Basic HTML Version
Teaching Lessons of Helpfulness
119
It is essential for parents to find useful employment for their
children, which will involve the bearing of responsibilities as their
age and strength will permit. The children should be given something
to do that will not only keep them busy, but will interest them. The
active hands and brains must be employed from the earliest years. If
parents neglect to turn their children’s energies into useful channels,
they do them great injury, for Satan is ready to find them something
to do....
The Co-operation of Teacher and Parent
When the child is old enough to be sent to school, the teacher
should co-operate with the parents, and manual training should be
continued as part of the school studies. There are many students
who object to this kind of work in the schools. They think useful
employment, like learning a trade, degrading; but such have an
incorrect idea of what constitutes true dignity....
[147]
Christ’s Example
In his earth life Christ was an example to all the human family,
and He was obedient and helpful in the home. He learned the car-
penter’s trade, and worked with His own hands in the little shop at
Nazareth.... The Bible says of Jesus, “The Child grew, and waxed
strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon
Him.”
Luke 2:40
. As He worked in childhood and youth, mind and
body were developed. He did not use His physical powers recklessly,
but in such a way as to keep them in health, that He might do the
best work in every line....
In the children and youth an ambition should be awakened to
take their exercise in doing something that will be beneficial to
themselves and helpful to others. The exercise that develops mind
and character, that teaches the hands to be useful, that trains the
young to bear their share of life’s burdens, is that which gives phys-
ical strength and quickens every faculty. And there is a reward in
virtuous industry, in the cultivation of the habit of living to do good.
The children of the wealthy should not be deprived of the great
blessing of having something to do to increase the strength of brain