The future of the children lies largely in the hands of the mothers. “Children are what their mothers are,” it is said; and it may be as true to say, Children are what their mothers make them. In one of the beauty spots of our nation’s beautiful capital, I saw yesterday, slowly raising its marble whiteness against the blue bowl of the summer sky, what is to be one of the most stately and lovely monuments erected in honor of man. And I thought, as I looked at those perfect fluted pillars, any one of which would have represented wealth beyond their dreams to the boy Abraham Lincoln and his frail mother, of his tribute to her: “All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” And to those who remember, this gleaming pile will speak perhaps as loudly of the mother who lived only ten years of her son’s life with him, but left her impress so completely on him, as of the Emancipator himself.
Many a mother has invested her life in her children—her time, her strength, her hopes, her plans, all that she had. And many a mother is doing the same thing today. If with this investment she keeps the lamp of faith and love to God alive in their hearts, if she sets high ideals before them, the investment must always pay, and pay well.
There are hundreds of Seventh-day Adventist mothers living in poverty, working daily far beyond their strength, denying themselves everything they desire, in order that their sons and daughters may have advantages that they never enjoyed. But not that they may gather to themselves, giving nothing again. No; they hope to see their children out in the great harvest field, taking some part in giving to the world the truth they love.12
For the encouragement of such mothers, a number of our well-known workers have told how their mothers helped them. You will notice that one note sounds through all these tributes—poverty and self-denial and toil, hope and perseverance and prayer. The first of these may be yours against your will, the second may be yours if you will. Perhaps your choice for your children today may affect their whole future destiny. You may have no money to give them, but you can give them something better, a desire to gain an education, a willingness to work, a resolution that will overcome difficulties, and an unfaltering faith in prayer. Choose wisely, labor unselfishly, pray unceasingly, and many of you will have the joy of seeing your sons and daughters putting their young strength and courage into the Master’s service. MRS. I. H. E.
What My Mother Gave Me
My mother was a woman of strong faith and mighty in prayer. Her influence struck deeper than education; it powerfully affected my religious being. I became a Christian because she prayed. I cast my lot with Seventh-day Adventists because she prayed. I always wanted an education, and I suppose that desire was largely an inheritance from her; for she always encouraged my efforts to gain knowledge. Silver and gold she had none to give me for my education, but she gave me that which was far more valuable—a capacity to seek after God, and a desire to fit myself for his work. The formal education came after that, as a matter of course. I could not help getting it—someway, somehow.
An Educational Atmosphere
My mother had been a school-teacher before her marriage. She was therefore very naturally interested in the education of her children. I remember her efforts to have a district school established in our neighborhood, and of course remember my first start in the log schoolhouse across the road from our farm. My father was one of the first directors of that school; and my earliest experiences in board meetings were in the meetings of its board of directors, held in our sitting-room, where I, as a small boy, sat in the corner and listened.
There was an educational atmosphere in my boyhood home, which was an inspiration and an encouragement to me in seeking an education. Such an atmosphere should pervade every Seventh-day Adventist home. FREDERICK GRIGGS.
Mother’s Sympathy Helped
As I was the only son in a family of six children, father was very anxious, as I grew to manhood, to have me take charge of the big farm he owned. But I had an unquenchable desire to obtain an education. Father refused to give me any financial help; but mother sympathized with me, and wanted to see my wish gratified.
When I was eighteen years old, I resolved to leave home, and attend the State normal school. I lacked $135 of having enough to pay my expenses for
the first year. Mother had a well-to-do bachelor brother, and she persuaded him to give me a loan of $135 at six per cent interest, with the promise that she would pay it back if I did not. That one year at the State normal school enabled me to secure a teacher’s certificate, and I taught a country school the following year. After that I was able to meet my own expenses by teaching and canvassing until I finished my college course.
Mother’s sympathy, her persuasive pleadings in my behalf, and her prayers, broke down the first great barrier in my way, and started me on the road toward my cherished goal. C. S. LONGACRE.
What I Owe to My Mother
To my mother, more than to all other human influences combined, do I owe a debt of lasting gratitude. From my earliest infancy she was the inspiration of my life. It was her early instruction which led me to give my heart to God. Well do I remember how night after night, after I retired to rest, I would hear her praying audibly in her room, remembering each one of her nine children by name.
