THE TEACHING OF JESUS

BY THE

REV. GEORGE JACKSON, B.A.

"Whosoever goeth onward and abideth not in the teachingof Christ, hath not God: he that abideth in the teaching, the same hathboth the Father and the Son."--2 JOHN IX (R.V.).

1903

TO

MY CHILDREN

DORA, KENNETH, BASIL, ARNOLD

MY WISEST TEACHERS

IN THE THINGS OF GOD

PREFACE

The following chapters are the outcome of an attempt to set before alarge Sunday evening congregation--composed for the most part of workingmen and women--the teaching of our Lord on certain great selected themes.The reader will know, therefore, what to look for in these pages. If he bea trained Biblical scholar he need go no further, for he will find nothinghere with which he is not already thoroughly familiar. On the other hand,the book will not be wholly without value even to some of mybrother-ministers if it serve to convince them that a man may preach freelyon the greatest themes of the gospel, and yet be sure that the commonpeople will hear him gladly, if only he will state his message at onceseriously and simply, and with the glow that comes of personal conviction.Indeed, one may well doubt if there is any other kind of preaching thatthey really care for.

My indebtedness to other workers in the same field is manifold. As faras possible detailed acknowledgement is made in the footnotes. Wendt'sTeaching of Jesus and Beyschlag's New Testament Theology havebeen always at my elbow, though not nearly in such continual use asStevens' Theology of the New Testament, a work of which it isimpossible to speak too highly. Brace's Kingdom of God, Stalker'sChristology of Jesus, Harnack's What is Christianity?Horton's Teaching of Jesus, Watson's Mind of the Master,Selby's Ministry of the Lord Jesus, and Robertson's Our Lord'sTeaching (a truly marvellous sixpenny worth), have all been laid undercontribution, not the less freely because I have been compelled to dissentfrom some of their conclusions. Like many another busy minister, I am adaily debtor to Dr. Hastings and his great Dictionary of the Bible.And, finally, I gladly avail myself of this opportunity of expressing oncemore my unceasing obligations to the Rev. Professor James Denney, ofGlasgow. Now that Dr. Dale has gone from us, there is no one to whom we maymore confidently look for a reasonable evangelical theology which can beboth verified and preached.

It only remains to add that in these pages critical questions are forthe most part ignored, not because the pressure of the problems which theycreate is unfelt, but because as yet they have no place among thecertainties which are the sole business of the preacher when he passes fromhis study to his pulpit.

GEORGE JACKSON.

EDINBURGH, 1903.

INTRODUCTORY