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 man
has died at the door of a granary. Some of us are starving, though
beside us there is 'the Bread of God that came down from heaven.'
Brethren, you must eat, and I venture to put the question to you—_not_
Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the world's Saviour? _not_ Do you
believe in an Incarnation? _not_ Do you believe in an Atonement? but
Have you claimed your portion in the Bread? Have you taken it into your
own lips? _Crede et manducasti_, said Augustine, 'believe'—or, rather,
_trust_—'and thou hast eaten.' Have _you_?
Further, let me remind you that under this eating is included not only
some initial act of faith, but a continuous course of partaking. The
dinner you ate this day last year is of no use for to-day's hunger. The
act of faith done long ago will not bring the Bread to nourish you now.
You must repeat the meal. And very strikingly and beautifully in the
last part of this conversation our Lord varies the word for eating, and
substitutes—as if He were speaking to those who had fulfilled the
previous condition—another one which implies the ruminant action of
certain animals. And that is what Christian men have to do, to feed
over and over and over again on the 'Bread of God which came down from
heaven.' Christ, and especially in and through His death for us, can
nourish and sustain our wills, giving them the pattern of what they
should desire, and the motive for which they should desire it. Christ,
and especially through His death, can feed our consciences, and take
away from them all the painful sense of guilt, while He sharpens them
to a far keener sensitiveness to evil. Christ, and especially through
His death, can feed our understandings, and unveil therein the deepest
truths concerning God and man, concerning man's destiny and God's
mercy. Christ, and especially in His death, can feed our affections,
and minister to love and desire and submission and hope their celestial
nourishment. He is 'the Bread of God,' and we have but to eat of that
which is laid before us.