Reared in a humble home, and lacking advantages possessed by others more fortunate, my mother sought to inspire me with the idea of making the most of my opportunities, and of preparing myself for a life of usefulness in the cause of God. She and my father sacrificed the aid I might have rendered the family, and encouraged me to devote my time and my earnings to secure an education, so that I might have a part in this work.
When I was absent from home attending one of our schools, my mother’s frequent letters proved my inspiration, and nerved me for the hard problems I encountered. Later in life when as a colporteur and Bible worker, and still later as a licensed minister, I was endeavoring to gain an experience in the work of God, her continued letters were incentives to faithfulness and consecration, and the frequent assurance that I was the object of her intercessions gave me confidence and strength to meet life’s trials and difficulties. She rests from her labors, but her influence lives on in the lives her labors blessed. F. M. WILCOX.
Value of Mother’s Interest and Sympathy
I wish that somehow the dear, anxious, praying mothers of growing boys could always be conscious of their influence for good over these boys. A mother’s interest in a boy’s welfare is a great help to him. That interest brings to her boy smiles, sympathy, encouragement, and such other help as she possesses.
I shall ever be indebted to the interest and sympathy of a fond mother in my earnest desire to secure an education. When I was four and a half years old, my father died in the Civil War, leaving my mother in poverty, with three small children to care for. The pension allowed by the government to aid the widows and orphans of soldiers was a
great help to us, but was so small that it little more than met our daily needs for food. The struggle for means to meet other necessities was long and hard.
As I grew older, the prospect of securing an education looked very dark, but knowing my needs and desires, my mother tried to save a little from her small pension to help me. When Battle Creek College opened in 1875, I wanted to enter, but we could not manage the finances. The deep interest my mother manifested encouraged me to hope that I might get through some day. The next year we had nearly one hundred dollars, and with this I left Iowa for Battle Creek. The money did not last long, but my mother’s sympathy, counsel, and encouragement stayed with me through the first struggle. Somehow I fancy that her parting benediction has remained with me to this day.
Boys need more than money. That is important, but the mother-love expressed in words of interest, sympathy, counsel, and courage, helps boys to triumph. A. G. DANIELLS.
The Education of Her Children a Primary Responsibility
My mother took active charge of my earlier education, not leaving it to chance or to the “teacher,” as is often the case. To her the education of her children was a primary responsibility. She taught me the first and second grades at home, before sending me to school at six years of age.
Before taking me to camp meeting for the first time, she told me that while I was still in my cradle, she had dedicated me, her oldest son, in a special way to the cause of God as a laborer. This fact, and the way in which she communicated it to me, was, I am sure, an important factor in my conversion at the camp meeting soon after, and it gave direction to my efforts to secure an education.
Many times she told us of her own struggles in pioneer life, and the efforts she put forth to secure an education, in spite of the fact that she was able to attend school only six months. Her stories were an inspiration to industry and personal effort.
When I was old enough to work on the farm, it seemed necessary for me to drop my work during the busy summer months. My mother encouraged me to keep pace with my classes by studying evenings and attending school on rainy days. It did not rain often enough those days. But through my mother’s encouragement and help, I kept up with my classes, even during one summer that I remember well, when I attended school only one day each week.
It was largely my mother’s influence which led to the sacrifice necessary on the part of my parents to permit me, at the age of seventeen, to enter the colporteur work, and attend school at South Lancaster, Mass. Next to God, my mother helped me through all these struggles for an education, giving direction, words of encouragement, and inspiration to every effort, and remembering me daily, I know, at the throne of grace. E. R. PALMER.13
Mother’s Devotion and Encouragement
In a little white cottage nestled at the base of the Allegheny foothills, where they break into the valley of the Ohio, still resides the little woman who, more than any one else on earth, gave me an early stimulus to get an education—my noble mother. Always a pious Methodist from her youth, she sent me regularly to Sunday school, even when I had to ride three miles on horseback to get there. She started me to public school the first September after I was six years old, to a teacher who boarded at our house. When present truth began to be preached in that same district schoolhouse four years later, she took me to see the prophetic and commandment charts, and hear the wonderful prophetic stories and Sabbath truth told by Elders E. H. Gates, D. M. Canright, and H. A. St. John, who stayed at our house much of the time.
Before that winter was over, mother, my two younger sisters, and I were Seventh-day Adventists. A new inspiration had come into mother’s life and mine—that I might be fitted for God’s service. Though a soldier’s widow, she had educated, by sacrifice, my older sister to become a successful teacher in the public schools, and now she longed for me to become a Christian worker, while she prayed for the conversion of my older sister and brother to the truth. She was rewarded in both.
