Before publishing Marching to the Drumbeat of Abolitionism: Wheaton College in the Civil War (2010), Dr. David Maas, retired professor of history, released Wheaton College Awakenings: 1853-1873 (1996), comprising 266 entries excerpted from correspondence, diaries, newspapers and other printed matter, chronicling early campus life.

A few examples:

#18. Discipline of studying, 1857. And if the discipline of study ever accomplishes anything it must be self-imposed. The student who needs a police force to exact obedience to academic law deserves no place in a respectable literary institution.

#37. Student attacks novel as trashy literature, 1857. The country is flooded with books and papers which have a tendency to excite and intoxicate the mind; consequently the mind becomes poisoned and the desire for useful information is destroyed and all the noble powers of the intellect die of starvation or from the want of wholesome intellectual food…[too many read] worthless nonsensical trash which has a tendency to destroy the virtue and morality of the consumer. [Great men of the past] Webster, Clay, Washington and Sumner…[did not] rise to the highest pinnacle of fame by spending their time novel reading…Young man, beware, beware of that young lady who spends most of her time in reading novels, talking nonsense and laughing at others…

#97. Professor critical of the architectural style of central section of Blanchard Hall, 1868. [Professor John Calvin Webster in address dedicating the cornerstone of the west wing of Blanchard Hall refers to the original center section as] the semblance of an old-fashioned New England cotton mill.

#106. Complaint of high costs of Wheaton, 1857. Although the world seems to frown on you now and by every means possible to take the last dollar you possess, particularly so if you are a student at Wheaton College.

#252. Student concerned about Civil War, 1861. It [imagination] sees the dark cloud which now overhangs our country roll away; and our nation purified by fire and blood – rising up with a halo of glory around.

During its early decades, the Wheaton College Record, the student newspaper, published verse written by faculty and students. However, as the editors, Raymond Horton and Charles Seidenspinner, observe in their introduction, “to publish a poem in a newspaper is to bury it.” Seeking to rectify this, they scoured thousands of pages, seeking “…the best representatives of the literary talent which has appeared on the Wheaton campus.” Compiling the best of the best, they collect their choices into a book called The Wheaton Anthology, published in 1932. Brief in pages, the anthology contains a number of interesting pieces, including a poem by Jonathan Blanchard, first president of Wheaton College. Also included are poems by Elliot Coleman, who later gained renown as a poet and professor at Johns Hopkins, and Royal T. Morgan, professor of natural sciences.

The presidents of Wheaton College are lauded for their leadership, guiding the institution through the decades, holding close its motto, “For Christ and His Kingdom.” But leadership is usually a partnership; and surely every man would respectfully defer to the invaluable contribution of his wife. Ruth Cording, former archivist at Wheaton College, composed a booklet, Romance, Roses and Responsibility, celebrating the lives of these faithful women. Cording profiles the following: 1. Mary Blanchard, wife of founder Jonathan Blanchard. 2. Margaret Ellen Milligan, first wife of second president Charles Blanchard, who died during her early motherhood. 3. Amanda Jane Carothers, second wife of Charles Blanchard, died from scarlet fever. 4. Frances Carothers, third wife of Charles Blanchard, who was a physician and wrote a biography of her husband. 5. Helen Spaulding Buswell, wife of J. Oliver Buswell, third president of Wheaton College. 6. Edith Olson, wife of V. Raymond Edman, fourth president. 7. Miriam Bailey, wife of Hudson Armerding, fifth president. 8. Mary Sutherland, wife of Richard Chase, sixth president. 9. Sherri Elizabeth, wife of Duane Litfin, seventh president.

Commenting on her use of the rose motif, Cording writes:

Mary Blanchard brought her roses from Cincinnati when she and her husband, Jonathan, Wheaton’s first president, came to Knox College in 1845. Those rose bushes were then transplanted to their home on South President Street when the Blanchards moved to Wheaton, In 1863 the bushes were moved to the college and planted in front of Blanchard Hall near the east door. Some of the bushes were also planted, at the request of Jonathan Blanchard’s granddaughter, Geraldine Kellogg Dresser, and when she died, former president V. Raymond Edman referred to the “heritage of roses,” stating that she “passed the Blanchard heritage to us with roses.” In 1984 I noticed that the roses in front of Blanchard Hall were just about ready to go into pink bloom, but that the remodeling of the front of Blanchard would threaten their blossoms. The college gardener was alerted and all the remaining bushes were moved to the front of Westgate, the current home of the Wheaton College Alumni Offices. They are now appropriately marked with plaques, showing that they were originally brought to Wheaton by Mary Bent Blanchard – 150 years ago!

The following passage describes the relationship between A.W. Tozer and Wheaton College and is transcribed from “A Passion for God: The Spiritual Journey of A.W. Tozer” by Lyle Dorsett (Moody 2008).

From 1945 until his death in 1963, Tozer poured seemingly unbounded energy into the younger generation. The Sunday evening services at the church on Union Avenue continued to attract hundreds of students as long as Tozer was there. They came twenty-five miles from Wheaton College, and they drove or took the streetcar from Moody Bible Institute. College-age men and women were eager to listen to an intelligent and articulate speaker who assumed the inerrancy of the Bible and used it to call them to radical obedience.

