Mr. Mescherski, who is chief of one of the departments of agriculture, and one of the principal advocates of school gardens in Russia, has stated the object of school gardens and their significance as follows: “School gardens ... are of importance on the following grounds. (1) Hygienic, as being a place for physical labor in the open air, so necessary for the teacher and pupils.... (2) Scientific educational, as acquainting children with the life of useful plants, developing their minds by the study of nature, and promoting in the rising generation a regard for labor and a more moral and æsthetic sentiment concerning trees. (3) General economical ... and (4) personal economical,” which refers to the support of the teacher. [Sidenote: Christians should encourage rural life] If the Russian government, on the liberation of its serfs and its crown peasants, found it so greatly to its advantage to establish school gardens, of what lasting benefit would they be to Christians! Protestants, instead of crowding into the cities where the laboring man is subject to the trades unions, trusts, and monopolies, should seek for themselves a few acres of land, and should see that schools are established for the education of their children where the mechanical text-book grind is replaced by the study of God’s will as revealed in His Word and works. Nature studies thus conducted, instead of developing doubt, will strengthen the faith of the pupil, and the students from such schools will be fitted for citizenship not only in the governments of earth but in the Kingdom of God. This also is a part of the system of instruction known as Christian education. XVII CHRISTIAN EDUCATION (Continued) [Sidenote: Education defined by Pestalozzi] The nineteenth century has not been lacking in minds which have grasped, at least in part, the principles of Christian education. Thus writes Pestalozzi: “Sound education stands before me symbolized by a tree planted near fertilizing waters.... In the newborn child are hidden those faculties which are to unfold during life. The individual and separate organs of his being form themselves gradually into an harmonic whole, and _build up humanity in the image of God_.”[184] With this agrees Milton’s definition of education. “The end, then, of learning,” he says, “is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love Him, to imitate Him, to be like Him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, _which being united to the heavenly grace of faith_, makes up the highest perfection.” This is similar to the definition given by the author of “Christian Education,” that “the true object of education is to restore the image of God in the soul.”