One day the following spring, while for the first time I was driving a two-horse breaking plow in the field, at the age of ten, Elder Gates passed by. Doing faithfully the all-round work of a preacher in those days, he led me into conversation about plowing, and crops, and my youthfulness, up to the point where he said, “Some day you will want to go to our college at Battle Creek.” The impression made by that remark was never lost by me, nor by my mother, to whom, leaving my team standing in the field, I went at once to carry this new idea.
It took eight years for that idea to come to fruitage, but cherished in my mother’s heart as the ideal thing for her growing boy, and wet with her tears, and borne to heaven in her daily and nightly prayers, the idea did not die. Through her sacrifices, my efforts to earn money for the purpose, and the interest of a dear aunt who still lives, I arrived at Battle Creek College in September, 1888. Whatever I have done for God during the intervening twenty-eight years, I owe primarily, under him, to the devotion and encouragement of my mother. I hope to be a star in her crown. W. E. HOWELL.
My Mother’s Influence
Among my earliest recollections is that of having an intense desire to go to school. I was the tenth child in our family. My older brothers and sisters of course were attending school; and without doubt the desire to accompany them and not be left behind, was a great incentive in the matter. Neither father nor mother had very much education:
but they had a great desire that their children should be educated, and every effort was put forth to have all the work out of the way; and as I remember, it seems to me that all the matters of the farm and home were run with reference to letting the children attend school when it was in session.
I begged so hard to go to school when four years of age that my mother gathered me up one day, after the rest had gone, and carried me more than a mile, and set me down on the steps of the schoolhouse. I went in, and was kindly received by the teacher and by the rest of the school. I enjoyed that day; and as it seems to me now, there never was a day in school that I did not really enjoy.
My mother always took a deep interest in my education; and although we were poor, and my parents could not help me after I had finished the district school, my mother always endeavored to encourage me in my work. Later, when I was attending Battle Creek College, seeking to get an education to fit myself for usefulness in the cause of God, she expressed her interest in the matter, saying that she would rather go to the poorhouse than have me hindered in gaining an education. I have always felt sure that she meant every word of it; and when I know what feeling there was about going to the poorhouse in old age, I can appreciate more what it meant.
My parents, knowing that they would be unable to leave their children any property to speak of, felt that if they could give them a fairly good education, it would take the place of houses or lands received by inheritance, and would really be a better start in life. I am sure that their idea in this matter is correct, that nothing can be left to the children that will be of more value than an education. Little things in early life shape the entire course that follows. Perhaps I cannot even now realize how much the influence of my mother had to do with starting my feet in the direction that I have gone ever since, and in which I have found the greatest of pleasure. G. W. CAYNESS.
South America
Now that our attention has been turned to South America by recent advance steps in organization of our work in that continent, some facts published in the Religious Telescope of March 22, 1916, may be of interest:—
“The total population of South America is estimated at 45,000,000.
“The pure Indian population is variously estimated at 6,000,000 to 15,000,000.
“The number of Negroes in Brazil is given as about 4,000,000.
“South America is twice the size of Europe, three times the size of China, sixty times the size of the British Isles.
“In Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay the population is illiterate to the extent of fifty, eighty, and ninety per cent, respectively.
“Fifty years ago Japan was a pagan nation, but today there are three times as many teachers and three times as many pupils in the schools of Japan as in the schools of all South America.
“In Brazil, Uruguay, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Paraguay the population is illegitimate to the extent of eighteen, twenty-seven, fifty, fifty-eight, and ninety per cent, respectively. . . .
“Speaking generally, there are no doctors outside of the larger towns, but an appalling prevalence of disease.”
Be Pure, Strong, Wise, and Independent
Be pure; be strong; be wise; be independent. Let the world go, if it is necessary that the world should go. Serve the world, but do not be the servant of the world. Make the world your servant by helping the world in every way in which you can minister to its life. Be brave; be strong.—Phillips Brooks.
Home Life Department
By Mrs. I. H. Evans; Miss Lora E. Clement
Conducted by Mrs. I. H. Evans, Takoma Park, Washington D. C.
Assisted by Miss Lora E. Clement
Through the columns of this department, hints will be given on all matters pertaining to the home life. Short articles and letters are solicited from home makers, telling of their everyday experiences,—their joys and sorrows, their failures and successes.
