things are learnt by means of signs. I now use tlie word
R ON CHRISTIAN doctrint:. [book t.
next of the mode of making known, the meaning ;—a great and arduous undertaking, and one that, if difficult to carry out, it is, I fear, presumptuous to enter upon. And presumptuous it would undoubtedly be, if I were counting on my own strength ; but since my hope of accomplishing the work rests on Him who has already supplied me with many thoughts on this subject,
I do not fear but that He will go on to supply what is yet wanting when once I have begun to use what He has already given. For a possession which is not diminished by being shared with others, if it is possessed and not shared, is not yet
" The Lord saith, " Whopossessed as it ought to be possessed.
soever hath, to him shall be given."^ He will give, then, to those who have ; that is to say, if they use freely and cheerfully what they have received, He will add to and perfect His gifts. The loaves in the miracle were only five and seven in number before the disciples began to divide them among the hungry people. But when once they began to distribute them, though the wants of so many thousands were satisfied, they filled baskets with the fragments that were left.' Now, just as that bread increased in the very act of breaking it, so those thoughts which the Lord has already vouchsafed to me with a view to undertaking this work will, as soon as I begin to impart them to others, be multiplied by His grace, so that, in this very work of distribution in whicli I have engaged, so far from incurring loss and poVerty, I shall be made to rejoice in a marvellous increase of wealth.
Chap, ii.— What a thing is, and ichat asigji.
2. All instruction is either about^ things or about signs ; but things are learnt by means of signs. I now use tlie word
" thing " in a strict sense, to signify tliat which is never employed as a sign of anything else : for example, wood, stone, cattle, and otlier things of tliat kind. Not, however, the wood which we read Moses cast into tlic bitter waters to make them sweet,^ nor the stone wliich Jacob used as a pillow,* nor the ram which Abraham offered up instead of his son;* for these, though tlu^y are things, are also signs of other things. There are signs of another kind, those which are
Matt. xiii. 12. * Matt. xiv. 17, etc., x.\. 31, etc. ' Ex. xv. 25.
Gen. xxviii. 11. » Gen. xxii. 13.