. The Fourth Gospel manifests this in the subsequent discourse
where the feeding on the bread and fishes introduces the subject of the
feeding on the flesh and blood of Christ. The notion that we feed on the
Word of God, first found in Deuteronomy (viii. 3), pervades all Jewish
literature. It is found in Philo (i. 119): “The soul is nourished not on
earthly and corruptible food, but on the _words_ which Gods rains down
out of His sublime and pure nature which He calls heaven.” It reappears
in the account of our Lord’s temptation, when He replies to Satan,
quoting Deut. viii. 3, “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every
_word_ that proceedeth out of the mouth of God;” and again (John iv.
32), “I have _meat_ to eat that ye know not.”
On that last occasion the Fourth Gospel tells us that the disciples
actually misunderstood the metaphor and interpreted it literally; and to
this day I dare say many would give a literal interpretation to the
“daily bread” of the Lord’s prayer; but there can be little doubt that
Jesus meant by “bread” every gift and blessing that constitutes life,
and primarily the spiritual sustenance of the soul. As to the emblematic
use of the “fish,” it cannot be traced to the Old Testament; but in a
very early period of the existence of the Church, as early as the reign
of Vespasian, we find the Fish in rude paintings representing the
Eucharistic food of the faithful; and it is said that this appellation
was given to Jesus from the initial letters of the Greek title I(esous)
Ch(ristos) Th(eou) U(ios) S(oter) [Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour]
because they made up the Greek word _Ichthus_, fish. About the middle of
the second century we find one of the earliest extant Christian poems
describing how the Church everywhere presented to the faithful, as their
food, “the Fish, great and pure, which the Holy Virgin had caught.” The
poet evidently did not invent this metaphor; it was established,
intelligible, and inherited, at the time when he used it, and must have
been in use much earlier. To speak of “crumbs” metaphorically may
perhaps seem to us a bold metaphor, but it may be illustrated by the
dialogue between Jesus and the Syro-Phœnician woman: “It is not meet to
take the children’s food and cast it unto dogs:” “Truth, Lord; yet even
the dogs eat of the _crumbs_ which fall from the master’s table.” Now it
was a common-place in the doctrine of Jesus that every disciple who
ministered the Word or Bread of Life invariably received it back in
ample measure: “Freely ye have received, freely give.” Give what?
Certainly not material bread, but the truth or bread of life. And again,
“Give, and it shall be given unto you: good measure pressed down and
running over shall THEY[24] give into your bosom.” Again, I ask, give
what? What but the spiritual Bread, which, by the laws of spiritual
nature, cannot be freely given without a yet more rich return into the
giver’s heart? It was this Bread that Christ ministered to His disciples
and bade them set before the people; it was this Bread which the
disciples found multiplied in their hands so that it sufficed for all,
and they themselves were fed from the crumbs that fell from the food.
In course of time the story of this spiritual banquet finding its way
into Christian hymns and traditions would be literalized and amplified
with variations. As Moses “spread a table” for Israel “in the
wilderness,” so also, it would be said, did Jesus of Nazareth when he
fed thousands of His followers on divine Bread. The Fish, _which is not
mentioned in our Lord’s dialogue with the Disciples_, might naturally he
added to the Bread, in the narrative, as a Eucharistic emblem. If the
Fish had been mentioned by our Lord in the dialogue under question, my
explanation would at once fall to the ground; but it is not mentioned;
and the only difficulty is in explaining how Jesus could have spoken
metaphorically of the “seven” as well as the “twelve” baskets. We can
understand the “twelve”—each one of the twelve Apostles who ministered,
receiving a return of spiritual “crumbs”—but whence the “seven?” Here I
can but conjecture. You know that seven is what is called “a sacred
number.” I find in the Fourth Gospel, xxi. 2-14, a story (evidently
emblematic) of a miraculous meal of bread and fishes in which “seven”
apostles took part. This may have been based upon some tradition in
which seven apostles were recorded as having taken part in a spiritual
Eucharistic feeding of the multitude. If that was so, it would follow
that in the latter case there would be “seven baskets” of fragments, as
in the former case there were “twelve,” corresponding to the number of
the ministering apostles: and Jesus, in the dialogue under
consideration, would remind His disciples how on two occasions where the
bread of life was multiplied for the hungry, the twelve Apostles
received the twelve baskets of crumbs, and the seven received the seven.
