Christ as a teacher

A'- ^ :oi ,

PBESENTED TO THE LIBBARY

PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

Pfofessof HcnPy ^OJ^ Dyke, D.D., LiIi.D.

. ?I.V77

CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

TWO LECTURES

DELIVERED BEFORE THE NEW YORK SUNDAY-SCHOOL
TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION.

BY

MARVIN R. VINCENT, D.D.

NEW YORK:

ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY,

900 BROADWAY, COR. 20th STREET.

Copyright, 1886, by
Anson D. F. Randolph & Company.

EDWARD o. Jenkins' sons>

Printers and Stereotypers^

ao North William St., New York,

CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

I.

It is a vast and most tempting subject which
you have assigned me. At best you will not
expect me to do more than to touch a point
here and there on the circumference of the
theme. That I may do even thus much, let
me waste no time in preliminary words. I am
to speak of CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

None of us will dispute the rightfulness of
the title which our Lord gives Himself in the
thirteenth of John {v-J^- "Ye call me master
{ox teacher) anHTlord, and ye say well, for so
I am." He is the representative teacher; the
teacher of teachers ; the model and the inspi-
ration of the most successful theories of teach-
ing. Back to Him we must go, down the
whole long line of sages and philosophers, for
the best example of the art of expounding
truth to uninstructed minds. Our admiration
grows as we apprehend the conditions under
which He taught, and the character of His
material. He had not to deal with virgin soil.

J CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

The teacher who grapples with a fresh mind,
unbiased by reh'gious opinions or definite re-
ligious conceptions, has a great advantage
over one who must reach a mind through a
jungle of false conceptions and prejudices,
rooted in tradition, developed by false meth-
ods of training, and backed by perhaps the
most arrogant and dictatorial ecclesiasticism
the world has ever known. It was very much
for even some such auditors to say, " Never
man spake like this man.'-' , ■ •

THE POWER OF CHRIST'S PERSONALITY.

And here we catch more than a hint of the
first great element of Christ's power as a
t eacher— Hi S PERSONAUT y7~ 1 1 w^s the man
that carried and drove home the teaching.

Power in teaching is bound up with charac-
ter in the teacher. Truth, from a real teacher,
is not like water running through a marble or
silver channel which imparts no character to
it. It is rather like water in a medicated cup
which communicates its flavor to the liquid.
A mind is not merely a receptacle for facts ;
it is a germ to be informed, and only life can
inform with life. Formulas of truth quicken
as the teacher's life pervades them. The in-
stinct of the youngest pupil is to put the
teacher before the lesson. Scores of men who

CHRIST AS A TEACHER. C

never exerted a fraction of Thomas Arnold's
power over English youth, were his superiors
in knowledge and in what goes to make the
drill-master ; but the best thing which the
Rugby boys carried away from Rugby was
the impress of Arnold himself.

The great illustration of this truth is Christ.
The powers of Christianity is the power of a
person rather than of a system. His words
are " spirit and life," because He speaks
them. I do not mean merely that His pres-
ence was commanding and His mode of speech
fascinating, though that might well be the
case; but I mean that^^the Man and His say-
ings were inseparably welded ; that the say-
ings were the outcome of the man's inmost
quality and fibre. Christ is the incarnated
denial of the French diplomatist's falsehood
that " the great object of language is to
conceal thought." Christ himself appeared
through all the windows of His speech. You
would not be slow to appreciate the difference
between Webster's reply to Hayne, thundered
forth by the great expounder of the Constitu-
tion in person, and the same speech declaimed
in the best style by a clever school-boy. You
do not stop to analyze such differences ; you
feel them. Of Christ it has been beautifully
said, "To hear His daily speech was not

5 CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

simply to receive His thoughts but to share,
as it were, the inmost Hfe of His spirit. His
speech is, after eighteen centuries, exceeding
wonderful to the world, and humanity still
listens to it as one listens to a tale he can not
choose but hear; yet to the men who first
heard it, it was made fully intelligible by His
person. To hear His speech was to enjoy
His fellowship ; and His fellowship created
the sense that understood His speech. _ His
words came to them explained by a living
and articulate commentary." That was pre-
eminently true of our Lord which was said of
a certain literary character of England, that
" his conversation was companionship and his
companionship conversation." Christ's words,
spoken by Plato or Aristotle, would not have
been " spirit and life." No homily or treatise
will generate the enthusiasm of a true student.
Men will not suffer martyrdom for an abstrac-
tion, nor meet a code with self-surrender.
Self will not capitulate to sermons. The
sermon must flame into a life. Christ at the
tomb of Lazarus gives the real clench to
Paul's argument in First Corinthians : " Love
your enemies" must be translated into the
wood and nails of the cross before men will
decipher it.

The first and highest requisite of a Sunday-

CHRIST AS A TEACHER. j

school teacher, therefore, is a well-defined
Christian personality. Study of the Scrip-
tures will not, of itself, make a teacher. The
work begins deeper than that. The teacher
is not set merely to explain the geography
and the customs of Bible lands or the mean-
ing of hard texts. He is not merely to give
his pupils information : he is to inform them
with the quality of a Christ-like character ;
and for this he must have " Christ formed
within" him. He is to be a moral and spir-
itual power, not an encyclopaedia. He is to
be not mere ammunition, but powder on fire.
Paul, as you remember, in his counsel to
Timothy, puts self before teaching : " Take
heed to tJiyself and unto thy teaching "; for
it is thyself that teaches. Similarly he said
"to the Ephesian elders: "Take heed unto
yoiirselves and unto the flock."

This whole line of thought will find further
illustration in the second characteristic of our
Lord's teaching, to which we now come.

CHRIST A DOGMATIC TEACHER.
Christ was a dogmatic teacher. I know that

the word "dogma" jars upon some ears, but
it is a fair question whether the word or the
ear is responsible for the jar. A defective ear
courts false harmonies. The King of Siam,

3 crrRisT AS A teacher.

according to the story, was more delighted
with the orchestra's preliminary jargon in tun-
ing their instruments than with their grandest
symphony, and asked to have " that first piece "
repeated. Many are afraid of the word " dog-
ma" because they mistake, or only partially
apprehend, its meaning. "Dogma" is a good
New Testament word, which always carries the
sense of authority. . That was the very thing
which astonished the people in Christ's teach-
ing. \He taught them as one having authority.''
Possibly we believe in dogma more than we
think. If we follow back some of the things
about which we are surest, we may find that
they rest on dogma after all. You and I began
our education with dogma. When you stood
beside your mother and began upon the alpha-
bet, little knew or cared you about Cadmus or
the theory of phonetics. Your mother said,
" That is A," and you believed it, and have
acted upon your belief ever since. I know
there is said to have been at least one excep-
tion to that rule. I have somewhere read of
a stuttering Block Island boy who essayed the
alphabet for the first time, and on being told
that the character on the blackboard was A,
replied, " H-h-how do y-you know i-it's A?"
The teacher meekly replied that her teacher
had told her so ; whereupon the young skep-

CHRIST AS A TEACHER. q

tic, after a long look at the doubtful character,
stolidly responded, " H-h-how did you k-n-now
he d-d-didnt l-l-lie ? " But we may safely afifirm
that such hopeless exceptions are rare. Most
of us learned the alphabet dogmatically at
our mother's knee or — over it. It was the
same with the multiplication table, and with
a hundred other things. We have no better
reason for believing them than that we were
told so. The purest dogmatism is the basis of
at least two-thirds of our knowledge. Dogma
is a_Jjin.da.mental necessity of our education.
Tt is simply impossible, as it would be foolish
if it were possible, to follow down every item
of our knowledge to its roots. A life might
be consumed upon a single item. It is at once
our right and our duty to enter into other
men's labors, and to stand upon the founda-
tions they have laid. All honest and thorough
work saves the time and the labor of future
generations. No locomotive-builder thinks it
necessary, in order to construct a perfect ma-
chine, that he should begin where Stephenson
did, and work up through each successive stage
to the present level of knowledge and mechan-
ical skill. He starts with the latest and best
model he can find.

