unaccustomed to the stinging savours of the garlic and the leeks of
Egypt, loathed the light bread. And so Jesus Christ comes into the
world in lowly form, like the barley loaf or the light bread from
which men whose tastes have been vitiated by the piquant savours of
more earthly nourishment turn away as insipid. And yet He in His
lowliness, He in His savourlessness, is that which meets the deepest
wants of humanity, and is every man's fare because He will be any
man's satisfaction.

But I wish to bring before your notice the wonderful way in which our
Lord, in this great dissertation concerning Himself as the Bread of
Life, gradually unfolds the depths of His meaning and of His offer. He
began with saying that He, the Son of Man, will give to men the bread
that 'endures to everlasting life.' And then when that saying is but
dimly understood, and yet awakes some strange new desires and
appetites in the hearers, and they come to Him and ask, 'Lord,
evermore give us this bread,' He answers them with opening another
finger of His hand, as it were, and showing them a little more of the
treasure that lies in His palm. For He says, 'I _am_ that Bread of
Life.' That is an advance on the previous saying. He gives bread, and
any man that was conscious of possessing some great truth or some
great blessing which, believed and accepted, would refresh and nourish
humanity, might have said the same thing. But now we pass into the
_penumbra_ of a greater mystery: 'I am that Bread of Life.' You cannot
separate what Christ gives from what Christ is. You can take the
truths that another man proclaims, altogether irrespective of him and
his personality. That only disturbs, and the sooner it is got rid of,
the firmer and the purer our possession of the message for which he is
only the medium. You can take Plato's teaching and do as you like with
Plato. But you cannot take Christ's teaching and do as you like with