In spite of the difficulties connected with the establishment of a work in a new field, our workers have had the pleasure of seeing the gradual development of the work of this institution until its business has extended into many homes and offices of Washington. Though the capacity for house patients is small, the Sanitarium has enjoyed a liberal patronage from residents of the city who come to it to obtain the advantages of its diet tables, treatment rooms, and medical offices. Not a few have told us of prejudice overcome by their contact with our workers and acquaintance with this line of our denominational work. A few have been led to study the message and to accept it. The faithful and intelligent services of trained, consecrated nurses never fail to favorably impress the sick and their friends; and it is through this influence that the success of our work will mostly come.
Recently Brother Ellery Robinson has taken up the work of chaplain at the Sanitarium, and will conduct the Bible classes for the nurses. We are all well pleased to have him join us, and we feel sure that with his past experience in gospel work in India, he will find many opportunities for such work among our patients and friends of the institution.
The sanitarium family has just had the pleasure of entertaining Sister S. E. Whiteis, who has but recently returned from India after many years of faithful service in the Master's cause. It is a great privilege we have here in Washington of meeting the faithful missionaries who return for a period of rest, but filled with a burden to return where the need of service is greatest.
The first graduating exercises of the Washington Sanitarium Training-school for Missionary Nurses was held in the Memorial Seventh-day Adventist church, Wednesday evening, Jan. 2, 1907. Miss Emma L. Runck and Miss Althera Craft were granted diplomas graduating them from the two years' course in nursing. The program was as follows:—
Program
MEDITATION .................... Orchestra
INVOCATION .................... Dr. Ruble
VIOLIN SOLO .................... Mr. Paige
ADDRESS—The Need of Trained
Workers in Our Missions .................... Elder Spicer
MALE QUARTETTE
ADDRESS—The Qualifications, Responsibilities, and Opportunities of Nurses .................... Elder Evans
PRESENTATION OF DIPLOMAS
BENEDICTION .................... Dr. Neall
SWEET RECOLLECTIONS .................... Orchestra
The floral decorations were pleasing, the music was appropriate for the occasion, and the addresses were inspiring. Many friends were present to congratulate the young ladies who are about to enter upon their lifework of service to their fellow men for the sake of teaching them the truth for this time.
The following is a list of the workers at the Washington Branch Sanitarium:—
Physicians: C. T. Harding, Jr., J. H. Neall, Patience Bourdeau-Sisco. Business Manager, H. P. Gardner; Matron, Mrs. G. A. Irwin. Graduate Nurses: Mr. F. F. Johnson, Mr. W. F. Smith, Mr. Riley Russell, Miss Amelia Webster, Mrs. F. F. Johnson, Mrs. J. W. Hopkins, Miss Emma L. Runck, Miss Althera Craft. Undergraduate Nurses: Mrs. Bothilde Moultrup, Miss Nellie Hiett, Miss Anna Watson, Miss Rose Palmer, Miss Mary Ellwanger, Miss Minnie Johnson, Mr. I. N. Bartholomew.
G. T. HARDING, JR.
Our Medical Students in Washington, D. C.
By H. N. Sisco
This year there are thirteen of our young people taking their medical course in this city. Miss Estella Houser is a senior in Howard Medical School, and the following are in George Washington Medical College: senior class, Willis Warner and Roy M. Clark; junior, J. W. Hopkins and Riley Russell; sophomore, A. B. Dunn, V. L. Mann, F. W. Vasenius, and the writer; and in the freshman class, F. A. Loope, W. A. Paige, Philip Wolfram, and C. H. Morian. All are making good progress, and are pleased with the school.
IOWA CIRCLE SANITARIUM, WASHINGTON, D. C.
The college grants a rate of one half the regular tuition to all who come recommended by the General Conference. Besides this, there are two free medical missionary scholarships, this year held by two of our students; and several other scholarships depending on competitive examinations, etc.
The dean and professors show us every consideration in the matter of Sabbath observance. Last year an examination was upon Saturday, but our students were permitted to take it on the following Monday. This year each class schedule is so arranged that very little of the work comes on the Sabbath, and we are guaranteed that absence from classes which do occur on the Sabbath shall not count against us in our grades. Only a few days ago a beginning lecture course was especially arranged to accommodate the Adventist students in the class.
