the perfect works which man had smitten into imperfection, save to redeem and recreate them-to redeem them from a bondage imposed upon them at the Fall, to recreate them into their ideal perfection and loveliness? How could the Creative Spirit manifest His presence and achieve His kind purpose but by the exhibition of creative energies-energies not natural to man, but supernatural ? The God-Man was a new and miraculous person on earth; His works, therefore, were necessarily new and miraculous works. Supernatural to us, they were natural to Him. He, the Creator, came to create anew; and what could His work be but a new creation equally wonderful-nay, more wonderful and miraculous than that first creation, which also was a violation of the order which preceded it?

To object to the miracles of Christ is, therefore, to object to the Scripture revelation of the person of Christ. Admit that He was more than man, that He was God in man, and His miracles follow as the natural and proper manifestations of His miraculous personality.

The Miraculous Feeding of the Five Thousand is one of the most beautiful and instructive of these manifestations. Each of the Evangelists has told the story of it; so far as it is needful to a complete view we shall combine their several narratives.*

More than one of them supplies us with a starting point. Matthew hints that Jesus withdrew into the wooded hills and plains on the north-eastern coast of Galilee in order to escape the tyranny of Herod, who had just put John the Baptist to death. John tells us that Jesus went thither by sea, not by land. While Mark supplies an additional and characteristic reason for Christ's sojourn in this "desert place." According to him our Lord was moved not simply by consideration for Himself and His unfinished work, but mainly by a tender consideration for His disciples. They had just returned, full of triumph and exultation, from their first mission, talking with eager excitement of the

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wonderful things they had been moved to say and do; how they had healed the sick and cast out devils. Their excitement was sustained by the listening crowds who thronged them, leaving them no leisure so much as to eat." Their Master takes thought for them, and says, "Come ye apart into a desert place, and rest a little." No doubt this invitation expresses a gracious affectionate consideration even for the physical need and comfort of His friends; but it does much more than that-it expresses care for the spirit as well as for the body. All that excitement was not good, not healthful for the disciples-that perpetual talk about their conquests over the evil power, and the open-mouthed wonder, almost adoration, of the crowds that went and came. It tended to dissipate their spiritual force, to engender a restless and irritable self-consciousness, to magnify outward passing wonders at the expense of the invisible eternal realities of which these were the signs. They needed rest, solitude, silence, in order that they might recover their mental poise, and prepare themselves for the 'greater works" which they were to see and do; and, therefore, Christ said to them, "Come and rest."

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A very gracious invitation; an invitation, moreover, which we are seldom reluctant to obey. For rest after labour is very sweet, and silence after much talk, and the calm solitudes of Nature after the disturbing excitement of crowded streets. All this we love well, and often too well; the rest is so pleasant to us that we do not care to go back to the duties which excite and exhaust us. All the more, therefore, let us note that Christ adds a limitation to His invitation. says, "Come and rest ;" but He adds, "a little." Rest-repose, ease, quiet, selfculture, holiday-mirth, with all we include in that word—is not to be enjoyed simply as an end, but as a means to an end. Action is our true calling, not rest. Even the rest of solitary spiritual intercourse with Christ realizes its true end only as it qualifies and prepares us for spiritual labour. We are with Him in

He

the "desert place" only that we may serve Him in the crowded city, and, if need be, follow Him through angry crowds, "without the gate."

No

The rest of the disciples was of the briefest it lasted only during the short sail across the tranquil waters of Gennesaret. For a few days the multitude followed Christ with an extraordinary eagerness. They went by land, He by sea. They, therefore, must have compassed the lake across which He sailed; yet they "outwent" Him. sooner does He reach the shore than He finds a great multitude awaiting Him. His intention of resting and giving rest is defeated by the crowd who once more press round Him. But He has compassion on them, Mark tells us, "because they were as sheep not having a shepherd." What a pathetic phrase! How accurate, and yet how picturesque! For were not the multitude, rushing about from this side the lake to that, like an unguided flock-unguided, and yet so anxious to be guided-unfed, yet craving food-having no shepherd, and yet so eager to have a shepherd that they "run afoot out of all their cities" into the desert to find one? Jesus is full of pity for them, full of ruth. He "speaks to them of the kingdom of God," "begins to teach them many things," and "heals them that had need of healing."

