Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/231

Letter 19] given to Jesus from the initial letters of the Greek title I(esous) Ch(ristos) Th(eou) U(ios) S(oter) [Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour] because they made up the Greek word Ichthus, fish. About the middle of the second century we find one of the earliest extant Christian poems describing how the Church everywhere presented to the faithful, as their food, "the Fish, great and pure, which the Holy Virgin had caught." The poet evidently did not invent this metaphor; it was established, intelligible, and inherited, at the time when he used it, and must have been in use much earlier. To speak of "crumbs" metaphorically may perhaps seem to us a bold metaphor, but it may be illustrated by the dialogue between Jesus and the Syro-Phœnician woman: "It is not meet to take the children's food and cast it unto dogs:" "Truth, Lord; yet even the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from the master's table." Now it was a common-place in the doctrine of Jesus that every disciple who ministered the Word or Bread of Life invariably received it back in ample measure: "Freely ye have received, freely give." Give what? Certainly not material bread, but the truth or bread of life. And again, "Give, and it shall be given unto you: good measure pressed down and running over shall give into your bosom." Again, I ask, give what? What but the spiritual Bread, which, by the laws of spiritual nature, cannot be freely given without a yet more rich return into the giver's heart? It was this Bread that Christ ministered to His disciples and bade them set before the people; it was this Bread which the disciples found multiplied in their hands so that it sufficed for all, and they themselves were fed from the crumbs that fell from the food.

In course of time the story of this spiritual banquet finding its way into Christian hymns and traditions would