Unlike most teachers He philosophizes little about life.
A single chapter of the Gospels, or at most two, would contain all the
maxims about life which He thought necessary for wise and lofty
conduct. His method is rather to put Himself in relation to the
crucial occurrences of life, and to reveal the true way of regarding
them by His own attitude towards them. When He would teach the beauty
of humility it is by putting a little child in the midst of His
arrogant and vainglorious disciples, that the child may become the
living and memorable parable of His sentiments. When He would teach
humanity, He does so by His own conduct to lepers. When He would
discredit and expose the barbarism of the Mosaic Sabbatarian laws as
interpreted by scribes and Pharisees, He does so by healing the sick
and blind upon the Sabbath day. He is all for the concrete, teaching
not by theory, but by example. The method is novel, and its advantages
are obvious. The best conceived discourses on humility, mercy, or
sympathy, might be forgotten, but no one can forget the child among the
disciples, nor the raptured gaze of the blind man when his purged eyes
open to behold the face of his miraculous Physician, nor the picture of
Jesus touching without fear or disgust the leper whose unclean
contagion made him an object of aversion even to the pitiful.
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