July 1931
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ATHEISM’S ADVANCE./)
STUDENTS . By GEORGE T. B. DAVIS, Philadelphia, Pa.
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ago, in a city in the great Northwest, I was conducting a revival campaign in a large tabernacle. One night, I dis missed the crowd and started out of the building. A feeble old man came down the aisle and took me by the hand. ‘I would like to speak to you a minute, Brother Bob,’ he said with a trembling voice. “ ‘All right,’ I replied, T will be glad to talk with you.’ “He looked at me a minute and then said, ‘Let me get where I can prop against the wall, for I am feeble and old and trembly in the knees.’ We walked down the aisle toward the door, and he leaned his old stooped shoulders against the wall. “ ‘Brother Bob,’ he began, ‘I am an old superannuated minister of the gospel. I came to the great Northwest as a missionary. It has been nearly sixty years now since I arrived in this country. When I came here I brought my bride. Oh, how happy we were! We were young and everything was beautiful. We were happy in God’s work. “ ‘After I began my ministry here in the Northwest, it occurred to my wife and me that our denomination had no school anywhere in this section of the country. We preachers had a conference. We said, “We must build a church school, so that we can educate our own children.” We perfected the plan. I subscribed a hundred dollars a year. You know I never made over a thousand dollars a year at preaching. My dear sweet wife made her pledge, and though she was not strong physically, she did her own washing and saved the money to give to the school. We had only one child, a boy. “The old man’s face lighted as he continued. ‘He was a great boy—bright, clean, obedient, Christian. He grad uated from high school with honors. We were proud of him. He was president of the young people’s society in my church. He prayed in public. Everybody said he was an ideal preacher. “ ‘The day came when he was to go to college. It was the happiest day of my life. Wife and I stood on the front step and kissed our darling boy good by. We both cried. We didn’t cry because we were sad. We cried because we were proud of our boy. He looked so manly and clean as he went out the gate, and his shoulders were so broad, and he was so erect. That night, wife and I knelt together by the bed to pray. I put my arm around
tragic situation exists today in the universities, colleges, and schools of the United States and Canada. During the past few years, infidelity, agnosticism, and atheism have been making rapid gains in many of our educational institutions. The result is that multitudes of students are either wavering in their faith, or have fully renounced their former beliefs. The student publication of the University of Toronto recently declared that a majority of the students were “practical atheists.” A person connected with a large college for boys in an Eastern state said a few weeks ago that most of the boys in the school were infidels or athe ists. Forty girls in a single society in a leading college in the South declared their disbelief in God. Such con ditions are fast becoming typical rather than exceptional. A certain atheistic association is securing the names of students in colleges and schools and is sending to them its pernicious, soul-destroying literature. Shall we sit idly by and allow pur young men and women and boys and girls —the flower of our lands—to be lured to destruction, and not lift a finger in their defense ? God forbid! In the Word of God we read that “when the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him.” So, in this hour of crisis in the schools of our lands, a significant campaign has just been inaugurated to help in checking atheism in the col leges and in seeking to win the students to a saving knowl edge of Christ. The new movement is known as The Million Testaments Campaign for Students in the United States and Canada. The aim is to present, carefully and prayerfully, a million attractive New Testaments to the students in the universities, colleges, and schools of both countries; and to have the Word watered by such a mighty volume of believing prayer,' that revivals will sweep through hundreds of educational institutions, and thou sands of students will be born into the kingdom of God. T h e T ragedy of I t In speaking to a group of men in Philadelphia, Rev. R. R. (Bob) Jones, President of the Bob Jones College, deeply stirred his audience by a portrayal of the infidel and atheistic conditions existing at the present time in the schools of the United States. In the course of his ad
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dress, he told how large num bers of young men and women from g o d l y homes are hav ing their faith in God wreck ed by the at mosphere a n d te a c h in g of many of o u r s c h o o l s . He said: “Some time
her, and she put her little frail arm around me, a n d I prayed something like this: “Our Fa ther, we thank Thee that we h a v e a s a f e place to edu cate o u r boy. We need not
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