Goodloe Harper Bell The first strong, sound, pro-gressive educational work of Seventh-day Adventists began with the

coming to Battle Creek of Goodloe Harper Bell in 1866. This young married man, thirty-four years od, and largely self-taught, except for some months at Oberlin College, had become an educational figure of some prominence in the early pub-lic school system of Michigan. His first trip to Battle Creek was in company with a friend who was to take treatments at the newly established Health Reform Institute. The next year he carne back for the sake of his own health, which had been undermined by a too rigorous diligence in his studies. He agreed to do light work on the grounds and in the garden of the institute, and as a result greatly improved in health.

The boys of the neighborhood found in Bell a friendly spirit, and they enlisted his services in helping them with their school problems. The White boys, Edson and Willie, mingled with this group about the PIONEER STORIES RETOLE)

grounds, and to their delight they found they couldl learn more about their arithmetic and grammar prob-lems from him than they could from their own scho:'1.-teacher. As a result they appealed to their father to ge: Mr. Bell for their teacher. By this time Goodloe had accepted the Adventist faith, and Eider White, favor-ably impressed with the young pedagogue, and inflr. enced by the representations of his sons, made arrange-ments to have Bell installed in a cottage on Washington Street, where he was to conduct a school. His fame soon spread, and it was not long before the cottage was crowded, and inadequate to carry on the work of the classes.

The General Conference then took an interest, such as they had previously shown in Byington's school, then discontinued. Professor Bell was taken under the wing of the church organization, though his income was still only from tuitions. But a larger building was found for his school. This was no other than the first frame building of the Review and Herald, erected by the funds supplied by Palmer, Kellogg, Smith, and Lyon. The Review and Herald having two brick buildings, and a third in prospect, the little frame house, 20 by 30 feet, had been moved down toward the river, on Washington Street, to the rear of the publishing plant. This two-story building was requisitioned for what is to be re-garded as the first official Seventh-day

Adventist school, the beginning of their later college. The lower floor was used for the school; the upper story housed the family of Professor Bell.

Opening June 3, 1872, the school numbered twelve pupils, but the attendance quickly increased to twenty-ive. Then a night class in grammar took in fifty. When the fall term began, the attendance was so large that the school had to be removed to the new church build-ing, the third at Battle Creek, on the site afterward occupied by the Tabernacle. In this commodious but ill-equipped home it was conducted for more than a year.

The success of this school, under the smile of God and the directives of the Spirit of prophecy, is clearly attributable to the character of the great educator who started the work. Prof. G. H. Bell was no mere peda-gogue. As has been the case with most educational reformers, he was not molded wholly by the conven-tional schools of the period. In the first place, he had been a student at Oberlin College, in Ohio, a pioneer school in educational reform, his family having removed there from the place of his birth, Watertown, New York. The migratory instincts of the eider Bell, like that of many of his neighbors, induced him to re-move to the more virgin land of Michigan when his son Goodloe was only well started on his college course. No such opportunity offered again, but the young man made up by diligent private study for his lack of school-ing, and in that process developed some of the original concepts and methods that he later put into operation so successfully.

He was a friendly man, yet exacting in his teaching requirements. He believed in associating with his stu-dents outside as well as inside the schoolroom. He was thorough in mastery of his subjects, and clear in ex-position. He was open to new ideas; and, very largely under the influence of Mrs. White's suggestions, he instituted new methods of teaching, lessening the burder, of memory work, prescribing persistent investigation and research, and inviting original thinking and expression. In the field of English language and literature he was a forceful innovator; and whereas perhaps his method of teaching grammar and rhetoric might today be thought archaic, it was at least clear-cut, direct, and concise beyond most modern texts. As a guide and interpreter in literature for the Christian student, he was a teacher whose choice and exposition might well be followed more closely by his successors.

Professor Bell was not reluctant to teach children. He was capable of leading mature minds into deep studies, and he did so in his college work; but he began with the children, who loved him, and some of them advanced with him from elementary studies to their college courses. In this he was a worthy example of the true teacher, and his career is a testimonial to the valu of the system that starts the young teacher, either man or woman, with the little child, giving him humility, invention, adaptability, and resourcefulness in meeting minds on more mature levels.

One of the most graphic descriptions of Professor Bell and his work is given by D. W. Reavis in his book I Remember:

"By many of the students in Battle Creek College, Professor Bell was regarded as a severe disciplinaran, a far too stern one in their judgment; but in view of the fact that he had a conglomrate student body, the great majority of whom were full-grown men and women from socially neglected places, who had ac-quired a loose decorum, even severe discipline was necessary if reforms were to be achieved, for some were so calloused in their ways that a mere hint or sug-gestion was not sufficient to work any change in them. In fact, the whole spirit of the entire denomination at that time was reformatory in every detail of life. Strict rules and regulations were established, and all were re-quired to adhere to them without question, if they were to be members in good standing. . . .

