The text has another application besides this, the pupil when perfected would stand on a level with His master; the latter had no indefeasible superiority. When they had lighted the lamps of others the light of the rest would be as bright as their own. If they were to glory it should be, not in their superiority to their pupils, but in their pupils having become as good as themselves. They were not to be like those teachers who keep back from their prentices some special secret of their art. Next comes the verse, “For there is no good tree that bringeth forth corrupt fruit.”(178) This applies both to those who teach and to those who learn. If the master’s scholars mostly turn out ill it may be inferred that he is a bad master; and if the master be self-seeking at bottom, whatever disguise he may put on, the evil will come to light: selfishness always generates counter-selfishness, and false pretension detected in one case may lead a young man into general mistrust. In another view of the verse, the behaviour of the man is the fruit and his nature is the tree. This fruit is not without value in itself, but is of more value still as an evidence of the condition of the tree. This falls in with the constant burden of Christ’s teaching, “God looks to what you _are_ as well as to what you _do_, and part of the importance of what you do comes from its shewing what you are, or from its helping by way of practice to confirm you in your ways whether good or bad.” In the last four verses of the address our Lord again speaks to the whole company of hearers. He takes one of His familiar topics, viz., that good is not only to be admired, it must also be done. This is expressed by the illustration of the house on the rock and that on the earth. Many who followed Him counted themselves His disciples because they carried away his commands in their heads and talked about them. He tells them that they can only get firm hold of them by putting them into practice. There were many hearers who would put our Lord’s precepts away somewhere in their memory, and be satisfied with possessing right and beautiful thoughts without carrying them into practice, keeping them like curios in a drawer. These were like men building on the earth, who do only just what the moment requires. But the habit formed by steady obedience effects a structural change in the man’s own mind. This is a lasting possession—it has taken time and pains to acquire, but it is storm proof like the house upon the rock.