UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY FEB 27 1922 Bulletin of McKendree College BIBLICAL LITERATURE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION RURAL LEADERSHIP OCTOBER, 1921 Vol. X No. 1 Entered, as second-class matter March 3, 1913, at the post office at Lebanon, Illinois, under act of August 12, 1912. Announcement In co-operation with the Board of Home Missions and Church Extension of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Mc- Kendree College offers work in Biblical history and literature, Church history, religious education, community betterment and rural leadership. Under Biblical studies are offered courses in Greek, elementary Hebrew, history, introduction to the writings of the Old and New Testament, oral interpretation of the Bible, and public reading. By arrangement with and under supervision of the Con¬ ference examiners, work is so planned as to enable candidates for the ministry to meet at the same time requirements for graduation from College and entrance requirements of the Conference. Students so desiring can elect a major (at least 28 hours) under the department as follows: Curriculum in Biblical Literature and Religious Education. Freshman Year. Junior Year. Bible 1. 2 . 9 U 2 Bible . . 4 4 English 1, 2 . 3 3 N. T. Greek . . 3 3 Laboratory Science... 5 5 Religious Education.. 2 Foreign Language.... 3 3 or 4 4 Rural Leadership.... 2 History 1, 2. 3 3 Social Science . , 3 3 Electives . 4 4 16 16 or 17-17 - Sophomore Year. 16 16 Bible . 2 2 Senior Year. English Literature 7, 8. 3 3 Bible . . 4 4 Psychology 1 . 3 Philosophy . , 3 3 Social Science (Econ.) 3 Church History .. . 3 3 Education . 3 3 Electives . . 6 6 Physical Training . 1 1 Electives . 4 4 16 16 16 16 Candidates for the ministry are urged to include among their electives an elementary course in Hebrew. If the heginnin g is post- poned until seminary days, the chances are that the study will not be taken up. V] D‘ 1 L { Ub XH6 Following the lead of the “Country Life Movement” and the finding of the “Rural Leaders’ Council,” the following course is proposed. The program for the first two years is ready. Freshman Year. Bible 1, 2. 2 2 English 1, 2. 3 3 Laboratory Science. 5 5 Foreign Language. 3 3 History 1, 2. 3 3 Total .16 16 Sophomore Year. English Literature 7, 8. 3 3 Psychology . 3 Educational Psychology. 3 Sociology . 3 Rural Sociology. 3 Rural lr olitics. 3 Religious Education. 3 Public Speaking. 2 2 Electives . 2 2 Total .16 16 Junior Year. American Literature. 3 3 Social Psychology and Leader- smp . 3 Economics . 3 Rural Economics. 3 Journalism . 2 Community and Neighborhood Co-operation ..'. 3 Community Clinics. 3 Electives . 2 7 Total .18 16 Senior Year. Bible . 2 2 Community Programs. 3 Community Recreations. 3 Rurai Education... 3 Church History. 3 Health, Hygiene, Housing, Sanitation . 3 3 Electives . 5 5 V ■V, Total .16 16 Rural Life Association of the Southern Illinois Con¬ ference, McKendree College co-operating. Purpose: To quicken interest and enthusiasm; to secure co-operation and better organization among workers; to pro¬ mote all agencies that lead to social and religious betterment; and to increase our command of all means to larger and more efficient service. Conference Officers: President, Rev. C. W. Flail, Albion. Secretary-Treasurer, Rev. Orin F. Young, Palestine. Conference Committeemen: Conference, Rev. L. L. Peterson, Mt. Carmel. McKendree College, W. N. Stearns, Lebanon. District Officers: East St. Louis—Rev. C. C. Flail, D. D., President; Rev. C. C. Dawdy, Secretary. Centralia—Rev. Ressho Robertson, D. D., President; Rev. C. R. Yost, Secretary. Olney—Rev. J. B. Stout, President; Rev. G. H. Hall, Secretary. Mt. Carmel—Rev. J. A. Taylor, D. D., President; Rev. W. A. Sharp, Secretary. Carbondale— Institutes: 1. Week-end Institutes, Saturday-Sunday, including work in Bible study, improvement of Sunday-schools, social betterment, teacher-training. Closing lecture illustrated with stereopticon. 2. So far as means at command avail, series of weekly lectures, covering a considerable period and presumably lead¬ ing to examinations and a certificate. 3. Correspondence and visitation by the Director, for the purpose of studying situations and helping in framing plans for work. This work provides valuable laboratory material for class use. 1. Rural Pastors’ School (1921, July 11-30) for three weeks of study—Bible, evangelism, Sunday-schools, rural leadership, recreation and amusement. 2. Epworth League Institute (1921, Aug. 1-1) of the Southern Illinois Conference brings together about four hun¬ dred young people for purpose of study and inspiration. A staff of trained workers provide instruction in Bible, program and methods, missions, organization of local work. 3. Illinois-Missouri Interdenominational School of Mis¬ sions holds annual session (1921, June 14-18) on McKendree grounds. 4. Southern Illinois Conference Candidates’ School (1921, Aug. 1-1), for the preparing Conference entrance examinations. McKendree WORKS eleven months in the year! The College Man in the World Wallace N. Stearns. “No man liveth to himself alone.” This is simple truth plainly stated. Every link in the chain shares the strain, and the failure of any link, however small, is the failure of the chain. No man is so humble a member of society that he is not under bond, or so insignificant as not to be needed. We hear the slogan, “The world in a generation.” We cannot save the world by universals. The salvation of the world is to be wrought by a summation of units. What the world demands in fine is intelligent service, not in some faraway Utopia, but right at hand, at the very task which, if we neglect, some other will perform. In fact, we are face to face, you and I, with this question, “After college, what?” It is the duty of the College to interpret aright to its pupils this problem of life. It is my purpose here to speak of this