The South is Ready for Rural Schools by Edward Alexander Sutherland

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 25, 1916

The South is Ready for Rural Schools

By Edward Alexander Sutherland

For years we have been told that the time has come for the third angel’s message to be carried to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people. A great work has already begun, but we are now down at the very close of this world’s history, when this work calls for a great laymen’s movement. Thousands of families will be moved upon by the Spirit of God to settle in the waste places of the earth. Farmers, financiers, builders, and those skilled in the various arts and crafts, filled with the love of God, will go to neglected fields to improve the land, to establish industries, and to prepare humble homes for themselves, at the same time giving the truth to their neighbors. “This is the work we are called to do. Even the desert places of the earth, where the outlook appears to be forbidding, may become as the garden of God.”

As the people of God allow his Spirit to take more complete possession of them, there will be a breaking away from those things that have bound them, such as homes, friends, and pleasant church relations. There will be less desire to seek those things that please only the physical and the intellectual man. Plans, homes, friends, means, worldly opportunities,—all will be laid upon the altar, in order that the individual may enter those fields that will yield the largest harvest of souls.

Some of our people have had a foretaste of this experience in their endeavor to develop the rural school work of the South. Families have left the comforts of life in their Northern homes, where they enjoyed splendid church privileges and other advantages. They have gone out into regions where the truth was not known. They have planted little schools, missionary centers; they have lived the truth before their neighbors. They have carried out the principles of reform for which we as a people stand. And while many of these people had little practical experience in working for souls before they came South, they are making a deep impression here.

In a meeting attended by presidents of normal schools, colleges, and universities, State superintendents of public instruction, and other leading educational men from nearly every State in the Union, which was held last year, a well-known educator talked about what he had seen in the rural schools of the South conducted by Seventh-day Adventists. He told those present that if they wanted to come in touch with the genuine teaching spirit and with the sacrifice that is essential to the success of the rural schools, they should visit some of our schools. Such favorable mention of the work of these obscure teachers is one of God’s ways of bringing divine principles before the world. The result is not due to the great wisdom and intellectual power of these workers. It comes by recognizing a great principle, and then losing self in the attempt to develop a work that God says the world needs. The rural school should be the entering wedge into hundreds and thousands of communities to prepare people for advanced light.

To show you that the workers in these rural schools have made some impression for the truth, note the following words, written by Dr. Claxton, United States Commissioner of Education, as an introduction to “Men of the Mountains,” a book which describes Madison and the rural school work:— “The smaller schools maintained by the Seventh-day Adventists, described in the latter part of this book, are not so well known by the outside world. Indeed, they are hardly known by the people who live a few miles away. Yet a careful study of these schools, their spirit and methods, their accomplishments and the hold that they have on the people of the communities in which they are located, as well as of the earnest and self-sacrificing zeal of their teachers, has led me to believe that they are better adapted to the needs of the people they serve than most other schools in this section. They have discovered and adapted in the most practical way the vital principles of education too often neglected.

“I can never forget the summer day of 1913 when, in company with Dr. Sutherland and Dr. Magan, of the school and rural sanitarium at Madison, Tenn., I first visited some of these schools and learned how thoroughly they had adapted themselves to the conditions and needs of the people. I am sure they are worthy of the most careful study of all who are interested in adapting schools of whatever kind to the needs of the people of all this mountain section and of all the Southern mountain countries, and that they contain valuable lessons for the improvement of rural schools in all parts of the United States.”

These words should encourage hundreds of Seventh-day Adventists now practically idle in the market place to enter this long-neglected field. A hundred mature men and women should be ready to begin this kind of work next fall. The Southern conferences are ready to cooperate with those who are prepared. If the Spirit of the Lord calls you to take up this work, do not delay, but at once plan for a preparation. The summer term at Madison gives a special, brief preparation for rural school work in the South. E. A. SUTHERLAND.