instruction, edification, culture, and perfecting is within the boundaries of Christ's conception of his own Church. The time will come when we shall not need to modify any of the great grand words ever spoken by Jesus Christ. The mischief is that a cold age wants to drag down the reading to its own coldness. I say concerning this Book of marvels and most astounding miracles—let every line stand. There are coming men who can read the Book in all its apocalyptic wondrousness of suggestion, colour, pomp, and music. We may not be able to read it; our ears are filled with unholy noises, our eyes are divided so that we cannot focalise our vision and fix it with intensity enough upon the object to see its real beauty, but in the coming time there are generations that will be able to read the Book in all its breadth, and we must not spoil it for their using. Fear not, the lion of the tribe of Judah hath power to open the Book, and in an infinitely less degree, but not wanting in healthy and noble suggestion, is it true that hearts are coming, brighter minds, nobler souls, who will be able to open the Book in its true sense and read it with all its magic and power and grandeur of suggestion.

Do not

Do not drag down the Book to your present coldness. imagine that the Book is about to accommodate itself to the impoverishment which you have inflicted upon yourselves. The miracles stun us because we have lost the power of grasping them, but when materialism goes down and faith rises to its proper position the miracles will be easy reading to all believing souls. You must enlarge the idea of the Church.

"They need not depart-give ye them to eat." You never know how much you have till you begin to give. The thing given with the right spirit grows in the giving. You will find after you have withdrawn some donation from your store, with a good motive and a right intent, that when you go back again to the store it will have returned, and in your secrecy you will say, What mystery is this, when I have given the money? It was taken out to be given, but I must have forgotten to convey it." This is the ministry of the angels, to go to the secret drawer and put the money back, to watch your face when you return to count what you expected to be the diminished amount. We have proved this we must not be accounted foolish men by those who have not entered into the same experience. If I were my own treasurer

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I should be poor in a month: I would not know what had been done with the money. But taking it always from him, in the act of giving it to him it grows in the giving.

Let us hear those wonderful men talk again. And they say unto him, "We have here but five loaves and two fishes." Did they tell the truth? No. Did they distort the facts? No. Is it possible to state a fact and yet to keep back the truth? Perfectly possible, and done every day. Let us hear how much they had. Five loaves and two fishes-and no more. Sure? What had the fools forgotten? What we forget in all our misreckoning. Give me the inventory of their property, will you; it will then read thus: "We have here but five loaves and two fishes, and God and Christ, and the Miracle worker and the Creator." What poor inventories we return. The stationer could give us paper enough for our inventories ten thousand times over. We give the material side only when we add up our riches; we put down the loaves and the fishes, and the water and the gold, and the silver and the stones-but what about ideas, impulses, thoughts, purposes, burning desires, imperishable capacities? What about the immortality that stirs within us? With such omissions your inventory is not worth the paper it is written upon. When you reckon up your little stock to-night do not forget to add at the foot of the roll-" and Christ, and Providence, and my Father in heaven," and you will lay down your weary head as a millionaire, multiplied by innumerable millions as to store and value.

Jesus said, "Bring them hither to me." He was not disturbed by the number, as the disciples were. In their hands the loaves would have been only five and the fishes would have been only two, but in Christ's hands the stock will be multiplied into a great feast. It is the same with everything we have. Let us take up our two talents to Christ-we shall bring them back two hundred. Let us take up our resources to Christ, and we shall come back multiplied into an army that cannot lose a battle. This accounts for your non-success, my friends: you are using your little store without passing it through the all-multiplying fingers : if you were more religious you would be more successful.

Now this is a miracle which does not appeal to the imagination. Sometimes the rationalists have told us that the people upon whom the miracle was wrought were simply operated upon by a magnetic

will, by a higher power of mind than their own, and they for the time being became the happy subjects of a kind of magnetic action. I imagine the bread had no imagination to be wrought upon it would appear to me that the five loaves and the two fishes were not subjects for the operation of any magical art. Moreover, the whole story is so constructed as to make it sternly literal. "Jesus commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude." Jesus did not personally give the bread to the multitude-he passed it, as he passes all his bread, through the medium of ministries and servants of his own appointing.

It was more than a mere miracle: it was a sacrament. He made a religious feast of it. He never did anything secularly, as we use that cold term--his whole life was religious, his very breath was a prayer, the opening of his eyes was a revelation. He did nothing without his Father. We should have larger comforts if we had more religion in the using of them. Your unblest bread will soon be done. If you eat animally you will be choked, if you eat sacramentally you will have bread enough and to spare. Eat with contentment of heart, with a sense of gratitude and thankfulness to God, as the guest of God, and the host will see that you have enough. Do not spread an atheist's table that you may put upon it venison and wines of all famed vineyards: you will only get up a glutton and a winebibber, flushed with a bad heat and satisfied but for an hour. On the poorest meal, on the simplest engagement of life, ask the heavenly blessing-secretly or audibly, but mean it-and sitting down to your little table, say, "I am here as God's guest: he asked me to sit here," and the feast will be a holy sacrament.

There are eternal meanings in this bread-giving. This is the miracle of the ages. It is the only miracle which all the evangelists have told, and there may be a purpose in this unanimity of record, for this is the miracle we must all partake of or we cannot live-we must eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of God. “Except a man eat my flesh and drink my blood he hath no life in him. This is the true bread which cometh down from heaven, of which if a man eat he will hunger no more. Now we come with

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our little dwarfing expositions, and take all the sap, the juice, the wine out of this holy growth. We will ask little questions about transubstantiation, and we will set up little enigmas and miserable riddles which are unworthy of the Christian imagination, and our religious liberties and privileges. This is not a question of transubstantiation: the bread does not pass into any other body or substance the wine is wine at the last as at the first, and no magic can change its nature. And yet as in the letter I feel the spirit, so in these elements of bread and wine my heart feels that it is feasting upon the living Lord. Do not ask for this gospel to be reduced to words: I ask you to enlarge your words to receive this gospel.

Have you eaten of the bread sent down from heaven-have you drunk of the blood of the Son of God? If not, you have no life abiding in you. Lord, evermore give us this bread. This is the bread that endureth unto life everlasting. In my Father's house is bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger: I will arise and go to my Father, and I will say unto him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son." Have you challenged him with a speech so eloquent in contrition? He will shake the heavens that he may reply to you with the enthusiasm of his whole house; his angels and his first-born will consider it no humiliation to gather around you and clothe you and make you rich with all heaven's wealth.

Return, return, thou hungry wanderer in the wilderness: thou needest not depart in thy Father's house are all mansions, and there is a resting-place even for thee.

LXII.

REVELATION BY NIGHT AND DAY.

Matthew xiv. 22-36.

22. And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the multitudes away.

23. And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray and when the evening was come, he was there alone.

24. But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves: for the wind was contrary.

25. And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea.

26. And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear.

27. But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.

28. And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water.

29. And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus.

30. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.

31. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? 32. And when they were come into the ship, the wind ceased.

33. Then they that were in the ship came and worshipped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the Son of God.

34. And when they were gone over, they came into the land of Gen

nesaret.

35. And when the men of that place had knowledge of him, they sent out into all that country round about, and brought unto him all that were diseased;

36. And besought him that they might only touch the hem of his gar ment; and as many as touched were made perfectly whole.