We seem also to have the respect and good will of all the students. A special class meeting occurred some weeks ago, and our young men were urged to attend, but did not do so. A few days after the president of the class came and offered an apology for having urged us so, stating that he had forgotten that the meeting was to be on our Sabbath. Another student was the other day inquiring how many Adventist students there were in the school, and interestedly asked what our people believed. Thus should many of our staunch young people be sowing the seeds of truth in the higher institutions of learning, while gaining their education; and providentially, too, we believe, a door of opportunity has been opened in Washington for those who desire to study medicine. We are of good courage in our work. H. N. Sisco.
Nurses' Reception
By H. N. Sisco
ON the evening of December 29, Dr. Bourdeau-Sisco gave a reception at her home in honor of Miss Emma Runck and Miss Althera Craft, who are just finishing their nurses' course at the Washington Branch Sanitarium. About fifty persons were present, including Drs. G. T. Harding, J. H. Neall, G. H. Heald, W. A. Ruble, and S. P. S. Edwards, the sanitarium family, medical students, and friends of the graduating class, from Washington Training College.
Remarks were made relative to our work by the doctors present, by the members of the graduating class, by medical students, representatives of the Sanitarium, and by under-graduate nurses. We are ever to remember that our nurses are going out into all the world, not to heal the body only, but rather to bind up the bruised soul.
The musical part of the program consisted of piano selections, violin solos, vocal music, and selections by Takoma Park Orchestra. An original poem was read in honor of the graduating class, followed by congratulations and a social hour. The evening will be pleasantly remembered, not only because of the occasion itself, but because it was the first of a series, we trust, of many such occasions, on which we may bid many nurses' classes Godspeed in their work for the world. H. N. Sisco.
Findings
By W. A. R.
Dr. C. W. Heald has begun private practice in Orion, Ill.
Mr. G. B. Replogle, who is pursuing medical studies in Little Rock, Ark., writes: “A. W. Peterson, Mrs. Nellie D. Long, and myself expect to be graduated in medicine in May. Brother Lewis Sickler, Minnie Long, and Brother Charlie Wilson are taking the medical course here.”
Brother J. C. Mussleman, of Siloam Springs, Ark., writes: “Besides doing our ordinary nursing work, we have been holding house-to-house Bible studies, teaching in a Sunday-school near us, holding two public Bible readings and prayer services each week. Besides this, we have a home church-school for our eight-year-old boy, with eight outsiders, and more want to come. We attend two Sabbath-schools, one in the morning, and one in the afternoon, teaching in both. They are seven miles distant from us. This keeps us so busy that we do not have as much time as we wish to visit those who are interested.” W. A. R.
Medical Missionary Department
Conducted by the Medical Department of the General Conference
W. A. GEORGE, M. D., - - - - Chairman
W. A. RUBLE, M. D., - - - - Secretary
F. G
By F. G.
1907
ANOTHER year has passed. The new year is before us. How rapidly the years are passing away! How rapidly have the work of God in the earth is being finished! How important that every moment be used wisely, and yet how easy for valuable time to pass unimproved!
As we look back through the year, we can all see many neglected opportunities for doing good, and many mistakes which we have made. We can also see many ways in which the sparing mercy and love of God have been shown. We can see some encouraging growth in the divine way in the lives of all of us. The past we can not change. The future is not ours, but the present is given to us in which to correct the mistakes of the past and to lay broad plans for usefulness for the future.
Our schools all over the world have, during the past year, received a great impetus. Probably never before in the history of our work have our schools been so well filled with such an earnest class of students. Our educational convention during the last summer has certainly borne good fruit, and we look for many substantial results from it yet to come. That it has been an inspiration, not only to teachers, but to our people everywhere, is witnessed by these full schools. The most important period of an individual's life is the period of childhood and youth—a period of education. As the twig is bent, the tree is inclined. If we have an earnest company of workers going into all the world every year, we must have earnest students in our schools. We can never have these thoughts impressed too fully upon us.
