DUTY OF PARENTS TO THEIR CHILDREN.
[Extracts from the writings of Mrs. E. G. White.]
MANY parents will have to render an awful account at last for their neglect of their children. . . . Children are left to come up instead of being trained up. . . . Parents stand in the place of God to their children, and they will have to render an account whether they have been faithful to the little few committed to their care. Parents, some of you are rearing children to be cut down by the destroying angel unless you speedily change your course, and are faithful to them. He can not love unruly children who manifest passion, and he can not save them in the time of trouble. Will you suffer your children to be lost through your neglect? Unfaithful parents, their blood will be upon you, and is not your salvation doubtful with the blood of your children upon you?—children who might have been saved had you filled your place, and done your duty as faithful parents should. . . . Parents, correct your children. Begin while they are young, when impressions can be more easily made, and their evil tempers subdued before they grow with their growth and strengthen with their strength. . . . You should correct your children in love. Do not let them have their own way until you get angry, and then punish them. Such correction only helps on the evil, instead of remedying it. After you have done your duty faithfully to your children, then carry them to God, and ask him to help you. . . . Ask him to temper their dispositions, to make them mild and gentle by his Holy Spirit. He will hear you pray. He will love to answer your prayers. Through his word he has enjoined it upon you to correct your children, to “spare not for their crying,” and his word is to be heeded in these things. . . . Children Especially Tempted. Children are the lawful prey of the enemy, because they are not subjects of grace, have not experienced the cleansing power of Jesus, and the evil angels have access to these children; and some parents are careless, and suffer them to work with but little restraint. Parents have a great work to do in this matter, by correcting and subduing their children, and then bringing them to God and claiming his blessing upon them. By the faithful and untiring efforts of the parents, and the blessing and grace entreated of God on the children, the power of the evil angels will be broken, a sanctifying influence is shed upon the children, and the powers of darkness must give back. Gather the Children Together. When the destroying angel was to pass through Egypt, to destroy the first-born of man and beast, the command to Israel was, to gather their children and families into their houses with them, and then mark their door-posts with blood, that the destroying angel might pass by their dwellings; and if they failed to go through this process, there was no difference made between them and the Egyptians. The destroying angel is about to go forth again, not to destroy the first-born alone,142but to slay utterly old and young, both men, women, and little children, who have not the mark. Parents, if you wish to save your children, separate them from the world, keep them from the company of wicked children; for if you suffer them to go with wicked children, you can not prevent them from partaking of their wickedness and being corrupted. It is your solemn duty to watch over your children, to choose the society at all times for them. Teach your children to obey you, then can they more easily obey the commands of God, and yield to his requirements. Don’t let us neglect to pray with and for our children. He who said, “Suffer little children, and forbid them not to come unto me,” will listen to our prayers for them, and the seal, or mark, of believing parents will cover their children, if they are trained up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. [The foregoing was first printed in 1854.] There is earnest work to be done for the children. Before the overflowing scourge shall come upon all the dwellers upon the earth, the Lord calls upon all who are Israelites indeed to serve him. Gather your children into your own houses; gather them in from the classes who are voicing the words of Satan, who are disobeying the commandments of God. Get out of the cities as soon as possible. Establish church schools. Gather in your children, and give them the word of God as the foundation of all their education. Had the churches in different localities sought counsel of God, they would not need to be thus addressed on this point. . . . We may bring hundreds and thousands of children to Christ if we will work for them. Let all who read these words be melted and subdued. Let us in our educational work embrace far more of the children and youth than we have done, and there will be a whole army of missionaries raised up to work for God. I say again, establish schools for the children wherever there are churches. Where there are those who assemble to worship God, let there be schools for the children. Work as if you were working for your life, to save children from being drowned in the polluting, corrupting influences of this life. Schools should have been placed in different localities instead of centering so many large buildings in one vicinity. . . . There are places where our schools should have been in operation years ago. Let these now be started under wise directors, that the children and youth may be educated in their own churches. — U. T., “The Need of Church Schools.” Educate the Children and Youth. The wealthy man and woman converted to God, will begin to comprehend what good may be done with their intrusted capital. They will see that institutions are to be established for the education of the youth, and that they are to be sustained by gifts and offerings. They will know that many youth must be trained for the missionary field, and the wealthy will become agents in the hands of God to set in operation the instrumentalities whereby men and women may become enlightened, and turn from degradation and error unto the living God. Through the grace of Christ, those who have riches and are connected with him, will sow abundantly, seeking out the youth, and running a risk in educating them, hoping that they will devote their lives to missionary work. God has intrusted the rich with gifts, that, if wisely used, will produce a hundred-fold in this world, and in the world to come life everlasting. To have the knowledge that our talents are being employed for the good of others, affords satisfaction in this life that brings a great reward. We know that if the Lord’s capital is selfishly spent or hoarded, God will call us to an account. — Review and Herald, Sept. 19, 1893. THE SONS OF ZION AND THE SONS OF GREECE.
