In geometry we begin with what we call “axioms,” a few simple principles that need no proof. We call them “self-evident,” because we see that they are true, that they must be true, the instant we know what the words mean that state them to us. Upon these we build our geometry and all the science and art that rest upon it or grow out of it. When we prove one thing we did not know by something that, being self-evident, needs no proof, we put the two together and prove a third, and so on as far as we can go. Jesus would have known the third, and the hundredth, and the last, as he knew the first--without this building-up process. He would know all that the axioms contain as we know the axioms. For want of fitter words we have been speaking of his “method of thought.” As these words have significance to mere men, Jesus, it seems, had no method of thought; he did not, as men must do, think to know; he knew things. Perhaps this is in part what he meant when he said to Pilate, “I am the Truth.” CHAPTER VIII. “NEVER MAN SPAKE LIKE THIS MAN.” We will consider the method of Jesus as a teacher, and the word is appropriate now. He did have a method in teaching men the truths that he knew without reasoning about them, the truths that he did not discover by investigation, the truths he knew because they were in him. To begin with, Jesus does not seek to prove things to his hearers; he announces what is truth as God announces truth. He is a divine dogmatist; he offers no proof of what he sets forth as truth. No other teacher ever taught as Jesus did. What we may call his logic-form is pre-eminently the teacher’s; but no teacher ever employed it as did he who came out of Nazareth. He reasons from the weaker to the stronger reason. He does not reason to prove truth to others, as he does not reason to discover it for himself, but to teach it. This is the form of reasoning we find in all his parables and illustrations. His arguments are designed to help his learners understand what he meant and to impress it upon their minds. He never seems concerned about proving to men the truth of what he said, but only to make it plain and to enforce it. Many illustrations might be given; let a few suffice. One day Jesus was teaching his disciples the doctrine of God’s providence. He makes no argument to prove that there is a providence; he does not seek to convince them, but only to help them realize in their own thoughts the all-embracing, unfailing, and gracious providence that kept them. And he did this not to make them understand the doctrine of providence, but to help them trust in it. He seeks to bring home to them the truth he does not seek to prove. How does he set about it? What is his method? Not a mere man’s method. It is indeed an absolutely simple method; but no other teacher, who has not learned it of him, has used it so in discoursing of such truths.