Autobiography of U.M. McGuire

Some very kind but possibly unwise friends have advised me to commit to paper some recollections of my long life. As reasons for such advice they have expressed a wish for some souvenir by which to remember me and the possible historical value of such notes as throwing light upon some human situations with which I have been connected. Though not entirely convinced that there will be any considerable value for either of these purposes in any memories which I may recall I am inclined to comply with the wishes of such friends. Hence, with no thought of publication, but merely to leave a record of events as I remember them, for whatever uses they may serve, these notes are written. These notes are drawn exclusively from memory. Documentary material is scattered in many places and none of it is accessible to me at this time. A margin of possible error in dates and names must in occasional instances be expected. But any such error will be exceptional and the body of the narrative may be accepted as accurate. Owing to the fact that a failure of my eyesight prevents me from reading these notes I depend for their accuracy upon my stenographer, Miss Lurabelle E. Gustafson, whose assistance has been of great value to me in their preparation.

MEMORIES

By U.M. McGuire

I was born April 7, 1856. My birthplace was a log cabin situated on a yellow clay hill about a mile northwest of the present village of Commiskey in Jennings County, Indiana. That hill was very much like many others of its kind in the locality which exhausted their fertility with their first crop and to the best of my knowledge and belief since the day I was born it has produced nothing.

My people are a numerous progeny, especially on my mother's side. Her name was Nancy Violetta Deputy, born in 1836. The Deputys came from West Virginia in a stream of immigration beginning about 1805 and they kept coming till nearly the middle of the century. The area of their settlement began near the present village of Deputy, Indiana, and spread in a northwesterly direction for ten or twelve miles occupying some thousands of acres of uncleared forest land in Jefferson, Jennings and Jackson Counties. Much of this land was fertile bottom land along the creeks of the region which they soon developed into productive farms. For the times they were wealthy and rather pretentious folk who built a line of substantial two-story brick houses in a community in which log cabins were respectable residences. Most of those houses still stand in a good state of preservation. Some of the migrant Deputys farther into Illinois and Missouri and one of the branches is still represented by a prosperous family at Mount Carmel, Illinois. The houses still remain, but the descendants of those pioneers are scattered over the earth. My mother was the daughter of Andrew Deputy, who was one of the later migrants, coming down the Ohio River in a flat boat in 1841. I am informed that Prof. Manfred Deputy of the Minnesota State Teachers College at Bemidji, Minnesota has compiled a history of the family which doubtless contains full and interesting information, but it has not been published and I have never read it.

My father was William Edward McGuire, born in Jennings County, April 14, 1834. The tracing of my ancestry on his side is a trifle dim as to historical accuracy. Some things are clear. His grandfather came from Ireland probably shortly after the American Revolution; settled first in North Carolina; thence with a group of other immigrants made his way through Tennessee and Kentucky to Clark's Grant at the falls of the Ohio where Jeffersonville now stands. The immigrants settled near Charleston and in 1798 organized Silver Creek Baptist Church, the first church of that denomination organized in the present state of Indiana. The name of McGuire is in the list of the early membership of that church and near the present building is the grave of Francis McGuire whose death occurred at the age of 43 in 1806. The identification of Francis McGuire as that McGuire to whom my ancestry in this country is traced is not conclusive but all circumstances point to him as that ancestor. At any rate, if I must weep on the grave of an ancestor anywhere the grave of Francis McGuire will serve for that purpose better than any other I am able to locate.

Here then I am son of William Edward McGuire and of Nancy Violetta Deputy McGuire bearing the name of Ulysses Melville McGuire. This combination of names invites reflections. William Edward is grave and dignified; Nancy Violetta is sentimental and suggestive of spring flowers, but Ulysses Melville might provoke the derision of the gods. What induced my parents to tag me with such a name as that is beyond my comprehension. For nearly fourscore years I have abominated that name but the long discipline of patience has enabled me to forgive my erring parents for inflicting it upon me. I am told that it was bestowed as a mark of honor for two friends of the family, one of whom was Ulysses Hill and the other Melville Robertson. I hope that those two worthy fellows inflicted no greater wrong on humanity,--peace to their ashes.

I was the first of five children. The second was William Felix, who died several years ago; James Horace who also died some years ago; Flora May, now Mrs. Flora King; of Dundee, Illinois; and John Elmer, living near Paris Crossing, Indiana.

My family tree is a fairly wholesome one to survey, on its many branches put out in the course of a century and a half in the Ohio Valley country. It is rare to find physical or mental defects or serious moral lapses or any pretensions to any but plain American stock. The books do say that some centuries ago McGuires were princes of Fermanagh in Ireland. For lack of particular records one may imagine a prince McGuire, a good catholic with a red nose rather habitually drunk, blustering about over his petty principality at the head of some moss troupers. Whether I am in that princely line is all unknown and a matter of most profound unconcern except that if my picture is correct I no longer qualify as a descendant by either a red nose, a truculent manner, membership in the Catholic church or a disposition to set the banquet hall roaring with Irish bulls. Neither by the records nor by any visible mark is such ancestry indicated. I am an utter American, Protestant, Baptist democrat.

My father and mother were industrious, honest, friendly folk, faithfully religious, both Methodists with little education and less wealth. My father was a country school teacher. Both had an unusual talent for the time as singers. I inherited their inclination without pretending to their talent. However, by the time I was fifteen I began to lead the singing in our country Sunday School and I have kept the things up as chorister, singing teacher and concert singer in an amateur way most of the time since.

A register of the burial places of my ancestry may have value. On my father's side my great grandfather, Francis McGuire, is buried as noted at Silver Creek Church; my grandfather, George Washington McGuire, in an unknown grave at Hopewell M.C. Church near Commiskey, Indiana; my father, at First Marion Baptist Church on the old Brownstown Road six miles northwest of Paris Crossing, Indiana in a grave with a granite marker. On my mother's side, my great grandfather, Henry Deputy lies in an abandoned graveyard where once stood Grassy Creek Baptist Church, about three miles northeast of Crothersville, Indiana; my grandfather, Andrew Deputy in the old Coffee Creek Baptist Cemetery a mile west of Paris crossing; my mother, in a grave marked by a stone in a cemetery at North Vernon, Indiana.

Any history of the period will give a description of the country in the period of my childhood. Its pioneer character may be indicated by the fact that Daniel Webster in an address at Madison 24 years before I was born called Indiana a wilderness. At the time of my birth much of it was still covered by the original forests. The greater game animals such as the buffalo, bear, cougar and wolf were gone, but young men of the community still told stories of adventures with the bear, the cougar and the wolf. Even during my youth a stray bear or cougar occasionally visited the neighborhood. For manners and customs of the people one may refer to any history of Indiana.

MY EDUCATION
^top

The schools of the period were elementary and crude. The public school system of Indiana had been established only five years when I was born. Many of the schools were held in log houses. They were ungraded and taught by persons with little or no professional qualifications. My father was regarded as an exceptionally good teacher for the times but he never had anything equivalent to a good eighth grade education of today. I seem to have been born with some aptitude for learning. My mother taught me the alphabet from newspapers pasted on the wall of our log cabin. I began to read at the age of four and at seven I was reading newspapers readily. Most of the elementary branches came to me with equal ease. At seventeen with no advantages except those of the ungraded district school I found myself able to pass the teacher's examination of the county and the following winter began teaching in the public schools which I continued for several years. In 1875, I found myself in a position to attend a summer Normal School at Butlerville, Indiana which gave me my first insight into the possibilities of higher education. In 1879 I entered Hanover College for the latter half of the spring term. The College at that time maintained a two years preparatory department. I was registered in the senior prep. I did the work of the whole term in six weeks and made a record, if I remember correctly, of one hundred per cent in mathe- matics in both recitation and examination. In the fall of 1880 I returned to the College and was registered as a junior in the College course. How I came to be so registered I never inquired. I only knew that it gave me a chance to learn and that was my concern. It had for me, however, immense value in the way of stimulus. I found myself classified with such men as Walter Fisher, Oscar Montgomery, Mason J. Niblick, Bruce Milroy and other men with college training. I realized that I must match those men in the work of the junior year while in college and that I was going to have to match them in the world after leaving college. The distinguished careers of some of them since leaving college may indicate a task I faced. From the first week it become apparent that I had won my place as a leading member of the class and I held that place until I left the college later in that same year. That ended my college career. Later I entered the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary but remained only a short time, just long enough to catch the inspiration of contact with such men as Doctors Boyce, Broadus, and Sampey and to match minds with college graduates from every southern state.

My education has come largely from the college courses I never took. I never learned algebra for instance in school but I taught it with gratifying success teaching it to myself in advance of the classes pursuing it. I never studied Latin in the schools but I learned Latin grammar, composition, Caesar and Virgil at home and taught it with success in school. I never studied Greek in school but I pursued at home Greek grammar, composition and the Greek New Testament which I used with enjoyment and profit throughout my career as a minister. To a considerable extent the same account may serve for my education in literature, logic, philosophy, psychology, social science, economics, theology and law. Every branch I ever studied had a fascination for me and I realized that I had to match minds in my public work with men who had studied all these branches in the schools. The general result is that for many years my happiest intellectual fellowship has been drawn from association with university men having the highest scholastic degrees. Even at the present time I belong to two or three select clubs into which I have been invited by such men. In 1921 by the courtesy of Franklin College I was honored with the degree of Doctor of Divinity, an event which doubtless reflected more honor on me than on the college.

My experience in acquiring a knowledge of men and things has impressed me often with the handicap I carried in the lack of a systematic and complete college and seminary course. Such a course would have saved time, would have made me far more effective, especially in my earlier years and would have enabled me to achieve a more satisfactory career in life. At the same time I realize that the necessity of supplying that lack as far as possible by my own efforts has offered some compensatory values. Whether from a natural bent or as a result of that experience I have gone through life with the feeling that nothing was too hard in the way of learning for me to undertake with the expectation of success.

YOUTH ^top

The experiences of my youth were those common to boys and girls growing up under pioneer conditions in a purely rural community. Much of my time was spent in the woods and in almost daily contact with the smaller game animals which abounded such as squirrels, the raccoons, foxes and wild turkeys. Along with these was an abundance of fish, even in the smaller creeks. In May about the time of Dogwood blossoms, there was a great run of fish of the species locally known as Red Horse. The young men of the neighborhood would take fish spears and torches and catch them by thousands. Coon hunting at night with dogs was one of my favorite sports. Another favorite boyhood sport was the trapping of several kinds of small game such as rabbits, partridges and even wild turkeys.

My boyhood was haunted by a fear of dogs. I suppose this fear began with an adventure in which at six years of age I was caught and severely bitten by a large black dog. The terror inspired by that adventure associated itself with the approach of a barking dog until I became a mature man. Other animals either wild or domestic inspired no such felling. I took them for simply what they were harmless or harmful as the fact might warrant. During the first eight years of my life my father was a farm renter operating small farms and moving from farm to farm in the same general locality almost every year, meanwhile teaching school in the local school districts every winter. For several years he was also the township assessor. Thus although he was poor he was respectable and highly esteemed as a neighbor and a citizen. When I was about eight years of age he bought a parcel of eighty acres partly cleared and partly forest. The timber was heavy mostly white oak which he worked into staves and plow handles and sold. With the proceeds combined with other sources of income he paid for the farm at $10.00 an acre. About 1872 he sold that farm and bought another timbered tract of 160 acres not far away on which he built a house and from which he cleared and sold the timber as in the former case. He had the prospect of becoming a well-to-do land owner of the community but he suddenly took tuberculosis and died in his fortieth year. His death left the care of the family on my hands in my eighteenth year. My mother had long been an invalid. The expense of his sickness and the confusion of his business affairs due to his sickness left us after his estate was settled, with forty acres of scantily timbered land, the house in which we lived, a horse and a cow. With these resources I faced the task of taking care of my mother and rearing the other four children. Physically I was not very vigorous. Remunerative employment was not easy to find in the local neighborhood and during the last winter of my father's sickness I often earned not more than twenty-five cents a day. How we managed to get through is a mystery to me even yet, but my mother knew how to make the most of our scanty resources. Her patience and trust in God held us together and kept us going till spring came. When my father died he was buried in a coffin of the sort commonly used by the undertakers for paupers and I wore ragged clothes to his funeral. Within a month after his death I had found work for the summer with a farmer, David Hughes at $13.00 a month, which seemed to be a great piece of good fortune. From that time on I began to teach school and the task of taking care of the family became a less hopeless one. As I look back over that winter I regard it as one of the most beautiful experiences of my life, and when three or four years later I realized that we had pulled through and that I had held my mother and the children together and we had won the battle, I experienced one of the profoundest satisfactions of my long life.

During the period of my boyhood I had gone to the country schools every winter first in one district and then in another, most of the time my father being the teacher. I had learned rapidly. In each of those schools I had one competitor of my age and grade. One of those competitors was Parker Gardener, who challenged me in arithmetic. We never settled the question of excellence between us. In another school Sardis Summerfield challenged me in grammar and reading. I think I beat him but he never knew it. The third champion was Belle Rogers, and she challenged me all along the line. For three years in the same school we carried on a battle of brains. I think that she was my equal but I am quite sure that she was never convinced of it. All three of them I think are gone. The last of them Belle Rogers, later Mrs. T.J. Staples, passed away only a few months ago. It is an interesting memory that these keen rivalries never produced any estrangement between us and that we continued through life fast friends.

Spelling schools were a chief institution of the community and there was great rivalry between individuals and schools in the matter of ability to spell words orally correctly and in proper form as to syllables and pronunciation. From the first I developed unusual aptitude in spelling and by the time I was ten years old I had few rivals in the schools I attended. In Marion Township in which I lived there were ten district schools. Nearly everyone boasted its champion speller and spelling matches between schools were almost of weekly occurrence during the winter months. They drew crowds and produced excitement. In the eleventh year of my age I began to glory in the spelling matches. One wintry night we had a township spelling match for the township championship. A young man named Evan J. Hughes who had finished the common school course and was preparing to teach and been for two years the acknowledged champion speller of the township. In the popular imagination he was supposed to be able to spell anything forward or backward and was regarded as invincible. In this township match I found myself after all the local champions had gone down, pitted against Evan Hughes. The moment was as full of thrills as an ancient tournament. To the astonishment of the crowd of him and of myself I beat him. Henceforth I was the township champion. The hour was full of glory. From that time I never met defeat in a spelling match. No achievement of my whole career can quite equal for elation the moment when I beat Evan Hughes. We also were lifelong friends. Later I became his pastor and he was loyal to me to the day of his death. I was trained to work both indoors and out. At eight years of age I began to help my invalid mother with the household work and continued to render such assistance to a greater or less extent as long as I remained at home. At ten years of age I began to drive a team and follow the plow and to perform many tasks around the farm. As I grew older I went to the woods and learned to handle the axe and cross-cut saw. I always had a fancy for doing unusual things. In indulging this fancy I trained myself to use an axe effectively with either the right or the left hand. Similarly I learned to broadcast grain using both hands at once sowing grain over a spread of double width across the field. I knew once no other man in all the range of my acquaintance who could equal me in using an axe with either hand and only one who was my equal in double broadcasting. Much of my time was spent in clearings and I attended log-rollings frequently. What a merry crew those rustic log-rollers were. Our custom was to appoint two leaders who divided the team into alternate numbers by equal choosing then dividing the piece of land on which the logs were to be rolled into two portions as nearly equal as possible. When each crew set gaily to work to complete the portion allotted to it sooner and in a more workmanlike manner than the other with cheer and banter and song the work went swiftly on and at noon the women served a common meal for all in the shade of the trees. I should like to see again such a scene.

