John 6:67-69 Then said Jesus to the twelve, Will you also go away?… "To whom shall we go?" Poor humanity, distracted by many perplexities, bleeding from many wounds, weeping over many griefs, must go somewhere: she cannot eat out her own heart with grief and consume her own life with sighing. Whither shall we go? Where shall the great mystery of our existence be unveiled to us? Is Nature to be the temple of our worship, with its skies, now bright and now cloudy, arching over us in alternate loveliness and terror? Ah, there is no gospel in her sighing wind, and all her resurrections die again, and all her waves break upon a strand that is unknown and far. Can infidelity reassure us? Is there safety in the everlasting "No?" Can we vanquish the danger by denying it? Can we overcome the peril by putting it far away? Men try this sometimes, but it is a sombre region to dwell in where dead leaves crackle under foot. Ah, no! there is a shuddering and sickly air, as of some ghost-haunted wood or precincts stern and savage; and it is useless, for Death will come, although society join us in the conspiracy to cheat him, and although friends forbear kindly to inquire about our age, and although decay can go and rouge over its wrinkles, and compliment itself into youth again, Death will come; and there is something in all of us that will keep on asking, "What then? what then?" "What after death for me remains?" Oh, it is wiser surely even with the Egyptian to shape the coffin in the lifetime, or with the Jew to build the sepulchre in the garden. Speaking of Jews, would Judaism serve to shelter us? It has glorious types — a wonderful history, many lighted windows of worship. Shall we enter the door? Nay, don't exhume it: it has been in the sarcophagus, a corpse, now for more than a thousand years. Christ would have been the soul of it once, but it rejected Him, and struck its own suicide in a mistaken chivalry which preferred death to what it deemed to be dishonour. Judaism can do nothing for us. Then shall reason light us down the vale, or morality put a staff in our hand, or superstition torture us into safety, or formalism ferry us over the swellings of Jordan? Alas! they are all miserable comforters; they lift no cloud; there it hangs, mysterious and solemn, over the passage into eternal life. Jesus of Nazareth, Divine human Saviour! we come to Thee: we pray to Thee. In Thee is all the beauty which the Greek worshipped: in Thee is all the law which the stern Roman loved. Thou art Nature's great interpreter; and infidelity shrinks away from Thy presence; and Judaism is fulfilled in Thee; and superstition becomes reverence as Thou speakest; and formality gets an inner spirit; and faith in Thee is the highest reason; and love to Thee is the grandest morality. (W. M. Punshon, LL. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?WEB: Jesus said therefore to the twelve, "You don't also want to go away, do you?" |
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