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54
True Education
was life, and life was service. “Freely you have received,” He said,
“freely give.”
Matthew 10:8
.
[50]
It was not on the cross only that Christ sacrificed Himself for
humanity. As He “went about doing good” (
Acts 10:38
), every day’s
experience was an outpouring of His life. In one way only could
such a life be sustained. Jesus lived in dependence upon God and
communion with Him. His life was one of constant trust, sustained
by continual communion, and His service for heaven and earth was
without failure or faltering.
As a man Jesus supplicated the throne of God till His humanity
was charged with a heavenly current that connected humanity with
divinity. Receiving life from God, He imparted life to others.
Instead of directing the people to study human theories about
God, His Word, or His works, He taught them to behold Him, as
manifested in His works, in His Word, and by His providences. He
brought their minds into contact with the mind of the Infinite.
“No man ever spoke like this Man.”
John 7:46
. This would have
been true of Christ if He had taught only in the area of the physical
and intellectual, or only in matters of theory and speculation. He
might have unlocked mysteries that have taken centuries of work and
study to solve. He might have made suggestions in scientific matters
that would have stimulated thought and invention till the close of
time. But He did not do this. He did not deal in abstract theories,
but in that which is essential to the development of character, that
which will enlarge the capacity of human minds for knowing God
and increasing their power to do good. He spoke of those truths that
deal with the way people live, truths that will unite them with God.
Christ’s teaching, like His sympathies, embraced the world.
Never can there be a circumstance of life, a crisis in human ex-
perience, that has not been anticipated in His teaching, and for
which its principles do not have a lesson. The Prince of teachers,
His words will be found a guide to His co-workers till the end of
time.
To Him the present and the future, the near and the far, were one.
He had in view the needs of the whole world. Before His mind’s
eye was outspread every scene of human effort and achievement, of
temptation and conflict, of perplexity and peril.