Jesus taught them many things, then; speaking with them, and healing the sick as they "went up the mountain," till at last "He sat down" on a grassy slope, and began to speak to them in ordered forms of discourse. Through the best hours of a day, in the loveliest season of the year, with a bright heaven above and a tranquil sea below, they listen as He discloses the secrets of the kingdom of God. And when the day begins to wear away, when Jesus is weary and the multitude faint, He asks Philip, "Whence

shall we buy bread that these may eat?” -showing the same gracious consideration for them that He had just before shown for the disciples. He had cared that the disciples should have "rest," and now He cares that the multitude should have "food"-not limiting His compassion to those who acknowledged Him their Lord. Jesus speaks to Philip; but why to Philip? "This He said to prove him."

Is it not wonderful? At the close of a laborious day, occupied with care for the five thousand, He yet singles out Philip, thinks of him, and applies to him a test to which, for some special reason, Philip needed to be exposed! Wonderful, indeed, and surely most encouraging; teaching us that we are not lost in the crowd of disciples who now gather round the feet of Christ, that He has thought and care for each of us, and measures out our discipline according to our several need.

Simply enough, Philip falls to reckoning. He calculates that it will cost at least two hundred pence to furnish food enough to give each of the five thousand even "a little." He is proved, then, and found wanting? Yes; but Christ does not rebuke his simplicity, his slowness of heart. He leaves His question to work in Philip's mind, and apparently Philip consults his brethren, and asks them to go over his calculations. For now they come to the Master, and say, "This is a desert place, and the day is far spent. Send them away that they may go into the villages round about and buy themselves bread." Nay, replies Christ,

They need not depart : give ye them to eat." "We! exclaim the astonished disciples. "Why, it would take two hundred pence"-you see they have found Philip's calculation correct -"to buy bread for them; and where are we to find the pence, or where, if we had the pence, could we buy the bread ?”

And now they are proved and found wanting, too. Both their calculation and that of Philip had omitted one factorthe creative power of Christ. They had forgotten that, and neither His probing question, nor His direct command, have sufficed to remind them of it.

He, however, tries them and teaches them in another way, gradually leading them to the true answer to His question. He will not admit their solution of the difficulty to be the only solution or the best. He bids them go and see how many loaves they have. They have none; but as they return from their profitless quest, practical keen-sighted Andrew exclaimed, "Here is a lad who hath five barley-loaves and two small fishes!" though even Andrew cannot forbear the doubtful inquiry, "But what are these among so many?" Neither the sagacity nor the faith of the disciples can solve the difficult problem; and so Jesus solves it for them. He bids them range the multitude in companies of fifties and hundreds; and graphic Mark tells us that the grass was fresh and green -"they sat down on the green grass"and that when the men were set down, in their orderly arrangement they looked like beds of flowers springing from a lawn. He calls the companies, as our Version has it, "ranks or spaces," literally "garden-plots "--their gay varicoloured garments and symmetrical distribution giving him the vivid conception. Nor let us here omit to note that Christ is "the Author not of confusion but of order;" that He cares for things which to us seem as trivial as this orderly distribution of the multitude, even on the eve of one of His mightiest works for it is this conception of Him as caring for little things-as knowing our very down-sitting and uprising-which keeps the memory of His goodness always fresh, and nerves us in our narrow round to do our trivial tasks as in His sight.

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So soon as the companies of fifties and hundreds are duly seated, Jesus "blesses" the bread. Had He used any special words of benediction they would probably have been reported. As we have no record of the potent

transforming words, we may with reason conjecture that Jesus simply used the common 66 grace before meat,' hiding His miraculous power under ordinary forms of speech. This conjecture gathers strength from the divine modesty of the miracle. The bread is multiplied; but no one can tell how. There is no show, no ostentation, but a hiding of power. Christ does not "strike His hand" over the food, and in a loud voice command the five loaves that they become five thousand, and the two fish that they become two thousand, dazzling all eyes with the splendours of miracle; but He quietly breaks the bread and gives to His disciples. Imperceptibly the food is multiplied in His hands; as often as the disciples return to Him they find there is still enough and to spare, until each of the five thousand has had as much as he will. Nothing could be more extraordinary than the Divine Power whose touch multiplies, except it be the Divine Modesty which conceals the power.