What is the argument in the words under consideration, according to your
interpretation? I presume you would take them thus: “Why do you suppose
I am talking about literal bread? Can I not make bread as I please? Do
you not remember my two miracles, and how from five loaves for five
thousand people there came twelve baskets of fragments, while from seven
loaves for four thousand people there came seven baskets?[25] How then
can I (or you while you are with me) be in need of literal bread?” But
this interpretation is open to one serious objection. It is opposed to
the whole tenour of Christ’s life. Nowhere else in the Gospels do we
find that Jesus used any miraculous power to exempt Himself and His
disciples from hunger. We are even taught that on one occasion He
resisted a prompting to turn stones into bread, as being a temptation
from the Evil One. For His disciples he might undoubtedly have been
willing to do what He would not do for Himself; but that Jesus (like
Elisha) so habitually used miraculous powers to shelter His disciples
from the inconveniences and hardships of a wandering life, that he could
encourage them to believe that he would do so on the present occasion,
is a hypothesis quite inconsistent with the Gospel history. Moreover,
plausible although this interpretation may appear to us—because we are
familiar with the literalizing interpretation of the miracles of the
Four Thousand and Five Thousand—it does not, if I may so say, bring out
the proportion of the sentence. Surely it does not sound logical to say,
“Did I not once supply you with bread for four and five thousand people
(literally)? Why then do you not understand that I now speak of ‘leaven’
metaphorically?” Instead of this, should we not rather expect: “Do you
not remember how on two previous occasions ‘bread’ was used spiritually?
Why then do you not understand that ‘leaven’ is here used spiritually?”
Now this is what I believe to have been the original meaning of the
words, if genuine. I believe that Jesus intended to remind the Disciples
how on two previous occasions the multitude had been fed with the
spiritual Bread, the Bread of Life: “You know that that was what I meant
before, when I spoke of Bread; how is it then that you do not understand
my meaning now when I speak similarly of leaven?”
I do not pretend to say that this explanation is completely satisfactory
even to me, much less to claim that it should completely satisfy others.
Some may prefer to rationalize the miracle as an exaggeration with a
substratum of fact; others may reject the dialogue as a late
interpolation. Yet even then I think the considerations above
alleged—which I have put forward, on the supposition that the dialogue
is genuine—may go a long way toward shewing how these miraculous stories
may have sprung up without any real basis of miracle, and how, in the
elaboration of these narratives, words that cannot be accepted as
historical may have been attributed to Jesus _without any fraudulent
purpose_. Although I am unwilling to admit (and do not feel called upon
by evidence to admit) that the words and doctrine of Jesus have been
seriously modified to suit the miraculous interpolations of early
Christian times, yet of course (on my hypothesis) some slight occasional
modifications cannot be denied. For example, in the miracle of the Four
Thousand, Jesus is introduced as saying, “How many loaves have ye?”
These words must necessarily be rejected by any one taking my view of
the narrative, as the addition of some later tradition which,
interpreting a metaphor literally, endeavoured to set forth the literal
fact dramatically as it was supposed to have occurred. In the same way
it is possible that the dialogue now under consideration may be an
amplification of a simple rebuke from Jesus to the disciples for
misunderstanding His precept as to leaven, the early tradition having
run somewhat after this fashion: “The Lord spread a table for the hungry
in the wilderness: He gave them bread from heaven to eat. The Lord gave
food unto the multitude through the hands of the Twelve; and in their
hands the Bread of Life was multiplied so that a few loaves satisfied
many thousands. Then did the Lord warn His disciples that they should
_beware of leaven and feed on nought save the one true Bread. But they
understood not His words, and remembered not the mighty works of His
hands_.” It seems to me quite possible, I say, that the dialogue under
discussion may have arisen from an amplification of some such words as
those above italicized; and I am somewhat the more inclined to take this
view because St. Mark’s narrative (the earliest) contains a curious
little detail which looks like a trace of some old hymn about “the one
true Bread” _i.e._ Jesus: “They had not in the boat with them more than
_one loaf_ (Gr. _bread_).”
If these suggested solutions seem improbable, let me once more remind
you that you have to choose between them and greater improbabilities.
