ordinary hearer can without difficulty finish the sentence.  Christ was not afraid of a paradox.  When, e.g., He said, “Whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also,” He was ready to risk the possibility of being misunderstood by some prosaic hearer, that He might the more effectually arouse men to a neglected duty.  His language was concrete, not abstract; He taught by example and illustration; He thought, and taught others to think, in pictures.  How often is the phrase, “The kingdom of heaven is like unto——­” on His lips!  Moreover, His illustrations were always such as common folk could best appreciate.  The birds of the air, the lilies of the field, the lamp on the lamp-stand, 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