heard the Saviour characterised-brought up in Galilee, where education was not so well maintained as in other

parts of Palestine-broke in upon the quiet progress of truth, and hurried it forward into a revolution in which much excellent truth, being given too soon, was afterwards lost or perverted. And lastly, that his attacks on the Scribes and Pharisees as recorded in the Gospels are proof of his want of high training, and even of his ignorance, for the very things He taught were being taught by the best among those whom He satirized with such intemperance.

We reply-reserving the whole question of the evil or not of a religious revolution at this time for another sermon-first, that history does not confirm the theory that the high teaching of the Jewish sages was having much influence upon the world. We are told that they taught a large tolerance and a profound charity. Where is the proof that this teaching was effective?

Love to one's neighbour as to oneself-patience under injury-a universal spirit of charity even among those alone who held a common faith-that men should not seek the highest place-that the true master was as one who serveth-these things do not seem to have had the smallest influence among the Jewish parties during the last fatal war with Rome.

And as to the influence of these truths upon the Gentile world, how many proselytes do we find, and how were they treated by the boasted tolerance of the higher Judaism? A few swallows do not make a summer, nor a few thousand proselytes a regenerated world. Nor does admission into the outer court of the Temple and

exclusion from the inner say much for the perfect liberality of the Doctors of the Law.

The fact is, however much they taught these truths, they did not teach them so as to make them influential. As to the statement that there were Pharisees to whom Christ's denunciations did not apply, no one ever doubted it. There are always men who stand apart from the violence and bigotry of their time, and the more bigoted the greater number are, the more will these isolate themselves. Of such a type Gamaliel is an instance. But such men, in their turn, react upon the mass and make its narrowness still more narrow, if narrowness be the tendency of the time. Moreover, as we shall see, the isolated culture of these men was, in itself, almost worse than bigotry. It threw the common people back into deeper ignorance. One may imagine the scorn with which Gamaliel would have treated men like the common Galileans whom Christ collected round Him, from the ill-concealed contempt with which he treated the Sanhedrin itself. The more one considers the matter, the more it seems that Christ's reproofs were well deserved. It may well be that there were a few wise and good men who did not share either in the scorn or the violence of the period. But we have no right to impute their wisdom to all the hierarchy in the face of much evidence to the contrary. Six oak trees in a wood do not make it an oak wood.

But it is said again that the sayings of these wise men were household words among the Jews, and that Christ only repeated them. Why then, I ask, did they not tell upon the world as the words of Christ did?

Why did they not inspire men to go forth and preach them to the world? Why did they not make an army of martyrs? Why did they not overrun in a few years the Greek and Roman worlds? Why did they not destroy Heathenism?

The answer to this will answer also our previous question in what points did Christ's teaching of these common truths differ from the Jewish teaching of them?

The Jewish teaching did not succeed because it was not embodied in a person. Christ's teaching differed from that of the Jewish sages, first, in this, that it was these truths made real in a life.

The teaching in the Jewish schools was of a noble religious type. But independent of the fact that the higher truths were not communicated to such persons as the shepherds of Bethlehem, the teaching was teaching and no more. No one dreamed of going among men and living the truths he taught. And the great mass of the people do not realise things by description. They must see in order to know. A lecturer gives a clear and accurate account of the sea to a class of inland persons not gifted with much imagination, and they now possess a mild interest in the information, but none in the sea itself. On the whole, they do not care to pursue the subject further. But suppose that the lecturer could suddenly transport his pupils to the Atlantic, and say, 'Look there; that is the ocean.' They would not know as much about it as if they had listened for hours to his lectures, but they would have what they had not before—a vivid interest in it; they are inspired to study

it for themselves, and in the end, because they love it, and are thrilled by its power and beauty, they learn to know it better than they could by any elaborate description.

So here, truths were given by the Jewish sages to the people in the schools, analysed, reduced to proverbial forms, and they had no universal effect; they produced no vital interest.

At last one comes who says, I am the Truth and the Life. Look here-see my works, behold my life, what I say, and do, and live; that is the mind and the character of God. It is easy to put that to the test; the spectators are interested; they do not understand the theory of truth so well at first, but they are thrilled, inspired, impelled. They cannot rest till they have seen all they can; they comprehend what they see; they return again and again to the human realisation of the truth.

This was the manner of Christ's teaching, and the influence of it crept into the study of men's imagination. Again, it is hard to love merely ideal truth. Unless truth is connected with a person whom one can love, it does not get afloat, it lies stranded on the beach. Preach such a truth as 'Love your neighbour as yourself,' and it has but little attractiveness till you have connected it with the life of some one who has fulfilled it. But then men's hearts are stirred, they love the man and necessarily the truth which made the man. Then love gives it vogue-a fire burns in our hearts; we must speak or die; we speak, and the fire is communicated; it runs from soul to soul, spreading, kindling

as it goes. We want truth embodied in a person whom we can love.

It was because this was done by Christ that Christianity succeeded where Jewish wisdom failed. A great love to a man arose, mingled with a profound veneration for his character. Both these, love and reverence, were irresistible. Men's hearts were drawn to Him as the seas are to the moon. He had laid down his life for them; they would die for Him. He had borne witness to the truth in death; they would die for his truth. He had lived among them a perfect life, and what He taught was guaranteed and glorified by it. It was not so much truths or a system of truths which they saw. It was Christ as the incarnate Truth. A central point was given to which all the rays of truth could be traced, at which their inner harmony was seen; and at once the teaching which had this human centre took fire, force, movement, expansion, and radiated over the world.

This leads me to the second and the last reason I shall give for the success of Christianity as contrasted with the failure of the Jewish sages. It was preached to the common people.

I have said that truths require to be lived--nay, more, to be died for-to give them vogue. But that they should be lived and died for, they must come into the open arena of the world, among the mass of everyday men and women; they must come out of the retired cloisters of the schools. That they should emerge clearly and take distinct outlines, such outlines as the populace can grasp, they must be brought into direct opposition