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Education
The Feast of Tabernacles, or harvest festival, with its offerings
from orchard and field, its week’s encampment in the leafy booths,
its social reunions, the sacred memorial service, and the generous
hospitality to God’s workers, the Levites of the sanctuary, and to His
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children, the strangers and the poor, uplifted all minds in gratitude to
Him who had crowned the year with His goodness, and whose paths
dropped fatness.
By the devout in Israel, fully a month of every year was occupied
in this way. It was a period free from care and labor, and almost wholly
devoted, in the truest sense, to purposes of education.
In apportioning the inheritance of His people, it was God’s purpose
to teach them, and through them the people of after generations, correct
principles concerning the ownership of the land. The land of Canaan
was divided among the whole people, the Levites only, as ministers
of the sanctuary, being excepted. Though one might for a season
dispose of his possession, he could not barter away the inheritance
of his children. When able to do so, he was at liberty at any time to
redeem it; debts were remitted every seventh year, and in the fiftieth,
or year of jubilee, all landed property reverted to the original owner.
Thus every family was secured in its possession, and a safeguard was
afforded against the extremes either of wealth or of poverty.
By the distribution of the land among the people, God provided
for them, as for the dwellers in Eden, the occupation most favorable to
development—the care of plants and animals. A further provision for
education was the suspension of agricultural labor every seventh year,
the land lying fallow, and its spontaneous products being left to the
poor. Thus was given opportunity for more extended study, for social
intercourse and worship, and for the exercise of benevolence, so often
crowded out by life’s cares and labors.
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Were the principles of God’s laws regarding the distribution of
property carried out in the world today, how different would be the
condition of the people! An observance of these principles would pre-
vent the terrible evils that in all ages have resulted from the oppression
of the poor by the rich and the hatred of the rich by the poor. While it
might hinder the amassing of great wealth, it would tend to prevent the
ignorance and degradation of tens of thousands whose ill-paid servi-
tude is required for the building up of these colossal fortunes. It would