Olivet Nazarene University - Aurora Yearbook (Bourbonnais, IL)

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or I die. Give me souls, or take my soul; that made the Wesleys take their father ' s grave for a rostrum, the blue dome of Heaven for a tabernacle, and the wide world for a parish, and fling the white light of full salvation across the seas and around the globe. A vision ! Every man and movement is insipidly useless without it! It transforms a laggard into a hero, a dead man, a dead insti- tution, or a dead movement into a flame of intellectual and spiri- tual life and efficiency; it awakens every latent and dormant power of a man ' s being, chains them with celestial fire, and puts them on a vigil stretch for the unheard of things. Do we find it necessary to stretch our faith to get a vision for Olivet ? Are there any possibilities there which may be used as a solid foundation on which to erect a superstructure which will be an everlasting monument to the heroic courage, the bleeding sacrifice, and almost divine patient plodding endeavor, and an unconquerable deteimination to win in the face of the heavy odds of our great Nazarene people? Or is the faithful work of years to come suddenly to naught? Indeed, we find it very easy to have a far-reaching vision for this institution. Olivet, beautiful foi situation, the joy of ten thousand people up and down this rich Mississippi valley, and to a great many throughout the whole country! Seventy-five acres of rich, deep, fertile soil, broad sweeps of waving, verdant fields of grass and fragrant flowers, nestling peacefully and securely in the midst of a territory famous for its natural resources and bountiful farm products; near enough to the throbbing commercial centers to make communication and transportation easy, and yet far enough away to escape their alluring and tempting contaminations. Olivet lies like a pearl, pure and gleaming white in its setting of platinum. Could any situation be more glorious; surrounded by a clean little town, made up of godly warm-hearted people, who are Page Eighteen - « mm « l imit) nit) o Diiiu : dm itiiiiiuii known everywhere for their thrift, simplicity of life, and generous hospitality; two great buildings erected with a careful eye to physical and sanitary as ' well as educational requirements, where hundreds have been saved, educated, and called to various places in the great work of God. The above are but a few things which inspire our vision and we feel sure that one does not need to be a prophet or the son of a prophet to foresee for Olivet a future bright with hope and glorious with prospect. We mention just a few of the many things comprehended in our vision for this institution; firstly — Olivet entirely out of debt. Despite the past, with its failures and reverses, the happy day when this great financial burden of One Hundred Thousand Dollars will be removed is near at hand. In fact, thirteen states are already making preparation for the celebration of this momentous and culminative event. The gathering splendors of this long- looked-for victory already illumine the horizon with ten thous- and streams of liquid glory. Standing on the tiptoe of expectancy, we salute it and hail its coming with jubilant joy. The happy release from this incarceration of notes, mortgages, and debts will give mighty momentum to this hitherto hindered and handicapped institution; the results of which, as we anticipate them, thrill us with the most exquisite joy. Secondly — A great student body — attracted by the superior advantages of location, equipment, and curriculum. In our soul ' s vision we can see and hear this great body of students thronging the spacious dormitories and. walking to and fro across the great, broad, beautiful campus — hundreds of them with happy, serious, maturing faces, ruddy of cheek, agile of body, keen of intellect, and with a consuming vision spurring them on in their careful, thorough preparation to go out from this sacred spot full of a thousand tender memories to kindle revival flames around the globe. It is not too much to expect that Olivet should have a representative

