A Letter To Brother E. R. Harper
Mr. E. R. Harper 402 Highland Ave. Abilene, Texas.
Dear Brother Harper:
Your letter and a copy of your article, "Have I Changed?", came yesterday to me here in San Antonio, where I am in a meeting. Then last night at the meeting one of the brethren brought a copy of the Gospel Guardian to me, and I noticed that your article appears in the current issue (August 26) of the paper.
Twenty years ago no man could have convinced me you would ever write the things you have written during the past eight months. I am surprised and disappointed in every article you have written. I wonder if you realize fully what you are saying in some of your pieces. Please let me call your attention to some things you say in your current article, "Have I Changed?"
1. "Guardian of the Gospels." You say, "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."
In view of what you have written during this year, 1954, I do not think any of your readers will accuse you of being a guardian of the gospel. A few short years ago you were a guardian of the gospel, and that is what you should be now; but your recent articles show beyond reasonable doubt that you now are setting yourself up as the "Universal Guardian" of an unscriptural project which is larger than the Highland Church is able to support, and which no church has a right to build, according to a statement you made in the Tulsa Lectures in 1938 when you were a gallant "Guardian of the Gospel," before you became the "Universal Guardian" of a Romish innovation of centralization of the authoritative control of resources of one thousand and eighty-eight churches of Christ.
2. "Human corporation." You say, "You men have set up a 'Human Corporation'," then you proceed to berate the right of the Gospel Guardian to exist; saying, "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."
What on earth do you mean, Ernest? Are you arguing that it is wrong to organize and incorporate a publishing business? Do you truly believe such tomfoolery? Why this vicious attack on the right to organize a publishing company? Do you know what you are saying?
3. 'We did not start this fight." Oh yes; you did start this fight. You and the Highland elders started this fight just like the Digressives started the instrumental music fight, when they introduced the mechanical instruments into the worship of God. You brethren started this fight just like Don Carlos Janes started a fight when he started his one-man missionary society. You started this fight just like some of our school brethren started a fight when they started soliciting contributions from churches of Christ.
You and the Highland elders started this fight when you started begging thousands of churches to give you control of their funds. You started this fight when you started to build something larger than the Highland Church is able to support. You started this fight when you started this violation of church autonomy.
The Highland Church and you and I were not in this fight until you brethren joined the sponsoring church concept of begging thousands of churches all over the country to surrender the control of their resources to you. In your opinion, who started the instrumental music fight? the missionary society fight? the premillennial fight? Don't you think that the people who started the advocacy of these theories and practices are the starters also of the fight over them? When you find the answer to these questions, then you will have the answer as to who started the fight that you and I are in now.
4. "Contributions to colleges." Since you are so positive, Brother Harper, that you never did advise any church to contribute money to a school, I feel sure that you never intended for the things you said to be taken as an endorsement of that practice; but many years ago, in your anxiety to raise money for Freed-Hardeman College, you did say things that caused many to think you were advising the churches to contribute to the school.
When you get excited, Ernest, you are not so careful as you ought to be in what you say and the way you say it. This leads your readers or hearers to reach conclusions which you had not intended.
Of course, Brethren Hardeman and Roland were not with you all the time, and they do not know what you said in some places and on some occasions. If they had heard some of the things you said, I think that they too would have concluded that you were asking the churches to make contributions to the school.
I am wondering if you gave all that Hardeman and Roland said in those two letters you quoted in the Gospel Guardian of August 26. In both their letters you have included and enclosed in quotation marks the "etc." signs, as though Hardeman and Roland both had closed their letters with "etc., etc." signs. That does not sound like a president or a dean of a college. I have noticed your careless and incorrect use of quotation marks in nearly all your articles, and I thought that you, perhaps, had taken the liberty to substitute the "etc." sign for what these men actually had said.
And one other thing: since you admit that "Ernie Harper may have changed his mind" as many as one thousand times, don't you think you might have forgotten at least one of the times that you changed? If a man changes his mind a thousand times, I think he does exceptionally well to remember nine hundred and ninety-nine of these changes.
Now, Ernest, I am not trying to "ruin" you or to harm you; I would be one of the last men on earth to want to hurt you in anyway whatsoever. I wish I could see you and talk these things over with you. Mary and I were in Abilene last week. We visited with Sister Harper and the girls a little while; they told us you were in a meeting in Arkansas. We were sorry we did not get to see you, for I am very anxious to talk with you. I prize your friendship highly, and I want to retain it more perhaps than you know. Regardless of how long our argument may last, and regardless of how hot it may wax, I am resolved and determined to remain, as ever and always, Your true friend and brother, Cecil B. Douthitt