I HAVE faith to believe that the actual daily work of school life can be conducted from the standpoint of teaching the science of salvation. And to me it is one of the problems that seems to face us to arrange our school work so that every one in every department shall deal with the same truth.
There is much that is to be molded. I will not be destructive. I will not be too general in assertion; but I do think there is much yet to be molded by the power of the truth that the Lord is coming. I believe there is much to be molded in our direct plans for the school-room work by the power of that very truth in our lives and hearts. And when that is done, the schools will react in a wonderful way upon the progress of this message.
The educational work arose out of the message, and not before the message. But when the message exerts its influence upon the schools aright, the schools will react in a wonderful way for the finishing of this work, and you will find workers, from the youngest child to the gray-haired veteran, every one giving this message. We are told that the church schools are to give to the children that kind of an education that they shall be prepared as children to take up this work, when older ones are shut out from it.
The Lord is coming in this generation. There is a wonderful preparation to be made in our day, and it requires means, methods, plans, and purposes different from what have been seen in the world. No man living upon the face of the earth can plan God’s work for this closing generation by looking to the past conditions. No man can understand this work from what has been done. It is a new experience altogether. This last experience is the climax of all experiences.
And it must mean something to us if we allow that truth to mold our life and our work; it will mean something more to us than the application of prophetic periods and the determining of dates. It will mean an ever-living power, and the coming of Jesus Christ into our own experience, and that will shortly prepare us for the work which faces us.
I feel that deeply, and I believe that earnestly. But the center of it all is this question of the revelation of the law of God. The law of God is the center of the whole controversy. We profess loyalty to the King of heaven. We subscribe to his law, and profess to be under his banner; but what is being done in the earth to-day? His law is being trodden under foot. It is being declared that his law has been abolished. We are contradicting this statement out of the book, and proving out of the book that it has not been abolished, but that by faith we establish the law of God; but we are to prove that his law has not been abolished by revealing that law in humanity. Any man can stand before the mere argument, and say that the law is abolished; but no man can stand before the revelation of that law in humanity, and say that it is abolished.
That law was first given in definite form at Sinai, and God through his Son gave his law to the world in those ten commandments, and there was the thunder and the lightning, and such an outward revelation of the majesty of Jehovah, that the people were afraid, and drew back afar off, and desired that God would not speak to them any more lest they die, and they said to Moses, “Speak thou unto us, and we will hear.” And God listened to that word, and so he spoke through Moses, that through humanity he might reach humanity with his law at that time. But Moses said unto the people, “A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you . . . like unto me,” and that prophet came and spoke that law again in humanity; and the sermon on the mount is simply the second revelation of God’s law from the mount, drawn out for the benefit of humanity. That same humanity through whom was given that further revelation of the law of God from the mount, went up into the mount of transfiguration, and that very same law that was written in his heart as the law of life, as the light of the world, and that very same character of God which was but the revelation of what the law of God is,—that light broke through the veil of humanity, and his garments became white and glistening, so as no fuller on earth could whiten them; and when his disciples were awakened, they saw his glory; and what did they see?—Nothing less than the veritable light of God’s law. Could any man, seeing that light shining forth through humanity in such a way as that, stand up and say God’s law is abolished?
He has said to us, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see”— not garments white and glistening, not a dazzling light that would strike the eye, but “your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” And that result will come. But that is simply letting that same light that so dazzled the disciples on the mount shine out in character, in good works; but when it shines out in that way, there will be a testimony to the perpetuity of God’s law that surpasses any argument drawn from a book.
Now I do not say that we should not present the fullness of the truth of the Book, but what I long to see is that the Book shall go to the world, translated through humanity, and then it ceases to be an argument simply; it is a revelation of the light of life to the world.
It seems to me that the practical problem for us to face with reference to the school work is to study how the revelation of the law of God as the chiefest subject of study shall be applied practically in the school work. You say that the children must be taught to read. Certainly they must be taught to read, but there is a way of teaching them to read that will contribute to the result of which we have spoken. The very means used in teaching them to read will be a means of bringing to them this same kind of experience. You say that they must be taught practical things. Is not God’s law broad enough to take in practical things, practical duties? Did not God’s law show its breadth in its application to the Jewish nation, and did he not tell them that if they would observe his statutes, they should be the head and not the tail? From my standpoint, it is our human limitations on this very instruction that has come to us about that in the Bible and through the spirit of prophecy, which shuts off very much of the breadth of this experience. “But I do not see how it can be done,” says one. I agree with you, and we never shall see as long as we continue to occupy that attitude toward this truth. How do we instruct the people that they are to see things?—By believing them first; and that experience brings light to them, and so the application of these things comes not so much in plans previously made as in that experience that the wisdom of God must make plans as they are needed. You never saw a leaf grow to any pattern that it made first. It makes the pattern in the growing. There is much in this that neither you nor I can see, but I can see enough in it to draw me toward it, and to make it appear attractive as a definite plan for work: that God’s law in its fullness, in its breadth of application, shall be the all-absorbing theme of study for old and young, and the all-absorbing thing to which we shall give ourselves fully as the only way in which God’s work may be revealed in this generation, that this5controversy between good and evil shall be brought to an end.
Our message against the beast and his image is not merely a message of controversy against certain doctrines taught by the papacy; it is a message of reality against semblance; it is a message of the real against the artificial. In the papacy we find the revelation of the mystery of iniquity, but we are not simply to present argument against argument, but to put reality against pretense. To put the law of God, which seems to be all that is real for humanity, — to put that into the life is the answer to all this false life that rules the world to-day under Satan’s control. Now there is a revelation to be made, there is a work to be done, that has not yet been done. After three years of study in the schools of Babylon the wisdom of Daniel and his companions was demonstrated in Babylon, and acknowledged to be ten times greater than that of all the teachers in Babylon. I want to know if three years of experience which we have had in methods of imparting divine knowledge in Christian education has made it evident in Babylon that our wisdom is ten times greater than that of their teachers?
Now that does not mean that we should not give any further thought to this question of Christian education, but it does mean to me that there is an experience that we have not yet laid hold of. I believe it, and my soul does weary of so much talk of the wonders of this thing, and so little of actual revelation of the wonders of this thing. I mean it in all Christian kindness, but I mean it. We have talked for years of the wonderful things that would come from Christian education, but my soul wants to see more of these wonders, and not have to hear so much talk about them. The revelation itself as God means that it shall be revealed, and as it will be revealed, — the revelation of that thing itself will quiet a great deal of discussion about the thing. And I am longing and praying for it; and I believe that you are. Without losing heart, but with a faith that will bring something to us in this work, let us lay hold more fully upon the reality of the thing itself in our own personal experience, that it may be revealed to the world in this movement.
We face this experience without rising up under God, and laying hold upon it. Now we must have that same faith that says, in spite of all, We are able to go up and possess the land. Nothing but that kind of faith in actual experience will do it. We talk about the faith of Caleb and Joshua, we preach about their faith; but we must exercise their faith in our own experience, and we must have that same faith with reference to this school work, but we can only exercise such faith as that in the word and promises of God, and the Bible has yet to take a new place in our experience and in the experiences of the school work; and when it has its place in our experience and in the experiences of the school work, there will be no longer any question in the minds of any as to the relation of the closing message to the schools.