True Ideal for Our Youth
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to the best use. Physical and mental powers are to be equally taxed.
Habits of order and discipline are to be cultivated. The power that is
exerted by a pure, true life is to be kept before the students. This will
aid them in the preparation for useful service. Daily they will grow
purer and stronger, better prepared through His grace and a study of
His word, to put forth aggressive efforts against evil.
True education is the inculcation of those ideas that will impress
the mind and heart with the knowledge of God the Creator and Jesus
Christ the Redeemer. Such an education will renew the mind and
transform the character. It will strengthen and fortify the mind against
the deceptive whisperings of the adversary of souls, and enable us
to understand the voice of God. It will fit the learned to become a
co-worker with Christ.
If our youth gain this knowledge, they will be able to gain all the
rest that is essential; but if not, all the knowledge they may acquire
from the world will not place them in the ranks of the Lord. They
may gather all the knowledge that books can give, and yet be ignorant
of the first principles of that righteousness which could give them a
character approved of God.
Those who are seeking to acquire knowledge in the schools of earth
should remember that another school also claims them as students,—
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the school of Christ. From this school the students are never graduated.
Among the pupils are both old and young. Those who give heed to the
instructions of the divine Teacher are constantly gaining more wisdom
and nobility of soul, and thus they are prepared to enter that higher
school, where advancement will continue throughout eternity.
Infinite Wisdom sets before us the great lessons of life,—the
lessons of duty and happiness. These are often hard to learn, but
without them we can make no real progress. They may cost us effort,
tears, and even agony; but we must not falter nor grow weary. It is in
this world, amid its trials and temptations, that we are to gain a fitness
for the society of the pure and holy angels. Those who become so
absorbed in less important studies that they cease to learn in the school
of Christ, are meeting with infinite loss.
Every faculty, every attribute, with which the Creator has endowed
the children of men, is to be employed for His glory; and in this em-
ployment is found its purest, noblest, happiest exercise. The principles
of heaven should be made paramount in the life, and every advance