matter in terms of lives I have known. Four of my friends whose destiny led them at the close of their college careers to little towns, some of them to the hamlets whence they had set out. The great city claimed some of my fellows and fortune favored them. And yet, to my mind, the greatest success has been achieved by these whose lives have been wrought out not into spectacular display, but into abiding results. Three of these classmates represent three as different types as it would be possible to find, opposite in nature, tastes and vocations. Young A came of one of the oldest families of the state; he was heir to honored traditions. Had he wished, he, too, might have gone to the city and won. But a father’s need was his guide, and he went back to the village where the rest of us could find nothing to do. Even meddlesome neighbors won¬ dered how he could ever be content with so little. But he did not go home to sleep. He was a musician; his first act was to organize a quartet. This was not much, but it showed his spirit. There was a vacancy soon in the village schools; he was elected head master. This position he held for twelve years. A disorderly school was brought to time, youngsters were imbued with a spirit of doing something, courses of study were improved, trustees and patrons were won over to higher standards. But this work as an educator did not stop here. The township had been divided into sub-districts, each equipped with tumble-down school house and some of them with indifferent directors and incompetent teachers. It was at the dawn of the consolidated rural school system. The young principal became an advocate, listened to abuse with perfect good nature, bore some humiliating disappointments as a true man knows how, and lived to see vans paid for out of the public funds to carry children from even the remotest country home to the central public school where he himself presided. And children carried new ideas back to their homes and in every place the name of A became a word to be con¬ jured with. The schools of the state at the time were in a sorry plight; a citizen of one city in declining election to the Board of Education said that he was too choice of his company. He was put up for the legislature. He developed a gift for public speaking and he won his fight. He was made chair¬ man of an important educational committee. He framed a bill providing for a small supervising committee of education in each county, in place of the unwieldly local committee made up of men either wholly without interest or with interest more personal than befits public servants. He saw the bill become a law for all the State save five cities where certain opposing forces could not be dislodged. Four years later, but too late for him to know it, these five cities roused from their torpor and joined the procession. The state has been wrought over by the efforts of a small band of heroic men who counted the village principal as their leader. He endured insult, he refused personal advantage, he fought his fight, and he won his victory. A certain man then in office who held him up to contempt has since gone down in humiliating defeat. The shore of Lake Erie had long been a favorite haunt for men of wealth. Mile after mile of lake front has passed into private estates. Our friend saw that the poor man would eventually have to take his bath from some adjacent high tree. With a few sympathetic followers he began to agitate a town¬ ship park. Three thousand dollars was the price. This time the people only made fun of him. But the young apostle traversed the country, and actually got the township bonded for the amount. Today this park is the one spot where three thousand or more people can visit the lake without paying a fee of some sort or taking a risk of ejection. Other townships have followed the example, and these simple playgrounds are to me the most beautiful reserves on the lake front. But this young fellow did not rest here. He took over the village pa¬ per ; he became its editor, and thereby he secured a hearing. He became mayor of the village. Folks began to sit up. They heard of old buildings that were a disgrace to the town, of mud sidewalks, of streets below grade, of disorderly places and crowds; even the best of citizens were fearful now and opposed his measures. But gradually people went over. To¬ day there is hardly a more comely village of its size in the state. Paved walks, telephones, electric lights, fire apparatus, interurban railway, etc., and now citizens are talking of paved streets and more. The old buildings are nearly all gone. Three times have parts of the town been swept by fire, and thrice have risen again. Around the grave of this young man, some three years since, there gathered a notable crowd of college presidents, legis¬ lators, teachers, men of high finance, and laboring men. Every one had lost a friend and every one acknowledged his obliga- tion. And through all those twelve years not one word, spoken or written, had A uttered that could have been used against him. Another man went from the farm, where there is, of course, no chance to do anything. Nevertheless, he achieved the impossible. His home was a little hamlet on the crest of a hill that could boast of the deepest clay in all the country around. But B went back home and commenced work. The land failed, crops failed, farmers were in despair. Buildings went to ruin, cattle were sold, and the few thrifty farmers who stood by confessed that it hardly paid. B had an idea of chem¬ istry. He began to study the soil and concluded that the farmers had been deceived in their fertilizers. He became an agent for fertilizers; he prepared an analysis for a new fertil¬ izer and had it made at his own financial risk. The plan worked, farms improved, crops were better, and this rural Moses is the oracle for the very men who not long ago counted him a fool. B next noticed the isolated