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together for joy. All nature will bear testimony, as designed, for the
illustration of the word of God.
The natural and the spiritual are to be combined in the studies of
our schools. The operations of agriculture illustrate the Bible lessons.
The laws obeyed by the earth reveal the fact that it is under the mas-
terly power of an infinite God. The same principles run through the
spiritual and the natural world. Divorce God and His wisdom from the
acquisition of knowledge, and you have a lame, one-sided education,
dead to all the saving qualities which give power to man, so that he is
incapable of acquiring immortality through faith in Christ. The author
of nature is the author of the Bible. Creation and Christianity have one
God. All who engage in the acquisition of knowledge should aim to
reach the highest round of progress. Let them advance as fast and as
far as they can; let their field of study be as broad as their powers can
compass, making God their wisdom, clinging to Him who is infinite in
knowledge, who can reveal the secrets hidden for ages, who can solve
the most difficult problems for minds that believe in Him who only
hath immortality, dwelling in the light that no man can approach unto.
The living witness for Christ, following on to know the Lord, shall
know that his goings forth are prepared as the morning. “Whatsoever
a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” By honesty and industry, with
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a proper care of the body, applying every power of the mind to the
acquisition of knowledge and wisdom in spiritual things, every soul
may be complete in Christ, who is the perfect pattern of a complete
man.
He who chooses a course of disobedience to God’s law is deciding
his future destiny; he is sowing to the flesh, earning the wages of sin,
even eternal destruction, the opposite of life eternal. Submission to
God and obedience to His holy law bring the sure result. “This is
life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus
Christ, whom Thou hast sent.” This is a knowledge of such value that
no language can describe it; it is of highest worth in this world, and is
far-reaching as eternity. “Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man
glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let
not the rich man glory in his riches: but let him that glorieth glory in
this, that he understandeth and knoweth Me, that I am the Lord which
exercise loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth:
for in these things I delight, saith the Lord.”