The Lawgiver of the Jewish people had told them that all the discipline they passed through in the wilderness had been to teach them that '_man does not live by bread alone, but that by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God, doth man live_.' He was speaking to them as the members of a _nation_. He was telling them that the endurance of their national polity from age to age would depend not upon material bread, but upon another kind of nourishment and strength which it would derive from an unseen Presence. The lesson was repeated by every prophet, ratified by the darkest and the brightest passages of Jewish history. They were a wise and understanding people, strong and united,--however poor in numbers and physical appliances,--just so far as they believed in a One God, who watched over them, in whom they might confide. They were a contemptible people, essentially weak, full of elements of strife and dissolution,--however numerous they were, however rich,--when numbers and riches became the objects of their worship, when the righteous and living King was forgotten. Do you think that this, which is _the_ maxim of the Old Testament, is forgotten in the New? Do you think that Jesus introduced a new law which set this law aside,--a law that had reference to individuals merely, and not to societies? I believe that the great misery and sin of the Jews, in the time when our Lord appeared among them in the flesh, was that they had lost the feeling of national unity,--that they had become mere covetous individuals, herding together in sects, knit to each other by opinions and antipathies, not by the sense of a common origin, a common country, a common Lord. Jesus came to gather together the lost sheep of the house of Israel under their true Shepherd. Jesus claimed publicans and sinners as part of the same nation, as heirs of the same covenant with the most devout. Jesus was in continual conflict with the sects, because they were substituting a self-seeking religion for the faith of Israelites. It is true that He was unfolding the faith of Israelites into a human and universal faith; but in doing so, He was establishing, not undermining, that which sustained the nation, and must sustain every nation.