'They did all eat and were filled.' One can fancy how doubtingly and
grudgingly the apostles doled out the supplies at first, and how the
portion of each was increased, as group after group was provided,
and no diminution appeared in Christ's full hands, until, at last,
all the five thousand, of all ages, of both sexes, of every sort,
were fed, and the fragments lying uncared for proved how sufficient
had been the share of each.
May we not see in that scene a picture of the full supply for all
the wants of the whole world which there is in that Bread of Life
which came down from heaven? The Gospel proclaims a full feast,
which is enough for all mankind, which is intended for all mankind,
which shall one day satisfy all mankind.
This universal adaptation of the message of the Gospel to the whole
world arises from the obvious fact that it addresses itself to
universal wants, to the great rudimentary, universally diffused
characteristics of human nature, and that it provides for all these,
in the grand simplicity of its good tidings, the one sufficing word.
It entangles itself with no local or historical peculiarities of the
time and place of its earthly origin, which can hinder it in its
universal diffusion. It commits itself to no transient human
opinions. It addresses itself to no sectional characteristics of
classes of men. It brushes aside all the surface distinctions which
separate us from one another, and goes right down to the depths of
the central identities in which we are all alike. However we may
differ from one another, in training, in habits, in cast of thought,
in idiosyncrasies of character, in circumstances, in age--all these
are but the upper strata which vary locally. Beneath all these there
lie everywhere the solid foundations of the primeval rocks, and
beneath these, again, the glowing central mass, the flaming heart of
the world. Christianity sends its shaft right down through all these
upper and local beds, till it reaches the deepest depths which are
the same in every man--the obstinate wilfulness of a nature averse
from God, and the yet deeper-lying longings of a soul that flames
with the consciousness of God, and yearns for rest and peace. To the
sense of sin, to the sense of sorrow, to the conscience never wholly
stifled, to the desires after good never utterly eradicated and
never slaked by aught besides itself, does this mighty word come.
Not to this or that sort of man, not to men in this or that phase of
progress, age of the world, or stage of civilisation, does it
address itself, but to the common humanity which belongs to all, to
the wants and sorrows and inward consciousness which belong to man
as man, be he philosopher or fool, king or slave, Eastern or
Western, 'pagan suckled in a creed outworn,' or Englishman with the
new lights and material science of this twentieth century.
Hence its universal adaptation to mankind. It alone of all so-called
faiths overleaps all geographical limits and lives in all centuries.
It alone wins its trophies and bestows its gifts on all sorts and
conditions of men. Other plants which the 'Heavenly Father hath not
planted' have their zones of vegetation and die outside certain
degrees of latitude, but the seed of the kingdom is like corn, an
exotic nowhere, for wherever man lives it will grow, and yet an
exotic everywhere, for it came down from heaven. Other food requires
an educated palate for its appreciation, but any hungry man in any
land will relish bread. For every soul on earth this living dying
love of the Lord Jesus Christ addresses itself to, and satisfies,
his deepest wants. It is the bread which gives life to the world.
And one of the constituents of that company by the Galilean lake was
children. It is one great glory of Christianity that its merciful
mysteries can find their way to the hearts of the little children.
Its mysteries, we say--for the Gospel has its mysteries no less than
these old systems of heathenism which fenced round their deepest
truths with solemn barriers, only to be passed by the initiated. But
the difference lies here--that its mysteries are taught at first to
the neophytes, and that the sum of them lies in the words which we
learned at our mother's knees so long ago that we have forgotten
that they were ever new to us: 'God so loved the world that He gave
His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not
perish, but should have eternal life.' The little child who has
learned his earliest lessons of what father and son, loving and
giving, trust and life mean, by the sweet experiences of his own
father's home and his own mother's love, can grasp these blessed
words. They carry the deepest mysteries which will still gleam
before us unfathomed in all their profundity, unappropriated in all
their blessedness, when millenniums have passed since we stood in
the inner shrine of heaven. Wonderful is the word which blesses the
child, which transcends the angel before the throne!
This is the bread for the world--meant for it, and one day to be
partaken of by it. For these ordered fifties at their Christ-provided
meal are for us a prophecy of the day that shall surely dawn, when
all the hunger of wandering prodigals is over, and the deceived
heart of the idol-worshipper no longer drawing him aside to feed on
ashes, they shall come from the East and from the West, and from
the North and from the South, and sit at the feast which the Lord
hath prepared for all nations, and when all the earth shall be satisfied
with the goodness of His house, even of His holy temple.
III. The Bread which is given to the famishing is multiplied for the
future of the Distributors.
'They took of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full.' More
was gathered than they had possessed at first. They preserved over,
for their own sustenance and refreshment in days to come, a far
larger store than the five loaves and two small fishes with which
they had begun. The fact contains a principle which is true about
almost all except material possessions, which is often in God's
providence made true about them, and which is emphatically true
about spiritual blessings, about our religious emotions, our
Christian beliefs, the joys and powers which Christ comes to give.
