stle's
aspiration for "equality," secure in return the enthusiastic adhesion to
the rights of property of all that is best and noblest among the poor?

When will the world, or even the Church, awaken to the great truth that
our politics also need to be steeped in Christian feeling--that humanity
requires not a revolution but a pentecost--that a millennium cannot be
enacted, but will dawn whenever human bosoms are emptied of selfishness
and lust, and filled with brotherly kindness and compassion? Such, and
no more, was the socialism which St. Paul deduced from the equality in
the supply of manna.

_SPIRITUAL MEAT._

xvi. 15-36.

Since the journey of Israel is throughout full of sacred meaning, no one
can fail to discern a mystery in the silent ceaseless daily miracle of
bread-giving. But we are not left to our conjectures. St. Paul calls
manna "spiritual meat," not because it nourished the higher life (for
the eaters of it murmured for flesh, and were not estranged from their
lust), but because it answered to realities of the spiritual world (1
Cor. x. 3). And Christ Himself said, "It was not Moses that gave you the
bread out of heaven, but My Father giveth you the true Bread from
heaven," making manna the type of sustenance which the soul needs in the
wilderness, and which only God can give (John vi. 32).

We note the time of its bestowal. The soul has come forth out of its
bondage. Perhaps it imagines that emancipation is enough: all is won
when its chains are broken: there is to be no interval between the Egypt
of sin and the Promised Land of milk and honey and repose. Instead of
this serene attainment, it finds that the soul requires to be fed, and
no food is to be seen, but only a wilderness of scorching heat, dry
sand, vacancy, and hunger. Old things have passed away, but it is not
yet realised that all things have become new. Religion threatens to
become a vast system for the removal of accustomed indulgences and
enjoyments, but where is the recompense for all that it forbids? The
soul cries out for food: well for it if the cry be not faithless, nor
spoken to earthly chiefs alone!

There is a noteworthy distinction between the gift of manna and every
other recorded miracle of sustenance. In Eden the fruit of immortality
was ripening upon an earthly tree. The widow of Zarephath was fed from
her own stores. The ravens bore to Elijah ordinary bread and flesh; and
if an angel fed him, it was with a cake baken