Have I Changed?
Now it is no disgrace to change ones mind about anything. It is not the "changing of your mind" about certain things that brings about criticism. But when men who are known to keep changing their minds on subjects, and then attacking so bitterly those who continue to practice what you at that time believed and taught with just the same "viciousness" as now oppose your former practice, it, when continued in, over and over and over, creates in the minds of men a question mark as to whether or not you are truly qualified to become the "Guardians of the Gospel." Now Ernie Harper may have changed his mind a thousand times but I have not set myself up as the "Universal Guardian of the Gospel." You see you men have set up a "Human Corporation" which "corporation" has set itself up as the "Guardian of the Gospel." Of course if the Lord had thought he would need a "human corporation for such a thing, it is strange he did not organize it. It will be remembered, we did not start this fight; we did not jump on you men. You have tried to create in the minds of the people that we are a "Digressive Church" and by such have sought to harm our good work in the church. It will be remembered that I went to you and talked to you about this program. I told you just what it was. You published in November the program just as it has been carried on from February 10, 1952 until now and yet you say, It is not as it was told to you. THIS I will answer in another article. You had known from November until February that Phil Kendrick was to be the treasurer and that other churches were to send contributions to Highland for you published it that way in your own paper and yet you never offered a criticism. Two years passed before you did. Can you explain why?
Contributions To Colleges
In your article of June 24, 1954 concerning your source of information that I had worked for FreedHardeman College asking churches, as such to contribute to it, you say, "Our information that he solicited and accepted contributions from churches to that school comes from an elder in one of the strongest churches in West, Tennessee, a man who has profound admiration for E. R. Harper, and who has been a life-long friend of Ms." Strange this man does not wish Ms name given and strange that being such a good friend of mine as you have tried to make him appear to be that in all this he has never thought enough of men to even write me of Ms "deeply distressed" feeling over the "change that has occurred in me in these last few years." We are strange human beings at times. Here is one of my dearest friends from child-hood, I suppose from this letter, and yet he knows I have changed. Instead of coming to me, he goes to the men who are doing their best to brand me and the church where I am as a "Digressive church" trying to create anew the "Old Missionary Society," gives to them that which he hopes will further harm the influence that I, his good friend, may have in the work of the church. Your friends, who remain your friends, do not go to those attacking you with information they hope will destroy. He may have been a friend but now he has ceased that friendship and is trying as best he can to destroy that "one time life-long friend" of his. But so is life and yet we live and work on. The judgment is ahead for us all. We better know what we are doing and saying for "one thing certain": We are not all "going to heaven" as things are now. Whoever is wrong about this better get right. If I am wrong it is lost, eternally lost, for E. R. Harper, if I do not correct it. But remember it is the same for you also. There is no place for willful misrepresentation or of ignorant misrepresentation, for if you do not have the correct information and you print it just the same, hoping it to be, you are guilty of sin. Somebody is wrong in all these accusations and someone is just plain lost. This thing is too serious to be lost in the day of judgment just to prove somebody wrong or to cast suspicion upon another to ease the pressure that is hanging over us. So far as my personal affairs are concerned, I suppose I will never realize that it has ever been made. Those who have known me through the years, most of them will believe me, and I can preach on where they are. My enemies, if I have such, wouldn't let me preach there anyhow. The reason I write these is that, in the future when this generation has passed and men wish to use these things, you have written about me, that my answers will be there for truth to refute such accusations. Again I say I never solicited money for a school in my life.
Letters That Talk
N. B. Hardeman Writes
That you may know I have told the truth I now give you a letter from Brother N. B. Hardeman, who was president of the school at the time I worked for it.
"Dear Brother Harper:
I have just read your article. I think it good. For several years after Freed-Hardeman College was organized in 1918, it could hardly exist. Brother ______ was employed to go among its friends and try to raise some money. He accepted checks from churches and individuals. Various members of the faculty did likewise. Finally you were asked to help the school. I recall that you didn't think churches "as such" should contribute but only members. There was no objections to you doing as you thought best etc., etc."
Signed, N. B. Hardeman
Letter — C. P. Roland
"Dear Brother Harper:
I received the copy of your article, 'The Judgment Lies Ahead of Us,' in answer to your opponents. I have read it carefully and believe it states the facts throughout. In regard to your employment by Freed-Hardeman College, it is exactly according to my memory of the plan. You are correct that you did not solicit funds from churches and it has not been the practice of Freed-Hardeman College to do so during any recent years.
I hope such an honest reply in good spirit may cause the others to study the matter more thoroughly and be less radical in their views of a congregation's liberty to choose the field of its good work, etc., etc."
Signed, C. P. Roland, Dean
Now my good friends, I have the President of the school that hired me and the Dean who was there at that time also, both stating I told the truth of this matter in my letter. Now this "good friend" of mine, no doubt through the passing of the years has come to think that such was so. But my work was just as I told it even though you, Brother Tant think my "explanation pretty weak." I was not trying to defend. I just told the truth and the truth is "never weak." It may not be believed but truth is always "strong." It now appears that I did not change as you accused though changing of itself is no disgrace. Just "too much of it" renders ones influence weak.