THE DECALOGUE AND THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT.
By E. Lanphear
WHEN the principles involved in the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount come to pervade the lives of men, few difficult problems will remain unsettled. We will need no Sunday laws, nor will we need the name of God inserted in our national Constitution. When our preachers and teachers bring all their preaching and teaching into conformity with these, the people will be able to understand the Word of God without text-books or the theology by doctors of divinity. So much false theology is thrown over the Gospel that it distracts the masses, and they do not know what to believe. But few, comparatively speaking, ever study to know the real meaning of the Ten Commandments, or what the Sermon on the Mount means to them. One must know spirituality by personal experience before he can successfully impart that truth. Spiritual truth and spiritual life are essentially identical. The imparting of spiritual truth is the imparting of life. In this was the unexampled power of Christ as a teacher of spiritual truth. He asserted this when He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Herein is seen the supreme necessity of spiritual life on the part of every Christian teacher. Doctrine is but a skeleton of life. Hence it is that many preachers whose sermons are ponderous with theories, copious as to their quotations from the Father, have little power to develop life. One may analyze the metaphysics of Paul's theology to the nicety of a hair's breadth, but leave his congregation as poor as Pharaoh's lean kine, unless, back of the metaphysical analysis, in some degree he reveals the spiritual life. The secret of the failure of many Sabbath-school teachers is found here. Their knowledge of the Scriptures is mainly historical and theoretical, but they do not possess that spiritual life which is higher than all theories, and which more than words imparts its blessings directly to the hearts of the pupils. Then he who would successfully teach in spiritual things must teach them through the power of actual spiritual life. All life is soul-inspiring. For example, if the life of a given teacher along the line of honesty is the embodiment of all that is honest and true, that life will beget honesty in those who are taught, when all theories concerning honesty, put forth by the same teacher, without the embodiment of those theories in his own life, would be futile. Every Christian, whether officially commissioned as preacher or teacher, is a help or a hindrance along spiritual lines. If his soul be filled with spiritual life, with consecration and devotion, it matters little whether he can formulate beautiful theories concerning life or not. Those who come in contact with Him will be inspired to live as He is living, to think as He is thinking, to be what He is. No man or woman is fit to teach the Word of God until he or she has been converted and can teach in the Spirit of Christ and His Gospel. I think some of the Sabbath-school superintendents and teachers in our schools are capable of teaching the true Spirit of the Gospel, and the rest are as liable to teach wrong as right, and the pupil is worse off than if he had never been taught. Parents should guard their children against such teaching.