with submissive trust; it is to commit
ourselves to Him as our Lord; it is to rest in Him as our all; it is to
come to Him with open heart, accepting Him as all He claims to be; it is
to meet the eye of a present, living Christ, who knows what is in man,
and to say to Him "I am Thine, Thine most gladly, Thine for evermore."

But most emphatically of all does our Lord say that we must "eat His
flesh and drink His blood" if we are to partake of His life. That is to
say, the connection between Christ and us must be of the closest
possible kind; so close that the assimilation of the food we eat is not
too strong a figure to express it. The food we eat becomes our blood and
flesh; it becomes our life, our self. And it does so by our eating it,
not by our talking of it, not by our looking at it, and admiring its
nutritive properties, but only by eating it. And whatever process can
make Christ entirely ours, and help us to assimilate all that is in Him,
this process we are to use. The flesh of Christ was given for us; by the
shedding of Christ's blood, by the pouring out of His life upon the
cross, spiritual life was prepared for us. Cleansing from sin and
restoration to God were provided by the offering of His life in the
flesh; and we eat His flesh when we use in our own behalf the death of
Christ, and take the blessings it has made possible to us; when we
accept the forgiveness of sins, enter into the love of God, and adopt as
our own the spirit of the cross. His flesh or human form was the
_manifestation_ of God's love for us, the visible material of His
sacrifice; and we eat His flesh when we make this our own, when we
accept God's love and adopt Christ's sacrifice as our guiding principle
of life. We eat His flesh when we take out of His life and death the
spiritual nutriment that is actually there; when we let our nature be
penetrated by the spirit of the cross, and actually make Christ the
Source and the Guide of our spiritual life.

This figure of _eating_ has many lessons for us. Above all, it reminds
us of the poor appetite we have for spiritual nourishment. How
thoroughly by this process of eating does the healthy body extract from
its food every particle of real nutriment. By this process the food is
made to yield all that it contains of nourishing substance. But how far
is this from representing our treatment of Christ. How much is there in
Him that is fitted to yield comfort and hope, and yet to us it yields
no