Editorial by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Apr 13, 1905

Editorial

By Editor

Effective Teaching

It costs something to be a true teacher of the people. He who administers genuine comfort to those in trial must himself pass through the furnace. He who speaks with authority must put his own life into his utterances. He who writes to move the hearts of others must dip his pen in his own heart’s blood. He who preaches effectively the gospel of unselfish love must himself experience the consuming power of self-sacrificing love. This means that the teaching which really lifts people to a higher plane of thinking and living must be vivified by the very life power of the teacher, and that the wise counselor must have wrought his own counsel into experience. These principles found expression in the life and work of Jesus, the world’s greatest teacher. “Never man spake like this man,” because no man ever lived like this man. He healed sin-sick souls with his words because his words were the vehicle for conveying the virtue of his own sinless character. His words of love were not the mere mouthing of the phrases common to the Pharisees, mere sound and emptiness, but they were the deeds of love incarnated in verbal expressions. And this heart-to-heart language was understood by the common people, and it brought comfort to the sorrowing and hope to the hopeless, and placed the feet of the despairing upon vantage-ground. Such teaching is needed to-day. The ears of the people have been wearied with professional platitudes, and their souls are not comforted by sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. So long have human substitutes been taught for real Christianity that many are apparently arrayed against Christianity who are really fighting the perversions of Christianity, and there is great demand to-day for teachers of truth whose garments are not borrowed in order to conceal the wolf character. Godly living and godlike teaching can not be separated.

Abiding Fellowship

The name of Jesus is still “Immanuel,” and it still means “God with us.” Although “no man hath seen God at any time,” yet we are assured that “the only begotten Son . . . hath declared him,” and Jesus himself has said, “If a man love me, he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” Thus through the incarnation of the blessed Son and the gift of the Holy Spirit, provision has been made for abiding fellowship with “the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God.” What a privilege is this! and how highly it should be prized! Day by day, amid all the strife and confusion, we may walk with God. While earthly ties are broken by the last enemy, and the most intimate spiritual association is disturbed by a departure from the faith, yet through it all “He abideth faithful,” and we can maintain unbroken communion with our Father and our God. When cares press heavily, and burdens seem almost unbearable, and the tempter presses his companionship upon us, then, without attempting to answer by any course of reasoning the doubts and fears which may fill our minds, we may pierce the clouds which surround us, and by the fact of abiding fellowship with the Father and his Son we may disprove the suggestions of the enemy of our souls. This experience of fellowship with heaven and the results which flow from it constitute the best evidences of the reality of the gospel of Christ. Then “draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.”

“In heavenly love abiding, No change my heart shall fear; And safe is such confiding, For nothing changes here. The storm may roar without me, My heart may low be laid, But God is round about me, And can I be dismayed?”