all that fallen humanity needs.  Here is a great fact to be explained.  The only reasonable explanation is that given by the Saviour himself.  When the Jews marvelled at his teaching, saying, “How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?” he answered, “My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.”  Such a religion as that described in the gospels could not have been conceived of unless it had actually existed; and it could not have existed without God for its author.  Gifted men may be in advance of their own age; that is, they may see before others what is the next thing indicated by the present progress of society.  But mere men do not rise at once above all the errors and prejudices by which they are surrounded into the region of pure light and truth.  All the work that men do is imperfect, and needs emendation by those who come after them.  A religion that remains from age to age as perfectly adapted to the wants of all men as it was at the beginning, must be from God, not from man.

Our Saviour’s manner of teaching was also as original as the teaching itself.  He saw through the world of nature and mind at a glance, and it stood always ready at hand to furnish him with arguments and illustrations—­arguments and illustrations as simple and natural as they were profound, and by means of which he unfolded the deepest truths in the plainest and most intelligible forms.  Take, for example, the parables of the mustard-seed and the leaven.  They contain within themselves the whole history of Christ’s kingdom in its inward principle.  They unfold views of its steady progress from age to age, as a growth from an inward vital force, on which the most philosophical minds especially love to dwell; and yet they are perfectly intelligible to the most unlettered man.  To teach by parables, without any false analogies, and in a way that interested and instructed alike the learned and the ignorant, this was a wonderful characteristic of our Lord’s ministry.  In this respect no one of his apostles, not even the bosom disciple, attempted to imitate him.  Yet in the great fact that his teaching was not for a select few, but for the masses of mankind, so that “the common people heard him gladly,” all his servants can and ought to imitate him.

Thus far we have considered mainly the human side of our Lord’s character, though through it all his divinity shines forth.  Let us now look more particularly at his divine mission and character.  On the fact that his mission was from God we need not dwell.  Nicodemus expressed the judgment of every candid mind when he said, “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.”  If there is one truth which our Lord asserted more frequently than any other, it is that he came from God:  “The works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me.”  “If God were your Father, ye would love me:  for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me.”