Window Cleaning
A good way to dispose of the window cleaning in the home is to do the windows of one or two rooms each week. The work may be done in a very few minutes with a kerosene solution, with wood alcohol, or with ammonia.
The use of soap and water on windows makes difficult polishing.
Add one tablespoonful of kerosene to one quart of warm water. Wet a cloth in it, wring tightly, and wipe the window clean. Dry and polish with soft cloth or paper.
The use of ammonia or alcohol, pure, makes the most brilliant windows. As evaporation is rapid, it is a waste of the liquids to use large cloths when moistening the glass. For the same reason polishing must be done very quickly. One pane should be finished before another is begun. If the window is large, it is well to finish a part at a time. Both alcohol and ammonia will mar the finish of the woodwork of the window, and one using them should be careful in this particular.—Selected.
Teach the Children to be Careful
It is often a disastrous thing to take a child into a room where there is fragile bric-a-brac. Children have no appreciation of the breakableness of the pretty objects that they naturally want to take in their hands for play. They are attracted by color, delicacy, oddity of shape, or something of the sort.
But oh, how many broken pieces! How many mortified or exasperated mothers!
And yet the fault lies almost entirely with the mother of the child. It is quite natural for the child to want to touch an object, to finger it, to play with it.
A wise mother I know trained her child so that he never dropped objects. When he was a tiny little fellow, she began holding pretty objects up for him to look at, allowing him to run his little hands over them, pat them, and hold them for a moment. When he grew older, she played a game with him by pretending that he was an art dealer who wanted to sell pretty things to her. She pointed out the most fragile pieces in the house, and told him why they were so valuable, and so breakable. She showed him how to hold them, how to carry them, and then she allowed him to bring them to her. Not once—and she says this with a pardonable boast—not once has the little boy broken anything valuable.
The first time I visited her, I brought with me a lovely cup and saucer of fine ware for which I had paid a large sum when I was in France. Imagine my consternation when she called to her side her little boy of three, and pointed out to him the beauties of the gift, and then directed him to carry it over to the table and lay it down. I half rose from my seat to interfere, but she smiled me down.
“Little brother loves it as much as we do,” she said softly, with her eyes fixed proudly on the youngster.
The baby carried the cup and saucer over to the table, then came over to his mother and sidled up close.
“A sunny tup,” he announced.
“Not funny, dear,” answered his mother, “but very beautiful. See the wonderful color,” etc. Then she quickly pointed out the beauties of the cup and saucer again, and asked the baby to bring it to her.
Little Brother carried it over even more carefully. The dear little fellow brought it up to me, and said, in his quaint, babyish language, “Not a sunny tup, a beuffel tup.”
By deliberately encouraging handling of rare objects, that mother was training unconsciously the senses of her child. He walked more steadily, he held things more surely, he used his hands more efficiently. And he prided himself on doing those things well.—Selected.
Our Colleges
By Frederick Griggs
Our Schools and Our Work
WE live in an enlightened age, intellectually speaking. The printing press, the telegraph and telephone, the means of rapid transit, have brought in an era of discovery, invention, and research which has made the world intelligent. Knowledge has indeed been increased during the last century, and this increase of knowledge has been confined not alone to material and temporal things. Knowledge of the Word of God has been increased. Today the Word is printed in about seven hundred languages, and yearly more than 15,500,000 copies of the whole and of parts of the Bible are sent out to a needy world.
All these conditions demand a high standard of education for those who would successfully take part in the world's work. Great issues are before the world. History is making as never before. The world's map is being changed. Back of this outward strife of men and nations lies an unseen but mighty intellectual force. The present great war finds its origin in the work of the schools of the Old World. For a quarter of a century certain great scholars have been teaching and writing a philosophy of war that has been most effective in the present national cataclysm.
