"Take eat, this is my body which is given for you."
"This cup is the New Testament of my blood which is shed for you."
Christ spoke as an incarnate son of God, as a human manifestation of the Spirit of Life. His form, derived from and nourished by the fruits of the earth, was in its elemental essence one with the vital principle of all forms of life. The bread was His body. His physical life was sustained by His participation in the sacrificial intercommunion of Nature. But the time was come when His body was to suffer death. He had risked His life by preaching reformatory doctrine. Now this work was done. He was aware of His impending death, therefore He would not eat again. But His disciples were not yet to die, for their work was not yet done. Therefore He bid them eat and drink, and thus continue to benefit from the intercommunion of Nature, in which all forms of life obtain mutual sustenance by mutual sacrifice.
The wine was His blood. In an agricultural and vine-growing country such as Judæa, bread and wine were suitable examples of nutriment necessary for the maintenance of physical life. The flesh and blood of men are drawn from the products of the earth, and are resolved into their elemental parts when the spirit is separated by death from the body. Starvation weakens and finally destroys the body, but nourishment restores waste and makes continued manifestation of the spirit possible. Christ's blood had been formed from the fruits of the earth. Now it was to be shed. Sacrifice according to the Jewish law necessitated the shedding of blood. Was not the Feast of the Passover, which He was then keeping with His apostles, a sacrifice of blood? But He announced the institution of a new testimony of His blood which should not only witness to His death, but should show forth the victory of the Spirit over physical dissolution. The symbol of sacrifice was to be spiritualised. Whereas the old Jewish idea of worship necessitated the taking of life and emphasised the shedding of blood as pleasing to God, the spiritual significance of sacrifice was now re-illustrated by Christ's new interpretation of the sacrament of life. The kindly fruits of the earth; the increase of the earth; the bursting forth of vital energy from the earth--was now to yield the symbolism of the communion of life. Not death, but life was to be emphasised as the will of God. The veil of the Spirit was to be lifted, showing Nature as the outer sign of life, as the veritable vesture of God.