No one will understand me to depreciate
research, nor to mean that religious truth is to

10

CHRIST AS A TEA CHER.

be received on mere authority, an idea which
is contrary to the whole spirit, attitude, and
teaching of the Gospel. It is a Christian
apostle who bids us be ready to give to every
man that asketh us a reason of the hope that
is within us. But I am^sjgeaking of teaching
and of methods of teaching ; and my point is
that all teaching must include dogma, and,
ordinarily, must begin with dogma. If you
want to instruct a child or an ignorant person
about the soul, you do not begin with a dis-
cussion of the nature of spirit and matter;
you do not pretend to lead the pupil through
every stage of knowledge and proof. You
start with dogmatic statement : " You have a
soul, and that something in you which you
know and feel is there, — that something which
is not your hand nor your foot, nor anything
about your body, but which thinks and wills
and chooses, and is glad or sorry, — is your
soul." I say dogma does not exclude question
or research. On the contrary the true teacher
dogmatizes in order tjCLset, his pupil thinkjnr;
and asking questions._ Properly viewed, dog-
ma is the true preparation ancOtiHuIant for

research.

Now, Christ's teaching is a notable illustra-
tion of this. Not that He does not invite
question ; not that He does not explain ; but

CHRIST AS A TEA CHER.

II

the great, fundamental characteristic of His
metHod is assertion, — shnple, authont^ative
"Statement. "The facts about God and His
HEingdom, and Hfe and death and judgment,
are thus and so." And these statements were
not authoritative in form and manner only.
They carried . the sense pfauthorityj^. and im-
pressed and moved men from a point deeper
fTTarTtTieir logic. Christ was a notable illus-
tration of the remark that " power of state-
ment is power of argument." Christ knew
men too well to attempt to reach the masses
with argument. Even the learned Nicodemus'
first essay is met with that most tremendous
dogma in the New Testament, " Except a
man be born again, he can not see the king-
dom of God."

Perhaps we do not fully realize what a deli-
cate and dangerous experiment it was for a
radical reformer like Jesus, — a teacher of a
strange and unpopular doctrine, — to throw
Himself so much upon simple assertion. And
here comes in that power of Christ's personal-
ity alrea^y^alTuHecTToT'ir'neecIed a wonderful
"seir to carry those assertions; it needed the
peculiar quality of that self infused into those
assertions sp as to give them a self-evidencing
power. It is not every, one that can dogma-
tize effectively. The power of a dogma lies

J 2 CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

very much in who propounds it. When a
youthful pulpit orator, fresh from the semi-
nary, lays down the principles of family gov-
ernment to a congregation of fathers and
mothers, all that he says may be thoroughly
true, but the fathers and mothers either smile,
or are thinking of something else ; and the
washerwoman in the corner under the gallery,
with half a dozen rampant olive-plants at
home, if she does not say as much, feels that
she can tell the preacher a great deal more
about his subject than he is telling her. The
lesson, however truthful, is truth outside of
the preacher, not a part of him ; not the ex-
pression of experience or sympathy or any-
thing residing in him. Therefore, the more
dogmatic he is, the more absurd he is. It is
simply stage-thunder. As the best-made can-
non-ball is useless until fitted to its cannon, so
the soundest and most compact dogma is impo-
tent until it is cast in the mould of individual
experience and propelled by personality.

Th^erefore Christy. could dogmatize effect-
ively. No one but Christ could have given
lodgment to such words as — "Ye must be
born again ": " He that believeth not is con-
demned.iilj:eady ": . " God.is:a-Spirit, and they
that worship Him must v.'orship Him in spirit
and in truth ": " He that loveth his life loseth

CHRIST AS A TEACHER. j,

it ": " On these two commandments hang
all the law and the prophets." Back of all
lay His deep, divine self-consciousness, the
knowledge thajt He was Himself the Truth.
When He taught, it was the Truth speaking
the truth. No doubt lingered in any remote
depth of His soul: no secret apprehension or
haunting sense of possibility that any word of
man could overthrow the word of the living
God. Pure, absolute certainty was the foun-
tain-head of His speech : intuitive certainty
that what He uttered was the eternal verity
and reality, beside which the imaginings and
dialectic subtleties of worldly-wise moji were
but cobwebs. " He was certain that though
He never wrote, only spoke, His words were
imperishable, and would outlast heaven and
earth. He was at the first as at the last cer-
tain of the reality of His words and claims,
of their endurance and triumph. He was as
calmly and consciously confident when He
sat, pitied by Pilate, in the shadow of Cal-
vary, as when He went forth, approved by
John, to preach, in His fresh and glorious
manhood, the Gospel of the kingdom of God,"
Out of this we may draw at least one valu-
able practical lesson for the Christian teacher.
There are indeed questions raised by the
Gospel toward which he must bear himself as

I A CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

a humble and reverent learner. He comes,
not unfrequently, to a something tangled and
complicated to his human sense, like the bush
on Horeb, yet like that bush, burning with
God's fire, before which he can only stand
with unshod feet, waiting for the voice from
the flame. But the Gospel has certainties as
well as mysteries. It would not be a Gospel
else. And toward its great, fundamental
positions, his attitude is to be that of assur-
ance. In modern teaching there is often mani-
fest too strong a disposition to put Chris-
tianity on the defensive. It was Coleridge, I
believe, who declared that he was " sick of
evidences of Christianity." We can not work
for men's salvation with anything less than a
certainty, held by us as it was held and pro-
pounded by Christ, as a fixed, unalterable,
eternal fact. Men can not be moved to self-
abandonment and self-consecration by an open
question. If the Gospel is something yet to
be proved, it is time that Christians, at least,
abandoned it for something else. I know that
Christianity involves questions which are yet
in court ; but none of these are vital. If,
however, the Gospel itself is still a thing in
doubt ; if there is a possibility that science
may yet put us out in the cold, without a Sav-
iour and bankrupt in faith, and shivering in

CHRIST AS A TEA CHER. j k

the blasts from every point of the philosophic
compass, — I, for one, want no more of it.
Let me go down from the Christian teacher's
place, if my business there is only to urge a
probability, or to flaunt a flag from the top of
pasteboard bastions which the next shot from
a well-trained infidel battery will breach. The
alternative for us is a sure Gospel or no gospel.
Evidences of Christianity have their function,
and an important function ; but it is, I am in-
clined to think, in the majority of cases, rather
the education of believers than the conviction
of unbelievers. As Christian teachers our busi-
nessj§,l£ss..ix»_axgue'"fliah to assert the Word of
God, and the Gospel of Christ as the power
of _God unto salvation. A great modern
preacher has well said, "If we would trust
Christ's cross to stand firm without our stays,
and, arguing less about it, would seldomer try
to prop it and oftener to point to it, it
would draw more men to it."

Sunday-school teachers must, in the nature
of the case, be mostly dogmatic. ^ *' The creed
oT cKlldFood," one has justly said, " must
necessarily be imparted dogmatically." It
must rest on authority : and authority which
carries home the truth to a child's mind is
born of a living Christian personality in the
teacher. The standard of preparation must

1 5 CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

not be let down- ; the demands of Scriptural
study must be strictly met ; but the carefully
gathered knowledge, in order to move and
impress the pupil, must be fused by the Holy
Spirit into the mould of a living experience.
In Bible-classes of older pupils, the teacher
must, of course, be prepared to answer objec-
tions and to deal with doubts ; but he must
never take the attitude of a doubter himself.
If a question is asked which he can not an-
swer, or a problem raised which he can not
solve (and the veriest child will often pro-
pound such), let him say so frankly, but
always in such a way as to let it be under-
stood that no possible solution or answer can
in any wise disturb for him the solid ground-
work and substance of the Gospel. He must
never tread gingerly on Gospel ground. It is
holy ground, but firm ground ; and though he
may not be able to arrange and explain all
that is 7{pon it, he is to step as one who knows
that the Rock of Ages is under it.

CHRIST A SYSTEMATIC TEACHER.

