account." As if he had said, "Though I could have done without your gift, to you it would have been a real loss not to send it. It has indeed benefited me, and for that I am deeply grateful: but it has benefited you much more; and I am more gratified by the spiritual good it has done to you, than by the temporal relief it has afforded to me." Surely, then, giving ought to be regarded as one of the means of grace; and were we to look upon it in this light, instead of giving "grudgingly," we should be thankful for the opportunity, and the gratitude of the giver would surpass even that of the receiver.

Again. The highest commendations are bestowed upon those who gave largely in proportion to their means, however small might be the actual amount. The poor widow cast into the treasury but "two mites," the smallest sum that was admissible by law; but then it was "all she had, even all her living." And our Lord, instead of blaming her for want of prudence, bestowed the highest commendation on the self-denying and generous act. Many that were rich had cast in much. "But this poor widow," said He, "hath cast in more than they all." St. Paul speaks in transports of "the grace of God," (the grace of Christian liberality,) bestowed on the poor churches of Macedonia; stating that "in a great trial of affliction," and in the midst of "deep poverty," they had contributed not only to their power, but even "beyond" it; and that with so much cheerfulness that they prayed the apostles, even "with much entreaty," to "receive the gift," and to take upon themselves the office of ministering to the saints.

In regard to the duty of regular and proportionate giving, St. Paul offers, on one occasion, the following direction: "Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him." (1 Cor. xvi. 2.) Giving is too often extemporaneous and thoughtless, and sadly inferior to the ability. What the apostle here enjoins is, that it be made a religious and conscientious duty every week. He does not, of course, mean that we are to give nothing except on the Sabbath, but that on that day we should "lay by," as an offering to God, a due proportion of our means; and that this should be kept by us "in store," to meet the claims of religion and benevolence which may be made upon us. to enlarge somewhat on this most important direction.

It may be well

Observe, then, that the apostle fixes the time of this duty. The importance of having fixed times, as far as possible, for other duties, is universally admitted. We all subscribe to the aphorism, "Any time is no time." Have we not all found by experience, that when we omitted to fix the time of a duty, thinking that it could be done at any time, it has commonly been neglected altogether? Now, there is special reason for having a time fixed for setting apart a due proportion of our income to God. And can any other time be so suitable for this duty as the holy Sabbath? when we are led specially to reflect on the liberality of the Divine Father in giving His own Son for the world's redemption. Surely, when the Christian has been musing on God's love, until the fire of gratitude so burns in his heart as

to lead him to exclaim, "Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift!" he will not be likely to offer a less proportion of his property to God than he ought.

St. Paul not only determines the time of this duty, but also indicates a proportion to be devoted to God. He does not indeed enjoin a definite arithmetical proportion; but still his rule is sufficiently definite for all practical purposes, especially when we consider the light which is thrown on the question by the Old Testament. If this duty be not made a matter of conscience, any rule, however definite, would be evaded. The apostle's rule is this: "Let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him." Here is a distinct recognition of two things: first, that God is the Author of our temporal prosperity; secondly, that He claims from every one an amount according to that prosperity. Then, obviously, our first inquiry should be, "To what extent has the Lord prospered me?" and the scale of giving must rise in proportion to the increase of prosperity. We should, however, be on our guard against a very plausible error. We are not to assume that we are giving enough now, (even though the absolute amount may be large,) and determine to increase our future givings in proportion to our future prosperity. Rather let us go back a few years, when it was with great difficulty, and not without encountering some privation, that we could support our families. How much did we give then? Have we increased our givings in proportion to our increased prosperity? If not, then, plainly, we have been robbing God; and our first duty is restitution. Let us remember that our accounts will have to be audited, at the last day, before an assembled universe. How shall we appear in the presence of the great Master, the Proprietor of all? Spitalfields.

JOHN HANNAH.

HORE BIBLICE.

No. LXXXVII.-MANNA.

FROM THE GERMAN OF DR. w. F. BESSER.

EXOD. XVI. 13-15.

(Translated for the Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine.)

"WHAT was it?" is asked even to the present day respecting the manna which the children of Israel ate forty years long, until they came into the land of their inheritance. Three explanations have been given.