Either the miraculous narrative must be historically true; or it must
have been deliberately fabricated; or it must have sprung into existence
without intention to deceive. As to the improbability of the first of
these solutions, I say nothing, because you have rejected it. Certainly
it would be difficult for a painter to depict in detail the processes
necessitated by this miracle without producing a grotesque impression:
but on this point I am silent, as it is beside my purpose. It remains
therefore for you to decide whether the theory of deliberate falsehood,
or of the unconscious accretions of tradition and misunderstanding of
metaphor, supplies the least improbable explanation. For my part, having
regard to the character of Christ’s disciples, the abundant evidence
that they misunderstood the teaching of their Master, and the frequent
instances of miraculous narrative arising from misunderstanding in other
cases, I have no hesitation in saying that, in this case also, the
hypothesis of deceit is far more improbable than that of
misunderstanding.
I had not intended to touch on any other miracle; but one more can be so
briefly discussed that I will not omit it. I dare say you have
anticipated (though you have not read _Onesimus_[26]) that I should
explain the “walking on the waves” and the “stilling of the sea” as
narratives derived from early Christian hymns representing the Son of
God as stilling the storms that threaten the bark of the Church.
Nevertheless you may not have perceived how easily a historical and
authentic tradition of the deeds and words of Christ would lend itself
to amplification so as to be elaborated into the full miraculous
narrative as we now find it in the Gospels. Well then, open your Greek
Testament at St. Mark’s narrative (i. 25-27, or Luke iv. 35, 36) of the
exorcism of an unclean spirit. You will there find it stated that Jesus
“rebuked an unclean spirit;” and a somewhat rare word is used to express
the rebuke, “Be thou _muzzled_ (φιμώθητι).” It is further added that the
disciples, in their astonishment, said to one another “What is this?
_With authority he commandeth even the unclean spirits and they obey
him._” Now you know very well that the same Greek word (πνεῦμα)
expresses two totally distinct English words “spirit” and “wind;” but
you may not so well know that the same ambiguity is found in Hebrew.
Look at Psalm civ. 4 in the Old Version, and you will find “Who maketh
his angels (_i.e._ messengers) _spirits_;” but the New Version gives,
more correctly, “Who maketh _winds_ his messengers,” or, “Who maketh his
angels _winds_.” Now suppose that in some cases where the above
tradition was circulated in the Church, either in Greek or Aramaic, the
word “unclean” was omitted, as it easily might be for brevity. It would
follow that, without the change of a single word, the hearers might
interpret the story as follows: “Jesus _rebuked the wind_, saying to it,
_Be thou muzzled_. His disciples marvelled, saying, What is this? _With
authority he commandeth even the winds_ and they _obey_ him.”
But you may say perhaps, “Jesus could not use such an extraordinary
phrase as ‘Be thou muzzled,’ in addressing the wind. To a human being it
would be applicable, or even to a spirit, but not to the wind.” Well, it
certainly would be rather unusual: but turn to St. Mark iv. 39, and you
will there find a passage telling you how, in a storm at sea, Jesus
awoke and “_rebuked the wind_” with the words “_Be thou muzzled_
(Φιμώθητι),” and how the wondering disciples said to one another, “_Who
is this that even the wind_ (Matthew and Luke, ‘the _winds_’) and sea
_obey him_?” It appears to me by no means unlikely that we have here two
versions of the same tradition; the one in the earlier chapter of St.
Mark representing the facts; the other in the later chapter resulting
from a misunderstanding of the facts, whence there sprang up the
amplified and beautiful tradition of the Stilling of the Storm—a story
which must have in all ages commended itself to the Church, and may
still commend itself, by reason of its deep spiritual truth, but which
ought, in this age, to be recognized as in all probability, not
historically true.
Neither of the above-mentioned explanations of this miraculous narrative
appears to me by any means certain; but either seems to me decidedly
more likely than that Jesus so far raised Himself above the conditions
of humanity as to rebuke and check the winds and the seas. If I
interpret the life of Christ aright, He neither did, nor wished to do,
any such thing, and would have regarded the suggestion to do it as a
temptation from Satan. I say this with reverence, almost with fear and
trembling, knowing that I must give account of these words hereafter
before Him. But what can a man do more to shew his homage for the Truth
than follow where the Truth appears to lead?