I go on to note that Christ was a systematic
teacher. I do not meaiT in the scholastic
sense of elaborating a system of morals or
theology. He left that for others. But it is
a great mistake to suppose, as not a few do,

CHRIST AS A TEA CHER. j y

that Christ's teaching was a disorderly collec-
tion of fragments which it should be the task
of future students to sift out and arrange.
Christ's teaching was methodical in its inner
structure. This opens a very wide subject,
and I can only touch a point here and there.

Take, for example, the progression in His
teaching. Compare the last chapters of John's
gospel with the Synoptists. A great advance
is perceptible. The teaching is less rudiment-
ary. It appeals to a higher grade of spiritual
development. Transfer it to the beginning of
Christ's ministry, and you at once perceive
that it does not fit there. " The Sermon on
the Mount at the opening of the ministry,
and the address in the upper chamber de-
livered at its close, are separated from each
other, not only by difference of circumstance
and feeling, but as implying on the part of
the hearers wholly different stages in the
knowledge of truth." * Matthew throws a

* Thomas Dehany Bernard, " The Progress of
Docti'ine in the New Testament." This most valu-
able and suggestive book, of which a cheap Amer-
ican Edition has been published, ought to be on the
desk of every Bible-class teacher. On this topic
the teacher may also profitably consult Canon West-
cott's " Introduction to the Study of the Gospels,"
another convenient and admirable manual.

jg CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

bridge from the old economy to the neAV.
John carries forward the piers toward that
final heavenly economy of which he gives us
a glimpse in the Apocalypse. In Matthew
we have Jesus as the Messiah ; in John as the
Eternal Word. In Matthew He is the fulfil-
ment of prophecy. In John He is Himself
the prophet and the earnest of better, heav-
enly things to come. " His record is a creative
source, and not a summary ; the opening of a
new field of thought, and not the gathered
harvest." Matthew keeps Christ before us as
the interpreter and fulfiller of the law : in
John He appears introducing the grander and
richer economy of the Spirit. In the one He
satisfies the law, in the other the want of hu-
manity. John represents Him as the world's
life ; the disciple's friend and teacher ; the ob-
ject of faith, the magnet of love, the focal
point of prayer, the goal of hope, the inspirer
of service. Matthew's backward look stops
at Abraham ; John leads us back into the
eternal past, where dwelt the Word before
Abraham was. In Matthew we have the new
interpretation of old precept; in John, the
fact and the S3cret of fellowship. Matthew
tells how to follow Him, John how to abide
in Him. Matthew's gospel is the gospel of
an infant church, John's of a matured church.

CHRIST AS A TEACHER. jg

Or take the parables. Sometimes it seems
as if Christ were repeating Himself, or simply
piling up illustration round a single truth. On
the contrary, it will always be found that the
truth is many-sided, and that the illustra-
tions grow from the different sides. TThree
vparables, for instance, are grouped rouncTthe
topic of Christ's saving the lost : the Lost
Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost Son.
The first two are an answer to the Pharisees,
who complained that He ate with publicans
and sinners, and who counted a common man
of less value than a sheep. (JiLllie third, the
explanation of His conduct is referred to its
higher reason as the work of the Father. In
the parable of the sheep, the interest centres
in the loss : of the coin, in the search : of the
son, in the restoration. ' In the first is pictured
loss through stupid an d~"BTm3r straying: in the
second, loss in the very sphere of the king-
dom of God, through the power of worldly
circumstance which withdraws the man from
circulation, and obscures God's image in him,
as the dust hides the superscription of the
coin. In the third, loss through wilful aban-
donment of filial privilege : so that we see loss
under the three aspects of witlessness, useless-
ness, and — r-ebelliouoneGD. — ■ Once more, the
seeker of the lost appears under the pov/er of

20 CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

three motives : compassion for man's misery ;
\asenseof_the humblest man's transcendent
V^^alue ; and consummate fatherly love.

Or look at the two parables which set forth
the lesson of faithful service : — The Talents
and the Pounds. These are not the same.
Luke does not put Matthew into another
form. The lessons are different. \ Look at
Luke. Ten servants: a pound to h:a(!Trser-
vant : interest ten pounds for one : reward,
ten cities, and " good servant." Literest five
pounds for one ; reward five cities, and no
" good servant." In other words, endowment
equal, interest unequal, standard of merit
and of reward determined by amount or
quantity ; ten cities for ten per cent. ; five
cities for five per cent., with an unpleasant
hint in the omission of " good servant."
Now turn to Matthew. Three servants : five
talents to one, two to another, one to the
third. Interest five talents on five; reward,
" Good and faithful servant, enter into the joy
of thy Lord." Interest two talents on two.
Reward, " Good and faithful servant, enter
into the joy of thy Lord." Thus we have,
endowment unequal, interest unequal, but re-
ward equal : standard of merit and of reward
determined not by quantity, but by quality.
The same reward is assigned to different quan-

CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

21

titles because both bear the common stamp
of faithfuhiess. In short, where servants
equally endowed make an unequal use of
their endowments, they are unequally re-
warded. Where servants unequally endowed
are^ equally faithful^ the_ reward is equal.*

(Take the " Beatitudes "'. at the opening of
the Sernioii' ITn'^tlTe 'ftfouht. Do you think
that those blessings are thrown out^t random,
and that it would make no difference whether
our Lord should begin with " Blessed are the
poor in spirit," or " Blessed are they that are
persecuted for righteousness' sake"? Not so
indeed. !rhis sexigs- is.xonstrucJted onjt_defi-
nite plan, and proceeds wath a close^ inner^
logical_C£nnection. Note first how the bless-
ings fall into two groups, answering to the ar-
rangement of both the Lord's Prayer and the
Decalogue :^\the_first four, like the first four
commandments, and the first four items of
the Lord's prayer,.] ooking upward, from earth_
to heavenj_.froin . man , to God, an^ indicating
qualities in man as related to God : ithe_other
"group looking earthward,^ and _c gnj; exDpl at i n g

* I would earnestly recommend teachers to pro-
cure and study Dr. A. B. Bruce's work on " The
Parabolic Teaching of Christ." It is published by
A. C. Armstronj^ & Son.

22

CHRIST AS A TEA CHER.

manls..-relationsto his fellow-man, and to his
earthly surroundings.

Then, note further, a progress in the ar-
rangement. The sermon starts from a point
outside the kingdom of God, and shows us_
Tiow a man comes into it. The blessings,
therefore, follow the steps of progress toward
citizenship. Our Lord brings the kingdom
of Heaven at once into the field of vision.
The man says, " What is the kingdom of
Heaven to me ? Why should I want it ? "
That is the very question. Are you conscious
of any reason why you should want it ? Do
you feel any need of it? If not, you will not
gain it, for only those who feel such a need
seek and find it. Hence, " Blessed are the
poor in spirit" could properly stand nowhere
else than at the beginning. Poverty of spirit
means just what poverty means always and
everywhere. It means to the spiritual and
moral nature what being poor means to the
pocket, to the appetite, to the naked and
chilled body — conscious want: a sense of
emptiness. Spiritually, it is the opposite of
self-satisfaction ; and no man will seek the
kingdom of God, of which the first principle
is " Deny self," so long as he is satisfied with
self.

When one has squarely confronted his need,

CHRIST AS A TEACHER. 2^

and has confessed to himself, " I am poverty-
stricken at the very sources of my being," the
result will be mourning. There will be some-
thing in him answering to the poor man's
gnawing pain from hunger, and his chill from
cold. Therefore mourning drops naturally
into the second place. A Roman poet tells
us how one of the gates of the city of Rome
was always dropping moisture from its arches.
It is a type of the entrance to the kingdom of
Heaven, which is through tears. The sorrow
is the sorrow of conscious mistake, of disap-
pointment, of wounded pride, of newly dis-
covered weakness and sinfulness : sorrow
over emptiness of wisdom, of satisfaction, of
cause for self-gratulation, of strength and of
goodness.