There is no measure of the effect of the teacher upon any great movement. Luther recognized this power in the work of the Reformation. His work survived and in great part grew because of his appreciation of the effect of education on the child. In speaking of this, Painter says, “The necessities of the Reformation gave Luther an intense interest in education. The schools of the times, already inadequate in numbers and defective in methods, were crippled during the early stages of the Reformation by the excited and unsettled state of society. A new generation was growing up without education. The establishment of schools became a necessary measure for the success and permanence of the Reformation. . . . With Luther education was not an end in itself, but a means to more effective service of church and state.” D’Aubigné says, “It was not public worship alone that the Reformation was ordained to change. The school was early placed beside the church; and these two great institutions, so powerful to regenerate the nations, were equally reanimated by it. It was by a close alliance with learning that the Reformation entered into the world.” He further says that “Luther felt that to strengthen the Reformation it was requisite to work on the young, to improve the schools, and to propagate throughout Christendom the knowledge necessary for a profound study of the Holy Scriptures. This accordingly was one of the objects of his life.”
What was true of the relation of education to the cause of the Reformation has ever been true of any great work of God. At the time of the removal of the Israelites from Egypt and their establishment in Palestine, specific direction was again and again given regarding the education of their youth. In the establishment of Christianity the early church gave good heed to its duty, realizing the possibilities to its cause of truth from a properly educated youth. Mosheim says, “The Christians took all possible care to accustom their children to the study of the Scriptures, and to instruct them in the doctrines of their holy religion; and schools were everywhere erected for this purpose, even from the very commencement of the Christian church.”
Without controversy the second advent movement is the greatest work God has ever undertaken for man, or men for their fellow men. Error is engaged in its last struggle with truth; and into this struggle error is throwing all the darkness of all the ages, and truth, all the light. This greatest cause of all times demands of its believers the highest equipment, physical, mental, and spiritual. No effort is to be spared to bring to a speedy issue this greatest undertaking of all times. In the nature of the struggle, truth will triumph, but it requires of all believers that they make it a quick triumph.
If the church of God throughout all time has had a duty to educate its youth for service, it has a double duty in this hour. This last message is to go to all peoples and languages. Young men and women, strong of body and mind, and of consecrated heart, can best endure the hardship of this pioneer work. But they cannot get their training for this work in those schools whose aim is worldward instead of heavenward. A preparation to carry the saving gospel to men is not the work of a moment. It is a matter of “precept upon precept; line upon line.” It is a work of growth.
In the educational convention of 1906, held at College View, Nebr., the following resolution was voted:—
“That it is God’s purpose to finish in this generation his work in behalf of mankind.”
“That the primary object of our training schools is to afford young men an opportunity to study for the ministry, and to prepare young persons of both sexes to become workers in the various branches of the cause.”
“Today we face a great missionary problem. Notwithstanding all that has been done to finish this work, there are still vast fields unentered, millions of men and women unwarned, and many pressing Macedonian calls unanswered.”
“In view of this situation, we feel deeply impressed that the time has fully come when we should put forth the highest efforts of which we are capable to place in the field the number of qualified workers required to finish the Lord’s work according to his purpose.”
In order to accomplish this end, it was recommended that an active propaganda be undertaken in schools and conferences in behalf of the work of foreign missions, and that the burden of this work be pressed home upon the young men and women who are preparing for service, leading them to take as their motto, “The advent message to all the world in this generation.”
This is our work today as truly as when this resolution was adopted. It was interesting to note that the enrolment in our schools the year following this convention was nearly twenty-five per cent greater than the year previous. God seemed by this token to set his seal of approval upon our declaration of purpose in the conduct of our school enterprises along the line of mission endeavor.
This work of educating for the ministry of God’s word is not confined to our advanced schools, but is the fundamental work of every grade, from the first of the primary to the last of the college. Neither is missionary work confined to foreign lands. It is at our very door all the time. The possibilities of Christian help work in all its phases are immeasurably great. Such work produces workers for Christ. Our schools have done much in this sort of education. Its effects are seen in the body of men and women who are bearing the brunt of the work of this message in this and other lands. Almost without exception they have been in attendance at our schools, many of them all their school life. There they have found the inspiration for the service in which they are now engaged. It is the great duty of our schools and their high privilege to train for this service. May they perform this duty and improve this privilege to their full measure. FREDERICK GRIGGS.
Distinctive Features of the Seventh-day Adventist Schools
By William E. Howell
I AM set a task that is both easy and difficult—to point out the characteristics of a Seventh-day Adventist Christian school that distinguish it from the secular school.
It seems an easy task because as a graduate of our first college, as an educational worker for twenty-two years since that time, and having had seven years’ intimate touch with the innermost details of our educational system, I have breathed the atmosphere of the Christian school so much, and have felt and witnessed its power on young lives to such a degree, that it often seems to me that all its features are distinctive.
