The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-02-27
INTERNATIONAL SUNDAY-SCHOOL LESSON
Copyright, Davis ". clsrk.) a<Aa<es@<esk
Save for my daily range

Save for my daily range Among the pleasant fields of Holy Writ, might despair. -Tennyson.
 First Quarter. Lesson TX. Matt. vii, s1-2o. February ee, 1904. Hearers and Doers of the Word. Macaulay says of Pitt that he could pour forth long succession ef stately periods without generalization. in voice of silvery clearness Perhaps he reached the zenith of oratorical fame in his speech on the addition of the slave trade. Fox, Gray, Windham, contemporaries and themselves adopts at the art of speaking, agreed that 1t was the most extraordinary display of eloquence ever heard. Where is that speech? 4 memory only!
 We have an American analogtae in Web- ster. There he stood before an entranced Congress, his very soul blazing in those deep caverns below his marble brow, as he poured forth his Reply to Hayne." His statement was argument his infer ence was demonstration" Where Is that speech? Just a memory. though only two generations have passed since its deliv- cry.
 Two miilenniums ago Galiiean availed himself of one of natures auditortums, and, when the unsynagogued congregation gathered, he opened his mouth and taught them. That assembly dissolved; but in each successive generation a new and ever-inereasing throng has come together.
 As from the sounding board of the open heavens, the old sermon has struck tho ear of each new congregation. The ser mon Jesus preached is no dream of ideal eloQuence. It lives In every dialect. It fis the most potent composition in written speech. Millions know 1t by heart; mill
 lions live by it.
 But some one will say, Jesus only bor-
 rowed the aphorisms of the rabbi, after all. They will put the Talmudic sayings In parallel column with those of tho Mes
 sah, and thus discount his originality.
 Put those rabbinical maxims back into their context, however, and you almoSe invariably find them on lower plane, and often moving in a direction opposite to the teaching of Jesus. Again, if Jesus taught the same truth as the rabbis, why then were they offended with him? He may have used the modes of speech cur rent in hls day, but it must be admitted
 also that he made them the vehicle of a diviner meaning.
 Miss Martineau, in her Life in the
 East" melange of happy description
 and unhappy theology, dismisses Jesus as an Eesene. But the merest tyro ought to know that the trend of Jesus teaching is fundamentally opposed to that of the Es- sene. They were the most esoterfc, un-
 missionary sect extant. How could he
 who said, Go ye into all the world. and preach the gospel to every creature" be
 an TSssene? On purifieation, the Sabbath,
 the resurrection. Jesus was in diametric opposition to that strictest and tiniest of
 sects. To affirm identity on finding q point or two of similarity ia unphilosoph" | ical fin the extreme.
 Apart from. infinitely above. the rabbi
 on the one hand and the Essene on the
 other. Jesus stands the original and un-
 ceasing Teacher of the race. He speaks
 with authority to the universal human
 heart. illuminating, inspiring. empowering
 it. He is not a channel through which
 truth flows perturbed, perchance, and cor
 rupted with human prejudice and error in
 It's passages. So he could say not only,
 T speak the truth" but. T am Truth"
 He is the original source not the trans
 hitter; a fountain, not a conduit! Again, he is not the institutor of a system of doctrine, not the formulator of
 ritual. He comes to inspire a life in
 the soul, to set up a kingdom within.
 which consists not in the externalities and
 comparative trivialities of sacrifice and