Man wants no reminding that he lives by _bread_. There is no fear of his not giving care enough to the needs of his body; but there is danger lest he should think of nothing but these needs, and starve his soul and become such that eternal life, without a body to care for, would only be a condition of aimless weariness. He resolved therefore to keep His powers apart for spiritual ends. He will work no miracle to shew that He _can_ work a miracle, or to assure either Himself or others that He is the Son of God; neither will He use this power to provide what others win by toil, or to preserve Himself or His followers from the common ills of human life. There are a few of our Lord’s Signs which might, at first sight, look as if in them this principle were not observed. At the marriage of Cana in Galilee, the Sign is worked as an act of kindness to save the host from mortification arising from an accident. I have mentioned, as regards the miracles of the loaves and fishes, that on both occasions the supply which our Lord’s own company had with them was sufficient for their immediate wants. The crowds, however, had, by their rapt attention to our Lord, been detained away from their homes and their supplies, and, if they had had to go a distance to buy bread, they would have suffered from taking so long a journey fasting. The case was an exceptional emergency parallel to that of illness, and our Lord meets it by miraculous means. The miraculous draughts of fishes benefited probably all who were partners in the vessel, but they were not wrought to meet any necessity on the part of our Lord. All night long they had taken nothing; this scarcity may have been part of the lesson of the miracle, and the great draught is only a bounteous compensation. This is a miracle of instruction, as I said in the last chapter: it tells men that a turn comes at the moment when they are about to give up, and that the faith which bears up long is rewarded. Moreover, to recur to what I said in the last chapter, St Peter had been told that he was to be henceforth a fisher of men; and when multitudes, both of Jews and Gentiles, were gathered into the Church in Jerusalem he must have thought of this as answering to the Sign. The miracle of the stater in the fish’s mouth also requires notice. It is not wrought to obtain the coin, but to keep before Peter’s mind that he as well as his Master were the children and not the servants or tributaries of God. From St Peter’s answering without hesitation that his master would pay the didrachm, it is clear that there was no difficulty about producing the small sum. He does not speak to our Lord on the matter, but our Lord, directly he enters the house, asks him, “What thinkest thou, Simon? the kings of the earth, from whom do they receive toll or tribute? from their sons, or from strangers?”(65)