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The Missionary Idea in School

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 1, 1906

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 83, No. 44.

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The Missionary Idea in School

By Wm. Covert

OUR young people should attend school with a zealous purpose to work for the Lord. One of the first lessons to be learned by a Christian student is that this world was planned and created for man. This truth, understood, will, with the thoughtful, create a desire to see the world made better. Such a desire, intensified by the Spirit of the Lord, begets and maintains an interest in missionary study and missionary expansion. Since the earth was given to man, every member belonging to the family of man who recognizes the gift, and who seeks to please the Giver, will shape his school studies and school work with a view to help improve the condition of things in the earth. When the nearness of Jesus’ coming and the unreadiness of the people everywhere to meet such an event is considered in our schools, why should not all our young people in these schools prepare to teach the world the truth with reference to this coming? Should not this be done? Our denomination and our schools stand for this idea. They exist to do this work.
Let our young people place themselves in the missionary current, and drink from the missionary stream. Make the geography lessons blend with the missionary idea, and have the history impart missionary information. Teach them to know about the lost and benighted condition that prevails in all lands, and inspire them with a willingness to consecrate their lives and their entire interests to rescuing the perishing.
The chapel talks, the Bible studies, and the social worship in our schools should have their source in the great missionary fountain. These can be made rich with the word of life, and weighty with zeal for souls.
A mighty host of capable and earnest laborers for God and the truth can soon be made ready to wield the sickle in the whitened harvest-field through the instrumentality of our institutions of learning if the Lord’s way is followed. To accomplish this very desirable object, love of sinners and a burden for their salvation will need to be impressed upon the learner’s conscience in such a manner as to cause these things to become important factors in the mind of every member in all the classes. Schools would greatly facilitate the missionary idea if they would organize and maintain a systematic and well-directed correspondence with our missionaries who have gone to other lands to proclaim the third angel’s message. Such a department in a school would help to acquaint the students with the real object for which our schools have been created. Should the missionary spirit become thoroughly inculcated in our schools, the entire question of success would be wholly settled in a righteous way, and soon the earth would be lighted with the glory of God, and the end be reached. If the twelve or fifteen thousand students now in our schools should become fully aroused to the needs of the hour, and could be led to seek God for the essential preparation to accomplish that which yet remains to be done, the great deliverance would come soon. Shall we not all plan to work and to pray for such a result?
Wm. COVERT.