they were and as a teacher of morality at all, was not so in the name of another master, nor by virtue of a delegated right, as they were, but in his own name, and by virtue of a right which emanated from, and was centred absolutely in himself.

The modes of producing conviction are reduced by the writers upon Rhetoric to three in general; one of which influences or convinces the hearer, by affecting his passions; another, by satisfying his understanding; and the third, by the mere weight and authority of the character of the speaker. This last was the method most agreeable to the dignity of our Saviour's personal character; and was that which he most regularly employed. It is a peculiar characteristic of his mode of teaching the people, which each of the three first evangelists has distinctly noticed, in its proper place, once for all; that he taught "as one having authority, and not as the "scribes:" which does not imply merely that he taught with more wisdom and gravity, more clearness or perspicuity, more convincingness and force of reason, than the scribes, or ordinary teachers of the people, (though all that might be very true,) but simply that he taught with the air and tone, the language and demeanour, of a superior power, addressing his subjects, of a master, addressing his servants, of a lawgiver, legislating for his people. Such an one would have only to express his will, in order to have it obeyed; unless they who heard it expressed, should dare to be guilty of rebelling presumptuously against a rightful authority and jurisdiction. To suppose that the scribes, or any order of the ministers of religion among the Jews, could have talked in this strain, or assumed so lofty and dignified a tone as this,

would be to suppose they were in the place of God himself, and had a right to speak to moral agents as the supreme moral Governor alone is privileged to do. Such, no doubt, was the language in which Moses frequently addressed the Jews of old; and such was sometimes that of the prophets of the old dispensation but in both instances, with the utmost fitness and propriety, because both Moses and the prophets even in such cases spoke only in the name of God, and what they said was virtually said by God.

The peculiarity then, of our Saviour's manner of teaching consisted in this: that he taught as an original instructor; as having an independent, selfderived authority; with the commanding address of a supreme moral legislator, who had only to declare his will, to render it binding on his hearers that they should obey it, or make it impossible not to be guilty of sin and rebellion, in disobeying it. We have a specimen of this manner in St. Matthew's account of the sermon on the mount; in which the ipse dixit of the speaker predominates throughout; shewing in what an authoritative way, as entitled to do so by virtue of his own power and will, he took upon himself to cancel old obligations of duty, and to impose new; to bind or to loose at his discretion; and to supersede or to reinforce the doctrine and discipline of Moses and the prophets, by a doctrine and discipline of his own. No doubt, this mode of addressing and teaching his hearers is exactly that which we should, a priori, have expected the moral Governor, the Creator and Ruler of the universe, to assume in speaking to his moral and a Chap. v. &c.

responsible creation, were he to appear among them, in a human form, for the very purpose of making known his will to them: but well might it seem new and surprising to the people, and well might it strike them with awe and astonishment; as it is said to have done.

It was not often, therefore, that our Lord had recourse to argument, as such-that is, to the second of the above methods of conviction-in enforcing a point of duty; nor ever formally and systematically, but if at all, only incidentally and by the way. Argument, however, by which I understand the possible kinds of reasoning in general, is divided by rhetoricians into the two characteristic species of the euthymem (or syllogism) and the example: both of which are equally intended for the conviction of the understanding, but each, under certain circumstances, may more properly be used for that purpose, than the other. The example has the advantage in plainness and simplicity; in being more popular, and adapted to the level of the commonest capacities, while the euthymem is more refined, and artificial, and requires a higher degree of intellectual ability to understand it, and greater powers of memory and abstraction to retain and follow it. The example is a mode of reasoning naturally accommodated to questions of debate or practice; the euthymem is more appropriated to researches of science, and to metaphysical or abstract reasonings. Long before the invention of an art of rhetoric, or the reduction of the principles of logic to fixed, artificial rules, the predominance of that mode of reasoning which argues from like cases in the past, to similar cases in the future, characterises the de

liberations and speeches which occur in Homer, the most ancient of the Greek poets, or in Herodotus, the most early Greek historian: whereas no such peculiarity is discernible in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, or the orations of Thucydides. The use of the fable, which is merely the use of an imaginary example, designed to supply the place of a real one, is of still more ancient date; and will be found to go back in the records of every nation, to a period coeval with their origin itself.

The moral parables of our Saviour are instances of the same mode of reasoning in general; and if they had consisted of impossible or improbable circumstances, must have been pronounced fables; and as they consist both of possible and probable, may be real histories: but whether real histories or fictitious, they are to all intents and purposes examples, and only enlarged specimens of the argument from analogy or a pari, purposely so contrived as to illustrate one thing by its resemblance to, or its identity with another. Such parables, in themselves, and in the use which is made of them, may be compared to graphic or sensible pictures; and our Lord's employment of them for such a purpose, resembled the practice of the ancient prophets in teaching by signs or actions. If he chose to have recourse to any means of conviction, beside the weight and authority of his own decisions, or to enforce assent to his doctrines by any form of reasoning which would best harmonize with the deference due to himself; perhaps the plainness and perspicuity, and the un

b For some further remarks on this subject, the reader is referred to the Appendix, chapter II. which will be found in the last volume of the work.

studied refinement which became his teaching, as well as regard to the habits, capacities, or inclinations of his hearers, might induce him to prefer the example; which by its simplicity and yet its elegance, by its artlessness and yet its lively and picturesque effect, if not by its accordance to the genius of an Oriental audience, seemed to be expressly marked out for his selection.