Advantages of the Country
105
Identical Laws Govern Nature and Mankind—The Great
Teacher brought His hearers in contact with nature, that they might
listen to the voice which speaks in all created things; and as their hearts
became tender and their minds receptive, He helped them to interpret
the spiritual teaching of the scenes upon which their eyes rested....
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In His lessons there was something to interest every mind, to appeal
to every heart. Thus the daily task, instead of being a mere round of
toil, bereft of higher thoughts, was brightened and uplifted by constant
reminders of the spiritual and the unseen.
So we should teach. Let the children learn to see in nature an
expression of the love and the wisdom of God; let the thought of Him
be linked with bird and flower and tree; let all things seen become
to them the interpreters of the unseen, and all the events of life be a
means of divine teaching.
As they learn thus to study the lessons in all created things and
in all life’s experiences, show that the same laws which govern the
things of nature and the events of life are to control us, that they are
given for our good, and that only in obedience to them can we find
true happiness and success
Give Practical Lessons in Agriculture—Of the almost innumer-
able lessons taught in the varied processes of growth, some of the most
precious are conveyed in the Saviour’s parable of the growing seed. It
has lessons for old and young....
The germination of the seed represents the beginning of spiritual
life, and the development of the plant is a figure of the development
of character.... As parents and teachers try to teach these lessons, the
work should be made practical. Let the children themselves prepare the
soil and sow the seed. As they work, the parent or teacher can explain
the garden of the heart, with the good or bad seed sown there, and that
as the garden must be prepared for the natural seed, so the heart must
be prepared for the seed of truth.... No one settles upon a raw piece of
land with the expectation that it will at once yield a harvest. Diligent,
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persevering labor must be put forth in the preparation of the soil, the
sowing of the seed, and the culture of the crop. So it must be in the
spiritual sowing
12
Education, 102, 103
.
13
Ibid., 104, 105, 111
.