Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/104

 78 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO largest ever offered by any Baptist for any cause, the grandeur of the under- taking, the greatest Baptists have ever attempted, the imperial promise of the institution when finished, the appalling destitution it will relieve, the present stress of the occasion, the measureless issues that hang trembling in the balance, all these things and many others clothe the subject with resistless attraction. We beg pastors not to be deterred from presenting this theme by the knowledge that their churches are too poor to help. Present it without making an appeal, if necessary. Anyhow present it. December was now near its close and the pastors and outside churches were not yet responding in any hopeful way. The appeal of Mr. Gates addressed directly to pastors in an article toward the end of the month contained the following : .... The issue of the whole enterprise now depends on whether the brethren outside this city will pledge one hundred thousand dollars rather than see the great undertaking fall to the ground in failure. We ask, therefore, every pastor living between Ohio and the Rocky Mountains to preach one sermon to his people on Christian education during the month of January. [The foregoing sentence was printed in capital letters.] Since we do not insist that an appeal for money shall accompany the sermon in every case we are bold to urge the sermon itself on every pastor without exception. Preach the sermon, dear pastor, whether your church be in city or country, whether it be large or small, rich or poor, self-supporting or dependent, in debt or out of debt, building, not building, or about to build, favorable to education or opposed to education. Preach the sermon, whether you have been long in the field, or are a new comer, or about to retire. Preach the sermon if your salary is in arrears and the finances are lagging. Contribute to the cause of Christian culture one sermon, contribute the sermon if your people will give, contribute it if they will not give. Preach with an appeal if possible, without it if neces- sary. In any case, we beg of you, preach the sermon. Evidences now began to indicate that the pastors were respond- ing to these urgent appeals. They were themselves astonished at the results following the presentation of the cause to their people. Some churches took public subscriptions. Some appointed com- mittees to canvass the congregation. Encouraging subscriptions began to be reported to the secretaries. On February 18, 1890, they were able to say to the readers of their appeals, We have thus far received from the Northwest outside Chicago about thirty thousand dollars. If we can secure seventy thousand more outside the city our success will be assured. The following is from a brother living in Kansas, to whom personally we have never appealed either verbally or by