It is a good thing for us to form resolutions and to make plans for improvement. Naturally we form these resolutions and lay these plans at the beginning of every year. There is, perhaps, no more reason for doing this at that time than at the beginning of every day. The apostle Paul said, “I die daily.” So should we, and yet, after all, there is something about the new year and the new-year's season which begets within us a desire that we may make greater advancement than we have made in the past. But this can be done only when from day to day there is this constant improvement seen.
As teachers we should have more of the love of God in our hearts, more of the spirit which animated the unselfish life of Christ, this coming year than we have had the past year. We should be more patient with the dull and slow pupil. We should be kinder but firmer in our discipline. We should put to a greater stretch all our intellectual power, recognizing that if we would be teachers, we must be learners. We should be found alone with our God, talking with him about our work and our shortcomings more than we have been. We should hold before our minds more continually the knowledge that we and our pupils will each have to stand at the judgment bar of God shortly. We should have more cheerfulness and more courage, realizing that God ever lives, and that he is our strength and helper. In these ways there may be far greater progress in our work this coming year than there has been in the past. By walking in these ways of improvement the year 1907 will be to us not only a happy new year in its beginning, but it will be a happy old year at its close.
F. G
The Relation of the School Board to the Parents
By F. G.
We have been asked to express our opinion concerning the relation and authority of a school board to that of the parents, particularly in regard to the relation of young men and women. What we may say is, of course, only our personal opinion. It would seem that while the school board may have authority to make any regulations which it may desire regarding the conduct outside of school, of students living in their own homes, yet it would undoubtedly be expedient and a part of better judgment for boards, as far as possible, to leave the conduct of pupils who are living in their own homes, to the parents. Of course the school board has the authority, or power, to make many regulations relating to the deportment of students which would be unadvisable or unnecessary to make.
In our boarding-schools the board and faculty are responsible for the conduct and deportment of the young persons placed under their charge, and this responsibility rests upon them at all times, whether the students are in school or out. But the first responsibility of the care of the children and young people must rest upon the parents so long as their children are with them in their homes.
In our church-schools the boards have the “power” to say that if young men and women associate together, and courtship is carried on, even outside of school and in the homes of parents, they can not attend the school. They may base their action in this matter upon instruction from the Testimonies; but the question would still remain, Does not this instruction and the carrying of it out apply first and foremost to the parents, and would it not be the part of wisdom to leave the responsibility with them? If they saw fit to permit their sons and daughters to receive and pay attention to each other during the term time, would not the responsibility for any mistakes naturally rest upon the parents rather than the teachers?
This is certainly a question which presents many perplexities, but yet it appears to us that the wise solution of the whole question is for boards and faculties, as far as possible, to leave the management of children and young people outside of school, to the parents. There are, of course, cases where parents assume a wrong and defiant attitude to the general spirit and regulations of the schools, and apparently desire their children to do those things which the ones in charge of the school feel are harmful, and they carry this spirit not only in their homes, but into the school, in their determination to break down what may seem to them a wrong and useless regulation. Then in some instances it does become necessary for the board or faculty or both to take decided steps in the matter. However, this is not generally the attitude of the parents of the pupils in our schools; and when this spirit is manifested, it can generally be overcome by kind and careful explanation and reasoning with the parents.
F. G.
The Message and the School
By M. B. Babcock
“THEREFORE be ye also ready; for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.” “Know that he is near, even at the doors.” Who believes this? “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Who will do this? What is the exclusive business of such on earth, to which every other interest gives right of way? “Ye can not serve God and mammon.”
John the Baptist, sent of God to the nation appointed to receive the Son of man at the first advent, in the spirit and power of Elias, went before him “to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” So in the last days, in the same spirit and power, many messengers from among men, called and sent of God for that special purpose, shall go before him—“to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord,” “when he shall come to be glorified in his saints.” They go to warn the world of the end of all corruptible things at the revealed glory of our Lord.