Youthful sports interested me. In school we had bull-pen, town-ball (rustic cousin to baseball), the fox-chase (a contest in long distance running through the woods) and other less intense forms of physical sport. In the community gatherings of young men, the chief sports were wrestling, jumping and running. The tales of the great jumps made by some of the local champions would make a modern record broad jumper turn green with envy. My favorite sport was running and from the time I was ten years old I never met a boy of my age who could equal me in either sprinting or long distance running. In most of the other games I was so awkward that at times I might break my neck or several of my legs.

Of the many men and women who as teachers, the family doctor, and ministers who came into the experience of my youth it would be a pleasure to write at length and with enthusiasm. There were noble souls among them who were my friends tried and true when I needed friends and who game me good counsel and assisted me in emergencies where a little assistance went far toward surmounting serious difficulties. A multitude of friendly faces of the boys and girls who were my school mates comes before me now with bright eyes, smiles and shouts, all faded from the scene and silent now the faces and voices of a vanished generation.

Certain customs that were a torment of my youth cannot be forgotten. They were drunkenness and fighting. The habit of excessive drinking prevailed largely among the men and personal brawls with fighting were usual and expected incidents of many public occasions such as elections, celebrations and social parties. The whole business mortified and disgusted me. My mother often talked to me about these customs. At eight years of age I gave her my pledge that I would never drink intoxicating liquors and I have never violated that pledge.

Behold me then on the threshold of manhood, rather loose jointed with large feet, unaccountably brachycephalous skull, the complexion of a calf-bound law book, and ears spread like wings, a rather gentle voice of a low tone, a somewhat taciturn manner and blest with a host of friends and no enemies. Thus I face the world.

A TEACHER ^top

The process and range of my education have been sufficiently indicated under the appropriate head. For a young man of my position in the community and of my mental bent the most obvious and ordinary opening for employment was that of a teacher in the public schools. But securing a position was no child's play. The teacher was elected by the patrons of the school. It was not enough to be able to secure a creditable certificate and license to teach, the next job was to persuade the folks of a given neighborhood to elect one as a teacher. At this point all the finesse of local politics entered the field. Perhaps a young candidate such as I was had nothing against his record and was intellectually qualified to teach, but there was the matter of age. Most schools had pupils older than I was. The patrons might well hesitate to put a youth like me in such a responsible position. Besides there were other teachers in the field as candidates, some of them were soldiers of the Civil War still vigorous young men and in high favor with the community. Some of them had made a record of vigorous administration in the control of a school. One of them for instance boasted that he had whipped twenty of his pupils in a single week. For a generation only a little way removed from "lickin' and larnin'" such a record was rather impressive. Again some man in the district was Road Supervisor and some neighboring teacher had assisted him in securing an election. He was therefore obligated to return the favor to that teacher. These are only samples of the many factors that entered into the election of a teacher for the district and it became form of fine political art to locate the persons of influence and having located them make sure of their support. In either case the attempt had some elements of precariousness. In one case for instance I thought that I had located the person who was the center of influence. My opponent was a young man, a friend of mine, a thoroughly good character and two years teaching experience. But when I sounded out my key man he assured me that my opponent could not possibly secure the school, that he would see to it personally that he was rejected and that if he came on his farm he would be incontinently ordered off. He further assured me that I might go home and give myself no further concern, that the school was mine. When the school meeting came on I was surprised to find that my friend received every vote and I received none and that my key man as soon as I had left him mounted his horse and rode to the district to secure the election of the other man. I tried several school meetings with somewhat similar results. At one in an adjoining county I was openly supported in the school meeting by the most influential man in the community, was elected almost unanimously, and the next day one of those men acting for the rest, rode to the county seat and fixed things with the county superintendent so that I should fail to secure a license. And the way things were fixed is interesting. I found little difficulty with the examination but I was in the examination. While I was engaged in a series of questions on geography a man strolled in, came in friendly fashion to my desk, sat down and discussed the schedule of questions on geography with me. He gave me no help because I knew the subject better than he did but when I received my report I had failed in geography and the reason was that I had received help in the examination. My officious friend had evidently been sent in to create the appearance of having assisted me in examination. So I missed that school. At last however in the midst of much pulling, and political ingenuity I was elected to teach my home school. From that time on my experience as a teacher was measurably free from the perils of district politics. I soon had a record of efficiency as a teacher which fairly assured me a school long before the fall campaigning began. Within three or four years school meetings were abandoned. The teacher was selected by the township trustee, usually pretty well advised politically by the county superintendent. Through seven or eight successive winters I taught in country schools and during two winters after entering the ministry I taught such schools.

One of the interesting devices in the educational system of the times were schools privately conducted, usually for more advanced study than the common schools afforded and with a cast of preparation for teaching. Such schools were called usually select schools. Either alone or in partnership with certain other teachers I instituted and carried through several summer terms of such select schools. They were located at some central point easily accessible to aspiring students in the grade schools and to young people desiring to make special preparation for teaching. The teachers who conducted such schools were usually persons who had some successful teaching experience and were regarded as of some local eminence. Such schools have long passed into disuse but while they existed they rendered a valuable service to many hundreds of aspiring young men and women who never enjoyed the advantages of regular high schools. Out of those little schools which I conducted alone or in partnership with John E. Graham, Will D. Chambers and others, many fine young men and women went into enlarging and useful careers.

My experience as a teacher in these different types of schools gave to me a pedagogical habit which I have carried through life. Much of my pulpit work has been a teaching ministry. I have always made large use of maps, blackboards, and pictures. From the very first of my ministry I began to insist on teacher training. A subject which in those days and those localities was new and received with incredulity. But I had the educational background of the schools and it was not long before the need of teacher training and of educational methods in the Sunday School began to be recognized. Rev. S.H. Huffman, Baptist Sunday School Missionary for Indiana took the matter up and began to sing a song of teacher training all over the state. By 1892 or earlier the first teacher training course ever proposed to the Baptist churches of Indiana was prepared at the order of the Indiana Baptist Sunday School Convention by President W.T. Stott of Franklin College and myself. It had little popular use and was soon superseded by teacher training courses having the prestige of the great Sunday School Publishing house.

I continued however to specialize in religious education, assisted Mr. Huffman in holding Sunday School Institutes and Conventions in various parts of the State of Indiana and gained some prestige as a specialist on the subject. For two years I was President of the Indiana Baptist Sunday School Convention and declined re-election. About the year 1896 I wrote a little mono- graph on the Church as an Educational Institution, which was published by the American Baptist Publication Society and is still in some vogue as a tract for the times on Christian Education. In the summer of 1897 I became a member of the staff of a Summer Bible Institute at Union Baptist College, Jackson, Tennessee. In this school I was associated among others with Dr. Milton G. Evans of Crozer Theological Seminary. Later he became president of that institution and our casual acquaintance formed at Jackson developed into a warm life-long friendship. My association with S.H. Huffman continued through many years until his death; and I regard the friendship of that noble man as one of the choicest in my long list of friendships.

