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The Willing Mind

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 6, 1908

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 85, No. 32.

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The Willing Mind

By J. S. Washburn

In education the will must be quickened, and the desire to know must be awakened. How difficult and how vain is the effort to force knowledge upon the unwilling mind. This is not God's plan. How inviting and wonderful are all his works, how they draw upon our desires to know more, to understand better, to become more fully acquainted with the divine Author and wonderful Creator.
“True education is not the forcing of instruction on an unready and unperceptive mind. The mental powers must be awakened, the interest aroused. For this, God’s method of teaching provided. He who created the mind and ordained its laws, provided for its development in accordance with them. In the home and the sanctuary, through the things of nature and of art, in labor and in festivity, in sacred building and in memorial stone, by methods and rites and symbols unnumbered, God gave to Israel lessons illustrating his principles; and preserving the memory of his wonderful works. Then, as inquiry was made, the instruction given impressed mind and heart.
“In the arrangements for the education of the chosen people it is made manifest that a life centered in God is a life of completeness. Every want he has implanted, he provides to satisfy; every faculty imparted, he seeks to develop.
“The Author of all beauty, himself a lover of the beautiful, God provided to gratify in his children the love of beauty.”—“Education,” page 41.
How earnestly every instructor should seek to feel and understand this blessed, divine, winning principle. It is true that there may be in public schools, where education is compulsory, those who are incorrigible, and who can not be won, whose interest can not be awakened; but in our church-schools and in our colleges, it would be very strange to find those whose affections and interest could not be so completely won that, with willing and open minds, they would draw in the instruction of truth, and the true beauty imparted by the earnest sympathetic teacher.
J. S. WASHBURN.