blessed paradox which the prophet spoke when he said, 'Buy ... without
money and without price.' Oh! what a burden of hopeless effort and
weary toil--like that of the man that had to roll the stone up the
hill, which ever slipped back again--is lifted from our shoulders by
such a word as this that I have been poorly trying to speak about now!
'Thou art careful and troubled about many things,' poor soul! trying
to be good; trying to fight yourself, and the world, and the devil.
Try the other plan, and listen to Him saying, 'Give up self-imposed
effort in thine own strength. Take, eat, this is My body, which is
broken for you.'




THE MANNA

'I am that bread of life. 49. Your fathers did eat manna in the
wilderness, and are dead. 50. This is the bread which cometh down from
heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.'--JOHN vi. 48-50.

'This is of a truth that Prophet,' said the Jews, when Christ had fed
the five thousand on the five barley loaves and the two small fishes.
That was the kind of Teacher for them; they were quite unaffected by
the wisdom of His words and the beauty of His deeds, but a miracle
that found food precisely met their wants, and so there was excited an
impure enthusiasm, very unwelcome to Jesus. Therefore He withdrew
Himself from it, and when the people followed Him, all full of
expectation, to get some more loaves and see some more miracles, He
met them with a douche of cold water that cooled their enthusiasm and
flung them back into a critical, questioning mood. They pointed to the