Almost two thousand years ago the learned and devoted Paul in such mighty power preached the second coming of Christ that the people who heard thought the day of Christ then “at hand.” The secret of his power lay in the fact that he himself knew Christ, he saw him, and therefore could introduce him so others could see and know him. Those alone can introduce the Lord of glory and really present his message who personally knew him and it. It is certain that the better, more perfectly, more devotedly the messenger knows for what he is sent, and knows him who sent him, the more definite the introduction will be, the more life and power the message will have, and the deeper and more lasting the effect will be on hearts and minds.
The agencies employed and fostered by God’s remnant people will prosper and increase in power for good only when they are in the hands of devoted souls that know him and his message, and find no glory “save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Every convert “gained, comes into the light, called of God to introduce to men him whom he himself has met and seen and known.”
Without doubt no agency outside the home circle equals that of the genuine Christian school as a means ordained of God to introduce himself and his message to the hearts and minds of the children and youth of the land, and to furnish faithful, finished, effective instruments for his use in the perilous times impending. Self-control, learned in daily drill and wholesome restraint; strength and vigor of mind; quickened power to perceive; talents trained in humble hearts,—all these give ability most acceptably to present the true and living God and his “present truth” in resistless power in the very face of the evil one himself. Growth in grace and in the knowledge of God proceed none too surely and safely under the best conditions and means divinely appointed. “Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.” “Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.”
M. B. BABCOCK.
An Opportunity for a Young Man or a Young Woman
By E. D. Sharpe
“Go work to-day in my vineyard.”
If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble to dust; but if we work upon minds, we engrave on those tablets something that will brighten to all eternity.—Daniel Webster.
To every one has been given at least one talent, and therefore, to every one a responsibility, a duty, a privilege, and a place in which to work, affording ample opportunity to develop and make use of the talent bestowed. There are many desirable positions of trust awaiting every young man and every young woman who is qualified to fill them. No higher aim can actuate a young man than to occupy a field that permits the exercise of his intellectual and moral faculties to an unlimited degree; that affords the greatest personal and social pleasure; that requires vigorous activity and fortitude to surmount difficulties, overcome obstacles, and endure hardness; that provides for the temporary needs of the household; that uplifts humanity, creates friends, and leaves no regretful career behind; and lastly, that not only restores the image of God in the souls of many, but brings the greatest reward in this world and in the world to come.
It is a sober truth known to all, that the men whom all regard with satisfaction are those who have given their ability, their best effort, and their life to the work of enlightening and uplifting their fellow beings. Yes, heavenly intelligences and the Lord of all, count such greatly beloved. The Great Teacher, of his own free will, chose and filled such a position, using every faculty of his being to bless others, and thereby earned a name that is above every name in earth or heaven, so that every soul, from the man in the hovel to the king upon his throne, and from the ministering spirit to the shining seraph, praise and adore the One who “went about doing good.” On the other hand, Lucifer sought to honor himself, to cast down others, and thereby degraded himself before the entire universe, making his name an eternal disgrace, degraded below every name that is named, so that “his remembrance shall perish,” and “they that come after him shall be astonished at his day, as they that went before were affrighted.”
Now it is not the name we seek, but these instances have been cited to indicate what work merits the greatest praise, and therefore what has been productive of the greatest good to all concerned. Effect follows cause. What were the effects of Christ’s work? of Lucifer’s? What, then, were the causes? In making a choice, and every young man will, what will he choose? If you long to make money to become rich, call to mind the experiences of Rockefeller and the leaders of the Life Insurance “System,” and the attitude of the world toward them. Consider the utility and the rewards incident to dealing in dollars. If you desire to be a senator or a statesman, compare the life and reward of Joseph and Chauncey Depew. The careers of Napoleon and Alexander the Great do not impress us like that of Daniel, the prime minister of Babylon and later of Persia.
