It is the right of every child born of Christian parents to have a Christian education. Parents therefore rob their children of an inalienable right when they, as members of the church, fail to provide Christian training for their children.
Moreover, the adoption of a system of Christian education lies at the foundation of strength in church organization, and the Christian body which fails to provide schools for its children and youth will in time cease to exist; for its life-blood is sapped, and death is the inevitable result. Churches have died ignorant of the cause of their own decline. Could the case have been analyzed, it would have been found that year after year the youth—the strength, the flower, the hope of the organization—were drifting away. Nothing can preserve the church except the proper education of the children. As well might any other method be relied upon, as for mankind to attempt to perpetuate the race by applying healing remedies to adults while the children and youth were allowed to die unnoticed, consumed, as it were, by some awful pestilence.
It is because the children must be saved, because healing must be applied to the young and tender ones, the hope of our work, that teachers are in training or are urged to prepare for work in Christian schools.
The situation is a touching one. Altogether too long have we halted. Scores and hundreds of teachers must now be hurried into the field. No cheap cast of mind can do acceptable work in a Christian school. The standard is high. Christian teachers, above all others, need thorough training. It is for them that the Educational Department of the General Conference is planning to conduct the summer assembly at Berrien Springs, Mich., June 12 to August 20.
This school will be held in tents, in a fifty-acre grove of beech and maple, on the new farm of Emmanuel Missionary College. The site is lovely beyond description. Nature seems to have spared no effort to produce an ideal spot. The bluffs, the lofty trees, the river, the springs, the brook—in fact, the entire surroundings, are such as to remind one of that first school on earth, the home of Adam and Eve. It is a place where worn teachers may come apart to rest, where all will be near to God.
The St. Joseph River, near the Site of the Summer Assembly.
The course of instruction offered is of a most practical nature for teachers of church and intermediate industrial schools. The fact that the school is on the farm, where fruit is ripening, and the vegetable gardens are open to study, and where students may daily watch the growth of a school which is in process of construction—these things make it possible for a work to be done at Berrien Springs which could not be done elsewhere.
Some of the most stirring problems with which young people have ever been called to grapple, will be met at this assembly.
From August 10-20 the assembly will resolve itself into an educational convention, in which all departments of the educational work will be represented. This, to our teachers, will correspond to the annual gatherings of the Jewish nation, serving to bind together and unify the interests of those whose hearts are devoted to a noble work.
Those interested should make application for the Announcement of the Summer Assembly.
