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A Failure to Recognize God’s Messenger
I ask you who are living at the very heart of the work to review
the experience of years and see if the “Well done” can truthfully be
spoken to you. I ask the teachers in the school to consider carefully,
prayerfully, Have you individually watched for your own soul as one
who is co-operating with God for its purification from all sin and for
its entire sanctification unto Him? Can you by precept and example
teach the youth sanctification ... through the truth unto holiness,
obedience to God?
Have you not been afraid of the Holy Spirit? At times it has
come with all-pervading influence into the school at Battle Creek
and into the schools in other localities. Did you recognize it? Did
you accord it the honor due to a heavenly Messenger? When the
Spirit seemed to be striving with the youth, did you say, “Let us put
aside all study; for it is evident that we have among us a heavenly
Guest. Let us give praise and honor to God”? Did you, with contrite
hearts, bow in prayer with your students, pleading that you might
receive the blessing that the Lord was offering you?
The Great Teacher Himself was among you. How did you honor
Him? Was He a stranger to some of the educators? Was there need
to send for someone of supposed authority to welcome or repel this
Messenger from heaven? Though unseen, His presence was among
you. But was not the thought expressed that in school the time ought
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to be given to study, and that there was a time for everything?—as if
the hours devoted to common study were too precious to be given
up to the working of the heavenly Messenger.
If you have in this way restricted and repulsed the Holy Spirit
of God, I entreat you to repent of it as quickly as possible. If any
have closed and padlocked the door of your heart to the Spirit of
God, I urge you to unlock the door and to pray with earnestness,
“Abide with me.” When the Holy Spirit reveals His presence in your
schoolroom, tell your students, “The Lord signifies that He has for
us today a lesson of heavenly import of more value than our lessons
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