The work of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln is much more appreciated than that of Aaron Burr or of Stephen A. Douglas. Why? In the lower walks of life men are esteemed or disregarded according as their field of work deserves. They produced the causes, they reaped the effects. The effects are therefore to us indications of a utility that is or is not worthy of our consideration. We must seek out and choose that line of work that will establish causes that bring the effects we desire. The successes and failures of others are indications to us as to the nature of the work we shall choose to do. But above all that we have mentioned in human affairs, none impresses us more deeply than the great and good work done by men like Martin Luther, John Huss, David Livingstone, Wm. Carey, Robert Moffat, Pestalozzi, Milton, Melanchthon, Mr. and Mrs. Judson, Horace Mann, James White, Uriah Smith, and all the other noble worthies that have given their lives to preaching, teaching, writing, enlightening, blessing, and ministering to needy humanity. The deeds and rewards of these men are plain to all, are manifest to everybody. They are beloved by God and men. Why?—Because of the profession or work they choose to follow, and their devotion to it, and what they accomplished.
Now in these days of opportunity and promise there are thousands of openings to be filled, numerous occasions to do something and to be something, to make life a success by choosing that profession which affords the greatest possibility to benefit souls, ourselves included. As Johnson observes, “Every man is obliged by the Supreme Maker of the universe to improve all the opportunities of good which are afforded him.”
From native land, from Europe, from heathen Asia, from benighted China and far-off India, from the deserts of Arabia and the jungles of Africa, and from the isles of the sea comes a decided, plaintive, and ever-increasing call for Careys, Moffats, and Williams, for preachers to proclaim the everlasting gospel, for professors and teachers to establish many schools where may be taught the “unsearchable riches” and the sciences, for Christian physicians to minister and to found sanitariums, for printers and translators to scatter the printed page, for business men to direct, for Bible workers, canvassers, nurses, musicians, and industrial teachers who can teach and ply the trades and crafts. These openings are multiplying daily, hourly. Who dare say there is no work for me to do? The universe would dispute it.
Let every soul hear the great missionary call that is coming from all the world, for preachers, teachers, doctors, business men, and all other kinds of workers. And when you hear the call, respond to the position tendered you, an enviable position, fraught with eternal possibilities. And when you have decided to fill that position, enter one of our institutions, obtain an education, the necessary preparation, and then, as others have done, give your utmost service to humanity. A life of personal satisfaction in doing good will accompany you, and in the end God will make you a star to shine forevermore among your fellows and those whom you have helped to save. “Consecration in any work of life singles man’s forces for the utmost service.”—Beardshear.
E. D. SHARPE.
Student Ideals
By Mrs. Hattie B. Howell
As yet my own college days are not so remote that all the youthful ideals of my student life have lost their freshness and sweetness. It is a delightful thing to live in the “grand perhaps” of youth, and to think the “legions of thrilling thoughts” which usher in the mysteries of the untried future. “Thought,” it has been said, “is the measure of life.” Ideal thinking, then, has potency for ideal living. To live above the level of our thoughts is contrary to natural law in the spiritual world. “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Youth is our golden opportunity for indelibly garnishing the walls of the mind with pure, lovely, noble, lofty ideals, worthy, as the years go by, of becoming living, speaking, acting souls dwelling in the earthly habitation.
Student ideals pertain to matters and things which are of peculiar interest to students, to schools, to teachers, to study, to preparation for life, to every influence which makes for the development of the man which is in the boy, and of the woman which is in the girl.
That which we think would afford us complete satisfaction if attained to, constitutes an ideal to us. Our ideals are in conformance to our tastes; and in proportion to our possibilities for the development of our higher tastes, they may be the progression of our ideals. As the mountain climber finds rising above each new peak gained, another which it was impossible for him to see from any lower point, so for the student each new summit opens to his mental vision greater heights and loftier motives for his endeavors. He is not farther away from his ideal, but its rate of advance is equal to his own. He sees his ideal always just a little above him, on a mount of transfiguration, beckoning him to climb. If in harmony with the sentiment of the motto of this convention, our highest aim is “to love Him, to imitate him, to be like him,” the One “altogether lovely,” then to us there comes a time when we shall be satisfied, a time when we shall awake in his likeness.
Some ideals approach too near to imaginary quantities to be worth reckoning with in the mathematics of life. But an ideal which is real enough to be clothed with flesh, or as Bulwer Lytton puts it, “embodies what is possible to man,” but “what is not common to mankind,” may be very helpful to us in the problem of life.
