everlasting life; all which sayings both of the Holy Scripture and godly men, truly attributed to this celestial banquet and feast, if we would call to mind,-oh how they would inflame our hearts to desire the participation of these mysteries, and oftentimes to covet after this bread, and continually to thirst for this food."

Referring to those wonderful words of our Lord, "I am the Bread of Life," St. Augustine says, "O Truth, who art Eternity; O Love, who art Truth; O Eternity, who art Love; all over I tremble with love and awe, as if I heard this voice from on high, 'I am the Food of men; thou shalt feed on Me; nor shalt thou convert Me, like the food of thy flesh, into thee; but thou shalt be converted into Me.""

A new and deeper meaning has now been given to the prophet's words, "Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which satisfieth not?" The immortal soul may be hungry and unsatisfied in the midst of the good things of the world. Man does not live by bread alone, but by the Word of God-the Word made flesh-the Word who is the Bread of Life.* God alone is the food of the soul; God alone can satisfy it. Why will any continue prodigals among the swine; fain to eat their dry husks when there is bread enough and to spare

"The word érióvσios in the Lord's Prayer is used nowhere else; it refers to the essence or substance of things, and means super-substantial."-S. Baring-Gould.

in our Father's house, and He bids His children come and eat?

O the perversity of man! Once God said, "Eat not, or you die," and man would eat; now God says, "Eat and live," and many will not eat.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SOUL SEARCHING FOR GOD.

"His mother said unto Him, Son, why hast Thou thus dealt with us? behold, Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing." -ST. LUKE ii. 48.

"The distant landscape draws not nigh

For all our gazing; but the soul

That upward looks, may still descry

Nearer each day the brightening goal."

"The soul that seemed

Christian Year.

Forsaken, feels her present God again,
And in her Father's arms,

Contented dies away."

Christian Year.

"God's face may be hid for other causes besides displeasure. It may be in pure love; it may be for our own preservation, as was the case with Moses in the rock; it may be only that we may seek more earnestly and find more gloriously."—GERBODUS.

AN impenetrable veil hangs over our Lord's life at Nazareth. Just once only it is raised. We see Him, a boy of twelve, going up to Jerusalem with Mary and Joseph; we read of His loss; we hear His first recorded words; then He returns to Nazareth. The veil drops, and we can know no more of the wonderful

life in that holy home. Oh how we should like to know more!-what He said and did; how He lived the daily human life; how He met the daily difficulties and trials that are so irksome to us, so fruitful of sins and failures in duty; how He kept God ever in His heart and thoughts in the midst of work, and His daily intercourse with sinful and ignorant and distracting people; what He said about current events and the world's ways; to which of the world's customs He conformed, and which He quietly and silently reproved by His rejection of them. It seems as if the knowledge of all this would have been precious indeed; more helpful to us in everyday duty than much that is so carefully recorded. The want of all this seems terrible to those who desire to live this life after His pattern, in the world but not of it; a loss that is by no means supplied by the lives of holy people who have lived godly in all ranks and positions and circumstances.

But it is useless to regret and long and day-dream. If it had been necessary for us, these records would have been preserved for our learning. We must turn to what we have and con it over and over, for there is more than enough for us there to learn and practise. There is more than lies upon the surface. If, like Mary, we will ponder in our hearts, we shall find hidden treasures; we shall prove that there is life in the Word of God; that it is no mere dead record, but that it lives and works as we handle it, and operates powerfully upon our souls.

Let us, then, look at the brief details there are

given us of our Lord's hidden life, and search for instruction and light. In our day-dreaming we picture the life of that holy home as quite peaceful because it was so pure; as happy because all there were holy and beloved of God; we think that there must have been paradise restored, a pure man and woman and God ever with them. There must indeed have been intense happiness, the highest happiness that this fallen world can now afford; the happiness which the world seeks in vain in selfishness and indulgence, in turning away from God and absorbing itself in the present and in self. But there could not have been unmixed happiness even in that home, where all was holy, and One was God Himself. Is it by chance that in the only event preserved to us there is so largely present the element of sorrow? Was there not, must there not have been that inevitable ingredient of all human life, introducing itself into that home just as it comes to all human homes?

We must believe that our Lord tasted the bitter griefs of childhood, the worries and petty injuries and cruelties that neighbour inflicts on neighbour. He lived the life we have to live-no better. For example, was there no painful conflict in His soul as He determined to stay behind at Jerusalem and inflict these three days' misery upon the gentle, loving hearts of His mother and Joseph? Did He not suffer in their sufferings, and grieve that being "about His Father's business" made it necessary that He should give pain and most agonizing sorrow and anxiety to those most dear to Him? The lines of human history