By James Stalker
I.
THE function of the teacher is a more limited one than that of the preacher. The preacher addresses the multitude; the teacher concentrates his attention on a select few. The audiences to whom Jesus preached numbered thousands; the men to whom He acted as teacher numbered only twelve. Yet perhaps in its results His work in the latter capacity was quite equal in value to His whole work as a preacher.
The teacher's office had many remarkable occupants before Christ. In the schools of Greek philosophy Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and other famous masters stood in a relation to their disciples similar to that which Jesus sustained to His. Among the Jews also this relationship was not unknown. In the schools of the prophets, in the Old Testament, the " men of God " were the teachers of "the sons of the prophets." John the Baptist, besides preaching to the multitude, had disciples who followed him.
The standing phrase in Greek for the disciples of any master is " those about him: " the disciples of Socrates, for example, are " those about Socrates." Similarly it is said in the Gospels that Jesus chose the Twelve " that they should be with Him." This circumstance alone must have limited the number of those who were His disciples in the strict sense; for few could give up their work and home in order to follow Him. His habits were itinerant; and this made the separation of those about Him from settled occupations more absolute. It seems, indeed, that some attached themselves to Him temporarily and intermittently; for we hear on one occasion of as many as a hundred and twenty disciples, and on another of seventy; but those whom He chose out to give up all and be with Him continually were only twelve.
There was, however, another reason for the strict limitation of their number. A teacher has to know his disciples individually and study them, as a mother has to study the temperament of each of her children separately in order to be to them a good mother. While the preacher, addressing a crowd, draws the bow at a venture, not knowing whom he may hit, and has carefully to avoid references to particular persons, the teacher addresses every question and remark straight to individuals; and therefore he must know the precise mental condition of every one before him. This is why the names of the Twelve are so exactly given in evangelist after evangelist, and their relations to one another indicated. Perhaps they included as great a variety of disposition and experience as will ever be found among the same number of men; but they were not too numerous for separate treatment, and there is the completest evidence that their Master studied everyone of them till He knew him through and through, and carefully adapted His treatment to each particular case.
His affectionate way with John exactly suited the temperament of that disciple; and equally adapted to the case was His patient and delicate handling of Thomas. But His treatment of Peter was the crown and glory of His activity in this character. How completely He knew him! He managed the tumultuous and fluctuating elements of his character as a perfect rider does a high-mettled horse. And how successful He was! He transformed a nature unstable as water into the consistency of rock; and on this rock He built the Church of the New Testament. Similar results were achieved in the whole apostolic circle. With the exception of the traitor, every one of the Twelve became, by means of the Master's teaching, able to be a pillar in the Church and a power in the world.
Jesus combined the work of the preacher and that of the teacher. The former was most fascinating, and it could easily have absorbed His whole time and strength. The multitudes were clamorous to have Him, and their needs spoke urgently to His heart. Yet He saved most of His time for the training of twelve men. We love numbers too much. We measure ministerial success by them; and many servants of God expend on them their whole strength. It is true, indeed, that no preacher who has the heart of Jesus in his breast can join in the depreciation of the multitude, which sounds so wise, but is so cheap. Yet the example of Jesus teaches us also a different lesson. It is a saying of one of the wise, that the difference between being broad and being narrow is the difference between being a marsh and being a stream; and the quaint remark has a bearing on the present case. If a moderate quantity of force, such as may be in us, is distributed over too wide a surface, it may have no more effect than the inch-deep water of a marsh; but, concentrated on a more limited task, it may be like a stream which sings along its narrow channel and drives the mill. Get a multitude and distribute your influence over it, and every one may receive but little; but throw yourself on twelve men or six or even one, and the effects may be deep and everlasting. There are those quite unfit to address a multitude who might teach a small number; and it may turn out in the end that they have done as much as if they had been endowed with the more coveted gift.
II.
In some respects Christ's methods of teaching the Twelve were similar to those which lid pursued with the multitude. They heard all His addresses to the multitude, for they were always with Him; whereas the majority of His hearers can only have heard Him once or twice. Besides, they heard from Him in private many a discourse not dissimilar in its structure to His public sermons. In the same way, they witnessed all His miracles, because they accompanied Him wherever He went; whereas the majority saw only the miracles performed in one or two places. Besides, He wrought some of His very greatest miracles-such, for example, as the stilling of the tempest-in their presence and for their benefit alone. This constant repetition of great impressions was an incalculable advantage.
