table to others, he forgot himself. They remembered, they
could not help remembering, what he said; but he--no! he said it and
moved on, keeping no register of his sayings; and so much the more
natural and characteristic they are. Nor would he, like smaller
people, be very careful of the form and turn of his speech; it was
never set. Certainly he gave his followers the rule not to study
their language (Mark 13:11). Whether or no he had consciously
thought it all out; we can see the value of his rule, and how it
fits in with his way of life and safeguards it. Under such a rule
speech will not be stereotyped; no set form of words will impose
itself on the free movement of thought, the mind can and will move
of itself unhampered; and when the mind keeps and develops such
freedom of movement, it commonly breaks new ground and handles new
things. Not to be careful of our speech means for most of us
slovenly thinking; but when a man thinks in earnest and takes truth
seriously, when he speaks with his eye on his object, his language
will not be slovenly, his instinct for fact will keep his speech
pure and true. This is what we find in the sayings of Jesus; there
is form, but living form, the freedom and grace which the clear mind
and the friendly eye communicate insensibly and inimitably to
language.

Our task in this chapter is primarily a historical one. From the
words of Jesus we have to work back to the type of mind from which
they come. There is always danger in such a task. We may forget the
wide and living variety of the mind we study; our own minds may not
be large enough, nor tender enough, not various, quick and
sympathetic in such a degree as to apprehend what we find, to see
what it means, and to relate it to itself, detail to whole. How much
greater the danger here! While we analyse, we have to remember that
the most correct analysis of features or characteristics may easily
fail to give us a true idea of the face or the character which we
analyse. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. The face and
the character have an "integrity," a wholeness. The detail may be of
immense value to us, studied as detail; but for the true view the
detail, familiar as it may be to us, and dear to us, must be sunk in
the general view. Especially is this true of great characters. The
"reconstruction of a personality"--to borrow a phrase from some
psychologists--is a very difficult matter, even when we are masters
of our deta