' Then Jesus said to them, 'Verily, verily, I say
unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven.' No: but only
a type and picture of it. 'My Father giveth you the true bread from
heaven. For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven,
and giveth life unto the world. . . . I am that bread of life.'
My friends, herein is a great mystery. Something of what it means,
however, we may learn from that wise and good Jew, Philo, who was
St. Paul's teacher according to the flesh, before he became a
Christian; and who himself was so near to the kingdom of God, that
St. Paul often in his epistles uses Philo's very words, putting into
them a Christian meaning. And what says he concerning the Rock of
living waters?
The soul, he says, falls in with a scorpion in the wilderness; and
then thirst, which is the thirst of the passions--of the lusts which
war in our members--seizes on it; till God sends forth on it the
stream of his own perfect wisdom, and causes the changed soul to
drink of unchangeable health. For the steep rock is the wisdom of
God (by whom he means the Word of God, whom Philo knew not in the
flesh, but whom we know, as the Lord Jesus Christ), which, being
both sublime and the first of all things; he quarried out of his own
powers; and of it he gives drink to the souls which love God; and
they, when they have drunk, are filled with the most universal
manna.
Pages:
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132