Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/230

214 they could be interpreted metaphorically, if you could only comprehend how the accounts of the miraculous feeding of the Four Thousand and of the Five Thousand (obviously literal as they now stand in our Gospels) could be referred to as spiritual incidents. In order to answer this question we must now pass to the narratives of the two miracles themselves. I suppose even those who accept them literally would admit that they are emblematic, and that they represent Jesus, the Bread of Life, giving Himself for the world. The Fourth Gospel manifests this in the subsequent discourse where the feeding on the bread and fishes introduces the subject of the feeding on the flesh and blood of Christ. The notion that we feed on the Word of God, first found in Deuteronomy (viii. 3), pervades all Jewish literature. It is found in Philo (i. 119): "The soul is nourished not on earthly and corruptible food, but on the words which Gods rains down out of His sublime and pure nature which He calls heaven." It reappears in the account of our Lord's temptation, when He replies to Satan, quoting Deut. viii. 3, "Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God;" and again (John iv. 32), "I have meat to eat that ye know not."

On that last occasion the Fourth Gospel tells us that the disciples actually misunderstood the metaphor and interpreted it literally; and to this day I dare say many would give a literal interpretation to the "daily bread" of the Lord's prayer; but there can be little doubt that Jesus meant by "bread" every gift and blessing that constitutes life, and primarily the spiritual sustenance of the soul. As to the emblematic use of the "fish," it cannot be traced to the Old Testament; but in a very early period of the existence of the Church, as early as the reign of Vespasian, we find the Fish in rude paintings representing the Eucharistic food of the faithful; and it is said that this appellation was