Industrial Knowledge Is of More Value Than Scientific—There should have been experienced teachers to give lessons to young ladies in the cooking department. Young girls should have been instructed to cut, make, and mend garments, and thus become educated for the practical duties of life. (CG 358.1) MC VC

For young men, there should be establishments where they could learn different trades, which would bring into exercise their muscles as well as their mental powers. If the youth can have but a one-sided education, which is of the greater consequence—a knowledge of the sciences, with all the disadvantages to health and life, or a knowledge of labor for practical life? We unhesitatingly answer, The latter. If one must be neglected, let it be the study of books. (CG 358.2) MC VC

There may be those who have had wrong training and those who have wrong ideas in regard to the training of children. These children and youth want the very best training, and you must bring the physical labor right in with the mental—the two should go together. (CG 358.3) MC VC

Jesus Was an Example of Contented Industry—It requires much more grace and stern discipline of character to work for God in the capacity of mechanic, merchant, lawyer, or farmer, carrying the precepts of Christianity into the ordinary business of life, than to labor as an acknowledged missionary in the open field, where one’s position is understood and half its difficulties obviated by that very fact. It requires strong spiritual nerve and muscle to carry religion into the workshop and business office, sanctifying the details of everyday life, and ordering every worldly transaction to the standard of a Bible Christian. (CG 358.4) MC VC

Jesus, in His thirty years of seclusion at Nazareth, toiled and rested, ate and slept, from week to week and from year to year, the same as His humble contemporaries. He called no attention to Himself as a marked personage; yet He was the world’s Redeemer, the adored of angels, doing, all the time, His Father’s work, living out a lesson that should remain for humanity to copy to the end of time. (CG 359.1) MC VC

This essential lesson of contented industry in the necessary duties of life, however humble, is yet to be learned by the greater portion of Christ’s followers. If there is no human eye to criticize our work, nor voice to praise or blame, it should be done just as well as if the Infinite One Himself were personally to inspect it. We should be as faithful in the minor details of our business as we would in the larger affairs of life. (CG 359.2) MC VC