p. 17 | Nashville, Tennessee by Stephen N. Haskell

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Jul 28, 1904

Nashville, Tennessee

By Stephen N. Haskell

We have now been in the South about seven months. Five months of this time we have had a house and a family of workers. Sister Wilson, an experienced Bible worker, has labored with us. At the close of the Graysville Academy, eleven young people from the school joined our family. Unfortunately one of them had been exposed to the mumps, while in Graysville, and was taken down with them here, and several of the others took them. This interfered with their work. Some also had to return to their homes on account of the sickness of friends.

There have been sold by our family over thirty-six hundred copies of the special number of the Watchman and the Bible Training School, besides many books and pamphlets. Five hundred periodicals, and over seven thousand pages of tracts were given away during the soldiers’ reunion. Our workers have demonstrated that young men and women in the South, while in training, can support themselves as well as in the North. Among our workers were those who could reach all classes of people.

Our plan of work has been to spend one half of the day in Bible study, and the other half in practical city work. Some have earned as much as two dollars a day in selling publications, others not so much. In all our experience we have never had a company of more devoted Christian workers, or those who have had more thorough Bible instruction in the schools before they came to us. None of these workers were obliged to enter the training-school, but did it from choice, that they might gain an experience in self-supporting missionary work, and obtain a better understanding of the Bible. Some had financial inducements offered them, which would have been far easier and more gratifying to the natural heart than to go out in the hot sun, day after day, and visit from house to house. But in this they have manifested a true missionary spirit. Several of them are holding Bible readings, and are developing into excellent workers.

As soon as the weather was suitable, we expected to pitch a tent, in which Elder Butler and I could hold meetings, but in this we have been sadly disappointed, as we are unable to secure a lot on which to pitch a tent. Yet God has given us several precious souls who have taken their stand for the truth. Some of these are persons of influence. Seeds of truth have been sown in every part of the city.

Other moves have been made during this time which verify the words of encouragement the servant of the Lord has spoken; surely the cloud is lifting in the South. We refer especially to Professors Sutherland and Magan, who came South and purchased over four hundred acres of land on which to establish an industrial school similar to the one at Berrien Springs. It is nine miles from the city of Nashville, bounded on two sides by the Cumberland River. Having purchased this land, friends of the educational reform at once came to their assistance, and made the first payment of five thousand dollars, and I understand provision is made for the payment of the remaining ten thousand, so there will be no necessity for a general call for means to purchase the land. But buildings suitable for school work will have to be erected upon the farm. There is a good-sized house and three barns upon it at present. About one hundred acres of this land is of a superior quality, one hundred acres medium, while another hundred is not so good, some of it being quite poor, giving excellent opportunity to demonstrate what can be done with land when worked according to God’s method. This purchase embraced about two thousand dollars’ worth of personal property, such as farming implements, cattle, horses, etc. They have arranged to begin operation this autumn with a few young people from the North who have a burden for the work, but require training before they are prepared to meet the peculiar condition of things in the South. Those who know most about the South look upon this move as a godsend.

There are many who have come South, but have failed to see accomplished what they expected. This is in part due to the fact of being unprepared to meet the condition of things which exists here.

Small industrial schools should be established all through the South, among the whites and also among the colored people. There are scores of our young people in the North who have a burden to come South, and there is no place more fitting to educate and train these young people for this work than upon the very field and among the very people for whom they are to labor. They then naturally adapt themselves to the peculiar condition of things that exists in the South. Every nation and people in the world has its own peculiar customs, and until we learn to adapt ourselves to them, and see only the salvation of souls, we are not prepared to be successful workers.

We therefore look upon this move as being one of God’s own appointment to do a great work in the Southern field. There are those who have come South who have done a grand and noble work, but many have met with disappointment in not seeing accomplished that which they expected, and some have returned North feeling that the South was a hopeless field, when the failure was because they themselves did not understand how to adapt themselves to the condition which existed in this part of God’s vineyard; for there is a condition of things here that does not exist in any other field in the world that we ever visited. The people are more social than in the North, but they are jealous of their social relations.

There are many who labor in the cause of God successfully under certain circumstances, but when these circumstances are changed, they make a failure. Like Moab, they have been at ease from their youth, and have settled on their lees, and have not been emptied from one vessel to another, and therefore their taste remains with them, and their scent is not changed. Jer. 48:11.

God wants a people at this time who can go anywhere, go out at his bidding, and be simply his hand to carry out his purpose in the closing work of the gospel.

Judging from the present outlook, and from the standpoint of those who best understand the condition of things in the South, and what God has wrought in the last few years, we can only say that most assuredly God is going before us, and “there is a sound of a going in the top of the mulberry trees.” There exists in the South a union of sentiment and purpose among the brethren. The prospect before us at the present time should cause every heart to be of good courage in the Lord.

S. N. HASKELL.