1905-06 Volume 30 No 1–5 - Phi Delta Theta Scroll Archive

THE SCROLL. 5movement hastening the coming of the much needed college.Seeing the need, an academy was opened and students flockedto it. Its resources, endowments, apparatus and generalequipment were one man and a loom-house. It was enough!Students came in great numbers. There was little place toshelter them, but they found board at fifty cents a week andwere privileged to pay for it by splitting rails. When in1834, after the college had been chartered as "a manuallabor" institution, there were enrolled 236 men, it was amoment of great distress for the authorities. They did notknow where to put them.But friends rose up for the school. Madison presbyteryclaimed it in 1828. The synod adopted it in 1830. Dr.Matthews brought 82,745 and seventy books from Virginia inNovember, 1830, and the theological department, the motherof McCormick Seminary, was born. .And when in 1832 Dr.Blythe, at sixty-seven years of age, after a pastorate of nearlyforty years at Pisgah church in Kentucky, came to assume theoffice of the president of Hanover College, the institution wasat last in connection with human history and going forward toits destiny with strong, steady foot. The great revival of1786 began in the room of President Blythe, then a studentat Hampden-Sydney, \'irginia, and there was not a day duringhis long, brilliant career as preacher and teacher that heforgot the inspiring experiences of that early awakening.The birth of Hanover College at this distance seems tohave been prompt and easy. But we all know that no historianwill ever write down the agonies of self-sacrifice andtell the pains of labor that this college cost its heroic founders.That she survived the vicissitudes of those harsh early yearsis a signal proof of the power of prayer linked to the persistentwork of wise men. After she rose to her feet she haltedand tottered several times, when men thought she was aboutto fall to her final ruin. The old church debates alienatedher friends. Disputes as to location imperiled her. Panicsprostrated her. The civil war overwhelmed her and shookher very foundations. But through all her trials God broughther, and amid a large measure of prosperity. President D. W.Fisher at the recent commencement appointed a committee ofthe board to prepare a worthy celebration of the seventy-fifthanniversary of the college, year after next, and raise on thefoundation of Dr. Crowe's loom-house an additional $200,000for endowment.Nearly 500 men have been graduated from this pioneer