The Keynote, Unity

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Feb 25, 1904

The Keynote, Unity

We have talked of the keynote of the message. In an orchestra a variety of instruments may be used, but if all strike the keynote and keep to the music, there will be harmony even with diversity. It would be no help to any school to have the name of following pagan or papal methods. On the other hand, it will be no help to a school to be labeled the Christian school. It will be no advantage to a student to get an idea that because he has received training according to a particular method or school, he has now the proper equipment. I fear we may so overemphasize this matter of

method that we shall train students into a self-consciousness that will injure them, and bring defeat in actual service. Moses wist not that his face shone. If he had talked about it, it would have spoiled it all. While we must seek for the best methods and follow the light, I believe there is no set way by which any one can say the work must be done. It is like preaching and soul-winning. Whenever one settles it that by just this or that arrangement of texts or way of presenting the truth the results are gained, that moment that way ceases to be the way.

The one way that can be defined, so far as I know, is for the worker, alone with God, and confessing his own need, to tell the Lord that he knows there is no way but his own, and that he alone must do the work. So in this school work, many ways may be used, but God must do the work. There is no aristocracy of reform. The class spirit in a school is bad, any school spirit among the schools is equally bad.

Reference has been made to the need of constructive work, rather than destructive. Paul suggests a constructive program, as he urges us to press over toward the mark: “Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded; and if in anything ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. Nevertheless, whereunto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing.” —From a report of the Educational Convention.