By A. T. Jones
[Address delivered by ELDER A. T. JONES in Chicago.] “REJOICE greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass. And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off: and he shall speak peace unto the heathen: and his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth. As for thee also, by the blood of thy covenant I have sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water. “Turn you to the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope: even to-day do I declare that I will render double unto thee; when I have bent Judah for me, filled the bow with Ephraim, and raised up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece, and made thee as the sword of a mighty man. And the Lord shall be seen over them, and his arrow shall go forth as the lightning: and the Lord God shall blow the trumpet, and shall go with whirlwinds of the south. The Lord of hosts shall defend them: and they shall devour, and subdue with sling stones; and they shall drink, and make a noise as through wine; and they shall be filled like bowls, and as the corners of the altar. And the Lord shall save them in that day as the flock of his people: for they shall be as the stones of a crown, lifted up as an ensign upon his land. For how great is his goodness, and how great is his beauty! corn shall make the young men cheerful, and new wine the maids.” “Ask ye of the Lord rain in the time of the latter rain; so the Lord shall make bright clouds, and give them showers of rain, to every one grass in the field.” Zech. 9:9 to 10:1. Can there be any question as to what time this scripture applies? There is no mistake as to the time referred to in the first verse that I have read. That refers to the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem. The next verse tells of the time when his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. That is the time of his second coming, the time when his kingdom shall be set up and fill the whole earth. To what time, then, do the other verses apply? — Plainly to the time between the first advent of Christ and his second,—to the Christian dispensation. When is the time of the latter rain? — Now. Notice also that the fourteenth verse speaks of the time when “the Lord God shall blow the trumpet;” and verses eleven and twelve speak of the prisoners of hope being brought out of the pit wherein is no water. This evidently refers to the resurrection of the dead. Thus we can see plainly that this scripture refers to the last days, to the time in which we live. It therefore is instruction to us. Now I want you to notice especially the thirteenth verse. What people are particularly mentioned here? — The sons of Zion and the sons of Greece. And what class of people are mentioned in verse seventeen? — The young men and the young women. And what is the Lord going to do in this time with the sons of Zion? — Raise them up against the sons of Greece. In this time that thing will be done,—in this “time of the latter rain,” when the young men and the maids shall be made cheerful by the Lord, just before the great trumpet is blown; this is the time that the Lord is going to raise up the sons of Zion against the sons of Greece. The sons of Greece have had the ascendancy in this work long enough, now it is the turn of the sons of Zion. To see further what this signifies, turn to the first chapter of First Corinthians, beginning with the eighteenth verse: — “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish, foolishness, but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. . . . Where is the wise, where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” Who was it that brought in this wisdom? Who was it that sought after wisdom? — The Greeks. And that wisdom of the Greeks ruled the world in that time, the time when this was written; it has done so since, too, and it does now. That144wisdom of the Greeks ruled the world, and what did it do for the world? — It was the means of the world's not knowing God; for “the world by wisdom knew not God.” That wisdom was the very means by which the world reached the point where it knew not God. And that wisdom was altogether of the Greeks. And the Lord set against that wisdom the foolishness of preaching, the foolishness of the preaching of the cross of Christ. Thus the Lord sent into the world his wisdom, which to the world was foolishness. But the world did not have a chance to see that thing fully and fairly tried. Yet so far as his wisdom did have a chance, it abundantly demonstrated itself to be wiser and mightier than all this boasted wisdom of the world which was Greek. But shortly the mystery of iniquity began to work; and many of those who professed the cross of Christ, those who professed the wisdom of God, accounted this wisdom of the world—this wisdom of the Greeks—to be a great thing. They turned aside after that, adopted it, and made