In the Saviour’s miracle of feeding the five thousand is illustrated the working of God’s power in the production of the harvest. Jesus draws aside the veil from the world of nature, and reveals the creative energy that is constantly exercised for our good. In multiplying the seed cast into the ground, He who multiplied the loaves is working a miracle every day. It is by a miracle that He constantly feeds millions from earth’s harvest-fields. Men are called upon to co-operate with Him in the care of the grain and the preparation of the loaf, and because of this they lose sight of the divine agency. The working of His power is ascribed to natural causes or to human instrumentality, and too often His gifts are perverted to selfish uses, and made a curse instead of a blessing. God is seeking to change all this. He desires that our dull senses shall be quickened to discern His merciful kindness, that His gifts may be to us the blessing that He intended. [Sidenote: _Partakers of the Life of God_] It is the word of God, the impartation of His life, that gives life to the seed; and of that life, we, in eating the grain, become partakers. This God desires us to discern; He desires that even in receiving our daily bread we may recognize His agency, and may be brought into closer fellowship with Him. * * * * * [Sidenote: _We Reap What We Sow_] [Sidenote: _Life’s Harvest, Character_] By the laws of God in nature, effect follows cause with unvarying certainty. The reaping testifies to the sowing. Here no pretense is tolerated. Men may deceive their fellow-men, and may receive praise and compensation for service which they have not rendered. But in nature there can be no deception. On the unfaithful husbandman the harvest passes sentence of condemnation. And in the highest sense this is true also in the spiritual realm. It is in appearance, not in reality, that evil succeeds. The child who plays truant from school, the youth who is slothful in his studies, the clerk or apprentice who fails of serving the interests of his employer, the man in any business or profession who is untrue to his highest responsibilities, may flatter himself that, so long as the wrong is concealed, he is gaining an advantage. But not so; he is cheating himself. The harvest of life is character, and it is this that determines destiny, both for this life and for the life to come. The harvest is a reproduction of the seed sown. Every seed yields fruit “after its kind.” So it is with the traits of character we cherish. Selfishness, self-love, self-esteem, self-indulgence, reproduce themselves, and the end is wretchedness and ruin. “He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.”[132] Love, sympathy, and kindness yield fruitage of blessing, a harvest that is imperishable. [Sidenote: _Increase from Sowing_]