he use an adverb from the abstract, like “providentially.”  He says, “your heavenly Father.”  He does not talk of “humanity”; he says, “your brethren.”  He has no jargon, no technical terms, no scholastic vocabulary.  He urges men not to over-study language; their speech must be simple, the natural, spontaneous overflow of the heart.[20] Jesus told his disciples not to think out beforehand what they would say when on trial (Mark 13:11)—­it would be “given” to them.  He was perfectly right; and when Christians obeyed him, they always spoke much better than when they thought out speeches beforehand.  They said much less for one thing, and they said it much better.  Take the case of the martyr—­an early and historical one—­whose two speeches were during her trial “Christiana sum” and, on her condemnation, “Deo gratias”.

With this, remark his own gift of arresting phrase; the freshness of his language, how free it is from quotation, how natural and how extraordinarily simple.  Everything worthwhile can be put in simple language; and, if the speech is complicated, it is a call to think again.  “As a woman, over-curiously trimmed, is to be mistrusted, so is a speech,” said John Robinson of Leyden, the minister of the Pilgrim Fathers.  The language of Jesus is simple and direct, the inevitable expression of a rich nature and a habit of truth.  You feel he does not strain after effect—­epigram, antithesis, or alliteration.  Of course he uses such things—­like all real speakers—­but he does not go out of his way for them.  No, and so much the more significant are such characteristic antitheses as:  “Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Luke 16:13), and “Whosoever will save his life shall lose it” (Matt. 16:25), coming with a spontaneous flash, and answering in their sharpness to the sharp edges of fact.  His words caught the attention, and lived in the memory; they revealed such a nature; they were so living and unforgettable.

Remark once again his preference for the actual and the ordinary.  There are religions in which holiness involves unusual conditions and special diet.  Some forms of mysticism seem to be incompatible with married life.  But the type of holiness which Jesus teaches can be achieved with an ordinary diet, and a wife and five children.  He had lived himself in a family of eight or nine.  It is perhaps harder, but it is a richer sanctity, if the real mark of a Saint is, as we have been told, that he makes it easier for others to believe in God.  In any case the ordinary is always good enough with Jesus.  Only he would have men go deeper, always deeper.  Why can you not think for yourselves? he asks.  Signs were what men demanded.  He pictures Dives’ mind running on signs even in hell (Luke 16:27).  “What could you do with signs?  Look at what you have already.  You read the weather for to-morrow by looking at the sky to-day.  The south wind means heat; the red sky fair weather.  Study, look, think” (Luke 12:55).  His animals, as we