The right people to ask.
I. WHY JESUS COULD REFER TO HIS HEARERS. It is not every teacher that could refer confidently to his hearers, not even to his most attached and trustful ones. If he did, and if an accurate report could be got of all their impressions, the result might not be very complimentary to the teacher. He might find out that as yet he himself was only a learner. He might find out that he himself was only making guesses and dealing with the surface of things. But Jesus knew whence he came, and all he said was said with the spontaneity, the natural coherence, belonging to him who spake as never man spake. We know the impression the teaching of Jesus makes upon us, and we know that the miscellaneous crowds who first listened to it must have been impressed in the same way. It is not meant that they understood everything, or always understood rightly. But there was this impression, at all events, that Jesus spoke with authority, and not as the scribes. Jesus knew that the common people of the country were not against him, and his enemies also knew that they could not afford to inquire too curiously into the opinions of the multitude. That multitude might not be enthusiastic about Jesus, but a decided condemnation of him the multitude never would give, if only a sufficient number of people had been asked.
II. A HINT FOR US IN OUR JUDGMENTS ABOUT JESUS. We are too much accustomed to fly to books about Jesus which have intellectual merit rather than personal experience in them. Jesus referred confidently to the great bulk of his auditors, even the common people. And we should try to find out what the common people think about him. If Jesus cannot bless everybody, he cannot bless anybody. The scribes and Pharisees made difficulties where the common people made none. And so we should do well in our difficulties to consider whether they are shared by others. There is great benefit in listening to the opinions of all sorts of people about Jesus Christ. It is well, on the one hand, to hear what can be said by the learned and academic mind; and it is also well, on the other, to listen to those who, behind all that has been peculiar in Christ's teaching, all that has wanted learning whereby to understand it, have seen the universal truth that was meant to do them good. Christ's teaching can lay hold of hearts and consciences when the most elaborate system of mere ethics has no grasp. Christ is more than anything he has said, and those who make no pretence to intellectual superiority or anything special, can see him through his every word and deed. We had better not reject Christ before we have listened well to the kind of people who have accepted him.—Y.