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Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students
symbol of the spiritual elevation on which Christ ever stood. Every
word He uttered came from God, and He spoke with the authority
of heaven. “The words that I speak unto you,” He said, “they are
spirit, and they are life.”
John 6:63
. His teaching is full of ennobling,
saving truth, to which men’s highest ambitions and most profound
investigations can bear no comparison. He was alive to the terrible
ruin hanging over the race, and He came to save souls by His own
righteousness, bringing to the world definite assurance of hope and
complete relief.
It is because Christ’s words are disregarded, because the word
of God is given a second place in education, that infidelity is riot
and iniquity is rife. Things of minor consequence occupy the minds
of many of the teachers of today. A mass of tradition, containing
merely a semblance of truth, is brought into the courses of study
given in the schools of the world. The force of much human teaching
is found in assertion, not in truth. The teachers of the present day
can use only the ability of previous teachers; and yet with all the
weighty importance that may be attached to the words of the greatest
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human authors there is a conscious inability to trace back to the first
great principle, the Source of unerring wisdom. There is a painful
uncertainty, a constant searching, a reaching for assurance, that can
be found only in God. The trumpet of human greatness may be
sounded, but it is with an uncertain sound; it is not reliable, and the
salvation of souls cannot be assured by it.
In acquiring earthly knowledge, men have thought to gain a
treasure; and they have laid the Bible aside, ignorant that it contains
a treasure worth everything else. A failure to study and obey God’s
word has brought confusion into the world. Men have left the
guardianship of Christ for the guardianship of the great rebel, the
prince of darkness. Strange fire has been mingled with the sacred.
The accumulation of things that minister to lust and ambition has
brought upon the world the judgment of heaven.
When in difficulty, philosophers and men of science try to satisfy
their minds without appealing to God. They ventilate their philoso-
phy in regard to the heavens and the earth, accounting for plagues,
pestilences, epidemics, earthquakes, and famines by their supposed
science. Questions relating to creation and providence they attempt
to solve by saying, This is a law of nature.