it the leading thing in their preaching of what they set forth as the gospel of the cross of Christ. And that was the course by which the apostasy came, which brought in “the man of sin, the son of perdition,” who exalted himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped. Thus the mystery of iniquity supplanted and hid from the world the mystery of God. But there stands the word in the tenth chapter of Revelation, seventh verse: “In the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.” The mystery of God was started there in the days of the apostles,—“Christ in you the hope of glory.” The cross of Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God: that was preached. The mystery of iniquity came in, and hid it from the world. But, thank the Lord, in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, the mystery of God, the preaching of the true gospel, shall stand forth again, never to be hidden or obscured any more. And it is in this our day that the mystery of God is to be finished. Now is the mystery of God to stand forth exactly as it is, in the clear light and the power and the glory of God, until its work is done. Just as it was in the beginning, this is the time again when “the foolishness of God” will be set against the wisdom of the world. And in “the foolishness of preaching,” which is preaching of the cross of Christ,—in this setting of the foolishness of God against the wisdom of men,—in this preaching of the cross of Christ against all the seeking after the wisdom of the world,—in this it is that God will raise up the sons of Zion against the sons of Greece. That is the work that is before us in our day. That is the work of Seventh-day Adventists, under God. It is the work of the third angel's message. And the thing now for every Seventh-day Adventist to do is to rally himself, to set himself before himself, and tune his mind to an understanding, a comprehension, an appreciation, of the wonderful thing that God proposes to do in this day, in using him as an instrument in his great and grand work of raising up the sons of Zion against the sons of Greece, in causing the wisdom and knowledge and power of God to stand in the world in its proper glory, just as it should, transcending all the “wisdom” that has ever, or can ever, come from the sons of Greece. If Seventh-day Adventists will only do this, the victory is won. But so long as Seventh-day Adventists realize nothing of this great responsibility and wondrous privilege, and think that the education of the present day in the worldly schools is good enough for our sons and daughters, I want to know how the Lord is going to do what he has here promised, and what must be done. Look again. What does that wisdom of Greece do? what is its tendency? what is its only work? what is its outcome? — To lead the world to where it does not know God. Anything that can bring me to where I do not know God at the last, brings145me there at the first: it starts with me there. That is what it does for me at the beginning. All that anything can do in the beginning which in the end brings the world to where it does not know God, is to take away the knowledge of God. And there stands the word, that that is what the wisdom of Greece did, which was the wisdom of the world at that time. “The world by wisdom knew not God.” That so-called wisdom, that which really passed with the world as wisdom, was the means by which the world came not to know God. It was that very “wisdom” that deprived the world of the knowledge of God. And that wisdom was the wisdom, the philosophy, the science, the learning, of the Greeks at that time. And that philosophy, that science, that learning, of the world at that time, is the philosophy, the science, and the learning of the world to-day. In that day it was indulged and propagated by Greece; in this day those who indulge and propagate it are the sons of Greece. And it is written of this day, that God will “raise up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece.” EVILS TO BE AVOIDED IN EDUCATION.
[PARENTS, in their anxiety for their children, often defeat the object of true education because they fail to grasp the relative importance of improvement and development of the child’s threefold nature. The article by MR. EDWARD BOK, a large part of which was quoted from the Ladies’ Home Journal (January, 1900) in the March ADVOCATE, laid bare the evils of the “cramming system.” The words of MRS. LEW WALLACE, in an article entitled “The Murder of the Modern Innocents,” which appeared in that journal for February, 1899, received wide attention at the time, but parents can not too often read these things. To impress the facts upon the minds of our readers we have placed selected paragraphs from the above-mentioned article beside selections containing similar thoughts from the writings of MRS. E. G. WHITE.—EDITOR.] THE MURDER OF THE MODERN INNOCENTS.
