THE KING’S BUSINESS 129 this explanation, also. Tamarisk trees exude gum for two months only; and tamarisk trees are comparatively rare in the peninsula of Sinai. ‘The entire supply would not feed one man for a year.’ Tamarisk gum cannot be baked, except to vanish away from any food form. It contains no food elements capable of nourishing the human body. At best it is but a passing confection, or even medicine. Let us picture, then, the children of Israel journeying for forty years and accompanied by the necessary forests of tamarisk trees and the needful insects doing ever their stinging business under divine guidance, and the gum with its constituent elements changed into nitrogenous food values— one can hear the monks of Mount Sinai chuckle as they imagine such a wealth of tarfa gum! Either this, or the inference that the passing use of a little handful of the gum was the historical foundation for the myth of the manna! We find no escape from the dilemma into which Professor McFayden has been led. Then there comes.to us the solemn scene in Galilee when Jesus sadly told the expectant multitude that He would not longer give them earthly bread that came down from heaven. ‘It was not Moses that gave you the bread out of Heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread out of heaven.’ If the manna of Exodus is*not a miraculous bread, there is a moral stain upon the testimony of Jesi^s. ‘Bread from heaven’ is the testimony of Nehemiah 9:15; ‘Bread from heaven’ is the testimony -of Psalm 105; ‘And he rained down manna upon them to eat, and gave them -food from heaven’ is the testimony of Psalm 78. “We who are preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ in America are dis gusted when a magazine of standing and historical worth foists upon us the frayed out, vapid exegesis of Dr. Driver. That school of interpretation had its day, did its bitter work and left its wrecks all along its pathway. We do not care to hear of it in up-to-date Bible study. We earnestly warn all our brethren, ministers and laymen, against such publications. Keep them out of sight! They are but sad relics.”
|jjj«t run» la (ttlfriat rtarn from tlje hrah anit hrromr tiff firat fru ita o f tljem that alrpt, (0 fceatlf, m lym ia tlfg ating? © graue, mljere ia tlyg uirtorg? ®lfe a tig g o f hratlj ia at«; anil tiff atrrngtlf o f at« ia tlje lam. Hut tlfanka ho to (Hah, mlftrlf gtarttj mb tfye oirtorg ttjrooglf o « r iCarh 3 m t a flUfriat. Elyereforc, mg hclotteh brethren, he g e atrhfaat, «nmoueable almaga abomthutg in ttfe morfe o f tiff ffiorh, faraam«rlf aa ge knout ttfat gour labour ta not fn oatn tn ttf& Harh.— 1 d o r . 1 5 : 2 0 ,5 5 - 5 8 .
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