on
the masses by the Sermon on the Mount was not so much an appreciation of
its high morality, as a feeling of the personal authority with which
Christ spoke. Had the scribes, then, no authority? They ruled the whole
life of the nation with tyrannical power. They sat in Moses' seat, and
claimed all manner of sway and control. And yet when people listened to
Jesus, they heard something ringing in His voice that they missed in the
rabbis. They only set themselves up, in their highest claims, as being
commentators upon, and the expositors of, the Law. Their language was
'Moses commanded'; 'Rabbi _this_ said _so-and-so_; Rabbi _that_ said
_such-and-such_.' But as even the crowd that listened to Him detected,
Jesus Christ, in these great laws of His kingdom, adduced no authority
but His own; stood forth as a Legislator, not as a commentator; and
commanded, and prohibited, and repealed, and promised, on His own bare
word. That is a characteristic of all Christ's teaching; and, as we see
from my text, to the apprehension of the first auditors, it was deeply
stamped on the Sermon on the Mount.

I purpose to turn to that Sermon now, and try if we can make out the
points in it which impressed these people, who first heard it, with the
sense that they were in the presence of an autocratic Voice that had a
right to speak, and which did speak, with absolute and unexampled
authority.

And I do that the more readily because I dare say you have all heard
people that said 'Oh! I do not care about the dogmas of Christianity;
give me the Sermon on the Mount and its sublime morality; that is
Christianity enough for me.' Well, I should be disposed to say so pretty
nearly too, if you will take _all_ the Sermon on the Mount, and not go
picking and choosing bits out of it. For I am sure that if you will take
the whole of its teaching you will find yourself next door to, if not in
the very inmost chamber of, the mysticism of the Gospel of John and the
theology of Paul.

I. I ask you, then, to note that the Sermon claims for Jesus Christ the
authority of supremacy above all former revelation and revealers.

'Think not,' says He, 'that I am come to destroy the law or the
prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.' And then He goes on,
in five cases, to illustrate, in a very remarkable way, the authority
that He claimed over the former Law, moulding it according to His will.

Now I do not propose to do more than suggest, in a sentence