Our Lord Himself has laid His hand upon it, and claimed it as a faint
foreshadowing of what He is. The Jews, not satisfied with the miracle
of the loaves, demand from Him a greater sign, as the condition of what
they are pleased to call 'belief'--which is nothing but accepting the
testimony of sense. They quote Moses as giving the manna, and imply
that Messiah is expected to repeat the miracle. Christ accepts the
challenge, and goes on to claim that He not only gives, but Himself is,
for all men's souls, all and more than all which the manna had been to
the bodies of that dead generation. Like it, He came--but in how much
more profound a sense!--from heaven. Like it, He was food. But unlike
it, He could still for ever the craving of the else famishing soul;
unlike it, He not only nourished a bodily life already possessed, but
communicated a spiritual life which never dies; and, unlike it, He was
meant to be the food of the whole world. His teaching passed beyond the
symbolism of the manna, when He not only declared Himself to be the
'true bread from heaven which gives life to the world,' but opened a
glimpse into the solemn mystery of His atoning death by the startling
and apparently repulsive paradox that 'His flesh was food indeed and
His blood drink indeed.' The manna does not typically teach Christ's
atonement, but it does set Him forth as the true sustenance and
life-giver, sweet as honey to the soul, sent from heaven for us each,
but needing to be made ours by the act of our faith. An Israelite would
have starved, though the manna lay all round the camp, if he did not go
forth and secure his portion; and he might no less have starved, if he
did not eat what Heaven had sent. 'Crede et manducasti,' 'Believe, and
thou hast eaten,'--as St. Augustine says. The personal appropriating
act of faith is essential to our having Christ for the food of our
souls. The bread that nourishes our bodies is assimilated to their
substance, and so becomes sustenance. This bread of God, entering into
our souls by faith, transforms them into its substance, and so gives
and feeds an immortal life. The manna was for a generation; this bread
is 'the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.' That was for a
handful of men; this is for the world. Nor is the prophetic value of
the manna exhausted when we recognise its witness to Christ. The food
of the wilderness is the food of the city. The bread that is laid on
the table, 'spread in the presence of the enemy,' is the bread that
makes the feast in the king's palace. The Christ who feeds the pilgrim
soldiers is the Christ on whom the conquerors banquet. 'To him that
overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna.'