“Give Ye Them to Eat”
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glory due unto His holy name. The working of His power is ascribed
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to natural causes or to human instrumentality. Man is glorified in place
of God, and His gracious gifts are perverted to selfish uses, and made
a curse instead of a blessing. God is seeking to change all this. He
desires that our dull senses shall be quickened to discern His merciful
kindness and to glorify Him for the working of His power. He desires
us to recognize Him in His gifts, that they may be, as He intended, a
blessing to us. It was to accomplish this purpose that the miracles of
Christ were performed.
After the multitude had been fed, there was an abundance of food
left. But He who had all the resources of infinite power at His command
said, “Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.” These
words meant more than putting the bread into the baskets. The lesson
was twofold. Nothing is to be wasted. We are to let slip no temporal
advantage. We should neglect nothing that will tend to benefit a human
being. Let everything be gathered up that will relieve the necessity
of earth’s hungry ones. And there should be the same carefulness in
spiritual things. When the baskets of fragments were collected, the
people thought of their friends at home. They wanted them to share
in the bread that Christ had blessed. The contents of the baskets were
distributed among the eager throng, and were carried away into all the
region round about. So those who were at the feast were to give to
others the bread that comes down from heaven, to satisfy the hunger of
the soul. They were to repeat what they had learned of the wonderful
things of God. Nothing was to be lost. Not one word that concerned
their eternal salvation was to fall useless to the ground.
The miracle of the loaves teaches a lesson of dependence upon
God. When Christ fed the five thousand, the food was not nigh at hand.
Apparently He had no means at His command. Here He was, with
five thousand men, besides women and children, in the wilderness. He
had not invited the large multitude to follow Him; they came without
invitation or command; but He knew that after they had listened so
long to His instruction, they would feel hungry and faint; for He was
one with them in their need of food. They were far from home, and
the night was close at hand. Many of them were without means to
purchase food. He who for their sake had fasted forty days in the
wilderness would not suffer them to return fasting to their homes. The