Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 190, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 August 1917 — THE BREAD OF LIFE [ARTICLE]

THE BREAD OF LIFE

Eating the Flesh and Drinking the Blood of the Son of Man. Jesus said: “I am the bread of life." “I am the living bread which came down out of heaven; If any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever; yea, and the bread which I will give Is my flesh, for the life of the world.* “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life In yourselves.” “He that eateth my flesh, and drlnkeyi my blood, hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” The Jews stumbled at this eating and drinking, as did Nicodemus at being “born again.” It may be that some of us, too, are stumbling, for thia very remarkable way in which the Master stated a very great truth has caused not little confusion in the religious world, some of it even In our own day. Whatever strangeness may have been fastened to these wonderful sayings of our Lord by those who would mystify his statements, or who would hide from the less Intelligent the great ideas the Master had in mind, nothing in all his teachings is more practical or more Important than the very thing, he is here saying, and he certainly intended them to be understood. He is saying some very intelligent things to a very materialistic people, and divine wisdom prompted him to clothe his Ideas In this very striking language.' It is necessary for us, also, to think, if we shall grasp the spiritual truths the Master intended to teach. And so, first of all, let us think of eating. But we must not confine our thinking simply to taking food into the stomach. While this is the literal, it is the limited idea; Much more is involved, else eating falls the purpose of eating. We must think of it in the more comprehensive sense as the process of appropriating the life element In physical food to the building up of the physical body; utilising the vital energy inherent in physical food in the construction of physical manhood. This process, in its entirety, is a wonderful thing, absolutely necessary to physical existence, whether at low or high cost of living. We may think of eating, and not think of all that is involved, but eating must mean the process in its entirety, or its purpose falls. - What is true of eating is equally true of drinking, and the same things may be said concerning It. It is the same principle of utilization or appropriation, the only difference being that In .eating we supply one requirement of the physical body, while in drinking we supply another. Different elements enter into the process of body-bulldlng, and these are appropriated, in part, by eating and drinking. Now, if we carry thlq idea of eating over into the realm of redemption, and if we will consider that the spiritual man must have food as well as the physical man, and then, if we understand that this Is just what Jesus was talking about, and will allow him to use the familiar form of the physical to express the spiritual, we will at once see the logic of his statements. We will readily understand how we are to “eat his flesh and drink his blood” in just the way in which Jesus used this language. Let us see how reasonable and how important his thought. He said: "No man cometh unto the Father but by me.” There is no solution of the problem without him. Then, “without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin,” and his blood cleanseth from all sin.” Jesus and his blood are the absolute first essentials. He, therefore, musl make the sacrifice necessary unto the remission of sin. And when that sacrifice is made for us, it must be utilized by us, if its benefits are to ba realized in us. Or, to state It otherwise, we must appropriate unto our salvation the sacrifice which was esential in his broken body and shed blood. To “eat his flesh and drink his blood" is a logical form of statement, if we give to eating its full meaning—that of appropriating his sacrifice unto our redemption, or to our spiritual life. And this must be actual or real, and just as practical, as to appropriate physical food to the use of our physical bodies. , It was after this manner the Savior was speaking. He simply used the form of statement familiar In the physical to’ express the less familiar truth concerning the spiritual. If we will do our thinking after the manner of his speaking, we will find that he was not saying such a strange thing, nor saying that thing In such strange way, after aIL ! The difficulty thrown around these statements has been in trying to make our Lord say what he was not trying to say, and not trying to understand what he was clearly saying.—A. L. Orcott, in Christian Standard- - .