When I was about fifteen years of age I was converted and joined Big Oak Christian Church in Moore County, North Carolina. At the age of about seventeen I felt the divine call into the gospel ministry. I made known to the Lord my willingness to obey the heavenly vision. But I could not see how I could prepare myself for so great a work as I did not have any money. Neither was my father able to help me in a financial way. I was then working at public work and the money that I earned was being used to help support the large family to which I belonged, there being nine boys and four girls in our family.
However, I told my father of my desires and how that I desired to become a preacher some day. He told me that if I could make my own way through school he would let me go then, even though I had not reached the age of my freedom. I appreciated this kindness of my father very much. He was always good to us boys, and so was mother. But they were poor and I knew they needed my wages, at least until I was twenty-one. I knew I was no better than my other brothers, and I also knew that my father was not able to treat us all so nicely as to let us quit working for him before we were twenty-one years old. Hence I felt it best to work on with him until I reached that age, which I did.
On my twenty-first birthday the “boss man” paid me off and I carried the money to my father and gave it to him. I then began to work for myself and to plan to go to school. I worked at a shingle mill for two months, saving in that time about $30.00. I then left home for school. I had about fifteen dollars when I got to the first school I attended which was Why Not Academy in Randolph County, N. C., it being conducted at that time by Professor G. F. Garner. Here I kept “bachelor’s hall,” doing my own cooking and cutting wood on Saturdays to help defray my expenses.
While here I began to correspond with the President of Elon College, Elon College, N. C. This institution belongs to my own denomination and I decided that I wanted to study there. I had no money with which to pay my expenses, but I had some good friends who loaned me enough money to start to college on. So I entered Elon College. I was timid, dull, and embarrassed, but I know God had called me to a great work and that call included a preparation. I was willing to make the sacrifice. Those things with which I busied myself in the afternoons were chopping wood, cutting corn, and cleaning off the town cemetery. I kept up this work for the first year. The second year my conference licensed me to preach and I was called as pastor of two churches. After this I made my way through college by doing pastoral work. It was hard on me, but I believe it was God’s way of helping me through college.
My college career was one of hard work and much toil. In fact it was a miracle that I got through at all. And I am convinced that if a man has a noble purpose prompting him to strive for an education, he can get it.
Elon College, N. C.
DETERMINATION AND STEADFASTNESS WINS.
J. R. MOSLEY, L.I., B.S., M.S., PH.D.
My observation and experience has been that anyone who is anxious enough for a knowledge and culture to be willing to sacrifice false pride, and do well whatever his hands find to do that needs doing, can easily go through college, and even take advanced university training. It is not so much a question of money as desire, determination and steadfastness. The only exception is where one is bound by higher duties, such as caring for parents, or any call from the Divine that is direct and immediate.
When I started to college in the fall of 1889, I only had, of my own making, a little more than enough money to buy necessary clothing and railroad fare from Statesville, N. C., to Nashville, Tenn. I had stood the competitive examination for a scholarship at Peabody College for Teachers and that paid two hundred dollars a year in addition to free tuition.
Major Finger, who was then Superintendent of Education for North Carolina, wrote me that while others had won the scholarships open to North Carolina for that year, I was prepared to enter the sophomore class at Peabody, and that if I would pay my expenses one year, he would, upon the recommendation of the President, appoint me to a scholarship which would be good for two years. When mother saw my heart was set on going to college, she said, “Rufus shall go if we have to sell the creek field.” As I was the fourth child of a family of eight children, and as we were not through paying for the whole farm, I could not accept such a sacrifice.