My educational work continued to widen out. I tested the value of my theories in my own church work. For years the churches I served maintained Sunday Schools with an enrollment considerably larger than the memberships of the churches themselves. I organized teacher training classes in them. One of these classes, in my church at Washington, Indiana, graduated 17 teachers from a full two years standard course at one time. About 1916 I drifted into teaching in Baptist Summer Assemblies. The thing came about rather casually. As chairman of the Committee on Social Service of the Indiana Baptist Convention I was invited to provide a teacher on some phase of that subject for the Summer Assembly at Franklin. I secured for this purpose Dr. C.S. Gardiner of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary at Louisville. But just before the opening of the Assembly I received word from him that the condition of his health forbade his undertaking the task. I conferred at once with the members of my committee and they insisted that I undertake it. There seemed to be nothing else to do so I undertook it. I had a large class and much enthusiasm, but after it was over the word passed around among Baptist leaders that the course was too socialistic and they wanted no more of it. That ended my career as an Assembly teacher in Indiana for some years, but a few years later the Assembly committee invited me to repeat the course and offered me $50.00 for the service. I repeated the course and had just two students in the class. On the whole $50.00 seemed to be a fairly high price to pay for teaching a dozen simple lessons to two students. So that ended again my Baptist Assembly work in Indiana until this year I have been invited to teach in two regular courses in the Assembly, but some delay in correspondence on the subject may prevent my doing so. I shall know within a day or two of the date of this writing.

However, my Assembly work is not all included in this story. I have been in demand most of the time during the last 17 years, as a member of the regular teaching staffs of Assemblies. I have taught in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Montana, and Idaho-Washington. Assemblies having repeated engagements in several of them. This Assembly work has been one of the most delightful phases of my whole career. A list of the men and women with whom I have been associated in the faculties would be readily recognized as containing many of the known names of Baptist leaders. And I suppose that the thousands of fine young men and women whom I have taught in the classes or addressed in the Assembly halls could not be surpassed for high character by any other group in the United States. It has been a marvel to me that my services have continued to be in demand in these Assemblies for many years after I have passed the supposed maximum age for such service. In this year for instance I have been compelled on account of conflict of dates to decline invitations from both Iowa and Nebraska.

It is probable that my interest in the social applications of the gospel has contributed to the demand for my services. Dr. Samuel Zane Batten, for many years Secretary for Social Education of the American Baptist Publication Society, was very much interested in securing my services for various Assemblies, and usually I served in the Assemblies to which I was assigned as a representative for his department. Since his death the demands for my services has continued, and 'tis interesting to note that the demand for a course in Social Education has been uniform in every Assembly in which I have taught. Within the last few years I have been generally recognized throughout the country as a Socialist and there is always a demand in these Assemblies for addresses at public meetings in which I am invited to give my interpretation of current public affairs. My interesting educational work has not been limited to the Assemblies. It has brought me into many associated forms of educational activity. Thus within the last few years I have been a member of the Adult Education Council of Chicago; of the Adult Division of the Chicago Council of Religious Education; President of the Chicago Baptist Sunday School Union and Principal of the Adult Division of the School of Religious Education of Hyde Park Baptist Church. During all the years I have been busy in the local church to which I belonged, both as a member of the church Council of Religious Education and as a teacher of Adult classes.

MARRIAGE ^top

Naturally growing up as a wholesome some- what sociable and quietly ambitious farmer boy, I took to the social ways of the young people of my neighborhood. In the public schools, in revival meetings, in singing schools, in spelling schools, and in literary societies the boys and girls were thrown together wholesomely. In so called socials and in the country dances many of them were thrown together with considerable question as to wholesomeness. In church circles the social party which turned very largely to games of kissing among the boys and girls were frowned upon as being at least highly questionable and the dance with all of its accompaniments was regarded as an institution wholly of the devil. It is well to reflect also that any game of cards, attendance at theaters and even patronizing the circus were morally taboo. Our young people were therefore if members of churches expected to watch their step closely, but if not were given over to a reprobate mind and whatever mischief they might get into.

I had a wise mother. She early gave me instruction which counteracted the effect of ribald stories of amorous adventures told by boys of the neighborhood. So far as I was personally concerned those stories filled me with moral disgust and I never believed half of them. With all respect for the shades of those conscienceless young liars, now long dead I do not believe half of them yet. People who lament the primitive simplicity and innocence of pioneer times as compared with modern sophistication of youth simple do not know their young people. One might search long on West Madison St., Chicago or in Harlem, New York for a collection of more utter depravity than those familiarly assembled about the sawmills in the pioneer woods. In those groups it was generally understood and firmly asserted by windy young fellows from 15 years old to 40 that folks were just animals and there was no such thing as virtue among the sexes. Against that sort of thing I revolted with my whole soul and I was not alone among young men. There were such sterling neighbor boys as Tip Warner, Jake Huffman, Frank Deputy, Ben Foster and others out of whose lips never came a word of disrespect to womanhood. They lived up to their language. As a result so far as my contacts with the girls and young women of my neighborhood were concerned no one of them ever gave me occasion to believe such stories and from my boyhood it was with me a fixed principle that no woman should ever have cause to blush because of her association with me. That principle I have held through life.

I had the usual run of youthful attachments. Some longer, some shorter, none very serious for me and so far as I know not very serious for any of my young girl friends. They constitute bright spots in the course of my experience which was sufficiently drab. At the age of 21 I closed a term of school on Coffee Creek near Paris. Among the visitors present on that occasion was a young woman,noticeable but not conspicuous, by the name of Elba Graham. She was a daughter of William J. Graham, a farmer in the neighborhood. Subsequently we met at church and other places, found ourselves in a congenial circle of young people in the neighborhood and became familiarly acquainted. The general outcome was that we were married on the seventh day of March, 1880. Some particulars of her like are due at this point. Her ancestors like mine came from Virginia. Her grandfather, William Graham, settled as a pioneer on Graham Creek near Paris Crossing, probably as early as 1825. His children as I remember them were Sarah, Abraham, William J. and Newland. William J. married Miss Cobb and began life in a log house on the hill just west of Paris Crossing. Here a son Norman was born and later his mother died. A few years afterward William married Miss Holbrook, who became the mother of twin sisters, Elba and Ella. Both named in that simple fashion with no middle names. Later a brother John E. Graham was born.

All of them received the common school education available in the community and being young people of some social and cultural aspiration made the most of it. Ella taught school for a short time and then married George Dodd. He was interested in the sawmill business at which he was fairly prosperous. They had two children, Clara and Eldo. Ella died about the year 1885. Her daughter Clara spent a number of years during her schoolgirl days in my home until she graduated from the Anderson High School. Later she married George Williamson. They had one daughter, Mary, who proved to be a girl of unusual intellectual aptitude, graduated from Franklin College, married Emmett Avery and later both did graduate work in the University of Chicago, where she still holds a position in the University library. Eldo Dodd married Cora Deputy, a granddaughter of my mother's brother, Sylvester Deputy. They still live at Paris Crossing and have an interesting family of children rapidly growing to maturity. One of their girls is teaching in the public schools and a son is in Franklin College preparing for the ministry.

After the death of Ella Dodd, George married Lottie Yauger, who proved to be an excellent mother to his orphan children. He died at about 80 years of age and Lottie later married a Mr. Wagner at Franklin, Indiana, where they still reside.

Norman Graham, my wife's half brother grew to manhood, married Susan Wagner, ^* and some years later was accidentally killed in a sawmill leaving her with several children all of whom grew to manhood and womanhood. Susan still lives in Indianapolis.

John E. Graham, my wife's brother, who was a boy and a young man highly esteemed in the community and an active member, as in fact all of his father's family were, in Coffee Creek Baptist Church. He was an unusually active, capable, cheerful and practical young man, noted particularly in the handling of mules and machinery with which he spent his time in farm work. But for a practical person with strong common sense, vitality and fine social qualities he was intellectually about the dumbest soul I ever knew. The study of a book was to him a task of the utmost difficulty and drudgery. In the face of that difficulty he took a fancy that he wanted to become a teacher and set about preparing himself for the work. I think that I have never known any other human being to work so hard in endeavoring to acquire the necessary elementary information and he never did become anything like a satisfactory scholar although he did acquire sufficient information to pass a moderately successful examination for a common school teacher's license. From the opening of his first school he proved to be a marvel of skill as a teacher, was remarkably inspiring, successful and in popular demand. He went on with the drudgery of further preparation, got into college, equipped himself for high school teaching and as a high school teacher, principal, and superintendent maintained his record of remarkable professional success, but to the day of his death he never could compose a creditable paper in English, was always foggy in mathematics and was seldom quite sure of himself in any branch of learning. Soon after he began teaching he married Miss Lulu Whiteside of Austin, Indiana. One child was born to them, a girl who died in childhood and John himself died at Seymour some years ago. Lulu still survives and resides at Seymour.

