Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/222

206 destroy the vine. So here, the Lord comes to the fig-tree of Phariseeism, the tree of degenerate Israel, seeking fruit; and finding none, He curses it, and withers it with the breath of His mouth. Is it not easy to see how a parable, thus expressed in the hymns and earliest traditions of the Church, might speedily be literalized and give rise to a miraculous narrative?

Let me point out to you a curious fact confirmatory of this view. I dare say you may have noticed that St. Luke, although he agrees with St. Mark and St. Matthew in the context of this miracle, omits the miracle itself. Why so? Is it because he never heard of the miracle? Not quite so. It is because he had heard of it in a slightly different form, not as a miracle but as a parable, which he alone has preserved. St. Luke's version of the tradition is that the Lord comes to the barren tree and, finding no fruit on it, gives orders that it is to be cut down: but the steward of the farm pleads for a respite; let the ground be digged and manured, then, if there be no fruit, let it be cut down. A similar thought, you see, is here expressed in two different shapes, a miraculous and a non-miraculous; and it is not difficult to understand how the former may have been developed from the latter.

But I see that your last letter has a remark on this very miracle, and on the difficulty of rejecting it. "It is associated," you say, "with one of the most characteristic sayings of Jesus: for it is in connection with the withering of the fig-tree that Jesus says (Matt. xxi. 21), 'If ye have faith, ye shall not only do what is done to the fig-tree, but even if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea, it shall be done.'" "Here," you say, "we have a characteristic saying of Jesus expressly referring to something done, and done miraculously."

Would it not have been wise, before making so