WE have studied the teachings of nature as to what is the only right way to breathe. It will not be well to study the teachings of the Spirit on the same subject, that we may have all the light possible upon it.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 105.1

Our first quotation, will be found in the little book entitled “Christian Education.” Under the heading, “The Necessity of Doing Our Best,” page 125, we read:—ARSH February 15, 1898, page 105.2

“They should perseveringly practise speaking in a low, distinct tone, exercising the abdominal muscles in deep breathing, and making the throat the channel of communication.”ARSH February 15, 1898, page 105.3

This is right breathing, and only this is right breathing. The abdominal muscles, or muscles of the abdomen, form the structure which God has built that men and women may breathe for health.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 105.4

This confirms what we learned from “nature itself,’—that no effort is to be made by the lungs; no strain is to be brought upon them. They are not made for that. Whenever this is done, it is only warring against life.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 105.5

You are not to breathe with your lungs, nor to talk with your throat. The abdominal muscles are to be used to breathe with and to talk with. The lungs are not to be active, but passive; they are not to act, but to be acted upon by the machinery which is to be kept in motion by the exercise of the abdominal muscles. So, likewise, with the throat; it is not to be the organ, but only “the channel, of communication.” The exercise of the muscles of the abdomen, causing contraction of the lungs, forces the air through the throat over the vocal cords, and thus creates the tones; then the tongue, teeth, and lips cut the tones into words, and thus speech is formed. Therefore, do not breathe with the lungs, and do not talk with the throat. Breathe with the abdominal muscles, and talk with the abdominal muscles and then mouth.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 105.6

“Many speak in a rapid way, and in a high, unnatural key, but if they continue such a practice, they will injure the throat and lungs, and as a result of continual abuse, the weak and inflamed organs will become diseased in a serious way, and they will fall into consumption.”—Id.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 105.7

Do you not see, then, that it is a serious wrong for any Seventh-day Adventist to be a consumptive? It is wrong for any Seventh-day Adventist to have continued lung trouble of any kind; but it is an awful thing for a Seventh-day Adventist, and above all, a minister, to die of consumption.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 105.8

“Ministers and teachers should give especial attention to the voice, and learn the art of speaking, not in a nervous, hurried manner, but in a slow, clear, distinct manner, preserving the music of the voice.”—Id., page 126.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 105.9

But you never can do that if you use the throat, much less if you use your throat and lungs both.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 105.10

“Let no one say, ‘There is no use for me to try to pray, for others do not hear me.’ Rather say, ‘I will make earnest efforts to overcome this God-dishonoring habit of speaking in a low, indistinct tone, and I will put myself under discipline until my voice shall be audible, even to those who are hard of hearing.’ Will it not be worth disciplining yourself to be able to add interest to the service of God, and to edify the children of God?ARSH February 15, 1898, page 105.11

“Let the voices of the followers of Christ be trained so that instead of crowding words together in a thick, indistinct way, their words will be clear, forcible, and edifying. Do not let the voice fall after each word, but keep it up so that every sentence will be full and complete.”—Id., page 131.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 105.12

“The proper use of the vocal organs will bring benefit to the physical health, and increase your usefulness and influence.”—Id., page 132.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 105.13

You will see this more fully as we advance. We are simply searching now for the right principles.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 105.14

“They can give attention to the cultivation of the voice, and by judicious exercise may expand the chest and strengthen the muscles.”ARSH February 15, 1898, page 105.15

But it is not enough simply to expand the chest,—it may be, and often is, expanded altogether wrongly,—but you must expand it rightly. Now let us see how that is done.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 105.16

“Let the abdominal muscles have full play. Do not bind the waist with bands and corsets, but taking in full breath, let the burden of your words come from this foundation, supported by abdominal breathing, and let the throat be the channel for the tone.”—Id., page 122.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 105.17

The abdominal muscles cannot have any proper play at all, much less can they have full play, when you have them bound with dress bands and corsets.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 105.18

And when we come right down to practical health reform, really to right living, it is a living test with our sisters as to whether they are going to accept God’s way or the devil’s way in this matter,—whether they will follow the Lord’s word, or follow fashion’s tyranny. Which will you do? Will you set about this in sacred earnest, and breathe according to the Lord’s directions? or will you bind yourselves tightly about so that you cannot possibly breathe properly, and so never have good health? O, let your bodies loose! set yourselves free! “Let the abdominal muscles have full play. Do not bind the waist with bands and corsets, but taking in full breath, let the burden of your words come from this foundation.”ARSH February 15, 1898, page 105.19

