When Jesus was sitting on the mountain, he lifted up his eyes, and saw that there was a great multitude coming. All those who come to him, that is those who incline to the right faith, Jesus sees, and on them he has pity, and enlightens their understanding with his grace, that they may come to him without error, and to these he gives ghostly food, that they may not faint by the way. When he asked Philip, whence they could buy bread for the people, he showed Philip's ignorance. Well Christ knew what he would do, and he knew that Philip knew not. Then said Andrew, that a lad there bare five barley loaves and two fishes. Then said Jesus, "Make the people sit," and so on, as we have before repeated it to you. Jesus saw the hungry people, and he compassionately fed them, both by his goodness and by his might. What could his goodness alone have done, unless there had been might with that goodness? His disciples would also have fed the people, but they had not wherewithal. Jesus had the good will to nourish them, and the power to execute it. God hath wrought many miracles and daily works; but those miracles are much weakened in the sight of men, because they are very usual. A greater miracle it is that God Almighty every day feeds all the world, and directs the good, than that miracle was, that he filled five thousand men with five loaves: but men wondered at this, not because it was a greater miracle, but because it was unusual. Who now gives fruit to our fields, and multiplies the harvest from a few grains of corn, but he who multiplied the five loaves? The might was there in Christ's hands, and the five loaves were, as it were, seed, not sown in the earth, but multiplied by him who created the earth. {187} This miracle is very great, and deep in its significations. Often some one sees fair characters written, then praises he the writer and the characters, but knows not what they mean. He who understands the art of writing praises their fairness, and reads the characters, and comprehends their meaning. In one way we look at a picture, and in another at characters. Nothing more is necessary for a picture than that you see and praise it: but it is not enough to look at characters without, at the same time, reading them, and understanding their signification. So also it is with regard to the miracle which God wrought with the five loaves: it is not enough that we wonder at the miracle, or praise God on account of it, without also understanding its spiritual sense.