WE will consider the method of Jesus as a teacher, and the word is appropriate now. He did have a method in teaching men the truths that he knew without reasoning about them, the truths that he did not discover by , the truths he knew because they were in him.
To begin with, Jesus does not seek to prove things to his hearers; he announces what is truth as God announces truth. He is a divine dogmatist; he offers no proof of what he sets as truth.
No other teacher ever taught as Jesus did. What we may call his -form is pre-eminently the teacher’s; but no teacher ever employed it as did he who came out of Nazareth. He reasons from the weaker to the stronger reason. He does not reason to prove truth to others, as he does not reason to discover it for himself, but to teach it. This is the form of reasoning we find in all his and illustrations. His arguments are designed to help his learners understand what he meant and to impress it upon their minds. He never seems concerned about proving to men the truth of what he said, but only to make it plain and to enforce it. Many illustrations might be given; let a few suffice.
One day Jesus was teaching his the of God’s . He makes no argument to prove that there is a providence; he does not seek to convince them, but only to help them realize in their own thoughts the all-embracing, unfailing, and gracious providence that kept them. And he did this not to make them understand the doctrine of providence, but to help them trust in it. He seeks to bring home to them the truth he does not seek to prove. How does he set about it? What is his method? Not a man’s method. It is indeed an absolutely simple method; but no other teacher, who has not learned it of him, has used it so in of such truths.
He begins with what they knew: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” They knew the lilies—that is, they were used to seeing them, the little flowers so common, so , yet so beautiful. Jesus concludes: “Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?”
In the same way he reasons of sparrows and men. He would inspire his disciples with the courage that has its root in faith in God’s loving and unfailing providence. He says to them the great God not only feeds the poor little birds, but cares for them, “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.”
He would teach his disciples the of forgetting what is essential in brooding anxieties about small things: “And which of you with taking thought [worrying] can add to his one cubit? If ye then be not able to do that thing which is least, why take ye thought for the rest?... Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on. The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment.”
He would make men see how simple and unmysterious is prayer and how absolutely certain it is that God will answer. Have we not listened to mere men—preachers they called themselves, yet doing, it may be, the best they could—mystifying simple-minded people and little children—themselves most of all—with disquisitions concerning the “subjective” and “objective” results of their devotions! Answering infidels, they suppose!
Jesus makes no argument about the nature of prayer; he has not a word to prove its reasonableness or to harmonize the doctrine with law. He says: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”
How does he prove what he affirms? He does not prove it; he brings it home to them: “What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or, if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?”
Every hearer, whether parent or child, answered out of his heart, “There is not such a man among us.” Jesus concludes: “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?”
The cold and cruel Pharisees, playing at religion and seeking their own, complained one day that Jesus healed a poor maimed man on the Sabbath day. Jesus made no argument about the nature of the Sabbath. He reminded them that they would lift a sheep out of the ditch on the Sabbath day, and concludes with a question that brought the truth home to them: “How much then is a man better than a sheep?”
These same people, contending about the forms of religion and forgetting God and man, complained that Jesus kept company with “publicans and sinners,” and was kind to them. In answer he told them of the shepherd who, missing one sheep from his flock of a hundred, could not be content with the ninety and nine, but went out into the seeking the lost one; he told them how glad the shepherd was when in his arms he had tenderly brought it home. He told them also of the woman who could not rest till, with broom and candle, she had searched her house for the piece of money she had lost. He told them of her neighbors rejoicing with her when she had found it. Why he cared for publicans and sinners he made plain when he added: “I tell you there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.”
Jesus would make these hard of what they called the Church and despisers of their brother-men realize the Fatherhood of God. He made no argument of the sort mere men would make.
He tells them of the two sons and how glad the old father was when his poor got home. The conclusion no human heart can miss: the infinite Father, better than any earthly father, is infinitely glad when his return to him. The heart that once takes in this story of the two sons can never again tremble and before that horribly heathen conception of God that makes him only an infinite terror, seated on the throne of the universe, to be afraid of, fled from, and hated forever.
Jesus sought to encourage the most and to trust in the divine justice as well as mercy. There is no lofty argument concerning the righteousness of God. He tells of the widow and the unjust judge, who feared not God nor regarded man, the judge who made a boast of heartlessness and apologized to himself for seeming to do a good deed. He grants the widow’s prayer because he was selfish and mean;............