That sermon Jesus preached in Capernaum the day after the feeding of the five thousand, and which stands recorded in John 6, was the hardest piece of doctrine and the severest strain on the reason and prejudices and submissive faith of his professed followers of all that had ever come from his lips. The crowds forsook him, of course. But even many of his disciples could not support the strain and "went back, and walked no more with him." It was more than they were willing or ready to receive. Jesus let them go. He always did. An ordinary man would have been distressed, worried, and flurried. He would have pleaded, explained, possibly modified. But Jesus remained calm. He had spoken God's mind and done God's will--no more, no less; and there he rested and left God to take care of results and consequences. Turning to his apostles who stood there--sorely perplexed, no doubt, and grieved, for we know how much they cared for the visible success of Jesus--he said to them: "Would ye also go away?" Simon Peter answered him: "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we have believed and know that thou are the Holy One of God." In this answer there lay a note of despair, yet the kind of despair that cleaves the stronger, because desperate, to its last and only hold. How shall we, can we, leave thee, Lord? Though all seem discouraging, though thy words be strange to us and thy ways incomprehensible, we can not leave thee, for our last hope is bound up in thee. In thee have we believed, and besides thee we have no more refuge and know not [151] whither to turn. So they stay with him, for they can not afford to turn him loose.

      Among us, too, those things repeat themselves. Men become perplexed today. Once it was written, "By faith we understand" (Heb. 11:3). But the spirit of this age wants to understand before it will have faith. The doubts that lurk secretly and the skepticism that stalks in open day; the problems of life and its strange contradictions which seemingly defy all rule and principle; the leading of God's word, so contrary to the path our own wisdom would choose--these are perplexing, and none abide the strain.

      Yet to whom shall we go? To reject Jesus' claim and word means the loss of the only One worth clinging to in this darkness. Leave him and you must reject the Bible. Leave the Bible, and there is an end, as far as you are concerned, of all revealed religion; for no other word that claims to be a revelation from God is worthy of comparison with the Bible, or can at all be reasonably considered after the Bible has been rejected. And revelation being discarded, you are thrown back simply on your senses and reason. How poor a guide they are, the long, sad history of human follies and vagaries witnesses. To reject Christ is to lose all light, to be without God and without hope in the world. And to whom would you go? To Mohammed, whose teaching has blighted and cursed and paralyzed and dehumanized millions for a thousand years? To Buddha, who has thrown a pall of gloom and hopelessness upon nations until they have sunk into apathy and degradation? To Confucius, who has turned the heart and soul of the Chinese into dust? To the goddess of Reason, that loosed the reins of human passions in the Reign of Terror? To the masters of music, or literature, or art, who themselves lived and died in spiritual darkness, or even in dissolution and immorality, and whose [152] work has never yet redeemed a human soul? To the cynic, who infects all he sees and touches with wormwood and gall? Or the agnostic, who learnedly leaves you in darkness and doubt? Or the Epicurean, who laughs his scruples away and gives himself up to sensual pleasure after the motto: "Let us eat and drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die?" If you leave the Christ, to whom will you go?

      In Robert G. Ingersoll's lifetime there appeared a cartoon in the Ram's Horn which vividly set forth the real situation. A stormy ocean scene; no ship or help in sight in all the wide expanse; but in the foreground a rock surmounted by a cross, to which a shipwrecked woman was clinging; another shipwrecked person, a man, bearing the features of Ingersoll, pawing the waters and sinking. But he cries to the woman, "Turn that rock loose; it has no real foundation." Give up the rock, because Ingersoll has his misgivings about it; turn from the words of eternal life to the musical lilt of the infidel's oratory; let go that which alone can save you, to share the hopeless waters with him--forsooth!

      And Christ has the words of eternal life. Peter was right. He had seen captives freed, and tears dried, and the calm of God's peace fall upon tempestuous hearts, and sinners go away with a new light in their eyes because all their guilt was forgiven. Jesus does lift up and save souls, as most of us can testify. He alone can truly help. If "down in the human heart, crushed by the tempter, feelings lie buried," Jesus can restore them. He has blessed and healed all these eighteen hundred years; he heals and redeems today; and he is the only Helper. And if reason should reel and the eyes grow dark, yet I would cleave to Jesus, for he is good; and would give him the benefit of all doubts, for he alone is worth holding to in the darkness and storms of this life. [153]

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