Chapter 63—Proper Education
Education comprises more than a knowledge of books. Proper
education includes not only mental discipline, but that training which
will secure sound morals and correct deportment. We have had many
fears that those who take students into their houses will not realize
their responsibility and will neglect to exert a proper influence over
these youth. Thus students will fail to obtain all the benefit which they
might receive at the college. The question too often arises: “Am I my
brother’s keeper?’ What care, what burden or responsibility, should
I have for the students who occupy rooms in our houses?” I answer:
The very same interest that you have for your own children.
Says Christ: “Love one another, as I have loved you.” The souls of
the youth that are brought under your roof are as precious in the eyes
of the Lord as are the souls of your own dear children. When young
men and women are separated from the softening, subduing influences
of the home circle, it is the duty of those who have the care of them to
make home influences for them. They would thus supply a great lack
and would be doing a work for God as verily as the minister in the desk.
To throw around these students an influence which would preserve
them from temptations to immorality, and lead them to Jesus, is a
work which heaven would approve. Grave responsibilities rest upon
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those who reside at the great center of the work, where are important
interests to be sustained. Those who choose their homes at Battle
Creek should be men and women of faith, of wisdom, and of prayer.
Hundreds of youth of various dispositions and of different edu-
cation are associated in the school, and great care as well as much
patience is required to balance in the right direction minds that have
been warped by bad management. Some have never been disciplined,
and others have been governed too much, and have felt, when away
from the vigilant hands that held the reins of control, perhaps too
tightly, that they were free to do as they pleased. They despise the very
thought of restraint. These varying elements brought together in our
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