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Jesus the Teacher. He is the great giver of instruction to the sons of men; for He is the word and the wisdom; He is the lesson as well as the teacher. “Who teacheth like Him” who says, “Learn of me.” They who come to Him He calls “disciples,“—men who enter his school, and come to Him for instruction. As such He receives them and deals with them; for He has “compassion on the ignorant.” Not in one thing, but in all things does He teach. He teaches the inner man, for He has access to the spirits of men. He speaks to ear, and heart, and conscience. There is no teaching like his for completeness, for efficacy, and for the moulding of the whole man. He speaks, and we hear. We speak, and He hears. He comes to us; we go to Him. And in this blessed interchange between the scholar and the Master, the great work of enlightenment, renovation, expansion, consolation takes place. Of all teachers, He is the wisest and most learned, as well as the most patient, loving, and painstaking. He openeth our ears to hear and our eyes to see. As He did in Galilee in the days of his flesh, so does He now over all the earth, though at the Father’s right hand.

‘Train them up in exact obedience to yourselves, and break them of their own wills.’ … The common course of parents is to please their children so long, by letting them have what they crave, and what they will, till their wills are so used to be fulfilled, that they cannot endure to have them denied; and so can endure no government, because they endure no crossing of their wills. To be obedient, is to renounce their own wills, and be ruled by their parents’ or governor’s wills; to use them therefore to have their own wills, is to teach them disobedience, and harden and use them to a kind of impossibility of obeying. Tell them oft familiarly and lovingly of the excellency of obedience, and how it pleaseth God, and what need they have of government, and how unfit they are to govern themselves, and how dangerous it is to children to have their own wills; speak often with great disgrace of self-willedness and stubbornness, and tell others in their hearing what hath befallen self-willed children.

Or how great importance the wise and holy education of children is, to the saving of their souls, and the comfort of the parents, and the good of church and state, and the happiness of the world.