without food, the man whose safe is stuffed with share scrip and whose plate-chest is crammed with gold and precious stones, would be in just as sad a plight as the poorest beggar in Bournemouth. In the last resort all men depend upon the produce of the fields; and the produce of the fields _is the gift of God_. Man cannot make food. He cannot create bread. With all his knowledge of chemistry he cannot command a harvest. God must GIVE it. And He gives the harvest _year by year_. Some things, as Dr. Dods remarks, God gives us once for all—our supply of coal and the various minerals and metals. But corn, food, and bread He gives us year by year, as if to emphasise the fact of our dependence upon him. I have read somewhere that when the month of August comes round the world is each year within two months of famine. The world’s granaries at that time contain only eight weeks’ supply of corn. How forcibly such a fact preaches the truth of our dependence upon God! Rich and poor alike depend for very life upon the harvest God shall give. “Give us this day our daily bread” is a prayer for us all. It is a prayer for Job in his prosperity quite as much as for Job in his adversity. It is a prayer for Joseph amid the well-stocked granaries of Egypt quite as much as for Jacob face to face with starvation in Caanan. It is a prayer for rich and poor, for the man who has his thousands as well as the man who has not a shilling; for we are all pensioners upon the bounty of God; what He gives us we gather, and it is only when He opens His hands that we are filled with good. Now, let me pass on to speak, in the second place, of: (2) The _modesty and simplicity_ of the request made in this prayer, “Give us this day our daily BREAD.” “Bread” that is what is asked for—the bare necessities of life. As T. T. Lynch quaintly puts it, “This is a prayer for daily _bread_, not for daily cake.” And as if to emphasise the modesty of the request, it is not for the necessities of a lifetime, but for the necessities of _to-day_ that we are to ask. “Give us _this day_ our daily bread.” The adjective which is translated “daily” is a word that has caused scholars no end of trouble. It is found nowhere else in literature, either sacred or profane, and there have been at least thirty different meanings assigned to it. But only two interpretations need be considered. One is that which we have in our familiar version of the prayer, “daily bread”; the other would make the word to mean “sufficient for my sustenance.” The old Syriac version translates it “bread for my need.” So that you will notice that whichever interpretation is adopted “human wants,” as Godet says, “are here reduced to the minimum.” We are to pray for _bread;_ we are to pray for only as much of that as will suffice for the day, or meet our present needs. The spirit of this petition is that of the prayer of Agur of old, “Feed me with food convenient for me.”