To be well educated should be every student’s ideal, that out of his well-furnished intellect he may more liberally dispense God’s gifts to him. A miser was never any man’s ideal, I am sure. The poor rich man who exclaimed, “What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits?” had not learned that “a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth;” nor yet the truth of Huxley’s saying that “the great end of life is not knowledge, but action.” God exhorts every man to add to his virtue knowledge, and having freely received, freely to give. Education is power, but “he hath no power that hath not power to use.”
Education is a very broad term. It pertains not alone to books, libraries, lectures, study, school, etc., because every man is to a greater or less extent self-educated. Upon you, whose future is yet mostly before you, I wish to impress these words of George Eliot: “Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.” Each thought and act wears in our brain a groove which helps to shape the next thought and action, and thus the habits grow, and the character is molded. Whether good or ill, the grooves into ruts are worn; and what is so strong as the power of early habit? That youth who furrows his brain with godlessness, frivolity, lightness, and dishonesty shall of his sowing reap the increase in maturer years. The principles which constrain you in your student life, are the principles which will actuate you when student days are over. Show us the boy, and we see the man; show us the girl, and we see the woman.
Dear student friend, select your companions, be they people, or be they books, or be they schools. A good school and a good schoolmaster are of great value to a student, and to my mind a good boarding-school is capable of doing much to solidify and idealize a student’s character. Of course I am speaking of a good school, an approximately ideal place. In spite of their best intentions and plans, parents are seldom able to execute any very systematic program for the home, and so the happy routine of boarding-school life has a large place to fill in the character making of the student. A good school can no more make a pupil an unselfish, thoughtful, industrious, thorough, economical man than it can convert him, but just as a Christian school frequently becomes the schoolmaster which leads the youth to Christ, so it furnishes a wholesome tonic to earnest effort, which, like bracing mountain air, makes for strength. Development, “along the lines of least resistance,” affords us no more moral strength than it does physical. The man who expects to make his mark in the athletic world places himself under a rigorous trainer. Is there less reason for young men and women who are pressing toward the mark of a higher calling, placing themselves where there is daily constant insistence upon performances which neither their inclination nor, perhaps, convictions would otherwise lead them to do? The ideal boarding-school excludes the luxurious as akin to the sensual, and adopts simplicity as the charm of an institution as well as of an individual.
The same principles which are always true of institutions, the same spirit which can make a student or a teacher ideal, are the only things which can make a school ideal. The student who has caught the spirit of one of our great presidents, who said he would rather sit upon one end of a log with Mark Hopkins on the other for his teacher, than to attend the university without Mark Hopkins, has got the student spirit. The essence of the good school lies not in its reputation, its endowment, its equipment. The “finishing school,” so called, has quite missed the ideal. Unfortunately those opportunities which only decorate the manner rather than the character, are overestimated, particularly by the young. “These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.” Matt. 23:23.
MRS. HATTIE B. HOWELL.
(To be concluded)
Life, or Preparation for Life?
By A. W. SPAULDING
ONE conception of the school is that it is a secluded place, like a shipyard or a machine-shop, meant to form and finish certain products which are thereafter to do a work in active life.
The similes could not bear criticism, it is true; but neither can such a conception of the school, when the character and needs of the mind are considered. Yet that idea is common enough. The student looks forward to a career for which he believes he is now fitting himself; the teacher feels his teaching to be apart from his other life interests, or else, wrapped wholly in scholasticism, feels himself apart from other classes of men. Lineal descendant of the cloisters and cells of the Dark Ages, such a school fails to meet the needs of so practical a life as ours must be; for however much men may plan first to learn, then to do, the law of life demands that the science be learned in the art.
The often-quoted injunction, “Learn to do by doing,” is meant to voice this truth; yet many who quote it as an expression of their educational creed, try to apply it under conditions which forbid its application. The school which, because of its artificial forms, departs widely from the mode of life the student must observe afterward, can not, with all the theory it gives him, fit the student for that after life; for what men and women learn is what they form the habit of doing, not what they merely read or what they are merely told.
