Bulletin of the Joint Committee on Endowment, 2, number 6, December 1912

IN

OF* THE

Joint Committee on Endowment

Published Monthly at Columbia, S. C, by the Joint Committee on

Endowment of the Presbyterian College of South Carolina,

Chicora College and Columbia Theological Seminary.

Entered as second-class matter June 27, 1911, at the postoffice at Columbia,
S. C, under the Act of July 16, 1894.

Vol. II. DECEMBER, 1912. No. 6.

FAREWELL.

In July, 1911, we began publishing the Bulletin for the purpose
of giving publicity to the campaign then being launched to raise a
fund of $200,000 for our three educational institutions and for
eighteen months the little publication has gone on its errand, telling
the Presbyterians of the Synod of South Carolina, and some others,
of the progress of the enterprise. Now that the "Simultaneous
Canvass" by presbyteries is over and the fund well nigh completed
the little paper has served its purpose, and so will be discontinued.

We have sought to give the widest possible publicity to the cam-
paign, desiring that our people should know what we were doing,
why and how we were doing it, and also the results of their com-
bined efforts. Now that the Bulletin is to be no longer published
we will substitute for it a letter to the churches to keep them
informed of the further progress of our enterprise, until the work
is brought to a successful completion. This letter will be sent to all
the pastors of the Synod, and also to the clerks of the sessions of
those churches that are without a pastor.

BULLETIN OF THE JOINT COMMITTEE.

Financial Results.

Of course you want' to know how the subscriptions stand. Here
is a statement by Presbyteries :

29 churches of Pee Dee Presbytery have subscribed. . . .$ 25,000

23 churches of Piedmont Presbytery have subscribed. . . 9,550
45 churches and the two colleges of Enoree Presbytery

have subscribed 47,706

47 churches of Bethel Presbytery have subscribed 37,916

26 churches of South Carolina Presbytery have subscribed 11,926

35 churches of Harmony Presbytery have subscribed. . . . 20,115
14 churches and the Seminary of Charleston Presbytery

have subscribed 22,440

219 churches of the Synod have subscribed $174,653

Thus it is seen that a little more than $25,000 is needed to com-
plete the fund to $200,000.

The raising of this balance presents a task to the Presbyterians
of South Carolina that is fraught with large interests and grave
responsibilities. In no little way are we facing a crisis. We said
we were going to raise $200,000. The major portion of this has
been subscribed. We are under obligation to get the balance. Can
we do it?

The committee in charge of the campaign think we can do
you? From the first we have had faith in the ultimate success
of the enterprise, and now we must press on until our efforts are
crowned with complete victory.

The Plan of Procedure to CompeETE the Task.

It is not surprising that in employing the simultaneous canvass
method that some churches did not find it convenient to co-operate
or that other churches did not operate the scheme at the time fixed
with entire success.

It is the purpose of the committee to now go back to these
churches and request them to help by using the old method of
making, or allowing to be made, a canvass of the membership by
a few individuals. The committee will prosecute this method just
as rapidly and vigorously as it can.

We believe the churches that have not yet done their part are
interested and loyal, and that now, when their help is needed and
will count for so much, that they will gladly join hands with the
others and contribute to this great enterprise. In addition we will

BULLETIN OF THE JOINT COMMITTEE.

likely call upon certain individuals, members of our Church above
the average in wealth, to make a subscription in addition to what
they have given through their church. In these two ways we hope
to soon complete the fund to $200,000.00.

Additional Results.

While the financial results of the campaign are large, there are
others that are by no means small.

It is certain that the Presbyterians of South Carolina know more
about their three institutions of higher learning, their past history,
their present condition, and their prospects and needs than ever
before, and with the increased knowledge has come increased
interest and loyalty. The schools have a larger place in the minds
and hearts of the people than ever. They will pray for them more
intelligently and earnestly and support them more willingly and
generously.

The presidents of the institutions, two of them having assumed
their new duties near the beginning of the campaign, returning to
us from other Synods, have had an unsurpassed opportunity of
meeting large numbers of the Church in a most delightful way.

This campaign has been a great getting together of the Church,
and it will not soon forget the pleasure it has enjoyed nor lose
the blessing it has received by the united service it has rendered.
May this be but the beginning of a better day, a day of increased
effort and larger fruitfulness, for our beloved Church.

The Worth of a Christian College.

In the Youth's Companion of January 2d there is a most interest-
ing article by the late Wm. T. Snead, in which he says :

"On what trifles, seemingly as light as air, do the destinies of
nations hang ! Between fifty and sixty years ago the Eastern world
was convulsed with war. Six nations sent their sons to fight and
die in the Crimea in order to secure forever the integrity of the
Ottoman Empire. While they were thus engaged * * * it so hap-
pened that one fine day an American citizen, named Robert, saw a
boat cross the Bosporus to Scutari laden with loaves of bread that
seemed to have been baked in an American oven. Attracted by the
homelike appearance of the loaves, he inquired whence they came.
He was told that Mr. Hamlin, an American missionary, who kept a
school at a village called Bebeck, had a contract to supply Florence
Nightingale's hospital with bread, and that these loaves were baked
by his pupils.

4 BULLETIN OF THE JOINT COMMITTEE.

Robert sought out this pastor, who was combining the supply of
the bread of earth with that of the bread of heaven, liked him, and
fired by his zeal and enthusiasm, gave him thirty thousand dollars
with which. to found an American college in Turkey.

It was only a trifling sum, but it has produced and is producing
more wide-reaching and permanent results than the thousand
million dollars that the European nations were then lavishing on
their armies in the Crimea. For that small endowment was like
the grain of mustard seed in the parable. In the college thus
founded were reared and trained on American principles the men
who twenty years afterward destroyed the integrity of the great
Ottoman Empire by founding the principality, now the kingdom, of
Bulgaria, which is today the most thriving, the most advanced and
the most powerful of all the Balkan States.

There are not so many Bulgarian students in Robert College now.
The men trained there have founded schools and colleges in their
own country. Out of a total revenue of thirty-five million dollars
Bulgaria spends on education every year four million dollars not
a bad return for the thirty thousand dollars of American money
given by Christopher Robert in 1856.

It is not a small thing to have laid the foundation of a new State,
to have given shape to the latent aspirations of a nationality and
that is what the Americans did when they cradled the Bulgarian
kingdom in the classrooms of Robert College. Even greater work
than this they have done and are doing.

Great Britain, absorbed in diplomatic, naval and military affairs,
has spent untold millions of dollars in propping up the political
system established in the East. But today you look in vain for any
lasting trace of good resulting from all her sacrifices. The Ameri-
can government, on the other hand, has spent nothing, and has
accomplished nothing. But private American citizens, subscribing
out of their own pockets sums that in fifty years might perhaps have
equaled the amount spent to build one modern ironclad, have left
in every province of the Ottoman Empire the imprint of their intel-
ligence and of their character."

Oh, liberty loving men and women of South Carolina, if you
desire to perpetuate the blessings of a free country and of a free
church, then give your money for Christian education and send your
sons and daughters to Christian schools where the Bible is taught
as the Word of God !

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