The man who is really hungry and thirsty
will take such food as you give him. The
beggar is not the chooser. Sorrow accom-
plishes nothing until it brings us down to the
point where we are ready, not only to accept
and endorse God's charge of weakness and
error, but to take His remedy for these, what-
ever it be : ready and willing to be fed with
God's meat ; to take God's prescription for
sin ; to take Christ's yoke of docility and sub-
missive obedience. Here, therefore. Meek-
ness, the spirit of absolute submission and

24 CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

subjection, grounded in a true humility, falls
into its appropriate place.

From a sorrowful and often vague sense of
need, and a meek willingness to confess its
source and to have it supplied in God's own
way and on God's own terms, we move on to
the clearer definition of the need itself. The
man finds out what he wants. All his sense
of emptiness and his consequent mourning
and submissiveness now run into the channel
of one great desire — to be holy. He hungers
and thirsts after righteousness. Christ says
to him, "The thing you have all along wanted
is Tightness ; right relation to me and to my
law and to my children. Seek that first — my
kingdom and my rightness." This desire is
no sickly sentiment. Hunger and thirst mean
vigorous appetite. Holiness is adapted to
call out all the best energies. Our Lord and
His apostles never contemplate any lower
ideal than an enthusiasm in its pursuit. You
see how naturally this beatitude falls into line
with the others. Poverty of spirit engenders
mourning ; mourning, meekness ; poverty,
mourning, meekness, issue in holy desire, and
desire in satisfaction. " They shall be filled."

Now we turn earthward. A man filled with
God's righteousness, which includes joy and
peace, can not keep it to himself. Righteous-

CHRIS T AS A TEA CHER. 2 C

ness is in him, not as dead precept, but as "a
fountain of water springing up." Righteous-
ness, Hke water in a reservoir, is pervaded
with a thrust and pressure outward and down-
ward toward men. It will get out of the man,
and flow to his brethren in the form of mercy.
The next blessing, as we might expect, is on
the merciful, Mercy is rightness toward God
taking shape in loving rightness toward men.
It grows out of righteousness as a branch from
a vine. You find the same essential connec-
tion between righteousness and mercy in the
Old Testament. Says the Psalmist, " Unto
Thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy, for Thou
renderest to every man according to his work."
There is no clash between righteousness and
mercy, as is so often assumed. It was the
highest righteousness which gave the world
the grandest token of mercy. It is the Just
who is the Justifier.

But here we are guarded. There is a some-
thing called mercy which has no essential con-
nection with righteousness ; but is merely a
natural, humane impulse, a kindly "good-na-
ture," which often finds expression in kind
and helpful deeds, but which often goes hand
in hand with unbridled self-indulgence.
Righteousness is the test of mercy on the one
side ; now Christ puts a test on the other

25 CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

side : — Purity of heart ; righteousness at its
fountain-head. Therefore we recognize the
true place of the next beatitude, " Blessed
are the pure in heart."

Then, for I must hasten on, a pure heart is
a peaceful heart, because at peace with God ;
and such a heart seeks to be at peace with
men, and studies the things which make for
peace. Notice that the blessing is not to
peaceable men, but to makers of peace ; pro-
moters of it among their brethren. It is the
part of a righteous man not only to " keep
the peace " himself, but to come, bringing
Christ's olive-branch into the midst of their
dissensions and strifes. This, then, is the true
place for the blessing on the Peacemakers.

But to such an one, peace means, first of
all, right. He knows no peace at the expense
of right. Christ is the "Prince of peace,'
but righteousness is the " girdle of his loins."
Hence Christ's disciple inevitably comes into
collision with an unrighteous world, and the
result is persecution for righteousness' sake.
The very lips which uttered this beatitude,
said, " I came not to send peace, but a sword."
This blessing rightly closes the list. It would
be manifestly out of place at the beginning.
It presupposes all that is contained in the
preceding beatitudes.

CHRIST AS A TEACHER. 2 7

i^So of the Lord's prayer. Put " Our Father
which art~irr~H"eaven," anywhere but at the
beginning, and see if you can pray that prayer.
Begin, for instance, with " Thy kingdom
come." What a tremendous question, what
an awful doubt you encounter at once. " Thy
kingdom " ! But whose kingdom ? What is
it, or who is it that we are inviting to lay us
under absolute subjection and tribute? Is it
a beneficent power, or a power of evil and
tyranny? The doubt is forestalled by the
words '' Our Father, Thy kingdom come."
But not to dwell on the matter of order and
progress in the Lord's prayer, note the mirac-
ulous way in which the whole Sermon on the
Mount is packed into it. Take up that ser-
mon at any point, and you will strike a line
leading directly to the Lord's prayer. A
heavenly economy of life must include some
provision for putting and keeping us con-
sciously in contact with Heaven. It must be an
economy which we can pray as well as live.
And therefore the Sermon on the Mount,
which is the manual of the kingdom of
Heaven, the exposition of the divine economy
of life, has a prayer bedded in its heart, and
connected by living fibres with its entire struc-
ture. TheJLorc^'g pray£r_i5^.t]3£^~S£mLQiUga =->
the Mount cast into aspiration.

23 CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

I have only to remark farther, that Christ
shows His consummate art as a teacher by
His skilful veiling and draping of His lines of
system. The fault of many teachers is in un-
duly ernphasizing their plan. A Sunday-school
lesson may be so ingeniously constructed as to
draw all the attention to its structure, while
its subject-matter goes begging ; and many a
preacher has spoiled a sermon by keeping the
lines and joints of his plan constantly on the
surface. Nature gives us a lesson on this point.
She is the greatest of systematizers, Avith the
widest range and the richest variety in her sur-
face developments. She builds a man over a
skeleton, but she hides the skeleton; and it is
the flash of the eye, the mobility and variety
of expression, the inflections of the voice, the
infinite diversity of movement and attitude,
which appeal to us, and not the nice articula-
tion of bones. With_jCbxisi:»jn fi th od-jyas.. a
means and not an end. He aimed at direct
contact of the heart with the living substance
of His speech ; and it was because nothing was
suffered to stand between these, that men said,
" Never man spake like this man."

CHRIST A GREA.T QUESTIONER.

I have but a few minutes left for one other
point. Christ was a great questioner.

CHRIST AS A TEA CHER.

29

It is a common saying tliat any fool may
ask a question wliich a wise man can not an-
swer. That is true ; but it does not follow
that any fool knows how to question. It re-
quires quite as much wisdom to put questions
as to answer them. Christ was early found in
the temple asking questions ; not indeed as a
teacher, for a lecturing Christ-child would have
been a monstrosity befitting the Apocryphal
gospels rather than the narratives of the Evan-
gelists. But those old Rabbis knew what apt
questioning was, and they were astonished at
the wisdom of His questions as well as of His
answers. Socrates was a master of the art ;
and it is the skilful, subtle questioning which
leads on and sustains our interest through a
dialogue of Plato. Paul deals much in inter-
rogation. In the Epistle to the Romans, you
will find six questions in the second chapter,
sixteen in the third, six in the sixth, nine in
the ninth, ten in the eleventh ; and so in
other epistles. Christ's teaching abounds in
question, and in question aimed at a great va-
riety of ends. If you assume the teacher at
your first contact with the uninstructed, you
are quite as likely to excite his resentment as
his interest or respect ; for ignorance is gen-
erally conceited, and it touches his conceit,
not that you should know more than he does,

OQ CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

but that you should assume to know more. If
you make him a sharer in your thought by a
question which appeals to his thought, you
catch him on the side of his sympathy.

