Sylvanus Stall

Suggestion:—Bread, rolls or biscuit can be used if thought necessary, and these can be used for refreshments later.

If the children are tired of "driving to church" in an imaginary carriage, let them drive in an imaginary sleigh, with imaginary bells, amid winter scenes.

We have here a small loaf of bread; it is called a Vienna roll, and here is a small biscuit. Now, this is bread, only it is baked in small loaves. As people all over the world have hunger, so bread in one form or another has become the universal food of the world. When in the Lord's Prayer we ask God to "give us this day our daily bread," we mean not simply bread made of flour, but we mean necessary food, food of all kinds; and so the word bread has come to be used to signify all kinds of wholesome food. God gives us our food day by day, just the same as each morning the manna rained down from heaven for the Children of Israel while they were journeying through the desert. God does not send it to us in just the same way, but each day He furnishes us a sufficient amount of food to sustain our bodies.

Now, as there is universal physical hunger, and as God has made provision to supply the food necessary to satisfy the hunger of the body; so there is a universal hunger of the soul, and God has also made provision to satisfy this universal hunger of our higher spiritual nature. In the sixth chapter of the Gospel by St. John, you will find much said about the food for the higher, the spiritual nature. Jesus said, "Verily, verily I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from Heaven; but My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He which cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world."

The body is sustained by the food which grows up out of the earth, because the body is earthy. But to sustain the higher and spiritual nature of man, which is from heaven, the food is sent down from heaven, and therefore Jesus says of Himself that He is "The bread of God which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world," "I am the bread of life, he that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst." And in the forty-eighth verse of that same chapter He says, "I am the bread of life; your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that man may eat thereof and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any man eat of this bread he shall live forever, and the bread that I will give him is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."

Now, when you desire to be good, when you desire to live like Christ, you desire to know more concerning Him; and when you desire to read God's Word, and to learn of that which is holy and good and right, then you have this spiritual hunger. That is the kind of hunger of which Jesus was speaking in this chapter. The presence of Jesus in the soul and the knowledge of Him that is given in the Bible is the best kind of food for our spiritual nature. This was the kind of spiritual food upon which Joseph fed when he lived in the midst of idolatrous Egypt. It was upon these spiritual truths that David and Daniel and Paul and Luther fed daily, and this nourished their spiritual natures. I trust you all have this hunger for the bread of life. Jesus said, "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled."

Did you ever see a plant growing at the window in a crock and observe how it bends or reaches out toward the light? If you turn the crock around so that the plant bends inward toward the room, after a day or two you go to the plant and it will have changed its direction, and instead of bending into the room, it will be bending out toward the window. Now this plant feeds on the light from the sun, and on that account it reaches out toward the sun. So if you hunger after that which is good, you will reach out after God, just as the plant reaches out after the sun.

This kind of bread which I hold in my hand costs something. Flour costs several dollars a barrel, and bread from five to ten cents a loaf. In times of famine bread has sometimes been sold at many hundreds of dollars for one single loaf. But the bread of life is free; it costs nothing. Everybody can have spiritual food for the simple asking for it. Therefore it is that we go to God in prayer and ask Him for every good and helpful grace and blessing; that we ask Him for His presence in our hearts, and to make us good, and to help us to become like Christ.

But there are some who have this hunger after that which is good, but they do not know about God and about the Lord Jesus Christ. They do not have any Bibles. Therefore it is my duty and your duty to send them the bread of everlasting life. It is for this purpose that we give our money for missions so that missionaries may be sent to them to tell them of God and His love, and of Jesus Christ the Saviour, and to take them the Bible.

In order that we may be strengthened by bread, it is necessary that we should eat it, and that we should assimilate it or make it part of our own bodies, in order that we may become strong, otherwise we would die of hunger in the midst of great store-houses of food. So men and women die spiritually in the midst of churches, in the midst of Bibles, Bible influences, and Bible privileges; yes, die without Christ. In order that our spiritual natures may be fed with spiritual food, we have every Christian influence in our homes, we have the Sunday-school and the Catechetical class, and the Church with its preaching service, and prayer-meetings and other services. If you desire to be good, you must study your Bibles, go to Sunday-school and to church, and seek to know all you possibly can concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, and receive Him into your hearts, and live a Christian life by His aid and the grace which God will grant you from day to day.