The bearing of the words on Christ's hunger is twofold : first, He will not use His miraculous powers to provide food, for that would be to distrust God, and so to cast off His filial dependence ; second, He will not separate Himself from His brethren and pro- vide for Himself by a way not open to them, for that would really be to reverse the very purpose of His incarnation and to defeat His whole work.
Life by Bread.
How shall we live ? Multitudes of people are asking that, question to-day with peculiar earnestness. The man who could give a satisfactory practical answer would be regarded as the greatest of all public benefactors. Sometimes a kindly providence apparently shapes all for a man at the moment of his birth. Not tiii some sudden calamity overwhelms him is he roused into a conscious necessity of deciding for himself what he will do and become. But to most men there comes early in life the occasion and the necessity for deliberation and decision. Towards what goal in the future, he then asks, shall I now direct my steps, and by what route and methods shall it be reached ? To these questions he is forced to give some kind of answers.
1. What is covered by the word "Bread"? — Bread we call the staff of life. This familiar imagery is as ancient at least as the
ST. MATTHEW iv. 4 53
time of Abraham. To the three angels, one of them the mysterious angel of the covenant, who appeared to him as he sat at the door of his tent in the plains of Mamre, the hospitable patriarch said, " I will fetch a morsel of bread, and stay ye your hearts." Moses, when he threatened the people with famine in punishment of their sins, described it as the breaking of their staff. Isaiah also warns the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judah that the Lord of hosts will take away " the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water." Bread was what the famished Bedouin craved when he caught up so eagerly the bag he found lying by a fountain in the desert, and flung it down again so quickly in despair, exclaiming, " Alas ! it is only diamonds."
But " bread," as we have it in the text, means more than this. It covers the whole visible economy of life — all that range of supplies, helps, and supports upon which men depend to keep themselves alive, and to make life comfortable and enjoyable. It covers the whole economy of food and drink, clothing, shelter, ministry to the senses, to power, respectability, and worldly honour. The world's commonly accepted theory is, By these things we live. We cannot get on without them.
TJ If it be urged that these views of Mr. Hinton [on sacrifice] are very uncomfortable views of life, I might suggest that Christianity itself, with its fundamental axiom, " He that loveth his life shall lose it," cannot strictly be defined as a comfortable religion. I would ask whether our modern worship of " the com- fortable " has given us a life that really satisfies even the most worldly amongst us ; whether, on the contrary, it has not bound down the free play and joyous movement of life under a " weight of custom, heavy as frost, deep almost as life," debarring us from the healthy joys of "plain living and high thinking," from the lofty enterprise and joyous heroism that " feeds the high tradition of the world," and from the deeper blessedness of sacrifice,
That makes us large with utter loss To hold divinity?1
2. The peril of " Bread." — Possessed as we are of a physical
nature, with its clamorous appetites and its innumerable bodily
needs, we are tempted at times to believe that man is merely a
superior kind of animal, living by bread alone, and with no interest
1 Ellice Hopkins, Lift and Letters of James Hinton, 293.
54 A QUESTION OF LIFE
in anything save what he can see and touch and taste. On this view, man becomes and remains a mere instrument, in one way or another living only for bread, living only for an end out of himself, living merely in subservience to that class of things which bread represents. There is the great evil in this world, and there Bpring up temptations similar in character to those which assailed Christ in the wilderness.
(1) There is danger for the individval. In that first concep- tion of himself as a responsible and solitary being, every young man meets the same devil as Jesus met. And the temptation is the same — the assurance given in some form or other that bread is all that a man needs, that everything else is a delusion, that to live a life of physical comfort is the only solid wish for a man's soul. Perhaps it is a business which he knows is wrong, but sees must be profitable. Perhaps it is the abandonment of those he ought to care for, so that he may himself get rich. Perhaps it is the hiding of his sincere convictions in order to keep his place in some social company. Perhaps it is connivance at a wicked man's sin in order to preserve his favour. Perhaps it is the postponing of charity to some future day when it shall be easier. Perhaps it is a refusal to acknowledge Christ, the Master, out of fear, or because some easy, foolish friendship would be sacrificed. Perhaps it is simply the giving up of ambitions, in- tellectual or spiritual, for the sake of quiet, unperturbed respecta- bility. These are real struggles.