'Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.' This
Bread secures that if 'a man eat thereof he shall not die.' The bread
that perishes feeds a life that perishes; but this Bread not only
sustains but creates a life that cannot perish, and, taken into the
spirits of men that are 'dead in trespasses and sins,' imparts to them
a life that has no affinity to evil, and therefore no dread of
extinction.
If 'a man eats thereof he shall not die,' Christ annihilates for us the
mere accident of physical death. That is only a momentary jolt on the
course. That may all be crammed into a parenthesis. 'He shall not die,'
but live the true life which comes from the possession of union with
Him who is the Life. The bread which we eat sustains life; the Bread
which He gives originates it. The bread which we eat is assimilated to
our bodily frame, the Bread which He gives assimilates our spiritual
nature to His. And so it comes to be the only food that stills a hungry
heart, the only food that satisfies and yet never cloys, which, eating,
we are filled, and being filled are made capable of more, and, being
capable of more, receive more. In blessed and eternal alternation,
fruition and desire, satisfaction and appetite, go on.
'Why do ye spend money for that which is not bread?' You cannot answer
the question with any reasonable answer. Oh, dear friends! I beseech
you, listen to that Lord who is saying to each of us, 'Take, eat, this
is My body, which is broken for you.'