than they find themselves "at the land whither they went." "On the day following" the multitude return to the mountain on which they had been fed, where also they had left Jesus on the previous evening, confidently expecting to find Him for whose miraculous bread they were once more hungry. They knews that on the previous day there was but one boat by the shore, and that "Jesus went not with His disciples into the boat, but that His disciples were gone away alone:" how then has he managed to escape them? Whither has He gone? They renew and extend their search for Him. Availing themselves of a little fleet of fishingboats that drew near the foot of the mountain, they cross over to the other side of the lake and seek Jesus in "His own country." They find Him probably on the shore, and go with Him to the synagogue-so that it was a Sabbathday. No sooner do they discover him than they blurt out the eager question : "Rabbi, when camest Thou hitherwhen and how?" And now if Jesus cared for mere "wonders," had he thought miracles so strong a proof of truth as many of us do, what an opportunity of astonishing the multitude into faith was at his command! The night had been full of miracles. He had walked upon the sea when it was at its roughest! He had sustained sinking Peter and made him walk too! He had hushed the storm into a calm; and by His power the boat had been drawn in an instant from the middle of the lake to the desired haven ! Here was a night of wonders; and Jesus could have called at least twelve eyewitnesses to attest each of them. Does Jesus, then, speak of these miracles? No; but when the faithless multitude throng Him with questioning lips and eyes, He answers them only with rebuke: "Verily, verily, ye seek me not because ye saw SIGNS, but because ye Idid eat of the loaves and were filled."q¶ They sought bread, not truth; they were hungry for wonders, but had no appetite John vi., 22. See THE CHURCH for June. for signs. They had not entered, and did not care to enter into the spiritual significance of the miracle which Christ had wrought upon the mountain. That was only a wonder to them as yet, and a wonder which they hoped to see repeated. It had not revealed Christ to them as bread-giver and life-giver. They had not come across the lake because they wanted Him, or the life that was in Him; but because they longed for the loaves which He could give, and craved to see the wonders which it was in His hand to work. Instead therefore of feeding their appetite for wonders, by telling them of the miracles wrought in the stormy night, Jesus first rebukes it as a morbid appetite, and then proposes that before there be any more talk of fresh wonders they shall seek out the meaning of the miracle he had already wrought for them. They would have been content with food for the body; but He cannot be content till they also receive food for the soul. They thought the bread of yesterday a very pleasant and miraculous bread; but they did not suspect how miraculous and pleasant it was, that underneath the food which perishes there lay an enduring spiritual food. In the long conversation betweenChrist and the Jews, which fills the sixth chapter of John's Gospel, we have, then, Christ's interpretation of the miraculous feeding of the Ten Thousand,—an interpretation far more subtle and profound than any we could have found in it for ourselves Let us glance at its main outline. After rebuking the multitude for their sordid motives, Jesus continues, "Labour not for the food which perisheth, for how shall that which perishes preserve the perishable life of man and nourish it into a life eternal; but labour for that food which endureth unto eternal life, which, imperishable itself, immortalises those who partake of it; which the Som of Man shall give you, by giving you Himself: for Him hath God the Father sealed to be the pure sacrificial food of the world." "Labour!" they exclaim and inquire, "What shall we do that we ¶ John vi., 26. may labour the labours of God? What ritualisms, what divine authentic set of works, do you prescribe, by the observance of which we may rise to the better life?" Jesus replies, "I have no such set of authentic ceremonials to impose. The labour of God is one, not many, moral, not ritualistic: it is that ye believe on Him whom God hath sent, that by vital faith you appropriate the life that is in the Sent One of God-the Saviour of men." : This they find a hard saying-a grave demand. That a spiritual act of trust should be substituted for their formal acts of worship is a thought which cuts all their habits and prejudices against the grain. That Jesus the Carpenter should be the Messiah of whom the prophets had spoken in such glowing and majestic strains was hard to believe now that the enthusiasm born of the miraculous gratification of appetite had passed away. Yesterday, when they were on the mountain, while the bread and fish were still in their mouths, it did not seem so impossible; in their excitement they had wanted to "force" Christ on to the Messianic throne, to make Him a king who was their king but now that they have slept on it, and the first flush of excitement has passed, they have grown critical and doubtful; they have their objections and not unreasonable objections-to urge. They said therefore unto Him, "What SIGN showest Thou that we may see and believe Thee?" Jesus had reproached them for their indifference to signs; they will demand one of Him. "What sign showest Thou? What dost THOU work? Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread to eat. Can'st thou give manna too? True, it is but a day since we ate of the loaves and were filled; but dost not Thou perhaps make a little too much of that miracle? The Messiah is greater than all prophetsgreater even than the prophet, Moses: must He not show greater signs? Moses gave our fathers the sacred manna; he fed hundreds of thousands of them day by day for many years on a bread which visibly came down from heaven. Thou hast but fed five thousand, for a single day, with bread which came we know not whence ?" 66 corn This, I say, was not an unreasonable objection for Jews to take, though it would be so unreasonable in us. It showed a commendable aptness that they should so promptly compare the barley loaves with "the bread from heaven,” and the "sign" of Moses with the signs which Messias might be expected to work. The manna was more to them than it can be to us. Their inspired writers had magnified it as of heaven" and "angels' food." Their compatriots Josephus and Philo speak of it, the one as that divine and admirable food," the other as "that wonderful and wonderworking prodigy." Aben Ezra calls it "the greatest of the miracles of Moses." And the thoughtful writer of that curious Book in the Apochrypha, known as "The Wisdom of Solomon," suffers his fancy to play about it till he makes it take a different exquisite flavour on every palate; Thou feddest Thine own people with angels' food, and didst send them from heaven bread prepared without their labour, able to content every man's delight, and agreeing to every taste. For Thy sustenance declared Thy sweetness unto Thy children, and answering to the appetite of the eater, tempered itself to every man's liking." This was the popular conception of the manna : and if the sign of Messias was to transcend that of Moses as far as Messias was more excellent than Moses, how great a work must Jesus do before He could hope to prove to the satisfaction of Jews that He was the Sent One" of God! Compared with a miracle so vast and prolonged as that which they ascribed to Moses, what was the miracle of feeding five thousand men for a single day from five barley loaves and two small fishes? 66 Does Jesus shrink from a test so severe? No; His reply to the reasonable scepticism of the multitude is singularly clear and full. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven, but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world." He meets their objection with a threefold denial: it was not Moses who gave the manna; the manna was not the true bread; the manna did not come down from the true heaven. It was not "Moses" who gave the manna, but "my Father," as indeed their own sacred writers-even Moses himself-abundantly declare. Throughout the Old Testament the works of Moses-and this among them—are expressly and constantly attributed to God, the Father Almighty; the very Psalm* which they quote in support of their position rebukes the Jews because they did not believe in "the God who had opened the doors of heaven, and had rained manna down upon them." Nor was the manna the true bread;" for it could not give life; it soon putrified and stank, and even when fresh had, and could give, no secret power which should arrest the progress of disease and death; the whole generation who subsisted on it died in the wilderness in which it fell. Nor did the manna 66 come from the true heaven;" for the firmament from which it comes down is not that heaven -spiritual, invisible, eternal-in which the Father dwells, and from which alone He can proceed who will prove Himself the true bread by giving life. The work attributed to Moses was a very singular and admirable prodigy ; but Jesus speaks of a prodigy infinitely more singular and admirable-a manna which is the true gift of the Father, which comes down from the true interior heaven in which He dwells, and which gives the true eternal life, not to a generation simply or to a race, but through all time to the whole world. 