Saviour, because of the living Father who hath sent me. He who eateth me lives because of me, who am the lifegiving bread.' Stripped of the metaphor, the sentiment is,― He who believes on me shall enjoy real permanent happiness, because I am the divinely appointed and qualified Saviour; and because believing in me is the divinely appointed means of obtaining a personal interest in me as the Saviour, and in the blessings of my salvation. I can never cease to be able to save to the uttermost, because He who sent me for the very purpose of saving men, is the independent and exhaustless source of all existence, power, and enjoyment; and he who believes in me, can never cease to enjoy real happiness, for I am the divinely appointed and qualified procurer and bestower of real happiness on all who believe, in consequence of an irreversible appointment of Him who cannot change; as, because he lives, I must live, so because I live, so they must live also.' Such, so far as I am able to apprehend it, is our Lord's meaning in these words, which, like so many others on the same subject in Scripture, are "dark by excessive brightness." Our Lord now repeats a sentiment he had already uttered, the more deeply to impress it on their minds. 'This bread which has come down from heaven, infinitely surpasses the manna of which you are accustomed to speak so highly. They who ate of the manna died. They who eat of this bread shall never die. "This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead. He that eateth of this bread shall live for ever." "1 In these words our Lord distinctly states, that this bread, which he has again and again asserted was himself, had come down from heaven, claiming obviously pre-existence, and pre-existence in heaven. The manna came down from 1 John vi. 58. the upper regions of the atmosphere, not from heaven, properly so called; but Jesus came down from the heaven of heavens, from the bosom of the Father, where he had been from the ages of eternity. It may be said, indeed it has been said, that this argument overthrows itself by proving too much; for surely the flesh and blood of which our Lord speaks, did not come down from heaven. This is, however, by no means implied in the argument. "The Son of Man" is here just equivalent to, 'the Messiah,' and is used, not in its etymological, but in its conventional, signification. All that it implies is, that the pre-existent divine person who descended from heaven, and, when the object of the descent was accomplished, ascended up where he was before, united himself to human flesh and blood for the most wise and gracious purposes, especially for those sufferings and that death which were necessary to secure the redemption of a lost world. It is a mode of expression of the same kind as saying, when our present king was a midshipman." 1 As this mystical bread far excelled the manna in its origin, so it also, in a corresponding degree, excelled it in its efficacy. It is not with this heavenly bread as with the manna. The ancestors of those whom our Lord addressed, had eaten of the manna, but they had not lived for ever. They were all dead thousands of years ago. The manna does not seem to have had any greater power to sustain, or to prolong life, than any other species of wholesome food. It could not counteract the fearful efficacy of the original curse- "Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return;" 2 nor of the additional curse denounced on that unbelieving generation-" Your carcases shall fall in the wilderness." 3 But this heavenly bread has the power of counteracting a more awful curse than either of these-the curse that 1 This was written during the reign of William the Fourth. dooms the immortal soul of man to the second death. It has the power of communicating, and sustaining, and prolonging, to all eternity, a better life than that forfeited by sin-a divine, a heavenly life: "He that eateth of this bread shall live for ever." On eating it, he shall begin to live a new, a higher, a holier, a happier, life. That life shall be sustained by the continued eating this mystical bread, and shall never, never come to an end. It deserves notice, that, in the whole of this passage, the enjoyment of eternal life-that is, real permanent happiness-is represented as connected, not with having eaten the bread of life, but with eating it. The faith of the Gospel, by which an individual is interested in the saving benefits which were procured for men by the atoning sacrifice of our Lord, is not a transient act, but a habitual exercise. The bread of life must be our daily food; and, just in the measure in which we feed on this heavenly manna, shall we realise the vigour, and activity, and enjoyment, of the heavenly life. Thus have we arrived at the close of that interesting and instructive discourse, which our Lord delivered in the synagogue of Capernaum. 1 It is a discourse certainly not. without its difficulties, but it is richly replete with the most important and delightful principles of the christian faith. It may be useful, previously to our finally taking our leave of it, as a subject of exposition, to recal briefly to our minds the occasion, the design, and the manner, of this important discourse. 2 The occasion of the discourse was furnished by the mercenary professions, and pertinacious adherence, of a multitude, who were moved by the hope of his gratifying their national ambition, and perhaps equally by the expectation of being fed, without their own care and cost, by his mira John vi. 59. 2 For much contained in the succeeding paragraphs, I am indebted to Dr Pye Smith. "Scripture Testimony," vol. ii. pp. 124-127. culous power. They sought him because they had eaten of the loaves, and been filled; and they showed what was uppermost in their minds, by hinting that the most acceptable miracle he could perform, would be one similar to that of the manna in the wilderness. The more politic of them, probably, extended their views farther, and contemplated his being able to support armies for the establishment of their expected dominion over other nations. From the appetite of hunger, Jesus, who could with dignity employ any object or circumstance as a vehicle of divine instruction, derived the occasion of this address, and taught them that they were labouring under a deeper necessity, and that God had graciously provided a suitable relief. The design of the discourse was to break the charm of his hearers' destructive ambition, to wean them from their low sensuous views, to show them the nature of true happiness, and to unfold to them the only method of attaining it. The manner in which he prosecuted this design, was by showing that man's true happiness consisted, not in sensible and present enjoyments, but in spiritual and eternal blessings; that he had been divinely commissioned and qualified to bestow such blessings, not on one nation only, but on mankind generally, and that faith in him was necessary to the obtaining a personal interest in these blessings; that to render himself capable of making men really and permanently happy, it was necessary that he should suffer and die as a piacular victim for the transgressions of men; and that the belief of the truth on that all-important subject, was as necessary to a man's deriving advantage from his sacrifice, as eating is to a man deriving advantage from nourishing food; that, while they continued under the unbroken influence of their carnal desires and worldly prejudices, they laboured under a moral incapacity of receiving and enjoying the blessings he came to procure and bestow; and that nothing short of a divine influence could emancipate them from the power of this present evil world, and enable them to receive what was freely given them of God. With regard to the particular form of the discourse, its principal subject wears the aspect of a prediction—an unfulfilled prediction-with regard to the manner in which he was to accomplish the salvation of men, and the manner in which they were to obtain a personal interest in that salvation. The whole discourse is marked by that mixture of literal and figurative diction which is one of the most characteristic features of the Old Testament prophetic discourses, and by that envelope of obscurity which was necessary to guard the public prediction of any future event. The event predicted in this case, was the extreme sufferings and cruel death of the Saviour. Of this catastrophe it was his manner to speak obscurely to his public and promiscuous audiences, and it was only to his disciples in private, and occasionally, that he, greatly to their surprise, foretold it in plain. terms. The keeping in view these general remarks respecting the occasion, design, tenor, and form of the discourse, will be of use to us in enabling us more readily to call up the important truths to which our attention has been turned in these expositions. III. THE EFFECTS OF THIS DISCOURSE ON HIS DISCIPLES IN WORD, AND ON HIS DISCIPLES IN DEED. JOHN VI. 60-71. § 1. On his Professed Disciples. 1 The impression made by this discourse on those who heard it, is described by the evangelist in the sixtieth verse:"Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?" The "disciples" is here plainly a general term, descriptive of all who, under the impression that Jesus was a divine messenger, probably the Messiah, were in the habit of waiting on his ministrations, and of course comprehended under it per 1 John vi. 60. |