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Tour Thousand Student Volunteers
OUR THOUSAND “Volunteer” stu
dents! An army of active; earnest, en
ergetic young people, full of all beau
tiful enthusiasms of youth and of all
the noble aspirations that make life
worth living and the world a field of
fruitful labor! A significant sight was
that which met the eyes of the think
ing public during the week just past,
when four thousand of the most prominent young
students from every part of our country and from
many foreign lands, assembled in the great audi
torium at Nashville, Tenn., and voluntarily put
themselves into communion with 11 invisible things
that are,” and by their own act, steadily set aside
diversions, amusements and the usual pleasant rou
tine of college life, to sit for hours in eager listen
ing to the words of teachers, thinkers and workers
in the great cause of Christianity.
The pleasant Southern city seemed filled to over
flowing with this vast concourse of workers, and for
more than an hour before that fixexd for the open
ing of the Convention, the streets leading to the
assembly hall were filled with a steady stream of
people all moving toward the common goal. Young
men and women, in the familiar college cap and
gown or the more conventional attire of our modern
civilization, more mature, though not more earnest,
teachers and leaders also of both sexes, strangers
and visitors alike mingled in the throng in perfect
cordiality of speech and manner. It was character
istic of the assembly that a spirit of universal cour
tesy prevailed and questions were asked and an
swered alike by strangers and by friends.
The hour for the opening of the Convention was
three o’clock on Wednesday afternoon, February
28th, and long before the appointed time, not a sin
gle vacant seat could be found in an auditorium
which seated, at a conservative estimate, more than
five thousand people. Viewed from the platform, tier
on tier of earnest upturned faces, seemed to mingle
in a sort of composite whole, which at the first
.word of the opening speaker, became blended to
gether as though by some magic alchemy of the
spirit—an alchemy whose potent power never wav
ered during all the days that followed when this
same audience sat silent and motionless for six
hours each day for five days, beneath the spell of
a common interest and a common cause.
Strange as it may seem the real meaning of this
vast assemblage was not generally understood
throughout the country, and even in the city of
Nashville itself the question was asked, “What
does this movement really mean?” Therefore, be
fore going more deeply into details of the Conven
tion under consideration, it may be well to briefly
review the
Aim of Such a Convention,
which it is officially stated, is “to bring together
carefully selected delegations of students and pro
fessors from all important institutions of higher
learning in North America and leaders of mission
ary enterprise, both at home and abroad, to con
sider the great problem of the evangelization of
the world, and unitedly to resolve to undertake in
His strength greater things for the extension of
the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.”
The germ of this movement may be traced to a
meeting held in 1886 at the invitation of Mr. Moody
at Mt. Hermon, Mass., which was termed the first
“Student Summer Conference,” and when this con
ference closed, one hundred men had volunteered
for missionary service. This fact soon made the
need felt for definite organization for future work,
which was consummated in 1888, the work being
in the hands of a Supervising Committee, repre
senting the leading student interests in North
America with their 250,000 students. “The Evan
gelization of the World in this Generation” being
The Consecration, the Heart, the Hope of American College Life Assembled in Nashville.
The Golden Age for March 8, 1906.
the watchword of the organization, its purpose was,
and is, to further'in every way an interest in for
eign missions among all Christian students in the
United States and Canada; to enroll a larger num
ber of properly qualified students as volunteers to
meet the demands of missionary societies; to help
all such intending missionaries, and to lay an equal
burden of responsibility on all students who are to
remain as ministers and lay workers at home. Be
fore the recent meeting at Nashville, it has been
recognized that the
Achievements of This Movement
have been to present the claims of world-wide mis
sions in 900 educational institutions of North
America; it has enrolled and aided in the training
of a large force of volunteers, 3,000 of whom have
already entered mission fields from North America
alone; it has stimulated a systematic and thorough
study of missions; has increased the number of
pastors and laymen in the home churches “who
have caught the vision of the missionary oppor
tunity, and have been raised by it;” it has sup
plied during the last eight years, eight secretaries
for seven of the mission boards; it has led many
men and women into the field of home missions;
it has been instrumental in increasing the gifts of
colleges for missions, and has created systematic
giving among the students—in 1904 such contribu
tions amounted to over SBO,OOO, while at the recent
Nashvivlle Convention
Nearly One Hundred Thousand Dollars was
Contributed
by the assembled Convention.
The movement being intercollegiate, it necessarily
brings together many thousand students from the
various colleges throughout the country who would
not otherwise come into any sort of contact, and
being interdenominational and international, its
members are given the great advantages of asso
ciation with representatives of all the great evan
gelical denominations, as well as with fraternal
delegates from the universities and missionary so
cieties of Europe and from the active working fields
of the far East.
