Sermon V. Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

First Sunday in Lent, March 12, 1848.

Matthew VI. 11.

Here are many points of view from which this season of Lent may be regarded. One of them is given us in the beginning of the Gospel for to-day. The tempter said to Jesus, ‘If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.’ He answered, ‘It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God shall men live.’ If these last words had declared that man does not live by bread, they would have been naturally construed to mean that he has a higher, more mysterious life than that of his body; one requiring a diviner nourishment. But this sense, though it may be latent in the answer, has not generally been felt to arise immediately out of it. That the most perfect man does, in some sense, live by bread, was shown by our Lord’s hungering. He did not exalt himself above the conditions of creatures with bodies, dying bodies; those conditions He entered into. It was to His weakness, to His suffering, that the Tempter spoke. And the reply did not move the question to a different ground, but met it on its own ground. Man’s body lives not by bread alone, but by the Word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God. This was, obviously, the first intention of the language when it was used by Moses. The manna proved to the Israelites that their support came from the Word of God. That Word did not sustain them without visible food; but it conferred upon the visible thing its power of sustaining them. Take away the life-giving Word, which proceeded out of the mouth of God, and the little round thing which lay upon the ground would have been useless. This lesson they were to lay to heart; the pot of manna in the tabernacle was to remind them of it when they were come into the promised land, and were eating bread made by various processes from the corn which they had themselves sown and reaped. They were not to think that this derived its nourishing power less from the Word of God than the manna which their fathers ate in the wilderness. They were not to suppose that this bread had any virtue of its own more than the other. Its virtue lay in its fitness for the creature whom God had endued with a life incomparably more wonderful than that of the corn, wonderful as that is; wonderful as is its capacity of growth, maturity, conversion into a material quite unlike itself; wonderful as is the whole relation of the vegetable to the animal substance. Rightly reflected on, this bread contained a deeper, more comprehensive, revelation of God than the manna. But, because deeper and more comprehensive, therefore less adapted to an infant nation, which had been sensualized and debased by animal and vegetable worship, and by the slavery which must accompany it. Such a people have to begin at the alphabet; they must be taught by the falling of food from Heaven, that they depend upon an invisible Person, a sure Friend who cares for them; not upon the hard material thing which will not come to them when they ask for it; which they will be least able to procure when they treat it with most reverence. But that truth had need to be fixed in their hearts, again and again, in different stages of their history, by methods adapted to those stages. In the city as much as in the wilderness, when they had grown old in a settled independence, as much as when they had just escaped from the flesh-pots of Egypt, in the monotony of ease, as much as when everything around them spoke of famine and drought, they would be assailed by materialism and unbelief; they would be in danger of losing all thought of an unseen Protector. Therefore the heavens would become brass, and the earth iron, the locust and the palmerworm would eat up the fruits of the ground, the Philistine, or the Assyrian, would lay it waste for the same reason that the manna had fallen in the sight of their fathers; to shew them that they lived by the Word which proceeded out of the mouth of God, and not by any necessary fertility in the soil, or special exemption from the plagues of Egypt, or any strength in their hands or in their wit. There might come, in the latter days of the nation, even a harder and more desperate condition than that which is the result of men’s natural inclination to trust in things seen, and in the works of their own hands. A stiff religious formalism, a comfortable conceit that they were going on with suitable decency through a round of appointed services, or, were acquiring merit by acts of voluntary supererogatory devotion, might make the heaven brass and the earth iron in another sense. All real communication might be cut off between them; the Lord of all might be exhibited as a tyrant to be won over by presents and bribes; the heart which should receive His grace might become utterly impenetrable. In such a period of the history of the Jews, our Lord appeared among them; at such a time the voice from Heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son,’ and the voice from hell, ‘If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.’ At such a time, He claimed to be the Son of God not because He could make stones bread, but because He could stand on the old promise, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.’ And having thus asserted His own filial dependence and filial faith, and having claimed the privilege of dependence and faith, not for Himself but for man; He, who came as the firstborn of many brethren, could say to the band of fishermen, His disciples, ‘After this manner, therefore, pray ye: Our Father—give us this day our daily bread.’ That childlike petition was the fruit of His Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation.

