General Conference Bulletin, vol. 5
EUROPEAN SCHOOL WORK
A. G. Daniells
A. G. Daniells: I suppose it is about time to close, but in doing so I would like to say just a word regarding the school. First, I would call attention to this last week’s “Review,” which has just come, and it has a very fine article regarding the new British sanitarium. It tells you the whole story, pretty nearly, from beginning to end. Another article, on the school in Great Britain, is one of great interest. This is the second year of its existence. The first year was sixteen weeks. This school year is thirty-eight weeks, and the attendance is seventy. The first year it was about thirty. That is a good record. GCB April 9, 1903, page 140.2
Now the first year they went through the school paid their rent and expenses, their teachers, and closed the school with the ownership of a new typewriter, and with $100 on hand, and not one single penny of indebtedness. And, furthermore, the majority of the students paid their way through the school during the year, or the term, and every one of them came out clear, without owing the school a single penny when they got through. Now, brethren, these little schools mean a great deal to those fields. We will begin to see that a good school can be operated, even if we have no large buildings and large facilities,—good schools. schools in which young men and young women will receive training, good training, for service in the work of God. And that is what we want: that is the end. You take a young man, and no matter whether you have a building of your own, or whether you have large facilities, if you give that young man a knowledge of God’s truth, make him acquainted with the message that he has to proclaim, and turn him out a good worker, you have met the end of the object, the purpose, of a good school, have you not? GCB April 9, 1903, page 140.3
That can be done in these fields without a very great outlay, if we will take hold and give them some assistance. We have an experience of several years’ ago to encourage us in this work. When Elder Matteson was in Denmark, he started a little school, in a little building, with a few young men and young women. He taught them, and he had his associates teach them, and they worked the best they could, and developed a few young persons. Those young persons have come to be valuable workers in the cause of God. Dr. Ottosen is one of them that went to that little school in a private building in Copenhagen. GCB April 9, 1903, page 140.4
Now it seems to me that this is a question that should come before this Conference, and that some encouragement should be given to our missionaries in these foreign fields. GCB April 9, 1903, page 140.5
Professor Wilkinson has been conducting a little school in Paris during the past winter. It is still in session. That means something to France, to gather in the young men and young women in France, as far as possible, and then associate with them some young men who may go from this country to assist in carrying on the work,—to associate them together, as we have in Great Britain,—have them study together, mingle with one another, blend together, and grow up together as workers, and take the field together as workers for the French field. GCB April 9, 1903, page 140.6
Now you take Italy. As you know, we have just started in Rome, down in the city of Rome. Brother Everson and his wife and her sister are now located there, as you will see from this week’s “Review.” It ought not to be very long before Brother Everson will have a little school operating in the city of Rome; if he can only have half a dozen Italians and half a dozen Americans studying together, it can be put to good use. The school can be made a valuable factor in developing the work in Italy. GCB April 9, 1903, page 140.7
Now, brethren, I ask you to think of it: Thirty-one millions of people, only one minister, some thirty or forty Sabbath-keepers. Do you not think that no time should be lost in getting every young man and every young woman in Italy that believes this truth right into a school, and let training be given to them right away from this day? And ought they not to have help from this country? Should we not go to our schools, and select from them the very best young men and young women, gifted along literary lines, linguists naturally, born so, and get those young people to go to Rome to finish their education, three of them, four of them, half a dozen of them, and let them go to Rome, and go to school there in that school with the young Italian Sabbath-keepers? When the vacation comes, let them go to work selling Italian literature, working among the people as missionaries; and when the summer is passed, gather them in, and the next year have another little school for twenty, or thirty, or forty weeks, and center our energies on training those young people to work for the souls of the people of Italy. GCB April 9, 1903, page 140.8
I think that can be done, with less than fifty Sabbath-keepers living in Italy. That sort of work can be done. Please read the article in this week’s “Review” from Professor Wilkinson regarding Spain. Notice this: “After a careful investigation of the present conditions of Spain, which our visit to this land has permitted us to make, we wonder why the messengers who carry the truths of the third angel’s message have not entered this country before. Surely God has gone before us, and doors are standing open in Spain for the entrance of present truth.” Now it will not be long until, very likely, we will want a little school, composed of half a dozen or ten, in Barcelona, Spain. GCB April 9, 1903, page 140.9
I believe that this Conference ought to encourage the British school. I believe that we ought to make provision for the raising of money. Our brethren have worked tremendously hard over there to raise $10,000 for a school, and they have got the money pretty well in hand. We ought to put $10,000 with it, and establish a good school in Great Britain, so that we can make it a “half-way house,” so to speak, for the development of a great army of young people who will pass from there on to the lands that are under the eye of Great Britain. I ask you to think about it. GCB April 9, 1903, page 140.10