BETHLEHEM was little among the thousands of Judah. We are told that probably not over thirty children fell under the order of Herod. The murder of the innocents of the nineteenth century is a march to untimely graves, not by order of a wrathful king, but under what is claimed to be the finest free-school system in the world. Go into any public school, and you will see girls pallid as day lilies, and boys with flat chests and the waxen skin that has been named the school complexion. Every incentive and stimulus is held out; dread of blame, love of praise, prizes, medals, badges, the coveted flourish in the newspapers—the strain never slackens. Watch the long lines filing past, each pupil carrying books—three, four, five—to be studied at night in hot rooms by fierce, sight-destroying lights. Time was when spectacles went with age. They are no sign of age now. Many must An Education that Kills.
IT has been the custom to encourage children to attend school when they are mere babies, needing a mother’s care. Children of delicate age are frequently crowded into ill-ventilated school-rooms, to sit upon poorly constructed benches; and the young and tender frames have, through sitting in wrong positions, become deformed.
In our institutions of learning there was to be exerted an influence that would counteract the influence of the world, and give no encouragement to . . . love of display, love of flattery, and strife for high rewards and honors as a recompence for good scholarship. It would be impossible to avoid these, and yet send to the public schools.
In regulating the hours of sleep there should be no haphazard work. No student should form the habit of sitting up late at night to burn the midnight oil.
146 wear glasses to help eyes worn prematurely old by night work. . . .
I do not undervalue education; it is greatly to be desired, but overeducation is slaying its thousands.
The burden is books. The tasks imposed on the young are fearful. The effort seems to be to make text-books as difficult and complicated as possible, instead of smoothing the hill so high and hard to climb. The Process Emphasized.
Said a mother, “Two and two are what?”
The boy hesitated.
“Surely you know that two and two make four.”
“Yes, mama; but I am trying to remember the process.”
Process, indeed! . . .
One day Mary was bending over a tablet writing words on both sides of a straight line, like multiplied numerators and denominators.
“What are you at now?” asked grandma.
Mary answered with pride, “I am diagraming.”
“In the name of sense, what’s diagraming?”
“It’s mental discipline. Miss Cram says I have a fine mind that needs developing. Look here, grandma, now this is the correct placing of elements. ‘Fourscore’ and ‘seven’ are joined by the word ‘and,’ a subordinate connective copulative conjunction. It modifies ‘years,’ the attribute of the proposition. ‘Ago’ is a model adverb of past time. The root word of the first clause is—”
“Why, that’s Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg. I keep it in my work-basket and know it by heart.”
“Indeed! Well, ‘our’ is a simple personal—”
That’s enough. If President Lincoln had been brought up on such stuff, that speech would never have been written. He called a noun a noun, and was done with it. “Mental discipline.” Not any more than a Chinese puzzle; merely so much rubbish under the attic. The mathematics superstition is strong in the land we love to call our own; children of thirteen are in algebra.
Mental Discipline and Nervousness.
Undertake the tasks laid on girls in their teens for one year, and then write me how you like the “system.” We need no physician to tell us that the number of nervous diseases on the increase is appalling. In educating youth there is need of that wisdom which comes only from God. It is a mistake to put into the hands of the youth books which puzzle and confuse them, a study of which can not fail to mix things in their minds. The Process Emphasized.
Many parents have kept their children at school nearly the year round. These children have gone through the routine of study mechanically, but they have not retained that which they learned. Many of these constant students seem almost destitute of intellectual life. The monotony of continual study wearies the mind, and they have but little interest in their lessons, and to many, the application to books becomes painful. . . . They did not encourage in themselves reflection, and investigation of objects and things. . . . Close reasoners and logical thinkers are few, for the reason that false influences have checked the development of the intellect.
A return to simpler methods will be appreciated by the children and youth. Work in the garden and field will be an agreeable change from the wearisome routine of abstract lessons to which their young minds should never be confined. Mental Discipline and Nervousness.