The forty days then which bring that Fasting and Temptation to our mind, are given us especially that we may be taught how to pray this prayer. Those who find it quite easy, in all circumstances of indulgence and comfort, to believe that they receive their bread from God; who, when it is most abundant, ask him to give it—meaning what they say—have not, perhaps, any call to self-restraint. But there are some who know, in their consciences, that they are apt to mock God when they speak these solemn words, apt to take food and every other blessing as if it were their right of which no power in heaven or earth except by sheer injustice can deprive them. Something which shall tell them of dependence, some secret reminiscence, insignificant to others, that all things are not their own; some hint that there are a few million creatures of their flesh and blood who cannot call any of these things their own, is needful for them. If it comes in the form of punishment sent specially to themselves, they cannot say it was not wanted; if it is a voice addressed generally to the whole Church, a season returning year by year, they cannot pretend that there are any satisfactory reasons why they should close their ears to it. What they ought to desire is, that they may keep the end in sight: so they will never reckon means, of whatever kind they be, of any value for their own sakes; they will not fancy that to abstain from food is more meritorious in God’s sight, than to eat it; if in either case, equally, they are desiring to recollect that it is a good which He bestows. Above all, they will feel that, whatever else Lent is, it is certainly a time of confession, and their great hope of being ever able to use this prayer more faithfully must be grounded on an examination of the causes which have made it so unreal in times past. Let us look manfully at some of these causes this afternoon; if we study the petition, we shall not be long in discovering them.

I. It may seem strange that I should put, first of all, our unwillingness to acknowledge God as a Giver; our inclination to think of Him rather as an Exactor. Such a charge will, I know, sound to some most paradoxical. ‘What!’ they will say, ‘do you affirm that people in this day like especially to be reminded of the duties that are required of them, and dislike to be reminded of the gifts and mercies which they may expect with or without the performance of those duties? Is not precisely the opposite error that to which our age is prone? Are we not most restless and impatient when we are told, Such things you ought to do, such men you ought to be; most eager to receive the comfortable assurance that we may rest, for that God’s grace is everything—man’s energy nothing?’ Those who make this objection, shew that they have considerable experience, both of other men’s infirmities, and of their own. That a certain languor, not incompatible with much fever but one of its symptoms, is characteristic of our time, I should indeed be afraid to deny. We cannot feel it ourselves without being conscious that it is abroad. That when we are indisposed to strenuous effort, we often take refuge in theories, religious or philosophical, which disparage it, or represent it as needless, is also indisputable. We try stimulants first, then opiates; and each empiric, who would suggest a new one, may reasonably speculate upon the failure of the last. But where did this listlessness begin? what is the root of it? Our Lord puts this interpretation of it into the mouth of one who had exhibited it and wished to justify it thus: ‘I knew thee that thou wert an hard man, reaping where thou didst not sow, and gathering where thou didst not straw: therefore I hid thy talent in the earth; lo! there thou hast that is thine.’ If we can trust Him who knew what was in man, the two accusations are not inconsistent; we may be very slow in listening to calls of duty, and the reason may be that we regard Him who calls us an Exactor, not a Giver. I press this confession before all others, not only because the first word of the Prayer suggests it, but because I believe we, the ministers of God, are more bound to make it than other men. We have thought, it seems to me, that our chief business was to persuade and conjure and argue and frighten men into a notion and feeling of their responsibilities: whereas our chief business is, assuredly, to proclaim the name of God; to set that before our fellowcreatures in its fulness and reality; so to convince them of their sin; so to teach them how they may be delivered from it. Being very eager to make out a case against mankind, comparatively indifferent about the assertion and vindication of the Divine character, we have failed in one object quite as much as the other. We have not dared to speak of God broadly, simply, absolutely, as a Giver, lest we should thereby weaken His claim upon man’s obedience; whereas this is His claim upon their obedience: in this way He enforces His claim. Thus we have begotten in men a feeling that they are obliged to do something which they cannot do. A struggle ensues, passionate, irregular, hopeless, after an unattainable prize; then bitter discontent and murmuring against Him who seems to have created us for vanity and wretchedness.

