not be
visible. How could spiritual blessings be visible ones? If Christ now
feeds us, not with milk and honey, but "with the spiritual food of His
most precious Body and Blood;" if "our sinful bodies are made clean by
His Body, and our souls washed through His most precious Blood," truly
we are not without our precious things, any more than Israel was: but
they are unseen, because so much greater, so spiritual; they are given
only under the veil of what is seen: and thus we Christians are both
with the Church in the wilderness as regards faith, and in the Church
in Canaan as regards enjoyment; having the fulfilment of the words
spoken by Moses, repeated by our Lord, to which I just now referred,
"Man shall not live by bread only, but by every word which proceedeth
out of the mouth of God."

Now, then, I will refer to some passages of both the Old Testament and
the New, which both illustrate and are illustrated by this great
doctrine of the Gospel.

1. And, first, let it be observed, from the beginning, the greatest
rite of religion has been a feast; the partaking of God's bounties, in
the way of nature, has been consecrated to a more immediate communion
with God Himself. For instance, when Isaac was weaned, Abraham "made a
great feast[3]," and then it was that Sarah prophesied; "Cast out this
bondwoman and her son," she said, prophesying the introduction of the
spirit, grace, and truth, which the Gospel contains, instead of the
bondage of the outward forms of the Law. Again, it was at a feast of
savoury meat that the spirit of prophecy came upon Isaac, and he
blessed Jacob. In like manner the first beginning of our Lord's
miracles was at a marriage feast, when He changed water into wine; and
when St. Matthew was converted he entertained our Lord at a feast. At
a feast, too, our Lord allowed the penitent woman to wash with tears
and anoint His feet, and pronounced her forgiveness; and at a feast,
before His passion, He allowed Mary to anoint them with costly
ointment, and to wipe them with her hair. Thus with our Lord, and with
the Patriarchs, a feast was a time of grace; so much so, that He was
said by the Pharisees to come eating and drinking, to be "a winebibber
and gluttonous, a friend of publicans and sinners[4]."

2. And next, in order to make this feasting still more solemn, it had
been usual at all times to precede it by a direct act of religion,--by
a prayer, or blessing, or sacrifice, or by the prese