the
first time to the simple record of the Gospels, probably our first
feeling would be one of surprise that Jesus the Teacher had won for
Himself such an ascendency over the minds and hearts of men. For
consider some of the facts which the Gospels reveal to us. To begin
with, this Teacher, unlike most other teachers who have influenced
mankind, contented Himself from first to last with merely oral
instruction: He left no book; He never wrote, save in the dust of the
ground. Not only so, but the words of Jesus that have been preserved by
the evangelists are, comparatively speaking, extremely few. Put them all
together, they are less by one-half or two-thirds than the words which
it will be necessary for me to use in order to set forth His teaching in
this little book. And further, the little we have is, for the most part,
so casual, so unpremeditated, so unsystematic in its character. Once and
again, it is true, we get from the Evangelists something approaching
what may be called a set discourse; but more often what they give us is
reports of conversations--conversations with His disciples, with chance
acquaintances, or with His enemies. Sometimes we find Him speaking in
the synagogues; but He is quite as ready to teach reclining at the
dinner-table; and, best of all, He loved to speak in the open air, by
the wayside, or the lake shore. Once, as He stood by the lake of
Gennesaret, the multitude was so great that it pressed upon Him. Near at
hand were two little fishing-boats drawn up upon the beach, for the
fishermen had gone out of them, and were washing their nets. "And He
entered into one of the boats, which was Simon's, and asked him to put
out a little from the land. And He sat down and taught the multitudes
out of the boat." It is all so different from what we should have
expected; there is about it such an air of artless, homely simplicity.
Finally, we cannot forget that Jesus was a Jew speaking to Jews. Son of
God though He was, He was the son of a Jewish mother, trained in a
Jewish home, in all things the child of His own time and race. Whatever
else His message may have been, it was, first of all, a message to the
men of His own day; therefore, of necessity, it was their language He
used, it was to their needs He ministered, it was their sins He
condemned. The mould, the tone, the colouring of His teaching were all
largely determined by the life of His country and His time.

Yet this is He concerning whom all