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THE SECOND SERMON.
91

count recall for you all or even many of the words which he uttered on this occasion. He began with some plain teaching about practice. Soon he went on to speak of himself in a marvellous way, as if he would imply that communion with him and with the Most High were one and the same, and then in his last words he seemed to speak of the Last Things. And here again his words seemed as if he identified himself with the great Judge.

Now, this is not so strange to our mode of thinking in Israel as thou mightest think. Almost all our prophets speak the oracles of God as if they were using the very words of the Lord. Thou canst read in the Greek translation of the Seventy many passages of the prophets in which the very words of the Lord are given. Yet in most, if not all, cases the prophet beginneth, "Thus saith the Lord," or endeth, "This is the word of the Lord." But with this Jesus it was otherwise. He spoke as the ancient prophets do, but whether from his rapt intentness in the message he was delivering, or because he felt his spirit for the time merged in the