This very obscurity, however, is a proof of genuineness.
No one would have forged such an answer.
John vi. The whole of the conversation recorded in this chapter is in
the highest degree unlikely to be fabricated, especially the part of our
Saviour's reply between the fiftieth and the fifty-eighth verse. I need
only put down the first sentence: "I am the living bread which came down
from heaven: if any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever: and
the bread that I will give him is my flesh, which I will give for the
life of the world." Without calling in question the expositions that
have been given of this passage, we may be permitted to say, that it
labours under an obscurity, in which it is impossible to believe that
any one, who made speeches for the persons of his narrative, would have
voluntarily involved them. That this discourse was obscure, even at the
time, is confessed by the writer who had preserved it, when he tells us,
at the conclusion, that many of our Lord's disciples, when they had
heard this, said, "This is a hard saying; who can hear it?"
Christ's taking of a young child, and placing it in the midst of his
contentious disciples (Matt.
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