ute uniqueness, of His attitude and action as a
Teacher lies in two things: one, that His main subject was Himself, as
He said, 'I am the Truth,' and consequently His characteristic demand
from His scholars was not, as with other teachers, 'Accept this, that,
or the other doctrine which I propound,' but 'Believe in Me'; and the
other, that He seldom if ever argues, or draws conclusions from previous
premises, that He never speaks as if He Himself had learnt and fought
His way to what He is saying, or betrays uncertainty, limitation, or
growth in His opinions, and that for all confirmation of His
declarations, He appeals only to the light within and to His own
authority: 'Verily, verily, I say unto you.' No wonder that the common
people were astonished at His teaching, and felt that here was an
authority in which the wearisome citations of what Rabbi So-and-So had
said, altogether lacked.

That teaching abides still, and, as I believe, opens out into, and is
our source of, all that we know--in distinction and contrast from,
'imagine,' 'hope,' 'fear'--of God, and of ourselves, and of the future.
It casts the clearest light on morals for the individual and on politics
for the community. Whatever men may say about Christianity being effete,
it will not be effete till the world has learnt and absorbed the
teaching of Jesus Christ; and we are a good long way from that yet!

If He is thus the Teacher, the perpetual Teacher, and the only Teacher,
of mankind in regard to all these high things about God and man and the
relation between them, about life and death and the world, and about the
practice and conduct of the individual and of the community, then we, if
we are His disciples, build houses on the rock, in the degree in which
we not only hear but do the things that He commands. For this Teacher is
no theoretical handler of abstract propositions, but the authoritative
imposer of the law of life, and all His words have a direct bearing upon
conduct. Therefore it is vain for us to say: 'Lord, Lord, Thou hast
taught in our streets and we have accepted Thy teaching.' He looks down
upon us from the Throne, as He looked upon the disciples in that upper
room, and He says to each of us: 'If ye know these things, happy are ye
if ye do them.'

But the complete disappearance of the name as the development of the
Church advanced, brings with it another lesson, and that is, that
precious and great as are the gifts which Jesus Christ be