The Overflow
"Texas proverb"
"There is more joy in a printing-office over one sinner who pays in advance, and abuses the editor on every occasion, than over ninety and nine church members who take the paper and sing its praises and puff the editor, but never contribute one cent to keep him out of the poorhouse."
— T. R. Burnett (G. A. 1895)
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It'll be a classic Brother Jim Bales has written seven columns in the Firm Foundation trying to prove that paying your subscription to the Gospel Guardian is the same as making a contribution to the Broadway church in Lubbock. We aren't kidding. That's his point. He sees absolutely no difference in buying a Bible, book, tract, or paper from a publishing house and making a contribution to a church! That really whets our appetite for that forthcoming book of brother Jim's, "You Too Can Think Logically." If the F.F. article is a sample of his logic, we guarantee his book will become a classic in American literature —humorous literature, that is.
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Dynamite versus roach powder While we're on the subject, we also mention that brother Jim labored rather desperately in the same article to show that the "Lubbock Plan" for raising money for missions was precisely identical to what he calls the "Gospel Guardian Plan" for increasing the circulation of the Guardian! Well, that confirms a suspicion that has been growing with us for quite a while: brother Jim is keeping that typewriter of his so hot that he has not had time to read the Restoration literature. Does he not know that Isaac Errett, J. B. Briney, and other Missionary Society advocates beat him to that argument by a good seventy years? These men who split the church in the last century almost knocked themselves out trying to prove that the Gospel Advocate and their Missionary Societies were exactly parallel. Brother David Lipscomb pulverized their contention so completely that the digressives have long since abandoned the contention.
Now when brother Bales can produce an article comparable to those written by Errett, Briney, Pendleton, and others in support of his contention, we'll lay down a barrage from Uncle Davey's heavy artillery that will demolish the argument now just as it did then. Come to think of it, we don't believe it will take a barrage. A couple or three salvos ought to be enough. Or maybe one round. There's no point in using dynamite when roach powder will get the job done. Does anybody have a BB gun handy?
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Brutal honesty We get a deep chuckle now and then out of the unconscious humor in the serious writings of the pioneers. For example, we were recently reading brother Moses Lard's lengthy obituary of brother A. W. Robbins when we came across this gem: "His face was unfortunate, and did him injustice. It was pinched and dull. It was the face of a third-rate Presbyterian preacher." Where is the modern brother who will show such brutal honesty in writing the obituary of a friend?
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Removing the alternative. We see where some of our Baptist friends are taking shots at Dr. C. Oscar Johnson, pastor of the Third Baptist Church in Louisville, for an exchange of pulpits with Dr. Hampton Adams, a digressive preacher in St. Louis. They say that Dr. Johnson "either believes the old Campbellite doctrine that baptism is a condition for the remission of sins, or else he has become a modernist." Well, we can relieve the anxiety in the mind of the Baptist pastor who raised the question. Both Adams and Johnson are modernists; and neither of them believes what the Bible says about baptism.
Hurrah for the babies!
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Our good friend, Wayne Mickey, of Rochester, Minnesota, sends us this clipping from a British newspaper: "The Rev. Norman Kidson of Bakewell, believes babies should be baptized within a month after birth. As they get older, he says in his parish magazine, they become heavier to hold and are inclined to kick and struggle." Our sympathies are all with the babies. Their behavior makes, us think they probably have more sense than do the "Reverends" who perpetrate this outrage upon them.
We should think any intelligent being's would be tempted to "kick and struggle" if, contrary to his will and wishes, some brute four time his size grabbed him and held him tight with a double-Nelson while throwing water/ in his face!
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Titles
We receive many manuscripts with titles which we think aren't fully appropriate; but we haven't received one yet with a title quite like the one carried on an article of M. Kurfees, published in the Advocate of 1901. We don't whether McQuiddy ever edited Kurfees material or not; but if he did, he must have been asleep when an article bearing the following title went to the composing room: "From Reaping Hooks to Self-binders in Agriculture, and Hence from the New Testament to Modern Inventions in Work and Worship." That's not the article—just the title.
Modern Preaching
The modern pastor was shelling the woods with a mighty barrage of eloquence. He was against sin; he was in favor of righteousness. There could be no doubt of his position. He was going on record to that effect. His sermon subject for the day was "Repentance." Said he: "AH — my beloved friends, the Bible teaches that we should repent. In fact, a close study of this blessed volume will reveal that there are places in it where it positively makes such a declaration, AH — in a manner of speaking, of course. Jesus teaches that we should quit sinning, as it were, or we are liable to be damned to a certain extent, and go to hell in some degree at least."
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As Hinds Saw It
"Big, central congregations, with fine structures and abundant wealth, are failures as missionary congregations. They may beg money and give liberally to send the gospel to foreign lands, but they fail to reach the heathen at their own doors."
— John T. Hinds, (G.A. 1901)
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Rolling in dough Officials in Washington know The church must be rolling in dough For members will give And give, and give, As their tax reports plainly will show!
—Jack G. Dunn