Sometime during his last year as a student at Moody Bible Institute, J. Lloyd Hunter preached at Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago. Leading a ragged drunkard to Christ, Hunter reflected on the man’s lost decades, years that might have been dedicated to serving Christ rather than alcohol. At that moment Hunter decided to offer his own life in an effort to reach children. Traveling with his wife to various churches around the country, he gained valuable experience working with the American Sunday School Union. While living in Wheaton in 1937, Hunter, ablaze with a vision for evangelization, organized the Rural Bible Crusade, a ministry encouraging public school children to systematically memorize scripture. Its first advisory council consisted of J. Oliver Buswell, V. Raymond Edman, J.D. Hall, John R. Rice, Wendell Loveless, Bob Jones, Sr., William McCarrell, Oscar Lowry, Paul Rood, Harry Rimmer, George Strohm, Louis Talbot and Walter Wilson. Shortly before Christmas vacation of that year, Hunter stood before the students of Wheaton College to introduce his program. There Hunter’s idea was packaged as a contest, with letters sent to four thousand local school teachers. The envelopes contained a tract, Four Things That God Wants You to Know, with a request that pupils memorize Bible verses. Four hundred teachers responded positively, some requesting to join the contest, and to them were sent Gospels of John and a tract. Prizes were given for the verses learned. Ten verses entitled the pupil to a button. Thirty-two earned him a New Testament. Five hundred verses won him a fine leather Bible. Many families who never attended church received a Bible and heard the Gospel for the first time. Under the direction of Hunter, Phil Saint, Wheaton College student and brother of missionary martyr Nate Saint, taught “chalk talks” to classes, training young people in the essentials of presenting the Gospel to children. As the ministry blossomed Hunter’s health declined, and he entered the hospital in 1943, where he led three nurses to Christ shortly before his death. He was 55. Later that year, a committee met at Wheaton College and formed a constitution which delineated new internal organization. After the document’s ratification, the work of Rural Bible Crusade continued as it enrolled thousands of children in the Bible Memory Program. In 1966 the ministry moved from Wheaton to Salinas, Kansas; and in 1990 it changed its name to “Bible Impact Ministries.” In 1993 the ministry relocated to St. Louis, MO, expanding with permanent camps and facilities. Hunter’s passion for evangelizing and discipling young souls survives unabated.

[Some information for this entry is derived from Bible Impact Ministries.]

Dr. Hudson T. Armerding’s A Word to the Wise (Tyndale 1980) was published to bring wisdom and encouragement to fellow Christians everywhere. In the following excerpt he shares some of the wisdom gathered over fifteen years as college president:

Singing hymns together has long been traditional for both congregation and graduates at the annual Baccalaureate Service of Wheaton College. However, in 1968 the printed program carried the words of the beautiful hymn written by Kate B. Wilkinson entitled “May the Mind of Christ My Savior.” Then serving in his third year as president of the college, Dr. Hudson T. Armerding selected this hymn because of the meaningful content of its words for all committed believers –but particularly for young people, who have so much potential. Every year since then, with concurrence by the officers of each graduating class, this hymn has appeared in the printed program for the [Commencement Services]…These are the words that have stirred the hearts of many on those occasions…

May the mind of Christ, my Savior,
Live in me from day to day,
By His love and pow’r controlling
All I do and say.

May the Word of God dwell richly
In my heart from hour to hour,
So that all may see I triumph
Only through His pow’r.

May the peace of God, my Father,
Rule my life in everything,
That I may he calm to comfort
Sick and sorrowing.

May the love of Jesus fill me,
As the waters fill the sea;
Him exalting, self abasing,
This is victory.

May I run the race before me,
Strong and brave to face the foe,
Looking only unto Jesus
As I onward go.

May His beauty rest upon me
As I seek the lost to win,
And may they forget the channel,
Seeing only Him. Amen.

As was common in newly established and struggling institutions of higher education in the mid-nineteenth century, the Illinois Institute sold perpetual scholarships. Like the Methodist DePauw, the Illinois Institute sold these scholarships for $100. Not without some sort of restrictions, such as only lineal descendants of the purchaser and only one-at-a-time, these scholarships became a boondoggle and then a financial drain on the school.

