_Education and Redemption_
By Golda L. Abbott
THAT education is inseparably linked with redemption—that they two are one—is a truth the proof of which stands forth in bold relief in the annals of history. Within the courts of heaven it was mind that first met mind in conflict, and within our little world, the great arena of the universe, the inhabitants of heaven and of unfallen worlds have become a witness to the continued struggle. Under the spreading branches of the tree of life, man was given direct communication with the infinite words of living truth. While within the shadow of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he was given another word, the opposite of the word of God. It was wrapped in the deceptive glitter of promised knowledge. But with that word came a self-worship, and his mind became “enmity against God.” Doubt took the place of faith, error took the place of truth, and man by choice became a participant in that fearful conflict waged between the two great powers striving for the supremacy of the world,—powers of truth and error, life and death. Passing beyond the gates of paradise, we can trace without difficulty the development of the two classes of minds,—the one developed in the school of doubt, the other based upon divine wisdom. Faith in the word of God has from the beginning guided its adherents. At a time when false education had mantled the world in the midnight gloom of “physical degeneracy, mental stupor, and spiritual death,” when Egyptian wisdom and Grecian culture, pedestaled upon Roman supremacy, bore universal sway over the minds of men, at a time when even in Israel the voice of God was no21longer heard, when humanity was fast reaching the lowest point of sin and degradation,—at that time heaven bestowed its greatest gift, the Son of God. He went forth to meet the world’s greatest need, and to proclaim freedom to the fettered mind, and the knowledge of the Eternal. ‘And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.’ ‘Leaving his position upon the throne of the universe,’ ‘the Son of God came to earth to live a man among men.’ And as he lay a helpless babe within the arms of a lovely Nazareth mother, he, like every other child of the human family, was confronted by a choice between two educational systems,—the one the unfolding of that wisdom born of God, whose gift is eternal life; the other but the cultivation of that wisdom originating in satanic philosophy, whose reward is death,—the one a system of education built upon the everlasting rock of truth believed; the other founded upon the crumbling stones of mingled truth and error, a system of human reasoning with ‘doubt the pedagogue which leads to knowledge.’ Born amid surroundings the rudest, sharing a peasant’s home, a peasant’s fare, a craftsman’s occupation, living a life of obscurity, identifying himself with the world’s unknown toilers, Jesus followed the divine plan of education. Away from the influences of the schools of his time, where ‘the traditions of men’ were taught for ‘truth,’ the Christ-child, guided by a mother who had yielded herself as ‘the handmaid of the Lord,’ obtained his education from divinely appointed sources. The prophetic scrolls and nature, teeming with divine wisdom, his useful toil, and the experiences of his life,—these were his lesson books. When he became a man, it was still in the Word of God alone that he found an assurance of his divine mission, a declaration of his connection with heaven. While those about him had been dealing with sciences of human origin, supplanting the worship of God by the worship of self, the world’s Redeemer, alone and unnoticed, ‘emptied himself of himself,’ and stretching forth the hand of faith, gathered the hidden treasures of the knowledge of the Eternal. Living not by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God, he stood before the world, ‘the truth, the way, and the life,’ ‘the Word of God made manifest.’ In the highest and truest sense the work of education and redemption are one; and he who would become a Christian ‘must receive a Christian education.’ He must respond to the command, ‘Be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.’ ‘Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.’ ‘In the Teacher sent from God all true educational work finds its center. Of this work to-day, as verily as the work he established eighteen hundred years ago, the Saviour speaks in the words, ‘I am the first and the last, and the living one.’ ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, . . . the beginning and the end.’” In the presence of such a Teacher, of such opportunity for divine education, worse than folly is it to seek an education apart from him,—to seek to be wise from wisdom; to be true while rejecting the truth; to seek illumination apart from the light, an existence apart from the life; to turn from the fountain of living water, and hew out broken cisterns that can hold no water.