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Jesus was emphatically a teacher. Not one who was confined to a professor's chair, but one who taught everywhere. As a teacher He was eminently successful, and exceedingly popular. What was the secret of His success and popularity?

I. HIS DOCTRINES were of such a character as to command the most profound respect, and make the deepest impressions.

1. There was in them a peculiar fitness to the people. His teachings awakened the conscience, enlightened the understanding, and stirred the heart.

2. They were free from sectarian bigotry and prejudice. His principles were broad and generous, having universal application to the physical, social, and spiritual wants of men.

II. HIS STYLE. There was nothing stiff or stilted about it, no extravagance of speech, no affectation of manner. His very presence was a charm. Gentleness and simplicity marked all He said and did.

III. HIS ILLUSTRATIVENESS. One of the elements in His great strength lay in the aptness of His figures and comparisons from common life. Wherever He turned His eye He found central truth, and brought out of it something that the people could apply home. He ignored bewildering terminology, and showed that religion had something to say in the home as well as in the temple.

IV. HIS IMPARTIALITY. Teachers often make distinctions among their pupils. But Christ looked at man as man, and turned no one way either on account of rank or of poverty.

V. HIS AUTHORITY. It was the consciousness of His Divine authority which made Him so independent as a teacher. He did not pander to the corrupt tastes of the people nor accommodate Himself to their errors and prejudices.

VI. HIS NATURALNESS. There was nothing strained, artificial, or formal about His methods. It was in the most incidental and easy way that He taught some of His grandest lessons and did His greatest works. The smallest occasion was improved. There never was a teacher so little dependent on times and places. Why this spontaneity in all the teachings of Jesus? Because religion is natural, and religion is natural because it is real.

VII. HIS ABILITY TO INSPIRE MEN, to kindle in their hearts a holy enthusiasm. Xenophon tells us that men were more inspired by the example and spirit of Socrates than by his words. So with Jesus. There was something in His manner, address, and personal presence that at once won the hearts of His hearers. When He wanted men to become His disciples He had" but to say to them "Follow Me," and they at once "forsook all and followed Him." And He exerts that influence to-day.

(J. L. Harris.)

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KJV: There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews:

WEB: Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.