Note 313 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

To this miracle, as to the former, Olshausen, after Augustine,313 applies his definition of an accelerated natural process, by which we are to understand that we have here simply the occurrence, in an accelerated manner, of that which is presented yearly in the vine in a slow process of development. This mode of viewing the matter would have some foundation, if the substratum on which Jesus operated had been the same out of which wine is wont to be naturally produced; if he had taken a vine in his hand, and suddenly caused it to bloom, and to bear ripe grapes, this might have been called an accelerated natural process. Even then indeed we should still have no wine, and if Jesus were to produce this also from the vine which he took into his hand, he must add an operation which would be an invisible substitute for the winepress, that is, an accelerated artificial process; so that on this supposition the category of the accelerated natural process would already be insufficient. In fact, however, we have no vine as a substratum for this production of wine, but water, and in this case we could only speak with propriety of an accelerated natural process, if by any means, however gradual, wine were ever produced out of water. Here it is urged, that certainly out of water, out of the moisture produced in the earth by rain and the like, the vine draws its sap, which in due order it applies to the production of the grape, and of the wine therein contained; so that thus yearly, by means of a natural process, wine does actually come out of water.314 But apart from the fact that water is only one of the elementary materials which are required for the fructification of the vine, and that to this end, soil, air, and light, must concur; it could not be said either of one, or of all these elementary materials together, that they produce the grape or the wine, nor, consequently, that Jesus, when he produced wine out of water, did the same thing, only more quickly, which is repeated every year as a gradual process: on the contrary, here again there is a confusion of essentially distinct logical categories. For we may place the relation of the product to the producing agent, which is here treated of, under the category of power and manifestation, or of cause and effect: never can it be said that water is the power or the cause, which produces grapes and wine, for the power which gives existence to them is strictly the vegetable individuality of the vine-plant, to which water, with the rest of the elementary agencies, is related only as the solicitation to the power, as the stimulus to the cause. That is, without the co-operation of water, air, etc, grapes certainly cannot be produced, any more than without the vine plant; but the distinction is, that in the vine the grape, in itself or in its germ, is already present, and water, air, etc., only assist in its development; whereas in these elementary substances, the grape is present neither actu nor potentiâ; they can in no way produce the fruit out of themselves, but only out of something else—the vine. To turn water into wine is not then to make a cause act more rapidly than it would act in a natural way, but it is to make the effect appear without a cause, out of a mere accessory circumstance; or, to refer more particularly to organic nature, it is to call forth the organic product without the producing organism, out of the simple inorganic materials, or rather out of one of these materials only. This is about the same thing as to make bread out of earth without the intervention of the corn plant, flesh out of bread without a previous assimilation of it by an animal body, or in the same immediate manner, blood out of wine. If the supranaturalist is not here contented with appealing to the incomprehensibleness of an omnipotent word of Jesus, but also endeavours, with Olshausen, to bring the process which must have been contained in the miracle in question nearer to his conception, by regarding it in the light of a natural process; he must not, in order to render the matter more probable, suppress a part of the necessary stages in that process, but exhibit them all. They would then present the following series: 1st, to the water, as one only of the elementary agents, Jesus must have added the power of the other elements above named; 2ndly (and this is the chief point), he must have procured, in an equally invisible manner, the organic individuality of the vine; 3rdly, he must have accelerated, to the degree of instantaneousness, the natural process resulting from the reciprocal action of these objects upon one another, the blooming and fructification of the vine, together with the ripening of the grape; 4thly, he must have caused the artificial process of pressing, and so forth, to occur invisibly and suddenly; and lastly, he must again have accelerated the further natural process of fermentation, so as to render it momentary. Thus, here again, the designation of the miracle as an accelerated natural process, would apply to two stages only out of five, the other three being such as cannot possibly be brought under this point of view, though the two first, especially the second, are of greater importance even than belonged to the stages which were neglected in the application of this view to the history of the miraculous feeding: so that the definition of an accelerated natural process is as inadequate here as there.315 As, however, this is the only, or the extreme category, under which we can bring such operations nearer to our conception and comprehension; it follows that if this category be shown to be inapplicable, the event itself is inconceivable.