Humour, in its highest form, is the sign of a mind at peace with itself, for which the contrasts and contradictions of life have ceased to jar, though they have not ceased to be,--which accepts them as necessary and not without meaning, indeed as adding charm to life, when they are viewed from above. It is the faculty which lets a man see what Plato called "the whole tragedy and comedy of life"[6]--the one in the other. Is it not humour that saw the Pharisee earnestly rinsing, rubbing and polishing the _outside_ of his cup, forgetful of the fact that he drank from the inside? that saw the simple-minded taking their baskets to gather the grape-harvest from bramble-bushes? That pleaded with a nation, already gaining a name for being sordid, _not_ to cast pearls before swine, and to forsake caring for the morrow, because such care was the mark of the Gentile world--the distinguishing sign between Gentile and Jew? {119} That told the men he knew so well--men bred in a rough world--to "turn the other cheek,"--to yield the cloak to him who took the coat, not in irony, but with the brotherly feeling that "his necessity is greater than mine"--to go when "commandeered" not the required mile, making an enemy by sourness of face, but to go two--"two additional," the Syriac version says--and so soften the man and make him a friend?[7] What stamps the language of Jesus invariably is its delicate ease, implying a sensibility to every real aspect of the matter in hand--a sense of mastery and peace. Men marvelled at the _charm_ of his words--Luke using the Greek _charis_ to express it.[8] The homely parable may be in other hands coarse enough, but the parables of Jesus have a quality about them after all these years that leaves one certain he smiled as he spoke them. There is something of the same kind to be felt in Cowper's letters, but in the stronger nature the gift is of more significance. At the cost of a little study of human character, and close reading of the Synoptists, and some careful imagination, it is possible to see him as he spoke,--the flash of the eye, the smile on the lip, the gesture of the hand, all the natural expression of himself and his thought that a man unconsciously gives in speaking, when he has forgotten himself in his matter and his hearer--his physiognomy, in fact. We realize very soon his complete mastery of the various aspects of what he says. That he realizes every implication of his words is less likely, for there is a spontaneity about them--they are "out of the abundance of his heart"; the form is not studied; they are for the man and the moment. But they imply the speaker and his whole relation to God and man--they cannot help implying this, and that is their charm. Living words, flashed out on the spur of the moment from the depths of him, they _are_ the man. It was not idly that the early church used to say "Remember the words of the Lord Jesus." On any