Again, our Lord is at pains so to put what He says that it may not be taken for a fresh body of injunctions added to the Law; for the people were already, as He said, overburdened with such injunctions. He puts therefore what He has to say into such strong forms, and, by way of example, takes such extreme cases, that it is plain that He is illustrating a principle and not laying down a literal rule. We have “Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil: but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man would go to law with thee, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go one mile, go with him twain.”(148) He Himself, before the High Priest, does not submit to wrong, without asking in remonstrance “Why smitest thou me?” and the most literal minded of our Lord’s hearers would not have felt bound to offer his cloke to one who had stolen his coat. The language shews by its very strength that it is figurative. Indeed, a code of Law can hardly be delivered in an address to a multitude. If it is to meet all cases it must be complex, and to the hearer wearisome. If our Lord had delivered a treatise telling men what they were to do in the ordinary occasions of life, the precepts must have been so encumbered by qualifications that all impressiveness would have been lost. If to the saying “Give to him that asketh of thee” our Lord had appended all the obvious exceptions—such as the cases in which what is asked for would be hurtful—the whole force of the passage would have been frittered away. As long as a preacher delivers broad truths, put forcibly, his audience are ready to hear; but as soon as he begins to qualify his statements and to make exceptions, his hold over his hearers is gone, and they think he is unsaying what he said. Our Lord wished to leave _seed thoughts_ lying in men’s minds. He knew that His words would have to be carried in men’s memories for a long while before being written down. They must therefore be clad in the form in which they would last longest and be easiest to carry. He therefore embodied what He wished to have remembered in terse sayings, illustrated by cases which are familiar but extreme. The hearer could carry these sentences away, and would ponder on them all the more, because in their literal sense they are startling and impracticable as rules of conduct. I can conceive no style better fitted for the purpose which I believe to have been dominant with our Lord, than that employed in the Sermon on the Mount.