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

in chap. xi., and lay them side by side with the terms in which, in chap.
xii., Christ's body, the Church, is spoken of; the many members--the foot,
the hand, the eye, the ear--now ye are the body of Christ and members in
particular,--and note how striking the difference. And in the Oriental cast
of thought, far more than in the Western, exists this very tendency to
luxuriate in the details of metaphor. The abstinence from anything of the
sort in the case of the Supper, which, if it be metaphorical at all, involves
the metaphor of metaphors, is very significant.
Let us look for a moment longer at the bearing of these principles on
the Lord's Supper:
I. “Bread” metaphorically used.
When the word bread is used metaphorically, or with a figurative
allusion, it is a well established emblem of food or of nutrition--intellectual,
moral or spiritual. As the fox is the emblem of cunning, the dove of
gentleness, the rock of firmness, so is natural bread the emblem of
supernatural or spiritual nutriment. The proposition "bread is Christ's
body," taken figuratively, would make bread the literal thing, and Christ's
body the emblem of it, and would have to mean, “as Christ's body is
supernatural or spiritual food, so bread is natural bodily food." The
proposition, "Christ's body is bread," on the other hand, makes Christ's
body the literal thing, and bread the emblem of it, and would mean, "as
bread is natural bodily food, so is Christ's body supernatural or spiritual
food." If it be said, Bread is like Christ's body, the question at once arises,
In what respect? What is the well-known property of our Lord's body to
which we find a likeness in bread? If the reply is, Christ's body is
sacramentally eaten, and bread is like it, in that it is eaten naturally, we
would reply: The eating of Christ's body is a recondite and imperfectly
understood thing,--why, then, do you take it as the illustration of something
so simple and well understood as the eating of bread? Why illustrate the
simple by the obscure? Why illustrate it at all? Yet more, however, if the
reply is, Christ's body is broken, and bread, like it, is broken, we would
reply, It is not characteristic of bread to be broken; thousands of things
equally with it are broken: