We do not wonder at the effect of his teaching of which we read in St. John vii:  46, when the chief priests sent some of their officers to take him prisoner, and bring him unto them; the officers went, and joined the crowd that was listening to his preaching.  His words had such a strange effect on them that they could not think of touching him.  So they went back to their masters without doing what they had been sent to do.  “And when the chief priests and Pharisees said unto them—­Why have ye not brought him?  The officers answered, Never man spake like this man.”  Jesus was indeed—­The Great Teacher.  In this light we are now to look at him.  And as we do this we shall find that there were five great things about his teaching which made him different from any other teacher the world has ever known.

In the first place Jesus may well be called the Great Teacher, because of the—­GREAT BLESSINGS—­of which he came to tell.

We find some of these spoken of at the opening of his first great sermon to his disciples, called “The Sermon on the Mount.”  This is the most wonderful sermon that ever was preached.  Jesus began it by telling about some of the great blessings he had brought down from heaven for poor sinful creatures such as we are.  The sermon begins in the fifth chapter of St. Matthew, and the first twelve verses of the chapter are occupied in speaking of these blessings.  As soon as he opened his mouth and began to speak a stream of blessings flowed out.

It was a beautiful thought, on this subject, which a boy in Sunday-school once had.  The teacher had been talking to his class about the beginning of this sermon on the mount.  He had spoken of the sweetness of the words of Jesus, when “He opened his mouth and taught” his disciples.  “How pleasant it must have been, my dear boys,” said he, “to have seen the blessed Saviour, and to have heard him speak!”

A serious-minded little fellow in the class said, “Teacher, don’t you think that when Jesus opened his mouth, and began to speak to his disciples, it must have been like taking the stopper out of a scent bottle?” I cannot tell whether this boy had ever read the words of Solomon or not; but he had just the same idea that was in his mind when he said of this “Great Teacher,” “thy name is as ointment poured forth.”  Cant, i:  3.  We perceive the fragrance of this ointment as soon as Jesus opens his mouth and begins to speak.  If we had been listening to Jesus when he began this sermon, saying:—­” Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are the meek; blessed are the pure in heart; blessed are the peace-makers”—­and so on till he had spoken of nine different kinds of blessing, we might have thought that he had nothing but blessings of which to tell.  It would have seemed as if his mind, and heart, and lips, and hands were all so filled with blessings that he could do nothing else till he had told about these.