You will observe how often Christ intro-
ducesTTis lessons by a question, apparently
V^y" simple and commonplace, which draws
the hearer's mind into His own train of thought
and"ehlist"s his attention and interest before
he knows it. "What think ye ? If a man
have an hundred sEeep,' and one go astray,
doth he not leave the ninety and nine and go
after the one?" " Wliat „think- ye of the
Christ ? Whose son is he ? " Or sometimes
He tells a story, as He only knew how to tell
it, and then a question puts the clew of the
lesson into the hearer's hand, and sets him at
following it up. '/'Which now of these three
thinkest thou was neighbor to him that fell
among thieves ? " " The Lord frankly forgave
both the debtors : Simon, which of the two
will love Him most?" The questiqn,^j; the
beginning has a power of arrest ;_at the end,
a_]30wer of Iqdgmejit^ Sometimes He combines
the two, as in the story of the two sons sent
into the vineyard : " What think ye ? " and,
at the end, '' Whether of the twain did the
will of his father?" Sometimes He uses a
question to silence or to commit an adversary :

CHRIS T AS A TEA CHER. ^ j

"The baptism of John, was it from heaven or
of men ? " or in the parable of the wicked hus-
bandmen : " What shall therefore the Lord
of the vineyard do ? " Sometimes, again, to
make a point on which to hang a lesson. -
" Those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam
fell, — suppose ye they were sinners above all
that dwelt in Jerusalem ? I tell you nay ; but
except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."
Sometimes, to bring home a truth of God's
love and tenderness by a familiar analogy.
'' If your son ask bread, will you give him a
stone? " " If God clothe the grass, shall He
not much more clothe you ? " Or again, to
bring an every-day truth over into the moral
consciousness : " Do men gather grapes of
thorns, or figs of thistles ? " " Which of you,
proposing to build a tower, does not first count
the cost ? " Or, once more, to bring out some
conceit or delusion, as when, at the close of
the series of parables in the thirteenth of
Matthew, He asks, " Have ye understood all
these things? " One is tempted to smile at
the ready complacency with which they an-
swered, " Yea, Lord ! "

II.

At the conclusion of my lecture last year,
you kindly requested me to discuss some other
aspects of the same subject at which I hinted,
but which I had not time to treat then. Re-
suming, therefore, the former theme, I shall
speak first of

CHRIST AS A GREAT ILLUSTRATOR.

All great teachers have recognized the power
of illustration. Plato revels in it. Dante's
" Commedia " and Homer's " Iliad " and " Od-
yssey " are picture-books. The part of a ser-
mon which sticks, is the illustrative part. Often
the hearer will carry away nothing else. Dr.
Beman, of Troy, used to say that if he wanted
to preach an old sermon and not have it recog-
nized (a very useless precaution, by the way),
he took out the bears ; meaning those striking
illustrations which, being lodged in the hearers'
memory, would serve to identify the sermon.
Unless he put in some other " animals " of
the same kind, I must needs say, with all rev-
erence to his memory, that he was likely to
purchase concealment at the expense of inter-
(32)

CHRIST AS A TEACHER. ,-

est. You can not teach children effectively
without illustration. You must appeal to the
eye ; and that fact is recognized in the best
modern educational systems. And in the pro-
cess oi learnnig, the'average man is not greatly
in advance of the child as respects this matter.
Not logic, but seeing,_Js_Uie shortest way to
truth. Seeing is believing. Christ came, a
light into the world, that men might know
the truth. Most words are originally meta-
phors or picture-forms into which the primi-
tive man casts a statement. After a time the
lines of the picture fade, and the word be-
comes merely the symbol of a fact, yet it
always carries the original picture deep down
in its heart. It was something beside super-
stition which filled the old churches Avith
paintings and mosaics. Men^an not always
read books, but they can jead pictures. When
there were no books or few books, and reading
was confined to priests, they did the people a
Christian service who painted their Gospel for
them. So, when the worshipper could read
the story of the creative week on' the choir-
walls of Monreale, or the stories of Abraham
and Sarah and Melchizedek behind the altar
of San Vitale at Ravenna, or could follow the
whole history of redemption in St. Mark's at
Venice, from the fall of man, and the lives of

»A CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

the patriarchs hi the portico, to the ascension
of Jesus in the overarching dome, — he was
not without a Bible. We forget sometimes
how much the painters helped to carry the
truth of the Gospel over the gap of the dark
ages.

Illustrations serve the same purpose, for
illustrations are pictures^ The highest en-
"jiorsement of ilTustrative teaching -is -furnished.,
by Christ. Let us_consider sonie of the char-
acteristics oF^his method as employed, .by;.
Him.'

It is essential to a good illustration that it
should turn on a point common to. theimder-
standing of teacher and pupil alike. If I were
trying to teach an African savage a religious
truth by means of an illustration drawn from
the use of the telephone, I should only con-
fuse him, and give him two difficulties for one.
He does not know what a telephone is, to be-
gin with. I could do it with an illustration
taken from his bow or canoe or war-club, for
both he and I know what those are and what
they mean.

You observe, therefore, that Christ's illus-
trat[ons^^bya^-statt^ffom a point as familiar
to His hearers as to Himself. If He had cited
some marvel of the spiritual world out of
which He came, some most ordinary feature

CHRIST AS A TEACHER. ^j-

of His heavenly dwelling-place, they would
only have stared at Him, and their interest in
the truth He was expounding would have
given place to curiosity excited by this new
wonder. Instead of that, He takes a man
building a house, or findings treasure jn a field,
or sowing seed, or catching fislv^or a woman
sweeping the floor or making bread. He sets
the hearer on the farhiliar, commonplace truth,
so that from it he can reach up to the higher
and less familiar spiritual truth.

Hence our Lord drew a great many of His
illustrations from nature. AIT' HlS' hearers
knew how seed was sown and the stages by
which it grew. They were familiar with the
stony and the thorny ground and the hard-
beaten wayside. They were wont to watch
the changes of the sky, and they knew the
quick^nsing and..the- terribIe._.sj(Vejep .of the
mountain torrent, .They had considered the
lilies, the sparrows, and the reed shaken with
the wind. Even the familiar aspects of nature,
however, never appeal to men so strongly as
when they are somehow associated with man's
person or work or danger or pleasure : and
therefore, in Christ's illustrations from nature,
He draws largely on its aspects after it has
"t^t tHgUiaj^oT' mah7"""Hg~tTrke5 "Hrs-hearc^rs
to the vineyard, but the husbandman is there,

^5 CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

tending and pruning the vines. To the field,
but the sower comes, scattering seed by the
wayside and among the thorns. He bids
them mark the sparrows, but they are the
dead sparrows, strung on spits, and sold in
the market. He tells of the flocks, but the
prominent figure is the good shepherd ; of
the mountain torrent, but as it sweeps away
the foolish man's house from its sandy foun-
dation.

The significance of this feature of Christ's
illustrative teaching is too large a subject to
-be discussed here, but the theme is, neverthe-
less, too tempting to be dismissed without a
few words. This habitual association of na-
ture with man furnishes more than a hint of
The depth of Christ's insight into nature, and
of the comprehensiveness and symmetry of
His view of the universe ; for it reveals His
recognition of the fact that,jTature finds its.,
chief significance and its highest interpreta-.-
'^on in man. Nature, even on the physical
'"side, does not give up its best to the bird or
the beast. The jungle, however luxuriant,
can never mean nor yield so much as the field
of sown corn. But, in its association with
man, nature yields more than food or build-
ing material. It furnishes spiritual and moral
lessons which have no meaning and no appli-

CHRIS T AS A TEA CHE R. 0-7

cation apart from man, and which only man
can receive and approiariate. The whole spir-
itual meaning of nature lies latent until nature
is touched by man. And this meaning our
Lord is at pains that men should extract from
it. He would have them know that this rela-
tion between man and nature enables him to
make even brute bulks and familiar physical
forces vocal with truths of the soul. He is
not satisfied that they should draw from na-
ture only bread and drink and impressions of
form and color ; and accordingly he lifts na-
ture into the seat of a spiritual teacher. The
corn of wheat, casting its seed-form and tak-
ing on the nobler vesture of the full corn in
the ear, in some valley unvisited by man,
means only a few grains for the bird or a
mouthful for the browsing beast. When man
comes, only then, Christ comes and makes
that dying and risen wheat-corn a lesson and
a type of death unto self, spiritual resurrec-
tion, and moral fruitfulness.

