New Britain herald., 1928-01-09
SEES MEDIOCRITY IN COLLEGE MEN
Minister, Laudine John Wesley,
 Hits at Higher Schools

Colleges turn out students who dress alike, talk alike, think alike and act alike. all on the same level of mediocrity, according to Rev. William H. Alderson, pastor of Trinity Methodist church, in an ad- dress to 115 members of Every mans Bible class yesterday.
 The address was the first of { series of talks on the lives of out standing religious leaders, and was on John Wesley, founder of the Methodist church.
 In the course of his address, Rev. MT. Alderson said:
 "I wish that somehow or other we might in our imagination roll back the years and find ourselves stand ing on a certain September after noon in the year 1739, finding our selves part of great mob milling about on Remington Common. You would have met some folks pushing you from either side and trying to get ahead of you. As you pene- trated further and further into the crowd you might have caught a glimpse of the flowing locks of a little tit of man standing up on a soap box. You would have seen that he was wearing clerical garb. If you had gotten up close enough to hear the words you would have mo- ticed that he was possessed of a very great air of sincerity and earn estness. You also would have heard him repeat from time to time cer- tain words that formed his text Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.'
 "lf you had looked around you would have noticed how completely he had gripped the attention of that crowd, the great mob that listened to him; and even though you had not had eyes to see it or imagination enough to recognize it, you would have been in the presence of the most potent social force of the 18th century, and that was a century that contained such names as Marl- borough, Wellington, Nelson, Cleve- land, Wolf, Johnson, Byron, and yet this little man on the soap box that afternoon is the giant that towers over any of those other men l have named who lived in his century.
 T wonder what he might have looked like if we could have climbed up on that soap box beside him and looked out at the crowd. In the first place, the people who made their way out to Remington Com mon that afternoon did not come from the highest social levels. They were men who had come from the farms and the mines; their clothes were dirty and their faces were dirtier still. One had only to walk around in the crowd for a little while to find how seldom they bathed. They were people who were outside the church; men who had no interest in politics. Their emo tions were easily stirred. If their leaders told them to shout, they shouted.
 "That was the crowd, which had come out of the mines and out from Nli~ Aa4uS anu uIduC 1IS way UuL lU Remington Common and was mill ing around to hear this little man speak. And standing there that afternoon and watching this little fellow only 5 feet inches tall, you were in the presence of John Wes- ley, one of the great religious lead CTS of the worlds history. It is be- cause of that movement started there in 18th Century Europe, the influence of which has not died out in this present day.
 "But this is almost as though we had opened up our story in the mid dle of the book. Let us go back for a moment and pick up the threads. Back in the year 17O3 John Wesley was born in 8 parsonage in Ep- worth, England. He was the 6f- teenth child in family of l9. There are many instances in his family life which might be told if there were time. l will speak of just three of them.
 "One is the methodical training he received at the knees of his moth CT; the second, the experience he passed through when he had tho