1. Manna was a miraculous food, consisting of dew transformed into bread. The dew of heaven refreshes the earth, and makes it productive and fruitful; (Gen. xxvii. 28;) and, so long as Israel followed their Heavenly Captain through the wilderness, where nothing could be sown, (Num. xx. 5,) the dew was still to supply them with bread without the trouble of sowing. Hence it is called, "bread from heaven."

2. The manna of the Israelites was the same wilderness-food which is still to be found in the Sinaitic peninsula, and which the Arabs spread

upon their bread and eat. The tamarisk plant, (el-tarfah,) which is especially plentiful in the watered regions bordering on the Sinaitic chain, produces by exudation of the leaves, occasioned by the puncture of a small leaf-acorn, (according to Ehrenberg,) or by exhalation from the fresh buds, (according to Lepsius,) a reddish yellow sap, which drops down from the branches, and hardens into a gum. The taste of this substance is sweetish, and is sometimes compared to honey. Now, if what the holy Scripture says of manna is to be reduced to the product of the tamarisk, then we must admit an enormous amount of mythical embellishment; and whoever has once determined not to believe in the living God, who alone "doeth wonders," whoever says in his heart, "Away with the old song of the Lord; for He worketh no miracles," is beyond the reach of help and argument, unless it come from Him who rouses the insensible sleeper, that he may learn to cry out, with the church, "Sing unto the Lord a new song; for He hath done marvellous things." (Psalm xcviii.) But it has also been maintained,―

3. That the question respecting the manna of the Bible is improperly put, when it stands, "Was it bread from heaven, or the gum of the tamarisk?" There is a medium course; and a natural foundation for the miracle is held to be quite consistent with the dignity of God. If, according to Burckhardt, the aggregate annual produce of the manna at present collected throughout the Sinaitic peninsula amounts to some five or six hundred pounds in weight, still the miraculous augmentation of nature's own gift, especially observable in the double supply of the sixth day, discovers the interposition of the hand of God from heaven. This explanation, at first sight, has some degree of plausibility for, if in the plagues of Egypt Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews, so convincingly proclaimed Himself the Lord in the midst of the land, by enhancing in His service the indigenous powers of nature, and thus by means of genuine Egyptian plagues put the gods of Egypt to shame, and the king to confusion; it might be equally consistent with His majesty, as Lord in the wilderness, to provide a miraculous supply for His people out of the naturally scanty provision of the desert. The feeding of His people with manna would then correspond with the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, in the hands of the compassionate Jesus, and also with the increase of the meal and oil by [the instrumentality of] Elijah. But, according to the opinion of men of the most opposite sentiments, the tamarisk manna is essentially different from that mentioned in the Bible: for it can neither be ground in a mill, nor bruised in a mortar; it is neither fit for cooking, nor for making cakes; nor does it contain the nutriment necessary for the support of life. One might indeed suppose that not only an increase in the quantity, but also an improvement of the quality, was Divinely effected; in which case little room for the natural explanation of the miracle would remain. The fact, that in the eastern and northern parts of the peninsula, where the Israelites subsisted upon manna for thirty-eight years, not a single bush of tamarisk is to be found, is of no value in determining the question; as the nature of

the soil (the tamarisk thrives in loamy soil) might since then have undergone frequent alterations.

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The manna of the Bible is not, however, the gum of the tamarisk, whether embellished by fable or miraculously multiplied and refined. The text is plain :-"When the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell upon it." (Num. xi. 9.) "But how," says Kurtz, pertinently, "could Moses venture to persuade the people that the Lord Jehovah rained manna down from heaven, that it fell with the dew, if they saw it every day oozing out of the tamarisk, hanging in drops upon the branches, and then falling in inspissated granules upon the earth?" It is objected, indeed, that to the present day the Bedouins and the monks call manna the gift of heaven," and say that it is "rained down from heaven." To this we answer,-If Moses says to the people in the name of Jehovah, "I will rain bread from heaven," and if he relates that the manna fell with the dew from heaven, he certainly intended to make the people believe, (and also his readers,) that it was the immediate gift of God, and not indirectly produced by the agency of the tamarisk and acari. And when the monks and the Bedouins talk of "rain from heaven," and "the gift of heaven," it is merely a figure of speech, which they have borrowed from the scriptural account, or else from the lips of pilgrims; and they wish to preserve it, because it flatters their vanity and self-interest.

