multitudes. The key to these truly heavenly facts is wanting when the mental state of the guests of Jesus is left unnoticed, and as much attention is lavished on the elements, as if we had merely to do with bread-baskets and wine-jars. When Jesus made provision for a circle of friends, or for thousands of His adherents, the question is of the highest importance, what influence He exerted on their souls. Now we know He was never disposed to gain adherents by violent or over-persuasive urgency. The Son makes those free whom His Spirit takes captive. He could only by slow degrees establish the heavenly kingdom of Christian dispositions, because He mingled His life with the life of the world through the medium of the holiest tenderness, or through the tenderest holiness. But a heavenly kingdom of states of feeling He could at once call forth, by virtue of that captivating spiritual power with which His personality operated on susceptible souls. Such souls, by the power of His divine spirit which inspired them, and by the glow of sympathy which ravished them when once touched, He could raise for some moments to heaven, and transport into a common frame of divine joy, peace, and love, in which life appeared as new, and the world as transformed. Such foretastes of heaven make their appearance throughout the whole Gospel history. But the difference must be lost sight of between transient moods and permanent dispositions, between occasional flights of excited feeling and the constant soaring of the spirit, when it is thought strange that many of those whom Christ had borne upwards in a favourable hour, should relapse into common or even evil tendencies,—that the majority, or even all, at times should fall away. And it would argue ignorance of the spirit of Christ, if we were to expect that He would not venture so boldly to call forth the flowers of the new life, because He knew that these flowers would for a long while have no fruits. But we find sufficient indications' of the miraculous elevation of men's souls in events of this kind, and of the connection of these miraculous transactions with these miraculous states of mind. On the occasion of the marriage at Cana, for the first time in the history of the world a Christian assemblage for festive purpose took place in the presence of Christ. The mother of Jesus is full of great and anxious, and yet joyful forebodings; she communicates. her state of mind to the servants of the family, who are imbued

with the greatest confidence in the words of Jesus. They fill the water-pots-they bring the beverage at His bidding with perfect readiness. Meanwhile the company are so occupied with their conviviality, that they know not what has transpired outside. But the wine they are now drinking at the height of the feast is pronounced even by the governor of the feast to be as good as, or better than, what had been drunk before. In the element of a singular state of mind, in which the wedding guests had become one as branches with the true vine, with Christ as the principle of the world's transformation, the water becomes changed for them into wine. We have here to do with the operations of a higher ethical ecstasy-with the operations of a very beautiful but extraordinary state of mind, in which the festive Jews find themselves transported, by the power of Christ's Spirit, from the beginnings of the world to the heights of the transformed world. The drink which they quaff in this state of mind, being blessed to them by the presence of Christ, is to their taste the choicest wine. Thus they enjoy it not in mere spiritualistic fancy, but with the most real gust. But how it

1

1 We can represent to ourselves Christ's agency which changed water into wine in successive stages. From the history of Somnambulism, it is known that in the high degrees of the magnetic rapport, all the sensations and tastes of the magnetizer are repeated in the person who is psychically affected by him. Now at Cana there was no circle of magnetized persons assembled round the Lord, but a circle of souls whom His presence had raised to ecstasy in their festivity. What therefore in the department of magnetism may appear as a fact, might here recur with intensified power, and in a more vitalized form (as, for example, the constrained morbid clairvoyance of the somnambulist in the free healthy clairvoyance of the prophét). When therefore Christ calls forth in Himself the intuition (Anschauung) of wine with fresh creative power, when Christ drinks good wine, the others drink it also by means of the psychical connection. But the company that surrounds the Lord is not a mere circle of passive, receptive beings. His companions are by faith brought into active harmony with Him. As the branches do not merely receive the sap which the vine conveys to them, but form the wine out of it and with it, so these festive guests, at the moment of their union with the Lord, infused all their plastic life-power in order to complete the change. This is the first stage of the immediate operation of Christ. But the second goes into the elements of the beverage which they enjoy. And here we would call to mind the taste of magnetized water, only to indicate again how, in a higher life-circle, the same phenomenon may be repeated in a higher key. The taste of magnetized water,' says Fr. Fischer (Der Sonambulismus, p. 235), ‘is said to be exceedingly various; sometimes bitter, sometimes sweetish, sometimes sourish like Seltzer water, sometimes

