(_c_) By the Rabbinical use of the metaphor, common in Christ’s time, and well understood by the Jews. “There is nothing more common in the schools of the Jews than the phrases of eating and drinking in a metaphorical sense.”--(_Lightfoot._) “To eat of my bread” was a phrase equivalent to partake of my doctrine. Christ borrows a common metaphor to emphasize a deeper truth; to have faith in him is not to “eat of my bread,” but to “eat of my flesh;” that is, it is to receive not merely the influence of Christ’s teaching, but yet more that of his life and character itself, an influence which could be imparted to the world only through his passion and death, through the literal rending of his flesh and shedding of his blood. (_d_) By the experience of faith in a lower sphere, our faith in each other. The highest faith of a child in his mother is not believing something about her, nor merely believing what she says; it includes an intellectual belief that she is his mother, and a filial trust in her, but it also includes such a reverence for her, an uplooking to her, an admiration of her, a feeding upon her, that all her best characteristics are reproduced in the worshipping child. So the character of the best teachers ever reproduces itself in the character of their admiring pupils. (_e_) By the actual record of the experience of faith contained in the O. T. and the N. T. (_e. g._, Ps. 42:5, 11; 63:5-8; 73:23-26; 2 Cor. 3:18; Gal. 2:20; Phil. 3:8-14). (_f_) By other metaphors in the N. T. in which Christ is compared to a way on which we walk, a garment which we are to put on, a vine on which we are to be engrafted, a husband to whom we are to be married, a head from which we as a body are to derive all our life, the ground in which we are to be rooted, the foundation on which we are to be built, and the Spirit which is to dwell in us as in a temple. Faith in Christ then, as defined by Christ himself, if I have rightly interpreted this discourse, _is not belief about him, nor trust in him, but appropriation of him_. It is not mere belief in what the Bible teaches respecting him, though it is certainly founded on historical Christianity; it is not mere trust in his word or power or grace, though it involves the highest personal trust in him as a divine and gracious Saviour. It is making him the soul’s spiritual aliment, following after him, coming to him, dwelling in him, so drinking in his words, life, and spirit as to be conformed to his image. The soul enters into eternal, that is spiritual life, not by believing any teaching respecting Christ, not by trusting that Christ will bestow that life, but by so fastening its love and aspirations and desires upon Christ that he becomes the All and in all to the soul, and at once the model for and modeler of its future and final character.