The history of education has received but slight attention by Seventh-day Adventists, notwithstanding the fact that it is inseparably connected with every important reform the world has ever witnessed.
Revolutions are made possible by the educational methods followed by a nation. New nations are born as a result of an educational reform. Our own country is an illustration of this. The doctrines of Confucius to-day hold the Chinese in subjection, and Mohammedanism has its hundreds of thousands of believers because the minds of men are held in subjection by certain forms of education.
The Jewish nation was placed before the ancient world as a nation of educators, and they were given such a system of education as would make them a people to whom the heathen would involuntarily turn for guidance. This was God’s plan for the Israelites. This plan was made known to Abraham, the founder of the nation, who in establishing a government for the people of God, laid the foundation in a school.
In the system, as given to the Jews, the home school was the central feature. Every father and every mother was a teacher, and every child a pupil. When fathers and mothers failed to do acceptable work as educators, part of their duty was transferred to the Levites, and for years in Jewish history one entire tribe was set apart for the special work of teaching.
It was because the Levites degenerated as teachers that Israel went into captivity. The rejection of the Messiah is directly traceable to the conservative spirit developed in the rabbinical schools where the spirit of truth had been replaced by formalism, and the traditions of men took the place of the word of God.
“Jesus Christ,” says Paroz, “in founding a new religion, has laid the foundation of a new education in the bosom of humanity. The work of Christ was, from first to last, that of a teacher. His commission to his followers was that they should go to the world as teachers.”
The early Christian Church had a world of paganism to conquer. The strength of paganism was in its system of education. Chief among its educators was Plato, and platonism, merely another name for worldly philosophy and the science of evolution, was the educational principle which the Christian Church had to meet. For a time it met it with the word of God, and was victorious. Pagan philosophers were converted and became students in the Christian schools. Some Christian teachers, wishing to meet the arguments of noted pagan educators, adopted the pagan philosophy, applying it to the word of God. The leader in this move was Origen, a teacher in Alexandria. Pagan philosophy, applied to the Scriptures, gave birth to the allegorical interpretation of the Word, known to-day as higher criticism. Thus the mystery of iniquity arose. It is that power which exalts human reason above the mind of God. This human reason, or philosophy, named in the Bible “the mystery of iniquity,” was a mingling of pagan education with Christian education. It is well known as the papacy. When the papacy had been formed by educators, it sought the aid of the State to enforce its philosophy. Thus was formed the union of Church and State. Men bowed to the papacy when they accepted its system of education. The papacy controlled the world through a system of education. Its system brought darkness, and the period of its supremacy is known as the Dark Ages.
But it is written: “A day of great intellectual darkness has been shown to be favorable to the success of popery. It will yet be demonstrated that a day of great intellectual light is equally favorable for its success.”—Great Controversy, page 572.
The philosophy of this statement is like this: The papacy held the world in intellectual darkness.364
The Reformation was an educational reform. We have this stated thus by D’Aubigne, Book X, chapter 9: “The school was early placed beside the Church; and these two great institutions, so powerful to regenerate the nations, were equally reanimated by it. It was by a close alliance with learning that the Reformation entered into the world.”
The papacy, the greatest counterfeit of true Christianity ever produced, was overthrown by a new system of education, which was not a new system, but a return to the system of Christ. No power could overthrow the papacy except that of education and the schools. Once weakened by the educational system of the Reformers, and finding that death stared it in the face, the papacy gave to the world a counter-educational reform. This was the work of the Jesuits. The Jesuit system was a combination of the true and the false—just such a combination as was made when the papacy itself arose. This new compromise has been accepted in modern educational institutions, and thus men and women make an image to the papacy, which they are now worshiping.
Some day laws will be passed enforcing such worship. Christians may receive the mark of the image before a civil enactment just as surely as after such an enactment. It is time, then, that we ask ourselves whether or not, in this day of great light, we are in danger of receiving the mark of the beast and his image by accepting the popular system of education.
“Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.”
“The education that is generally given in the schools of the world is not that which can be accepted as true education. . . . Let us view the case correctly. Children are the heritage of the Lord, and are to be so educated that they may be the younger members of the Lord’s family, prepared by proper instruction to serve the Lord in their childhood life. Shall the members of the church give means to advance the cause of Christ among others, and then let their own children carry on the work and service of Satan? . . . I say again, establish schools for the children wherever there are churches.” E. A. SUTHERLAND.