Elba and her twin sister Ella were born February 11, 1856. They were an interesting pair of girls, small as bantam chickens, of light complexion, grayish blue eyes, auburn hair, dressed alike, always together, always below the normal size for their age, both jolly, playful and the pets of the neighborhood. So they grew up together. They went to school and Sunday School. Together they joined the church and were baptized into the membership of old Coffee Creek Baptist Church near their girlhood home. After Ella's marriage their father moved his family into his father's old home only a few hundred yards distant and for some years ran a boarding house for stone cutters employed in the large marble quarries nearby. Here Elba became an expert cook and manager of household affairs on a somewhat extended and complicated scale. Her mother died in 1875 leaving her as the sole and responsible manager of such a household. In the course of two or three years operations in the stone quarry ceased and the boarding house business closed up, but Elba had received her life training and continued to live with her father on the farm, managing the domestic affairs. Here I became acquainted with her. The personnel of our group of associates among the young people of the neighborhood was interesting then and is still so in reminiscence. To a considerable extent they ran in pairs. Among those whom I now recall there were Belle and Elbert Hill; Frank, Will and Ella Phillips; Ora, Etta, and Addie Hill; Lloyd and Dora Hudson; Lizzie, Lottie and Will Humphries; Lillie Wilson, Manville Fish; Thomas Deputy; Velmore, Alvin, and Emerson Deputy; and others in a widening circle. It is interesting to recall the marriages of this group. Elbert Hill married Dora Hudson; Walter McGannon, Maggie Jackson; Emerson Deputy, Ella Phillips; Alvin Deputy, Lillie Wilson; Frank Phillips, Addie Hill. Other couples were variously formed but these are the most intimate in my memory now. All of this group had practically grown up together. All were members of the local Baptist, Christian or Methodist churches. All were almost constantly together in church meetings of young people, sleighrides, picnics, and other pleasant gatherings. All of them were people of good character, not one of them has ever left a stained memory. Nearly all of them are dead. The only one of the group whom I know now to be living is Mrs. Belle Hart, formerly Hill, now residing at Kokomo, Indiana and in feeble health. To this group of young people it seemed perfectly natural that Elba Graham and I should be paired off together. Our courtship was romantic enough and both of us took it so. But both of us had had experience with life in its soberest aspects enough to know that it was not all a spring carol. Accordingly for both of us marriage meant a serious business for a lifetime and so we entered it. Our marriage was solemnized by Rev. Allen Hill (father of Elbert and Belle Hill) March 7, 1880 at the home of Elba's father.

Of course the rest of this story must be condensed. No book can recount all the experiences of a lifetime. But certain facts are vital, first, in temperament we were fairly balanced. I was a trifle reserved and slow of speech. Having grown up in the muscatutuck bottoms I had become pretty well saturated with what we then called malaria. My complexion was sallow, I was hardly at full weight and felt more or less a certain lassitude which accompanies the debility of life in the marshlands, but I had fundamentally a good constitution, was willing to work and accustomed to hardship. Gradually the effects of malarial poisoning were eliminated and within four or five years I came up to my normal weight of about 150 pounds and have lived vigorously ever since. My height was and is five feet ten and one half inches. She was tall enough to come to my shoulder, weighed 95 pounds, wore a shoe of size two and one half and was a active as a kitten. She was quick not only in action but also in thought and speech. Both of us had learned the art of getting along with folks in trying family situations and as a result we did not have to learn that art after we were married. Occasions of misunderstanding and irritation sometimes arose but both us knew how to handle them and in the course of a long life struggle together we never had a serious quarrel, never suspected each others loyalty and never dreamed of such a possibility as separation. In point of ability to do and endure hard work I think I never saw her equal. She seemed to be a structure of steel and electricity, cooking housekeeping, family laundry, care of the children all fell on her hands with none of the conveniences of modern aids to housekeeping and she went through it daily weekly and year after year with seldom a complaint of weariness. The laundry work for instance was done by hand with tub and washboard. The clothes were boiled in a galvanized boiler on the kitchen stove, water had to be carried from a well or cistern outside the house for all of these purposes and carried out again as waste water. Wood had to be carried in to keep the fire going in both the kitchen and the living room. The clothes must be hung out in the open air no matter how cold the weather and so it went. Of course I was not such a simpleton as to imagine that she could do all this work unaided. We were unable to hire help to any extent but I knew something about all sorts of housework from experience in helping my invalid mother and I contributed some share toward relieving these burdens. After the older children became old enough to help they also did their part but such assistance in no wise weakens the fact of her marvelous power of endurance and will to work. Aside from this extraordinarily heavy household burden it is to be added that she was the mother of seven healthy children all still living. Her skill in the care and nurture of children was equally surprising. At a time when the scientific care of children was yet practically unknown, she seemed to know it by instinct and to practice it in feeding, sanitation and protection against contagious diseases. She kept them under such discipline that although for many years we lived within the limitations of residence on a city lot she kept them trained so that without definite permission they never left the boundaries of the lot on which we lived. She kept them in school, in Sunday School and in church services, Sunday morning and Sunday evening with almost perfect regularity, and in church the McGuire children were the model of decorum for the children of the community. More even than this she was for many years an unusually successful primary teacher in the Sunday school and a leader in the organized women's work of the churches we served. But she never was a public speaker and she avoided public prominence.

Certain principles guided both of us in our family life. We permitted no conflict in the matter of discipline. When she spoke to the children her word was law for me and when I spoke to them my word was law for her. Household affairs were hers and I made no effort to interfere with them. External, public and pastoral matters were mine and she never interfered, but we often counseled together about matters of mutual concern. The net result of this policy was not only a happy married life between us but a wholesome impression of family life upon the community generally. She was scrupulously neat in person and as a housekeeper she had unusual skill in managing household affairs so as to avoid confusion. Of her skill in rearing children her children are the best testimony. Within seventeen years, that is, from 1881 to 1898, they were born in the following order: Ella May, Mary Agnes, Arthur Graham, Elbert Clive, Clarence Vane, Paul Raymond, and Edith Fern. All were physically and mentally normal and had vigorous constitutions. All grew to a much larger stature in proportion to their parents. All lived to adult age married and have healthy families. It should be added that during all her lifetime she never knew what it was to have a sufficient income and what people call a good living. She had a genius for economical management. As a result the children were always well-fed and comfortably clothed and appeared neatly dressed in public. During the first ten years of your married life my salary as a minister never amounted to more than $500.00 a year and while she lived it never exceeded $1,000.00 a year. But during the earlier years I spliced out my income by teaching and working in the stone quarry or in timber or on the farm. But such additions to my income were fractional irregular and not large. After we had been married about three years I became impressed with the need of a little life insurance and rode three miles to the nearest town to hunt up an insurance agent from whom I secured a policy for $1,000.00. This pitiful protector was all that stood between her and destitution for herself and two small children in case of my death. Later I secured $2,000.00 more.

So we bore the yoke together and sustained each other in a cheerful hopeful and actually happy experience of life until on a beautiful day in June, 1914 she lay down to her final rest. Our seven children were all present with me at her funeral and not a tear was shed. Her going was a coronation.

