The fugitive Israelites in the wilderness said, 'We do not want your
light, tasteless manna. It may do very well for angels, but we have
been accustomed to garlic and onions down in Egypt. They smell
strong, and there is some taste in _them_. Give us _them_.' And so
some of you say, 'The offer of pardon is of no use to me, for I am
not troubled with my sin. The offer of purity has no attraction to
me, for I rather like the dirt and wallowing in it. The offer of a
heaven of your sort is but a dreary prospect to me. And so I turn
away from the hands that offer precious things.' The man who is blind
to the God that beams, lambent and loving, upon him in the face of
Jesus Christ--the man who has no stirrings of responsive gratitude
for the great outpouring of love upon the Cross--the man who does not
care for anything that Jesus Christ can give him, surely, in turning
away, commits a real sin.

I do not deny, of course, that there may be intellectual difficulties
cropping up in connection with the acceptance of the message of
salvation in Jesus Christ, but as, on the one hand, I am free to
admit that many a man may be putting a true trust in Christ which is
joined with a very hesitant grasp of some of the things which, to me,
are the very essence and heart of the Gospel; so, on the other side,
I would have you remember that there is necessarily a moral quality
in our attitude to all moral and religious truth; and that sin does
not cease to be sin because its doer is a thinker or has systematised
his rejection into a creed. Though it is not for us to measure
motives and to peer into hearts, at the bottom there lies what Christ
Himself put His finger on: 'Ye _will_ not come to me that ye might
have life.'

Then, still further, let me remind you that our Lord here presents