This, then, is the story; and now for one or two lessons.

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1. And, first, for a lesson which connects itself with our opening remarks This, like the entire series of Christ's miracles, is of a restorative, a re-creative character. To create is, according to the common notion, to produce something out of nothing; more strictly, it is to produce "things seen out of things which do not appear." But in this case, Christ produces something more out of something already in existence; and things patent to sense, not out of things which do not appear, but out of the very real and homely loaves and fishes which the provident lad had brought with him. And this method of procedure is characteristic of Christ. His divine power always found a substratum on which to work. The water is intensified and raised into wine; but there are the six waterpots, full of water to the brim, ready to His hand. The closed eye is opened, the deaf ear unstopped, the fettered tongue loosened, the disordered frame restored, the dead body raised; but we nowhere read of a new body being created, or a new tongue,

or ear, or eye. Do we then limit the power of Christ, and say that absolute creation was beyond its scope? Nay, but rather we magnify His grace. He is the Creative Word; by Him all things were made and consist; but when He came among us in great humility, He came not to create, but to restore; not out of nothing to produce a new world, but out of this old world to bring forth a new heaven and a new earth; not to create a new and perfect race, but to create us anew and make us perfect; not even to raise us suddenly into new and happier conditions, but in our old conditions to quicken in us a new life, which, as it grew, should shape out its own organs and forms and circumstances. Creator simply would have been nothing; a Re-Creator is all.

To us a

2. Again Christ rules all processes of nature and all human ministries for good. Christ changes water into wine at the wedding table, teaching men to look to Him for the joy of vintage; teaching them that it is He who year by year transforms the moisture and goodness of the earth and the fiery warmth of the sun into wine, which maketh glad the heart of man. And now in the desert He teaches them to see Him in the harvest no less than the vintage. He makes our annual bread. Year by year He multiplies the loaves, bringing the multitudinous harvest from the seed-corn, in some lands thirty, in some sixty, and in some a hundredfold. Mark, too, that Christ gives the multitude, not corn, but bread

-corn carefully laboured and prepared by the arts of the miller and baker; so teaching them, andļus through them, that when men minister to our wants it is none the less Christ who ministers to our wants. It is the providence of Christ which sends each of us bread, just as it is His providence which sends the general harvest. Men are His ministers for our good, and every useful human art and the whole circle of its products are the gifts of His mercy. Farmers, millers, and bakers, aye, and men of all trades and professions, all are God's ministers, and may, if they will, Co-operate with Him for the good of the

world. Every man who is diligent, honest, and truthful in his vocation, manifestly fills well his part in the great scheme by which the world is fed and clothed, taught and comforted; and if he abide in his calling with God, he may have the supreme satisfaction of knowing that he is intelligently and voluntarily assisting to carry out the merciful design for the common weal of mankind, which, with him or without him, God will surely accomplish.

3. The boundless munificence and wise economy of Christ receive a fresh illustration from this narrative. It concludes with the command, "Gather up

the fragments that nothing be lost." Here we have the wise thrift which will suffer no waste. And for munificence

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Christ bids five thousand men, besides women and children, to His mountain table, and they all eat till they are filled," each having received "as much as he would." There was no stint, but there must be no waste. And are not munificence and economy blended in all His works? Oh, the depth of the riches of His bounty in the natural world; and yet how frugally He gathers up the fragments, suffering none to be lost! The dead leaves of autumn feed the strength and beauty of spring; out of corruption life comes forth, and out of the slayer bread for the eater. So, too, in His Providence, with lavish bounty, He sends food and culture forall, yet leaves no room for waste. If any do waste His bounty, either by a spendthrift diffuseness or by gathering to themselves more than they can wisely use, they suffer for it, bringing many, and often themselves also, to want. An unequal, unjust distribution of His gifts implies and produces extremes of need and pain. Some must lack what others throw away; and there are those who have a trick of spending so unwisely that no one is the richer for what they lose. There is enough for all, but not too much, if only all had their full share and knew how to use it. And we may be sure that the same law holds in the spiritual domain. Christ gives enough of truth and grace to each of us, and a little to spare for the wants of our poorer neigh