THE SABBATH ^top

Among the problems which in my younger ministry gave me a deal of trouble was that of the Sabbath. On this subject I started out with clear sailing. I was a puritan and that told the story. The Sabbath I understood to have been given by the example and command of God at the end of the creative week as a religious and moral institution binding upon all mankind. The day designated originally as the Sabbath by Divine selection was the seventh day of the week. Presumably identical with Saturday of the common calendar. But the resurrection of Christ changed the day and from that time the Holy Sabbath day of God's command was to be observed by all the world on the first day of the week, presumably identical with Sunday of the common calendar. Sunday had therefore all the elements of sacredness which had previously been attached to the seventh day of the week. This doctrine was well understood, easily stated and almost universally accepted.

But some inconvenient things began to happen. Seventh Day Adventists and Seventh Day Baptists were abroad in the land and they challenged the doctrine of a change of day from Saturday to Sunday. They insisted that the original Sabbath was the Sabbath for all mankind and is still binding as fully as it ever was, that the day had not been changed. Not a great deal of investigation was required to show that the theory of a change of the day from the seventh to the first day of the week was untenable. One seldom hears it now, but at that time a denial of this sacred puritan Sunday Sabbath had terrors about it. It was like throwing Christianity overboard. Nevertheless I became firmly convinced that the theory of a change of day must be given up. Naturally my state of mind brought me into correspondence with a number of respected and influential leaders, Rev. C.E.W. Dobbs, pastor of the First Baptist Church at Madison, Indiana, wrote a series of scholarly articles on the subject in the Indiana Baptist; Rev. R.E. Neighbor of Indianapolis, no less scholarly and exact also wrote articles. Both of these men were trying to meet my difficulty without referring to me in any way. Rev. Allen Hill my old father in the ministry wrote an earnest protest backed up by the best argument he could make from the New Testament. Rev. H.L. Stetson, Baptist pastor at Logansport, now President Emeritus of Kalamazoo College, gave me the benefit of his clear and incisive reasoning on the subject. Rev. E.W. Hicks, Baptist pastor at Toulon, Illinois, who had made a special study of the subject and thought that he had gathered a lot of new light about it, opened up an interchange of letters with me which continued through several months. The net result was that not one of all these good and noble friends had touched the heart of the problem. What I asked for was a clear statement in the New Testament that the Sabbath day with all of its old sanctities and obligations had been changed by the clear command of God to the first day of the week. This none of them could show. It was simply not there. The conclusion was inevitable that whatever value Sunday might have as a day for celebrating the resurrection of Jesus it was not the Sabbath, and the Sabbath therefore remained as God first instituted it on the seventh day of the week.

So convinced there was but one consistent course open to me, namely, to keep Saturday as the Sabbath and this for two or three years I consistently did. In pursuing this course I sought to avoid conflict with the religious ideals and customs of my people and made no public issue of the matter, except to resign my church at Uniontown. My reason for this resignation was that there were some Seventh Day Baptists in the community who were disposed to be insistent in their views and I resigned in order that my presence might not be an embarrassing circumstance to the church.

But, of course, I did not cease to think about the subject. I began to inquire about the foundations of the Sabbatarian position. It seemed to me not at all clear that God had instituted the Sabbath on the seventh day of the creative week as an institution for all mankind. As it became clear to me that the world was not made in seven calendar days the bottom went completely out of the argument for such a primeval Sabbath. The sanctions of the institution must therefore be sought in the Ten Commandments given to the Jews. But the record seems perfectly clear that to the Jews and not to any other nation was the Sabbath commandment given. If therefore, the Sabbath is to be regarded as a Christian institution it must rest on the ground that the law given to the Jews passes over in full effect into the Christian order. But such a passing over of the law into the Christian order seems clearly rejected by the writings of Paul and by the history of the early churches. I came to the conclusion, therefore, that the Sabbath is an institution designed particularly for the religious and moral conservation of the Jewish community.

Moreover, we had all along assumed that the seventh day of the primitive institution is identical with the Saturday of our common weekly calendar. How could this be shown to be true? The task was not possible and we who observed the Sabbath on Saturday found ourselves in the curious predicament of being governed in our practice not by the Bible alone but by the Bible and the almanac, with no evidence that the almanac was divinely inspired. There was still a further difficulty. A universal Sabbath to be observed on a specified day must be observed on that day all around the world, but here arose a difficulty. Where does the day begin and end its continuous journey around the world. How could people in London and people in China observe the same day, for when the day is beginning in London it is ending in China, and this circumstance has compelled geographers to fix a day line in the Pacific Ocean. When a ship at the Sandwich Islands observes Sunday morning another ship not far to the westward will be busy with the active duties of Monday morning. These two ships and the people in their localities cannot observe the same day. Now in order to make it possible for all people in the world to observe the same Sabbath day the Bible must tell us when and where the Sabbath day actually begins its journey around the world so that the people in any longitude will be able to take their Bible and say this is the Sabbath day here. Of course no such index is given in the Bible nor anywhere else. The fixing of the day line is a device of human convenience and the identification of God's Sabbath around the world is a simple impossibility. All of this reduces itself down to the fact that the designation of the Sabbath is a human device and not a divine law. The doctrine of a Sabbath identically fixed for all people by the law of God is not sustained by either the Bible or human experience.

What then is the conclusion. Clearly the Sabbath of the Jews did have permanent and universal values. The Sabbath was made for man because it had values for man, but those values do not depend upon the fixed and uniform observance of a particular day of the week. Men ought to recognize and make use of the high religious value of a day of sacred rest and worship, but the fixing of the day is in their hands. It is a matter in which they ought to consult common convenience while leaving all men free to utilize the values of the day in those ways which seem to them most worthful. Having reached this conclusion it was easy for me to see that there was no longer a duty resting upon me nor anyone else to observe a particular day as the Sabbath. Manifestly that day which the community in general is devoting to rest and religious worship may be best so observed by each individual. Through the years of a long life I have followed this policy. I observe Sunday for religious purposes because that is the day which people generally so observe. In a community of Sabbatarians I could with equally good conscience observe Saturday. In a community in which there was no recognition of the Sabbath I should select that day which seemed most fitting and convenient and so observe it.

This is the history of a most interesting period in my experience and this is the outcome. I find in it a spiritual liberty in keeping with the grace of God to all people. For me the Sabbath is a day of freedom not of bondage.

READING ^top

At the age of five I received as a present from my mother a red cloth bound copy of Rollo's Garden. That was my introduction to the treasures of literature and I read the book through before I went to bed. From that point on my intellectual history is one of omnivorous, voracious and not very selective reading. I read everything, books, newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, advertisements in fact everything in print that came within the reach of my vision. Of course, my reading included all that was prescribed in the regular courses and side reading in the schools, up to the time I left college. As a teacher I read almost everything including a great deal of pedagogical literature. As a Christian, Sunday School teacher, student for the ministry and through the long years of an active ministry I read endlessly in the field of religious literature. I scheduled my theological reading largely on the basis of the curriculum of my seminary. In general English literature I read the standard English novelists, Kingsley, Scott, Thackeray, Dickens; in poetry Milton, Pope, Dryden, Keats, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Browning, and the American poets, Longfellow, Whittier, Bryant, Poe, Sydney Lanier, James Whitcomb Riley, Walt Whitman, Joaquim Miller, Bret Harte, and Carl Sandberg. In the drama I began with Shakespeare to which I returned again and again through life, never satisfied with any other dramatic productions in English literature. I formed intellectual friendships in the anti-Christian or Liberal group, Darwin, Huxley, Spencer's Synthetic Philophy, Voltaire's Essays, Paine's Age of Reason, Ingersoll's Lectures, Emerson and Elbert Hubbard were my familiars. This in only a fraction of the story. For many years, especially since I entered the editorial work I received the new books for review from many publishers, and read and read and read. As a result I can hardly remember even a fraction of titles and authors to say nothing of current periodical literature from all parts of the world. Such a voluminous reading and especially current reviews of books brought me into correspondence most of it pleasing with distinguished writers in many lands. This continued until the month of August in 1933 when my eyesight definitely failed and I could read no longer.

