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."