CHAPTER X. ST LUKE IX. THE next day, as the girls had got the books out, and were waiting for their mother, the door opened, and their father looked in, expecting to find her there. "Oh, you are getting ready for reading," he said; "would you like me to come too?" There can be no doubt what answer would be returned to such a question. Cecilia ran off to fetch the large Bible out of the diningroom, thinking it the only one worthy of her father; and when she came back her mother was already seated. ST LUKE IX. 1-6; ST MATTHEW X.; ST MARK VI. 7–13. "Why were the apostles commanded to take nothing with them for their journey?" said Cecilia. "One reason was to show that they were followers of Him who had not where to lay His head, and whose religion was ushered into the world with no worldly display or pomp, nor propagated by earthly means; but the chief object of this sending them forth was undoubtedly to teach them absolute dependence and secure reliance upon God's providence and This journey itself was but a short one, and only among their own countrymen, and in their own land. It was a short essay of their faith and obedience, before the great time of trial came." care. "As David killed the lion and the bear before he killed Goliath," said Ellen; mamma was telling us last Sunday that that was a type of the small trials people are exposed to before they are strong enough for great ones." Her father smiled assent and went on. "This journey would have been no trial of the apostles, and what is of more consequence, would have given them no proof of God's care of them, had they been furnished with all that they were likely to need. Do you remember how, when He was preparing them for being left without Him, He reminds them of this journey, and asks whether they had lacked anything, and they said 'Nothing'" (Luke xxii. 35). "Oh yes, I remember," said the girls; and May added, "It was at the Last Supper." "He reminds them of the providence which had been extended over them at this time, and which they would need still more. Though He removed from them all these restrictions, and commanded them to use what human means of help they could, yet their position was so infinitely more trying then than now, that they would require all the faith and trust that had been nurtured by their present dependence to support them under, and carry them through the trials and difficulties and dangers that awaited them." "It seems strange," said Ellen, "that Herod should have believed in John the Baptist having risen from the dead (Mark v. 14); he was a Sadducee and did not believe in any resurrection." "It is not uncommon that those who begin by unbelief should end by superstition, those who refuse to believe what God declares necessary to salvation should instead believe in the feverish fancies of their own brain and the vague fears of their troubled consciences." "It says that he desired to see Jesus," said May; "did he make any effort to do so?" 66 'No, there was no earnestness even in his desires for good, it was mere idle curiosity; he never sought after Christ, and we know when it was he first saw Him, and how he then treated Him." (Luke xxiii. 8-11.) REFERENCES. Chrysostom, Alford, Matthew Henry, Wordsworth, Adam Clarke, Whitby. "Now you may go on and read the miracle of the loaves and fishes. It is the only miracle, almost the only incident, recorded by all four Evangelists." ST LUKE IX. 10-17; ST MATTHEW XIV. 13-21; "Our Saviour's retirement is connected by St Matthew with John the Baptist's death, by St Luke with the apostle's return," said Mrs Dalton. "The two events are supposed by most harmonists * to have happened within a few days of each other." "St Mark tells us plainly the object of His retirement (verses 31, 32), that the apostles might have time to rest and refresh themselves and to commune with their Lord after this their first essay of independent action; and thus he brings out most distinctly our Lord's tenderness and compassion, that would not repulse these multitudes that followed Him, even at a time when He most wished to be alone." "I think it ought to be a lesson to us," said May, "not to be put out when we meet with worries and interruptions." "Yes; and to do the work that presents itself to us, though it be quite different from that which we have marked out for ourselves." "It showed the faith of the people, that they not only followed Him but stayed all day till hunger seized them," said Cecilia. 66 * Ellicott; Dictionary of the Bible, art. Gospels;" Townsend's Harmony. "The miracle was a proof of the truth of our Lord's words-Take no thought what ye shall eat. Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.' We have no right to lay aside without due cause the natural means of subsistence; but when, in obedience to Christ, or through devotion to Him, we are deprived of these, we have a right to trust the extraordinary power which provided for the apostles in their journey, and fed these His trusting followers. And yet these people were still imperfect, their faith was not sufficient to satisfy our Lord, and when He went on to teach them the mysteries of the kingdom of God, they turned back and walked no more with Him. (John vi. 66.) Let us strive to grow in grace, and not to be satisfied while we have as yet not done even as much as these men had done." "It seems strange that, after all the miracles that the apostles had seen, they should not have thought of Christ's working a miracle-should have had no idea, except of buying bread." "Yes; they do seem to us very slow of apprehension, but they had never seen a miracle of this sort before, and we are all of us prone to make mistakes at the moment, which appear very strange to those who read of them, or to ourselves afterwards. Our Lord seems to have asked the question of Philip to try his faith, and to show him the utter hopelessness of all human means. There is an old proverb, 'Man's extremity is God's opportunity.' When their attention had been drawn to the needs of the people, and they found that they could only procure among all that multitude five loaves and two fishes, hardly enough for two persons (Luke xi. 5, 6), then He displayed His power to reward the faith of those that had followed Him, and to support the lives of those He had made." 66 How strange that command must have seemed to His apostles, 'Give ye them to eat,'" said Cecilia. "It was a command which, like many of God's com mands given to us, could not be fulfilled, except by His aid and power, and to that the apostles do not seem to have looked." "However slow of heart they may have been to expect a miracle, their compassion was hardly less than their divine Lord's," said Mrs Dalton. "You mean that they thought of the wants of the multitude, though they did not know how to supply them." "It must have astonished the people very much when they were bid to sit down without knowing what was coming!" said Cecilia. power," said Those they "They seem to have had no idea of His Mrs Dalton, "except in healing the sick. brought to Him in the sure hope of their being healed, but anything besides that the apostles never seem to have contemplated, and we cannot suppose that the multitudes were more enlightened than they." "There is an orderly arrangement about the whole," said Mr Dalton, "which reminds us that God is not the author of confusion, but of peace. The regular arrangements by hundreds and fifties, the whole party quietly seated on the grass, which at the early time of year would be in its full beauty (John v. 4, Mark vi. 39), the blessing of the meal of which they were about to partake, all forms a fit introduction to the marvellous increase by which, as the food passed from His hands to theirs, and so to the multitude, it became sufficient to satisfy all those men, women, and children after a long day's fast, and to leave more in fragments than there had been at first. The lessons that have been drawn from this miracle are innumerable, and I cannot do more than touch on a few; some we have already spoken of. The self-abandonment of the apostles who, on their return from their journey of preaching, were literally without food; the faith of the multitude who followed Jesus; the long delay of help, till it was become absolutely necessary-all suggest many |