66 This," said Jesus to the astonished multitude, "and this alone, is the true manna, this the true bread from heaven." their slightly contemptuous estimate of the Rabbi from Nazareth, break down. With sudden instinctive reverence, they call Him Lord," and cry with eager desire, "Evermore give us this bread." Their desire was but momentary and superficial. They have not entered into the depth of Christ's thought, nor of their own need. He had already claimed to be the "Sent One" of God, to have come down from heaven to give life to the world," and therefore to be the very bread for which they ask. His answer is very distinct, very sad. "I am the Bread of Life; he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. But I said unto you, that ye also have seen me, and believe not. Give you the true bread! Alas, how gladly would I give it, if only you would receive it. Nay, it is, and has been, given unto you. Here I stand, incarnating and diffusing the energies of the eternal life, giving life to as many as receive Me by faith. If you believed on Me you would never more hunger nor thirst, never crave and suffer lack of the eternal life. It is because, as I have told you before, you have not believed, that you have not received the life I am and bestow. Only believe in the Sent One of God, thus doing the work of God, and the Son of Man will give you the food which endureth unto life eternal. And here, for an instant, after this pathetic remonstrance with their unbelief, Jesus seems to withdraw in spirit from the crowd, to comfort and strengthen His weary heart by inwardly musing on his Father's good will. He, the life, standing face to face with that multiform death, striving in vain to penetrate it with His quickening energies, surrounded by a wistful multitude, who, though asking after life, cannot rise to faith, He is oppressed and very sorrowful. The mournful spectacle of so much unbelief compels Him to take refuge in the inner heaven of communion with God. His thoughts take words. 66 They will not come unto Me that they might have life; at least, they will not come yet: nevertheless, all that the Father giveth Me will, sooner *Psalm lxxviii., 22-25. The multitude admit-as how could they else?--that Moses is out-Mosesed, that He who can give them this bread to eat is greater than the greatest of the prophets. As they listen to His magnificent delineation of the true bread of life-the bread which is the immediate gift of the Father, which comes down from the very heaven of God, and conveys the true eternal life their scepticism, or later, come to Me, and him that cometh to Me, come when and how he may-I will in no wise cast out. And after all, I come down from heaven not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me. What better could I do? Since His will is that of all whom He has given Me I should lose none, but that to every one that believeth on Me, I should give everlasting life." Thus Jesus comforts Himself in the hour when he feels all the sadness of unrequited toil. Thus, also, He comforts us; for from this gracious soliloquy, uttered apparently as, detaching Himself from the crowd, He went up from the sea shore to the synagogue, we learn that, though we delay to come to Him and reject the bread He offers us, yet if ever, and whenever we do come and hold out hands of faith for the gift long refused, He will not and cannot send us away empty, since He came fron heaven, not to reject and receive men in arbitrary capricious self-will, but to execute the steadfast impartial will of the Father; which will is, that all who believe should have the life eternal, and that nothing of them, no part of them, should be lost, their very bodies being raised up at the last day. Jesus of Nazareth being "the bread from heaven," and the snort of indignation with which they would at last break out into speech, “Is not this man Jesus, the Son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How dare He then say, I came down from heaven?" 66 Jesus takes it on himself to answer this question, speaking with the strange quiet authority with which the Scribes, with all their noisy assumptions, found it so hard to cope. First, He exhorts them to that tranquility of soul which alone accurately reflects the forms of truth, Murmur not among yourselves." Then, as though unmindful of their question, as though bent only on pursuing His own train of reflection, He reverts to the consolatory thought, that the Father had given Him many who should believe on Him, and explains this giving by the drawing of the Father: "No man can come to me except the Father draw him"-a very simple yet profound word. For this drawing is that secret divine attraction of God the Father's love, which underlies all the varied forms of His providence, even the most afflictive, and all the divers revelations of His will, even though they take the shape of stringent command or indignant threat. By this word we are admitted into the interior secrecies of His divine rule, and taught that if God chastise us, it is only that in our need and sorrow we may turn to Him; that if He lay the axe of threatening at the root of any tree, it is that the tree, thus warned, may replace evil fruit with good. In all the varied manifestations of His divine and perfect nature which God has made-from the beauty of the tiny moss in the desert which speaks peace to the exhausted traveller, up to the cross on which the punitive and redeeming energies of His grace shine forth in their clearest splendours-there is