Often the future is unknown; therefore, it behooves us to prepare for uncertainties. We must purse an education and learn marketable skills so that, should the situation arise, we are prepared to provide. Education will open the doors of opportunity. As we follow the Lord’s admonition to seek learning, even by study and also by faith, we gain not only knowledge from our study but added light as we learn by faith. We should seek learning by studying diligently. Rarely will we be able to spend as much time dedicated to learning as we can now. The pattern of study we establish during our formal schooling will in large measure affect our lifelong thirst for knowledge. We must get all of the education that we possibly can. Sacrifice anything that is needed to be forfeited to qualify oneself to do the work of this World. Train your minds and hands to become an influence for good as you go forward with your lives. Be a good student. Arise and shine forth in your school with hard work, honesty, and integrity. If we are struggling or discouraged with our performance in school, it is important to seek help from mentors, parents, teachers, and helpful Church members. Never give up! Share your educational goals with your family, friends, and leaders so they can support and encourage you. This is the pattern of personal progress. When I was eight years old I was sent away from home to a boarding school in Sussex called Windlesham Board. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8

Many of the kids were their because their parents lived abroad, sometimes because their parents lived in London and always because people wanted their children to love the fun, friendly atmosphere where they could be encouraged to grow up as the Windlesham Family. On my arrival the first day I was introduced to an older boy, Hugh Stewart, and told that he was to be my moral guidance and would ensure that I gained the most from this unique environment. I said I was not in need of ‘looking after’, and he went away. However, I told a story. I needed it like anything, only not from him. Every night before lights-out in the communal dormitory, the Matron, Miss Chard, would stand in the doorway with an open notebook and ask each boy in turn, ‘Have you managed properly today?’ Each of us regularly said, ‘Yes, Miss Chard.’ But in the early days, when I was missing my parents particularly badly, sometimes I said, ‘No, Miss Chard.’ Usually nothing happened. However, one I said ‘No, Miss Chard’ two nights in a row. Then I asked to present myself in Matron’s room and was given a large spoonful of castor oil. It was only many weeks later that I discovered what Hugh Stewart might have told me, that Miss Chard’s concern was with whether I had moved my bowels that day, not with whether I had been moved to tears of loneliness. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8

It was a great school, where we learned during the day the difference between latitude and longitude, how to decline Greek verbs, about how science is caught rather than taught, we investigated the growth and reproduction of plants, and something about why the stars shine and something about the hearts of men (thought not of women). ‘To be learning something is the greatest of pleasures,’ Aristotle said, ‘not only to be a philosopher but also to the rest of humankind.’ At school we were getting learning in full measure and any of us found it passably pleasurable, dynamic, and interactive. The highlight of the week for all of us was ‘own jams day’, when at high teatime we were allowed the jar of jam that we brought from home. The jam had a nature so tender that it quivered when cut with a spoon and revealed sparkling, ruby-like faces. It was a reminder that someone somewhere cared for us. Most nights (and especially on the nights of own jams days) many of us were so happy we could hardly sleep. ‘With passion’, Klay wrote, ‘I have sought knowledge.’ But with equal passion ‘I have sought love. I have sought it because it relieves loneliness—that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it because in the union of love I have seen, in mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the Heaven that saints and poets have imagined.’ #RandolphHarris 3 of 8

The passions for knowledge and for love cannot be expected to operate with equal strength. In the ideal World pictured by traditional religions—where the more you know, the more you can feel sure of being loved—the two passions compliment each other. However, in the World revealed by science—where the more you know, the less you can feel sure—they pull instead in opposite directions. Where once it was through knowledge, now it is love or knowledge. And, when people have to choose between one or other of these staples, it is pretty obvious what their priorities will be. There is a dilemma posed by scientific progress. People who have been brought up to believe that knowledge and love, explanation and assurance, would go together sometimes have to decide which to cling to: the rationality of scientific truth—the choice that feeds one’s intellect—or the comfortable optimism of traditional religion—the choice that still feels and smells right. Well, we have received the gift of the Holy Ghost and the Holy Ghost will teach us truth and prepare us of life’s challenges. God gave us moral agency and the opportunity to learn whole on Earth, and he has work for us to do. To accomplish this work, we have an individual responsibility to seek learning. We should permit our consciousness to range in the field of greater possibilities. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8

