Jesus was untaught in the greater schools of his own people. “How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?” implies more than that his hearers knew his history well enough to know he was not school-trained as their scribes were; it means that they knew he did not speak as their scholars spoke. Jesus did not talk like a book; he was not learned in books; his language indicates, so far as books count, knowledge of the Scriptures only; he could read, but he was no scholar. Compare now the conditions under which this young carpenter of Nazareth, working at his trade, and doing good work till he was thirty years old, grew into manhood; consider what his people were at their best; consider how little of what was best in Hebrew life entered into his Galilean bringing up; consider the hard conditions and the narrow limitations of his life, and tell me whether Jesus is a normal development of his race and time and place? We will not now speak of his teachings; compare him with his natural conditions. There is nothing in all human history that makes it possible to believe that a mere Jew, brought up in that Nazareth, could have become this flawless, perfect character. If it be otherwise there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in heredity or environment; then any soil can produce any fruits. Better expect to find the kingly trees of the Yosemite Valley growing with the stunted sage of Arizona. Consider the teachings of Jesus and tell me can this perfection of truth come out of Nazareth? Consider what he teaches about God, the human soul, sin, reconciliation, salvation and immortality. Consider how he teaches and illustrates in his life the brotherhood of the human race. Consider his ethics--his doctrines of rights and wrongs. What he teaches about rights and wrongs, in principle and practice, is so absolutely full and perfect that good men--the best men in the world to-day, so long after his time--cannot so much as conceive of one single virtue he did not teach or of one single evil that he did not condemn. Nay, the wisest and best are always trying to teach men the truth Jesus taught; and his standard is so high that no sane and honest man has ever professed to have reached it.