Of course such a quantity of reading was excessive. No man could digest it, but it had the general effect of throwing a thousand tints upon my thinking and my ideals and so may be classed among what Dean Matthews calls, "The personality- producing processes." As I look back over that experience now, it brings to me the general illusion of a long swift, ride through a fairyland of indescribable variety and beauty.

Naturally a good deal of this reading had relation to current intellectual problems and greatly helped to determine my serious processes of investigation, and to assist in forming balanced judgments. All in all, through this vast course of reading, my world has contributed to the fullness of a long and active life. I owe more than I shall ever know to my friends of the pen and the printing press.

THE MINISTRY ^top

The beginnings of my work as a minister are now easily traceable to the experiences of childhood. My parents were active Christians, attended church regularly, had occasional neighborhood meetings in their home and were often visited by the itinerant Methodist minister. The religious ideas imparted to me in my childhood were of the simplest sort. "God was the Good Man", the "Devil was the Bad Man." God liked good folks, the Devil got bad folks. Good folks were honest, kind, truthful. Bad folks lied, were cruel and dishonest. Such primitive ideas as these brought me up to my first theological question at eight years of age. Does God really care for folks? Is he friendly toward me? I found no answer but held the problem in suspense until two years later I came under the spell of the Methodist revival. These revivals were of the most highly emotional sort with a lurid preaching of the fate of sinners unless they experienced religion. I did not know very well what it was all about but I caught the general mood and was considerably stirred in my feelings. Acting on the suggestion of a boyhood chum of mine, Pratt Steel, about my own age I went to the front with him and offered myself for membership in the church. Later at the end of the period of probation I was immersed but I had not shared the experience which many of the converts glowingly described and was not quite at ease about it. I may say that the visions, hallucinations and wild emotions and the shouting, jumping, jerks and trances described by them and regarded as current coin in the religious experience of the time never did come into my experience, but I did come to realize the love of God and it became the keynote of my own religious experience. From such a center of experience it was natural that there should come to me something of an emotional thrust to try to bring others to share in that experience, and later the question of becoming a minister of the gospel definitely developed in my mind as a vocational possibility. At this point I was deterred by stories told among my ministerial friends about their call to the ministry. In such stories of the normal type, characteristically there was first an overwhelming impression of a call to the ministry; Secondly a revolt and resistance against such a calling and finally after a stubborn fight, a yielding to the persuasion of grace. My experience did not work out so. The ministry appealed to me as a highly noble and desirable calling. I could not understand why I did not have the typical experience described by ministers of the time, but finally appealed to God to make it clear to me his will in this matter. As a result I became fully persuaded that it was his will for me to preach the gospel. But at that time I did not connect the preaching of the gospel with a vocation pursuit as a source of income. I conceived of my work rather as that of a layman who interprets the gospel and seeks to lead people to accept it, as a gratuitous service, in addition to the work of teaching which I expected to pursue as a livelihood. My mother concurred with this view. My most intimate and fatherly friend in the ministry, Rev. Allen Hill advised me that the way to find out how much preaching the Lord wanted me to do was to go to doing what he placed at my hand. Just then occurred a curious opening. A group of us young fellows about Paris Crossing formed a sort of outlaw Y.M.C.A. of which I became president, and we decided to undertake some evangelistic work. Accordingly without much formality and without conferring with any ministers we arranged a series of dates for evangelistic meetings to be held by ourselves. I do not now recall the places where such meetings were held, but during that winter there were about seventy- five additions to the churches where we held such meetings, mostly of young people near our own ages, that is about twenty-one. That had given us a taste of evangelistic work. When spring came the other fellows went their various ways but I began somewhat seriously to prepare for the ministry. The local Methodist church at Paris in which I held membership recommended me as a student for the ministry and with the advice of my pastor I began to do some reading in preparation.

At that juncture arose an unexpected difficulty. The Methodist church of which I was a member had administered for baptism immersion, sprinkling or pouring at the option of the candidate and accepted infants for baptism. I began to have misgivings about the practice of my church in this particular. I saw at once that the question of baptism was fundamental and must be settled before I took any further steps towards entering the ministry of my church. On this point I proceeded with great care, conferred widely with ministers of my denomination, read everything they recommended on the subject of baptism, explored the New Testament carefully under their guidance and before I had completed my work in college I found myself in the anonymous position of a Methodist student for the ministry with a training very much influenced by contact with the Disciples of Christ, deeply impressed by the religious spirit of the Quakers, attending a Presbyterian college with the prospect of entering the Baptist ministry. My friend Rev. Allen Hill had been aware of my perplexity and was willing to lend me any assistance in his power. But two years before I had told him that I was a Methodist, that I must work out this problem as a Methodist and with Methodists, and that it would not be wise for me to hold any conversation with him on the subject. Accordingly during those two years not a word on the subject had passed between us. I had been however, in considerable friendly contact with the Disciples and friends among them had invited me to read Milligan's "Scheme of Redemption" and Walker's "Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation". I found the books interesting but the authors impressed me as knowing a bit too much about the way the mind of God worked. At length in the year 1881 I became convinced that the immersion of believers is the only Christian baptism. I went to the spring meeting of my Circuit Conference and stated as fraternally and frankly as possibly the course of investigation through which I had passed and the conclusion to which I had come. I further informed the Conference that if as a Methodist minister I could be accepted with such views all of my life interests prompted me to go ahead in preparation for the Methodist ministry. If not I asked for advice. The Presiding Elder in charge of the Conference sprang to his feet and said, "I want to say emphatically that you can go no further. You stop right here." Then he became irritated and proceeded to lecture me on the general folly of my course to say that I had probably some ulterior motive and finally added this remarkable statement, "Whenever a Methodist young man begins to bother himself about such questions he usually comes out where you have come out." He seemed not at all aware of the tremendous certificate of vindication which he was giving me in that statement. After he had closed I rose and said to the members of the Conference that the outcome was clearly apparent and the course of duty plain to me; that I should be compelled to seek some other fellowship where my views might be acceptable; that the closing of this session would end my connection with the Methodist church, but I wished that we might separate in the same spirit of loving fellowship and goodwill which had bound us together for thirteen years. The Conference showed the same spirit and in testimony of it invited me to preach the next Sunday afternoon in my old church at Paris. This I did and was received with all the kindness that anyone could wish. On the Saturday following this meeting of the Conference I attended the monthly meeting of Coffee Creek Baptist Church, stated my experience, offered myself for membership and was cordially received. Then occurred a most unexpected incident. Pastor Hill, my old friend and for years pastor of this church, within fifteen minutes after I had been received to membership, announced his resignation and recommended that I be called immediately to the pastorate of the church. The thing was immediately done and I found myself suddenly called to a Baptist pastorate. Later I accepted the call. I spent three happy years in the pastorate of that church. In the fall without my knowledge a council was called to ordain me as pastor. It was regularly organized with Rev. Allen Hill as Moderator and Joshua Tibbetts, Clerk. The only other Baptist minister present was Rev. J.N. Spillman of Lancaster. The ordination was premature, I was not adequately prepared for the work of the ministry, but the thing had been thus officially and formally done and there I stood before the world a regular Baptist minister.

The earlier years of my ministry were spent in the services of country churches, most of them having services only once each month. The program of the monthly meeting included a business meeting or covenant meeting on Saturday afternoon; an evangelistic meeting on Saturday night; Sunday School and regular morning worship with the sermon on Sunday morning; an evangelistic meeting on Sunday night. In most of such churches a Sunday School was maintained every Sunday through the summer months, but the great event of the year was a revival meeting held preferably in the early fall.

I have already indicated that my temperament ran rather to a teaching ministry than to evangelism and yet during those early years evangelism was the heavy end of my work. I undertook that part of the task with some misgiving. One of my friends, an observant teacher of long experience said to me one day, "You will be a teaching preacher, you never will be an evangelist." A good many years later Grant Scott, a deacon of Greencastle church, said to a friend, "If you listen to McGuire you will either think or go to sleep, you can't just sit and listen." Those two remarks seem to me fairly interpretative.

