nd, the hen with her chickens under
her wings, the servant following the plough, the shepherd tending his
sheep, the fisherman drawing his net, the sower casting his seed into
the furrow, the housewife baking her bread or sweeping her house,--it
was through panes of common window-glass like these that Christ let in
the light upon the heaped-up treasures of the kingdom of God. No wonder
"the common people heard Him gladly"; no wonder they "all hung upon Him
listening"; or that they "came early in the morning to Him in the temple
to hear Him"! Yet, even in the eyes of the multitude the plain homespun
of Christ's speech was shot with gleams of more than earthly lustre.
There mingled--to use another figure--with the sweet music of those
simple sayings a new deep note their ears had never heard before: "the
multitudes were astonished at His teaching; for He taught them as one
having authority, and not as their scribes." It was not the authority of
powerful reasoning over the intellect, reasoning which we cannot choose
but obey; it was the authority of perfect spiritual intuition. Christ
never speaks as one giving the results of long and painful gropings
after truth, but rather as one who is at home in the world to which God
and the things of the spirit belong. He asserts that which He knows, He
declares that which He has seen.

(3) Another quality of Christ's words which helps us to understand their
world-wide influence is their winnowedness, their freedom from the chaff
which, in the words of others, mingles with the wholesome grain. The
attempt is sometimes made to destroy, or, at least, to weaken, our claim
for Christ as the supreme teacher by placing a few selected sayings of
His side by side with the words of some other ancient thinker or
teacher. And if they who make such comparisons would put into their
parallel columns all the words of Jesus and all the words of those with
whom the comparison is made, we should have neither right to complain
nor reason to fear. Wellhausen puts the truth very neatly when he says,
"The Jewish scholars say, 'All that Jesus said is also to be found in
the Talmud.' Yes, all, and a great deal besides."[7] The late Professor
G.J. Romanes has pointed out the contrast in two respects between Christ
and Plato. He speaks of Plato as "the greatest representative of human
reason in the direction of spirituality"; yet he says "Plato is nowhere
in this respect as compared with Christ." While in Plat