On the other hand, it is a difficult task to make these distinctions apparent to those who have not been in our schools as student or teacher, or who have not visited them long enough to catch the spirit of their instruction and daily life. Whatever distinctions exist, are spiritual at bottom. Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. The full discharge of my task in this article can be accomplished only by persuading the reader, as Philip did Nathanael of old, to “come and see;” or still better, as the psalmist exhorts, to “taste and see.”
No pupil who comes to our schools from the public elementary or high school, finds any difficulty in discovering the distinctions, even before the first day is over. No teacher from the secular school who attends one of our college sessions, winter or summer, to come into closer touch with Christian educational matter and methods, fails to find and feel the difference before he has completed the first month. No parent who spends a week at the academy with John and Mary the first time they are to be away from home, leaves with any feeling that he has misplaced them if his first ambition is that they know God better and qualify for his service.
But I am set the task of pointing out on paper what some of the distinctions15are. It must be done briefly, and with the consciousness that it cannot, in the nature of the case, be adequately done.
The Bible
Any one would mention Bible teaching first. It is a distinction, and one of the first importance. “But,” says some one, “the Bible is taught in other schools. My son is attending a Baptist college, where the moral influences are good, and Bible is taught every day.” But how? Neither the seventh-day Sabbath nor the Adventist doctrines are taught, but the “immortal soul,” the “millennium,” and “every day a long period at creation” are taught. Take out the first two, and put in the last three doctrines, and what is your son?
“But,” says another, “the teacher in my little girl’s grade in the public school is a Christian; she sings in the choir at the Methodist church.” Yet she is handcuffed and tongue-tied on teaching Bible if she wanted to. Moreover, she does teach fairies and water sprites and ogresses and mythical legends to account for the simplest phenomena in nature, God’s own handiwork. Fill little Mary’s mind with these, and give her no spiritual guidance other than the general moral standards of good society, and where is she?
“God’s Word must be made the groundwork and subject matter of education.” Subject matter: a Bible class in every grade from primary to college. The groundwork: every subject in the school tested by the Bible and the positive instruction based on the Bible. This is the Seventh-day Adventist educational policy in a nutshell.
History—Which Shall It Be?
Secular. “In the annals of human history the growth of nations, the rise and fall of empires, appear as dependent upon the will and prowess of man. The shaping of events seems, to a great degree, to be determined by his power, ambition, or caprice.”
Seventh-day Adventist Christian. “In the Word of God the curtain is drawn aside, and we behold, behind, above, and through all the play and counterplay of human interests and power and passions, the agencies of the All-merciful One, silently, patiently working out the counsels of his own will.”
Which kind of history teaching will you choose?
Science—Which Shall It Be?
Secular. “Supposed conflict between science and revelation”—evolution of the earth through millions of years, instead of one week of creation; ignoring the effects of the Flood; evolution of man from germs, mollusks, and quadrupeds, instead of being created on the sixth day; attempt to explain the phenomena of nature without recognizing God.
Seventh-day Adventist Christian. “The book of nature and the written Word shed light upon each other.” “The power of God is still exercised in upholding the objects of his creation.” “The whole natural world is designed to be an interpreter of the things of God.” “The most effective way to teach the heathen who know not God, is through his works.” “Only under the direction of the Omniscient One shall we, in the study of his works, be enabled to think his thoughts after him.”
Which kind of teaching do you want Robert and Susan to have?
Languages
Secular. Greek and Latin taught exclusively from pagan classics. Modern languages include the reading of novels, myths, and legends.
Seventh-day Adventist Christian. Greek and Hebrew taught to understand the Bible in the original. Modern languages kept close to the life of the people, and legitimate selections of standard literature, and largely for missionary purposes.
I must stop, though not half through. Similar comparisons can be drawn in music, in philosophy, in geography, in literature, and even in prosy subjects like mathematics and commercial studies.
And this is not even mentioning the spiritual atmosphere maintained through daily devotional exercises, in and out of the schoolroom; special services connected with the Sabbath; the tone of dormitory life; work of prayer bands; missionary activities of many kinds; and above all, daily contact with the spiritual-minded teacher, in both instruction and personal counsel.
Reader, which kind of school do you want, for yourself or for your children—the secular school or the Seventh-day Adventist Christian school?
W. E. HOWELL.
Why Go to College?
By L. L. Caviness
Whenever God has given any one a great task to perform, he has always expected a thorough preparation for the work. As we think of the great characters in the Scriptures, we find this to be universally true.