life of farmers’ fami¬ lies. He started the idea of a rural telephone. Sixty families gradually ventured in. Today a farmer in that little village can sit by his desk and call up any person as enterprising as himself anywhere in more than thirty townships, and thus transact business without leaving his farm. But, what was worse, the farmers had no money. The next step was a co¬ operative creamery. With the help of a half dozen associates this enterprise was put on foot. Ten years ago the farmer had a precarious income, a pittance just after harvest, and crops were hauled to market, too, over eight miles of the clay roads referred to above. Today every farmer who will may receive a check for his goods every month and he may pay up his bills in the same way. That creamery has transformed the clav- whackers into modern business men. Then B became a machine agent. Farm machinery was brought to his farm. Men came and looked and learned, and they bought the machinery. Grasshopper cultivators and peg- tooth harrows gave place to modern farm machinery and modern methods. New buildings are going up, and farmers’ homes begin to wear a semblance of comfort. Pavements have overcome the horrors of clay roads, and an interurban railway is more than possible that will sweep this once desolate hamlet out into' the life of the world. Time would fail me to speak at such length of the third man. His lot fell in a dead little academy town. He began as a teacher in that academy, and became the principal. He had ideas. After deciding that matters could be no worse, the trustees told him to go ahead and work them out. The young- fellow canvassed the country around, house to house. Pie secured enough students to open the school in the fall. In ten years the buildings were done over, endowments became available, students began to come in of their own accord. Then a renaissance struck the town. Men had gone to adjoin¬ ing towns for fuel or else stolen it from flat cars. A coal yard was started. The owner was C’s man doing business at C’s risk. He became an elder in the church and things began to stir. New furnishings, new organ. He got into local politics. One after another things down town began to take on life. Proxies played the roles, but the young man did the work. Then he acquired more ideas. Something must be done for the tumble- down colleges and academies. C resigned the principalship, became a member of the staff, and started after legislation. He stood for election and went to the legislature. The game is still on, there remains yet much to be done, and there is still woeful need of improvement. But the leaven is working, this young fellow’s ideas are taking shape, and friends of edu¬ cation are hoping they may crystalize into legislation. As for the academy, new buildings, new students and new hopes have given new life and augur well for the future. A fourth man was a clergyman. As a student he had dis¬ tinguished himself as a debater, college orator, chapel choris¬ ter, writer and editor of college periodicals. He was a fine musician and a fair athlete. He had maintained high scholastic standing. Necessity had compelled him to work throughout his college course and as a consequence the young man was possessed of due confidence, enterprise, initiative, and resource¬ fulness. On graduation he was called to a little prairie town, overchurched and surcharged with denominational bitterness born of the fight for existence. In the face of bitter official opposition two of these churches had federated and this young theolog was called to the task of organization. Beginning at the bottom he built up a stock of good-will. He showed an interest in the village schools and became coach for debate and football. He discovered much latent musical ability and built up a choir and ultimately a chorus society that became famous in the state and whose members were invited to other towns to sing. He organized a Commercial Club that gathered in the business men. Attention was called incidentally to dirty alleys and plague spots about town. Streets were cleaned up, unsightly spots became grass plots, tree planting received fresh impetus. People followed up the Church and attended the services. The building was painted and renovated, Sun¬ day-school facilities were added, money became more free for such purposes. Young people caught a larger vision of life and of its duties. When war came more young men went to the front than from any other town of its size in the state. Opposition, of course, never ceased, but the Church grew, people met and came to know and to respect one another more highly, and young people found ways for expending their en¬ ergies. Idle hours came to be wisely invested, and long winter evenings became seasons of profit. The young dominie was accorded a column in the village newspaper, and his weekly message was like a beacon on a lone shore. A village was set in the way of progress; new building's, clean roads, electric lights, and public spirit and pride have been stirred. It does not seem possible that the good people of that town thus roused to a consciousness of themselves can po back to their o old way. Tho he labored unselfishly, our friend became known. Frequent calls came to other fields, and at last it was folly to refuse. In a western city full of the energy and crude¬ ness of a new country he is building a larger structure, to which task we bid him God-speed. 1 have endeavored to show how four young men in their several towns interpreted life and in so doing have accom¬ plished deeds of which older men might feel proud. One such man in every town and the social problem is well on its way toward solution. “What shall I do to he forever known? Thy duty ever. But this full many did who sleep unknown. Never, no never.” “Ere perfect scheme of life thou canst devise Will life be fled, While he who ever acts as conscience cries, Shall live, though dead.”