After this chapter had gone to press a remarkable article from the pen of Dean Stanley appeared on “The Eucharist” in the Nineteenth Century (May, 1878), in which he arrives at substantially the same conclusions that I have arrived at in these notes, and enforces them with his usual eloquence and learning. He urges that in all religious ordinances we ought to try to get beneath the phrases we use, and not to rest satisfied with the words, however excellent, till we have ascertained their meaning; that Christ’s words here and in the appointment of the last supper as a permanent memorial ordinance are evidently metaphorical; that the very strangeness of the metaphor should turn our thoughts from the outward form to the inward essence; that the body and flesh signify the personality and character of Christ; that we must incorporate in ourselves, that is in our moral natures, the substance--the moral substance--of the teaching and character of Jesus Christ; that this is the only true transubstantiation; that the blood of Christ is his spirit, the inmost essence of his character, the self of his self; and that to drink his blood is to imbibe this inmost spirit; that this spirit is love or charity, which is throughout the New Testament represented as the fundamental essence of the highest life of God, and therefore of his children; and he interprets verses 53-56 here, in accordance with these principles, as follows: “This is one of those startling expressions used by Christ to show us that he intends to drive us from the letter to the spirit, by which he shatters the crust and shell in order to force us to the kernel. It is as if he said: ‘It is not enough for you to see the outward face of the Son of man, or hear his outward words, or touch his outward vesture. That is not himself. It is not enough that you walk by his side, or hear others talk of him or use terms of affection and endearment toward him. You must go deeper than this; you must go to his very inmost heart, to the very core and marrow of his being. You must not only read and understand, but you must mark, learn, and inwardly digest, and make part of yourselves, that which alone can be part of the human spirit and conscience.’ It expresses, with regard to the life and death of Jesus Christ, the same general truth as is expressed when St. Paul says, ‘Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ’--that is, clothe yourselves with his spirit as with a garment; or again, ‘Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.’ It is the same general truth as when our Lord himself says, ‘I am the vine; ye are the branches.’” 59 These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum. 60 Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard _this_, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?