For all these, the condition of increase is diffusion. To impart to
others is to gain for oneself. Every honest effort to bring some
other human heart into conscious possession of Christ's love deepens
one's own sense of its preciousness. Every attempt to lead some
other understanding to the perception of the truth, as it is in
Jesus, helps me to understand it better myself. If you would learn,
teach. That will clear your mind, will open hidden harmonies, will
reveal unsuspected deficiencies and contradictions in your own
conceptions, will help you to feel more the truths that come from
your lips. It will perhaps shame your cold appreciation of them,
when you see how others grasp at them from your teaching, or give
you more confidence in the Gospel as the power of God unto
salvation, when you behold it, even as ministered through you,
mighty to pull down strongholds. At the lowest, it will keep your
own mind in healthy contact with what you art but too apt to forget.
If you would learn to love Christ more, try to lead some one else to
love Him, You will catch new gleams from His gracious heart in the
very act of commending Him to others. If you would have your own
spiritual life strengthened and deepened, remember that not by
solitary meditation or raptures of silent communion alone can that
be accomplished, but by these and by honest manful work for God in
the world. The Mount of Transfiguration must be left, although there
were there Moses and Elias, and the cloud of the divine glory and
the words of approval from heaven, because there were a demoniac boy
and his weeping, despairing father needing Christ down below. Work
for God if you would live with God. Give the bread to the hungry, if
you would have it for the food of your own souls.
The refusal to engage in such service is one fruitful cause of the
low state of spiritual health in which so many Christians pass their
days. They seem to think that they receive the bread from heaven
only for their own use, and that they have done all that they have
to do with it, when they eat it themselves. And so come all manner
of spiritual diseases. A selfish, that is an inactive, religion is
always more or less a morbid religion. For health you need exercise.
'In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread'; that law expresses
not only the fact that work is needed to get it, but that toil must
give the appetite and fit the frame to digest it. There is such a
thing as a morbid Christianity brought on by want of healthy
exercise.
'There is that scattereth and yet increaseth, and there is that
withholdeth more than is meet, and it tendeth to poverty.' Good
husbandry does not grind up all the year's wheat for loaves for
one's own eating, but keeps some of it for seed to be scattered in
the furrows. And if Christian men will deal with the great love of
God, the great work of Christ, the great message of the Gospel, as
if it were bestowed on them for their own sakes only, they will have
only themselves to blame if holy desires die out in their hearts,
and the consciousness of Christ's love becomes faint, and all the
blessed words of truth come to sound far off and mythical in their
ears. The standing water gets green scum on it. The close-shut barn
breeds weevils and smut. Let the water run. Fling the seed
broadcast. 'Thou shalt find it after many days,' bread for thy own
soul--even as these ministering apostles were enriched whilst they
gave, and the full-handed liberality 'with which they carried
Christ's gifts among the crowd' had something to do in providing the
large residue which filled their stores for days to come.
Thus, then, this scene on the sweet springing grass down by the side
of blue Gennesaret is an emblem of the whole work of the Church in
this starving world. The multitudes famish. Tell Christ of their
wants. Count your own small resources till you have completely
learned your poverty, then take them to Jesus. He will accept them,
and in His hands they will become mighty, being transfigured from
human thoughts and forces into divine words, into spiritual powers.
On that bread which He gives, do you yourselves live. Then carry it
boldly to all the hungry. Rank after rank will eat. All races, all
ages, from grey hairs to babbling childhood, will find there the
food of their souls. As you part the blessing, it will grow beneath
His eye; and the longer you give, the fuller-handed you will become.
Nor shall the bread fail, nor the word become weak, till all the
world has tasted of its sweetness and been refreshed by its potent
life.
This miracle is the lesson for the workers. There is another
wondrous meal recorded in Scripture, which is the prophecy for the
workers when they rest. The little ship has been tossing all the
night on the waters of that Galilean lake. Fruitless has been the
fishing. The morning breaks cold and grey, and lo! there stands on
the shore One who first blesses the toilers' work, and then bids
them to His table. There, mysteriously kindled, burns the fire with
the welcome meal already laid upon it. They add to it the
contribution of their night of toil, and then, hushed and blessed in
His still company, they sup with Him and He with them. So when the
weary work is over for the Church on earth, we shall be aware of His
merciful presence on the shore, and, coming at the last safe to
land, we shall 'rest from our labours,' in that we see the 'fire of
coals, and fish laid thereon and bread'; and our 'works shall follow
us,' in that we are 'bidden to bring of the fish that we have
caught.' Then, putting off the wet fisher's coat, and leaving behind
the tossing of the unquiet sea and the toil of the weary fishing, we
shall sit down with Him at that meal spread by His hands, who
blesseth the works of His servants here below, and giveth to them a
full fruition of immortal food at His table at the last.