Men are only required to do that which lies in their power. A proprietor may not be able to make people sober, but he can forbid the introduction of temptations to drunkenness. A parent may not be able to subdue the spirit of pride, but he can in many instances limit the means of gratifying it.
There are reforms which are open to us all—in personal custom, in social habit, and it may be even in imperial ways. Let each Jehoshaphat seize his opportunity and magnify it.
All this would have been comparatively in vain but for another step which Jehoshaphat took. In the third year of his reign he sent to his princes—that is to say, he sent his princes—and he sent Levites, all of whose names are given; and he sent also two priests, Elishama and Jehoram, and their business was purely educational.
“And they taught in Judah, and had the book of the law of the Lord with them, and went about throughout all the cities of Judah, and taught the people.”
This was a mixed commission—partly civil, partly ecclesiastical. The men here mentioned are otherwise unknown. We identify them as educational reformers, or reformers who operated through the medium of education. They were not warriors, destroyers, revolutionists, but men who addressed the mind and understanding and conscience, and caused men to know that the true law was from above and not from beneath.
The book which the commission had in hand was the Pentateuch, or the law of Moses. This was known to be the law which alone could touch all the vital necessities of the commonwealth. Again and again we are constrained to admit that there is a law beyond man, above man, in a sense apart from man. Men are not driven within themselves to find a law, an instinct, or a reason. They have a written statute, an authoritative declaration, a book which Christian teachers do not hesitate to describe as a revelation, and to that they call the attention of men.
If the teacher were teaching out of his own consciousness he would be but an equal, often exposing himself to the destructive criticism of his more advanced and penetrating scholars; but the teacher takes his stand on a book—on the Book, the Bible—a revelation which he believes to be divine and final.
Say what we will, the effect of Bible teaching must be judged by its fruits.
Where are the nations that are most distinguished for wide and varied intelligence, for large and exhaustive sympathy, for missionary enterprise, for philanthropic institutions and for all the elements which give grace and beauty to social existence?
The question should admit of definite reply.