In any case I am sure we cannot rightly understand the life and mind of
Jesus until, by a great effort, we have divested ourselves of our
inveterate and vulgar belief that He wrought His mighty works as mere
demonstrations of His divine mission, and that He had power to perform
any works whatever, quite regardless of the laws of nature. Had that
been the case, I do not see how He could have blamed the Pharisees for
asking Him to work a sign in heaven. Why should they not have asked it,
and why should not He have worked it? Jugglers and impostors were very
common in the East; Galilee and Samaria were thronged with professional
exorcists: in miracles performed on men there was always the possibility
of collusion; any act on earth was open to suspicion of imposture, but
in heaven this was the general belief—there could be certainty; no mere
magician could work a sign in heaven. “Let but the sun stand still for
half a day, and we will believe,” surely this, from the
demonstration-point-of-view of miracles, was a very natural request; and
if Jesus really had the power of stopping the sun for half a day, and if
He felt that His wonder-working faculty was given to Him for the mere
purpose of demonstrating His divine power, I cannot understand how He
could have refused, much less rebuked, the request of the Pharisees.
But in truth His mighty works or signs were not wrought in this
deliberate way for the mere purpose of demonstration. They were the
results of an irrepressible pity, appealing to an instinct of power.
He could not see a demoniac or a paralytic look trustfully upon Him
without longing to help, and in many cases feeling that it was God’s
will that He should help. To suppose that He cured all who were
brought to Him is absurd, and is contrary (as we have seen above) to
the evidence of the earliest Evangelist. He had the power of
distinguishing between faith and not faith; had He an equal power of
discerning physiological possibilities from impossibilities? Did a
kind of instinct tell Him that the restoration of a lost limb was not
like the cure of a paralytic, not one of the works “prepared for Him
by His Father?” I do not suppose that such physiological distinctions
were intellectually known by Christ in His human nature, any more than
the modern discoveries of geology, astronomy, or history. But
experience and some kind of intuition may have enabled Him to
distinguish those cases which He could heal from those (a far more
numerous class) which He could not. In performing these “mighty works”
of healing, Jesus appears on many occasions to have studiously avoided
that very publicity which—on the theory of their being intended as
demonstrations—ought to have been a condition of their performance. He
takes the patient apart, or expressly warns him to be silent about his
cure—acts quite inconsistent with the demonstration-hypothesis.
Probably He felt that these works, although they came to Him fresh
from His Father’s hands, were not without a danger. Men crowded round
Him, not to hear the truth but to see “the miracles.” Instead of
recognizing that He did only such works as “the Father had prepared
for Him to do,” they thought that He could do “anything He pleased.” I
think we ought to feel that the very notion of such a power as this
was absolutely revolting to Jesus: “To stop the sun, to call down fire
or bread from heaven, to stay the course of rivers, and cast down the
walls of cities—doubtless Joshua and Elijah had done these works; but
they were not the works that the Father had prepared for the Son to
do.” Joshua and Elijah were but servants. He was the Son: and, being
the Son, He felt bound to conform Himself each moment to that heavenly
Will which He ever felt within Him and saw before Him, which dictated
“mighty works” indeed, but always works of love and healing. In one
sense He was entirely free; He could do all things because all things
were possible with the Father, and the Father and He were one; in
another sense He felt Himself less free than any being that had ever
assumed the shape of man, because all other human creatures had
deviated, but He alone could never deviate, no, not by a hair’s
breadth, from the indwelling Will of the Father.
It is for these reasons then that I reject miracles, not because they
are impossible, not even because they are _a priori_ improbable, not
because they were once useless and are now harmful; but because the
facts are against them. If the evidence shewed that miracles had
actually occurred, I should be prepared to learn from these materialized
parables as reverently as from word-parables, and to believe that God—in
order to break down men’s excessive faith in the machine-like order of
the visible world, and in order to divert their attention from Sequence
to Will—fore-ordained these divergences from the monotonous routine of
things. But the evidence does not shew this. The criticism of the Old
Testament, and the criticism of the New Testament, and the researches of
science, and the closer study of the life of Christ Himself, all
converge to this conclusion—that Christ conquered the world, not by
working miracles, but by living such a life and dying such a death as
might be lived and died by the Son of God, incarnate as a Son of man,
and self-subjected to all the physical limitations of humanity; and by
bequeathing to mankind, after His death, such a Spirit as was
correspondent to His own nature.
Footnote 24:
_i.e._ the Powers of Heaven.
Footnote 25:
Two different kinds of baskets appear to be denoted by the two
different Greek words. A similar difference is also found in the
narratives of the feeding of the Four Thousand and the Five Thousand:
but it would be easy to shew that no inference of importance can be
drawn from this distinction.
Footnote 26:
Pp. 275-6.
XX
THE MANIFESTATION OF CHRIST