In Christian education, the Book of Christianity must be preeminent. The Bible is the Book of Christianity. The purpose of Christian education is to build up Christians. Nothing that is not Christian can ever properly be brought into the education of a Christian, any more than can anything that is not Christian be properly brought into any other phase of the life of the Christian. Therefore, the Book of Christianity, –the Bible, –must be the standard of Christian education; it must be the test of everything that enters into the education of a Christian.
It has been, and it is, too much supposed that Christianity has to do only with a sort of spiritualized existence, apart from the real occupations and practical things of life.
It can not be denied that the life of Christ is the demonstration of Christianity. He is the model Man: the Pattern of what every man must be to be a perfect Christian.
He came into the world as an infant; He grew up from infancy to manhood, as people in this world do; He met all that human beings in this world meet as they grow up; He met all the vicissitudes and experiences of human life, precisely, as to the fact, as all people meet them; for “in all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren.” He was “in all points tempted like as we are;” and He worked as a carpenter with Joseph, until the day of His showing unto Israel in the active work of His preaching, healing, and ministry. And He was just as much the Saviour of the world when
He was sawing boards and making benches and tables, as He was when He was preaching the sermon on the mount. And this demonstrates that Christianity just as truly and as vitally enters into the mechanical or other affairs of everyday life as it does into the preaching of the divinest sermon that was ever delivered. And yet, in all this, Jesus was only the Word made flesh. The Word of God, in written form.
Nothing appeared in His life on earth that was not already in the Word. And since that which He was in the flesh was only what the Word was that was here before He came, it is certain that it was by the Word of God, through the Spirit of God, that He was made to be what He was, in the flesh. And this demonstrates that the Word of God, the Bible, the Book of Christianity, contains that which will completely educate mankind in an all-round, symmetrical life.