03 At Furman

Chapter 3 AT FURMAN The following fall John was back in Furman again. The college belongs to that group of small colleges, definitely Christian in purpose, which has produced so much of the finest leadership in America. Its traditions are healthily and honestly religious. It is "a brotherhood for character building and a fellowship in the pursuit of knowledge." Because of the moderate size of the student body there is a real community of interest and the students enter fully into the whole life of the institution. The daily chapel services are no perfunctory affair, nor is the athletic and social life less hearty than in larger institutions, and the close contact of student and professor affords special intellectual advantages.

John took his full share in all the life of the college. His cheery disposition and unselfish spirit made him one of the most popular men in school. Not particularly skillful in athletics though physically well-built, he faithfully played his part on the "scrubs," and was an enthusiastic supporter of the athletic teams. He was no saint who thought himself too good to mix with other men. His ability to manage affairs laid him open to many calls for his services. If there was a college picnic or banquet or reception, he was sure to have the chief responsibility for the arrangements. He decorated the halls for public functions; he was in the kitchen when refreshments were to be served. He was student manager of the college dormitory and dining-room, business manager of the college monthly and the year book, and held many other such offices in the various student organizations. As one of his fellow students has said:

"He was the servant of the student body while at Furman. He made opportunities to serve." A fellow student fallen sick, it was John who nursed him, who went to the kitchen and prepared him palatable food. These things he loved rather than his books, and because there were so many things that called for his time outside of the class-room, he did not usually stand well in his classes. But there is no man who went through Furman in those years who stood higher in the estimation of the faculty. The President remarked many times:

"John Anderson has a genius for helpfulness." And one of the professors has written:

What John Anderson was at the end, he was at the beginning of my acquaintance with him. Throughout his student years in Furman, he ministered to the physical needs of fellow students. He was almost as much of a physician then as he was afterwards. And in all of these ministrations one felt that John Anderson was first a Christian, and second, a physician. He was one of the purest spirits I have ever known. In this second year at college, Dr. W. W. Hamilton, at that time a pastor and later head of the Department of Evangelism of the Southern Baptist Convention, came to Greenville for a week of meetings in the church attended by most of the college students. In a midnight prayer-meeting which lasted until two o’clock in the morning, John made his full surrender to Christ and from that time on heart and soul were dedicated to the Master’s service, looking toward the day when he would be a missionary. He became a man of one purpose. Everything he did subsequently was related to that "one thing I do." Moreover, he did not postpone his missionary service until he was in China. The two things that were nearest his heart from that time forward were the college Young Men’s Christian Association and the Student Volunteer Band. He became an officer in both organizations, and served with contagious enthusiasm and energy. Dr. George W. Truett came for an evangelistic campaign one year, and John prepared a list of the college men who were not Christians, and called some of his friends together for daily prayer that they might be saved. He also talked to many of them personally and arranged conferences for them with ministers and friends. He would take his place beside a timid, unsaved fellow student when the invitation was given and go with him to the front of the church. Always was he concerned that his friends should find the same high joy in the friendship of Christ that he himself knew.

Greenville is a cotton mill center. There are fourteen or fifteen large mills in the outskirts of the city. On a visit to the Union Bleachery Mill, John was so impressed with the religious needs of the mill village that he subsequently organized a Sunday School there and himself taught one of the classes. Six of the forty girls in his class were converted, and since that time, as an outgrowth of that Sunday School, a church has been organized. Besides this service he frequently visited the county jail with a deputation from the college Y. M. C. A., holding meetings there on Sunday afternoons, giving literature to the prisoners and conversing with them personally.

He once remarked of a man who had become a missionary:

"He did not do anything for missions while he was in school in America. I wonder how he can do any good on the foreign field."

John set himself to his endeavors so that this should not be said of him. He had a prayer list of friends whom he sought to influence to volunteer for foreign missionary service. It would be difficult to’ calculate the number of those who had the opportunities for service in lands across the sea first brought to their attention by John Anderson, in a word or the gift of a pamphlet or a book. There are many who have borne testimony to this influence, as, for instance, a college mate who went subsequently to South America as a missionary.

