THE ESTABLISHMENT of Avondale College was a significant development in the rapidly expanding work of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Australia in the final decade of the past century. It was raised up under the direct guidance of Ellen G. White, and from the first reflected very largely the ideals of Christian education that are today acknowledged as the norm of the church's educational philosophy.
One has but to consider the prevailing concept in the later nineties of what education involved to appreciate the profound break with tradition that the founding fathers of Adventism were called to make. In Australia at the time, as also in the United States and Great Britain, the essence of education (apart from the three R's for the "lower orders") was a humanist-oriented classicism. It is true that the rapidly rising scientific thrust of the later nineteenth century had begun to make its impact and that such "progressive" educational philosophers as Herbert Spencer had sought, by invoking the "insights" of the Darwinian doctrine of man, to create a more contemporary outlook. But by and large the high schools and grammar schools of the day existed to prepare those who had the brains for university if their families could afford to send them to these privileged institutions of learning! (The primary schools, be it noted, were simply to train "artisans," "operatives," and "clerks" the "hands" who would eventually be employed in industry and manual labor generally.)
Naturally enough, the subjects studied were such as would be needed in the higher professional brackets: classical languages, philosophy, literature, history (with the strongest "constitutional" overtones), physics, chemistry, geography, and biology. Oh, yes, in church-related schools religion was studied--"divinity," it was called--just another subject in the curriculum! The whole scheme, for sure, was very traditional, very smug, and very stultifying!
Fresh Breeze Inspired by Spirit
But now in the Seventh-day Adventist Church a new fresh breeze, inspired by the Spirit of God, began to stir, as Ellen G. White brought message after mes sage to the leaders of the church, enshrining a new philosophy of education, and outlining for them a program that would involve the establishment of schools and colleges which would need to be conducted quite differently from the established seats of learning of the day, and which would foster curricula that would prepare students not merely the privileged few, but all children and youth in all walks of life--for LIFE--life now and in the ages to come!
It was all so very challenging indeed, many considered it so utterly radical that for long enough very little real progress was made in implementing the "blueprint" of Christian education with which the church was being entrusted.
One of the great opportunities came when Ellen G. White spent a period of missionary service in Australia.
In the opinion of this writer, no one has ever told the story of the beginnings of Avondale College more effectively than Arthur Grosvenor Daniells, the man on whose shoulders fell the task of leading the earliest Adventist community in Australia and of implementing the counsel that he received from Ellen G. White respecting the establishment of educational facilities in this country.
"Our work began in Australia in 1885," he wrote, "when Pastors Haskell, Corliss, and Israel, also Brethren Henry Scott and William Arnold, came to this field. Mrs. Daniells and I arrived in New Zealand in November, 1886. Sister White, her son W. C. White, and a number of other workers came here in the latter part of 1891.
"By that time we must have had nearly a thousand Sabbath-keepers in Australia and New Zealand. Among them was a large number of fine young people. They had a great desire to take part in the proclamation of our message. But they were without the education and training which they felt they needed, and we had no educational facilities here with which to help them. So great was their burden to obtain the needed prep aration for service, that several had crossed the Pacific to attend our schools in America.
"By the time Sister White came, others were preparing to leave for the schools in the States. Thus we faced not only the loss of their influence in our young churches but also the financial burden of their travel and their schooling. It was estimated that by the time these twenty or more young people had all returned to Australia, their expenses would have mounted to six or eight thousand pounds sterling. Nevertheless, we felt that we must continue that expensive program, for we saw no possibility of establishing a school in this country in the very near future.
"On the first day of January, 1892, I was elected president of the Australian Conference, and before the year was half gone a message came from Sister White stating that the Lord would have us establish a school for the education of our Australasian youth. This message was most welcome, but at that time it gave us most serious perplexity, for it demanded great things from a constituency small in numbers and poor in this world's goods.