If we are asked to name the greatest character of Old Testament times, our mind naturally turns to Moses, for he not only delivered the children of Israel from Egyptian bondage, but also organized them into a nation, and God gave to him the laws by which they were to be governed in all subsequent time. Moses was educated in all the learning of Egypt, the greatest nation at that time, yet, as always, though training was essential, it was not in itself sufficient. Moses had to learn to follow the divine guidance and not his own plans for doing God’s work. After he had learned this lesson, God could use him and the ability which he had acquired. Of the books of the Old Testament, Moses wrote more than any other writer.
If we look for the greatest man in the New Testament, we naturally think of the apostle Paul. He had studied at the feet of Gamaliel, probably the greatest religious teacher at that time. He was thoroughly trained in the theological system of the Jewish church, and was well qualified as a leader of God’s people. But Paul also needed the same lesson which Moses learned, the lesson of willingness to be led of the Lord. He had his own plans and methods, which had to be given up that he might learn what the Lord would have him do. Paul, like Moses, spent some time in the wilderness, learning to talk with God alone. It was Paul, who was learned in Greek literature and could quote the Greek poets, who was chosen of the Lord as the apostle to the Gentiles; and it is Paul who has left us the largest amount of writings in the Greek New Testament.
The preparation which God requires does not necessarily mean a college education, but it does mean that one shall qualify himself to the best of his ability for the work God has given him to do. In the times in which we live, this preparation is usually best obtained by study at school.
Education does make for success. While no college can give brains or ability to the young man who lacks, school training to the ambitious, industrious young person brings development of all his powers, and makes possible for him the service which God expects of him.
In the book “Who’s Who in America” are included the names of men “most notable in all departments of usefulness and reputable endeavor.” A study made by Mr. Wm. W. Smith, chancellor of the Randolph-Macon system, and verified by the United States Commissioner of Education, shows 10,704 successful men, divided as follows with reference to education:—
Without education, none; self-taught, 24; home taught, 278; common school education only, 1,066; with high school education, 1,627; with college training, 7,709, and of these 6,129 were college graduates.
According to the last census there are in the United States 14,794,403 males over thirty years of age. These are divided by the United States Bureau of Education as follows:—
Class 1. Without education, 1,757,023.
Class 2. With only common school training or trained outside of organized schools, 12,054,335.
Class 3. With regular high school training, 657,432.
Class 4. With college or higher education added, 325,613.
Now, of Class 1, no notable is reported; of Class 2, one out of every 8,812; of Class 3, 1 out of every 404; while of Class 4 there is 1 for every 42. In other words, the high school training increases a young man’s chances twenty-two times over the boy of only a common school education, while a college education brings a young man ten times the chance of a high school boy, or more than two hundred times the chances of one whose training has stopped with the common school.
A study of the educational qualifications of the Presidents of the United States shows that of the twenty-seven who have occupied that honorable position, nineteen attended college, and sixteen completed the college course.
Going back to the times of the Reformation, we find that the leaders were men of thorough preparation, and often even of outstanding scholarship. In our own denomination, there is scarcely a leader but received his training either in old Battle Creek College or in some of our more recently established denominational schools. Those who were hindered from finishing their course in school, without exception lament the fact, feeling that if their preparation had been more complete, their labors might have been more efficient.
The church which fails to offer educational advantages to its young people is sure to fail in its work for the Lord. In the words of another: “Show me a church that has schools, and I will show you a church that is growing; show me a church that has no schools, and I will show you a church that is dying.” Governor Brumbaugh defines the school as “the creation of the proper environment for the development of a soul.” D. Webster Kurtz says in the Gospel Messenger, “Heredity gives us possibilities, but environment16. . . develops the capacities and directs them into worthy activities.The wise man urges all, in the words of Prov. 4:7, “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; and with all thy getting get understanding.” And Paul, speaking to Timothy, one of the most promising young men associated with the great apostle, says: “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” 2 Tim. 2:15. And Christ himself, in the parable of the talents, indicates to us what will happen to those who bury their talents in the ground.
Why go to college?—“In order that we shall be able to play the very best part that is possible in life, in order that we shall be able to use the talents that God has given us to the very highest point of efficiency,” in order that we shall be able best to serve our fellow men, and in order that we shall do well the part that God has assigned to us in his closing work in the earth.