See how this consideration affects the petition for daily bread. If we dared to look upon God as a giver in the full, free, intelligible, sense of the words, we should, in asking for bread, feel that we were asking for the power and energy wherewith to work for it. We should say to ourselves; ‘This is the law under which God has put the universe, a merciful and good law which if man is able to evade as he is in some regions of exuberant fertility, the seeming privilege turns out to be his curse. It is desiring a stone, and not bread, to desire that we may have all we want without the sweat of our brow; and such a stone the Father will not give us. But when we desire the will to toil, and the wisdom to toil, and the strength to toil, and the fruit of toil, we plead as men with Him who desires that we should subdue the earth and replenish it, because He has made us in His image, and would have us share His work and His rest. Then we ask according to His will, and He heareth us. Then does the earth bring forth and bud, and God, even our own God, blesses us. We are not the creatures of chance; we are not the slaves of a Pharaoh; we are doing the blessed command of Him who created the ground and man to inhabit it.’ How entirely then does the life and sense of this passage depend upon those which have gone before it! If we misrepresent the Name of God, and the Will of God, how inevitably does this petition for bread turn to evil instead of good. If we will think of Him, not as the Scripture and the Church teach us to think of Him, as the Author and Giver of all things, but only as one who demands so much work of us, and offers so much pay in return, we fold our hands in indolence and despair; we cannot love that which He commands, or desire that which He promises. Let us confess, then, this sin first, that we have slandered His holy Name, not believing that He gives to all men liberally, and upbraideth not.

II. If we think of God as an Exactor and not a Giver, exactors and not givers shall we be. And so the word us acquires a very contracted signification indeed. The prayer will express a hope that we, who are sufficiently well supplied with all necessaries and comforts, may never be stinted of them; it will express a lazy half-formed wish that people, who have none of our comforts and little of what we call necessaries, may not quite starve. Think what meaning it must have had when it was offered up by that band in Jerusalem, after the day of Pentecost, who were of one heart and one soul, eating their bread with joy and singleness of heart. They will have understood it to be indeed a petition to the Father, who had so loved them as to give His only-begotten Son for them, and who had filled them with His own Spirit, that He would give them that which they needed for body and soul; would give it them under that condition of which I spoke just now: and under this further condition, that each, upon whom the Lord bestowed superfluity, should hold himself a steward, and distribute his bounties. As the first principle which united bread and work together had been proved, by a long experience, to be a blessed one, so the second they will have felt to be the fulfilment of Christ’s promise, that they should be children of His Father in heaven; that they should be gracious and merciful as He is. Without the one the Church would have been a hive of drones; without the second it would have been a collection of separate bees, each working for itself, bringing in its contribution to a common stock, but wanting the sweetness of affection, sympathy, subordination. Will it be said that the law of that Church was never intended to be perpetual; that even in apostolical history there are few vestiges of it after the Church had diffused itself beyond a single city or province? I answer; the accidents of that Jerusalem Church were indeed transitory; more transitory than the fall of the manna in the camp of Israel: but the law which those accidents made known was as permanent a law as that which the manna revealed. The selling of houses and lands was only one exhibition of a state of mind, an exhibition never enforced, as St. Peter told Ananias, But the principle implied in the words, ‘No man said that which he had was his own,’ is the principle of the Church, in all ages; its members stand while they confess this principle, they fall from her communion when they deny it.