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M. EDWARD BORDERS, A.B., A.M. Where there is no vision, the people perish. THE wise man in the long ago gave expression to this terse, trite, and unique text. This ancient, yet modern truism is not only applicable to the church but is equally so to an educational institution, and indeed is irrevocably and indispen- sably necessary to progress and attainment along any line of human life. A vis- ion! What wonderful and limitless possibilities are in- volved in this magic word! A man with a burning vis- ion cannot be permanently hampered or hindered by heights of honor, depths of suffering, weights of respon- sibility, by unfavorable location, or lengths and breadths of space. A burning vision will carry one anywhere in God ' s illimitable universe and enable him to accom- plish, in the name of God, anything in the realm of the possible, and many times, what appears to be absolutely the impossible. No man has ever gone beyond the horizon line of his ideals. No one has ever reached the goal of the extraor dinary and the unusual without dreams and visions. Michael Angelo, sitting in his crude studio, in a moment of inspiration, caught a vision of something far in advance of his day. At once he began to chip, chisel, and carve upon an old marble slab taken from the refuse of his back yard; and one day unveiled to an amazed and admiring world a realization of the dream of his heart. It was a vision that enabled the wonderful Raphael to transfer the Madonna of his dreams to the Madonna of his paint brush. What he did back there has endured for three centuries, but his ideal was on the canvas of his great artist ' s heart long befoie it was on the canvas of his easel. Generations have gazed enraptured at the work of this master of art, and have immortalized him, and all because he gave to the world his burning vision. Beethoven tells us of his polished symphony — how that in his dreams he had heaid the music of Heaven and could scarcely trust his trembling hand to write the things that he had seen and heard . It was a vision that enabled England ' s greatest statesman, Gladstone, in the time of a moral and social crisis, to cry out, Ten thousand deaths, ere I stain the purity of my conscience; that made Patrick Henry, the erstwhile store-keeper, in the House of Commons, to shout in the ears of his vacillating colleagues, Give me liberty, or give me death. It was a vision that made John Knox cry, Give me Scotland, Page Seventeen

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— « ' • ■ • ©liftct | - ° ■ - - - 4 in every land. Yes, and this representative a preacher, with a voice lifted in awful authority in defense of the cross and the Christ, and heard in every part of the world. To be sure, these blessed ideals cannot be realized without wading through bitter trials and surmounting fearful difficulties, but we belong to a crowd who do not reckon with the things against us. We reckon only with God. Our liabilities are enormous, but our resources are infinitely exhaustless. There are many dangers to be encountered. Mighty oceans, towering mountains, wide, burning deserts, death, wicked men, malicious devils, earth, and hell are in the way of our young people and our young movement But what of it? As long as God lives and the Book is true, and our great mystic Head is on the throne, we need never fear a calamity or a disaster; but with martyr ' s blood in our veins, and with a deathless heroism throbbing in our breast, we will drive on and conquer on every battlefield. That ' s the kind of a vision we have for every precious young life committed to the care and guardianship of our great Olivet institution. And that is the kind of a vision that every officer and teacher should endeavor to impart to them. To do this, the personnel of the faculty in particular must be such as to not only qualify them to teach from the textbook, but to break the alabaster box containing the precious ointment of their sanctified personalities upon the head and heart of each and every student, leaving upon them, wherever they may go in the world ' s broad field of battle, the distinguishing mark of Olivet, and thus fill the world with the priceless aroma of their incarnated ideals. Thirdly — An Industrial Department. Then again, our vision comprehends for this psychologically located institution, a great industrial department where hundreds of young men and women who possess an insatiate desire for an education and a li fe of well directed service for Jesus Christ, who, not having the means to make this possible, can divide their time between factory or farm and school and so by honest, healthy work obtain an education and realize thus perhaps the dream of their life. We mean a great, well organized, thoroughly systematized, efficiently directed busi- ness project, started and run along correct commercial lines, and on a profit making and paying basis. This is both possible and probable in the future achievements of Olivet. This would mean the salvation and the education of thousands of young people who would otherwise be lost to our movement and to efficient service in saving a lost world. We can easily catch an intelligent vision of such a work in connection with this school, where will be heard the hum and buzz of a busy throb- bing industry, with both the industrial and educational depart- ments like a busy beehive, with no room for drones. We know of scores of young men and women who would hail an institution of this kind with tearful joy. Fourthly — A Distinctive Bible Course. Greater emphasis put on a distinctively Bible course where students who have been deprived of the benefits and blessings of an education and yet who are gifted in exhortation, and who feel the call of God upon them, can come, and in a short time, obtain a working knowledge of grammar and a thorough knowledge of the Bible. Students from this department can be turned out to become veritable cyclones, thundering the terrors of a broken law, the impending judgments and wrath of God, and with streaming eyes, portray the love and mercy of God as vouchsafed to the world in the gift of His son, and thus win hundreds and thousands to Jesus. There is a distres sing need for a department of this kind where young men and women can become conversant with Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Amos, and Malachi, with the Gospels, and the Pauline and Petrine epistles, so that they may illustrate with Bible Page Nineteen