we are assuredly not so to pray during the remaining hours of the day? For we shall no longer be able to say, “Give us this day,” respecting what we have already received; or every one will be able to compel us to celebrate that sacrament at the very last hour of the day. 27. It remains, therefore, that we should understand the daily bread as spiritual, that is to say, divine precepts, which we ought daily to meditate and to labour after. For just with respect to these the Lord says, “Labour for the meat which perisheth not.” That food, moreover, is called daily food at present, so long as this temporal life is measured off by means of days that depart and return. And, in truth, so long as the desire of the soul is dir- ected by turns, now to what is higher, now to what is lower, i.e. now to spiritual things, now to carnal, as is the case with him who at one time is nourished with food, at another time suffers hunger; bread is daily necessary, in order that the hungry man may be recruited, and he who is falling down may be raised up. As, therefore, our body in this life, that is to say, before that great change, is recruited with food, because it feels loss; so may the soul also, since by means of temporal desires it sustains as it were a loss in its striving after God, be reinvigorated by the food of the precepts. Moreover, it is said, “Give us this day,” as long as it is called to-day, i.e. in this temporal life. For we shall be so abundantly provided with spiritual food after this life unto eternity, that it will not then be called daily bread; because there the flight of time, which causes days to succeed days, whence it may be called to-day, will not exist. But as it is said, “To-day, if ye will hear His voice,”299 which the apostle inter- prets in the Epistle to the Hebrews, As long as it is called to-day;300 so here also the expression is to be understood, “Give us this day.” But if any one wishes to understand the sentence before us also of food necessary for the body, or of the sacrament of the Lord’s body, we must take all three meanings conjointly; that is to say, that we are to ask for all at once as daily bread, both the bread necessary for the body, and the visible hallowed bread, and the invisible bread of the word of God.301 299 Ps. xcv. 7. 300 Heb. iii. 13. 301 The Greek ἐπιούσιος, translated daily (see margin of Revised Version, with alternate rendering of American Committee), is found only here and in Luke (xi. 3). Its meaning does not seem to come under the review of Augustin, but has troubled modern commentators. It has been taken to mean (1) needful, hence suffi- cient, as opposed to superfluity or want (Chrysostom, Tholuck, Ewald, Ebrard, Weiss, etc.); (2) daily (Luther, English version, etc.); (3) for the coming day (Grotius, Meyer, Thayer, Lightfoot, who has an elaborate treatment in Revision of English New Testament, Append. pp. 195–245). The direct reference of the bread to spiritual food is given by the Vulgate, and generally accepted in the Roman-Catholic Church. Olshausen, Delitzsch, Alford, etc., regard the spiritual nourishment involved by implication in the term. 105 Chapter VII