_MY LORD AS MY BREAD_
JOHN vi. 26-35.
Our life's bread is a Person. We may have much to do with Christianity and
nothing to do with Christ. The other day I was in a great and wonderful
bakery, but I never ate nor touched a morsel of bread. I touched the
machinery. I was absorbingly interested in the processes, but I ate no
bread! And I may be deeply interested in the means of grace, I may be
familiar with all "the ins and outs" of ecclesiastical machinery, and I
may never handle nor taste "the bread of God." Our religion is dead and
burdensome until it becomes a personal relation, and we have vital
communion with Christ.
"Thou, O Christ, art all I want." We find everything in Him. Everything
else is preliminary, preparatory, subordinate, and to be in the long run
dropped and forgotten. A ritual is only a way to "the bread," and by no
means essential, and very often undesirable. The heart can find the Lord
with a look, with a cry, and needs no obtrusion of ritual or priest. But
how pathetic! To be contented to potter about among the ritual and never
to find the Bread! To be in the house and never to see the Host! "Ye
search the Scriptures ... and ye will not come to Me."