Is it, then, a mere freak of nature, that the tamarisk manna is found precisely in that part of the Sinaitic peninsula, where the manna first fell from heaven upon the camp of Israel? We believe not. I. II. von Schubert supposes that the disposition to form manna, which at the time pervaded the atmosphere, and, through it, all the vital forces of the land, has been retained, at least, by the living plant of the manna-tamarisk. But this solution of the problem is hardly consistent with sound judgment: yet whoever approves of such an attempt to reconcile the processes of nature and of Divine grace can only do it from the correct conviction, that the remarkable coincidences between the miraculous and the natural manna must have some secret ground. The following attempt at explanation will perhaps set the matter in its true light.

It was the will of God that the miraculous gift, and the natural product of the stateliest tree to be found in the wilderness, should stand side by side. What the people had to expect, had they been dependent upon their own exertions, and limited to the means of subsistence supplied by the desert, was sufficiently evident in the miserable, tasteless, and innutritious gum of the tamarisk. The glorious superiority of grace over nature was thus distinctly represented in the contrast between the delicious manna miraculously produced at the command of God, and the poor provision of nature in the wilderness. Perhaps we might say, "If the tamarisk still bloomed and budded on Mount Sinai as on the third day of the creation, its produce would then yield a nutritious aliment;" for in the beginning God graciously supplied from heaven what since the fall the earth yields only in a state of imperfection. A similar instance of the superiority of

that which is effected by the direct interposition of God, as contrasted with what is found in the domain of nature, appears in the pillar of cloud and of fire. This allusion may be allowed, without supposing the phenomenon to have been only a more magnificent beacon, such as in eastern countries is usually carried before an army on the march, or a caravan: for the cloud came from above, and not from below. "Instead of the paltry caravan fire," says Kurtz, "God provided for the guidance of His people through the wilderness another and more glorious beacon." And so it was in reference to the manna: instead of the gum of the tamarisk, the Lord provided for His hungering people another and better food from heaven.

The resemblance between the heavenly and the earthly manna would answer another purpose. It cannot be doubted, that the similarity between the plagues of Egypt and the natural phenomena contributed to the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. A refuge was left open for his unbelief, which permitted him to ascribe to the gods of Egypt what the living God of the Hebrews had effected by the rod of Moses. In like manner, it is not improbable, the Amalekites, and their descendants, regarded the manna of the Israelites as merely the wretched substance which they gathered from their own tamarisks; and, because they were unwilling to recognise the gift of God, they became hardened in unbelief. (See Joshua xi. 19, 20.) And if in the present day the "wise" and the "prudent" of the earth look down with a smile of ridicule upon the simple ones, who are ignorant that the pretended bread from heaven is produced by the mere puncture of an acarus,—if they employ their acumen with unwearying zeal to prove, by a striking example, that all is natural which the Bible has surrounded with an appearance of miracle,-the Christian believer discovers something more instructive in the tarfah bushes of the Sinaitic desert; namely, the sovereign justice of God, who shows Himself froward with the froward, and will not compel the belief of those who obstinately resist Him, but delivers them up to the love of error, which usually adorns itself with a show of reason. Thus all the miracles of the Bible are precious to faith, but fabulous and foolish in the estimation of unbelief; and so it must continue until the miracle of the last day,-the only irresistible miracle,— which will convert all scoffing into wailing. Then let him keep his tamarisk manna, who has no liking for the manna which descends from heaven. The church enjoys the true bread from heaven, and joyfully sings the old song which in Jesus Christ is become new.

"Though He had commanded the clouds from above,

And opened the doors of heaven;

And had rained down manna upon them to eat,

And had given them of the corn of heaven:

Man did eat angels' food;

He sent them meat to the full." (Psalm Ixxviii. 23–25.)

Waiblingen, Würtemberg.

J. L.