the race. Life has ever depended upon food; hence food has been the
chief concern of man. During the history of the world the race has been
ignorant of the processes of digestion and assimilation. They have
known nothing of the chemistry of this source of life. They have gone
on from age to age building up their bodies by taking food, wholly
ignorant of the process by which it was done. The value of the thing
eaten has never depended on a knowledge of the process by which it was
assimilated. We thank God that it is thus with the bread of life. We
may never expect to comprehend the "mystery of godliness" in this life.
Just how the bread of life enables us to live forever, we are not
concerned to know. It is enough for us to know that it is so. Let us,
then, appropriate this rich provision of God's grace, and the blessing
will be ours.

NEW TESTAMENT VIEWS OF CHRIST.

III.--CHRIST THE WATER OF LIFE.

"Jesus answered and said unto her, Every one that drinketh of this
water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that
I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall
give him shall become in him a well of water springing up unto
eternal life" (John iv. 13, 14).

"Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and
cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink"
(John vii. 37).

"And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of a
spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ" (I.
Cor. x. 4).

Twice was a rock smitten by Moses in the wilderness to supply the
Israelites with water. The first was at Rephidim, in the wilderness of
Sin, during the first year of their Exodus, before they came to Mount
Sinai. The second was at Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin, in the
fortieth year of the Exodus. It is evident that the apostle refers to
the first of these, though we can hardly think, with most commentators
known to us, that he does so exclusively. The fact that the rock
followed them, as a type of Christ, in their wilderness life, demands
that it be from the beginning, rather than the end, of their journey.
And the fact that many who drank of it fell in the wilderness, requires
the same conclusion. But for reasons yet to appear, we think the two
are considered as one. The miracle was in all respects the same in the
second as in the first. There was the same dependence for life on the
sec