Chapter 13—The Teacher Must Be a Learner
“Flee also youthful lusts; but follow righteousness, faith, charity,
peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. But foolish
and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes.”
Those who would become the educators of the youth and children must
learn much, very much, both in precept and experience, in order that
they may be successful laborers for God. They must grow in grace and
in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, attaining unto
the measure of the stature of Christ. Growth in grace is a testimony
to the fact that you are abiding in Christ as the branch is abiding in
the vine. If you abide in Him, you will have power to discern spiritual
truth, for spiritual things are spiritually discerned.
“I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and
the Word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked
one.” God calls upon the young men and young women to make the
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most of their intrusted ability. He would have you cultivate habits
of industry, habits of study, that you may improve the talents He has
given you. God will accept your service, and the improvement of your
talents, but He can not look with approval upon half-hearted, half-way
work. Every branch of God’s work calls for the exercise of the highest
ability; it demands that you shall bring into requisition every available
help, that you shall direct your noblest impulses to the propagation
of the truth. The exalted, sacred character of the work requires the
enlistment of the highest intellectual and spiritual powers, that it may
be properly represented before those who sit in darkness and in the
shadow of death.
If you are called to be a teacher in any branch of the work of God,
you are called also to be a learner in the school of Christ. If you take
upon you the sacred responsibility of teaching others, you take upon
you the duty of going to the bottom of every subject you seek to teach.
If you present a subject from the Word of God to your pupils in the
Sabbath-school, you should make the reasons for your faith so plain
that your scholars shall be convinced of its truth. You should diligently
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