If teachers were receiving light and wisdom from the divine Teacher, they would look at things in a very different way. They would measure the relative importance of the things to be learned in school; the common essential branches would be more thoroughly taught, and the word of God would be honored and esteemed.
147 Even paralysis has crept in on the young; a leading physician of our State had three new cases in 1896. There is too much of everything except what is contained in Judge Baldwin’s admirable answer to the question, “Should manners be taught in our public schools?” Four, or at the utmost five, hours are a full day’s study, if one is to have health in this exhaustive climate. Under our forcing system the time demanded is nearer ten hours. Foreign children may study harder, but they do not come of fathers consumed by ambition, and mothers trying to do the impossible.
The girls break first because of greater capacity for suffering in nerves alive and quivering that with boys are insensible as telegraph wires. Besides, girls are more tractable, and take to music, embroidery, and painting, while boys play ball. In sanitariums, rest cures, water cures, and other refuges, forlorn wrecks of women lie on beds of pain, swallowing cod-liver oil, malted milk, and beguiling “foods” and drugs in order to build up. But there are no foundations to build upon. Parental Pride to Blame.
Back of all, and harder than unbending rules, is the merciless ambition of parents. American children must do, be, and have everything. Propose to cut down, drop the least congenial study, and there is an outcry, “Why, then Mary could not get her diploma!” What will she do with it if she does get it? Lay it away in a forgotten top drawer, or frame and hang it in the guest chamber—a costly document, bought with a great price.
Said a tender mother to me, “The air of the school-room is so foul that my boys’ heads smell of it.”
“And you continue to send them?”
“Oh, yes; you know they must pass.”
They are passing. The Practical Neglected.
Said one of my neighbors, “Here are two diplomas; they represent my two daughters educated to death.”
Death by freezing is easier. One of the most foolish sights I have ever seen was a feeble country girl There is health and happiness for him [the child] in the study of nature. . . . To the nervous child, who finds lessons from books exhausting and hard to remember, it will be especially valuable.
Every student should understand how to take such care of himself as to preserve the best possible condition of health, resisting feebleness and disease. . . . It is required of each one of us to preserve our health and strength by the practice of temperance in all things. [This includes temperance in study.—ED.] Anything that lessens the physical power enfeebles the mind, and makes it less clear to discriminate between good and evil.
The student who desires to put the work of two terms into one, should not be permitted to have his own way. . . . It is not reasonable to suppose that the mind can grasp and digest an oversupply of mental food, and it is as great a sin to overfeed the mind as it is to load the digestive organs, giving the stomach no periods of rest. Parental Pride to Blame.
Frequently the parents have but limited means, and an expense is incurred which they can ill afford; but everything must be made to bend to this artificial line of education. . . . They [the children] are required to study from books things that tax their young minds, and often they are taught music. . . . This course is not wise. A nervous child should not be overtaxed in any direction, and should not learn music until he is physically well developed.
Many children have been ruined for life, and some have died, as the result of the injudicious course of parents and teachers in forcing the young intellect. The Practical Neglected.
In connection with the schools should have been agricultural and manufacturing establishments. There should have been teachers also of household labor. There should have been a portion of the time each day
148 who expected to earn a living, she hardly knew how, puzzling over Cicero’s orations.
Latin is part of the treadmill stairs all must climb. Well has it been said of the Romans, that had they been obliged to learn their own language, they never would have been able to conquer the world. The dull girl pulls through grades high and low, and when the time comes to take a teething baby through dog days and nights, how goes the battle? Down with nervous prostration, she would give Euclid, Cicero, even the seventh book of Thucydides, for a day’s release from the pangs of neuralgia. Baby is predestined, one of the never-sleeping sort, doomed to nerves tense as fiddle strings. . . .
I knew one type of a class. She mastered various sciences and languages, had seven years of music, and in mathematics went so far as to carry the surveyor’s chain. She started in evanescent beauty, rose bloom and snow, and faded as certain sea shells lose color lying in the sun. The last time I saw her she said with angelic patience, “My children are wakeful at night, and I suffer a good deal.” She drooped without complaint, and one day the black horses came to the door and bore away the young mother to the city of the silent.
