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Bible School Students Dismissed One of the most enthusiastic of Finney's holy band was an extraordinary young man named Theodore Weld. Weld had been born in Connecticut in 1803, the son and grandson of Congregational ministers. After his conversion, Weld leaped into a new life of Christian service. Like many in Finney's holy band, he needed the tempering of formal theological study. He enrolled in a Bible school, but his prodigious talents could not be contained. During vacations he rejoined Finney's band of preachers, and he also found time to take up the cause of temperance. His gifts of persuasion were so remarkable that after his sermons, liquor dealers were said to return home and empty their whiskey barrels into the streets. The young preacher's reputation grew, and he was sought out by well-known minters to lead revivals in their towns. But they weren't the only ones who saw promise in Theodore Weld. So did a wealthy Christian benefactor named Lewis Tappan, a New York City merchant and founder of a company that would become know as Dun & Bradstreet. Tappan implored Weld, who was not yet 30 years old, to come to New York and convert the entire city. "Do what may be done elsewhere, and leave this city the headquarters of Satan, and the nation is not saved," Tappan wrote Weld. But Weld insisted that the great West (then Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois) was more important for the future of the gospel and the country. He told Tappan the region needed a seminary. Weld got his way when Tappan arranged the financing for lame Seminary in Cincinnati and, with an eye for quality, searched out the best man he could find to serve as its president. He settled on the Boston pulpiteer and moral reformer Lyman Beecher. Weld was offered a place on the Lane faculty, as professor of sacred rhetoric and oratory, but in characteristic self-effacement he declined. Instead, he enrolled as an ordinary student; along with dozens of the other Finney converts. The Lane Seminary freshman class of 1833 was 93 men strong, the largest and most impressive body of theological student that had ever gathered in America. The Bible School Agitators By drawing those students to Cincinnati, Lane Seminary guaranteed trouble for itself. The city lay on the northern bank of the Ohio River, and on the opposite bank lay the slave state of Kentucky. Although Ohio was free, Cincinnati commerce depended on the goods and services of the slave-owning South, and the slave traders dragged chained escapees through Cincinnati back to the South. The city was also home for more than a third of the 7,500 free blacks in Ohio, most of whom had struggled out of slavery, one way or another. All in all, Cincinnati was a living laboratory for the study of slavery and what it did to people. The Lane Bible school students, zealous with the love of Christ, quickly established relationships with these black residents. For his part, Weld lived, ate, and worshiped in the black community. Weld lost his heart to those people, who were destitute but industrious. He wrote a letter about what he learned: "I visited this week about 30 families and found that some members of more than half these families were still in bondage I found one man paying for his wife and five children; they had just redeemed the last, and had paid for themselves and children $1,400.00. Another woman recently paid the last installment of the purchase money for her husband. She had purchased him by taking in washing, and working late at night, after performing as help at hard work. But I cannot tell half After spending three or four hours and getting facts, I was forced to stop from sheer heartache and agony. The Bible School Slavery Debate The Lane students asked for permission to debate the slavery issue on campus, but Lyman Beecher, Lane's president, demurred. Only a few years before, race riots had broken out in Cincinnati as a result of the white population's increasing nervousness about so many freed slaves living there. The most troubling part was that some of the town's respected citizens, not just riverfront ruffians, were observed in the mob. Beecher was torn between his reformer's heart and his desire to maintain peace. But since Arthur Tappan, the seminary's benefactor, was an ardent abolitionist, Beecher nervously told the students to proceed. For 18 nights, the students gathered to address all aspects of the question. As the debate started, most of them, like Northerners generally, opposed abolition. They thought it sheer madness to suddenly set 2 million illiterate and untrained slaves loose upon the land. Their preferred solution was colonization-an almost totally unworkable scheme by which slave would be banished to the African colony of Liberia. The dominant intellect in the debate was Weld's. He influenced his fellow students not only by his detailed knowledge of slavery but also by his kindness and his willingness to hear all viewpoints. When the dust had settled, he had won the allegiance of the entire student body. Bible School Students Told To Stop Or Face Dismissal The first hint of the troubles that loomed ahead occurred shortly after the Lane students reached their verdict in favor of abolition. The seminary trustees, cowering in the face of the anger rising in Cincinnati from this student "agitation," demanded that all the discussion cease, that the abolition society begun by the students be disbanded, and that the students end their efforts to lift the city's blacks from the oppression of poverty. Do all of this, said the trustees, or face dismissal. In unison, the students resigned and walked out of the seminary. An Excerpt From: Focus On The Family, Why You Can't Stay Silent, A Biblical Mandate To Shape Our Culture, by Tom Minnery, Tyndale House Publishers, Pages 142-145
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