p. 15 | A Great Opportunity by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 26, 1916

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 43, No. 38.

A Great Opportunity

By Editor

SEVERAL articles in this issue make mention of the Loma Linda College of Medical Evangelists. The institution is not so well known as it should be. And were it more widely known, it would be much more highly prized; for all who know the true character of the institution — its high aims and splendid achievements — are glad to render it every assistance within their power.

The men and women who are at the head of this College of Medical Evangelists have before them the high aim of giving to young men and women such a training in the medical profession as will fit them to go as physicians and nurses to the various foreign fields where such workers can do the highest service for God and humanity. The Christian doctor, accompanied by the Christian nurse, can enter such fields as India, China, many portions of Africa, and other similar countries, and do a work that no other gospel laborer can perform.

The great need of these backward peoples strongly appeals to true-hearted Christians whenever they know the facts; and it is to meet the needs of these great fields, that the medical school has been established at Loma Linda. It is being equipped to give the highest training in the scientific studies that are needed by the up-to-date physician. But the atmosphere of the institution, while charged with this spirit of scientific achievement, is also permeated with the spirit of missionary zeal that would lead young men and women to do earnest service for Christ in these needy lands.

While the institution has a hospital at Loma Linda that is sufficient for all of the local needs there, yet to meet the government's regulations governing medical schools, a hospital is required in a large city like Los Angeles, where access can be had to all classes of patients, especially among the poor and needy, to show the students how, in actual practice, to treat the different forms of disease.

A block of ground has been purchased and paid for in the city of Los Angeles; but a large sum of money must be raised to erect a suitable hospital on this ground, so that the college at Loma Linda may have the hospital facilities required for giving the necessary training to its students.

Some benevolent and progressive persons a few months ago suggested the idea of building such a hospital as a memorial to the late Mrs. Ellen G. White; and Sabbath, October 14, has been designated as "Memorial Hospital Day." The plan is that this day shall be especially set apart by the friends of the institution to donate funds for the erection of this hospital, and not only that they will make these donations themselves, but that they will use their best endeavors to get as many persons as possible interested in a substantial way in this worthy enterprise.

There is no benevolent institution anywhere that offers better prospects for investment with the assurance that there will be good returns in the way of service rendered to needy humanity throughout the world. There are many medical institutions of various classes; but the institution at Loma Linda is the one institution devoted exclusively to training doctors to the highest point of scientific attainment, with the thought also that they shall be evangelists who will labor in the great needy heathen world. Some of the physicians trained in this school, to be sure, will be needed in countries outside of heathendom; but the great thought is that men may be trained to carry to the heathen the enlightenment of Christendom.

Those who have means that they can invest in benevolent enterprises should give the institution at Loma Linda their most careful consideration.