The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

seed is not the symbol of anything else, but is itself the thing symbolized
by the natural seed--it is the word. If we could say, as in a parable: This
bread signifies the body of Christ, it would mean that real bread is the
symbol of ideal bread, to wit, the communion bread, and that the thing
idealized in the term communion bread is not the symbol, but the thing
symbolized, and is identical with the body. It is a striking illustration of the
way in which the extremes of exegetical absurdity meet, that to make a
parallel between the language of the Supper and of a parable, would end
practically in an error akin to transubstantiation. It would imply the identity
of the thing expressed ideally in the word bread, with the thing expressed
literally in the word body. It would leave, as the only literal elements in the
Supper, body and blood--no real bread, no real cup; just as in the parable
of the sower, the only literal elements left are the Son of man, the word, the
world, the hearers.
7. Nothing is, in itself, metaphorical or symbolical. A lamb as a lamb,
a lion as a lion, is not a symbol. Neither the real lion, nor the real lamb, is
symbolical. It is the ideal lion or lamb that is symbolical. The mind makes
it so. The mind recognizes and accepts the analogy on which the metaphor
or symbol rests, and thus makes the symbol. Hence the bread, as such, can
be no more a symbol of the body than it can be the body itself. Bread, as
bread, is no symbol, but a literal reality. The moment we fix the fact that a
piece of bread is to be regarded as a piece of bread, apart from the general
analogies of all bread, we entirely exclude that bread from any possible,
relation to the symbol or metaphor. Christ could say, The bread which I
will give is My flesh, but not, the baker's bread, the wheat bread, which I
will give, is My flesh.
8. A symbolical dream and a parable differ essentially only in the
manner in which they are brought before the mind. The dream is a parable
pictured in sleep, and the parable is a symbolic dream stated in words.
Suppose, with no antecedent dream, Joseph to have been inspired to say:
The kingdom of Egypt is like unto seven ears of corn, etc., we would have,
by a mere change of the manner of presentation, a parable; or if