Paul, though surely not blind to this truth,
does not work it into his teaching as Christ
does. In his Epistles we breathe chiefly " the
air of cities and synagogues." He draws very
sparingly on Nature for illustration, and mani-
festly lacks that quick and exquisite suscepti-
bility to the various phases of nature which

^'

og CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

SO strongly marks our Lord. Yet there is,
even at this point, a deep-lying resemblance
between them, in that both see "the universe
of God as it is reflected in the heart and life
"oTTnan." No one can help feeling this in
reading Paul's words in the eighth of Romans,
on the " groan and travail " of the creation —
the sympathy of man's material and animal
environment with the pangs and longings of
fallen humanity.'^

From his habit of_s£le.ctingjamiliar things
for illustrations, we are quite prepared to find
his range of illustration extending into the
domestic and business spheres. Men are fa-
miliar most of all with their homes. There-
fore we are pointed to the grainymeasurg,
which was in every house, together with the
lamp-stand and the bed. The woman loses
her silver in, the house, and lights her lamp

* I can not but think that Canon Farrar (" Life and
Work of St. Paul," I., 18-21) is rather too sweeping
in his assertion that Paul " reveals not the smallest
susceptibility for the works of nature." I fear I
must have failed to apprehend his meaning, where
he says that the illustration of the wild-olive graft
(Rom. xi. 16-25) is "the only elaborate illustration
v/hich Paul draws from nature "; for it seems incon-
ceivable that the Canon should have overlooked the
fifteenth of First Corinthians. Indeed he cites the
allusion to the stars in v. 41.

CHRIST AS A TEACHER. ^g

and sweeps. TheJjome-lifg.Js ,the background
of the story of the prodigal. There is the
Vv^edding feast, and the servant sitting up for
his master ; the boy asking his father for a
cake of bread ; the washing of the dishes, and
the rich man building new barns. The con-
ceited guest enters and takes the first place at
the banquet ; the woman sets her bread to
rise, or grinds at the handmill ; the scoundrel
sows darnel by night among the wheat, and
the belated traveller knocks at midnight at
his neighbor's door, and asks for a loaf of
bread. The pictures are from the market and
the street also ; sometimes flashing out from a
single word. '' Good measure shall men give
ijito your bosom "/ a dark saying to the man
who goes to Washington market with his
basket on his arm, but not so to the oriental,
into the loose bosom of whose robe the trader
would pour the day's supply of grain. The
servants are away with their pounds to the
money-changers ; the steward bustles about
among his lord's creditors ^id discounts their
bills for cash ; the creditor chokes his debtor
on the highway, and the widow pleads her
cause before the judge in the gate.

Jn our Lord's teachin_gjjiioreover, the illus-
tration. is invariably subgrdiiiate. to • the truth
illustxated, and grows naturally out of it.

AQ CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

Unlike some modern teachers, He does not
first light on His illustration and then trim
and mould the truth to fit it. There are no
stained windows in the structure of Christ's

^^Srourse, to stay'ftle eye~"'~giri"themselves.
The illustrations are for letting in li^ht upon
the truth.__You can easily see that the great

^IHeme of the relations of men^s souls to truth
and their attitude toward God's Word, sug-
gests the i]lustratioii_of^ the seed on different
soils, and that the jprocess is not the contrary
one. You can easily see tliat the-grand con-
ception of the pervasion of society with the
spirit and law of God, came, in Christ's mind,
before the picture of the woman hiding
the leaven. The greater suggested the less.
The illustration does not dominate the truth
nor distract the attention from the truth
to itself. Some teachers pour forth such a
bewildering variety of brilliant illustration
that the pupil loses sight of the truth al-
together. Not a few modern sermons have
had their genesis* in a telling anecdote or a
striking figure, and the whole sermon has been
one ingenious inquisitorial process of stretch-
ing a truth upon the rack of that pet illus-
tration.

I But with all the simplicity of Christ's-91us- '
trations, they Tiave arf enormous range. On

CHRrS T AS A TEA CHER. a j

the surface they sometimes appear to explain
merely the fragment of truth thrown out by
the great teacher at the moment ; but the
fragment, on examination, reveals connections,
with a large- area of truth, and the illustratiqii
is found' "toTgVef the entire area' no less than
the fragment.^ Take, for instance, the familiar
parable of the talents, and the Lord's com-
ment. " To him that hath shall be given,
from him that hath not shall be taken away."
That truth ranges over the whole physical^
intellectual, and spiritual life of men. THe
old woman who sells peanuts on the corner
knows perfectly that she must have something
to buy her peanuts with, before she can realize
a profit on them. She and the capitalist are
alike in that. Nothing is given to either of
them without their first having. The man
who has, makes. The educated and trained
man masters a subject or does a piece of in-
tellectual work better and more quickly than
the untrained man of equal native ability.
He wins the new knowledge through the dis-
ciplined power which he has. An artist draws
more inspiration and more ideas in a day from
a beautiful landscape than the ignorant cow-
feeder who has passed his whole life amid its
beauties. Nature gives to the mind which
has. The man who has power of any kind is

A 2 CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

in a position to gain more power. In short,
the truth holds all the way up, that capital
brings interest. It holds in religion as else-
where. The same words — "JTo^him that hath
shall be_ given" — are added to the parable
of the sower. The stress is laid, in that par-
able, not on the seed, which is assumed to be
good, but on the soil. Where the soil had
the right quality with which to meet the seed,
there was fruit ; though there was a difference
in the fruitfulness of even the good soil, rep-
resented by thirty, sixty, and a hundred. The
interest of Gospel truth and power presup-
poses the possession of an honest and good
heart in the recipient.

You can follovv^ out the same line of thought
with the parables of the Mustard-seed and the
Leaven. Or take Christ's illustration of the
corn of wheat. How far-reaching is the truth
it carries ; that a higher form of life is always
won at the expense of a lower; that the high-
est life comes through death ; that all success
costs. The business-man succeeds at the price
of literary leisure and culture ; the boy grows
into a man of learning and thought through
the partial suppression of his animal instinct
to play ; a man and woman attain in marriage
that joint life of love, of higher quality than
the separate individuality of either, through

CHRIS T AS A TEA CHER. . ,

the partial merging of each individuality,
Christ's sharp alternative is, the world or the
soul. The soul is won at the price of the
world. The sensual life must go under if the
higher life of faith and love is to come to
fruitage. So you see that the illustration,
beginning iii_ agriculture, covers business and
learning and domestic life and religiorr. ^7 '~~"

CHRIST A GREAT NARRATOR.

But leaving this vein of thought, let us ex-
plore another lying close beside it. Christ
'was_a_^eat_narratoXu— It is a great art to be
able to tell a story well, for it is an art which
appeals to all mankind. In all times and
countries men have welcomed the story-teller.
We are all children in this. It does not show
that a man is becoming wiser because he is
losing his taste for stories. The child and the
old man meet here on common ground. It
is one of the harmless foibles of old age that
it repeats its old stories. Charles Lamb some-
where tells of a man who had retired, in a
green old age, upon forty pounds a year and
one anecdote. The great successes in litera-
ture have been largely stories. " Robinson
Crusoe," "The Pilgrim's Progress," and "The
Arabian Nights," are treasures forever. Ho-
mer's " Odyssey" will always have more read-

^. CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

ers than the " Iliad." Froissart will be well
thumbed, while Hume and Lingard gather
dust on the shelves. Macaulay will never lack
readers, because he has imparted to English
History the fascination of a story; and Her-
odotus will continue to hold his own among
the more modern magnates of history. In
any circulating library they will tell you that
the demand for novels exceeds threefold that
for any other class of books. Ten thousand
of " Helen's Babies," and " Barriers Burned
Away," are sold for one thousand of the best
essays or sermons in the language. Very few
people now living have read, I imagine, Gold-
smith's " Animated Nature," but who has not
read "The Vicar of Wakefield"? The Bible
has made its way to the jpeopIe_ largely by
"itsstQiiesr-- The boy of fifteen knows noth-
ing about the Epistle to the Romans, but he
can tell you all about Joseph and Moses and
Samson.

