p. 17 | The Great Industrial School of the Day

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 11, 1910

The Great Industrial School of the Day

By Bessie M. De Graw

TO-DAY God has a people in training for his coming kingdom, and his training is carried on in much the same way that it was in the days of Moses. A great industrial school is his chosen means of developing workers, and the South is one of the training-grounds.

Many of our people read the instruction in the Testimonies concerning the South, and their hearts are touched. They come to see that they are standing idle in the market-place, and they call out for work. Then the finger of God points to a great unworked field lying just at our door, and says, “Go work to-day.” He wants us to work for the good we can do others, but beyond that he wants us to enter the South because of the character development we ourselves will get out of it. We need the South more than the South needs us.

For a number of years I have been closely associated with an ever-increasing number of persons, mature and young alike, heads of families and unmarried men and women; and while I might tell of many things accomplished by them, I could also tell of many things done for them.

Let me take you to visit a school. The young man in charge was formerly a competent mechanic in a Northern city. He made good wages and lived well. To-day I find him planning, working, teaching,—a mature, solid Christian,—carrying on a small self-supporting school. He lives in a very humble cottage; his wife has but the simplest facilities. Both are giving their lives for a cause, and there is in them a firmness of fiber that never comes in a life spent in self-seeking.

In another school I find a minister and his family. He left a good, salaried position when he came South, to go on a farm in a neighborhood of uneducated people. A school is conducted. By day and by night the candle of truth is kept burning. The boys in the family are developing the farm, introducing better seed, better methods of cultivating, showing better crops. Those boys might be in an easier place, but father, mother, sons, and daughters are together building for eternity. I might tell you big results from such sacrifice. Souls are being brought to a knowledge of the truth. But better yet, that whole family is in God’s great industrial school preparing for Canaan.

It requires real conversion to enter this work; but when it is once entered, there is a joy in it that seldom comes otherwise.

Regarding the amount still to be done, there is a call for hundreds of students in this great Southern university of hard knocks and self-support. It is an institution where theory and practise are combined. All about us are people who need to be taught.

The call comes to you. Do you care to respond? There is a place for the man of learning, and a place for the man who has not had all the advantages of an education. There is room for the farmer, the mechanic, the tradesman.

One of the best ways for those at a distance to learn of the needs of the South is to attend a convention held periodically at the Nashville Agricultural and Normal Institute. The next meeting of this character will be at Madison, Tenn., August 27-31. If you wish further information, write early, and reading-matter will be sent. Plan to look into the situation with a view to doing what God would have you do.

For convention literature, address E. A. Sutherland, Madison, Tenn.

BESSIE M. DE GRAW.