Give Ye Them to Eat

“My life is not my own, but Christ’s, who gave it,

And he bestows it upon all the race; I lose it for his sake, and thus I save it; I hold it close, but only to expend it;

Accept it, Lord, for others, through thy grace!”

WE begin to live only when we begin to love, and we begin to love only when self dies and we live to bless others. We forget too often that we are the body of Christ in this world. The things he would do for men we must do. His pity for the lost must throb in our human hearts. His comfort for earth’s sorrow must be spoken by human lips. He is the bread of life which alone can feed men’s hunger, but it must pass through our hands. We must be the revealers of Christ to others. The love must flow to them through us. V are the branches, and from our little lives must drop the fruits which shall meet men’s cravings.

The importance of this human part is well illustrated in our Lord’s miracle of the feeding of the five thousand. When the need of the people was spoken of, the disciples proposed to send them away to buy bread for themselves. Jesus replied, “They have no need to go away; give ye them to eat.” No wonder the disciples were startled by such a command, when they realized the smallness of their own resources. Yet a little later they did give the multitudes to eat from their own small stores, and had abundance left for themselves.

The miracle is for our instruction. All about us are those who have many and sore needs. We pity them. We turn to Christ with our pity, and pray him to send some one to feed arid bless those who are in such need. But as we listen we hear him say, “Give ye them to eat!” Then we say, “Why, Master, we have nothing to give to these hungry multitudes. We can not comfort these sorrows. We cannot guide these tottering, stumbling feet. We cannot give strength to these fainting hearts. We cannot meet these intense cravings for sympathy, for love, for life. We cannot feed these hungers. We have only our five barley loaves, and here are thousands.” But our Lord’s quiet answer still is, “Give ye them to eat.”

Christ always used the human so far as the human would reach. He never wrought an unnecessary miracle. If the work could be done without the putting forth of supernatural energy, it was so wrought. And when miracles were performed, all that human ability could do in the process was left to human ability. There was never any waste of miracle. Then it is a common law in the kingdom of God that, when ever possible, divine gifts are passed to men through other men. God sends many of his gifts to the world through human hands and hearts. The word of God was spoken in olden times through human lips. When God came to reveal his love and mercy in a life, the people looked up and saw a face like their own faces. The real worker in the world to-day is the Holy Spirit. His is the power that regenerates, sanctifies, and comforts. But no eye sees him. Ikworks invisibly, silently. What we see all the time is a human face and a human hand. We hear the Spirit’s voice in the accents of lips like our own. The gospel is to be told to every creature; but those who have learned it them selves, and have been saved by it, must be the bearers of the good news. The command still and always is, “Give ye them to eat.”

This puts upon us who know the love and grace of Christ a great responsibility. Those who are in need or in sorrow about us must be blessed through us. The responsibility for helping, comforting, lifting up, these weak, sad, or fallen ones, is with us. Yet we seem to have nothing with which to answer their cravings. We have only five barley loaves, and what are they among so many?

We may get further instruction concerning the manner of blessing the world with our meagre resources, from the way the disciples fed these thousands. First, they brought their barley loaves to Christ. If they had begun feeding the people with what they had, without bringing it to the Master, it could have fed only a few. We also must bring our paltry resources to Christ, and put them into hi:, hands. This is always the first thing in doing good. Without Christ’s blessing, even the largest resources or abilities will avail nothing. Christ can do nothing with us until we have really given ourselves into his hands. But when we have done this, no one on earth can tell the measure of good that may be wrought even by the smallest abilities.

Then follows Christ’s blessing on the loaves. His blessing maketh rich. We ought to pray continually that Christ’s touch may be upon us, and that what we have may first lie in his hands, before it is given out to become food to others. There seems to be a significance, too, in the fact that Christ broke the loaves as he blessed them, before he gave them into the hands of the disciples. Often he must break us and our gifts before he can make us bread for others. Very beautifully do Dr. S. W. Duffield’s lines illustrate this: —

“They tell me I must bruise

The rose’s leaf
Ere I can keep and use
Its fragrance brief.

“GIVE YE THEM TO EAT.” IQ/

They tell me I must break

The skylark’s heart
Ere her cage song will make

The silence start.

They tell me love must bleed,

And friendship weep,
Ere in my deepest need

I touch that deep.

Must it be always so

With precious things?
Must they be bruised, and go

With beaten wings?

Ah, yes! By crushing days,

By caging nights, by scar
Of thorns and stony ways,

These blessings are!”

Many of us cannot be used to become food for the world’s hunger until we are broken in Christ’s hands. “Bread corn is bruised.” Christ’s blessing ofttimes means sorrow, but even sorrow is not too great a price to pay for the privilege of touching other lives with benediction. The sweetest things in this world to-day have come to us through tears and pain.

We need never be afraid to make sacrifices in doing good. It is the things that cost that yield blessing. The ashes of our joys ofttimes nourish joys for others.

“Some sweet or tender thing may grow
To stronger life because of thee;
Content to play an humble part,
Give of the ashes of thy heart,
And haply God, whose dear decrees
Taketh from those to give to these,
Who draws the snowdrop from the snows,
May from these ashes feed a rose.”

The last thing in this story of the feeding of the people was the passing of the broken loaves through the hands of the disciples to the people. Jesus did not distribute them himself. He gives our consecrated gifts back to us, that we may dispense them. He would teach us, for one thing, that we can be our own best almoners. Our money loses sadly in power to do good if we must pass it through a society instead of taking it ourselves to those who need it. If possible, we would better always give it with our own hands, and let our love go with it, in expressions that will be bread for the huner of those whom we would serve.

“The gift without the giver is bare.”

It is a great responsibility which this truth puts upon Christian people. The bread can reach the hungry only through the hands of the disciples. “Give ye them to eat” is still the word. The perishing world can get the blessings of the gospel of Christ only through us. Here stands the Master with the consecrated bread in his hands, enough for all. Yonder is the multitude, with countless needs and hungers. But between Christ and the people is the human ministry. “He gave the loaves to the disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.” Suppose the disciples had eaten of the bread themselves, and, when satisfied, had still remained sitting there, enjoying their blessing, but carrying it no farther; what would have been the result? The people would have gone hungry, although there had been ample provision made for them by the Master. The guilt would have been on the heads of the disciples.

But we are now Christ’s disciples. All about Us are hungry people. Christ has bread to give them — enough to satisfy all their hungers. But it must pass to them through our hands. What if the bread stop with us? What if we take it

—this sacred bread, Christ’s own body broken for us — and eat it with relish, and sit down and think not of those just beyond us who are hungering for comfort, for help, for love, for life? This bread is not given to us for ourselves alone,

—Christ gives no blessing in that way; it is given for ourselves, and then to be passed on by us to others. Says Amiel, “It is better to be lost than to be saved all alone.” And Susan Coolidge writes, using Amiel’s words as a motto: —

“To lie by the river of life and see it run to waste, To eat of the tree of heaven while the nations go

unfed,

To taste the full salvation — the only one to taste — To live while the rest are lost — oh, better by far be dead!

For to share is the bliss of heaven, as it is the joy <.f

earth;

And the unshared bread lacks savor, and the liiu unshared lacks zest:

And the joy of the soul redeemed would be little,

little worth,

If, content with its own security, it could forget the rest.”

So it is that we stand between Christ and a needy, hungry world. So it is that the bidding ever comes to us, “Give ye them to eat.” Let us be faithful. It would be a bitter thing, indeed, if any should perish because we did not carry to them the bread which the Master gives us for them.