"After a great deal of study and counsel we decided to start an 'Australasian Bible School' in the city of Melbourne. We rented two houses in St. George's Terrace, in St. Kilda Road. We then notified all our people regarding our plans for the school, and suggested that all who desired to avail them selves of its advantages should begin immediately to prepare for entrance.
"The first term of this school was held in the year 1892. As I recall, there were between twenty-five and thirty students present. Their ages ranged from fifteen to fifty years.
"At the opening service, Sister White was present and gave us an inspiring address. After speaking to us in a very direct way regarding the occasion, she seemed to lose sight of her immediate surroundings and directed our attention to the great mission fields to the north and east and west of us the unentered portions of Australasia, the Polynesian Is lands, India, South America, and Africa. Some of these great fields our message had not yet entered, while in some of them we were just making a beginning.
"We were told most clearly and forcibly that a great work would yet be carried on in all these fields. To our amazement she assured us that what had been developed in North America would be repeated in all those lands. She astonished us more than ever by saying that young people who received their training in the Australasian school would be sent as missionaries to the lands mentioned.
"Personally, I was overwhelmed by the great scope of activity and development revealed to us. To enter those countries, learn the difficult languages, make disciples, organize churches, establish schools, printing houses, and medical institutions in short, to duplicate what had then been developed in North America and to send missionaries from our little Australasian school to help do it, seemed like the wildest kind of speculation. My poor mind was too narrow and my vision too short to follow such a great sweep of advance.
"But I have lived to see those staggering predictions fulfilled. Our work is now firmly established in India, Burma, Malaysia, China, Japan, Korea, the Philip pines to the north and east of Australia, and in many of the Polynesian Islands. A great work is being done in South America and Africa. What we had developed in North America in 1892 is practically duplicated in all these fields. And young men and women have gone from the Australian College to every one of these mission fields save, possibly, to South America." --Avondale College Document File 170, 1894.
A fine beginning had been made. Indeed, the next year the enlarged enrollment in the school made it necessary for an additional house to be rented in St. George's Terrace, but the school was not that of the blueprint! For while these earliest operations we;re in hand, counsel continued to be received that the school in St. Kilda Road was not the kind of school that was to be permanently established in Australia. The permanent school, Ellen G. White pointed out, was to be located in a rural district away from the cities. She wrote:
"Where shall our Australian Bible School be located? . . . Never can the proper education be given to the youth in this country, or any other country, unless they are separated a wide distance from the cities." --Fundamentals of Christian Education, p. 310.
"We need schools in this country to educate children and youth that they may be masters of labor, and not slaves of labor." --Ibid., p. 314.
"Manual occupation for the youth is essential. The mind is not to be constantly taxed to the neglect of the physical powers. The ignorance of physiology, and a neglect to observe the laws of health, have brought many to the grave who might have lived to labor and study intelligently." --Ibid., p. 321.
"Habits of industry will be found an important aid to the youth in resisting temptation. Here is opened a field to give vent to their pent-up energies, that, if not expended in useful employment, will be a continual source of trial to themselves and to their teachers. Many kinds of labor adapted to different persons may be devised. But the working of the land will be a special blessing to the worker." -Ibid., pp. 322, 323.
In an amazingly short period of time, such a school was established at Cooranbong, about 75 miles north of Sydney, and some 30 miles south of Newcastle. (Note the story of its location on the back cover of this issue.) It was certainly a story of faith and courage, of massive odds, of seemingly insuperable difficulties and of thrilling victories. It revealed and even today the excitement of it strengthens the conviction that the God of Israel was in the project!
Think of it. At the time there was in the whole of Australasia only a token constituency a thousand members, or thereabouts, few of whom possessed any considerable means. The country was in the grip of a financial depression. Where could they hope to obtain the necessary means to establish and support a college? Or, for that matter, even to purchase a suitable location on which to build one? When at last the members of a small committee did find a property they felt they might manage to buy, the reports concerning it and the assessment of its potential were negative.
