The Overflow
Life Of D. S. Ligon
We have a letter from Arvey Freed Ligon, 817 Preston Street, Waco, Texas, telling us that he is doing a biography of his father, D. S. Ligon, and asking to receive narrative recollections concerning his father from any one who may have known him. Friends and acquaintances of brother Ligon can help much by sending in material.
—O—
At Last!
For years the colleges among us have been asking the brethren for help to assist them in the worthy work they are doing. Many of us have contributed to them. But now at long last one of these colleges has become so affluent that she has passed over from the receiving list into the contributing list. A recent news report from Childhaven, the mammoth benevolent institution some of the brethren are promoting in Alabama, shows that she has received a contribution from Freed-Hardeman College. By the way, is FHC doing "the work of the church" in helping to care for orphan children?
—O—
Both Feet In Mouth
A few years ago Hartzell Spence wrote a very popular story One Foot In Heaven it being a semi-biographical sketch of his father, a Methodist preacher. In a recent issue of Look Magazine, novelist Spence gets entirely out of his field of fiction and attempts to qualify as a textual critic of the Bible. He says there are "perhaps 50,000 errors in the Bible." Well, maybe Spence senior had "one foot in heaven" and maybe he didn't; but one thing is undeniable: Spence junior has "both feet in mouth" when he tried to qualify as a Bible critic. Read the article in this issue by Robert Welch, "The Truth About the Bible," and an article in next week's issue bearing the same title.
—O—
Full-Time Preacher
We hear talk now and then about a "full time" preacher and a "part time" preacher. Well, we think H. F. Sharp over in Blytheville, Arkansas, ought to qualify as the former. Last year he preached over 800 sermons! And that doesn't count Bible classes taught and an occasional debate with the denominationalists through the year. (He also found time to send in some two or three hundred subscriptions to the Gospel Guardian — for which we express our thanks.)
—O—
Methodist Advertising
Our Methodist friends are working out some new gimmicks in their advertising. A Texas paper recently carried this classified ad: 'WANTED — Men, women and children to sit in slightly used pews on Sunday morning at 11;00 o'clock. Kyle First Methodist Church." And in the Memphis Commercial Appeal for March 9 we saw this under the "personals": "NEEDED-6000 friends to donate $1.00 each to help us build church addition. St. Stephen's Methodist Church, 3981 Macon Road." What next?
—O—
Sign Of The Cross
A few brethren are beginning to give quite an emphasis in their new church buildings to the cross as an emblem of decoration. We think the following quotation from Dr. Herzog is in order: "The more the cross came into use in manifold forms and signs, the more truly evangelical faith in Christ, the Crucified, tended to disappear. The more the cross of Christ was outwardly exhibited, the more it became inwardly an offense and folly to men. The Roman Catholic Church in this respect resembles those Christians, who talk so much of their spiritual experiences, make so much ado about them, that they at last talk themselves out, and produce glittering nonsense." (Theological Encyclopedia, Vol. VIII, p. 60)
—O—
Still At It
The Christian Scientists are again raising a fuss over the matter of fluorides in drinking water. This time it is in Seattle, Washington. They have put on a regular political campaign out there to prevent the city from adding fluorides to the city water system (to combat tooth decay in children). It's the old, old story of the "Scientists" refusing to acknowledge that there is any "real" cause for tooth decay; they say that dental caries are only "an error in thinking," and the place to start treatment is in the mind, not the mouth, of the one who holds the erroneous notion. How silly can people get?
—O—
Who's Who
We've had a few people tell us they thought we surely must be exaggerating about the denominational "affiliations" of the Pepperdine faculty. Well, take a look at this paragraph from the bulletin of the First Methodist Church of Long Beach, California:
Who's Who In Our Lenten Services
Raymond Simpson, a prominent Long Beach attorney, graduate of Pepperdine Jurist Doctor's degree from University of Chicago, producer and director of Youth of America Program over KFWB, Professor of Political Science and History at George Pepperdine College, member and deacon of the Uptown Church of Christ, Long Beach. Mr. Simpson is one of the best qualified Christian lawyers to lead the first series, "Christ and Our Contemporary World."
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Not Where, But What
Brother E. V. Pullias, defending his affiliation with denominational churches and his participation with them in their worship services, has written an article "Where Can One Speak?" He misses the point. It is not where but what. Any gospel preacher would welcome the opportunity to speak the gospel of Christ anywhere — but after fifteen years of such speakings in California sectarian churches, we wonder how many people our brother can name who have been converted from their denominational error by his preaching. Our surmise would be: NOT ONE. So maybe its' a question of what he has been preaching, rather than where.
—O—
Chain Letters Again
Here they come again — those chain letters. We've lately found some gospel preachers who are involved in the chain letter merry-go-round, but instead of sending dimes or dollars, they are sending sermon outlines. Now who will be the first to start a chain letter sending books to the top name on the list?
—O—
"When We Meet..."
And up at Senath, Missouri, (not far from Steele, Missouri, where this page is being written) they're chuckling over a slip of the tongue made by their new preacher not long ago when he got up to lead a song just before the communion. In strong, clear tones he started out, "When we meet in closed communion; Where the feast divine is spread..."!