“All this is shadowy, barely possible, mere conjecture.” I maintain that conjecture, fairly supported, is enough to give the finishing blow to all faith in a miracle so different from Christ’s other “mighty works” as this of the fig-tree. Before finally and utterly rejecting a story found in a generally truthful narrative we wish not only to know that the story is improbable, but also to answer the question, “How may it have crept into the narrative?” The above conjecture supplies a fairly probable answer to that question; and the combined result of the evidence for the probability of some rational explanation, and against the probability of the miraculous occurrence, is so great that I can feel no hesitation in rejecting the miracle of the fig-tree and in declaring that the “characteristic sayings” of Jesus about the uprooting of mountains and trees were never intended to be literally understood.
And now, before going further, ask yourself once more, “What have I lost, so far, by giving up the miracles of Jesus? Does He sink in my estimation because He did not blast a fig-tree or destroy two thousand swine, or draw a fish with a stater in its mouth to the hook of Peter? Or have I lost a precious and ‘characteristic saying’ of Jesus because I no longer believe that He really encouraged His disciples to pray for the uprooting of material mountains and material trees?” I am quite sure your conscience must reply that you have hitherto lost nothing. If so, take courage, and follow on step by step where the argument leads you.
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:—