In this way you can take in a full breath, even while you are talking or reading, and can keep it up right straight along, breathing not only between sentences, but between clauses, or even between words, if the sentence is long, just as you please, and nobody will notice it. But it you undertake to use your lungs in breathing, speaking, or reading, you will be constantly on a strain to keep yourself in breath; and if the sentence is long, you will actually have to catch your breath in the very midst of it; the reading or speaking will be all broken up; you will get weary, and those who hear you will also get weary in listening; your lungs will be in pain; your throat will be sore; you will be a living invitation to throat and lung diseases; your work will be crippled, and your efficiency, and even your usefulness, will be destroyed. O, such a course is only a lingering death! The other way, according to the Lord’s directions, is life,—bright, cheery, active, vigorous, healthy, God-given life. Which will you choose? Which will you follow?ARSH February 15, 1898, page 105.20

“Editorial” The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald 75, 7, p. 108.

THE baptism of the Holy Spirit is only unto service.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.1

Anybody who wants the baptism, or the gift, of the Holy Ghost, in order that he may be lifted up in an ecstasy and kept there, swinging, like a canary, in an ecstatic feeling the rest of his days, will never get it.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.2

Yet this is about the idea that thousands of people have of the purpose and the effect of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. therefore their favorite song is,—ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.3

“O, could I ever, ever stay
In such a frame as this.
I’d sit and sing myself away
To everlasting bliss!”ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.4

Christ never was in such a “frame” as this, thank the Lord: if he had been, we should be eternally lost. But those people think that such is exactly the “frame” that becomes heaven. Yet if they would really think, they would see in a moment that it is altogether a false conception.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.1

Jesus was in heaven. He was there the possessor, by divine right forevermore, of all the bliss that heaven can possibly know. Yet, knowing and possessing all this, he did not sit and sing himself away to everlasting bliss.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.2

No. He left it all behind, and came down to earth, and spent his life here in the service of a poor, ruined people, laden with iniquity, to bring to these the knowledge of God, and all the good which that knowledge brings.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.3

And to him this was bliss. To him this was more than to be in heaven itself. It was not to him more nor less than heaven itself; it simply was heaven itself; for when he came down to earth, he did not, strictly speaking, leave heaven behind—he brought it along, and linked it to earth in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.4

To him this was better than to stay in heaven. He voluntarily chose to do this; therefore he did it because he would rather do it than to stay in heaven.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.5

Thus of his own free choice he came out of heaven to the earth, and stayed here as long as men would let him stay.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.6

As long as he could stay here and work for mankind, he would rather do so than to go to heaven.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.7

And this is Christianity.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.8

Unto this glorious mission the Lord Jesus was born of the Holy Ghost, and was baptized and anointed with the Holy Ghost. And this is the purpose of the birth, the baptism, and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, upon every soul who receives him.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.9

“God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power, who went about doing good.” “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.”ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.10

This is what the baptism of the Holy Ghost was for them; and this is what it is for forever.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.11

What an astonishing conception of Christianity it is, indeed, that he who had received the greatest degree of its spirit should forget everybody but himself; and thinking nothing, caring nothing, for the sin, the distress, and the misery of the multitudes of the lost all around him, should “sit” pampering himself in a halorious mood, and “sing himself away to everlasting bliss”!!ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.12

Such is not the spirit of Christianity. It is simply the spirit of the supremely selfish, shirking, lazy loafer.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.13

No; the spirit of Christianity is the spirit of the Lord Jesus himself, and he who has the greatest degree of it, instead of sitting and singing himself away to everlasting bliss, stands up, in the conscious surety of everlasting bliss, and works with all power in heaven and earth, and sings while he works, to draw all others from the darkness and woe of this world of sin, unto the everlasting bliss of the glorious liberty of the sons of God.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.14

He does not care to go to heaven till his work in the world is done. Give him his choice any day, and he would rather stay in this world, and work, than to go to heaven. He knows that in Christ, who is his life, heaven is sure to him. And having found in his blessed Lord, and by his Spirit, the connection between heaven and earth, to him it is heaven to work to get other people into the knowledge and surety of heaven.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.15

O, let us be only such Christian as Christ was in the world! Then we shall be of profit to the world, and the world will know that God sent Jesus into the world.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.16

“Studies in the Book of Daniel” The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald 75, 7, pp. 108, 109.

