To you has been intrusted the work of educating our youth and children, and I understand we are here to-day to talk over some of the ways in which you can sympathize and co-operate with the publishing work. To do this, let us first understand what this work is, what it represents, and why so much is said of its importance.
Personal Work
I believe that the publishing work is important largely because it stimulates personal, private efforts for souls. It is the fashion in this age to do things by proxy. Men go to war by proxy, they vote by proxy; their charity is largely done by proxy, and many of them do their missionary work in a similar way. We are prone to look to the merits of a system rather than to the thing accomplished by that system. We talk more of the size and facilities of our sanitariums, colleges, and publishing houses than we do of their real object in the world.
But our publications cannot be handled on this proxy basis; red tape will not sell them. Their circulation depends upon the individual whose heart the Lord has touched. The decline in the publishing work indicates a decline in personal work. The very difficulties you have met in carrying forward the work with “Christ’s Object Lessons” illustrates this.
Canvassers
In view of the Testimony which states that “the most effective way in which light can be communicated is by private, personal effort,” you can readily see why the canvassing work is spoken of so prominently and continuously. The canvassing work is the very highest type of personal work, because it is systematic personal work. Therefore if your students desire to engage in the very highest type of missionary work, suggest to them the canvassing field, also the advisability of their entering it as early as possible.
A Definite Preparation
Before going further, allow me to say that I have found everywhere a lack on the part of our young people in respect to a definite aim in life. Often those who have attended college do not seem to know just the work for which they are fitting themselves. I believe that you must change this, and to that end I am speaking to-day.
The Ministry
In almost every school there will be one or more desirous of becoming ministers. What higher or holier ambition could they have than this? Hold up before them the great example of our Saviour, how he ever did personal work, how his very sermons often were developments of private interviews, how he spent time with the woman at the well, with Nicodemus on the mountain, and with his disciples on the seashore. Teach them that to prepare for ministerial work, they must learn how to meet the people at their homes. With these facts emphasized, they will readily see the necessity of engaging in work with our periodicals, small books, etc.
Medical Missionaries
Others are interested in medical work. Teach such that they can begin work of this kind right around home. They can sell and take subscriptions for our health journals, and as they grow older, canvass for health books, such as “The House We Live In,” etc. In connection with this they can do errands for the sick, and assist in many other ways.
Foreign Missionaries
You will also find children who say that as soon as they grow up, they expect to become foreign missionaries. Our Little Friend is just beginning a series of original articles from laborers in various mission fields, with the sole purpose of helping such children to become familiar with these fields, and thus to stimulate in them a desire to go to them as soon as consistent. The Signs of the Times and our other papers have excellent missionary articles, all of which might be brought to the attention of the children in regular school work. They might be made a reading lesson, and in this way continue to keep alive the missionary spirit which they have.
The suggestions made concerning preparation for the ministry will be appropriate here. You well know that if there is one place above another where an all-round preparation for work is necessary, it is in these far-away lands.
Office Missionaries
Many of the children are familiar with work done in offices, and are therefore desirous of working in that capacity as they grow up. There is need for just such help. In fact, our various offices are anxious to secure a class of workers who recognize the need of a personal experience in the missionary plans they are constantly writing about to others. Conference officers, sanitariums, publishing houses, and business managers want just such help for their offices. To you they must look for their development.
Business Men
I know that it is the ambition of many to become business men. This also is a laudable desire, and I trust that it will be encouraged. You know that the Testimonies have spoken time and again of the necessity of business men,—other than ministers,—men who would devote their whole time to carrying on our work in a Christian, business-like way. Now I do not know that you have thought of it, but it is true, nevertheless, that very many of our business men have begun by selling books or papers. There is a certain business-like tact and energy that comes through the meeting of men that is almost indispensable to a business education. Hundreds of young men spend their vacations each year in the canvassing field just for this experience.
Encourage boys having this tendency by presenting some of these facts to them, and then suggest that they begin their business experience by opening up a route for some of our papers.
The Teacher
I suppose that any suggestions which I might make on this point would be superfluous, but I would ask for this one thing, and that is that the teachers keep ever before them the fact that upon them rests the responsibility of preparing workers for every branch of the third angel’s message.
Home Missionaries
There will always be those who do not have special plans for their future; those who will have their life occupied with home duties, and whose education must be for home work. Teach such that their work is one of the most important of any. Notice the following quotation from page 428 of “Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. VI:—
“Let those who desire to work for God begin at home, in their own household, in their own neighborhood, among their own friends. Here they will find a favorable missionary field. This home missionary work is a test, revealing their ability or inability for service in a wider field.”
As a commentary on this, I would read from Volume IV, page 390:—
“Missionary work—introducing our publications into families, conversing and praying with and for them—is a good work, and one which will educate men and women to do pastoral labor.”
From these you can encourage these home keepers, with the thought that their field is the most promising of any; that it lies at the very foundation of all effective labor. You will want to teach them how to write missionary letters. Let some of their essays be in the form of a missionary letter; and when the letter is written, instead of keeping it, or throwing it into the waste basket, let it be sent with a copy of some of our publications. Teach them how to keep a record of their missionary work, that it may be properly included in the librarian’s report to the State society.
Now, dear friends, I believe with all my heart that if plans similar to those about which we have spoken were followed up, instead of there being such a dearth of workers as there now is, we should soon have a sufficient number to gather in the ripened grain that is now in so many places falling for lack of gleaners. I rejoice with you in the privilege of co-operating in this grand work. My ambition in life was to become a teacher. In some humble way, possibly, this ambition has been partially realized, but not to the extent that the privilege is given to you. May the Lord guide you, and give you more than mortal wisdom in the task before you.