---

The disciples "were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure, and wondered." Had the miracle of the loaves been duly considered, the inference from it must have been that He who had wrought it must be Lord over the whole system of nature, and could, therefore, whenever He pleased, bend the elements to His rule.

I. There was another occasion on which Christ miraculously fed a great multitude. We read of His sustaining four thousand men, besides women and children, with seven loaves and a few little fishes. THERE WERE ONLY TWO OCCASIONS ON WHICH THIS WAS DONE. He showed Himself ready to heal all manner of sickness; but He showed no readiness to provide food miraculously. The reason is not far to seek. It was altogether one of the consequences of sin that men were afflicted with various maladies and pains, and that disease and death held sway in this creation. But it was not one of those consequences, that men had to labour for subsistence. Labour was God's earliest ordinance, so that Adam, in innocence, was placed in paradise to keep it. Had He dealt with men's want as He dealt with disease, removing it instantly by the exercise of miraculous power, He would have pronounced it a grievance that labour had been made the heritage of man; whereas, by the course which He actually took, He gave all the weight of His testimony to the advantageousness of the existing appointment. Universal plenty, yielded without toil, would generate universal dissoluteness.

II. When He multiplied the scanty provision, and made it satisfy the wants of a famishing multitude, He designed, we may believe, TO FIX ATTENTION ON HIMSELF, AS APPOINTED TO PROVIDE, OR RATHER TO BE THE SPIRITUAL SUSTENANCE OF THE WHOLE HUMAN RACE. And how striking, in the first place, the correspondence between Christ, the multiplier of a few loaves and fishes, and Christ the expounder of the commandments of the moral law. It might almost have been excusable, had a man who lived under the legal dispensation, and had nothing before him but the letter of the precepts, imagined the possibility of a perfect obedience to the commandments of the two tables. It was a wonderful amplification. The statute books of a nation are numerous and ponderous volumes; various cases as they arise demand fresh laws, and legislatures are either busy in making new legislations, or modifying old. But the statutes of God, though intended for countless ages, contain only ten short commandments — the whole not so long as the preamble to a single act of human legislation, and these ten commandments, breathed on by Him who spake as never man spake, amplify themselves into innumerable precepts, so that every possible case was provided for, every possible sin, every possible duty enjoined; and who can fail to observe how aptly Christ represented His office as expounder of the law, when He fed a multitude with the slender provision which His disciples had brought into the wilderness? But have not the virtues of the single death, the merits of the one work of expiation, proved ample enough for the innumerable company which have gathered round Christ and applied to Him for deliverance? And are not — if we may use the expression — are not the basketfuls which still remain, sufficient to preclude the necessity for any fresh miracle, though those who should crave spiritual food for ages to come should immeasurably exceed those who have already been satisfied in the wilderness?

III. To the PRECISE EFFECT WHICH A WANT OF CONSIDERATION PRODUCED IN THE CASE OF THE APOSTLES AND WHICH IT IS JUST AS LIKELY TO PRODUCE IN OUR OWN. It is evident that the miracle of the loaves is referred to by the sacred historian, as so signal a display of Christ's power that none who witnessed it ought to have been surprised at any other. The thing charged against the apostles is that they were amazed and confounded at Christ stilling the winds and the waves, though they had just before seen Him produce food for thousands; and the thing implied is — for otherwise there would be no ground for blame — that the miracle of the loaves should have prepared them for any further demonstration of lordship over nature and her laws. Thus the miracle of the loaves should have sufficed to destroy all remains of unbelief, and should have furnished the apostles with motives to confidence under the most trying circumstances, and a simple dependence on the guardianship of the Saviour, whatever the trials to which they were exposed. And why is it that we ourselves adopt not His reasoning? Why is it that we do not similarly argue from the loaves to the storm — from the mighty works of the atonement to the manifold requirements of a state of warfare and pilgrimage? Ah, if we did, could there be that anxiety, that mistrust, those fears, those tremblings, which we too often manifest when pains and troubles come thickly upon us? No, no; it is because we look not on the cross, because we forget the agony and bloody sweat and passion of the Redeemer, that we shrink from the storm and are terrified by the waxes. We consider not the miracle of the loaves, and then, when the sky is dark, and the winds fierce, we are tempted to give ourselves up for lost.

(H. Melvill.)

---

---

KJV: For they considered not the miracle of the loaves: for their heart was hardened.

WEB: for they hadn't understood about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.