"Professor Bell was no more severe in his discipline than he was required to be under the existing circum-stances. To him, through his thorough, hard work, many of the best early workers in the message owe their success. He was an all-round, thorough educator, es-pecially fitted to lay the foundations of our educational work.

"While most disciplinarians stress certain features in their work, Professor Bell was the most complete, all-round teacher of order and general decorum I ever met. Yet even he had his hobbies. He wrote me when he learned I had taken a hard school, and gave me much-appreciated counsel upon successful teaching. He did not wait for me to ask for his suggestions. He proffered them. He said he considered the entire life of his students as an exemplification of his work, of which he was very jealous; that the success of his students was his success, and their failure his failure. Among the many excellent things he cornmanded me to carry out was, first of all, order, with

thoroughness and promptness in every detail. These were his key-stones, reinforced with all the other strength-aiding regulations necessary to being a master in successful educational work. "I had been the recipient of his application of these requirements, and had seen them applied to many others for more than three years. I could fill a goodsized book with the narration of experiences in con-nection with the Bell system of discipline, but I will give only one.

"The ame of each member of all classes was writ-ten on a separate card, and a class number given to that member, which number was the same in all classes to which the member belonged. My class number in Bat-tle Creek College all the time I was there was 150. Each teacher had a student secretary, or general assistant, who called the numbers on these cards in recitations. When a question was asked by the teacher, the secretary called a number. No member ever knew when his or her number would be called, but all who had been long in Professor Bell's classes did know that the instant the number was called, its owner was to be on his or her feet and the answer given promptly.

"Dan T. Jones, who later became secretary of the General Conference, and a life missionary in Mxico, was a schoolmate of mine in boyhood days. He began to keep the Sabbath the year after I left for college. He was the brightest student in our country school, but of a very deliberate nature. He moved slowly, spoke with moderation, and reached all of his conclusions after careful thinking. He was a good Missourian in every way, but grammar and rhetoric were his most difficult studies. All other branches he seemed to understand with but little study.

"He had been in the college only a short time, but long enough to try the patience of Professor Bell in our rhetoric class. He always sat next to me in this class. One day his number was called when he evidently was not expecting it. He was to read quite a long paragraph from the textbook, which was cited in the question. He began to hunt deliberately for that paragraph before he made any move toward getting on his feet. Professor Bell could not tolerate such behavior any longer, and he said, 'Mr. Jones is evidently asleep. Some one please awaken him.'

"Dan said apologetically, without making any effort to get up, 'No, sir; I am not asleep. I am hunting the paragraph.'

"Then Professor Bell tartly replied, 'Hunting! Hunting!! Do people in Missouri hunt sitting down? Are you too weak to get up? Boost him, Brother Reavis, boost him!'

"All of the class looked serious, but I just laughed. My laughing seemingly hurt Dan as much as the professor's sarcastic reproof, and later I had a hard job erasing my offense. But he got over the affair after a time, and materially proted by the experience."

The school that Professor Bell started had been, with the beginning of the fall term of 1873, removed from his charge, and put into the hands of a young gradate of the University of Michigan, Prof. Sidney Brownsberger, though Bell was still employed as a teacher in it. Beginning with the winter term, it was shifted to the new third building of the Review and Herald, while they waited impatiently for the college quarters.

When the college opened in its new home, the irst of 1875, the administration and faculty as namedincluded James White, president; Sidney Brownsberger, principal; Uriah Smith, head o the Bible department; G. H. Bell, head of the English department; and others.

Bell held out for simplicity of teaching, for adapta-tion of the curriculum to the needs of the church, for a literary education influenced by the Bible rather than by pagan authors, for emphasis upon the mother tongue rather than the dead languages, for industrial education in connection with the academic, and for a cise association of teachers and students that approxi-mated the atmosphere of homeall these the subjects of Mrs. White's instruction.

Not only was Professor Bell a leader in educational circles, but he was a worker in the other activities of the church as well. Of his connection with the Sabbath school work one worker said: "From the beginning he exerted a molding influence in the Sabbath school work, serving as recording secretary of the General Association for two terms, and almost continuously upon the

executive committee. However, his greatest work, and that for which thousands hold him in loving remem-brance, is the series of eight little books, entitled, 'Bible Lessons for the Sabbath School.' "

For about two years, from June, 1869, to November, 1871, Professor Bell was editor of the Youth's Instructor. In this capacity he often wrote articles on the advantages and true meaning of education, and con-tinued teaching the school he had begun in Battle Creek. He died in 1899, in his sixty-seventh year, in an accident while driving his spirited horse, of which he was very fond. Thousands of men and women whose lives he touched and inuenced mourned his loss.