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| The Man Whose Life is in Harmony with His Teaching Will Teach with Greater Effect.
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Chapter 27.—The Man Whose Life is
in Harmony with His Teaching Will Teach with Greater
Effect.
59. But whatever may be the
majesty of the style, the life of the speaker will count for more
in securing the hearer’s compliance. The man who speaks wisely
and eloquently, but lives wickedly, may, it is true, instruct many
who are anxious to learn; though, as it is written, he “is
unprofitable to himself.”2009
Wherefore, also, the apostle
says: “Whether in pretence or in truth Christ is preached.”2010
Now
Christ is the truth; yet we see that the truth can be preached,
though not in truth,—that is, what is right and true in itself
may be preached by a man of perverse and deceitful mind. And thus
it is that Jesus Christ is preached by those that seek their own,
and not the things that are Jesus Christ’s. But since true
believers obey the voice, not of any man, but of the Lord Himself,
who says, “All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that
observe and do: but do not ye after their works; for they say and
do not;”2011
therefore
it is that men who themselves lead unprofitable lives are heard
with profit by others. For though they seek their own objects,
they do not dare to teach their own doctrines, sitting as they do
in the high places of ecclesiastical authority, which is
established on sound doctrine. Wherefore our Lord Himself, before
saying what I have just quoted about men of this stamp, made this
observation: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’
seat.”2012
The seat
they occupied, then, which was not theirs but Moses’, compelled
them to say what was good, though they did what was evil. And so
they followed their own course in their lives, but were prevented
by the seat they occupied, which belonged to another, from
preaching their own doctrines.
60. Now these men do good to many
by preaching what they themselves do not perform; but they would do
good to very many
more if they lived as they
preach. For there are numbers who seek an excuse for their own
evil lives in comparing the teaching with the conduct of their
instructors, and who say in their hearts, or even go a little
further, and say with their lips: Why do you not do yourself what
you bid me do? And thus they cease to listen with submission to a
man who does not listen to himself, and in despising the preacher
they learn to despise the word that is preached. Wherefore the
apostle, writing to Timothy, after telling him, “Let no man
despise thy youth,” adds immediately the course by which he would
avoid contempt: “but be thou an example of the believers, in
word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in
purity.”2013
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