But that which was distinctive in His method of dealing with them was the permission He gave them to put questions, which He answered. Whenever there was anything in His public discourses, which was obscure, they asked Him in private what it meant, and He told them. Or, if they had hesitation about the truth or wisdom of anything He stated, they were at liberty to propound their doubts, and He solved them. Thus, at the beginning of His ministry, we find them asking why He spake in parables, and again and again afterwards they requested Him to explain a parable which they had not fully understood. When they heard His severe teaching on divorce, they said to Him, " If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry," and drew from Him a fuller statement on the subject. In the same way, when they heard Him say that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God, they exclaimed, " Who then can be saved? " and thus led Him on to a copious discourse on the subject of riches. In short, we are told that, " when He was alone, He expounded all things to His disciples."
But He pursued this method further: He not only allowed them to ask questions, but provoked them to do so. He deliberately wound His statements in obscurity and paradox to excite the questioning propensity. He Himself gave this explanation of His habit of speaking in parables. The parable was a. veil cast over the face of the truth for the very purpose of tempting the hearers to lift it and see the beauty, which it half concealed, and half revealed. A teacher has done nothing unless he awakens the mind to independent activity. As long as it is merely passive, receiving what is poured into it but doing nothing more, true education has not commenced. It is only when the mind itself begins to work on a subject, feeling within itself difficulties to which the truth supplies the answers, and wants to which it gives satisfaction, that growth commences and progress is made. What Christ said set the minds of His disciples in a ferment; it was intended to raise in them all sorts of perplexities, and then they came to Him for their solution.
The method of Socrates, the wisest of heathen teachers, was similar. In his teaching also questioning played a prominent part. When a disciple came to him, Socrates would ask a question on some important subject, such as righteousness, temperance or wisdom, about which the disciple believed himself to be perfectly well-informed. His answer would be replied to by another question, designed to make him doubt whether it was correct or sufficient. Then Socrates would go on asking question after question from twenty different sides and angles of the subject, till the disciple was made to see that his own opinions about it were, as yet, nothing but a confused bundle of contradictions, and probably also that his mind itself was a mass of undigested pulp.*
Both methods had the same end - to excite the mind to independent activity. Yet there is a subtle and profound distinction between them. Socrates asked questions which his disciples tried to answer; Jesus provoked His disciples to ask questions which He answered. On the whole, what was aimed at in the school of philosophy was the mental gymnastic; the answers to the questions did not matter so much. Indeed, many philosophers have avowed that the chief end of their work is the mental invigoration obtained in the pursuit of truth;** and the saying of one of them is well known, that, if the Deity were to offer him in one hand the pursuit of truth and in the other the truth itself, he would unhesitatingly choose the former. This may be a wise saying in the region of philosophy; but no wise man would make it in the region of religion. It was saving truth of which Jesus was a teacher. The pursuit of this also disciplines the mind, but we dare not be satisfied with the pursuit alone; we must have the answers to the great questions of the soul. Therefore, whilst Socrates questioned, Jesus answered; and to Him, after wandering in the obscurities of doubt and inquiry, men will always have at last to come for the solution of the problems of the spirit. " Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life."
III.
If we were to express the aim of Christ in the training of the Twelve by saying that it was to provide successors to Himself, we should be using too strong a word; for of course in His greatest and most characteristic work-the working out of redemption by His sufferings and death-He had, and could have, no successor. He finished the work, leaving nothing for anyone else to do.
But, this being understood, we may perhaps best express what He did as a teacher by saying that He was training His own successors. When He was taken from the earth, much that He had been wont to do, and would have continued to do had He remained here, fell to them. They had to undertake the championing of the cause, which He had founded, and its guidance in the world. From the very beginning of His own activity He had had this in view; and, in spite of preoccupation's, which would, if He had allowed them, have entirely absorbed Him, He devoted Himself to the preparation of those who should take His place after His departure.
