It is surprising, and it will surprise us more and more, too, as we study these things, to see how in every line of nature there is a revelation of God; and you will see if you study it that in this matter of education, just as in these matters that we have been teaching from the Book of God, there is the same mystery of iniquity, and that is the form without the thing itself. Now certain facts of science are taught, but God is left out. God is not taught in all these things. We have advanced courses of study; we have every facility that the ingenuity of man can invent to teach the rising generation; but while we have such an abundance of the form, the real life of the thing has been left out. God has been left out, and, instead of building one up in God, as true education ought to do, and
as true learning does, it builds one up in self, just as the mystery of iniquity does. It is the same idea, and it is the same devil that is doing it all.
Well, Christian education should be just as different from that kind of education as true religion with the power is different from the form of godliness without the power; and, just as only one who knows in his own soul the power of God can teach that to others, so only he who has himself learned to see God and to read God in everything can teach God in everything to others. And, instead of the idea going abroad that Seventh-day Adventist schools are to be merely a cheap missionary school, with a kind of slur cast upon it, instead of our sympathizing with that idea, and thinking that if we want a real complete education we must go to some renowned institution, Seventh-day Adventists ought to know that, if the schools which have been established among us in the order of God's providence are doing the work God designs them to do, they will there get the best education in the world; and if they are not doing it they are not meeting God's mind in the matter. That is the truth of it.
The point is just this, that, when it is put upon the right basis, it is the privilege of every Christian student in a Christian school to have the direct aid of the Spirit of God, and the aid of those "ministering spirits that are sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation," in his daily study of God, as it is his privilege when listening to the presentation of the truth of God to have that Spirit to enlighten his mind there. What he is to learn in both places is the true knowledge of God,—to learn it on that basis that leads to an increased love and loyalty to God.
THE DESIRABLE THING.
And it is not massive buildings, although they are very desirable; it is not a wealth of apparatus, although that is very desirable; it is not extensive grounds, although they are very desirable, that necessarily gives to one a knowledge of God. He who sits down alone with this leaf, and that leaf, and God, can obtain more true education than he who sits down without that leaf at the feet of the most learned men in the world. But it requires some faith to believe that.536
Now it will require just as much of real faith in God for Seventh-day Adventist parents to say: "I would rather have my son or daughter taught in a school that does not have this world-wide reputation, I would rather have my son or daughter taught on that basis, even though it be in a school that has no worldly note, than that he should receive a diploma from the highest institution in the world where God and his goodness and his love are not taught on this basis." Now you know this is so. You know that there is a great drawing power in the idea that a son or a daughter shall be a graduate of some wealthy institution, with a world-wide reputation; and it requires faith in God to take his statement as to what constitutes a Christian education, and act upon it, just the same as it takes faith in God to accept the statement as to what constitutes the Christian Sabbath, and act upon it. And the reformation that God would have us conduct upon the line of education is just as distinct as the reform that he would have us conduct upon health principles, and the principles of the gospel.
They all go together; and it is because religion has been separated from the idea of education, and it is thought that we must send the children to the Sabbath school to learn of God, and to the schools to learn the sciences, that this trouble has come about in true education. And it is because they have been separated that so many have been led away from the real knowledge of God, and have lost him out of their minds and experience, while they have been building themselves up in their own selfish wisdom and self-righteousness.
Now I do not care to take anybody's time to find fault; but I would present the better way, and then you may choose; and, to my mind, true Christian education, and the education that we are responsible before God to give to our children, is that which every day and in every lesson presents directly the knowledge of God; and we cannot estimate the value of the character that grows up when built upon such material as this. Now the very reason why at the present time we see such a spirit of insubordination in the world, such a lawless spirit, such a disregard of constituted authority, is because the young people of the last generation have not been trained correctly concerning these things. It starts in the family with the children before they are old enough either to speak or to walk. But where has this begun?—It began clear back in that idea (and it is the old idea of Satan), Do away with the law of God, and when you have undermined respect for the authority of God, you have undermined respect for all authority, both human and divine. And it is that education of the last half century, in order to get rid of the authority of God, that has brought upon the world at the present time this spirit of lawlessness and insubordination, and this constitutional unwillingness to yield to any constituted authority. It is in the family, in the school, in the State, and in everything; and the root of the evil is in the wrong education.
You see that we have but just touched this subject. But there is the idea that I would like to have impressed, for you to carry with you, that all true education, all true teaching, is to bring to the mind the knowledge of God as the personal God, the Creator of all things, as revealed in Jesus Christ as our Saviour and Redeemer, and that we are to study him in the face of nature, and that we are to study him and find our interpretation of him in the Book of revelation which he has given us in our language, in order that we may be able to read what he has said to us in his language.