The London Training-School by William Ambrose Spicer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Oct 27, 1904

The London Training-School

By William Ambrose Spicer

ONLY three years ago the London training-school was opened. Already it has brought new life and vigor into our British work, as young men and women have been sent out from it into the field. Years ago some of us, who worked in Britain, used to dream of a school for workers some day. Now it is a splendid reality. I thanked God for its strong, healthy influence as I saw its mark stamped upon the work during my recent visit to Europe. It has just opened its fourth year in new premises.

The school building is a rented double house, near the Holloway Road, in North London, where our printing-office is. By piercing the partition walls here and there, the building has been excellently adapted to school purposes. I was delighted with the genuinely academic appearance of the chapel and class rooms awaiting the fourth-year students who were beginning to arrive as I left the city. Two young men had just walked in from Wales, canvassing as they journeyed, a distance of ninety miles.

This is essentially a school at work; for nearly every student thus far has had to earn most of his way through school, many by canvassing. It is study and class work all the morning, and then off the students hasten by train, street-car, and omnibus, to their fields for the afternoon canvassing campaign. It is sober, serious business with them; for they must earn their daily bread and living expenses. Then back they come at night, to return to their books.

I do not know that the plan would be practicable as a continuous policy in any other city than mighty London, with its five or six million people within easy access of Holloway. But our friends are working out the problem in London, and the results are manifest. Professor Lacey, formerly of Australia and Healdsburg, has now joined the school staff, and the best and strongest year of the school has opened auspiciously. Professor Salisbury, the principal, writes:—

“We had expected a very good school, perhaps from fifty-five to sixty-five, but we were really surprised to find seventy-five students present themselves for entrance the first morning. Since then, others have come in, and we have applications from some for the last of the month. Our Home is now full, and we have requested many of the older students to get rooms near the school, and to care for themselves. Had we had eighty beds instead of forty, we could easily have filled them.

“We are having beautiful weather, for which I am very thankful, as it gives the canvassing students an opportunity to get acquainted with London before damp weather sets in.

“You will be interested in our plans for the young men who are working

toward the ministry. Those who finish this year and next—eleven in all—are given definite fields of labor. You will see from the inclosed map of London, on which I have marked their fields with red ink, that we are storming the fort from all sides. We are sending Brother Shafer down to Croyden to begin a new effort. Brother Carscallen will continue the work at East Dulwich, taking a hall for Sunday night. Brother Whiteside will assist at Croyden, and help in the Sabbath meetings at Balham. Brother Poley will also assist at Balham. Brother Nickels will begin Sunday night meetings at Forest Gate, and take the Sabbath meetings at Leytonstone. Brethren Brooks and Klough will continue the work at Edmonton, which has been carried on by students this summer, and Brethren A. E. Bates and Douglas Armstrong are to open up work at South Tottenham. Brother O'Donnell is to push the Sabbath-school work, first in the churches about London, and then throughout the South England Conference.”

These names of students and places will be known to few readers on this side, perhaps, but the extract shows vividly how the little school band are indeed surrounding London, north, east, south, and southwest. The work is moving on in all Britain as never before, and our brethren there recognize the training-school as one of the strongest arms of service in the field. We shall hear from this school out in the colonial and over-sea mission fields also; for some of these young people who are working hardest for an education have definitely consecrated their lives to service in the regions beyond when the call comes.

W. A. SPICER.