Value of Pictures

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 4, 1908

Value of Pictures

PICTURES are very helpful, when the objects pictured can not be seen; but where they can be, they surpass even the best of pictures, and should be studied first. Thirty minutes spent by the shore of Lake Michigan would give the children more correct notions concerning lakes, seas, and oceans, their waves, the surf, cliff, beach, etc., than would a week's study of the best painting of any one of them. The educational value of the picture depends on the child's ability to interpret it correctly; that of the object is due to its adaptability to their need.

We sometimes fail to recognize how admirably the child and the universe are fitted to each other. The child is so small, and the universe so large, that it is difficult for us to believe and feel that the highest and noblest purpose of everything in the universe is the education of the child. God in his goodness has given us abundance of suitable material for the accomplishment of this purpose. But in our pride or ignorance we turn away from it all, and substitute therefore the work of our own hands, forgetting that he who created and fashioned the universe also created the child, and that possibly he knew as much as we do about what was suited for its intellectual and spiritual growth.—Selected.