An Appeal to Every True Presbyterian Interested in Higher Christian Education
The Sheldon Jackson College
Salt Lake City, Utah
Solicits the aid of the entire Presbyterian Church in the U.S. of America, and proposes a novel plan for raising $250,000 and giving the donors full and valuable return for these subscriptions in home building sites in Salt Lake City.
Like “Bread cast upon the waters,” your charity is likely to return a hundredfold.
We want all true Presbyterians to give us not only their prayers and moral support but their financial assistance to build this College and aid in rooting out Mormonism, which all Presbyterians must feel is a menace to our Church in Utah, besides being a blot on the bright escutcheon of our enlightened civilization.
There is no place in the country where Presbyterian money will accomplish more for Christian education, by counterbalancing false religion, and giving Christian training to those who will eventually be controlling citizens in a half a dozen States, than by PLANTING A CHRISTIAN COLLEGE AT SALT LAKE CITY.
A Presbyterian College has already been planted here with the approbation of the General Assembly. That College, however, is more in name than reality. While it has its Faculty, and its first class almost ready to graduate, it has no college building. In order to make permanent the mission and educational work of our Church in Utah during the past, a complete Christian College outfit is an imperative necessity. The thousands of young men and women we have taken through the preparatory schools and academies of Utah, must either stop their studies at this point or be turned over to Mormon universities and to the immoral influence of the Mormon Church from which we have rescued them.
We Can and Must Rally Our Own People to the Work that God Has Laid Before Us and Prevent This Calamity.
The Proposed Sheldon Jackson Presbyterian College at Salt Lake City Utah
Officers:
General John Eaton, LL.D., President
Robert G. McNiece, D.D., Dean of Faculty
Rev. Josiah McClain, Secretary
Gull S. Peyton, Treasurer
Trustees of the College:
Rev. S. E. Wishard, D.D., Rev. Geo. W. Martin, Seth H. T. Huse, Gill S. Peyton, Henry G. McMillan, Rev. Wm. M. Paden, D.D., Rev. Sheldon Jackson, D.D., Rev. C. M. Shepherd, V. M. Brown, Edward B. Critchlow, Joseph R. Walker, Rev. N. E. Clemenson, Robert G. McNiece, D.D., Rev. Josiah McClain, Col. Wm. M. Ferry, Walter Murphy (deceased), Albert S. Martin, Rev. Hugh B. McCreery, George Bailey, LL.B.
As is well known, the Mormon Church commences with the Kindergarten school to twist the minds of its little children with its false doctrines. Our missions and preparatory schools gather in many of these children, but for the lack of a Christian College, they are drawn back to the baleful influence of the Mormon universities.
With these facts in view, no Presbyterian in America can refuse us aid in the establishment of this College, knowing that it means the DIRECT SALVATION OF THOUSANDS OF SOULS that would otherwise be perverted to Mormonism.
WE GIVE YOU REAL ESTATE
A valuable piece of property adjoining the College has also been put at the disposal of the College. This has been sub-divided into city building lots. The value of these lots is from $150 to $400 each, according to size, location, etc. Irrigation privileges are included in the deed to the property.
THESE LOTS WILL BE DEEDED FREE OF ALL EXPENSE TO THOSE WHO WISH THEM, WHO DONATE TOWARDS THE BUILDING OF THE COLLEGE THE AMOUNT EQUAL TO THE VALUE OF A LOT.
If you desire to enroll your name among those who will contribute to this noble educational movement, the most practical and efficacious form of Home Missionary Work, SEND YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AT ONCE, and the Board of Trustees will present you with the best lots then remaining, in the order of precedence. As the number of lots is limited, and as there will no doubt be a great demand for them, it is advisable that your contribution reach us as soon as possible.
One of the principal reasons why these lots are presented by the Directors in exchange for subscriptions is the wish of the founders of the College to get as many Presbyterians as possible personally interested in this movement, and it is thought by giving them lots they will have greater personal interest than if they simply donated so much money outright.
All contributions will be immediately acknowledged in this paper.
Subscriptions should be sent by check, New York draft, or express orders to
Rev. THOS. GORDON, D.D.
Financial Agent of the Sheldon Jackson College,
No. 625 F Street, Washington, D.C.
SHELDON JACKSON COLLEGE.
In the future history of Utah this college will have an important part. Its origin is due to that large-hearted pioneer of our Church in the West, Dr. Sheldon Jackson, whose name it fitly bears. In May, 1895, he addressed the following letter to the Presbytery of Utah:
To the Presbytery of Utah:
Dear Brethren: Having in the good providence of God been the first Presbyterian minister to commence missions in Utah, I cannot help being deeply interested in the progress of the work you are so successfully carrying forward in the midst of such great difficulties.
