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June 30 - In Search of Proper Education-5

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How much better is it to get wisdom than gold! Prov. 16:16.

Battle Creek College, as we saw yesterday, failed to meet the expectations of its founders. Not only did it have the classical languages and literatures at its center, but Bible study and religion found scant place in the school's offerings. In fact, it had no regular religion courses, let alone required ones. While it is true that Uriah Smith hobbled over on his one real leg to provide some dusty elective lectures on Bible prophecy, it appears that he didn't have a large number of takers.

The college catalogues advertised that "there is nothing in the course of study, or in the rules and practices of discipline, that is in the least denominational or sectarian. The Bible courses are before a class of only those who attend them from choice." Again, "the managers of this college have no disposition to urge upon students sectarian views, or to give such views any prominence in their shcool work." Such was the birth of Seventh-day Adventist higher education.

But it got worse. Brownsberger resigned in 1881 and the school replaced him with Alexander McLearn, who arrived in Battle Creek with the advantage of having an exalted Doctor of Divinity degree, but the disadvangage of not being an Adventist or of being a recent convert.

Brownsberger may not have understood the needs of a genuinely Adventist education, but McLearn didn't even understand Adventism. He may have been an excellent academic, but under his leadership things went from bad to worse.

The institution closed its doors for the 1882-1883 school year with no certainty that it would reopen. So much for the first attempt at Adventist highger education. One of the Battle Creek newspapers characterized the Adventists debacle as "the west end circus."

It was into the mess of the McLearn leadership that Ellen White waded with a testimony entitled "Our College," a paper read in College Hall in December 1881 before the combined ecclesiastical and educational leadership of the denomination. And she didn't mince any words. "There is danger," she began, "that our college will be turned away from its original design"(5T 21).

This sad history can teach us something important. It is all too easy for us to think that the church has run continually downhill from its founding. Not so. The church has always had problems. It always will. But God didn't give up on it. That's the way He is. He works with less-than-perfect people and less-than-ideal institutions. God continues on even after we are willing to give up.

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That's the way He is. . .

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