But this very property, they were told, was the one to which the Lord was leading them! One can appreciate their dilemma as A. G. Daniells and the men associated with him weighed the situation. However, the same God who urged them to move forward, through the ministry of Ellen G. White, supplied all their basic needs, and on April 28, 1897, the first term of the Avondale School (as it was then known) began, with four teachers and ten students in attendance. Before the term closed, the school family had increased to fifty or sixty.
Verdict?
Another decade or two, and the best part of a century will have elapsed since these transactions took place. What verdict has the passage of time passed on the positive predictions made by Ellen G. White?
We can only reiterate, as A. G. Daniells testified in 1928, that the impact of Avondale College has been felt throughout the world wide work of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
The Australasian Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church operates three union missions in the South Pacific area an area that embraces all the developing island communities between Australia and Pitcairn Island and the equator in the north. With but few exceptions, the entire worker force of the church in this area has been trained at Avondale College. In a word, then, the Seventh-day Adventist missionary task force in the South Pacific is the product of Avondale College.
The Australasian Division embraces two union conferences in Australia and New Zealand. Here again, the large contingent of ministers and institutional workers who serve in the various departments of the church have received their preparation at Avondale College.
Ubiquitous
There is a sense, therefore, that Avondale is everywhere in the Australasian field. Visit one of the large cities almost any Sunday night in the year, enter a theater or hall in which an evangelistic campaign is being conducted, and the evangelist will be an Avondale man. Walk into an office of the Sanitarium Health Food Company, and the whole administrative staff, from the manager to the pleasantly spoken receptionist, will be Avondale graduates. Find yourself at some lonely mission station in the highlands of New Guinea or in an even lonelier Pacific atoll, and you will discover that the young missionary and his wife have recently come from Avondale.
What is more, Avondale graduates are now to be found contributing their service to the church in all parts of the world. Unfortunately, no appropriate records have been kept of their dispersal in fields afar, nor at this present time are there any statistics avail able in regard to their current distribution. However, during the period 1897 to 1973 inclusive, almost 3,200 students have graduated from Avondale College.
It is estimated that in excess of 80 per cent of these graduates have entered denominational employment. Some outstanding pioneer missionaries among this group were A. H. Piper, who entered the Cook Islands in 1901; Ella Boyd, an early teaching graduate who began our first church school in Tonga in 1904; S. W. Carr, who went to Fiji about 1905 and later pioneered work in New Guinea in 1908; A. G. Stewart, who located in Fiji in 1907; and Norman Wiles, who went to the New Hebrides to work among the Big Nambus in 1914, and died there in 1920.
It does not require any great imagination to recognize what a powerful impact Avondale College has continued to make upon the shape and image of Adventism in Australasia. "The faith once for all time committed to the saints," as it is shared with students in the classroom, is eventually preached in the churches, proclaimed from the public platform, and passed on in simple Bible studies around the fireside.
The high standards of personal life, moral integrity, and devotion to service, evident in the administrators of the college and the teaching faculty, are duly emulated and become "an aroma of Christ" in every community where Avondale students eventually locate. The challenge of the gospel to all the world in this present age, of which all at Avondale are continually reminded, inspires scores of our splendid young men and women to forgo opportunities of self-advancement in the world to serve instead the cause of Christ.
Avondale! Yes; and behind Avondale the figure of Ellen G. White. Of course, she would have been the last to covet any tribute we might wish to pay her. For she would have disdained any honor attached to her person. Indeed, she would have explained that she was but an instrument an agent used by the Holy Spirit the Lord's messenger to the remnant church.
Her words, she would have told us, were not her own. Listen. "Where shall our Australasian Bible School be located? I was awakened this morning at one o'clock with a heavy burden upon my soul. The subject of education has been presented before me in different lines, in varied aspects, by many illustrations, and with direct specifications, now upon one point, and again upon an other." --Ibid., p. 310.
Avondale College, multiplied a thousandfold in its graduates, is therefore an eloquent memorial of divine leadership in the field of Christian education.
