Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/232

216 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 be 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