There is a school . . . where little children go three hours in the morning and three in the afternoon, and are punished for the least restlessness. Naturally, the prisoners are too exhausted to make much racket when released, so the houses where they live are “kept quiet.” Teach the Trades.
If your boy’s tastes are not scholarly, you may make him miserable by trying to force a love for learning. He will go through the books, and the books will go through him; there is no assimilation. . . .
There is no reason why our little people should be bound under the same rigid rule as the heads of the Flathead Indians; why eighty should learn what perhaps six will need. As the English say in their straight- devoted to labor, that the physical and mental might be equally exercised. If schools had been established upon the plan we have mentioned, there would not now be so many unbalanced minds. . . . The youth who would be graduated at such institutions would many of them come forth with stability of character. They would have perseverance, fortitude, and courage to surmount obstacles. . . . There should have been experienced teachers to give lessons to young ladies in the cooking department. Young girls should have been instructed to manufacture wearing apparel, to cut, make, and mend garments, and thus become educated for the practical duties of life.
Young ladies frequently give themselves up to study, to the neglect of other branches of education even more essential for practical life than the study of books. After they have obtained their education, they are frequently invalids for life. They neglected their health by remaining too much in doors, deprived of the pure air of heaven, and the God-given sunlight.
These young ladies might have come from their schools in health, if they had combined with their studies household labor and exercise in the open air.
Health is a great treasure. . . . Every abuse of health enfeebles for life, and makes us losers, even if we gain any amount of education. . . . The impression that work is degrading to fashionable life, has laid thousands in the grave who might have lived. Teach the Trades.
Education in felling trees, tilling the soil, erecting buildings, as well as in literature, is the education our youth should each seek to obtain. Further, a printing press should be connected with our school, in order to educate in that line. Tent-making also should be learned. There are also many things in which the lady students may be engaged. There is cooking, dress-making, and gardening to be done. Straw-
149 forward way, if your son is to be a tradesman, give him a tradesman’s education. The man who under happy stars might excel as an architect or a machinist may be a poor lawyer, and sentenced to it because his father was bred to the law, and there was a judge somewhere among his ancestry.
The founders of our free school system (I hope they rest in peace!) little dreamed of the latitudes and longitudes that would grow out of their idea of a sound English education accessible to all; or as General Grant sensibly wrote, “Every child in the land can have the opportunity of a good common school education unmixed with sectarian, pagan, or atheistical tenets.” Their idea has been elaborated into a toilsome course, sapping the strength of the strongest. German, Latin, music, drawing, and studies whose names I do not know, are brought in. The Hearts of Parents Should Turn to Their Children.
After all, what are our children being educated for? The boys are to be bread-winners—that is decided. They must hurry through, and “hustle for a living.” The girls—let us believe it—are the future homemakers. The word “helpmeet” is obsolete, left behind with the woman who made Eden Paradise.
Constantly the question is being brought up, “Shall this and that be added to our public schools?” But who asks, “Can the scholars endure any more?” They have no protest nor petition; they must stand like human vessels ready to be filled to the brim with mixtures of facts. I plead for a childhood of the soul as well as of the body, for the free air, the blessed sunshine, the moderate task ended at the schoolhouse. This night young heads are leaning against their mothers, tired as no young things should ever be; and it is a sorrowful sound to hear a child waking from what might be the sunny slumber of a light heart beating to healthful music to ask in troubled voice, ‘Do you think I can make the pass grade?’ It is said that they like to go to school. Yes, and they would like it twice as well if there were half as much to learn. Many children have I known, but not one berries should be planted, plants and flowers cultivated; this the lady students may be called out of doors to do. . . . Book-binding also, and a variety of trades should be taken up.
Lads are to come in from different localities, and nearly all will take the industrial course. This course should include the keeping of accounts, carpenter work, and everything that is comprehended in farming. Preparation should be made for the teaching of blacksmithing, painting, shoemaking, cooking, baking, washing, mending, typewriting, and printing. Every power at our command is to be brought into this training work, that students may go forth, equipped for the duties of practical life. The Hearts of Parents Should Turn to Their Children.