Property is holy, distinction of ranks is holy: so speaks the Law, and the Church does not deny the assertion, but ratifies it. Only she must proclaim this other truth, or perish. Beneath all distinctions of property and of rank lie the obligations of a common Creation, Redemption, Humanity; and these are not mere ultimate obligations to be confessed when the others are fulfilled. They are not vague abstractions, which cannot quite be denied, but which have no direct bearing upon our actual daily existence; they are primary, eternal bonds, upon which all others depend; they are not satisfied by some nominal occasional act of homage; they demand the fealty and service of a life; all our doings must be witnesses of them. The Church proclaims tacitly by her existence she should have proclaimed openly by her voice—that property and rank are held upon this tenure; that they can stand by no other. Alas! she has not spoken out this truth clearly and strongly here or anywhere. She has fancied that it was her first work to protect those who could have protected themselves well enough without her, provided she had been true to her vocation of caring for those whom the world did not care for, of watching over them continually, of fitting them to be citizens of any society on earth, by shewing them what is implied in the heavenly filial citizenship into which God has freely adopted them. Failing in this duty, she has become powerless for the one she ignominiously preferred. She can give but feeble help to the rich in their hour of need, because she ministered to them with such sad fidelity in their hour of triumph and prosperity. She can scarcely make her voice heard against schemes for reducing all things to a common stock, for establishing a fellowship upon a law of mutual selfishness, because she has not believed that the internal communion, the law of Love, the polity of members united in one Head, of brethren confessing a common Father, is a real one—has left people to fancy that it is only a fine dream, a cruel mockery, incapable of bringing any tangible blessings. If she can yet avert such a calamity, it must be by calling upon all of us her members to confess the insincerity with which we have uttered these words, ‘Give us our daily bread.’ If we had understood that we were children of one Father, and were asking Him to bless all the parts of His family, while we were seeking blessings for ourselves, that, in fact, we could not pray at all without praying for them, we should have found the answer in a new sense of fellowship between all classes, in the feeling that every man, in every position, has an office and ministry which it is his privilege to exercise for those over whom he is set; in a clearer apprehension of the relationship between the master of a household and his domestics, the landlord and his tenants, the farmer and his labourers, the manufacturer and those who work at the loom or the mill, the tradesman and those who serve in his shop; between these and then between all of them and the outlying mass, which seems to be beyond the bounds of all ordinary civil relationships, but which, as it has the great mark of human relationship, may be adopted into these, or be fitted to take a part in the establishment of new societies elsewhere.

If we meet continually in the streets creatures of our own flesh and blood, who have a look of hunger and misery, without being able to determine whether it is a greater sin to withhold that which may save them from death, or to give what may lead to the worst kind of death; if a thousand social problems, which we once supposed were of easy solution, present themselves in new and embarrassing aspects, tempting us to pass them by altogether and then forcing upon us the reflection, that they must settle themselves in some way, whether we forget them or not; if we hear masses of creatures spoken of as if they were the insects we look at in a microscope, and then are suddenly reminded by some startling phenomenon that each one of them has a living soul; then, before we become mad, or escape into an apathy that is worse than madness, let us ask ourselves whether we have yet prayed this child’s prayer as we would have a child pray it, in simplicity and truth. And if we are conscious that we have not, let us confess the sin, and see whether He to whom we confess it does not shed some light into our minds which makes our path clearer—a light which we may believe He will vouchsafe to our brethren in this land, and in all lands, for their practical guidance, when their large theories are found to be reeds, upon which, if a man leans, they will go into his hand and pierce it.

III. But the prayer is only for this day. Hence it is often thought that the spirit of the Gospel is adverse to foresight. How can the command, ‘Take no thought for the morrow,’ be reconciled with the kind of anticipation and preparation which seem to distinguish the civilized man from the hunter of the woods? The answer lies in our own experience. Have we found that anxiety about possible consequences increased the clearness of our judgment, made us wiser and braver in meeting the present, and arming ourselves for the future? Is it this kind of temper which enables a man to plough the ground, to sow the seed in the appointed month, to wait patiently for the harvest? Is it the temper which would have enabled any sailor, any merchant to venture himself or his goods, upon the deep? We know perfectly well that the most opposite habit of mind to this, a simple and hearty reliance upon a power whom the ground, and the seasons, and the winds, and the waves obey, could alone have made such acts and enterprises possible. Clearness of vision, providence, discovery, are the rewards of the calm and patient spirit. The cases are rare indeed where they have been given to any other. Out of that care for the morrow which our Lord denounces, spring the fever of speculation, the hasting to be rich, endless scheming, continual reactions of fantastic hope and deep depression in individuals, of mad prosperity and intense suffering in nations. If we had prayed for this day’s bread, and left the next to itself, if we had not huddled our days together, not allotting to each its appointed task, but ever deferring that to the future, and drawing upon the future for its own troubles which must be met when they come whether we have anticipated them or not, we should have found a simplicity and honesty in our lives, a capacity for work, an enjoyment in it, to which we are now, for the most part, strangers. Here, I believe, we shall all find abundant matter for confession, if we look faithfully into our lives. This part of the prayer too has been unfaithfully repeated; we have been wearying ourselves in thoughts of what would be, because we have no confidence in Him who is.

