~eg_ularly, season aft~r season, and be~use numerous secondary agencies are employed m its production. ): ou plough, that 1s, break up the ground to receive the seed· but whence came the seed? From last year's gift. You sow it in the fields, cover 'it up again and lea"l'e it-to whose care? To God's. It is he who now takes the matter into his own hands, and in what remains you can but wait upon his will. It rests with him to send his rains or to withhold them; to order the sunshine and heat; to bless or blast your harrest. \Vhat man does is but to put matters in train for God's working-God hilllself does the rest; in the swelling and germination of the seed, in all the stages of its growth, in the formation of the blade, in the modelling of the ear, in the filling of it with the rich ripe grain, his power is absolutely, and all throughout, the only power at work. And how great the gift is when it comes! It is literally God opening his hand and putting into ours the food necessary for our sustenance. But for that gift, year by year renewed, man and beast would utterly perish. It is calculated that a year's pro- duce in Great Britain alone amounts in money value to over £160,000,000. The corn crop alone was valued in 1880 at £90,000,000. It is as if God had made a direct gift of that sum of money to our nation in the year named, only it was given in a better than money form-in food. How little we think of it! Men are proud and self-sufficient, and speak sometimes as if they would al.most disdaiu to accept or acknowledge a favour even from the Almighty. While yet, in truth, they are, like others, the veriest pensioners on his bounty, sustained by his power, seeing by his light, warmed by his sun, and fed year by year by the crumbs that fall from his table. Were God for a single year to break the staff of bread over the whole earth, where would either it or they be? 3. That it was given day by day, and with regularity. Thus the manna taught a daily lesson of dependence on God., and so playeJ an important part in the spiritual education of Israel. Yet familiarity must have done much then, as it does still, to deaden the impression of God's hand in the daily gift. Because the manna came to them. not by fits and starts, but regularly; because there was a "law" in itR coming-they would get to look on it as quite a co=on occurrence, no more to be wondered at than the rising and setting of the sun, or any other sequence in natw·e. " Laws of nature" tend., in precisely the same way, to blind us to the agency of God working behind and in them. as well as to hide from us his agency in the originatwn of the sequences that now flow so uniformly. We have spoken of God's agency in the production of the harvest. But there is good ground for speaking of our cereal crops as in yet another sense-" bread from heaven." These cereal plants, it is affirmed, are never found in a wild state ; cannot by any known process be developed from plants in a wild state ; and if once allowed to degenerate, can never again be reclaimed for human food. Not inaptly, therefore, have they been represented as even now a kind of standing miracle-a proof of direct creative interposition for the good of man. (See" The Cerealia: a Standing Miracle," by Professor Harvey, in" Good Words," vol. ii.) Yet how entirely is this veiled from us by the fact that "all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation" (2 Pet. iii. 4). 4. That it was a food entirely suitable t,o the circumstances of the lsraelites. It was light, nutritious, palat- able; comprised variety by admitting of being prepared in different ways (baked, seethed, ver. 23; cf. Num. xi. 8); was abundant in quantity, readily distinguishable by the eye, and being of a granulated nature, and strewn thickly throughout all the camp, could be collected with a "'!ery mode!ate expend_it_ure of _labour. It was thus, like so much in our own surroundings, and rn the prov1S1on which God makes for our wants, a constant witness to the care, goodness, wisdom, and forethought of the great Giver.--J. 0.
EXPOSITION. Vers. 9-21.-TllE PROMISE FULFILLED. double pro!Ilise approached. First, however, Molles ha.d made a double promise to the before they received the blessings, he required Israelites ill God's name " The Lord shall them to present themselves before the Lord give you," he ha.d &&id," ill the evening flesh to Ai; they had rebelled in murmuring, a.n act of eat, a.nd ill the morning bread to the full" ( ver. 8). hom&ge was proper; and as they had c&l.led in And now the time for the fulfilment of the question the conduct of M':l!'es a.nd Ao.ron. CII, XVI, 12-14.] TIIE IlOOK OF EXODUS. 39