VIII

The positive and cumulative reasons which the New Testament affords for interpreting our Lord’s words at the institution of the Eucharist as identifying that which He gave to His disciples with His body and His blood cannot rightly be set aside because of other expressions in the Gospels on which great stress has been laid by some writers; and the light shed on His words by the spiritual character of His risen body is not to be ignored because they were spoken before His death.

1. It has often been alleged that phrases by which our Lord on other occasions described Himself are parallel to the words used at the institution of the Eucharist and are merely metaphorical. An inference has been drawn that a metaphorical interpretation is to be placed on the words of institution, and that they are to be understood to mean either that the bread and the wine represent the body and blood of Christ without being His body and blood or that they are means by which, though themselves only bread and wine, those who receive in faith may partake inwardly and spiritually of Christ. Such phrases are “I am the bread of life,” “I am the living bread,” “I am the light of the world,” “I am the door of the sheep,” “I am the good shepherd,” “I am the way,” “I am the true vine”. In considering the argument based on these expressions it is important to notice three facts. First, as a matter of interpretation, the explanation that the bread and wine are means, and only means, by which the faithful communicants may spiritually receive Christ is not satisfactory. The alternatives are really two,—“This is in fact My body,” or “This represents My body,”—not three,—“This is in fact My body,” “This represents My body,” “This is a means by the reception of which My body may be spiritually received”. Secondly, neither the phrases which are used to support a metaphorical interpretation nor the circumstances in which these phrases were spoken were parallel to the words and circumstances at the institution of the Eucharist. Thirdly, a view by which the phrases are regarded as simply metaphorical attaches to them an altogether inadequate meaning. Each phrase denotes an actual fact about our Lord. It is not by way of metaphor but in spiritual reality that He feeds Christians, and gives them light, and admits them into the Church, and tends them, and affords them access to the Father, and unites them to Himself. In like manner, it is not by way of metaphor but in spiritual reality that the bread and the wine of the Eucharist are His body and His blood.

2. To avoid the difficulty of the gift at the institution of the Eucharist being of the spiritual body and blood of the risen life of Christ, it has been supposed by some who interpret our Lord’s words in their obvious sense that they were anticipatory only and denote not what the Apostles received at the institution but what they and other Christians were to receive after His ascension. It is more reasonable to suppose that the anticipation was in actual fact of the spiritual powers of our Lord’s risen life, and that, as in the days of His humiliation in the course of His ministry He possessed by anticipation in His human nature the glory of His ascended life for the purposes of the Transfiguration, so at the close of His ministry before that humiliation was ended He similarly possessed by anticipation the powers of His risen life for the purposes of the institution of the Sacrament and the gift to the Apostles.