The educational advantages of such a Convention
as the one just held, is a feature not to be lightly
regarded, for while contact with new fields of
thought and endeavor is at all times broadening, it
becomes inspiring also when its source is spiritual
as well as intellectual.
So much for the great Student Volunteer Move
ment in general, this review of which it is believed
will assist in a fuller appreciation of the Conven
tion just closed at Nashville. That city was chosen
as the meeting place at this time because of the
Urgent Invitations From its Civic and Religious
Organizations,
and it may be truly said that in no meeting place
was there ever a more generous or more cordial re
ception given to any body of delegates than that
accorded to the members of the Student Volunteer
Convention.
The arrangements were all in the hands of a com
mittee whose able chairman, Mr. John R. Mott,
with his competent assistants, had so perfectly
planned each*detail of the Convention that there
was not a single discordant note, not an evidence
of hurry, of confusion nor of any element save most
perfect order, and the strictest regard to detail.
The general meetings were so arranged that admis
sion was by card, almost exclusively, the holders
of the various cards, such as delegates, press, speak
ers, etc., etc., were admitted by different doors,
each door being guarded by uniformed officers, and
unlike most large Conventions, admission into the
meetings of the Student Volunteers, was regarded
as a privilege, to be valued according to the diffi
culty of its attainment. As soon as the auditorium
was filled, the doors were locked, and not a single
auditor left his seat during the progress of the
meeting.
The hall was most attractively decorated in flags
of the United States and Great Britain, while maps
of the two great nations hung side by side as
though to emphasize the tie of brotherhood between
them.
The Convention was opened by Chairman Mott,
and the vast audience stood and sang “All Hail
the Power of Jesus’ Name.” The singing was a fea
ture of the meeting, a special book of convention
hymns being provided. Chairman Mott’s address
at the opening was most powerful and his conclu
sions most striking. He said that it was the most
REPRESENTATIVE, AND THE LARGEST MIS
SIONARY BODY that had ever been held in all
the world, and that its “possibilities were limit
less.”
Mr. Herbert Speer, secretary of the Presbyterian
Board of Foreign Missions, was the next speaker
at the opening session, and his words were elo
quent and touching—he urged the volunteers to
so “expose their lives to the scrutiny of Christ
that each might be brought where no clouds of sin
hide the beauty of His face.”
It would be of interest to follow step by step
and day by day the words uttered from the plat
form of this great Convention by speakers who have
made the Movement the “dynamic force” it is,
but space forbids more than the briefest mention
of the speakers as well as fuller reference to the
words of guidance, of wisdom, of experience and of
advice which they so freely uttered.
The second meeting of the Convention was mark
ed by the executive committee report, and by the
most interesting address by Mr. Karl Fries, of
Stockholm, Sweden, who spoke on “Some Facts in
the Missionary Life of the Universities of the Con
tinent.”
Other Speakers of Prominence
were Mr. Wm. Gundert, who brought greetings
from Tubingen, Germany; Mr. G. T. Manley, Edu
cational Secretary of the World’s Missionary So
ciety ; Miss Una M. iSanders, Bishop Thos. F. Gailor,
of Memphis; Sir Mortimer Durand, British Ambas
sador; Jno. W. Foster, J. A. Macdonald, Hon. H.
B. F. McFarland, of the District of Columbia; Mr.
Harlan Page Beach, Educational Secretary of the
Movement, and professor elect of the theory and
practice of missions at Yale; Mr. Donald Fraser,
of British Central Africa; Dr. Herbert Lankaster,
Home Secretary of the Church Missionary Society
of London; Dr. James I. Vance, of Newark, N. J.;
Dr. S. B. Capon, of Boston; Dr. T. P. Haggard,
Corresponding Secretary of the American Baptist
Missionary Union; President John F. Goucher, of
the Woman’s College of Baltimore, Md. and Mr.
John W. Wood, of New York.
Dr. Shepard, a colored missionary to Africa, gave
interesting accounts of his personal experiences
in the “wilds of Africa,” while students of India,
China and Japan gave messages and incidents re
garding their work in the various districts from
which they came. Mr. V. W. Helm, of Tokio, Japan,
addressed the Convention as representative of the
League in Japan, and presented to the Chairman
a gavel, the head of which was cut from a tree at
the home of Joseph H. Nesema, the great Japanese
patriot and educator. Mr. Helm is foreign secretary
ot the International Committee of the Young Men’s
Christian Association, and brought a message from
the students in Japan. There are sixty-two of these
associations in Japan, and their work and impor
tance was briefly but interestingly reviewed by
Mr. Helm.
While each d,ay of the Convention was marked
by the immense general meetings held at 9:30 a. m.,
(Continued on page 5.)