IV. But it is our daily bread we ask for, τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον. This word ἐπιούσιον gave rise to one of the controversies between Abelard and Bernard in the 12th century. The former following a hint of Jerome, adopted the translation panem supersubstantialem, and taught Heloise and the nuns in her convent to use it in repeating the prayer. It appears that the practice was not a new one there; at all events, Bernard had no right to accuse his opponent of wilfully perverting Scripture, when he was following the guidance of the most approved Latin Father. We shall all probably agree that he was right in objecting to a phrase which, even if it had more philological plausibility than really belongs to it¹, would be entirely out of harmony with the tone and spirit of the prayer. It is less easy to say what exact word we should adopt; we have no analogy to help us, for the word does not exist in any classical author. The balance of evidence seems decidedly in favour of those who derive the word as Jerome did, but take it to mean ‘bread for subsistence.’ Our translators followed a different course, but they arrived nearly at the same result. Bread for subsistence defines accurately what we intend by daily bread, when we intend anything. We ask for bread to sustain us, bread that shall be enough for our needs. What is enough we happily are not called to fix; the act of prayer throws the decision of that point upon a wiser judge. No one, therefore, could infer from the use of this expression that a rigid sumptuary law is involved in the petition; that one has, of course, the same needs as another. The Bible admits the distinction of rich and poor; in commanding hospitality, it assumes that there are some who have the means of exercising it, and others towards whom it may be exercised. But the words are not the less cutting because they do not reduce all expenditure to a level. They may dilate to take in a great variety of cases, but they can never lose their proper original signification. Bread for subsistence will not, under any circumstances, be bread for mere display, for waste, for rivalry. The prayer asserts abroad, palpable, everlasting distinction between the different reasons for seeking wealth, the different ways of using it; though it leaves every man’s conscience to determine in the sight of God which reasons govern his acts, which ways he is taking. Honestly offered up, therefore, it will, I conceive, make us very uneasy in that kind of ostentation which men in each class of society are apt to affect for the purpose of not being distanced by those of the same grade, and that they may assert their right to a higher. Moralists, satirists, divines, have long been using their different weapons against this folly apparently with little success. It is now coming before us in a new form. Competition is denounced as a monstrous evil, which a new organization of society is needed to remedy. How numerous and weighty are the facts which the advocates of this theory are able to allege! how much excuse does there seem for the root and branch schemes which they suggest! Yes, if they were root and branch schemes; if they did find out the source of this evil, if a reconstruction of civil life could prevent its renewal. But we trust neither in satirists, moralists, divines, or communists. Another hand than ours is needed to deal with a disease which has penetrated so deeply, which has so nearly reached our vitals. What we can do is to tell men that this hand is stretched out, that any secret corruption which has been cherished in the heart of individuals, or in the heart of society, will be brought into the clear light; that national judgments will purge away those of which the removal is not first sought by national repentance. What we can do is to say, He who sends these judgments is willing to give that repentance. He invites us now at this time to acknowledge the sins that we know, to ask Him to search our hearts, and discover those which we know not. He bids us believe that the most inveterate cancer as in ourselves, so in the body politic, may be taken from us by His knife, if we will submit to it. He exhorts us not to wait till the dark and evil day actually comes upon us, till the house is left desolate of His presence, and stript of every good gift which we have received through it. He calls upon us this day to turn to Him with thanksgivings, as to the great Giver of all blessings, with confessions as to the Father whom we have grieved by disbelieving in His love, and not showing it forth to our brethren; with prayer that He will give us and them all we need, and most of all, the heart to receive it from Him as His stewards, for the good of those who are dear in His sight.