Jesus was fond of saying that a wise man knew how to bring forth from the treasury of his heart things new and old. It was in this way that He accomplished the most radical of religious revolutions while seeming only to fulfil the law and the prophets. What was there then that was so new and potent in the least of His discourses? The treasure of His filial consciousness. The inner inspiration springing up in them incessantly gives to every detail of His teaching, the oldest words, the most familiar metaphors, a meaning altogether new, a reach and bearing infinite. His speech confines itself to the antithesis that had become traditional with all the prophets, of man's weakness and God's strength, of sin and pardon, of repentance and confidence, of sickness and healing, of humility and exaltation. But He had a way of looking at them, and even of making them spring out of each other, that entirely renovated them. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven! Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted! Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled!" To press thus and to stimulate the sense of need, of misery and sin, so far that it changes into its opposite; to draw riches out of poverty, comfort out of sorrow, victorious strength from weakness; to find in sorrow for sin the germ of saintly life and in hunger and thirst the very source of satisfaction; to make every human soul thus pass through this inward drama of repentance and conversion in which it is regenerated and renewed,--such is the unique but admirable and all potent mystery of the Gospel.