The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-05-14
BISHOP GALLOWAY ID THE GRADUATES Eloquent Divine Delivers a Con- menCement Discourse PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS The Bishop Had for His Theme Christ as the Great Teacher, Who
 Spoke as One Having
 Authority.
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

Methodist Episcopal church. south, preached a High school commencement sermon at the Methodist church in Wy lam at the Ii o'clock service, yesterday. The church was filled. to overhowiAg and the congregation listened to the eloquent divine with rapt attention from beginning to end.
 The bishop spoke as follows:
 As appropriate to this occasion, I wish to speak to you for a while this morning about the Great Teacher. and some of the methods of his teaching. The text is found In the seventh chapter of the gospel according to St. Matthew. and the last verse;
 For He taught them as One having au- thority, and not as the scrIbes."
 This was said of our Lord at the con- clusion of what Is known as the sermon on the mount. The multtudes had gath cred there to hear from Him the great mysteries of His kingdom the great doc trines upon which it was to be built. This Is only another evidence and instance of the popularity of our Lords ministry Wherever He went the multitudes fol- lowed Him, and the common people heard
 
 Him gladly.
 There are two things wish to say as preliminary to this discussion The first is that during the first year of our Lord s ministry, He wrought more than He taught. He performed more miracles than He preached sermons. and in that fact there is a spiritual suggestion. He first, by the wonderful things He did, demon strated that He was very and eternally God. By performing miracles which only God could perform He demonstrated the fact that He had all power in heaven and In earth in His strong right hand Then when He came to teaching, He taught by the authority of a Lordship that had al- ready been demonstrated by the miracles that He wrought.
 An Illustration.
 Now the practical suggestiveness of that statement I may have to illustrate to you in order really to appreciate the force of 1t. When that great man in England, MT Gladstone, few years before he died, after he had retired from public life, and was living in the seclusion of his home, went over to Liverpool one day and delivered a great discourse in the town hall in behalf of the Armenian Christians who were suffering and being persecuted at the hands of the terrible Turks, every word that odd man uttered Che was then S6 years old) took the wings of the light ming and went round the world and stirred all Europe, and in fact the heart of civ ilized humanity. Now, suppose he had uttered the same words and given expres- sion to lthe same sentiments, in exactly the same language. when he was a young man 23 years of age. just entering Parla- ment, handsome young eollegian from Oxford. Do you suppose they would have had the same effect, and if not, why not ? Why would not the same sentiments, clothed in the same language, spoken by the same man at 23 years of age, have had the same effect as when spoken by him at S6 years of age? They would not that is very sure, and why not? We'll I can tell you-because, when at six and eighty years of age he uttered those sem timents, he spoke by authority of a pub lie life of sixty-fve years that was al- most faultless devoted to the upbuilding of humanity and the advancement of civ
 
 and holy, so that every word he uttered was given wonderful force and efficiency by the great history and the grand char l acter back of it.
 1 The lesson is this: That the influence of the message is largely determined by the | character of the messenger back of it. Not every person has the same influence | over me who breaches to me. He may | give a very good talk, but it may not | have a very good influence over me. I | want to know what is back of that talk | I want to know what sort of history the speaker has written, and what sort of | character Is back of 1t. and the purity and the beauty and consistency of the | character back of it will give force and influence to the message which he de- | livers Now. then. the other thought is this: That this Great Teacher at whose | feet the nations and the generations were | to sit has not left us any systematic writing of His teachings. Nearly all great men who aspire to be teachers and lead | CTS of the world have what they said written down and given to the nations | exactly as they desired.
 Christ Never Wrote.
 Our Lord never wrote anything. We | have to gather the great body of his l teachings from the wayside converse | tions He sat on a well curb and talked | to a woman who came to draw water. | He talked to the multitude outside of the | house of Simeon He went with the di- | sciples on the way to Emmaus. He talked to the multtudes that gathered out there on the mountain. And from these in stances of his life, these wayside con- versations. we gather the teachings of | this Great Teacher that are to live for | ever. With a strange sort of faith He willing ear, expecting them to live and not die. and they have lived and have 1 not died, and will never die.
 I said He never wrote anything. believe He did write on the sand once | did he not? And I believe the author of l "Ecce Homo" has given us the true in- | terpretation of that. He said that when | the sin of the woman was being told in | His presence, He turned and wrote on | the sand to hide the hot blush on His l cheek As to the methods this Great Teacher used, in the language of the | scripture He taught as one having au- | thority, and not as the scribes. What | authority? Who gave Him authority? 1 The authority with which one speaks 1 very largely determines also the influ- | ence of His teaching. Now, a man who | Ia the premier of a great government like England speaks, and when he does 1 a nation speaks. A man like the em- | neror of Germany can speak. and when | be does a great empire speaks. Our presi- | dept can isaue a proclamation, as he did