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thorough and systematic ways that long experience and wisdom can
enable us to plan and execute.
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“Let the teachers wake up to the importance of this subject, and
teach agriculture and other industries that it is essential for the students
to understand. Seek in every department of labor to reach the very best
results. Let the science of the word of God be brought into the work,
that the students may understand correct principles, and may reach the
highest possible standard. Exert your God-given abilities, and bring
all your energies into the development of the Lord’s farm. Study and
labor, that the best results and the greatest returns may come from
the seed-sowing, that there may be an abundant supply of food, both
temporal and spiritual, for the increased number of students that shall
be gathered in to be trained as Christian workers.”
Testimonies for the
Church 6:182, 189, 191, 192
.
Fields White Unto the Harvest
As the workers in the Australasian colonies and in the islands of
the Pacific kept advancing into new territory, there came to them a
deepening conviction that every effort possible must be put forth to
train many laborers for the harvest.
“All about us,” declared Mrs. White on one occasion in 1898,
while attending a wonderfully inspiring camp meeting in the newly
formed Queensland Conference, “are fields white unto the harvest;
and we all feel an intense desire that these fields shall be entered, and
that the standard of truth shall be raised in every city and village.
“As we study the vastness of the work, and the urgency of entering
these fields without delay, we see that hundreds of workers are needed
where there are now but two or three, and that we must lose no time in
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building up those institutions where workers are to be educated and
trained.”
The Review and Herald, March 28, 1899
.
And as the Australasian Union Conference Committee studied
anew, in the light of the opening providences of God, their duty to
occupy new territory, they “recognized the school, the sanitarium,
and the food factory as three agencies working in harmony for the
education and training of home and foreign missionaries, who should
go forth prepared to minister to the physical, mental, and moral needs
of their fellow men.” In her report to the readers of the Review of this