Tozer’s popularity with students on Sunday nights led to other times of interaction with college-age people. Dr. V. Raymond Edman, President of Wheaton College beginning in 1941, became a close friend to A, W. Tozer. The two men shared many experiences and interests. Edman, born in 1900, was three years younger than Tozer. Bespectacled, balding more than Tozer and slightly heavier, Edman served in the United States Army as an enlisted man in World War I. Whereas Tozer was self-educated, Edman worked his way through university, earning a BA from Boston University in 1922. A Spanish major, Edman developed connections with Dr. Paul Rader when he served as head of the C&MA’s Bible Training Institute in Nyack, New York. Through Rader, Edman connected with the Alliance and after marriage he and his wife went to Ecuador as missionaries. Eventually the Edmans returned to the United States because of Raymond’s health, and he went on to earn an (American History) and a PhD (International Relations) from Clark University in Massachusetts.

In 1937 Dr. Edman joined the faculty at Wheaton College to teach history. In 1941 he was appointed president of the college. Tozer’s name was well known to Edman by the time he we Wheaton, because as a member of the Alliance he had read Tozer’s articles in The Alliance Weekly. The two men met personally by 1940 and became fast friends. Both men understood college women and men and sensed God’s leading to encourage them in their faith. Tozer frequently had Dr. Edman come and preach at Southside Church and he urged the college professor to write for Alliance magazine. Once Edman became president of Wheaton College there was seldom a year that passed–at least until the Tozers moved to Canada in 1959–that the Southside pastor was brought to Wheaton College to speak in chapel.

Tozer shared his pulpit with Raymond Edman, and the latter opened the college podium to Tozer because they manifested almost identical understandings of the Bible. As Alliance men, both fully embraced the denomination’s four pillars of Jesus Christ as Savior Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King. Beyond this connection, however, both men stood deeply committed to the belief that all born-again Christians are invited by God into a “deeper life” after conversion. Each man had experienced a personal and transformational work of grace after conversion. And while each man knew that the Spirit of Jesus Christ works uniquely with every soul, they nevertheless knew from Scripture, church history, and their personal experience that the Spirit of Jesus Christ desires to continue to grow in and flow through His chosen people in profound, transformational, and God-glorifying ways that are seldom realized by most Christians.

V. Raymond Edman laid out his views on what he saw as the liberating and fulfilling life in a volume titled They Found the Secret (1960). A collective spiritual biography of twenty people, Edman presented cameo portraits and deeper life experiences of notable Christians such as Amy Carmichael and Dwight L. Moody.

Tozer set forth a similar view, albeit not through historical biographies, but in a series of articles he published in the magazine Christian Life that were published in a little book titled Keys to the Deeper Life (1957). Prior to this, Tozer had expressed his views on the ‘deeper life’ in several chapel addresses at Wheaton College–ten in 1952 and one two years later.

Young people loved Tozer in the same way an earlier generation loved D. L. Moody. Like the world-famous nineteenth-century evangelist, Tozer knew how to communicate with young adults, and he had a sacred anointing from the Holy Spirit to reach people’s hearts as well as minds. Like Moody and Edman, Tozer did not push Pentecostal doctrines or the gift of tongues. Instead, people were told that knowing about Jesus Christ, understanding correct doctrine, and being a good student of the Bible are only part of our calling. The Lord wants His people to “know Him” not just “about Him.” in the spirit of John 17:3, eternal life is to know the Father and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. Tozer, like Moody, urged people to enter into a deeper life with Christ. Tozer often spoke these or similar words:

Tens of thousands of believers who pride themselves in their understanding of Romans and Ephesians cannot conceal the sharp spiritual contradiction that exists between their hearts and the heart of Paul. That difference may be stated this way: Paul was seeker and a finder and a seeker still. They seek and find and seek no more. After “accepting” Christ they tend to substitute logic for life and doctrine for experience. For them the truth becomes a veil to hide the face of God; for Paul it was a door into His very Presence… Many today stand by Paul’s doctrine who will not follow him in his passionate yearning for divine reality. Can these be said to be Pauline in any but the most nominal sense?

Tozer went on to explain this further by quoting The Cloud of the Unknowing, which he argued contained a prayer that expresses the core of deeper life teaching:

God, unto whom all hearts be open…and unto whom no secret thing is hid, I beseech Thee so for to cleanse the intent of mine heart with the unspeakable gift of Thy grace, that I may perfectly love Thee and worthily praise Thee. Amen.

Tozer continued:

Who that is truly born of the Spirit, unless he has been prejudiced by wrong teaching, can object to such a thorough cleansing of heart as will enable him perfectly to love God and worthily to praise Him? Yet this is exactly what we mean when we speak about with the “deeper life” experience. Only we mean that it should be literally fulfilled within the heart, not merely accepted by the head.

