The Hidden Manna

To the church at Pergamos, pressed hard by persecution and by the seductions of false teaching, the Lord makes a promise strange and secret. To him that overcometh, he says, will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it. Hidden manna, a white stone, a secret name. Every part of the promise is inward, personal, unseen, known only between the Lord and the soul that receives it. The rewards of Christ are not all public. Some of the best of them are secret.

The manna itself we know. It fell in the wilderness and fed the whole camp in the open, bread from heaven for a hungry people. But there was a hidden portion. God commanded that an omer of it be laid up in a pot before the ark, kept in the holiest place, out of sight, a secret and sacred store. And the Lord, who called himself the living bread which came down from heaven, takes up that image and promises to the overcomer not the open manna only but the hidden, the secret feeding, the portion laid up in the holy place and given to those who press through to him.

THE SECRET FOOD

For the life hidden with God has a food the world knows nothing of. The Lord himself, wearied at the well, said to his puzzled disciples, I have meat to eat that ye know not of. There was a nourishment feeding him that they could not see, the doing of his Father’s will, the secret sustenance of communion with God. And so it is with all who live the hidden life. There is a feeding no one else observes, the sweetness that comes in prayer when no one is watching, the strength drawn from the word in the closed room, the quiet nourishment of a soul that has learned to eat of Christ in secret. This is the hidden manna, and the solitary knows it best, for the hidden manna is the very bread of the hidden life.

And it is a bread the world cannot give and cannot take away. The one fed on hidden manna is not at the mercy of the visible table, the applause, the success, the outward comforts that feed the natural man and leave him hungry the moment they are gone. He has a secret store, laid up before the ark, that sustains him when every visible provision fails. This is how the martyrs sang in prison and the hermits flourished in the waste and the poor in this world were rich in faith. They were eating a bread the world could not see, the hidden manna given to those who overcome.

GIVEN TO HIM THAT OVERCOMETH

For mark that the hidden manna is promised to the overcomer, not to the comfortable. It is the food of the fight. The church at Pergamos dwelt where Satan’s seat was, hemmed in by pressure and temptation, and to those who held fast and would not deny his name he promised the secret bread. The hidden manna is not given to the soul at ease that never contends for anything, but to the one who battles, who resists the seductions, who presses through the pressure and holds fast to Christ. The secret feeding sustains the fighter, and it is tasted most sweetly by those who most need it, in the hardest places, where the visible bread has run out and only the hidden remains.

THE WHITE STONE AND THE NEW NAME

And with the hidden manna comes a white stone, and in the stone a new name. In the old world a white stone was a token of many good things, of acquittal at a trial, of admission to a feast, of friendship pledged. And on this stone is written a name, a new name, the sign all through Scripture of a new identity given by God. Abram became Abraham, Jacob became Israel, Simon became Peter, each renamed by God to mark what God had made of him. The overcomer is given his own new name, the name that says who he has become in Christ, the true self hidden now with Christ in God, and one day revealed.

But the wonder of it is that this name is written which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it. It is a secret between God and the soul, a knowing so particular and so intimate that it cannot be shared, cannot be told, cannot be overheard. God knows each of his own with a knowledge unlike his knowledge of any other, calls each by a name he gives to no one else, deals with each in a way that has never been repeated with another soul since the world began. I have called thee by thy name, he says, thou art mine. The new name on the white stone is that particular, unrepeatable, secret love of God for this one soul, spoken in a word no one else will ever know.

KNOWN ONLY TO THE RECEIVER

This teaches us not to envy, and not to imitate, the visible graces of others. We look at another soul’s evident gifts, its public usefulness, its manifest consolations, and we grow discouraged that our own life with God is so hidden and so plain. But the deepest things between God and a soul are precisely the things that cannot be seen or shared. You have a hidden manna that is fed to no one else, and a name on a white stone that no other creature will ever read. The mercies God shows you in secret, the particular tenderness of his dealings with you, are incommunicable, and they are yours. Do not measure your life with God by what can be told. The best of it is the part that cannot.

GATHER IT DAILY

There is a discipline written into the manna that belongs to the hidden manna too. It could not be hoarded. When some of the people kept it overnight, against the command, it bred worms and stank by morning. It had to be gathered fresh each day, a new portion for each new day, and yesterday’s gathering would not do for today. So it is with the secret feeding of the soul. Yesterday’s communion, however sweet, will not sustain today. The hidden manna is a daily bread, gathered morning by morning, and the soul that tries to live today on the store of a past encounter finds it, like the hoarded manna, gone stale.

And it was gathered early, before the sun waxed hot, for when the sun grew hot upon it, it melted away. There is a counsel in that for the seeking soul. The hidden manna is most surely gathered in the quiet of the morning, before the heat of the day rises, before the noise and the business burn off the stillness in which alone it is found. Those who lay abed and did not rise to gather went hungry, and those who put off the seeking until the day had grown hot found the ground bare. The early, quiet seeking is the surest gathering.

Nor was more than a day’s portion given, and this too is mercy and discipline together. God fed his people one day at a time, and would not let them lay up a hoard that might tempt them to forget him, so that each morning they were brought back, hungry, to depend on him again. The hidden life is fed the same way, kept in daily dependence, never given so great a store of yesterday’s grace that it need not come again this morning for more. Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God, and the words proceed daily, and daily they must be gathered.

So do not try to live on a past feeding. Gather your hidden manna fresh, each morning, early, before the heat of the day burns off the quiet, and let yesterday’s portion go, and come again hungry for today’s. The store is never so full that you may skip the gathering, and the God who laid up the secret manna gives it new to those who come new each morning to receive it.

So seek the hidden manna and not the visible reward. Learn to eat of Christ in secret, to draw the strength that no one sees, to be fed at the store laid up before the ark. Contend, as the overcomer must, holding fast his name against the pressure and the seduction, for it is to the one who overcomes that the secret bread is given. And receive the white stone, the new name, the particular and unrepeatable love that God bears to you alone, known to no one else and needing to be known by no one else, for it is enough that he knows it, and that he calls you by it, and that you are his. Your life is hid with Christ in God, and hidden there, it is fed with hidden manna.