Church? " This," He says, " is My blood of the New Testament which shall be shed for many unto the remission of their sins." Did He mock her with metaphors, and leave her the shadow for the reality? Did He purposely sow in her the seeds of dissension for all time — He who said: " My peace I leave you; My peace I give you "? Certainly, if some wealthy man were to promise to leave you a splendid palace or a vast heap of golden coin, and afterwards you discovered that his promise was but a figure of speech, and your legacy but a photograph of the hoped-for riches, you might well feel that you had been deceived and derided. And if Christ, when He said: " The bread that I will give is My flesh for the life of the world," meant not His real body, but bread which figuratively might be called His flesh, He would have been guilty of having deliberately deceived mankind — He who can neither deceive nor be deceived — He who is truth and justice and goodness itself. "This," He says in unmistakable terms, " this is My body; this is My blood," and " My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed."
Brethren, a favorite argument of unbelievers against the real presence is, that the primitive Christian Church knew nothing of such a doctrine, for, say they, it is not found in the writings of the Fathers of the early centuries. That this assertion is in a measure true is owing partly to the excessive veneration of the early Christians for the Blessed Eucharist, and partly to the uniformity and universality of their belief in the real presence. Mindful of the double