Words such as these set ablaze the hearts of thousands of young women and men who, admittedly, were longing for something more. Not that they sought emotional highs or spiritual “experiences.” On the contrary, most of the young people at Wheaton College and Moody Bible Institute had encountered enough excesses in the burgeoning Pentecostal movement. This was not their goal. Rather, they wanted to know Jesus Christ better so that they could make Him known to a world of lost and confused souls.

Tozer’s messages to Chicago-area students became famous. Soon he was invited to fundamentalist and evangelical campuses in other places. During the 1940s and 1950s, the Chicago Alliance pastor spoke at St. Paul Bible College (Minnesota) in 1941. He did Spiritual Emphasis Week services at Wheaton College twice in the 1950s, and also at Fort Wayne Bible College (Indiana) in 1948 and 1954, as well as the baccalaureate address at Houghton College (New York) in 1952. He also spoke at Taylor College (Indiana) in 1960 and Nyack College the same year. Wheaton College honored Tozer with an honorary doctorate (LLD) in 1950, and Houghton College bestowed the honorary LLD two years later. Although Tozer never sought to be called “doctor,” he was certainly grateful to be so honored by highly respected Christian colleges like Houghton and Wheaton.

There is no way to measure Tozer’s impact on college people, but the testimonies are nearly legion. Billy Graham remembered going to hear Tozer at the Southside Church several times before he graduated from Wheaton College in 1943, and said he was always deeply blessed, Dr. J. Julius Scott, Professor Emeritus, Wheaton Graduate School, remembered that as a freshman at Wheaton in the early l950s, Tozer’s challenges to “know God Himself,” not just “about God,” left an indelible mark on his soul.23 In the same vein, the late Dr. Bernard King, who graduated from St. Paul Bible College in 1941, said he first met Tozer personally at the college commencement the year we entered World War II. He credited his relationship with Tozer that began at college as being extremely important in his spiritual life and ministry.

Dr. Tozer had a range of influence on high school–age youth that rivaled his impact on college people. He frequently spoke at Youth for Christ rallies on foreign missions and radical commitment to Jesus Christ. Likewise he became one of the most popular speakers at Christian and Missionary Alliance Youth gatherings in places such as New York and Cincinnati, as well as Chicago.

The Evangelism and Missions Collection, housed on the third floor of the Billy Graham Center in Special Collections, is largely unknown to most undergraduates. Emphasizing autobiography, biography and denominational histories, its countless pages hold boundless curiosities for the questing researcher.

Recently one such treasure revealed itself. Investigating the history of the Mennonites, a patron randomly pulled J.C. Wenger’s Glimpses of Mennonite History and Doctrine (1947) from the open-access shelves. Perusing the front matter, the researcher was surprised to read the inscription: “To C.S. Lewis, in gratitude. Goshen, Ind. 10-9-47. J.C. Wenger.” John C. Wenger (1910-1995), Mennonite historian and theologian, taught at Goshen College and Goshen Theological Seminary and wrote over 20 books.

Not only was this a book inscribed to C.S. Lewis, but it was sent to him by a renowned church historian, suggesting a relationship between the famed apologist and American Mennonites. But for what was Wenger grateful? wondered the patron. Was there significant interaction between C.S. Lewis and the Mennonites? Were the “plain people” of the Radical Reformation somehow connected to the committed Anglican?

Curious about the history behind this gift from Wenger to Lewis, the patron contacted Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana, inquiring of its archivist as to whether their archive possessed a reciprocal letter from C.S. Lewis to Wenger. Searching the J.C. Wenger collection, the archivist located the actual note that had initially accompanied the book:

Dear Mr. Lewis:

Under separate cover I am venturing to send you my recent book, “Glimpses of Mennonite History and Doctrine,” in the hope that you may find a bit of pleasure in it. Permit me to state that I appreciate tremendously the influence of the good which you are exerting in our modern world.

Very sincerely yours, J.C. Wenger, Goshen College, Goshen, Indiana, U.S.A.

So Wenger was simply thanking Lewis for his Christian testimony, expressed through literature. Lewis, a fellow academic typing from his desk at Magdalen College, Oxford, relays gratitude in a note also filed among the Wenger papers:

Dear. Mr. Wenger:

Many thanks to you for kindly sending me a copy of your “Glimpses.” With all best wishes,

yours sincerely, C.S. Lewis

A sticker in the front flyleaf of Glimpses indicates that it had been shelved among the inventory of Blackwell’s of Oxford, England, where Lewis lived. After Lewis or whomever donated or sold it to the shop, an unknown customer bought the book and so began its trans-Atlantic voyage back to the States and ultimately Wheaton College, possibly falling in and out of many hands throughout the years.

Material housed in the Marion E. Wade Center, which includes writing by Lewis and six other British authors, is the result of deliberate acquisition and is not available for circulation, but this intriguing item arrived quite by accident at some point to a completely separate campus library. Books in the Lewis collection frequently display his penciled notations, indicating concentrated engagement with the material. Since Glimpses of Mennonite History contains no notes, in addition to the fact that it wound up at an Oxford bookstore, we might conclude that his interface with midwestern Mennonite Christianity was short-lived and largely disinterested, though respectful.

And now the Evangelism and Missions Collection awaits your own discoveries.