was with the supply of wine outside of the highly vitalized sphere of the feast, would be a question of the same kind as what transformation (Verklärung) remained in the consecrated bread outside the holy sphere of the actual celebration of the Supper. Also the miracle of feeding a multitude, which, without prejudging, we here consider as having occurred twice, was evidently effected by a state of mind allied to His own in the guests of Jesus. The confidence with which He announced that He was about to feed the thousands, and even the thought of this feeding, was so new a revelation of the kingdom of love and confidence, that the souls of those who had once followed Him as His adherents into the wilderness, were elevated by this event far above their ordinary state of feeling. They sat down at His word, and their doing so indicated an exceedingly high and powerful elevation of their feelings. But it is an acknowledged fact, that impassioned expectation and joy can be propagated electrically and with augmented force among thousands. After the first miracle of feeding, those who had partaken of the food wished to make the Lord king,-a proof that they had celebrated a feast in the highest pitch of theocratic enthusiasm. In those moments the heavenly power of Christ could feed its thousands miraculously. His word alone had already strengthened them afresh, to say nothing of the word in connection with the natural means. Thus the feeding so as to satisfy them is explained, but not the overplus, the baskets-full of fragments. On this point it makes a great difference, whether we are inclined to see an Old Testament feast of loving omnipotence, or a New Testament one of omnipotent love. This remark requires further explanation. That among the guests of Jesus many were destitute of food, is certain, and the whole multitude were in danger of suffering the pains of hunger. But it appears incredible, if we take into account the Jewish method of travelling and making pilgrimages, that many of these pilgrims should not have carried with them a supply of provisions, greater or less. On these supplies, indeed, the Lord would not wish first of all to reckon. The miracle of feeding and of satisfying which He undertook, was quite independent of such supplies. But it could strong and vinous, sometimes burning, sometimes tart like sulphur and ink, sometimes saltish. But it shows a certain constancy in one and the same magnetizer.'

as little on that account be His concern to fill a multitude of baskets with fragments, over and above what was eaten. Now if such provisions are presupposed, we may be inclined to take the following view of the transaction. Christ feeds the thousands exclusively with the substance of His own bread. But those among these thousands who really had provisions, would hold them absolutely in reserve for themselves. Their hearts therefore remained closed, their private property remained like a fixture by their side; while Christ gives up everything, and the poor among them take their share of the distributed bread. Even in collecting the fragments, their gifts in bread do not add to the amount. Evidently, on such a supposition, the power of Christ is glorified at the cost of the operation of His love; and the dark miracle of the unheard-of, selfish reserve of the multitude hanging on the lips of Jesus, confronts the direct, exalted miracle of benevolent omnipotence. But if we are desirous of commemorating the founding of a New Testament feast, a heavenly bloom of social life, in the miraculous feeding, we must above all things feel how the hearts of the guests of Jesus thawed under His festive invitation and thanksgiving-how they were rendered great, warm, free, and brotherly, so that no one would keep his bread for himself, while he enjoyed likewise that of his brother. Thus we gain two splendid miracles of omnipotent love, which in the warmth of the moment form one-Christ feeds thousands with His little stock by an operation of heavenly power.1 But this feeding, as an operation of love, opens their hearts, and forms a pre-celebration of the final transformation of the world in the blessedness of Christian brotherly love-a pre-celebration of the Christian voluntary community of goods; and thus the second miracle takes place, the miracle of superabundance among the thousands of the poor people in the wilderness.

1 It will be evident that the explanation of the miracle here given, refers to the natural explanation which Dr Paulus has given (Leben Jesu ii. 162). But those who rightly apprehend our explanation, cannot fail to perceive the difference between it and the natural explanation. We regard the miracle of feeding and satisfying in its whole integrity as an operation of the power of Christ, which converts the existing means of feeding into the medium of a divine living power. In that case, the secondary miracle of the overplus is kept in view, and explained as above. We shall notice in the sequel the expressions in the Gospels which, according to Strauss (Leben Jesu ii. 197), militate against this view.

It has been justly observed, that in these miracles we may descry a foreshadowing of the Holy Supper. Certainly the guests of Jesus were communicants as to the state of their feelings, though not in developed and ripened Christian insight. In the communion, wine is always poured out for those who partake of it, which has the power and significance of His blood, and bread is broken, which is received and experienced as the life and action of His body. But in the consecrated circle of the communion a thousand mysterious experiences occur, experiences of strengthening and refreshment, and even of exaltation to heaven, which are intimately allied to those miracles of the Lord which affected men's states of mind, and allied not merely in reference to their special origin, the living power of Christ's heart, but also in reference to their final aim, the transformation of the world. Those miracles, as well as the permanent blessings of Christ in the Holy Supper, may be regarded as foreshadowings of the coming transformation of the world.

Attempts have been made to throw suspicions on the miracle at Cana by designating it a miracle of luxury.' Criticism resolves to do anything for the sake of gaining its object, even to put on pietist airs. But the spirit of Christ is perfectly selfconsistent when it treats the higher modes of want-as, for example, the worrying perplexity of a new-married couple, whose wedding is likely to end in ridicule and vexation for lack of wine with the same sympathy as the lower modes. The anointing which Mary performed at Bethany in honour of the Lord, of whose departure she had a presentiment, also appeared a work of luxury; but the Lord protected His female disciple against the attacks of those disciples who thought that the cost of the ointment should rather be given to the poor. Christianity will never allow itself to be changed into a mere hospital or alms-house, but in its spirit and aim always tends to the pure luxury of freeing and transforming the life, apart from the beautiful festive ideal manifestation of the spirit. A sickly spiritualism can accommodate itself only to the coarse natural constitution of the present phenomenal world; the entire new world, on the other hand, which is to bloom forth from the living power of Christianity, and more especially the resurrection of the dead, appears to it as an extravagant luxury of Chris