Story-telling, I repeat, is an art, and a fine-
art. It seems as though it might be an easy
thing to write a story like " Robinson Crusoe,"
but try it once. And there are certain features.,
■iYMdOf-you notice, are "common to all good
story-tellers^ Their first object, for instance,
is to_tell_ the story. A good many writers at-
tempt stories as a kind of staging for their

CHRIS T AS A TEA CHER. a k

moral reflections ; and, if the story has any in-
terest at all, you usually find that the staging
occupies the reader so that he overlooks the
building. In other words, he skips the moral
reflections and hurries on along the line of the
story. Again, all good stories run. Chaucer's
"Canterbury Tales," "Robinson Crusoe," "The
Arabian Nights," are full of movement ; and
the writers of popular fiction are coming to
recognize that fact, and to shape their produc-
tions accordingly. The popular romance of
the day is not the old three- volume novel, but
the short story with a simple plot and a suc-
cession of incidents gathering up rapidly to a
climax.

Our Lord was a great master of narrative,
an J His storres exliibit not only the two qual-
ti'es-of which we have been speaking, but oth-
~>nt^ which we shall note later. The best way
to illustrate this is to examine one of His sto-
ries in detail ; and we can not hesitate in the
choice of a specimen, for the story of the Prnd-
igal Son is the model story of all literature,
Dolli as to contents and method.

^--Observe, then, that Cb.rist goes straight at
the story. He does not work up to it through
any elaborate iiitroduction or learned prelude.^
WeTTave no long family history of this good

old father. "A certain man" — no matter who

^5 CHRIS T AS A TEA CHER.

or whence, any man vvill answer — "had two
sons." There is no display of the narrator's
power of analyzing character fastened upon
a description of these two sons. All that
the reader needs to know about them is left
to come out in the development of the story
itself.

Then follows the fact out of which the plot
of the story grows. Here, too, the reader is
left to infer for himself the motives and feel-
ings of the younger son — what he had been
secretly brooding over ; what hopes and am-
bitions he had been fostering ; the whole pro-
cess by which he had worked up to his decisive,
unfilial act — all, in short, which would have
furnished a chapter to the modern philosoph-
ical romancer. The young man is introduced
in the very act of striking the blow which cuts
him loose from father and from home. A
thoughtful reader will gather a great deal from
those few words, as Christ meant that he
should. The ingratitude, the insolence of the
demand for his portion of goods, the insensi-
bility to the privilege and love and protection
of home — all are there, but wrapped up in
the simple statement of his wicked act. Here
the modern dramatic story-teller would have
discovered another great opportunity. I have
somewhere seen this part of the narrative

CHRIST AS A TEACHER. ,j

worked up ; how the old man, when the boy-
came into his presence, was seated at a table
counting out, with trembling hands, a great
pile of gold and silver, and more to the same
effect. Now there is no pause. " Not long
after." Every sentence tells. The youth
wanted to manage his own affairs absolutely.
He would leave nothing in his father's hands.
"He gathered all together, and straiglitzvay
took his journey," and went as far away as
he could, " into a far country," out of reach
of fatherly hearing and counsel. And now
the modern prurient story-teller would find
his chance for a salacious description of a
luxurious and licentious life. That is one of
the favorite devices of the devils of modern
literature. It is needless to remark how pure
Christ's stories are. He uses the plainest words
where there is occasion, but He never pictures
sin so as to make it otherwise than ugly.

Short and sharp again, but how vivid.
" Scattered " is the word used of winnowing the
grain. "He scattered his substance, living un-
savingly." The great truth that absence from
God is waste of life was never more tersely put :
a far country and waste. We move on at once to
the consequence. When the famine came, he
had nothing. " He had spent allT Moral waste
is total waste. " He beran to be in want."

A 3 CHI^/S T AS A TEA CHER.

The painful and sometimes amusing adven-
tures of reduced men in search of employment
have furnished many a good story ; but how
powerfully that whole stage of the prodigal's
career is put by the use of a single peculiar
word, " he joined himself to a citizen." The
word means to " glue " or " stick to "; and its
use here seems to imply that the swine-owner
was not over-eager to employ him. In time
of famine people dispense with as many ser-
vants as possible ; and it would seem as
though the penniless young wanton had to
force himself upon the citizen. And so this
swine-capitalist, having nothing else for him
to do, or possibly with a vulgar satisfaction at
having a decayed gentleman at his mercy,
sent him into the fields to feed swine. Here
the realistic story-teller would disport himself
with the unsavory details of swine-keeping,
and would draw out the contrast with the
luxurious halls of pleasure. Nothing of this.
The one thought to be driven home at this
point is ivant. You see what a quick succes-
sion and sharp putting of points there is :
conceit and insubordination: waste: want.
One or two sentences have furnished the
world a synonym for soul - hunger. " He
would fain have filled his belly with the husks
which the swine did eat, and no man gave

CHRIST AS A TEACHER. aq

unto him." He had wanted the wrong thing
all along, and it was no better now. All he
wanted was to fill his belly. Suffering had
not yet issued in longing for better things.

Now another point : " He came to himself."
Let your plummet down into that sentence,
and you will find it very deep. It opens into
the great truth that rebellion against God is a
kind of madness. Man is his true self only
when he is a loyal son in God's household : a
madman else — in a delirious dream. What a
stroke of art in representing the beginning of
repentance as the return of a sound conscious-
ness. And a chapter of imaginary, doleful
reflections and contrasts could not exhibit the
prodigal's awakened thought so graphically as
this one sharp contrast in which he voices it.
" My father's house — the very servants there
have bread enough and to spare, and I, his
own son, am perishing with hunger ! "

Now reflection merges into resolution. " I
will arise ! I will go home ! I will confess
my sin ! " No description now of the sceneiy
along the road, nor of the various adventures
encountered on the journey ; tricks of the
story-teller to sharpen the reader's appetite
for the climax by keeping him in suspense.
The narrator is full of the thought of home,
just as the reader is. At this point of the

CQ CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

story you feel just as you do when you are
returning to your native town and family
homestead after years of absence. You do
not care a penny for all the scenery in the
world. The most exciting incident on the
way is insipid. You only chafe at the delay
it creates. You want to hurry those horses ;
to pull out the throttle-valve of that engine,
and drive through to home. Neither does
the narrator stop while he affectingly pictures
the old father looking out of the window or
scanning the road, and tell of the tears with
which he has moistened his pillow in the lone-
ly nights when the rain was on the roof. The
story needs no such details to make it pa-
thetic. Its pathos lies deeper. Home, home
is the theme. It is all in a sentence. " He
arose and went to his father." Pathos! In
following such a story as this, one can weep as
he runs. I wonder if any one can go on from
this point without the floods pressing to his
eyes. Oh, how the blessed details crowd upon
each other. Swiftly as the story moved at the
beginning, its pace quickens as it gathers
up for the close. The father sees, — sees
him a great way off. All the past look-
ing and yearning are in that. Love and
longing have made him far-sighted. " He
ran." Love never lets its object come the

CHRIST AS A TEACHER. kj

whole way. Divine love urges the sinner to
come, but it goes to meet him. Every feel-
ing is now swallowed up in compassion. The
embrace is first from the father's side. He
falls on his son's neck. The confession is
breathed, but without the request to be made
a hired servant. The boy never could have
said that with those arms round his neck.

And now we reach the climax. Festivity.
The joyful bustle of the awakened house has
gotten into the story. How the orders pour
from the happy father. " My son is at home
with a son's heart in him. Bring out the best
robe for him. My son is no dishonored beg-
gar, but an honored guest. Put a ring on his
finger. It is not fitting that my son should
be hungry. Bring forth the fatted calf and
kill it. The shadow is lifted from this home.
Let us eat and drink and be merry, — servants
and all." And then comes the whole Gospel
in a brief paragraph. Man is a son of God :
he is lost and dies by absence from God : he
is found and lives again by penitent return to
God. " This my son was dead and is alive
again, he was lost and is found."