A certain time should be taken each day for the enlargement of consciousness. This is done by reminding our imagination that the field with which it deals is limitless, that the mind is the creator and the sustainer, that mind is infinite, ever available, and always responsive to us. There should never be any sense of finality in our self-discovery No matter how much good we experienced today, we should expect more tomorrow. Expectancy always speeds progress; anticipation of better yet to come helps to dissolve the overload of burdens which we now carry with us. We must learn to loosen our consciousness. Nothing it too good to be true when it comes to God. He never made a promise that was too big to keep. The Kingdom of Harmony is already an ever-present reality, but as far as we are concerned it waits to be perceived, and only as much good can come to us as we mentally receive. We must increase our receptivity, continuously extend and expand our comprehension. We should declare a hundred times a day: Good and more Good is mine. An ever-increasing good is mine. There is no limit to the good which is mine. Everywhere I go I see this good, I feel it, I experience it. It crowds itself against me, flows through me, expresses itself in me, and multiplies itself around me. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8

We have to have as strong a commitment to knowledge as any of our generation. Gaining knowledge now will pay huge dividends. Certainty, certainty, feeling, joy, peace, and greatness of the human soul. Everlasting joy in return for one day’s effort on Earth. It will do you no good in life if you wake up one day, after partying your life away chanting: ‘I am: yet what I a none cares of knows, my friends forsake me like a lost memory, I am the self-consumer of my woes, and yet I am, and live.’ The key to halt the poverty cycle is found in education. People who are educated tend to give birth to healthier babies, have children who are healthier, more confident, resilient and have improved reasoning and judgment. An education is part of nurturing and is a sacred responsibility. Bless your children and your future home by learning as much as you can now. Seek learning by faith. We learn by faith as we diligently gain spiritual knowledge through prayer, scripture study, and obedience and as we seek the guidance of the Holy Ghost, who testifies of all truth. If you do your part to gain knowledge, the Holy Ghost can enlighten your mind. As we strive to keep ourselves worthy, the Holy Ghost will give direction and added light to our learning. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8

Who am I to say what I a really? As the nineteenth century got under way, it became increasingly hard to dispute that science had got the measure of the stars and planets. However, perhaps it could still be argued that science would never get the measure of the human psyche. Are people obliged to take seriously the preposterous claim that human, that inextricable being, has been made known by brain physiology? Would it ever be necessary to accept statements such as this by modern philosopher John Searle: that even the most cursory investigations show that mental phenomena are as much a result of electrochemical processes in the brain as digestion is a result of chemical processes going on in the stomach and the rest of the digestive tract? Or this by the scientist Francis Crick: You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. Alfred Tennyson was sure it would never be so. As he commented sneeringly in In Memoriam: I think we are not wholly brain, magnetic mockers. Not only cunning casts in clay: Let science prove we are, and then what matters Science unto human? #RandolphHarris 7 of 8

Can you imagine the consequences of being deprived of God’s presence and never again having a body? Just imagine how blessed we are to know that God is a being with a body of flesh and bones as tangible as ours, that we can worship a God who is real, who we can understand, and who has shown and revealed himself and his son to his people. He is a God who hears and answers our prayers; a God who watches us from Heaven above and is constantly concerned about or spiritual and temporal well-being. The obvious dangers without God is that, as happened to the state of the Virgin Mary in Hawarden, the tide would come up and carry the said people to some low land where they would be found the next day (or the next decade), drowned and dead. God gives us agency to decide for ourselves to follow him and obey his commandments without coercion. God gives us blessings and allows us to face trials so we can grow and become like him. He is a loving God who provided a plan through which we can enjoy happiness in this life and in eternity. We can be resurrected and, with sincere repentance and the making and keeping of sacred covenants, be once again in the presence of God. “Salvation to come to one who puts trust in the Lord, he will deliver you,” reports Alma 61.13. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8