162
Testimonies for the Church Volume 6
convenient for them. This land about the school is to be the school
farm, and this farm is to occupy much more space than you have
thought it would. Work in connection with study is to be done here
according to the counsels given. Avondale is to be a philanthropic
center. God’s people in Australasia are to be moved upon by the
Spirit of the Lord to give sympathy and means for the support and
[185]
encouragement of many charitable and benevolent enterprises, which
shall be the means of teaching the poor, the helpless, and the ignorant
how to help themselves.”
A Panorama
On several occasions the light has come to me that the land around
our school is to be used as the Lord’s farm. In a special sense portions
of this farm should be highly cultivated. Spread out before me I saw
land planted with every kind of fruit tree that will bear fruit in this
locality; there were also vegetable gardens, where seeds were sown
and cultivated.
If the managers of this farm and the teachers in the school will
receive the Holy Spirit to work with them, they will have wisdom in
their management, and God will bless their labors. The care of the
trees, the planting and the sowing, and the gathering of the harvest
are to be wonderful lessons for all the students. The invisible links
which connect the sowing and the reaping are to be studied, and the
goodness of God is to be pointed out and appreciated. It is the Lord
that gives the virtue and the power to the soil and to the seed. Were it
not for the divine agency, combined with human tact and ability, the
seed sown would be useless. There is an unseen power constantly at
work in man’s behalf to feed and to clothe him. The parable of the
seed as studied in the daily experience of teacher and student is to
reveal that God is at work in nature, and it is to make plain the things
of the kingdom of heaven.
God and Nature
Next to the Bible, nature is to be our great lessonbook. But there is
no virtue in deifying nature, for this is exalting the thing made above
the great Master Builder who designed the work, and who every hour
[186]