We pass now to another cause that may have originated miraculous narratives in the Gospels. Try to extricate yourself from our Western, cold-blooded, analytical, and critical way of looking at things. Sit down in the reign of Vespasian or Domitian in the midst of a congregation of Jewish and Græco-Oriental brethren, assembled for a sacred service, “singing a hymn” (as Pliny says, describing them a few years afterwards) “to Christ as to a God.” What effect on the traditions of Christ’s life and works would be produced by these “hymns and spiritual songs” which St. Paul’s testimony (as well as Pliny’s) shows to have been a common part of the earliest Christian ritual? Would they not inevitably tend, by poetic hyperbole and metaphor, to build up fresh traditions which, when literally interpreted, would—like the songs and psalms of the Chosen People—give rise to miraculous narratives? Part of the service indeed would not consist of hymns but of the reading of the “Scriptures” _i.e._ the Old Testament; but this also would tend in the same direction. For there you would hear, read out to the congregation, marvellous prophecies how, in the day of the Lord the Redeemer, the eyes of the blind should be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped, and the lame should leap as a hart; and the sole thought possessing you and every man in the congregation would be, “How far did all these things find fulfilment in the Lord Jesus Christ?” You would hear from the “Scriptures” narratives of marvellous miracles, how Moses gave water from the rock to Israel in the wilderness and fed them with food from Heaven, how Elijah raised the widow’s child from death, and how Jonah spent three days in the belly of the fish; and the sole thought possessing you would be, “How far were like wonders wrought by Christ?” Then would arise the hymn describing, in imagery borrowed from the Old Testament, how Christ _had_ done all these things, and more besides, for the spiritual Israel; how He had spread a table for His people in the wilderness, and given to thousands to partake of His body and His blood; how Moses had merely given water to the people, but Jesus had changed the water of the Jews (_i.e._ the Law) into the wine which flowed from His side; how Jesus had fulfilled the predictions of the prophets by curing the halt, the maimed, the blind, the leper, the deaf; how He had even raised the dead and bidden His disciples to raise the dead; how He, like Jonah, had spent three days in the darkness of the grave. If you look at the earliest Christian paintings you will find that they represent Christ as the Fish (the emblem of food); others depict the Mosaic miracles of the manna and the water from the rock. These shew what a hold the notion of the miraculous food had taken on the mind of the earliest believers. How easy it would be to amplify a metaphor derived from the Eucharistic feeding on the Bread of Life and perhaps on