March 1926
TH E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
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even scolded. Some of His greatest teachings were given under the very shadow of the cross, when He was sub jected to the severest trials of pa tience. Perhaps this self-control is best explained by His repeated with drawals to the place of prayer. How often a good teacher loses his grip through revealing a bad spirit. A minister of our acquaintance, inter rupted in his message by the turning of many in the oongregation to see a late comer who was entering with con siderable noise, slammed his Bible shut and bolted for the door, his wife after him endeavoring to persuade him to return and finish his sermon. He lost his power at this point. A little boy who was lost, when interrogated by a policeman as to who he was, could not give his address but told his father’s name. “ What does your father do?” he was asked. “ Oh, he stands on a box on Sunday and scolds people," was the answer. “ Ah, I understand,” said the officer. “ He is a minister.” Whether or not the description fitted the particular preacher we do not know, but it might well describe some ministers and teachers we have heard. A student in a trial sermon said: “ A Christian is one who forsakes not the assembling of himself together.” Would that it were true. Beware of flying to pieces. If we would teach effectively, well might we make the following lines our prayer: “ More like the Master I would ever be, More of His meekness, more humility, More zeal to labor, more courage to be true, More consecration for work He bids me do.” light, and it is this method which has been developed by the two Dutch sci entists. How much we may learn here when we apply some of these sen tences to the spiritual realm! We observe that the most tragic outcomes arise frequently from sins so obscure that the ordinary man would declare they did not exist; mur ders arise from the virus of hate, which may be so small that all man’s self-right.eous probing fails to find it; divorce and adultery are the outcome of impurity in heart that is perhaps at first invisible to the eye of man, even with the strongest microscope of intro spection. But when there is the “ in tense illumination” of the Holy Spirit, those tiny germs of sin may be dis covered, yea, and they have been photographed, for the world to see, and that photograph is published in the fifth chapter of Matthew!
self-forgetful, and ready to back up our teaching with any sacrifice for the good of others. U NFAILING GOODNESS. “ JeBUS began both to DO and TEACH" (Acts 1 :1 ). “ Jesus went about, all Galilee teaching and preaching . . . and healing” (Matt. 4:23 ). A minis ter who told Dr. Bonar he loved to preach, was met with the question: “ But do you love those to whom you preach?” It’s a loving heart, not sim ply a ready tongue, that profits others. Love lay behind all that Jesus did. A helping hand in time of need does much to help the truth,, to go home. Men write and wrangle for religion who never seem to live for it. The teacher who does not seize every op portunity, as did the Master, to ex press the love of God in loving deeds, is simply firing blank cartridges. As Dr. Burton exhorted: “ Let us train our eyes to watch for others’ needs and to read another’s woes. Train your soul to sympathy and your hand to help fulness.” “ Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not love, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal” (1 Cor. 13:1). S ELF CONTROL. One of the most remarkable things about the Great Teacher was His perfect balance under all situations. The Pharisees were ever “ takihg counsel how they might entangle him in his talk” (Matt. 22: 15). The priests and elders inter rupted Him with questions as to His authority (Matt 21:23). Did He ever “ lose His head"? Never! He never • ! • eeing thé Unseen Homers Hodgson wonders, and personalities to which they were blind. >: “ Photos of The Invisible” is the catchy title of an editorial in a well- known daily, describing the work of two Dutch scientists— Professors Paul Frosch and H. Dahmen,— who have succeeded in making photographs of “ a particle too small to be seen by ,the highest power of the microscope. They have isolated and photographed the virus of the dreaded ‘foot-and- mouth disease,’ which has frequently threatened economic disaster to the stock-raising industry.” Lord Ray leigh was the real discoverer of ultra microscopy, when in 1899 he showed that “ only sufficiently intense illumi nation was required to make visible a particle too small to be seen by the highest power of the microscope.” In 1904 Kohler took photographs by using the short waves of ultra-violet m I I m
minister that they were probably as large as he would want to account for in the Judgment. Results will come when our teaching flows from the pas sion to win men. Jay Gould, million aire, used to go to hear Moody, and when a friend asked him why he listened to him when he did not accept his theology, Gould replied: “ He be lieves what he preaches.” Do we teach as though we believed it with, all our hearts? If so, we will put our best energies into every opportunity, great or small. Joshua Reynolds, distin guished painter, when asked how he attained such excellence, said: “ By ob serving one simple rule, to put my best into each one.” S ELF FORGETFUL. "The Son of man came not to be waited on but to minister” (Mark 10:45). Selfish ness is a vice no one is without, yet no one will forgive it in another, especi ally one who professes to be a servant of the Christ. Many a good teacher ruined his work by his inability to for get himself. He wants to be flattered and feasted, and if every comfort is not furnished him he becomes sour, A man may fail in reasoning power and may not have the gift o f express ing himself well, but it is ten to one he will win his listeners to the truth if he proves his absolute devotion to their interests and forgetfulness as to his own interests. “ He that is great est shall be your servant” (Matt. 23: 11). The spidar is a type of selfish ness, working purely for itself. The bee is a type of beneficence, working for others. If we would get the honey of the Gospel to others, we must be s continually surrounding them, to the great forces in nature, but worst of all to God. It is the same pitiful blind ness that is over all the world, and has its origin in Satan’s lie in Eden. Satan persuaded Eve that if she ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree her eyes would be opened; and they were opened to evil indeed, but blinded to God and the angels, probably when they were driven forth from Eden. There were some people, however, in Old Testament times, who “ endured, as seeing the invisible,” and to them were given the name “ seers,” or “ see ing ones,1' as the masses realized pa thetically that there were glories, N the early history of Israel, it was realized that the mass of mankind were blind not o n l y to the tremendous hosts of ¿angels and demons
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