# What Is The True Christian Religion?/Chapter 12

CHAPTER XII
THE FAILURE OF LITERALISTS
Is this incident not an illustration of those people who reject every attempt to understand the spiritual meaning of the Bible and lose themselves in symbolism? Following such a method they can make the Bible mean anything their fancy suggests. They live in symbols and imagine themselves to be realists only. The people of the First Christian Age seem to have become largely materialists in holding on to symbols as if there were no meaning behind the symbols, as did my visitor. They speak of being washed in the blood as if it were literally applied. They sing of it in their hymns. A woman once said to me, "Perhaps you know how to argue, but I believe 'There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains!' I replied, "You object to my spiritual interpretation of the Bible, yet how much blood do you think was by Jesus at the cross? Was there enough to fill a fountain? You know at once there was not. You know perfectly well that there never was 'a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's veins.' You know perfectly well that in the whole history of the world there never was a sinner plunged "beneath that flood.' to 'lose his guilty stains.' You realize as I speak that the song you love is only a simile. You realize that the truth which flowed from Jesus is as a fountain in which men may bathe.—as they obey that truth, and they are cleansed from their sins as they obey.
But let us look more closley into this idea of the blood. That it is used symbolically is clearly shown when Jesus commands His disciples to eat His flesh and drink His blood. He used symbols to show them how to do this in the bread and the cup. The bread was not His flesh. The cup was not His blood. No one ever ate literally the flesh and drank the blood of Jesus. The Roman church tries to make its adherents fancy that they are actually eating the flesh of Jesus when ​they eat the little wafer handed them, but no one can sensibly believe that this is true, even though the priest claims it. Jesus claimed that He is the Bread of Life, and that we must eat Him. How do we do this? By partaking of His life. How do we partake of His life.? By receiving his love in our hearts so that it becomes our life. The same is true of His blood. As we partake of His truth, we are enlightened and vivified by it.
The entire Bible is written in symbols. The blood is mentioned so often and made use of because of its intimate connection with human life. It is true that the life is in the blood, of a man as well as of an animal. The writer of the Book of Hebrews says plainly, "It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins" Those sacrifices were only a symbolism, as he says. And the writer of Hebrews is likewise speaking wholly in symbols, after the manner of the Hebrew symbolists of his time. The blood of Christ offered without spot to God is only a symbolism, and it means the life of Jesus which is "to purge our conscience from dead works to serve the living God." The life is in the blood. The blood is, as it were, a corporeal soul, and represents the spiritual life. The blood poured out for us on Calvary represents the life He poured out for humanity, the life of the maternal human, and it was truly a sacrifice,—not to another God, for God is One, but a willing sacrifice on His part incurred in His rescuing man from his enemies of the underworld.
The wtiter of Hebrews also says that "almost all things are by the law purged with blood." This blood represents the Divine truth and life which flow out from the Lord since His victory over the hells. In the ancient sacrifices it represents the blood of Jesus; but it became a living power as His life—the reality it represented—to purify and cleanse and make alive after the completion of His combats with the hells on Calvary.
A favorite quotation of the "Plan of Salvation" people is the verse in Hebrews which says, "Without shedding of blood is no remission." But what does it mean? That without the suffering of Jesus on the cross as the innocent victim, the shedding of His blood, we cannot expect the forgiveness of God for our sins? It is an interesting ​illustration of the method of interpreting the Bible upon the basis of a preconceived idea so as to make it to conﬁrm our preconceived idea. The theory to be proved is that the Plan of Salvation is true.
Let us see what the shedding of blood really means? Obviously the pouring out of the life. In the use of the Jewish sacrifices, and of the sacriﬁce of Jesus, it was representative of the pouring out of the life of Jesus by means of which it was possible for Jesus to make effective His victory over the hells. By that victory He was conqueror and by that victory He makes us to be conquerors through His domination of the hells. Sins are remitted only as we repent of them, shun them as of hell. "cease to do evil, learn to do well." Jesus said to the Jews, "Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish." Repentance is therefore indispensable in order to secure forgiveness of sins. But the power to overcome our sinful tendencies results from the shedding of blood by Jesus—by His life poured out which secures for us the spiritual victory. Our sins are not remitted by the mere shedding of blood, but by the victory of Jesus enabling us no live His kind of Life.
When Jesus said at the Last Supper to His disciples. "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you," just what did he mean? The cup was not His blood, nor were its contents. He was speaking in symbols. Did He not mean, This cup, representing or symbolizing my blood, represents my life which is now poured out to enable you to keep my new covenant with you?" The Old Covenant was the Ten Commandments which men failed to keep because they were external men and tried to keep these commandments as external men in their own strength. Now Jesus had come into the world and had conquered the hells and was thenceforth to give men power to keep them by His personal presence with them in His truth. His new covenant with men was His promise to be with them and give them a perpetual victory as they lived His truth. The cup represented that truth of victory which if they drank they would have eternal life. What warrant is there in believing it meant the ideas of the Plan of Salvation? Why read into every passage of Scripture a conﬁrmation of that doctrine which has taken away from men the sense of need to keep the Lord's commandments and by destroying that sense of need, destroyed the effectiveness of Christianity in ​actually changing men? Let us fancy men saying, "Why change our lives when we have no need, when salvation is a free gift simply by believing a dogma, when all we can do is only evil has no effect in saving us?" The "consummation of the age" has come because of this false teaching of Faith Alone. It is truly the Abomination of Desolation set up in the Holy Place, or God's dwelling place with man, destroying true religion.