He paused a moment, and with a very serious, thoughtful look, placing his hand on his bosom, he said, "It is something here;" and then, raising his eyes to heaven, added, "and something up yonder." This poor boy had been taking lessons from "the Great Teacher," and he had taught him some of the most important things that we can ever learn. Jesus may well be called "the Great Teacher," because of his great knowledge.
But there is one other thing that Jesus has, which helps to make him "the Great Teacher," and that is—GREAT POWER.
Other teachers can tell us what we ought to learn, and to do, yet they have no power to help us learn, or do what they teach. But Jesus has this power. Let us take a single illustration from many of the same kind that occurred while he was on earth. One day he was going about teaching in the streets of Jerusalem. As he went on, he passed by the office of a man who was gathering taxes for the Roman government. The persons who did this were called publicans. This man, sitting in his office, was named Matthew. He was busily engaged in receiving the taxes of the people. It was a very profitable business. The men engaged in it generally made a great deal of money. Jesus stopped before the window or door of this office. He beckoned to Matthew, and simply spoke these two words:—"Follow me."
Now, if any other teacher had spoken these words to Matthew, and had tried to make him quit his business and engage in something else, he would have said: "No; I can't leave my office. This is all the means I have of getting a living. The business pays well, and I am not willing to give it up." But when Jesus spoke to him, he did, at once, what he was told to do. We read that "He left all, rose up, and followed him." Matt. ix: 9; Luke v: 28. He became one of the twelve apostles and wrote the gospel which bears his name. But it was the great power which Jesus has over the hearts of men that made Matthew willing to do, at once, what he was told to do.
And the power which Jesus exercised over Matthew, in this case, he still has, and still uses. And when he is pleased to use this power the very worst people feel it, and are made good by it. And Jesus, "the Great Teacher," uses this power sometimes in connection with very simple things. Here is an illustration. We may call it:
"Saved by a Rose." Some time ago, a Christian gentleman was in the habit of visiting one of our prisons. It occurred to him, one day, that it would be a good thing to have a flowering plant in the little yard connected with each cell. He got permission from the officers of the prison to do so. He had a bracket fastened to the wall, in each yard, and a flower pot, with a plant in it, placed on each bracket. One of these prisoners was worse than all the rest. He was the most hardened man that had ever been in that prison. His temper was so violent and obstinate that no one could manage him. The keeper of the prison was afraid of him, and never liked to go near him. He was such a disagreeable-looking man that the name given to him in the prison was "Ugly Greg." A little rose bush was put on the bracket in Ugly Greg's yard, and the effect produced by it is told in these simple lines, which some one has written about it:
"Ugly Greg was the prisoner's name,
Ugly in face, and in nature the same;
Stubborn, sullen, and beetle-browed,
The hardest case in a hardened crowd.