Gospel, or the Good Tidings. Perhaps the composition of the New Testament, and the naming of written documents Gospels, tended somewhat to dull the edge of the original ideas. It is at least well to remember the fact stated by a distinguished Biblical scholar, "that all the expressions employed in the New Testament to distinguish the proclamation of the new truth, set aside the notion of written documents. The Gospel was at first nothing but the proclamation of the good news of pardon flying from mouth to mouth."

No passage better brings out the force of the word "preach” than the prophecy of Isaiah that Jesus applied to himself. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

Because He annointed me to preach good tidings to the poor:
He hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives,
And recovering of sight to the blind,

To set at liberty them that are bruised,

To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

The Greek didaskalos was a teacher. In the Gospels the word is applied to Jesus nearly fifty times, and is commonly translated Master. Didasko, which is found even more frequently than didaskalos, means to teach, to instruct, to inform, while didaskalia and didache signify teaching or doctrine.

The functions of preaching and teaching are closely related. The preacher is charged with a message or proclamation that he is to announce as a herald, with a view of making disciples. The teacher is put in trust with a body of doctrine or a system of teaching in which he is to instruct and establish disciples. The relation is well expressed by Matthew in his version of the commission: "Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you:

And lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of theworld." The original distinction is best preserved in the offices that we assign to the evangelist, or the revivalist, and to the pastor. The characteristic work of the one is to preach, of the other to teach. Both, however, are preachers in the commonly accepted sense. How "preach" and not "teach" came to be used in a generic sense, embracing both functions, is a question perhaps curious rather than important. The main fact is that the Christian ministry combines the two functions of preaching and teaching. Moreover, in the New Testament Church they were commonly combined in the same man. Paul says he was appointed a preacher and teacher of the Gentiles in faith and hope.

The message that the preacher proclaims, and the doctrine that the teacher inculcates, are both addressed to man's spiritual nature, the only pedagogical difference being that the preacher appeals more directly to the active or motive principles of the mind. Both seek to influence conduct; the preacher to persuade men to become disciples, the teacher to lead disciples in the way of Christian living.

The minister, whether preacher or teacher, occupies important ground in common with the teacher of any other subject. He cannot reach and influence the hearer or disciple save as hearer or disciple is prepared to hear his message or lesson. Quite as much depends upon the mind as upon the object. "We reason from what we know," "We proceed from the known to the unknown," are current pedagogical maxims. When we know a new object, as one has said, "We identify the object, or those features of it which were familiar to us before; we recognize it; we explain it; we interpret the new by our previous knowledge, and thus are enabled to proceed from the known to the unknown, and make new acquisitions; in recog

nizing the object we classify it under various general classes ; in identifying it with what we have seen before, we note also differences which characterize the new object and lead to the definition of new species or varieties.

It is not what we see and hear and feel, but what we inwardly digest, or assimilate-what we apperceive-that really adds to our knowledge." Thus, it is the inner eye that sees and the inner ear that hears.

And so it is with new ideas and thoughts. The mind assimilates them through what it already contains. A man must be something of an orator, poet, or preacher himself, in order to appreciate oratory, poetry, or preaching. One cannot. read Milton without some sublimity; Burns, without some tenderness; Jesus, without some piety and moral elevation. And just as a man sees in a picture, a statue, or a poem some reflection of himself, so he finds in the Bible what he brings to it. At any given moment the standard of truth or of excellence is. in the mind itself. Thus Coleridge said: "That is truth which finds me," and Paul wrote: "To the pure all things are pure: but to them that are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their mind and their conscience are defiled." The relation of objective truth to subjective truth is a wholly different question. The mind, being essentially free, does not, and cannot really receive and assimilate any spiritual idea or truth, save as such idea or truth meets its own tests. Outward obedience, as to a formal rule, is quite another matter.

There is, indeed, an important distinction between religious ideas and mathematical, scientific, and other similar ideas. The preparation that religious ideas require is not so much. intellectual as moral, consisting of an ethical disposition or a spiritual tone. Still, this is by no means the exclusive property

of religious ideas. Many secular ideas and truths require a previous ethical preparation for their reception; and it may be said, in general, that, the more closely any subject matter relates to life and duty, the more important does this antecedent ethical preparation become.

The deadness to spiritual truth of those lacking such qualification is strikingly illustrated by many instances found in the Gospels and The Acts, and its value is also constantly enforced by Jesus and the Apostles. The following passages are all from the Fourth Gospel. "If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I speak from myself." "Jesus therefore said to those Jews which had believed Him, 'If ye abide in my word, then are ye truly my disciples; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."" "Why do ye not understand my speech? Even because ye cannot hear my word." import of these passages is that acceptance of Christ's gospel and teaching depends upon a certain personal relation or adjustment to Him. Doing the will conditions knowing the teaching; or, as that great preacher, Fred. W. Robertson, puts it in his sermon on the first of the above texts: "Obedience is the organ of spiritual knowledge." The mental habit or disposition now described is the work of the Holy Spirit.

The

It is important to observe that the moral disposition of the pupil or disciple, as a factor in learning, is in no way peculiar to religion. The Christian doctrine on that subject has its analogue in every system of teaching. Even in the dryest and most didactic studies, as mathematics and the sciences, the mental attitude of the pupil toward the teacher is an impor tant factor in effective teaching; and when we pass beyond certainty into the field of moral truth, his attitude seriously affects

the understanding and acceptance of the matter taught. Authority implies personal confidence, while a certain amount of sympathy and willingness to be taught is indispensable to interpretation. Through our whole lives, the construction that we put upon men's actions and words, and so our views of the men themselves, depend to a considerable degree upon our mental affections toward them. The charge sometimes made against Christianity, that it demands a sympathetic spirit on the part of the disciple, may, therefore, just as well be made against any other ethical system.

To the student of the theory of education, nothing of the kind is more interesting and instructive than the routes by which the great preachers and teachers of the first age of the Church reached their ends. These ends are always the same,

to disciple, and then to teach men. But they seek them through circles or series of ideas as different as the character and training of the men whom they address. The discourses of the Teacher who came from God, in particular, deserve the closest study as examples of pedagogical method. I may mention His conversation with the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well,

Even the cursory reader of The Acts sees that the book contains two kinds of sermons, and that they are divided the one from the other by a single criterion: the relation of the hearer, or of the audience, to the Messiah determines the cast of the sermon. Through all his intercourse with them, and particularly by a long series of special predictions, God was laboring to prepare the Chosen People for the fullness of time, when He should send forth His Son. The Law was their schoolmaster to bring them to Christ, and when the Son came He at once began to build on this foundation, as did His chosen messengers after Him. It would, indeed, be far from the