For in truth He is Himself this bread. All that the Gospel of St. John explains, underlies the narratives of the four. And shame on us, with Christ given to us to feed and strengthen us, if we think our resources scanty, if we grudge to share them with mankind, if we let our thoughts wander away to the various palliatives for human misery and salves for human anguish, which from time to time gain the credence of an hour; if we send the hungry to the country and villages round about, when Christ the dispenser of the Bread of souls, for ever present in His Church, is saying, They need not depart, give ye them to eat. The sceptical explanations of this narrative are exquisitely ludicrous. One tells us how, finding themselves in a desert, “thanks to their extreme frugality they were able to exist, and this was naturally” (what, naturally?) “regarded as a miracle.” This is called the legendary explanation, and every one can judge for himself how much it succeeds in explaining to him. Another tells us that Jesus being greater than Moses, it was felt that He must have outstripped him in miraculous power. And so the belief grew up that as Moses fed a nation during forty years, with angels’ food, He, to exceed this, must have bestowed upon five thousand men one meal of barley bread. This is called the mythical explanation, and the credulity which accepts it must not despise Christians, who only believe their Bibles. Jesus had called away His followers to rest. The multitude which beheld this miracle was full of passionate hate against the tyrant, upon whose hands the blood of the Baptist was still warm. All they wanted was a leader. And now they would fain have taken Jesus by force to thrust this perilous honour upon Him. Therefore He sent away His disciples first, that ambition and hope might not agitate and secularise their minds; and when He had dismissed the multitude He Himself ascended the neighbouring mountain, to cool His frame with the pure breezes, and to refresh His Holy Spirit by communion with His Father. Prayer was natural to Jesus; but think how much more needful is it to us. And yet perhaps we have never taken one hour from sleep for God. Jesus Walking On The Water. MARK vi. 47-52 (R.V.). (See iv. 36, pp. 133-140.) Unwashen Hands. “And when they had crossed over, they came to the land unto Gennesaret, and moored to the shore.... Making void the word of God by your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things ye do.”—MARK vi. 53-vii. 13 (R.V.).