A Word of Caution
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia,
October 26, 1898
To the Advisers of Medical Students:
There is a burden upon my soul. There are young people who are
encouraged to take up a course of study in medical lines who ought to
be preparing themselves most decidedly to proclaim the third angel’s
message. It is not necessary for our medical students to spend all the
time that they are spending in medical studies. Their work should
be more decidedly combined with a study of God’s word. Ideas are
inculcated that are not at all necessary, and the necessary things do not
receive sufficient attention.
A Danger to Be Guarded Against
While students are being educated in this way, they are being
made less able to do acceptable work for the Master. The taxation
that they undergo to obtain an extended knowledge in medical lines
unfits them to work as they should in ministerial lines. Physical and
mental weariness come because of the overstrain of study, and because
the students are encouraged to labor unduly for the outcasts and the
degraded. Thus some are disqualified for the work that they might
have done had they begun missionary work where it was needed and
let the medical line come in as an essential part connected with the
work of the gospel ministry as a whole, as the hand is connected with
the body. Life is not to be imperiled in an effort to obtain a medical
education. There is danger, in some cases, that students will ruin their
health and unfit themselves to do the service they might have done had
they not been unwisely encouraged to take a medical course.
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Often erroneous opinions are transcribed on the mind, and these
lead to an unwise course of action. Students should have time to
talk with God, time to live in hourly, conscious communion with
the principles of truth and righteousness and mercy. At this time
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