DANIEL, while yet a mere youth, was “skilful in all wisdom.” This was the leading part of his education. He was educated in a school of the prophets. Wisdom, then, was one of the principal studies in the schools of the prophets; that is, in the Lord’s schools.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.1

What is wisdom? whence come it? how is it attained? and what relation does it bear to education in general?ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.2

“Where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding? Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the fowls of the air. Destruction and death say, We have heard the fame thereof with our ears.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.3

“God understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof.... When he made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder: then did he see it, and declare it; he prepared it, yea, and searched it out. And unto man he said, Behold! the fear of the Lord, THAT IS WISDOM; and to depart from evil is understanding.” Job 28:12-28.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.4

It is certain, then, that the fear of the Lord was an essential part of the education in the schools of the prophets. This, in itself, required that the revelation which God had given of himself should be studied, that they might truly know the true God and his attributes. For they could not fear—reverence—him unless they knew him. And in studying the revelation which the Lord had given, this, of itself, was the study of the sacred writings,—the books of Moses and the writings of the other prophets.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.5

As “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,” it is certain that wisdom was the leading subject of study in the schools of the prophets. It preceded every other study. More than this, it not only preceded every other study; but it was the leading element, the guiding principle, in every other study. And as the knowledge of God is essential to the fear of God, and the certain knowledge of God is attained only by the revelation that he has given of himself and of his attributes, it is certain that the Holy Scriptures were the essential basis of all studies, the guide in every course of investigation, and the ultimate test of every inquiry.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.6

Wisdom is “the fear of the Lord,” and “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” All that any person can possibly know in this world without the fear of the Lord, will in “a little time,” vanish forevermore: while he who knows the fear of the Lord will abide forevermore; that which he learns in accordance with the fear of the Lord will also, with him, abide forevermore; and forevermore there is open to him the wide universe, with all its possibilities for the increase of knowledge. Thus he who has the fear of the Lord has also, in that, for an eternity, all things else: while whatever else he might have without the fear of God, he would not really have even that; because in a little while all that, with himself, must vanish. Thus in the very nature of things, the fear of the Lord is the most important of all things, and is therefore properly the beginning of knowledge as well as of everything else.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.7

There is another very important sense in which the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: unless a person knows a thing right, he is not certain of his knowledge nor of himself in it. Certitude is essential to genuine knowledge. “Knowledge” that is derived from guesses is not true knowledge; it is but a guess. For all that can ever be derived from a guess, is a guess. “Knowledge” that is gathered from a “working hypothesis” is not genuine knowledge. All that can ever be evolved from a hypothesis, “working” or other, is a hypothesis. With all such “knowledge” there goes a “painful uncertainty” and also the consciousness of it, which of itself vitiates every essential quality of it as being real knowledge. Such learning the scripture aptly describes as “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.8

On the other hand, however, he who begins with the fear of the Lord, he who begins with the knowledge of God and with knowledge obtained from God, begins with the truth. The knowledge of God is the knowledge of the truth; for he is the truth. Knowledge obtained from God is itself truth; for it is given by the Spirit, which is only “the Spirit of truth,” through the Word, which also is only “the truth.” Thus he who begins with the knowledge and fear of God begins with the truth; and all that he ever learns, being learned upon this basis, and measured, weighed, and tested by this supreme standard, will be only the truth. This itself is the detector of error and the test of truth; he therefore rejects the error and accepts only the truth, and so learns only the truth. And thus, though also ever learning, he is ever learning in the knowledge of the truth,—not ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge truth,—for he begins only with the truth, and learns only the truth, and so is ever learning in the knowledge of the truth.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 108.9

It will not do to say that this is impossible,—that there was never any such learning, and never any such teaching in the world. There has been just such teaching and just such learning in the world. Just such teaching was in the schools of the prophets, and just such learning was that of Daniel. And this record of Daniel and of the schools of the prophets was written to tell us of just such teaching and of such learning as that. It was true of others besides Daniel, as we shall see later; but if it were true only of Daniel, the fact that it was regarded by the Lord “for our learning” is sufficient proof that such learning is not impossible for us.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 109.1

