IV. Lastly, this faith secures the bread of life.

The bread of life is the starting-point of the whole conversation. In
the widest possible sense it is whatsoever truly stills the hunger of
the immortal soul. In a deeper sense it is the person of Jesus Christ
Himself, for He not only says that He will _give_, but that He _is_
the Bread of Life. And, in the deepest sense of all, it is His flesh
broken for us in His sacrifice on the Cross. That bread is a gift. So
the paradox results which stands in our text--_work_ for the bread
which God will _give_. If it be a gift, that fact determines what sort
of work must be done in order to possess it. If it be a gift, then the
only work is to accept it. If it be a gift, then we are out of the
region of _quid pro quo_; and have not to bring, as Chinese do, great
strings of copper cash that, all added up together, do not amount to a
shilling, in order to buy what God will bestow upon us. If it be a
gift, then to trust the Giver and to accept the gift is the only
condition that is possible.

It is not a condition that God has invented and arbitrarily imposed.
The necessity of it is lodged deep in the very nature of the case. Air
cannot get to the lungs of a mouse in an air-pump. Light cannot come
into a room where all the shutters are up and the keyhole stopped. If
a man chooses to perch himself on some little stool of his own, with
glass legs to it, and to take away his hand from the conductor, no
electricity will come to him. If I choose to lock my lips, Jesus
Christ does not prise open my clenched teeth to put the bread of life
into my unwilling mouth. If we ask, we get; if we take, we get.

And so the paradox comes, that we work for a gift, with a work which
is not work because it is a departure from myself. It is the same