The Overflow
Pursuant to our mailing permit, and in keeping with our custom, we publish no paper the first week in July and the last week in December. But the Guardian will be back with you the following week as usual.
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Brother Bales' Charge
In some of our last year's editorials brother Jim Bales thinks he has found something that misrepresents brother Sherrod of Lubbock. Well, brother Sherrod has never intimated to us that he thought we had misrepresented him. He aparently isn't =is excited over the matter as is brother Jim. And, incidentally, some of the Broadway brethren have made it clear that brother Bales is speaking only for himself in his constant "defense' of them—and that said defenses are sometimes as embarrassing to them as are the things they are being charged with!
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Putting On The Pressure
We carry this week a short article from brother Charles E. Crouch on "pledging." We do not agree with his implied position that the ordinary use of pledge cards necessarily means the application of pressure; but we are in absolute agreement with his conclusion that, "Any method used which applies human pressure in the place of divine teaching' is wrong and unscriptural. And unless the pledge cards are used wisely, they can certainly lend themselves to that kind of abuse.
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"Jangling Legalists'
Dr. A. T. DeGroot of Texas Christian University says, "More than to any other journal and person, it was to the Christian Standard and Isaac Errett that the Disciples were indebted for being saved from becoming a fissiparous sect of jangling legalists." How blind can a man be? That the Disciples' Church is a "sect' is admitted and declared by their leaders ("We are as sectarian as anybody'); that it is "fissiparous' is evident from the fact that it "split off' from the true- body of Christ; that they are "jangling' is known to all who read the venomous attacks they make on one another for supporting, or not supporting, their hundred or so agencies, bureaus, commissions, societies, boards, and committees. Just what is the debt to Errett, anyhow?
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Degroot's Defamation Of Franklin
While we're on the subject, we'll say that DeGroot's book, "The Disciples of Christ,' a semi-official history issued by the Christian Board of Publication, declares that Benjamin Franklin "had difficulty in making up his mind' on the music question, and gave an "uncertain' sound on it. That this is a flagrant misstatement of fact is known to every student of the restoration movement. But DeGroot proves his libel by a lengthy quotation from Franklin—which wasn't from Franklin at all but from John F. Rowe!! What kind of scholarship is that? When it is further known that the false statement has been called to DeGroot's attention, and no effort at all has been made toward correction, it becomes not only a question of scholarship, but also one of simple honesty. The ethics (?) of Isaac Errett must still control the Disciples' scholars.
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Well, Well, Well
Comes now Dr. Mortimer J. Adler, brilliant professor of the University of Chicago, dropping an atomic bomb into the smug complacency of the evolutionists. Flatly denying the Darwinian hypothesis relating to men and apes, Adler declares that despite certain anatomical similarities men and apes differ "essentially in kind,' not just in degrees. He proposed two possible alternative explanations for man's existence: (1) a theory of "emergent evolution' in which a higher species "evolves' from a lower with no intermediate forms (Adler hoots at the idea of "missing links'), or (2) the possibility of man's special creation by God in his own image—And that from a University of Chicago professor! We're speechless.
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New Fields To Conquer
Our Christian Church friends organized their General Convention in 1913; expanded into an International Convention in 1917; and spread out into a World Convention in 1930. What next? How about a Universal Convention? But we guess that will be the limit. The only possibilities after that are a Celestial Congress, for which they can't qualify, and a Bromstone Clambake, which they probably wouldn't desire.
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Those- "First Century" reports Apparently out of sorts over an article entitled "First Century Reports From Middle Judea," which we published not long ago, our brother editor of the Advocate aimed some rather bad-humored remarks toward us and in the direction of brother Jesse Kelley, preacher for Nashville's Grandview Heights congregation, who wrote the article. Says brother Kelley in response, "The information gained for that "report' did not come in an envelope post-marked several hundred miles from the place where it happened, and with no name attached, but from Middle Tennessee where the writer lives and where he is observing more than some would like for him to observe."
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Skating Party
But "middle Judea," we would have you know, isn't the only place where the church is making progress. We have just received a flock of circulars and announcements giving details of a "Church of Christ Skating Party' being sponsored by the 'young people" of the Pasadena (California) congregation. Since it was a "Church of Christ" hoop-do-do, no doubt it was opened with prayer and the juke box gave forth with an appropriate theme-song for the occasion—say, for example, "Jesus Lover of My Soul' instead of the customary "Skaters Waltz.' You think so?
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Ten years ago June 4. Ten years ago this day the writer of these lines stood with a weeping family as the body of J. D. Tant was placed beneath the sod of Texas. Participating in the final services in Cleburne were W. K. Rose, G. H. P. Showalter, and three Wallaces—Glenn, Cled and Foy. Ten years have passed, but neither time nor distance will fade the memory of that day, nor the life that three days before had come to an end. Will the readers of the Guardian indulge us this brief paragraph in which a son may pay tribute to the memory of a noble father? The ties of the flesh were close, but they are ended now; far closer and far more precious are the spiritual ties which shall never end. Jefferson Davis Tant—may he rest in peace: and may his son (and his grandson) prove not unworthy of the heritage he left.