on them as a bad, wild, low
set of people, with whom nothing could be done; and said, 'This
people who knoweth not the law, is accursed.'

But what they would not do, God himself would. God in Christ had
come to feed his own flock, and to seek the lost sheep, and bring
them gently home to God's fold. He could feel for these poor wild
foresters and mountain shepherds; he could understand what was in
their hearts; for he knew the heart of man; and, therefore, he could
make them understand him. And it was for this very reason, one
might suppose, that our Lord was willing to be brought up at
Nazareth, that he might learn the country speech, and country ways,
and that the people might grow to look on him as one of themselves.
Those Scribes and Pharisees, one may suppose, were just the people
whom they could not understand; fine, rich scholars, proud people
talking very learnedly about deep doctrines. The country folk must
have looked at them as if they belonged to some other world, and
said,--Those Pharisees cannot understand us, any more than we can
them, with their hard rules about this and that. Easy enough for
rich men like them to make rules for poor ones. Indeed our Lord
said the very same of them--'Binding heavy burdens, and grievous to
be borne, and laying them on men's shoulders; while they themselves
would not touch them with one of their fingers.'

Then the Lord himself came and preached to these poor wild folk, and
they heard him gladly. And why? Because his speech was too deep
for them? Because he scolded and threatened them? No.

We never find that our Lord spoke harshly to them. They had plenty
of sins, and he knew it: but it is most remarkable that the
Evangelists never tell us what he said about those sins. What they
do tell us is, that he spoke to them of the common things around
them, of the flowers of the field, the birds of the air, of sowing
and reaping, and feeding sheep; and taught them by parables, taken
from the common country life which they lived, and the common
country things which they saw; and shewed them how the kingdom of
God was like unto this and that which they had seen from their
childhood, and how earth was a pattern of heaven. And they could
understand that. Not all of it perhaps: but still they heard him
gladly. His preaching made them understand themselves, and their
own souls, and what God felt for them, and what was right and wrong,
and what would become of the