We may premise that no more appropriate occasion could have been chosen by Christ for promising this heavenly bread than the day following that on which He had multiplied the bread in the desert; and we know that it was Christ’s practice to explain His doctrines as they were suggested by circumstances. Thus, after curing the _centurion’s_ servant, He foretells the vocation of the _Gentiles_ (Matt. viii. 6‐13); after expelling the unclean spirit, He describes the power of Satan (Matt. xii. 22‐45); after asking for water, He speaks of the water of life to the Samaritan woman (John iv. 10, and foll.); after healing the paralytic, He predicts the general resurrection (John v. 28); and after curing the man born blind, He denounces the blindness of the Pharisees (John ix. 41). It was quite in accordance with Christ’s practice, then, to predict the Blessed Eucharist on the present occasion: and that He did so is proved by the following arguments:— (1) If St. John did not mean to record here a reference to the Blessed Eucharist, then he does not mention that sacrament at all, for he does not allude, unless perhaps very obscurely (xiii. 1) to its institution. But it is very improbable that our Evangelist omits all mention of this sacrament in his Gospel. For if, as we shall prove, this sacrament contains the body and blood of Christ, there was a reason why St. John should mention it in order to confirm the faithful against the Docetae who denied the reality of Christ’s human nature. Nor does it at all weaken this argument to say that the Docetae who denied the reality of the body in which Christ had walked and talked, would not be likely to be convinced by a reference to His body present in the Eucharist. For St. John wrote, not to convert heretics, but to confirm against heresy Christians who believed in the real presence. (2) Christ’s words (27, 52) can refer only to the Eucharist. For He speaks of a food which was still to be given _in the future_, whereas His _doctrines_, and His _Person_ as the object of faith, had been given already. (3) His words: “Amen, amen, I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you shall not have life in you” (verse 54), could be understood only in a literal sense, and so understood, they must refer to the Blessed Eucharist. For, if Christ had spoken in a figurative sense, it should be in that figurative sense which was known and recognised among the Jews. Now, the recognised figurative sense of eating a man’s flesh was to do him some serious injury, especially by calumny.(57) Such a figurative sense, however, would be absurd here; and hence Christ must have been understood, and must have spoken, in the literal sense. See Wiseman’s _Lect. on the Euch._, pp. 77‐91.