other in equivalent symbols. And so we have not to read into the text
any allusion to the rite, but to see in the text and in the rite the
proclamation of the same thing--viz. that the flesh and the blood of
the Sacrifice for sins is the food on which a sinful and cleansed
world may feed.

II. So, secondly, let me ask you to note our Lord's requirement here.

He carries on the metaphor. 'This is the Bread which cometh down from
heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die.' The eating
necessarily follows from the symbol of the bread, as the designation
of the way by which we all, with our hungry hearts, may feed upon this
Bread of God. I need not remind you that in many a place, and in this
whole context, we find the explanation of the symbol very plainly. In
another part of this conversation we read, under another metaphor
which comes to the same thing, 'He that cometh unto Me shall never
hunger, and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst. So the eating
and the coming are diverse symbols for the one thing, the believing.
When a man eats he appropriates to himself, and incorporates into his
very being, the food of which he partakes. And when a man trusts
Christ he appropriates to himself, and incorporates into his inmost
being, the very life of Jesus Christ. You say, 'That is mysticism';
but it is the New Testament teaching, that when I trust Christ I get
more than His gifts--I get Himself; that when my faith goes out to Him
it not only rests me on Him, but it brings Him into me, and that food
of the spirit becomes the life, as we shall see, of _my_ spirit.

That condition is indispensable. It is useless to have food on your
table or your plate or in your hand, it does not nourish you there:
you must eat it, and then you gain sustenance from it. Many a hungry