Mothers, let the little ones play in the open air; let them listen to the songs of the birds, and learn the love of God as expressed in his beautiful works. Teach them simple lessons from the book of nature and the things about them; and as their minds expand, lessons from books may be added, and firmly fixed in the memory.
Small children should be left as free as lambs to run out of doors, to be free and happy, and should be allowed the most favorable opportunities to lay the foundation for sound constitutions. Parents should be the only teachers of their children until they have reached eight or ten years of age.
This long-drawn-out process of adding and adding more time, more branches, is one of Satan’s snares to keep laborers back. . . .
150 who loved study for its own sake. Companionship is what lures them.
Instead of wandering up and down the wilderness of wintry facts, let them loiter a while among the dear illusions. The Happy Valley of Childhood is but narrow, where the golden water babbles to the talking bird and the singing tree, where the sun always shines and the years are summers. They who adjust the load that presses so heavily on the springs of life have much to account for.
Boston has been shaken by a solemn protest from the city physician against the ruinous manner in which children are overworked. Not the orphans in factories, nor the poor in the tenements, but in the handsome schoolhouses where the well-to-do send their sons and daughters. If we had a thousand years before us, such a depth of knowledge would be uncalled for, although it might be much more appropriate; but now our time is limited.
I would not in any case counsel restriction of the education to which God has set no limit. Our education does not end with the advantages which this world can give. Through all eternity the chosen of God will be learners. But I would advise restriction in following those methods of education which imperil the soul and defeat the purpose for which time and money are spent. Education is a grand life work. . . . It is a mistake to devote a period of years to one line of book knowledge. EARLY SPRING.
By Cordelia Stewart
GONE are the winter's rough gales,
And a softer breeze is blowing;
The fields have lost their snowy veils,
And on the hills and in the dales
The little flowers are growing. The brooklet sings a merrier song
To the willows lowly bending;
The icy fetters, so cold and strong,
Are broken now, and it glides along
Through the meadows, swift descending. The mossy bank, where the violets bloom,
Grows brighter for its singing;
And hastens the work on its mystic loom,
To be ready in time for the sweet perfume
The violet buds are bringing.
And the tiny blades of grass avow
That the winter time is over.
A robin sings on the maple bough,
And I almost thought I heard just now
The hum of the bees in the clover. Not long will we have to wait, I know,
For the birds and bees and flowers;
We're told in the softer evening glow,
And the balmy touch of the winds that blow,
And the daylight's lengthening hours. Cheer up, sad heart, thou'st waited long,
Through days so cold and dreary;
And raise your voice in a cheerful song
Of praise for the promise, so true and strong,
Of the coming days so cheery,— For the days with their new-born life so bright
And beautiful in their dawning,—
For the promise that even earth's darkest night
Will pass away in the glorious light
Of the resurrection morning. CAN WE CAMP ON THE ANGEL PLANE AND THE CARNAL PLANE AT THE SAME TIME?
By David Paulson
“As is the mother, so is her daughter,” Eze. 16:44. Many parents are almost in agony over the course their children are pursuing, when if they would carefully examine their own characters, they would find a defective link at the very place where, in the children, there is one altogether missing. If parents have attempted in their previous experience to walk on the angel plane spiritually and on the carnal plane physically, more than likely they will have the bitter disappointment of seeing their children walking on the carnal plane entirely, without even a desire to walk on the angel plane spiritually. There is no more unerring law in all the divine order than the law of heredity, and we can escape its apparently cruel application only by getting a new heredity,—being born again, from above; then we secure a heredity of which we may well be proud. Genuine, whole-souled conversion is the only thing that will save the children of the present from the miserable legacy left them from their parents; and if they wish to be candidates for translation, the same thorough work must be done on their characters as was done for Enoch and Elijah. Worldly education will not furnish this preparation for the mind, nor will it even furnish the right foundation for the divine work that must be done. Worldly customs in eating and drinking will not put such a vital resistance into the physical man as to enable him to withstand the terrific inroads of disease that are just before us. “Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless.”