Editorial October 15, 1927 Issue

Manna

Albert F. Gilmore

CHRISTIAN SCIENTISTS are deeply grateful for the revelation of all true causation as divine, and of effect only as the expression of the one cause, which is God. So certain was Moses of the divine source of the manna which lay "upon the face of the wilderness," that he declared, "This is the bread which the Lord hath given you to eat." The heroic lawgiver, who through his transcendent faith in God had been able to lead the children of Israel thus far on their journey from bondage in Egypt to freedom in the promised land, was never in doubt about God's complete provision for His children, or that God's constant love would find expression in terms of their need, feeding the hungry and satisfying those materially athirst.

In view of the wilderness experience of Moses and the Israelites, the recent report of an expedition sent by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem into the desert of Sinai to investigate the subject of manna is of more than passing interest. It is indicative of the persistent effort which is being made to conform the Scriptural accounts of divine aid administered to those in need, to what is termed natural law, by explaining away whatever is generally regarded as supernatural intervention in the phenomena of nature. The expedition reported that manna is the gum which exudes from the terebinth tree, and possesses certain nutritious qualities.

Literal acceptance, however, of this report would in no wise destroy the possibility that God fed the children of Israel in their wilderness wanderings; for manna as nutritive gum may have appeared at the command of the Lord as readily as the loaves and fishes with which Christ Jesus fed the multitude. In the desire to satisfy those willing to accept only material cause and effect, similar explanation has been made of the so-called miracles of the quails, and of the feeding of Elijah by the ravens.

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