If, then, the student learns the facts of physiology, but eats, and sleeps, and otherwise lives irregularly and evilly, he will not afterward give the gospel of health. If he studies enthusiastically the deeds of Christian heroes active in evangelization, but confines his emulation to dreams from the easy-chair, and neglects spiritual and physical exercise in worthy matters, he will not thereafter make a Livingstone nor a Mackay. If he swallows abstract sciences and religious tenets, without at the time finding a use for them and applying them, he will be most likely in later life to cling to the habit of always acquiring and never giving. If he regularly makes a disproportionate division of his school time between abstract study and practical duties,—disproportionate as measured by the standard of life’s work,—it will take all the grim threats of debt or starvation to bring him back from among mental gluttons into the ranks of rational livers.
There are great difficulties in the way of the school which would teach its students how to live life rightly. Ages have done their work in drawing men’s ideal of the school away from the home to the institution. Generations have set such a rapid pace for mental progress through the sciences of the school that the average student must despair of keeping it, if he must at the same time maintain his other proper relations to life. Ambition and pride, and sometimes misguided zeal for a worthy cause, urge student and teacher into practising what the whole world accepts as the proper standard of education, and into neglecting or postponing what they dimly feel is also important. So far-reaching and so interlaced are25the principles and practises that belong to the two opposing ideas, school as life, or school as preparation for life, that they can not be compassed in a day. A comprehension of their significance and results, and a knowledge of the principles which should guide us, can, we must believe, be best gained by a study of and a return to God’s ideal of the school, which is the home. The nearer we come to that ideal, and the farther we get from institutionalism, the nearer shall we get to the life and its proper culture, and the farther from the formalism which is death to our cause.
It may become a problem whether the school, disconnected from the home and perhaps opposed to it, can accomplish anything in the transforming of character and the preparing of Christian workers. It may become a question and an issue whether the school can, in justice to its work and its members, extend its privileges to those who are outside of its complete influence, and whose homes are in practise opposed to its teachings. It may be a matter for study how the school home may grow to conform more closely to the natural home in its program, social life, and duties. And the future may see among us every home a school, every school a true home, and every teacher, in his relations to his pupils, a father or a mother.
A. W. SPAULDING.
Thoroughness in Education
By Thirza E. Mason
“SEEST thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.” Prov. 22:29.
“Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.” Prov. 4:7.
People are perishing for lack of knowledge; wisdom of God is the most important thing; and the religion of Christ does not approve of mental laziness.
Thoroughness in every part of the school work is a qualification which each of our church-school teachers should strive to possess. The teacher is praised for her thoroughness in teaching, or condemned for her lack of it. The same is true of the pupil with respect to learning. Pupils should not be allowed to go day after day with lessons only half learned. Experience teaches, however, that thoroughness in one pupil is not thoroughness in another. Different minds differ in respect to capacity, and the matter which a book contains. The author of a book will get more from it than the teacher; the teacher will get more from it than the pupil; and one pupil will be able to get more from it than another. How long shall a pupil be kept on the same lesson? This is a question which comes to every teacher. The pupil should, as a rule, be required to spend more time on his lesson if his knowledge is really defective; but if his knowledge is as thorough as he is likely at present to make it, then extra time spent will be wasted, and lack of interest in the lesson, in other study, and even in the school, may follow. A teacher must constantly study her pupils. By watchfulness she will be able to appoint for the pupils lessons sufficiently long and difficult. Then, she must expect them to learn them and have them ready at proper times.
There are two reasons for giving emphasis to thoroughness in education: 1. Without thoroughness, correct ideas can not be formed, and clear and sound knowledge can not be had. Thoroughness will train the mind to a habit of clear and exact information. 2. What the pupil learns in the future is in a great measure dependent upon what he learns to-day. If to-day’s lessons are vague and obscure, the future and more difficult lessons will necessarily be less perfect. Also, the pupil is building up mental habits which will cling to him for life.
As teachers we need to set the example of doing well whatever we do, and profit by the following words from the Holy Book:—
“I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; and, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down.” Prov. 24:30, 31. “By much slothfulness the building decayeth; and through idleness of the hands the house droppeth through.” Eccl. 10:18.
