He then drew a long analogy between physical and spiritual nutrition in the terms of physiology. " But the closest parallel I can draw is that which we see in life and read of in tales, where one man is the sustenance and life of another, or more often where a woman is the sustenance and help of a man. Something which is very pure, which is fresh, which is high and lofty — why, it throws an influence around the base life which elevates and ennobles that miserable life to the level of its own. Not in a day. Not in a year. But in a long continuous process which works unseen. How is it done ? By abiding in the presence of that which is pure and noble. One life affects the other, and the weak becomes stimulated and roused ; there are the elements of growth. So a man who abides in the presence of Jesus Christ in some mystical way appropriates, unconsciously and unavoidably, the life and character of Christ, so that he is built up like Him. That
loo VICTORY AND INTIMACY
is the whole process. It is perfectly simple and perfectly natural The point of importance is this, that it is quite impossible to go on at all in the spiritual life without living in the immediate presence and fellowship of Christ. This is to reach the Supreme. This is to be nourished and strengthened for life." ^
How richly in the desert Israel fared,
By God's own hand with food angelic fed, Which with the dew around the camp was shed.
That other dew, brow-drenching, they were spared
In tilling thorn-cursed ground — sad burden shared By all for Adam's sin; but ate their "bread," As from a table in the desert spread,
"Without their labour," or their thought, "prepared."
So God's salvation, the true bread from heaven, In rich completeness is before us set.
Fresh with the Spirit's dew, and freely given :
But not without the labour of Another,
Toils, tears, and thorny crown, and bloody sweat,
Of Him who is God's Fellow and man's Brother.^
3. The sustenance promised to the conqueror is hidden food. When the manna was given to the Israelites a golden vessel full of it was stored in or near the ark. When the first Temple perished, the rumour ran that the ark of the covenant, and the objects associated with it, had not really perished. No one knows what became of the ark. It is mentioned in the days of Solomon (1 Kings viii. 21), and after that not at all in the historical part of the Old Testament. But the Jewish tale ran, and still runs, that when the first Temple perished under Nebuchadnezzar the ark had escaped the fate of the other vessels of the house of God, which were carried to Babylon, and had been successfully hidden in one of the thousand caves with which the limestone rock of Palestine is honey-combed, where still, if the tradition be true, it may await a chance discovery. St. John's readers would be per- fectly familiar with the tale, for it stood in their Bibles though it does not stand in ours. The Book of the Maccabees tells that "Jeremiah came and found a chamber in the rocks, and there he brought in the tabernacle, and the ark, and the altar of incense, and he made fast the door. And some of those that
* G. A. Smith, The Life of Henry Drummond, 493.
* Richard Wiltoa.
REVELATION ii. i; loi
followed with him came there that they might mark the way and could not find it. But when Jeremiah perceived it he' blamed them, saying, 'Yea, and the place shall be unknown until God shall gather the people together again and mercy come ; and then shall the Lord disclose these things, and the glory of the Lord shall be seen, and the cloud.' "
We can see, then, what the promise of the hidden manna would mean to these Jewish Christians — for most of St. John's readers, no doubt, were Jews — God's secret known, the ark revealed, the scattered people of Israel gathered together again, the Bread of Life restored to them, but restored in truer fashion, for their "fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead," but Christ had promised that " My Father shall give you the bread of heaven. ... I am the bread of life ... he that cometh unto me shall not huncrer."
(1) The manna was in its very nature and origin something hidden, something unknown and wonderful. The name is sup- posed to be derived from the wondering question of the Israelites as they saw the strange thing lie on the ground : " Manna ? " or " What now ? What is it ? " It was like coriander seed, sweet as honey; but what it actually %vas Israel never learned to know. It fell for nearly forty years with the dew from the womb of the morning, a gift direct from the hand of God. It came from the storehouse of heaven, where it lay hid with God, and this was all that the people knew of its origin ; and in this very ignorance was certified to them this glorious fact that it was inexhaustible, a supply measured by no breadth or fertility of corn-fields.