He employed them at first in subordinate and ministerial branches of His own work. For example, it is expressly said that " Jesus baptized not, but His disciples." After they had been longer with Him and attained to some degree of Christian maturity, He sent them forth to labour on their own account. They made tours, perhaps of no great extent, preaching and healing, and then returned to tell Him " all things, both what they had done and what they had taught," and to receive instructions for further operations. In this way the ground was sometimes broken up by the disciples before the Master came to sow it with the seed of eternal life; and perhaps regions were overtaken which He had not time to visit in person. But above all, their powers were being developed and their faith strengthened in view of the day, which He foresaw, when they would find themselves left alone face to face with the task of founding the Church and conquering the world in His name.
It is one of the characteristics of genuine Christianity, that it gives us an interest not only in the great events of the past, but also in the history of the future. The average man cares little for the future, except so far perhaps as his own offspring may be concerned: if he is happy, what does it matter to him what the state of the world will be after he is dead? But to a Christian it does matter. The faith and love in his heart bind him to the saints yet unborn. He is interested in a cause, which is to go on after he has left it, and which he is to meet and take up again at a subsequent stage of his existence. It is almost as important to him how the work of Christ will be prospering when he is in his grave as how it is prospering now. This ought to make us think anxiously of those who are to be doing our work after we have left it. Christ thought of this from the very commencement of His own activity; and it was not too soon.
A man may do more for a cause by bringing younger forces into its service and training them to their work than by lavishing on it every moment of his own time and every atom of his energy. I was recently reacting a monograph on the history of a particular branch of medicine; and intensely interesting it was to trace the progress from the beginning of knowledge among the Greek naturalists down through the Arab physicians of the Middle Ages, till one came to the vast and daily multiplying discoveries of modern science. But the name in the whole succession which chiefly arrested my attention was that of one whose contributions had been very large, but who acknowledged that they had not been strictly his own. He was always surrounded by a group of young physicians whom he inspired with enthusiasm for his subject; then he was in the habit of giving them single points of obscurity to investigate; and it was by the accumulation of these detailed studies that he was able to make vast additions to science. We need nothing more pressingly in the Christian Church at present than men who will thus guide the young and the willing to their work, showing what needs to be done and adapting talent to task. By taking up this function of the teacher, many a man might bring into the service of Christ those whose contributions would far surpass his own, as Barnabas did, when he brought into the Church the services of Paul.
IV.
Perhaps in our modern life the work most closely resembling the work of Jesus as a teacher is that of a professor of divinity.*** The students in our theological seminaries and colleges are at the same stage as the Twelve were before they were sent forth on their independent course; and the intercourse between Christ and the Twelve, if carefully studied, would throw much light on the relationship between professors and students.
To the Twelve the most valuable part of their connection with Christ was simply the privilege of being with Him-of seeing that marvellous life day by day, and daily receiving the silent, almost unobserved, impress of His character. St. John, reflecting on this three years' experience long afterwards, summed it up by saying, " We beheld His glory! " The word he uses denotes the shekinah that shone above the mercy-seat. In those lonely walks through Phoenicia and Peraea, in those close talks on the hills of Galilee, they often felt that the holy of holies was being opened to them, and that they were gazing on the beauty that is ineffable.
The chief defect perhaps of theological training, as it is practised at present, is the lack of this close intercourse between the teacher and the taught. Few professors have attempted it on any considerable scale. It would, indeed, be trying work. No eyes are so keen as those of students. If admitted close to a man, they take immediate stock of his resources. They are hero-worshippers when they believe in a professor; but their scorn is unmeasured if they disbelieve in him. They can be dazzled by a reputation; but only massiveness of character and thoroughness of attainment can be sure of permanently impressing them.
I know of only one man in recent times who threw himself without fear or reserve into the most intimate relations with students. His conduct was so Christ-like and is so great an example, that it is worthy of being commemorated here.