"John made a deeper impression upon me than any other young man that I ever met. I remember that while at Furman, he had me on his prayer list, asking that God would send me to the foreign field. He arranged conferences for me with Student Volunteer Secretaries. I remember especially one he arranged with Dr. Truett which helped me greatly to surrender my life for foreign service."

John was a member of deputation teams which went from the Volunteer Band into the surrounding churches to speak on Africa or China or Japan or some phase of missionary enterprise. Though not an easy speaker he never failed to impress by his earnestness and enthusiasm. Most of all did his friendliness and sunny smile attract people to the cause he represented. As one said:

"He was not a very fine speaker, but he lived his religion more than he spoke it." At the summer Student Conference of the Y. M. C. A. at Montreat, N. C, in 1908, John was one of a group of five who met together and laid plans for the organization of the Student Volunteers of the South Carolina colleges into a State Volunteer Union, with the object of increasing the missionary interest of the college students. The first meeting of this Union was held in Columbia in the spring of 1909 with only a very few delegates in attendance. In the spring of 1910, John was the principal factor in arranging for a meeting in Greenville. There were about forty delegates from the different colleges present and they had a good conference. John McEachern, now a missionary in Korea, was elected President for the ensuing year and John Anderson, Secretary and Treasurer, and together they perfected the organization and got the Union on its feet. The next year the number of delegates was doubled and there was a strong group of missionary leaders present. The expenses of the organization had been advanced by the officers, but that was cleared up and since that time the Union has held regular annual meetings and exerted an increasingly important influence in the South Carolina colleges. What is now the regularly published Bulletin of the Union was once brought out by John Anderson monthly on a mimeograph and mailed by him to the members of the Union. It took a good deal of time in connection with his other college activities, but he never seemed to tire of doing this service. He had the help of a few others in this work, but his was the principal responsibility. In the winter of 1909-10 he was chosen as one of three men to represent the college at the Quadrennial Student Volunteer Convention at Rochester, N. Y. There were nearly four thousand delegates from the colleges of Canada and the United States who met for five days in the great Convention Hall. In that throng there was no one who responded more wholeheartedly than John Anderson to the appeals of the representatives of the mission lands of the earth, the Chinese, the men of India, the Africans, the foreign missionaries and the secretaries of the mission boards. The white harvest fields spread out before his eyes by these speakers confirmed in him his purpose to help answer the prayers for more laborers by the offering of his own life. And when he had returned to the college again after those high days, for months he was handing on to his fellow students and to church congregations near at hand, the visions and inspirations that came to him in the convention.

There is a revelation of what was behind this fullness of life and abandon of service, in one or two of his home letters at this time. A letter dated April 15, 1910, contains the following:

I believe more and more in giving the first half hour of every day to God in prayer. If you do this you will have something to think on during the day. You will have God with you that day to help you battle with the evils of that day. At night you are tired and sleepy and do not remember anything you have read in your Bible. You need the protection of God through the night, but the devil does most of his work in your life through the day through men with whom you come in contact. In another letter of the same year he wrote:

I believe more and more in prayer. You can get what you pray for if you are in earnest and if the request is best for you. Prayer is the greatest instrument in the hands of living men. It is the greatest lever there is. You cannot get a lever long enough or with the right purchase to turn the world over, but prayer is able to turn it over. The person who is the sincerest Christian is the man of prayer. He is the man who can go out alone and talk to God aloud, feeling that he is within a few feet of Him.

Again:

One’s motto should be: Better to-day than yesterday. It is not expected that every one shall be a great man or a great woman, but it is expected that they shall be better today than yesterday. To many of his fellow students, the most remarkable characteristic of John Anderson was his genuine humility. There was nothing of Uriah Heep in his self-depreciation and desire to keep himself in the background. He was invariably out of sight when the time came to give credit to those who had shared in some enterprise. If he was caught in the limelight, he would blush like a girl, and pass off any compliment with ’’Oh, shucks!" As a friend has remarked:

’’I have never known a person who had a greater abhorrence of doing good to be seen of men."