Note 16 — Chapter V · THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS.

The drift of the narrative, then, obliges us to admit that the writer intended to signalize a miracle. This miracle may be viewed either as one of power, or of knowledge. If the former, we are to conceive that Jesus by his supernatural power, caused the fish to congregate in that part of the sea where he commanded Peter to cast in his net. Now that Jesus should be able, by the immediate action of his will, to influence men, in the nature of whose minds his spiritual energy might find a fulcrum, may to a certain extent be conceived, without any wide deviation from psychological laws; but that he could thus influence irrational beings, and those not isolated animals immediately present to him, but shoals of fish in the depths of the sea, it is impossible to imagine out of the domain of magic. Olshausen compares this operation of Jesus to that of the divine omnipotence in the annual migrations of fish and birds;16 but the comparison is worse than lame,—it lacks all parallelism; for the latter is an effect of the divine agency, linked in the closest manner with all the other operations of God in external nature, with the change of seasons, etc.; while the former, even presupposing Jesus to be actually God, would be an isolated act, interrupting the chain of natural phenomena; a distinction that removes any semblance of parallelism between the two cases. Allowing the possibility of such a miracle (and from the supranaturalistic point of view, nothing is in itself impossible), did it subserve any apparent object, adequate to determine Jesus to so extravagant a use of his miraculous powers? Was it so important that Peter should be inspired by this incident with a superstitious fear, not accordant with the spirit of the New Testament? Was this the only preparation for engrafting the true faith? or did Jesus believe that it was only by such signs that he could win disciples? How little faith must he then have had in the force of mind and of truth! how much too meanly must he have estimated Peter, who, at a later period at least (John vi. 68), clung to his society, not on account of the miracles which he beheld Jesus perform, but for the sake of the words of eternal life which came from his lips!