Present Need in Christian Education
By C. C. Lewis
A BROTHER writes to me, stating that where he lives, there is a settlement of Sabbath keepers with twenty-five or thirty children, and they want a school. They have organized a district school, and all the directors are our own people. But they begin to have fears that by using the State books and being debarred from teaching the Bible and the special truths for these days, they will fail to meet the demands of the Lord upon them to provide a Christian education for their children. They ask if it is possible to secure a teacher. They do not have much money, being new settlers; but they raise plenty of produce, and have an abundance of land to give for the establishment of an industrial school. In reply I told him that they might well have misgivings with reference to their proposed Seventh-day Adventist public school. I have seen several churches go through this experience, and always with sad results. Sooner or later they see the necessity of a church school, with no entangling alliance with the State; and when they try to change to such a school, there is friction with those in the church who think the old way is19good enough. Better start right, and have no wrong stitches to unravel. As for the teacher, I am new in the field, and cannot now place my finger on the man and his wife adapted to the place. But I have an abiding faith in the statement on page 109, Vol. VI, of “Testimonies for the Church,” which says that God has such workers in preparation, and that they will appear when the church opens the way. Another brother writes me for a man and his wife to take charge of a small intermediate school, teaching the classes, and making a home for a few students who could come from surrounding churches. These calls emphasize the need for fifty or more men and women to attend the Walla Walla College the coming year to prepare themselves to take charge of the church and intermediate industrial schools which our people in the Northwest are ready to start as soon as suitable teachers can be secured. And our call is not simply for young people without experience. We need many of these, to be sure, to spend two or three years in thorough preparation for openings that are sure to be waiting for them at the end of their course. But we also need especially just now men and their wives who can be fitted by a year’s work to take charge of industrial schools. Men in middle life who have good sense and Bible religion, and have made a success in financial matters,—men who can take a farm and make a small school pay expenses upon it from the start. Such men are more difficult to find than mere teachers. The church is calling for them; Walla Walla College is calling for them; the Lord is calling for them. Let those who in their hearts can, respond, “Here am I, Lord, send me,” write at once to the undersigned at College Place, Wash. C. C. LEWIS, President Walla Walla College.