We have seen, by the Word, that the Holy Spirit was the great Teacher in the schools of the prophets, which were but the models of all of the Lord’s schools; that is, of all Christian schools. And it is written to us, in the words of the Lord Jesus, that he, “the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, ... shall teach you ALL THINGS.” And he is only “the Spirit of truth.” Being only the Spirit of truth, it is impossible for him to teach anything but the truth. Then whosoever begins every study in the fear of the Lord, with the Spirit of truth as his teacher, and the word of truth as his supreme standard, and learns faithfully from these, will ever learn only in the knowledge of the truth.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 109.2

Thus it is that in the most vital sense “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” And this is why it is that wisdom—the fear of the Lord—Had the precedence in every line of study in the Lord’s schools.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 109.3

It must be borne in mind, too, that the fear of the Lord was distinctly taught there. The teaching of theology, or things about the Lord. The fear of the Lord itself, as a distinctive thing in the individual experience, was taught. The students were instructed as to what the fear of the Lord is, how to approach unto him, how to pray to him, how to submit themselves to him, how to commune with him, how to court his Holy Spirit, how to be led of the Spirit, how to live with God, how to walk with him, how to have the Lord dwell in their lives, how to know that they were ever in his presence, how to have him their companion in everything that they did in their daily lives,—in short, how to glorify God in body, soul, and spirit, in every thought and word and deed.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 109.4

All this is the teaching of wisdom. Wisdom was the chief and all-pervading subject of study in the Lord’s school. And Daniel is presented to us as a sample of what such teaching will produce. Let such teaching pervade again the Lord’s schools, and Daniels will be again produced.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 109.5

“Editorial Notes” The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald 75, 7, pp. 109, 110.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, with his usual wisdom, says: “Mental development alone will not give us what we want; but mental development, tied to hand and heart training, will be the salvation of the negro.” Yes; and it will be the salvation of other people just as well.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 109.1

Again, he says: “Mental development is a good thing. Gold is also a good thing, but gold is worthless without opportunity to make it touch the world of trade. Education increases an individual’s wants many fold. It is cruel in many cases to increase the wants of the black youth by mental development alone, without at the same time increasing his ability to supply these increased wants along lines at which he can find employment.” And it is just as cruel to do that to the white youth as it is to the black.ARSH February 15, 1898, page 109.2

“Success and Happiness” The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald 75, 7, p. 110.

“THAT intense feeling that something has got to be done, is the thing that works the doing. I never met a great man who was born rich. I am sure it is quite often more difficult to rise with money than without it,” well says Joseph Choate, the leading lawyer of the American bar. And in the following passage from an interview with the same gentleman, published in that excellent magazine, Success, is the most intelligent and best definition of “success” and “happiness” that we have ever seen:—ARSH February 15, 1898, page 110.1

“You have had long years of distinction and comfort; do you find that success brings content and happiness?”ARSH February 15, 1898, page 110.2

“Well,” he answered, contracting his brows with legal severity, “constant labor is happiness, and success simply means ability to do more labor,—more deeds far-reaching in their power and effect. Such success brings about as much happiness as the world provides.”ARSH February 15, 1898, page 110.3

“I mean,” I explained, “the fruits of that which is conventionally accepted as success,—few hours of toil, a luxuriously furnished home, hosts of friends, the applause of the people, sumptuous repasts, and content in idleness, knowing that enough has been done.”ARSH February 15, 1898, page 110.4

“We never know that enough has been done,” said the lawyer. “All this sounds pleasant, but the truth is that the men whose efforts have made such things possible for themselves are the very last to desire them. You have described what appeals to the idler, the energyless dreamer, the fashionable dawdler, the listless voluptuary. Enjoyment of such things would sap the strength and deaden the ambition of a Lincoln. The man who has attained to the position where these things are possible is the one whose life has been a constant refutation of the need of these things. he is the one who has abstained, who has conserved his mental and physical strength by living a simple and frugal life. He has not taken more than he needed, and never, if possible, less. His enjoyment has been in working. I guarantee that you will find successful men ever is to be plain-mannered persons, of simple tastes, to whom sumptuous repasts are a bore, and luxury a thing apart. They may live surrounded by these things, but personally they take little interest in them, knowing them to be mere trappings, which neither add to, nor detract from, character.”ARSH February 15, 1898, page 110.5

February 8, 1898

February 22, 1898