As I have already said, teaching' here implies not only the communication of instruction, either outwardly or inwardly, but also a disciplinary process of correction that includes necessarily chastisement. Jesus Christ comes to us, and brings the external means of communicating instruction in the record of His life in this book. And He comes to us, also doing what no other teacher can do, for He passes into our spirits, and communicates not only instruction but the Spirit which teaches them in whom it abides, and guides them with gentle illumination into all truth' concerning God, Christ, and themselves, which it is needful for them to know.
Nor does His work stop there, for He corrects and rebukes.
Nor does His work stop there, for as He Himself has said, As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.' He comes' with a rod' sometimes, but always in the spirit of meekness.' He uses not only inward but also out ward chastisements. The knife mercilessly cuts away the tender, pliant tendrils of the vine, and the sap bleeds out at the wound, but the life does not; and the result of the pruning is larger and mellower clusters, ruddy in the sunlight and full of generous juice. So be sure of two things, dear friends, that it is grace which chastens, that the knife is held by a loving hand, and that the purpose of our outward sorrows, as well as of our inward discipline, is that we may be partakers of His holiness.' That grace is not like some unskillful surgeon, who cuts so deep that, in the effort to remove the rumour, he kills the sufferer; but His surgery knows to a hairsbreadth where to stop, and when the incision has served its purpose.
The grace of God hath appeared disciplining.' Disciplining? What for? Is the discipline to be sedulously carried on for threescore years and ten, and there an end? If we will only think of life as Christ's school, we shall understand it better than from any other point of view; and be certain that all these capacities, which are imparted and unfolded and trained by us, exercised here, will find a better field beyond. Jesus Christ, the embodied Grace, has appeared to us. He prays us with much entreaty to receive His gift. If we will enroll ourselves in His school, and learn His lessons, and accept His corrections, and submit to His chastisements as tokens of His love and of His desire that we shall bear better fruit, then, as schoolboys say, we shall' get our remove' when we are ready for it, and go up into the top form. And there not only Grace but Glory will be our teacher, and we shall learn from the Glory more than ever on earth we learned from the Grace.
