Remember the words of the steward to the Bridegroom, “Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but Thou hast kept the good wine until now.” Such was the old usage, the usage of the Jews of old times and of the heathen. But Jesus meant to overturn this old amphictyonic usage also. The men of old gave the good and then the poor; He, after the good wine, gives better. Sour, unripened wine, the poor quality which was drunk at the beginning, symbolizes the wine of the old law, the wine that has turned sour and can no longer be drunk. Christ’s wine, finer and stronger, which cheers the heart and warms the blood, is the new wine of the Kingdom, wine intended for the marriage of Heaven and earth, wine which gives that divine intoxication which will be called later, “the foolishness of God.” The marriage of Cana, which in John is the first miracle, is an allegory of the evangelical revolution. THE ACCURSED FIG-TREE Another parable expressed in the form of a miracle is that of the withered fig-tree. One morning towards Easter, returning from Bethany to Jerusalem, Jesus was hungry. He came up to a fig-tree and found only leaves. It was too early to expect fruit, even from the earliest species. Yet Jesus, according to Matthew and Mark, was angry at the poor tree and cursed it. According to Matthew, “Let no fruit grow on thee hence-forward forever.” And presently the fig-tree withered away. According to Mark, “No man eat fruit of thee hereafter forever.... And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig-tree dried up from the roots.” In the Evangelists the account of the curse is followed by a return to the thought many times expressed by Jesus, that anything can be obtained if asked for with powerful faith. Others instead see here a metaphorical lament which many times returned to Jesus’ lips. The fig-tree is Israel, the old Judaic religion, which from now on will bear only unnourishing leaves of rites and ceremonies, leaves fated to shrivel without nourishing men. Jesus, hungry for justice, hungry for love, sought among the leaves for sustaining fruits of mercy and holiness. He did not find them. Israel did not feed His hunger nor fulfill His hope. From now on nothing can be expected from the old trunk, leafy but sterile. May it be dead to all eternity! Other races will henceforth be fruitful. The miracle of the cursed fig-tree is at bottom nothing more than a very apparent gloss of the parable of the sterile fig-tree in Luke. “A certain man had a fig-tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig-tree and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?”