Proverbs 6:23 - Homiletics

The object of religious teaching

I. IT IS TO SERVE AS A LIGHT . How much so called religious teaching "darkens counsel with words without knowledge"! We do not give right Christian instruction when we urge upon the belief of people unintelligible dogmas in phrases which are to them meaningless. Like the book Hamlet was reading, very much that is crammed into children is "words, words, words." You cannot teach that which is not understood. The first thing is to open the eyes of the scholar, to throw light on regions of the unknown. Revelation is illumination. Christianity is not a rule of dark superstition, but a religion of light.

II. THIS LIGHT GIVES A NEW INTERPRETATION TO ALL THINGS . The light does not create the objects it shines upon, it only makes manifest what was previously hidden, but not the less solidly existent. So religious revelation does not create. The doctrines of Christianity, if they are true at all, represent eternal facts. The New Testament brings these facts to light. Thus Christ has taught us to call God "Father," but he was our Father before the great Teacher came into the world. Earthly facts have new meanings as new lights fall upon them. The light of eternity transforms the whole appearance of life. Under its rays "all things become new." The pleasures, the sorrows, the duties, the gold, the food, the houses, the land, are there still, but they take on quite other hues, and range themselves in strangely altered ranks of interest. When the sun rises, the horrible monsters that loomed on us through the night resolve themselves into homely barns and familiar trees, while the distant mountain range that had been invisible before displays its silent solitudes in all their awful splendour.

III. THE MISSION OF THIS LIGHT IS TO GUIDE OUR CONDUCT , "Reproofs of instruction are the way of life." This teaching is not given merely to satisfy our curiosity, nor simply to develop our mental powers. When theology is pursued with the thirst for knowledge only, it eludes our grasp. When it is degraded to the functions of mental gymnastics, it is wrecked and ruined. The end of revelation is practical and momentous. Scripture is to serve as a "lamp to our feet." Religious teaching should not aim at merely exciting intellectual interest, nor at solving abstract problems, nor at inculcating authoritative dogmas, but at guiding men into the way of peace and life. Therefore:

1 . Do not be disappointed if it adds as many mysteries as it explains; so long as it sheds light on our path we can afford to find that it makes the darkness in some other regions the more visible.

2 . Do not be content with hearing, understanding, assenting to religious instruction. It fails wholly of its object if it does not lead us to Obey it, to walk in its light.