Christ’s words reveal for a man the secrets of his own heart to himself. They interpret to him his own confused and dreamy thoughts. This was what drew men so mightily to Him. It was not so much the novelty of what He told them that attracted them, as that they recognised in His teaching old familiar puzzles, which had come and gone through their minds, times without number, only in such shadowy guise that they could not fix and scrutinize them. Christ spake and then men said “This is what has been always troubling us.” Here is what we have always been wanting to say, and could not put into plain words—and now these floating impressions of ours are found not to have come by chance but to belong to truths set in our being. God has “sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts crying Abba, Father.”(21) But He would not have done so if we had not had the capacity for being sons, to begin with. We shall see too, when we think of it, that a revelation to men can only come by man, or in a voice or words like those of a man. Man’s understanding is fashioned in a certain way; his language is the creature of his understanding; ideas could not be conveyed to him unless they were clothed in language which he could understand; Revelation therefore must express itself in terms of human notions because they alone can be made intelligible in human speech. If God speaks, He must speak after the fashion of men, or His words will be an unknown tongue. To take an illustration: If a man, owing to something abnormal in his vision, became aware of a new colour, something which had nothing to do with red or yellow or blue; he could not communicate his new sensation because he could find no pigment which would in any degree represent it, and he could not describe it in words, by likeness to anything in the world. So God can only reveal to man about spiritual existence what man can conceive, that is to say only that to which he finds something analogous in his own being; for all must be put into that form with which man’s understanding can deal; and the only spiritual creature he can conceive is _man_; the only ideas he can conceive are human ideas; his mind must work on the lines along which men’s minds move; the only creature with whom he can sympathise, and whom he can believe to sympathise with him is _man_, and so—since there can be no real teaching without mutual understanding—by _man_ he must be taught. Christ’s revelation meets this need. It was as the Son of Man that Christ declared Himself, and in this character He conveyed to men the germs of all the spiritual enlightenment they can receive. Does not this throw light on the words, “No one knoweth who the Father is save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him,”(22) and again, “No man cometh to the Father but by me?”(23) CHAPTER IV. OUR LORD’S USE OF SIGNS.