p. 6 | The Life a Schoolroom by S.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 4, 1903

The Life a Schoolroom

By S.

True teaching is true living—the living that God approves. School opens with the first flush of accountable action in the morning of life, when the soul raises its windows to look around and out upon its environments; and such school closes only when the influence of that life has been lost in the clouds of night. Our school is larger than many of us have been led to think. We are teaching more individuals in that school than we may be willing to give account for in the day of judgment.

We teach as we live and what we live. The apt pupil looks through the veneer of our words and takes us for what we are and do, rather than for what we say. We may wish it otherwise, but we can not change the fact. For this reason the words of many who attempt oral teaching have in them no converting power, and the pupils drift out into the world to be swallowed in “the strangle of the stream.”

We do but a small part of our teaching with our organs of speech. The tongue is a swift racer; but it is a tardy teacher when pitted against the real life and character of the one who uses it. We can not live one thing and teach another. There was once an artist so skilful in the use of a pencil that he could draw a lion with one hand and a deer with the other at the same time. But if in our lives we are drawing lions, we can not paint a deer with our words. We shall make a fearful failure of it if we try. The ones whom we thus attempt to teach will suffer in their own souls for our useless, thoughtless, harmful vivisection and experimentation. The Saviour’s query, “Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?” gives an inspired exposition of the same idea; and He further says: “Therefore by their fruits ye shall know them.” We can not raise wheat from thistle-down, nor corn from mustard seed. We can not expect a harvest of souls if there is mildew in the heart of the seed we sow. The lamp whose wick is too short to touch the oil will never light the benighted wanderer home. He whose prayers do not take hold of the throne of the Infinite need not expect to guide lost souls through the wilderness of sin.

On the other hand, raindrops are bound to show the seven primary colors when the sun’s rays fall upon them. That is just as true of the obscure, dew-tipped blade of grass as of the mighty, cloud-fringing rainbow hanging in the sky. It is true in nature—it is true in life. You do not have to sit in the clouds in order that God may reveal His glory in you. Even so the true Christian, tho living in seeming obscurity, is bound to teach Christ in his acts as well as in his words. He can not help doing so as long as he remains a Christian. When we cease to live Christ, then we lose connection with the Teacher of all true teachers. Then we begin to look for grapes on the thorn bush, and for figs among the thistle-down. This is contrary to nature; and all oral teaching that is out of harmony with the life of the teacher is an attempt to do that very

thing, and is out of harmony with both nature and the Author of nature.

Why is it that so many who have had supposedly Christian instruction have become worldlings, and the shuttles of their lives are being manipulated by Satan to weave webs of sin? In too many cases the life of the teacher gave the lie direct to his oral instructions. His pupils were reading the word, “untrue, untrue,” between the words that fell from his lips. This teaching life we live is a terribly responsible one. But if unreserved consecration and submission is given to God, if the heart is right, God will look after the result. If we would teach the love of God, we must have it in our hearts. If we would teach Christ, we must cherish His indwelling presence. If we would teach what salvation is, we must ourselves know what it is. If we would lead the souls of others to ruin, we have only to attempt to teach with our lips what our hearts do not contain and our lives do not express. Then our pupils would look upon the fall of man as a fable, upon Christ as a myth, and upon the plan of redemption as a clever scheme of the superstitious; whereas, if the life itself has showed a personal experience in the things of God, the deeds and the words in harmony, and both testifying for God, that life-teaching will be a power for God, and souls will be the harvest. Such living is the most important business in the world; for it has the very message of God in it and the power of God permeating it, and that can not fail.