One of the recurrent objections to Christianity, from the time when, as St John records, many disciples forsook our Lord because he said he would give us his flesh to eat, is that it is materialist, and the objectors wish the materialistic lumps could be strained out of the soup, which would then be a pure nourishment, suited to the most delicate digestion. Leaving aside for a moment the fact that Christianity is not a mass of facts from which we can pick what we like and reject the rest, but an organic whole, and that truth is bound to present some difficulties to human minds, it may be worth considering what revelation has to tell us about matter.

Obviously to material beings such as ourselves the subject is meaningful. he world confronts us as a reality: so does our own flesh.