BLIGATIONS BETWEEN TEACHERS and pupils are mutual. Teachers should make diligent effort that their own souls may be sanctified through the grace of Christ, and that they may labor in Christ’s lines for the salvation of their pupils.
Good Marks
On the other hand, students should not pursue such a course of action as will make it hard and trying to their teachers, and bring upon them temptations hard to resist. Pupils should not, by a wrong course of action, lower the high standing and reputation of the school, and give reason for the report to go abroad among believers and unbelievers, that Seventh-day Adventist schools, though purported to be established for giving the best of education to those who attend, are no better than the common schools throughout the world. . . .
One student who feels his accountability to be faithful in helping his instructors, will help himself more than he helps all others. Heaven looks down with approbation upon the students who strive to do right, and have a firm purpose to be true to God. They will receive help from God. Of Daniel and his companions who stood firm as a rock to truth, it is written, “As for these four children, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom: . . . and in all matters of wisdom and understanding, that the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm.” . . .
O, I want to beseech of you to do nothing that is questionable. Consider in what light your parents would regard your actions, and forbear to do anything that would put thorns in their pillows. Do not be thoughtless, careless, and lawless. Your actions do not end with yourselves; they reflect credit or discredit upon the school, according as they are good or bad. If you do evil, you grieve Jesus Christ, who bought you with the price of his own blood, hurt the soul of your principal, wound the heart of your teachers, and injure and mar your own soul. . . .
Set your aim high, and then step by step ascend to reach the standard, even though it may be by painful effort, through self-denial and self-sacrifice. Christ will be to you a present help in every time of need, if you call upon him, that you may be like Daniel, whom no temptation could corrupt. Do not disappoint your parents and your friends; but above all, do not disappoint Him who so loved you that he gave his own life in order to cancel your sins and become your personal Saviour.
Jesus said, “Without me ye can do nothing.” Bear this in mind. If you have made mistakes, you may gain a victory by discerning these mistakes, and by regarding them as beacons of warning, to enable you to shun their repetition. I need not tell you that this will be turning your defeat into victory, disappointing the enemy, and honoring your Redeemer, whose property you are. . . .
Leading the Way
Teachers have their own natural weaknesses of character to contend with, and they are capable of moving unwisely under the stress of temptation. They may think they are doing right when they are enforcing strict discipline, and yet they may be making mistakes in the case with which they are dealing.
How much better would it be for both pupils and teachers, if students would place themselves upon their honor, and act from pure and noble motives, so that their very course of action would recommend them to those who were their teachers and educators. If in every possible way and under every circumstance, they would treat those who are in positions of trust, and bearing responsibility, as they themselves would like to be treated, what peace and success would attend the school. . . .
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Seventh-day Adventists believe that Ellen G. White exercised the biblical gift of prophecy during more than 70 years of public ministry. This article is excerpted from an article that first appeared in the January 23, 1894, edition of the Advent Review and Sabbath Herald (now the Adventist Review).
