It is the next passage which contains the words that I have chosen for my text. '_Many therefore of His disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it? When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples murmured at it, He said unto them, Doth this offend you? What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where He was before? It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray Him. And He said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father._' Why does the allusion to the Ascension occur here? What has it to do with the previous discourse? I think brethren, that here again the history of Christendom is the interpreter of the words of Christ. It has been a '_hard saying_,' that we must eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ, in order that we may have life in us. To make that '_hard saying_' easier to the understanding, easier to the flesh, various devices have been resorted to. One has been that to which I alluded just now, of representing the saying as only metaphorical. Another has been that of supposing that we may eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ, provided He descends into the bread and wine of the Eucharist, and transmutes them into His body and blood. I call this hypothesis an experiment to make the words which were hard, easier to the carnal understanding. I fully admit that there has been a Nemesis of that understanding. That which was framed to aid its conceptions, has become the most intolerable bondage to it. Decrees must compel it, under awful penalties, to accept the explanation which its impatience craved for. And what has been the consequence? The blessed and elevating mystery which this week speaks of, has been practically lost sight of. The ascended Christ, at the right hand of the Father, has been thought at a hopeless and incredible distance from the suppliant upon earth. The glorified Humanity has been entirely overshadowed by the thought of the cradle at Bethlehem. One vast section of Christendom has acknowledged the words,--'_Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you_.' But it has denied that other sentence which proceeded from the same lips,--'_It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you_, _they are spirit, and they are life_.' The spirit in man is as impatient of those fetters that bind it to the earth, as the carnal understanding is of all that is not of the earth, earthy. The message which Christ brings from the living Father to that spirit is,--'I can raise you above the earth; I can enable you to share those treasures of wisdom, and righteousness, and love which are the treasures of the kingdom of heaven.