Basic HTML Version
204
Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers
earnest labor. The hand and heart must cooperate, bringing new
and sensible plans into operation in the cultivation of the soil. We
have here seen the giant trees felled and uprooted, we have seen
the plowshare pressed into the earth, turning deep furrows for the
planting of young trees and the sowing of the seed. The students are
learning what plowing means, and that the hoe and the shovel, the
rake and the harrow, are all implements of honorable and profitable
industry. Mistakes will often be made, but error lies close beside
truth. Wisdom will be learned by failures, and the energy that will
make a beginning gives hope of success in the end. Hesitation will
keep things back, precipitancy will alike retard, but all will serve as
lessons if the human agents will have it so.
In the school that is started here in Cooranbong, we look to
see real success in agricultural lines, combined with a study of the
sciences. We mean for this place to be a center, from which shall
irradiate light, precious advanced knowledge that shall result in the
working of unimproved lands, so that hills and valleys shall blossom
like the rose. For both children and men, labor combined with
mental taxation will give the right kind of all-round education. The
cultivation of the mind will bring tact and fresh incentives to the
cultivation of the soil.
There will be a new presentation of men as breadwinners, pos-
sessing educated, trained ability to work the soil to advantage. Their
minds will not be overtaxed and strained to the uttermost with the
study of the sciences. Such men will break down the foolish senti-
ments that have prevailed in regard to manual labor. An influence
will go forth, not in loud-voiced oratory, but in real inculcation of
[245]
ideas. We shall see farmers who are not coarse and rough and slack,
careless of their apparel and of the appearance of their homes; but
they will bring taste into farmhouses. Rooms will be sunny and
inviting. We shall not see blackened ceilings, covered with cloth full
of dust and dirt. Science, genius, intelligence, will be manifest in the
home. The cultivation of the soil will be regarded as elevating and
ennobling. Pure, practical religion will be manifested in treating the
earth as God’s treasure-house. The more intelligent a man becomes,
the more should religious influence be radiating from him. And the
Lord would have us treat the earth as a precious treasure, lent us in
trust.