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The Schools and the Missions

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 1, 1906

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 83, No. 44.

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The Schools and the Missions

By W. A. Spicer

THE sound of that educational convention at College View, which proved to be first of all a missionary convention, has gone out to our furthermost mission fields. It was a joyful sound, for it meant recruits for the missions. It cheers the hearts of our missionaries to know that the teachers, who have the training of the youth, have their eyes also upon the fields. I know this, for I was with some of our workers in mission fields when the report of that strong movement among the schools came over the sea.
We know that the stand the teachers have taken means more than enthusiasm for missions. It means downright hard work and thorough training of our missionaries. The product of our schools must be hardened, sensible, steady plodding workers, ready to go and do for the Lord. To put briefly just one phase of our mission problem: We are getting where the call comes more and more urgently for thoroughly trained students—with the fervor and spirit of missions in every fiber of their being, yet young people who can master hard tasks—to go out into various lands to grapple with the learning of most difficult languages. We are sadly lacking just here. The hardening in study that equips for such work is really the training needed by the ministerial worker everywhere, at home or abroad.
It is a grand spectacle to get a perspective view of our educational system,—the church-school, the intermediate school, and the higher training college,—all teaching the missionary idea, and the finishing of this work, with the world-wide field stretching before them. As intermediate schools develop promising young workers, perhaps youth who have their eyes upon the ministry, I hope conferences will encourage such to go straight on into the higher schools, and resist the temptation to secure immediate service at the expense of more thorough equipment.
The connection between the intermediate and the higher school must not be weakened. Just here is one of the most important points in our educational system, it seems to me. The mission fields want to see strongly equipped students going into home conference service, for they look to the home conferences to test and develop such and pass them on.
W. A. SPICER.