In Far Lands

Before Mr. Gandhi, the leader of millions in India, took up the work that has made his name famous, he spent some years in South Africa. There he came in contact with Seventh-day Adventists, and learned something of their educational and health principles. Years later the leaders of our church in India were building up a schoolwork in North India on the lines laid down in the instruction of the Spirit of prophecy. Two or three of our men wished to interview Mr. Gandhi regarding the principles and aims of the school enterprise, and regarding health work. Our representatives were granted an interview. But it was a day on which Mr. Gandhi had taken a vow of silence—this strange man who studied the New Testament and paid reverence to the Hindu gods. Our spokesman, G. F. Enoch, talked, while Mr. Gandhi now and then wrote an answer on a tablet. Nothing had been said of religion or church. But as the visitors explained the plan of education to be followed in the school,—the threefold training of the mind, the heart, the hand,—and as the matter of a line of health educational literature was introduced, Mr. Gandhi wrote on the tablet: “Are you Seventh-day Adventists?” He had recognized the distinctive pattern. And it is to the special gift of the Spirit of prophecy in this church that our educators owe the blueprint which they endeavor to follow.SPIAM 81.2

Years ago, in one of the new countries of Europe created by the World War settlement, a university staff brought out a book on religious and moral education. It was a Catholic professor who prepared the volume by request. Perhaps he made no claim to authorship, but only worked as compiler. I do not know. But the book was put out by the university as the “best book” on religious education in that language. When our men in that country got hold of the book, they recognized a familiar note in many passages. They looked the matter up, and found that the new book was very largely a translation from Mrs. White’s book, “Education.” Recently, in Vienna, I met a young student-teacher who was from the country referred to. “I would say,” he told me, “that the book on education put out by the university was fully eighty per cent a translation from Mrs. White.”SPIAM 81.3