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Fundamentals of Christian Education
It is a daily working agency that is to be brought into exercise, a
faith that works by love, and purifies the soul of the educator. Is the
revealed will of God placed as your highest authority? If Christ is
formed within, the hope of glory, then the truth of God will so act upon
your natural temperament, that its transforming agency will be revealed
in a changed character, and you will not by your influence through
the revealings of an unsanctified heart and temper, turn the truth of
God into a lie before any of your pupils; nor in your presentation of
a selfish, impatient, unchristlike temper in dealing with any human
mind, reveal that the grace of Christ is not sufficient for you at all
times and in all places. Thus you will show that the authority of God
over you is not merely in name but in reality and truth. There must
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be a separation from all that is objectionable or unchristlike, however
difficult it may be to the true believer.
Inquire, teachers, you who are doing your work not only for time
but eternity, Does the love of Christ constrain my heart and my soul,
in dealing with the precious souls for whom Jesus has given His own
life? Under His constraining discipline, do old traits of character, not
in conformity to the will of God, pass away and the opposite take their
place? “A new heart also will I give you.” Have all things become
new through your conversion to the Lord Jesus Christ? In words and
by painstaking effort are you sowing such seed in these young hearts
that you can ask the Lord to water it, that it shall, with His imputed
righteousness, ripen into a rich harvest? Ask yourselves, Am I by my
own unsanctified words and impatience and want of that wisdom that
is from above, confirming these youth in their own perverse spirit,
because they see that their teacher has a spirit unlike Christ? If they
should die in their sins, shall I not be accountable for their souls?
The soul who loves Jesus, who appreciates the saving power of His
grace, will feel such a drawing near to Christ, that he will desire to
work in His lines. He cannot, dare not, let Satan control his spirit
and poisonous miasma surround his soul. Everything will be placed
one side that will corrupt his influence, because it opposes the will
of God and endangers the souls of the precious sheep and lambs; and
he is required to watch for souls as they that must give an account.
Wherever God has, in providence, placed us, He will keep us; as our
day our strength shall be.