This bread took the name “manna” from the question asked by the people when they found it upon the ground in the morning――_What_ is this? Their Hebrew words were――Man-hu; what this? All the ancient versions and most ancient authorities concur in deriving the name “manna” from this original question as put in Ex. 16: 15. [Our English version has the only correct rendering in the margin.] The manna fell by night as the dew falls, and it would seem, fell with and in the dew so that when the dew evaporated under the morning sun, there remained this very fine deposit――“a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost upon the ground.” “It was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey” (Ex. 16: 13–15, 31). A subsequent description (Num. 11: 7–9) adds――“The manna was as coriander seed and the color thereof as the color of bdellium. And the people went about and gathered it, and ground it in mills, or beat it in a mortar, and baked it in pans, and made cakes of it; and the taste of it was as the taste of fresh oil. And when the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell upon it.”――――The gathering, the preparation of it for cooking, and the cooking itself, cost labor, yet obviously none too much for the health and morals of the million. The physiological facts to be noticed are that it was sufficiently palatable for all practical purposes and had the necessary elements for the real bread――the staff of life――for a whole nation during forty years of wilderness life, with its alternations of marchings and encampments; of labor and of rest. The points which evinced the miraculous hand of God were――that it came from no known or possible source of supply in the kingdom of nature; that it fell in the full amount needed for the thousands of Israel; fell on each of six mornings but not at all on the seventh, the Sabbath; that the average amount on five of these mornings was a supply for one day, while on the morning next preceding the Sabbath, a double quantity fell, being a supply for two days; that the gathering for the first five days of the week could be kept only one day, but the double supply of the sixth day remained sweet and pure for two days; and moreover, a quantity laid up by God’s command in the sacred ark remained unchanged for many generations. Thus wonderfully did the Almighty impress his hand upon every feature of this bread from heaven![37]