According to a report drafted by The Committee on Wheaton College that was established to investigate Congregational involvement in the institute, the Illinois Institute had sold fifty perpetual scholarships for $100 and twenty-five eighteen year scholarships had been sold. DePauw had sold twelve year scholarships for $50 and six year scholarships for $30. As of 2010 Northwestern University still honored perpetual scholarships with their website noting that roughly 400 students had utilized this benefit.

Of the fifty perpetual scholarships sold prior to the Committee’s report, the Illinois Institute was able to cancel twenty-three and convert them into five years of tuition. Of the twenty-five eighteen year scholarships eleven had been converted.

One of the $100 perpetual scholarships had been sold to Joseph Powell, trustee of the Illinois Institute and father of noted explorer John Wesley Powell. Powell, knowing the financial struggles of the Institute, converted his perpetual scholarship (#225) to one that provided five years of tuition, which Powell utilized each term until the scholarship expired in 1864.

The visitor to the second floor of Buswell Memorial Library will spy a sign near the drinking fountain designating an alcove in a short hallway as “Mortimer B. Lane.” Cornered in the quiet byway are the offices of retired professors Gerald Hawthorne and Beatrice Batson. However, before Lane was a place he was a person, hired in 1937 to teach political science and economics. An admirable instructor, he enjoyed relationships beyond the classroom. Dr. Joseph MacKnight (’43) fondly remembers in an oral interview when Lane and his wife, Mary, opened their spacious dining room every Sunday evening, serving cold meats and refreshments to Wheaton College students strolling home from church. MacKnight’s classmate, Billy Graham, also recalls:

As for my homesickness, the Lane family soon came to my rescue. Dr. Mortimer B. Lane taught courses in government and economics at the college. Before that, when he was in government service, he and his wife and their seven children lived in Switzerland. Quite well-off, they entertained students in their large, comfortable Victorian home near the campus. They welcomed me as one of their own. Early on Sunday mornings, as Plymouth Brethren, they hosted a small local assembly in their house. I began to attend that quiet communion service with students from other churches.

As a Brethren adherent accustomed to restrained worship, Lane sent a friendly letter in 1939 to then-president Dr. J. Oliver Buswell, requesting that certain matters be observed during chapel services. Specifically, he objected to 1) prize giving; 2) concerts, unless dedicated to sacred music; 3) frivolous announcements; and 4) clapping. As well, he disliked the presence of “aesthetic decorations” such as candles, widely used by literary societies, since these trappings are used by the Roman Catholic Church to “appeal to the senses instead of to the mind and heart.” Buswell offers a sensible response:

My own background leads me to enjoy the worship atmosphere of a Gospel tabernacle type of meeting in which enthusiastic music, occasional handclapping, and a good many other informal things have a part in worship. I also enjoy the dignified Protestant service of the old orthodox churches in which a considerable amount of art is employed. I think the aesthetic appeal of music and art cannot correctly be set in antithesis to an appeal to the soul, but may correctly be characterized as an appeal to the soul through the musical and artistic sense the Lord has given us.

Celebrating a fruitful 14-year season of mentoring and hospitality, Mortimer B. Lane resigned in 1951 and relocated with his family to Long Beach, Mississippi. Here they opened “Southern States Bible and Christian Supplies,” selling and distributing scripture, Sunday School material, hymnbooks and recordings. Responding to Lane’s departure, Dr. Edman, fourth president of Wheaton College, expressed “deep regret” but also “…sincere appreciation for all that you and your lovely family have meant to us…You have been a pillar of strength to me personally and to all the College, a source of joy and encouragement to many young hearts, especially to those who have come from distant parts of the world.” As a parting gift, Edman and the faculty presented him with a letter case to use for his business. “I don’t need it to remember my associates at Wheaton,” Lane gratefully replies, “but this will make me remember all the more.”

Lane’s Plymouth Brethren assembly, for which he served as an elder, evolved into what is now called Bethany Chapel, situated on the corner of President St. and College Ave. in Wheaton, Illinois. His son, James, later served on the Wheaton College board of trustees.