Higher than the highest human thought can reach is God’s ideal for His children. Godliness—godlikeness—is the goal to be reached. Before the student there is opened a path of continual progress. He has an object to achieve, a standard to attain, that includes everything good, and pure, and noble. He will advance as fast and as far as possible in every branch of true knowledge. But his efforts will be directed to objects as much higher than mere selfish and temporal interests as the heavens are higher than the earth.
The Preparatory School
He who co-operates with the divine purpose in imparting to the youth a knowledge of God, and moulding the character into harmony with His, does a high and noble work. As he awakens a desire to reach God’s ideal, he presents an education that is as high as heaven and as broad as the universe; an education that can not be completed in his life, but that will be continued in the life to come; an education that secures to the successful student his passport from the preparatory school of earth to the higher grade, the school above.
The Eden School
“HAPPY IS THE MAN THAT
FINDETH WISDOM”
A Model School
The system of education instituted at the beginning of the world, was to be a model for man throughout all after-time. As an illustration of its principles a model school was established in Eden, the home of our first parents. The garden of Eden was the schoolroom, nature was the lesson-book, the Creator Himself was the instructor, and the parents of the human family were the students.
The Students
Created to be “the image and glory of God,” Adam and Eve had received endowments not unworthy of their high destiny. Graceful and symmetrical in form, regular and beautiful in feature, their countenances glowing with the tint of health and the light of joy and hope, they bore in outward resemblance the likeness of their Maker. Nor was this likeness manifest in the physical nature only. Every faculty of mind and soul reflected the Creator’s glory. Endowed with high mental and spiritual gifts, Adam and Eve were made but “little lower than the angels,”[[11]] that they might not only discern the wonders of the visible universe, but comprehend moral responsibilities and obligations.