Professor Tholuck is well known, by name at least, to all who have any tincture of theological knowledge. His numerous works in exegesis and apologetics give him a high place among the evangelical theologians of the century. He ranks still higher as a reforming force. What Wesley did for the Church of England, and Charmers for the Church of Scotland, and Vinet for the Church of Switzerland, he may be said to have done for the Church of Germany: he fought down and annihilated the old Rationalism, which corresponded to our Moderatism, and during the first decades of this century made evangelical religion a respected and waxing power in the land.****
But the method by which he chiefly accomplished this is what will entitle him to lasting remembrance in the Church of God. No sooner was he converted and settled down to his work as an academic teacher, than he at once began to seek intercourse with his students of a kind most unusual in Germany. Not satisfied with merely lecturing from his chair, he made himself personally acquainted with them all, with the view of winning them to Christ. He invited them to walk with him; he visited them in their lodgings; he gathered them in his rooms two evenings a week for prayer, study of the Scriptures and reports of missionary enterprise. As time went on and his classes grew, this became a task of portentous dimensions. But his devotion to it never relaxed. At the busiest period of his life, when he was preparing lectures which filled his class-room with crowds of students and publishing the books which won him a world-wide reputation, he regularly spent four hours a day walking with students, besides having one student at dinner with him and another at supper.
It was not superficial work. It bore no resemblance to the method of some who think they have dealt with a man about his spiritual concerns when they resemblance to the method of some who think they have dealt with a man about his spiritual concerns when they have once forced the subject of religion into conversation without preparation. He often found the approaches to the mind of the student very difficult and had to begin far out on the circumference of things. He was full of geniality and overflowed with humour; he tried the students' wits with the oddest questions, and those who had enjoyed the privilege of walking with him would retail for weeks afterwards the quips and sallies in which he had indulged. He was full of intellectual interest, knew how to draw every man out on the subjects with which he was acquainted, and could give invaluable hints on books and methods of study. He endeavoured to rouse and stimulate the mind from every side, and many owed to him their mental as well as their spiritual awakening. He did not neglect the body either: no professor in Germany did so much to help on poor students. Yet, all the time, he had his eye on one object and was drifting steadily towards it - the personal salvation of every student with whom he had to deal.
He had his reward. It was known in his lifetime that his success had been great; but it is only by the publication of his biography that it has been made known how great it was. Among his papers were found hundreds of letters from students and ministers owning him as their spiritual father; and it turns out that among his converts were some of the most illustrious names in the German literary history of the century. In the pulpits and professorial chairs of Germany there are at present hundreds working for the evangel who owe their souls to him.
Why does such a life seem to us so original and exceptional? Why is it not repeated in other spheres, in the office, the shop and the school, as well as in the Church and the university? Tholuck explained the secret of his life in a single sentence: " I have but one passion, and that is Christ."
* Description by Dr. Chalmers of a foolish preacher; story still remembered in Kirkcaldy. ** Compare the witty remark of novalis (Schriften, vol. iii. p. 196): " Der Philosoph lebt von Problemen wie dcr Mensch von Speisen. Ein unauflosliches Problem ist eine unverdauliche Speise. Was die Wurze an den Speisen, das ist das Paradoxe an den Problemen. Wahrhaft aufgelost wird ein Problem wenn es als solches vernichtet wird. So auch mit den Speisen. Der Gewinn von Beiden ist die Thatigkeit, die bei Beiden erregt wird. Jedoch gibt es auch nahrende Probleme wie nahrende Speisen, deren Elemente ein Zuwachs meiner Intelligenz werden."
*** In The Public Ministry and Pastoral Methods of our Lord Professor Blaikie heads a chapter, " The College of the Twelve." He also suggests another analogy: " A young minister, for example, may try to multiply himself by means of the young men of his flock. Some have a rare gift of finding out the most susceptible of these-getting them about them in classes and meetings, and perhaps sometimes in walks and at meals-explaining to them their plans, infusing into them their enthusiasm, enlisting their sympathies, and drawing out their talents, Dr. Chalmers in Glasgow, gathering young men around him, pouring his own views and spirit into them, rousing them to aid in his territorial schemes, and thus training the youths who in after years became the elite of the Christian laity of the west, comes as near as may be on a mere common level to the example of Christ and His Twelve."
**** The great name of Schleiermacher will doubtless occur to many as deserving to occupy this place; and it would be difficult to overestimate the profundity and extent of his influence. But to me at least the Life of Tholuck (by Witte, 1886) has been a revelation as to what were the real sources of the Evangelical Revival in Germany. Schleiermacher intellectualised the movement and became the scientific guide of those who had been spiritually quickened; but the quickening itself, on which in the last resort all depended, was largely due to humbler instrumentalities.
