Meat and Drink for Our Souls

Herman Bavinck, The Sacrifice of Praise: Meditations Before and After Receiving Access to the Table of the Lord, pp. 38-39:

Therefore, that word can be and indeed is the meat and drink of our spiritual lives. It the medium, not the fountain of grace. God is and remains the giver and dispenser of all grace; no man, no priest, no word, no sacrament has been clothed by Him with the treasure of grace or commissioned to dispense her. Servants can give the sign and seal, but God only granted the sealed and signified fact. This only has God done -- and this also is grace -- He has in His free power and pleasure bound Himself under oath to grant with His word, which is administered in full accord with the meaning of the Spirit, unto each and every one, who believingly accepts it, Christ, who is the meat and drink of our souls, the bread that has come down from Heaven, the water of life, drinking of which we shall never again thirst.

But to be thus, that Word must be believed with a child-like faith and accepted in humility. Even as bread, however powerful and nourishing it may be, can only be profitable for the preservation of our natural lives then, when it is eaten with the mouth and received into the body -- even so can the Word of God be food for our souls only then, when it is accepted by faith and is implanted in our hearts.