and immensity of that heavenly treasurehouse out of which it comes! Very ill it would be with us, and very unworthily should we judge of the Lord and Giver of life, if we limited our conceptions of Him by the boundaries of what He actually wrought, however much above men to do, or however, in its own measure, adorable and divine. And I not only say, that this miraculous act of feeding the five thousand, bears no proportion at all to the infinite capacities of Him on whom we believe, even the eternal Son of God,—and is but a drop out of the ocean of power which subsists within Him; but something more I mean to affirm. It is nothing at all, compared with what the same divine energy operating by and through Him, exhibits now-a-days under your very eyes! Christ, upon this occasion, wrought this overflowing banquet, not out of nothing, as when He called heaven and earth in their rude materials, into existence at the first; but out of the loaves which the dis

ciples placed ready in his Almighty hands! And though I have called the act an act of creation, it is, more properly speaking, a multiplying and enlarging of what already existed. Just, as in ancient times, the widow's loaf and the cruise of oil ever grew and grew, and flowed and flowed, while the times of famine lasted. The one needed divine power quite as much as the other. And, whether in one sense it might be accounted a mightier miracle or not, had he called the feast out of nothing, certainly it would not so completely, in its mode of operation, have harmonized, as it now does, with God's daily wonders.

Year after year, you behold your fields ripe and overflowing with golden harvests, till to the eyes and ears of them that can understand, the very earth, through all her vallies, laughs and sings! Is it not glorious, thus to behold the ground, that looks so dull and senseless, pouring forth its inexhaustible treasures, to gladden the heart of man? whence come they?

VOL. I.

I

whence come the overflowing heaps of nodding ears, which you gather into your barns? why, out of the seeds you sow! Out of small handfuls come forth all these mighty sheaves! How? why the power of God enlarges, and multiplies them. He gathers from the air, and from the water, and from the dust, new elements which he joins marvellously together, and the buried grain of corn brings forth, thirty, sixty, or a hundred fold of what it was at first. Our heavenly Father, day by day, and year by year, not only feeds five thousand, but more millions of living souls than the hairs of your head. From one quarter of heaven to another, He openeth his bounteous hand, and, from the five loaves,— that is, the scanty measure of seed committed to the earth's bosom,-filleth all things living with plenteousness. So that the wonder which Christ wrought for the five thousand men in the desert of Bethsaida, you behold every succeeding harvest, wrought before your eyes, for the innu

merable multitudes who would pine and languish into the dust without it!

But, in both cases, God works in the same manner, through the same divine instrument, by whom also, as the apostle tells us, he made the worlds. It is through Him, who blessed the broken loaves, ere he distributed them by his disciples to the multitude, and they grew and multiplied as he blessed them; and who still blesses the fruits of the earth, and sanctifies them to those that have faith in Him! Aye, and He bestows them richly and plenteously even on those who believe Him not! And I mention this, dear brethren, lest, while we read or hear the miracle, it should be with the same barren wonder which it awakened in the minds of the Jews. We should thus fail to reach the depths of wisdom which it indeed contains! It would be an ill thing, to confess, with empty words, the greatness of the Lord's work, while, with blind hearts, and out of that perverse contradiction incident to

understandings which sin has blinded, we refuse to acknowledge daily miracles greater and more glorious; conveyed through the same instrumentality, and hallowed by the same blessing, to all that love the Creator in the Redeemer, and worship God in Christ Jesus whom he hath sent! Certainly, the inspiring Spirit intended that we should gather from the history this great lesson. That we should, in thought, combine indissolubly in one, the meat that feedeth the body with that which sustains the soul; and in the oneness of the dispensations of nature and of grace, together adore the Father and the Son, in the union of the blessed Spirit! "I am the bread that came down from heaven."

"Your fathers ate

ness and are dead.

manna in the wilder

But he that eateth of

the bread that I shall give him shall live. for ever." Lord, evermore, give us of this divine bread, even thyself, that we may eat, and live for ever.

Certainly, as the event proved, nothing