I may take occasion here to remark that
while enlargement upon the hints furnished
by Scripture narratives is legitimate and often
profitable, it is not that easy matter which it

e 2 CHRIST AS A TEA CHER.

often seems to a lively and teeming fancy ;
and to do it effectively is something which re-
quires nice judgment and a very clear insight
into the whole drift and spirit of the story. A
danger lies close beside it, of covering up the
best points of the narrative with excessive or
incongruous description, and of making it
ridiculous by importing into it things quite
alien to its meaning and original setting. I
once heard a preacher describing the conver-
sion of Saul of Tarsus. He brought him to
Damascus, and then proceeded on this wise :
" When Saul arrived at Damascus, he went at
once to his hotel in Straight Street, and went
directly to his room. To most people, the
most pleasing sound in the world is the sound
of the dinner-bell ; but when the dinner-bell
rang, Saul didnt go down I " And I found
the following morsel in a volume of sermons
for children, where the preacher was telling
the story of Zacharias, the father of John the
Baptist. He described Zacharias' recovery of
speech as follows. I quote literally : " And
while they were all wondering what this
meant, old Zacharias gave a rattling kind of
gurgle in his throat, or coughed awaj> something
that had been like a heavy cold on him, and he
who had not spoken a word for nine months,
now spoke out loudly like the rest of the peo-

CHRIS T AS A TEA CHER. C 5

pie and praised God." I think I shall not be
deemed uncharitable in expressing the wish
that Zacharias' enforced silence might be im-
posed, for a season at least, upon those who
thus caricature the simple and dignified narra-
tives of the Gospel, and feed the lambs of the
flock with such miserable, I had almost said
blasphemous trash.

Let _me briefly note some other peculiari-
ties of our Lord's narrative style, at some of
wlTiclT I have already hinted in the story of
the Prodigal.

There is the dramatic element. Every
good story contains more or less of this. There
is a difference between annals and stories.
Merely to string a number of incidents to-
gether is not to tell a story. Much of the
effect of a story depends on the grouping of
the incidents; the setting of the telling points
in strong light and duly subordinating minor
details. The art of story-telling consists in re-
producing its scenes to the eye through the
ear. The oriental story-teller and the racon-
teur of Southern Europe are actors. If you
want a good modern illustration of how a
story can be dramatized in narrative, you will
find one in Charles Reade's charming little
tale of " Christie Johnstone," where Christie
tells to a holiday party of fishermen and fish-

J- A CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

wives the story of the ". Merchant of Venice,"
as dramatized by Shakespeare. It is_ this
characteristic of the Gospel stoxiesiiJiich makes
"them such capital subjects for pictures ; a fact
which the old artists who painted Scripture
scenes far more than their modern successors,
were not slow to appreciate. I should like to
say some things, if time permitted, about the
Bible stories in art ; and to show you how
they adapt themselves to the various local pe-
culiarities in which artists of different coun-
tries and times set them, without sacrificing
the point of their lessons. I will give you
just one instance. In the gallery of the
Louvre at Paris, there is a picture of the Prod-
igal Son by the younger Teniers, in which all
the details are distinctively Dutch. The
young man, in the costume of a Dutch gal-
lant, sits with two female companions at a ta-
ble in front of an inn, on the shutter of which
a tavern-score is chalked, and holds out his
glass to be filled by an attendant. Over in
the right-hand corner appears a pigsty, where
a stable-boy is feeding the swine, but with his
head turned toward the table as if in envy of
the gay revellers there. The picture, with all
its unbiblical setting, yet tells the Bible story
effectively. Sensuality is the same under any
garb. The difference between the youth at

CHRIST AS A TEA CHER. C c

the table and the youth at the sty is only su-
perficial. Degradation is only the lower and
grosser side of sin, a truth in Holland as in
Palestine. The possible swineherd is already
in the gay prodigal.

You note the same dramatic element in the
parable of the ten virgins. How vivid the
long waiting; the heads bowed in slumber;
the thrill of the midnight cry, " Behold the
bridegroom !" the hurried filling and trimming
of the lamps ; the woful plaint, " Our lamps
are going out ! " the rush to the oil-vender ;
the closed door, and the stern finality of the
terrible words from within, " I know you
not ! " Perhaps one of the most fearfully dra-
matic narratives of the New Testament is not
always recognized as such, because of its brev-
ity. I mean that of the rich man who would
pull down his barns and build greater. With
the most consummate art we are carried along
in the current of the rich man's thought, for-
getting with him everything but the heaps of
treasure, the plans for the new barns, and the
dreams of future luxury ; when, like thunder
from a clear sky, breaks " Thou fool ! This
night thy soul shall be required of thee ! "
And as at the sudden shifting of a scene, a
whole unsuspected economy of life is disclosed,
and with the rich fool, unconscious till this in-

eg CHRIST AS A TEACHER.

stant of anything but money and barns, we
look into a realm where only the soul counts,
and riches count for nothing.

Included in this dramaticelement is_the fre-
quent use of dialogue. ^'TIVe~cliafa£ters speak
_for themselves. This is characteristic of the
second part of the parable~^;5f::44i«-^^
where the respectable son is introduced. No
disquisition on the unfilial, servile spirit which
sometimes accompanies " good and regular
standing," could be half so telling as the
glimpse we get of it at the house door, where
it comes out that the older son's highest €Ofl-
ception of filial service is something to be
paid for with a feast. You will readily recall
similar instances, such as the story of the
wedding-feast, with the excuses of the several
people invited, and the closing incident of the
guest without the wedding-garment ; also the
Talents, the Unrighteous Steward, and the
Laborers in the Vineyard. In these the char-
icters interchange the appropriate language
of the field, the market, or the guest-chamber.
Just a word on the element of verisiviilitude
already touched upon in discussing Christ's
illustrations. It might not be safe to assert too
positively that all these stories told by our
Lord are imagined. More than one of them
may be a narrative of something which had

CHRIST AS A TEA CHER. - -

actually fallen under the Master's observation.
But^ _however that may be, ever>'. incident,
every word, every detail of these stories might

have_begn_tnj£_„Many of them, most indeed,
have a local coloring which always arrests
attention. It added to the effect of the par-
able of the Good Samaritan, for instance,
that the scene was laid on the Jericho road,
which, as everybody knew, was infested with
thieves ; while the passing of the priest and
Levite would be emphasized by the equally
familiar fact that Jericho was an important
station of priests. Christ never employed an
impossible or an improbable incident, and
"never took it out of its appropriate setting.
"And" therefore, in our teaching, it is always
the safer course to reproduce these incidents
as nearly as possible with their original cir-
cumstances ; to see, and to try and make the
learner see with Eastern eyes. It is hazard-
ous to modernize a Bible story. The lesson
may indeed assert itself through its incongru-
ous setting, as we have seen in the case of the
old painters ; but something is likely to get
into it which mars its beauty and blurs its
perfect impression. After reading John's ac-
count of the marriage at Cana, one does not
feel that our Lord is at home in Veronese's
magnificent canvas, among the gorgeous robes

58

CHRIST-AS A TEACHER.

of Venetian courtiers and the costly para

r2hernalia of an Italian banquet.
_^Wxind-rous teacher! How lucid Hi
ing, as with the brightness which cometh out
of the North, yet what depths in the heart of
the light ! How terribly plain, yet how kindly.
How positive and dogmatic, yet how sweetly
reasonable. How profound and yet how sim-
ple. How vivid and graphic, yet how dig-
nified. How outspoken, yet how pure. How
quick and subtle His perception of error or
sophistry, yet how frank and generous His
recognition of the smallest grain of truth.
How patient He is with ignorance ; how gen-
tle with slowness of faith. How informal and
familiar His lessons, yet with what logical com-
pactness and system underneath them. How
strongly drawn the lines of truth, yet what a
freshness and freedom pervades it. What
a divinity breathes through all His words.
Surely, as we study, we shall find admiration
merging into worship, and our lips and hearts
giving back His own words — t Yea, Master,
Thou art indeed both Teacher and Lord ; the
wisest, the best, the dearest of Teachers, be-
cause Lord over all, and blessed forever."

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