a secret yet strong attraction, the attraction of an infinite love, by which the Father draws His children to Himself. And if any of these manifestations quicken a longing after God in any man's soul, this longing is the secret remote influence of the eternal love which, if he * John vi., 41. Meantime, while Jesus was thus seeking and giving comfort, certain official persons of Capernaum had evidently joined the crowd, and discussed with them the strange claim which Jesus had advanced. For the Apostle John no longer speaks of "the multitude," or "the people," but of "the Jews,*—a title which, throughout His Gospel, he reserves for the official classes,-Elders, Scribes, Priests. And, indeed, the order and devotion of that morning's service in the synagogue must have been a good deal disturbed; for though no doubt the usual prayers were recited, and the usual psalms chanted, yet we gather from the narrative that there was an unwonted buzz of excitement and muttered controversial eagerness in the place, which must have been very distressing to the sleek comfortable Scribes, who hated any thought of disturbance and change. One can fancy the incredulous face with which these official persons would murmur at the notion of respond to it, will draw him onward and upward till he find God and life in Him. Staying Himself on this strengthening and most comfortable thought, Jesus proceeds to answer the question of the Scribes :-"Verily, verily, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. I am that bread of life, your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from Heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die. I am the living bread, which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." He commences His answer by repeating His former assertion, that He is the true bread of life; but He repeats it with an explanatory difference-His bread is His flesh given for the life of the world. He reverts also to the manna, but only to remind his hearers, that their fathers who ate manna in the wilderness never came out of the wilderness, and that the bread which could not save them from death could not possibly be the heavenly bread of life. The true bread of life is that of which if a man eat he does not die. This bread He declares Himself to be-Himself, and not His word, or His doctrine, or His miracles. All this, however, He had said or implied before. Now for the first time He adds to "I am the bread," the explanatory thought, "I am the bread which I will give, and the bread which I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." Jesus is the life; but if he is to become our life, He must give himself to us. Bread is always bread, but it is only bread for us when it is broken and placed in our hands. He who is the bread must give us bread; His body must be broken for us. His flesh once broken becomes "a meat indeed;" His blood once shed becomes " a drink indeed." But is not all this figurative and sacra LIKE FATHER, mental? It may be, but if it be, its symbolic meaning is based upon its literal truth. Flesh and blood are constituents of our humanity; as bere used by Christ they stand for our humanity and His. The first and ruling meaning of His words is, that the new, pure, perfected humanity of the Word become flesh, is to be communicated to us; that our humanity, weakened and tainted by sin, is to be raised by the indwelling energies of His perfect life, to the level of His strong and spotless humanity; that His redemption is not partial, extending only to the soul, but finished and complete, extending also to the body, which, in this chapter, He so often assures us that He will raise up at the last day. To this end, His body was about to be broken for us, given for us, and to us, on the Sacrificial Cross. Not till then would the trial of His humanity be complete; but then, when it had stood the last test, when even death could neither hold or taint it, it would be proved to be a living and life-giving humanity; then the whole world would have fresh assurance of the fact, that to become a partaker of His nature was to eat a veritable bread from heaven, to receive a life over which death had no power-no power even over the body, save to purge it from taint and defect, and to prepare it for a joyful glorious resurrection. Thus His flesh becomes our bread. He will so lay down his life as to overcome the death by which we are held, the inner death of the soul in sin, and the outer death of the body in corruption. Just as He broke the barley loaves, and by His blessing multiplied them into food for the hungry multitude, so also his body should be broken and blessed, and become the living, quickening food of the whole hungry world. This is the true bread which came down from Heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever,' LIKE FAMILY. BY REV. THEO. L. CUYLER, NEW YORK. MANY a sermon has been preached to mothers; many a tract and treatise written on the mother's influence. But how often are sermons preached to |