Another noticeable fact is that release from bondage was always heralded by two reforms. For instance, before deliverance from Babylon, Daniel was raised up to give the people instruction in health reform and educational reform. These two always accompany each other. The one affects the body, preparing it to become the temple of the Holy Ghost; the other turns the mind toward truth, that the Spirit of God may think through it. A body purified by right living, and a mind trained according to the laws of Christian education, brings an experience such as Daniel had.[30] That he lived on a plane above the majority of men is evident; for “I, Daniel, alone saw the vision: for the men that were with me saw not the vision.” What to Daniel was the voice of God those whose ears were not in tune with the Infinite heard as thunder or as an earthquake. It had been the privilege of all to see and hear as Daniel saw and heard, but they chose a coarser life, a slower vibratory existence, where the mental strain was less, and the heart strings were looser. It was easier to keep in tune with Egypt or Babylon than with the God of heaven. And when the Son of Man was born, he found it hard to select even a small company whose lives were in harmony with His own. Israel’s education was a spiritual education. Her King was to set up a spiritual kingdom in the hearts of a people spiritualized by the presence of truth. It was the same system which had been delivered by Christ to Adam; the same by which Abraham was taught; and what was not accomplished in the ages past will be accomplished by Christian education in the days preparatory to His second coming. VII THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM OF THE PAGAN WORLD God called Israel to become a nation of teachers, and gave them statutes and judgments which, when made the basis of the educational systems, tended to make of the nation a peculiar people, a nation of priests, a spiritual race, thereby constituting them the leading people of the world. From what did he call them?—“The Lord hath taken you, and brought you forth out of the _iron furnace, OUT OF EGYPT_.”[31] And again, “Out of Egypt have I called my Son.”[32] Egypt stands as a personification of the heathen world, and its very name means darkness. The dark mantle of paganism has ever obstructed the bright shining of the light of truth. As Israel’s power, physical, intellectual, and political, was derived from, and depended upon, her system of education, so it would be but natural to suppose that the opposing power of paganism would possess educational ideas, and be controlled by a system of instruction in harmony with its practices. Or, to state it more logically, we necessarily conclude that the pagan world rested upon a distinct system of education, and that the customs and practices of pagan nations were the result of the educational ideas which they advocated.