I ask you who are living at the very heart of the work to review the experience of years and see if the “Well done” can truthfully be spoken to you. I ask the teachers in the school to consider carefully, prayerfully, Have you individually watched for your own soul as one who is co-operating with God for its purification from all sin and for its entire sanctification unto Him? Can you by precept and example teach the youth sanctification ... through the truth unto holiness, obedience to God?
(CT 363.1)
Have you not been afraid of the Holy Spirit? At times it has come with all-pervading influence into the school at Battle Creek and into the schools in other localities. Did you recognize it? Did you accord it the honor due to a heavenly Messenger? When the Spirit seemed to be striving with the youth, did you say, “Let us put aside all study; for it is evident that we have among us a heavenly Guest. Let us give praise and honor to God”? Did you, with contrite hearts, bow in prayer with your students, pleading that you might receive the blessing that the Lord was offering you?
(CT 363.2)
The Great Teacher Himself was among you. How did you honor Him? Was He a stranger to some of the educators? Was there need to send for someone of supposed authority to welcome or repel this Messenger from heaven? Though unseen, His presence was among you. But was not the thought expressed that in school the time ought to be given to study, and that there was a time for everything?—as if the hours devoted to common study were too precious to be given up to the working of the heavenly Messenger.
(CT 363.3)
If you have in this way restricted and repulsed the Holy Spirit of God, I entreat you to repent of it as quickly as possible. If any have closed and padlocked the door of your heart to the Spirit of God, I urge you to unlock the door and to pray with earnestness, “Abide with me.” When the Holy Spirit reveals His presence in your schoolroom, tell your students, “The Lord signifies that He has for us today a lesson of heavenly import of more value than our lessons in ordinary lines. Let us listen; let us bow before God and seek Him with the whole heart.”
(CT 364.1)
Let me tell you what I know of this heavenly Guest. The Holy Spirit was brooding over the youth during the school hours; but some hearts were so cold and dark that they had no desire for the Spirit’s presence, and the light of God was withdrawn. The heavenly Visitant would have opened the understanding, would have given wisdom and knowledge in all lines of study that could be employed to the glory of God. He came to convince of sin and to soften the hearts hardened by long estrangement from God. He came to reveal the great love wherewith God has loved these youth....
(CT 364.2)
A principle of divine origin must pervade our conduct and bind us to God. This will not be in any way a hindrance to the study of true science. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10); and the man who consents to be molded and fashioned after the divine similitude is the noblest work of God. All who live in communion with the Creator will have an understanding of His design in their creation. They will have a sense of their own accountability to God to employ their faculties to the very best purpose. They will seek neither to glorify nor to depreciate themselves....
(CT 364.3)
God’s Ideal for Man
The religion of Christ never degrades the receiver. It never makes him coarse or rough, discourteous or self-important, passionate or hardhearted. On the contrary, it refines the taste, sanctifies the judgment, and purifies and ennobles the thoughts, bringing them into captivity to Jesus Christ.
(CT 365.1)
God’s ideal for His children is higher than the highest human thought can reach. The living God has given in His holy law a transcript of His character. The greatest Teacher the world has ever known is Jesus Christ; and what is the standard He has given for all who believe in Him? “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”Matthew 5:48. As God is perfect in His high sphere of action, so man may be perfect in his human sphere.
(CT 365.2)
The ideal of Christian character is Christlikeness. There is opened before us a path of continual advancement. We have an object to reach, a standard to gain, which includes everything good and pure and noble and elevated. There should be continual striving and constant progress onward and upward toward perfection of character....
(CT 365.3)
Without the divine working, man can do no good thing. God calls every man to repentance, yet man cannot even repent unless the Holy Spirit works upon his heart. But the Lord wants no man to wait until he thinks he has repented before he takes steps toward Jesus. The Saviour is continually drawing men to repentance; they need only to submit to be drawn, and their hearts will be melted in penitence.
(CT 365.4)
To man is allotted a part in this great struggle for everlasting life—he must respond to the working of the Holy Spirit. It will require a struggle to break through the powers of darkness, and the Spirit works in him to accomplish this. But man is no passive being, to be saved in indolence. He is called upon to strain every muscle and exercise every faculty in the struggle for immortality, yet it is God that supplies the efficiency. No human being can be saved in indolence. The Lord bids us, “Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.”Luke 13:24. “Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”Matthew 7:13, 14.
(CT 366.1)
Unholy Influences at Work
I entreat the students in our schools to be sober-minded. The frivolity of the young is not pleasing to God. Their sports and games open the door to a flood of temptations. They are in possession of God’s heavenly endowment in their intellectual faculties, and they should not allow their thoughts to be cheap and low. A character formed in accordance with the precepts of God’s word will reveal steadfast principles, pure, noble aspirations. The Holy Spirit co-operates with the powers of the human mind, and high and holy impulses are the sure result....
(CT 366.2)
My soul is deeply stirred at the things that have been represented before me. I feel an indignation of spirit that in our institutions so little honor has been given to the living God, and so much honor to that which is supposed to be superior talent, but with which the Holy Spirit has no connection. The Spirit of God is not acknowledged and respected; men have passed judgment upon it; its operations have been condemned as fanaticism, enthusiasm, undue excitement.
(CT 367.1)
God sees that which the blind eyes of the educators do not discern—that immorality of every kind and degree is striving for the mastery, working against the manifestations of the power of the Holy Spirit. The commonest of conversation, and low, perverted ideas are woven into the texture of character and defile the soul.
(CT 367.2)
The low, common pleasure parties, gatherings for eating and drinking, singing and playing on instruments of music, are inspired by a spirit that is from beneath. They are an oblation unto Satan. The exhibitions in the bicycle craze are an offense to God. His wrath is kindled against those who do such things. For in these gratifications the mind becomes besotted, even as in liquor drinking. The door is opened to vulgar associations. The thoughts, allowed to run in a low channel, soon pervert all the powers of the being. Like Israel of old, the pleasure lovers eat and drink, and rise up to play. There is mirth and carousing, hilarity and glee. In all this the youth are following the example of the ungodly authors of some of the books that are placed in their hands for study. All these things are having their effect upon the character.
(CT 367.3)
Those who take the lead in these frivolities bring upon the cause a stain not easily effaced. They wound their own souls, and will carry the scars through their lifetime. The evildoer may see his sins and repent, and God may pardon the transgressor; but the power of discernment which ought ever to be kept keen and sensitive to distinguish between the sacred and the common, is in a great measure destroyed....
(CT 368.1)
I urge upon all to whom these words may come: Review your own course of action, and “take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth.”Luke 21:34, 35.—Special Testimonies On Education, 202-212; written to the teachers in Battle Creek College.
(CT 368.2)
It is a continual struggle to be always on the alert to resist evil, but it pays to obtain one victory after another over self and the powers of darkness. And if the youth are proved and tested, as was Daniel, what honor can they reflect to God by their firm adherence to the right!
(CT 368.3)