act what my text says in words. I know no difference between the rite
and the parable, except that the one is addressed to the eye and the
other to the ear. The rite is an acted parable; the parable is a spoken
rite. And when Jesus Christ, in the great discourse to which I have
referred, dilates at length upon the 'eating of His flesh and the
drinking of His blood' as being the condition of spiritual life, He is
not referring to the Lord's Supper, but the discourse and the rite refer
both to the same spiritual truth. One is a symbol; the other is a
saying; and symbol and saying mean just the same thing. The saying does
not refer to the symbol, but to that to which the symbol refers. It
seems to me that one of the greatest dangers which now threaten
Evangelical Christianity is the strange and almost inexplicable
recrudescence of Sacramentarianism in this generation to which those
Christian communities are contributing, however reluctantly and
unconsciously, who say there is something more than commemorative
symbols in the bread and wine of the Lord's table. If once you admit
that, it seems, in my humble judgment, that you open the door to the
whole flood of evils which the history of the Church declares have come
with the Sacramentarian hypothesis. And we must take our stand, as I
believe, upon the plain, intelligible thoughts--Baptism is a declaratory
symbol, and nothing more; the Lord's Supper is a commemorative symbol,
and nothing more; except that both are acts of obedience to the
enjoining Lord. When we stand there we can face all priestly
superstitions, and say, 'Jesus I know; and Paul I know; but who are ye?'
'The meek shall eat and be satisfied,' and the food of the world is the
suffering Messiah.

But what have we to say about the act expressed in the text? 'The meek
shall eat.' I do not desire to dwell at any length upon the thought of
the process by which this food of the world becomes ours, in this