Part 60

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."

SEPTEMBER The Twenty-seventh

TAKE AND EAT

JOHN vi. 52-63.

There is, first of all, appropriation. I must "stretch out" "lame hands of faith"; and "take" before I "eat." In the lives of many Christians there is too much asking and too little taking. If it were only rightly regarded, prayer is companionship as well as petition, and companionship is literally significant of the sharing of bread. In every season of communion a part must be assigned to the taking of the things for which we have prayed. "Receive ye the Holy Ghost."

And there is assimilation. We must "eat" as well as "take." It is in the exercises of obedience that we digest and incorporate the bread of life. Without our obedience the living Lord never becomes "part of ourselves." We never "become one in the bundle of life" with the Lord our God. And truth which is not assimilated becomes a drug. Instead of being a "savour of life unto life," it becomes a "savour of death unto death."

And there is vitalization. The assimilated bread of life makes everything alive. Every faculty in my being feels the touch of divine inspiration. It is native bread for native power, and everything is renewed.

SEPTEMBER The Twenty-eighth

THE DAILY MANNA

"I will rain bread from heaven for you." --EXODUS xvi. 11-18.

And this gracious provision is made for people who are complaining, and who are sighing for the flesh-pots of Egypt! Our Lord can be patient with the impatient: He can be "kind to the unthankful." If it were easy to drive the Lord away I should have succeeded long ago. I have murmured, I have sulked, I have turned Him out of my thoughts, and "He stands at the door and knocks!" I yearn for "the flesh-pots," "He sends me manna," "Was there ever kindest shepherd half so gentle, half so sweet?"

"And they gathered it every morning." And that I think is the best time to gather the heavenly food. At night I am weary, my body is craving sleep, and I am not vitalized in the fields of grace. But in the morning I am refreshed, and I can go to the heavenly fields and gather "the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him." I can be fed as the day begins, and I can set out to my daily work with the taste of God in my mouth, and His mighty grace in my heart, and I shall delight to "walk in the paths of His commandments."

SEPTEMBER The Twenty-ninth

THE FOUNTAIN

1 JOHN v. 9-21.

My Lord is "the fountain of life." "This life is in His Son." The springs are nowhere else--not in elaborate theologies, or in ethical ideals, or in literary masterpieces, or in music or art. "In Him was life." It is so easy to forget the medicinal spring amid the distractions of the fashionable spa. There are some healing waters at Scarborough, but they have been almost "crowded out" by bands and entertainments. It is possible that the secondary ministries of the Church may crowd out the Church's Lord. I do not object to the entertainment if only it opens out on to the Spring!

To have the Son is to have life. Nothing else is needed. "Thou, O Christ, art all I want." Ritualisms, and ecclesiasticisms, and formal theologies are not requisite. We can be saved without an academic knowledge of "the plan of salvation." Many a gamekeeper's little child knows all the roads on the estate, although she would be quite "at sea" in explaining "the plan of the estate" which hangs in the house of the steward. "This is life eternal, to know Thee and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent."

SEPTEMBER The Thirtieth

WHITE ROBES IN THE STREETS

JOHN xvii. 11-28.

The man who has been fed with the "bread of life" must remain "in the world." The Lord gives no countenance to the life of the ascetic. Our sanctification is not to be gained by withdrawal and retreat. At the best, that would be a holiness sickly and anæmic, a coddled virtue devoid of firm muscle and iron nerve. Our Lord purposes a holiness which shall wear white robes in the streets, and shine like virgin snow in the market, and keep itself chivalrous and stately in the common fellowships of men.

"In the world," but "not of the world." The man who is fed on "the bread of life" is endowed with powers of resistance against "the noisome pestilence." The germs of worldly epidemics find no nutriment in him. "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me." When an evil microbe finds no foothold it withers away. If I am not "of the world" I shall quite naturally and instinctively be able to resist "all the wiles of the devil."

And my Lord purposes me to have this positive, masculine holiness in order "that the world may believe." He wants disciples who will arrest the world by their glorious health, and by their invincible moral defences. He wants my purity to advertise His grace; He wants my faith to increase "the household of the faith."

OCTOBER The First

A WONDERFUL UNBELIEF

PSALM lxxviii. 15-25.