I have sympathetically watched the growth of your school work and your efforts to crown that work with a Christian College. Such an institution seems so essential to the highest success of your efforts that I make you the following propositions:
1st. If the citizens of Salt Lake City will provide not less than fifty acres of land suitable as a site for such a college and in a location acceptable to the trustees of the same; and
2d. If the trustees of the proposed college will legally bind the same in its charter or otherwise (a) To make the Bible a regular text-book in the curriculum of studies. (b) To provide that the college can never be alienated from the work and doctrines of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, as set forth in the standards of said church;
(c) To provide that the institution shall be named and always continue to be known as the “Sheldon Jackson College;” (d) To provide that if at any future time these conditions shall be materially changed the property will be forfeited to the “Board of Aid for Colleges and Academies of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America,”
I will pledge myself and heirs to give towards the endowment of such a college the sum of $50,000, the same to be paid as soon as I can dispose of Washington (D.C.) City real estate to that amount.
I shall promise to raise and pay the salary (not to exceed $1,500 per annum) of the President of the college for a few years until other arrangements can be made, together with necessary traveling expenses for a year or two while he is at work upon an endowment.
Praying that you may have God’s blessing and with wisdom and direction of the Holy Spirit in the founding of the educational institution in the name and for the honor of the Lord Jesus Christ,
I remain your brother in Gospel work,
(Signed) Sheldon Jackson.
The very next day the charter of a college was drawn up, and its incorporation shortly followed. The need of such an institution in Utah and the appropriateness of putting it in Salt Lake City hardly have to be argued.
Utah is soon to become, if not already, one of the greatest of the western states. She comes nearer being self-supporting in a greater variety of products than any other state in the Union. Professor Newberry, who formerly occupied the chair of Geology in Columbia University, and who has made several tours of exploration through this territory, stated that Utah has a larger amount and variety of mineral wealth than any other equal area in the United States. Everything indicates that Utah will soon be filled with a great population. Salt Lake City will soon have a population greater than Denver, Omaha, or Minneapolis have now. With this city as a center, and within a radius of four hundred miles lies about one-third of Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Nevada. Within that circle our Church is not intruding upon ground already occupied by any other Christian College.
There ought to be a Presbyterian College here to secure and make permanent the important results of twenty-five years of extensive educational work by our church. During this time we have spent somewhere about $600,000 for educational work alone. We should have a college to complete the academic system which we have so thoroughly organized throughout the state. We have four academies in Utah, represented by substantial two-story brick buildings, costing on average not less than $12,000 each, and with over five hundred pupils, at Mt. Pleasant, Springville, Logan, and Salt Lake City, the latter the most beautiful and complete school building in Utah. This should in some way be identified with the college, as the preparatory department. In all our schools in Utah, we have not less than twenty-one hundred pupils, and including the states adjoining Utah, the number of our pupils is greatly increased. To have no college in such a centre as this leaves us to the remorseless logic that in our Christian educational work, we either do far too much, or we are not doing enough.
It is of the greatest importance that the friends of Christian education in the Presbyterian Church should establish a college here in order to avert the disaster of having Mormons control the higher education in this important new state. The University of Utah in Salt Lake City, is a Mormon institution, with a Mormon president and faculty, and more than five hundred students. The Agricultural College at Logan has the same Mormon equipment, and over two hundred and fifty students. The Brigham Young College at Logan, with one hundred and fifty students, and the Brigham Young Academy at Provo, with two hundred and fifty students, have the same Mormon outfit.
A Christian College here in Salt Lake City would have as its constituency the state of Utah with its three hundred thousand inhabitants; Idaho, with one hundred thousand inhabitants; Western Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico, with two hundred thousand more.
The General Assembly of 1897 made the following utterance: “The announcement of the opening of Sheldon Jackson College for instruction at Salt Lake City is full of encouragement to every Christian visitor, preacher, teacher in the state. We commend the keeping up of the high-grade work in Salt Lake Institute and the making of the Institute the preparatory department of the college.
Then we shall have on the ground a system of education for all who desire it, standing over against the headquarters of Mormonism. We recommend that in view of the enormous evil which now exists and threatens to invade the peace and purity of our population in Utah, and the surrounding states, that special and earnest efforts be made to arrange for aggressive movements in that section of the country, especially in establishing and maintaining schools. It is therefore for this college, in its needs, in its mission, that we make our earnest appeal to the loyal men and women of the great Presbyterian Church.”
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I Am Aaron Shafovaloff 