Ann Calcut and Others SIR,—Warren Postbridge in Ann Colon and
Others seemingly overlooks the explanation, quite common today, that the withering of the fig-tree was an "acted parable ' involving the use of Jesus's supernatural powers. It demonstrated the ultimate fate of a Jerusalem which had no fruit for its God when He came. Echoes of the same thought are in Jesus's " If they do these things ina green tree, what shall be done in the dry ? " It is not out of keeping with His character to use a fig-tree to demonstrate this fact any more than to lay about on cattle with a whip to act another parable about the Temple.
C. S. Lewis puts up a very good case against his contention (which he shares with Emerson and Matthew Arnold) that the Gospel without miracles is still the Gospel. If Jesus does " wbat I see my Father doing," there is point in demonstrating that God is master of storms and considers a man's sanity worth more than 2,000 pigs. And as C. S. Lewis says: " No tree died in Palestine that or any year, except because God did, or ceased to do something to it."—Yours faithfully,
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