INTERLUDE.
BEFORE entering upon the subsequent history of the College, this writer would take this occasion to refer to one of many omissions, which he has noted in revising the pages already printed, a point of special interest and importance. This is the religious element in Randolph-Macon College.
The College was the child of the Methodist Church, established, in large measure, to educate young men for the ministry in accordance with the ideas and usages of the church of that day. Religion was the first and foremost consideration—religion as taught and emphasized by the Methodist Church—religion allied with education. At the first opening of the College a chaplain was appointed for it by the Conference, a man who was as complete a model of the Methodist minister as could be found, William B. Rowzie, a walking, living epistle of Christ, "known and read of all men." One better than he could not have been found to inaugurate the religious life of the College.
Never in the history of the church in Virginia has Methodism, in its spirit and economy, been more thoroughly exemplified than it has been at Randolph-Macon. The morning and evening sacrifice of prayer and praise noted every day of work. Preaching in the chapel was had twice on Sabbath and prayer service was held on Wednesday evenings. Students were required to attend morning and evening prayer and Sunday morning service. Besides this, the members of the church were organized into classes with leaders, according to Methodist usage, and class-meetings were regularly held once a week. Thus was exhibited a complete practical example of Methodist economy as prescribed in the Discipline. The result and fruit of this work was a high state of religious life. Every year, or oftener, this life took the form of great religious activity, and sweeping revivals occurred, bringing well-nigh all in the College and many outside under spiritual influence, and many converts into the church. There were few years, if any, when some such revival did not take place. Of many it could be said, "This and that man was born there"; many who not only became Christians themselves, but went forth from the College to preach the gospel throughout the Southern land. Many here were drilled in Methodist usages, and thus prepared to become class leaders, stewards and Sunday-school teachers and superintendents after they left College. A large proportion of these became presidents of colleges and principals of high schools and academies, in which they inaugurated the same system of "religion in earnest." These schools shared the same benign and gracious influences, and in turn became "fountains in the desert," from whence "streams broke out," reaching even to the ends of the earth, "making glad the city of our God," and causing "the wilderness to bloom and blossom as the rose."
It may be thought strange that fathers belonging to other churches and others not religious were ever found sending their sons to a college which was thus permeated with religious life as taught and practiced by Methodists. But in many cases they did send them.
This writer, whose acquaintance with the College extends over a period of nearly sixty years, makes bold to say that he has never known a student to change his church membership during all that time and become a Methodist. He has known class-leaders who had been at home Presbyterians and Episcopalians, but after leaving College they resumed their work in their fathers' churches, none the worse for having for a time worked in "Methodist traces."
As to calculating the ultimate effects of all these causes and influences in time and eternity, it were as vain to try to calculate or measure them as it would be
"To bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades
Or loose the bands of Orion."