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The air is full of projects for the amelioration of the condition of the poor and for arranging the relations of capital and labour. This story will afford help in these, if its suggestions are heeded. The spectacle of the disciples wrestling with their problem is a piteous one, but it is deplorably familiar. Note our Saviour's wisdom. "How many loaves have ye?" A prudent estimate of our resources is the earliest thing in demand.

I. ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF OUR DEPENDENCE ON THE SAME PROVIDENCE OF GOD WILL BE OF THE MOST VALUABLE ASSISTANCE IN TEACHING US THE PRACTICAL WAY IN WHICH TO AID THE POOR. Put away all superciliousness. "The rich and the poor meet together: the Lord is the maker of them all." There is no possible philosophy by which an opulent man can prove himself any wiser or better than one who is reduced in income. Many a man has toiled as industriously, and planned as shrewdly, as ever any one of us did; but chances have been against him. Still, we are to remember that this does not prove that we are the better men, nor that he is worse: it only proves that God is sovereign over His creatures. That was a sober counsel for all the ages which Moses gave Israel (see Deuteronomy 8:11-18).

II. MEN WILL COME TO MORE REAL WISDOM AND USEFULNESS IN CARING FOR THE POOR AND THE HUNGRY WHEN THEY ACTUALLY ADMIT THAT SOMETHING MUST BE, AND CAN BE DONE BY THEMSELVES. There is a suggestion of great sense in the witticism of Sydney Smith: "Whenever A sees B in trouble, he is sure to say, with due consideration, that C ought to help him." Much of the most available and valuable human sympathy in this world is wasted in just a blind and suffused wishing that some plan could be made by which every relief could be given at an extraordinary effort. What is wanted is a quiet endeavour to help one man, or one woman, or one child, as the nearest one to our hand. Mass-meetings are valuable; great associations awake zeal and direct it; but individual effort will go farther, and reach the case more swiftly. It is sad to think how societies multiply, while the cry of the lowly and the poor does not grow less. You pass blanketed puppies led by a ribbon, taken out by a hired man for their airing, three avenues from the streets where human beings are shivering, uncovered and hungering in the cold. Now, something might be done when each Christian admits he can do a proper part of it.

III. IT MIGHT BE SAID HERE THAT IT WOULD NOT BE SO DIFFICULT TO FIND FUNDS TO PURCHASE "TWO HUNDRED PENNYWORTH" OF BREAD WITH WHICH TO FEED THE HUNGRY, IF THE RICH WOULD BE INDUSTRIOUS. Useful occupation is the rule for the race: if any man will not work, neither let him eat, but when he has enough to live upon, does that end his service? Might there not be some good when a merchant has gained enough for himself to withdraw upon, if he would just stay in business for a few years longer, devoting the gains of his gifted experience to the Lord? It is the business of a child of God to add to the aggregate wealth of the world by a thrifty productiveness, and then the rich people can take care of God's poor.

IV. MONEY FOR PROCURING FOOD FOR THE HUNGRY WOULD BE FORTHCOMING EASILY, IF CHRISTIANS PRIZED AND PRACTISED ECONOMY IN THE SCRIPTURAL WAY, AND DIVIDED THEIR SAVINGS IN MINISTERING TO OTHERS. All superfluities are mere grace, and ought to be given away unhesitatingly when poorer people are in actual distress. We do not venture to say what our Lord would have remarked to Philip, in his perplexity at not finding out how to procure two hundred pennyworth of bread, if the unsophisticated fisherman had come over from Capernaum with anything like a gold-headed cane in his hand, or with a seal-ring on his finger. The state has assumed the board and clothing of an able-bodied man for twenty years of uselessness in prison, because he tore a jewel out of the ear of a woman who was lavishly wearing four-thousand dollars worth of ornaments upon her own person that day in the street.

(C. S. Robinson, D. D.)

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KJV: After these things Jesus went over the sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias.

WEB: After these things, Jesus went away to the other side of the sea of Galilee, which is also called the Sea of Tiberias.