In spite of the fact that by temperament, habit, and forecast of my friends I was not built for an evangelistic ministry. I not only spent a large part of my earlier years in the ministry in evangelistic work but had considerable success in such work. I recall now a partial list of churches and schoolhouse, most of them still standing, in which either alone or in association with some neighboring minister I held meetings in the fall and winter and which with only one or two exceptions were fruitful in conversations, running usually from eight or ten to thirty or forty. This list as I recall it includes Coffee Creek; Tea Creek; Mount Zion; Freedom; First Marion; Uniontown; New Harmony; Bethel; Bethany; Beech Grove; Grantsburg; Rensselaer; Prairie Vine; Weber Schoolhouse; Egypt Schoolhouse; Milroy; Beaver City; Brookston; Second Mount Pleasant; Galveston; Royal Center; Rushville; Fairmount; Alexandria; Anderson; South Street Church, Indianapolis; Sullivan; Tobinsport; Washington; Dugger; Vincennes; Princeton; Baldwin Heights; New Hope; Greencastle; Lawrenceburg; Bicknell; Lancaster; and others. The list is incomplete because I cannot recall all of the places. At some of these places I held revival meetings repeatedly. I have no idea of the actual numbers added to the churches in these revivals. Estimating a low average of ten additions for each revival the number added to the churches in these revivals would be about four hundred. The total was considerably more than that number, to say nothing of additions occurring when no revival was in progress. Some special instances are rather impressive. For instance: At Beech Grove I baptized in the Muscatutuck one Sunday thirty-two candidates. The total additions at Uniontown in three years were eighty-one. At Washington one Christmas day twenty- three, nearly all adults, offered themselves for membership in the church when no revival was in progress. The revivals at Beaver City and Dugger led to the organization of vigorous new churches. This is a part of the story of my evangelistic work.

During the entire period of my ministry I served part time, half time, or full time at the following churches: Coffee Creek, Lancaster, Dupont, Uniontown, New Harmony, First Marion, Bethany, Rensselaer, Prairie Vine, Beaver City, Anderson, Sullivan, Washington, Lawrenceburg, Princetown, Bicknell, and Greencastle. All these churches except Renssalaer and Prairie Vine are still in existence and active. To the list should be added the First Bohemian Church, Chicago, whose pulpit I supplied regularly for six months three or four years ago. All except this engagement and that at Greencastle occurred in a continuous ministry of about thirty-eight years. Greencastle I served for two and one half years in an interim between two periods of editorial work.

In all of these pastorates the educational character of my ministry was predominant. Usually the Sunday School outnumbered the church. The educational program was distinct, publicly exploited and characterized by the introduction of new and modern methods. In nearly every instance the pastor who followed me had a great revival in which the membership of the church was nearly doubled. This was a result upon which I had definitely calculated as a feature of my pastoral program. Some instances will illustrate the way the plan worked out. At Rensselaer I worked five years and built and paid for a house, but had no large in gathering. The next year after I left my successor had a revival meeting with fifty-two additions. At Anderson I began with a membership of forty-two, housed in a little rented shanty. In seven years we had built a house which was yet burdened with a debt and the membership had grown to one hundred and eighty-nine. Within two years under the pastorate of an evangelistic minister the membership had passed four hundred. At Sullivan I labored seven years with few additions, but built a parsonage and paid for it. My successor held one of the greatest revivals ever held in that city and more than doubled the membership the first year. These are samples which indicate the character of my ministry. On the whole it has seemed to me that an educational ministry of the sort I have here described, while less spectacular than an evangelistic one, may in the course of years prove to be the fruitful type of ministry.

An interesting study in this connection has been in my own growth in theology and in religious experience. This growth has come partly from reading and reflection but also largely from contact with the people in trying to help them adjust their lives and solve their problems. I began my ministry in the atmosphere of strict evangelical orthodoxy. It included emphasis upon the sovereignty of God, law as his absolute fiat, holiness as his ruling attribute, the Bible his inerrantly and infallibly inspired word, crude traditional Sunday School ideas of the origin and authorship of the Bible, sin a deep hereditary perversion of human nature, the equal deity of three persons in the Trinity, the death of Christ on the Cross by the fiat of God to satisfy the demands of divine justice and so to make possible a release of the grace of God for the salvation of sinners, necessity of regeneration (meaning the miraculous creation of a new life in the saved), a full hierarchy of angels and devils, Satin himself a person in effective rivalry with God with the control of human lives, heaven and hell definite places whose locations is not definitely known, the everlasting salvation of the believer in Jesus and damnation in an endless hell for all impenitent unbelievers. My views of the kingdom of God and of the second coming Christ like those of most of the ministers of my time were a trifle hazy. The world I conceived as sunk in sin and in no sense the subject of redemption. Salvation was essentially an escape of the individual sinner from the world through God's grace.

It will be at once apparent that my experience of religion as a sharing in the love of God and the impulse born of that experience to make the love of God savingly known to others, would have a tremendous intellectual difficulty in trying to find its way about through such a scheme of theological ideas. From the very start I found myself confronted with specific problems of adjusting my theology to my experience of the love of God. That problem of adjustment has been one of the heavy problems of my whole ministerial career. For instance I found that God is something more than a sovereign. He is a loving father and his sovereignty must yield to his character as a loving father. That discovery necessarily sent adrift some outworn theological lumber about God. This issue faced me in an acute form about 1893 at Anderson. A poor boy was dying of tuberculosis. I called to see him and found him greatly agitated. I discovered that his agitation was caused by a visit only two or three hours before by an active Christian in an evangelical church, who had come into his room and addressed him in these words: "Young man, God has his eye on you. You had better repent and do it quickly for you are going to hell as fast as you can go." This was the real raw stuff. It was theology which seemed perfectly true but utterly devilish. I threw that approach and everything involved in it out-of-doors and began to talk to the boy about God as a loving father who invites and loves and welcomes and helps us. Presently he was calm, content, trustful and happy, but the nearest I ever came to swearing in my ministry was when I said deep in my soul, "Damn such theology."

Such a revulsion was bound to raise questions about the Bible. Evidently the Bible contained a good many statements which would have to be reinterpreted and revalued in light of the conception of God to which my religious experience committed me, and I began to feel my way cautiously to such reinterpretations and revaluations. It was plain enough that in the Bible God does speak savingly to the souls of men but it became also clearly apparent that one problem in the understanding of the Bible is to find out what God is actually saying in the midst of the multitude of sayings of men. That problem for the sake of the people I must solve. Before I had done with it I had raced all over the field of modern biblical criticism and had learned to apply the experimental test of religious truth all along the line. This involved the modern psychological approach to theology. Sin must be studied in the light of psychology. Conversion is a process in psychology. Jesus was a man in full psychic health and lived in the undisguised realities of human experience.

It continued to be apparent as it is today that the Calvinistic Theology rooted in the assumption of the sovereignty of a personal God cannot on metaphysical grounds be denied and I see no reason now why it would be denied. But it is a half-view. It must be assimilated to the goodness of a fatherly God and no man has yet been found who is wise enough to affect the assimilation on metaphysical and logical grounds. In dealing with folks and their problems of life adjustment, faith in a fatherly God works. The attempt to understand a sovereign God fails. So, the outcome in my own experience has been not the rejection of evangelical orthodoxy even in its Calvinistic form, but the discovery of a wealth of grace which that form of orthodoxy makes difficult to the sincere seeker after God. On certain points however, I arrived at a definite rejection of earlier belief. For instance, before many years had passed I could not conceive of God as having instituted an endless hell for the torture of the weak and erring children of men who might miss the true standard of life. For me no such hell was longer possible. I did not know and do not now know all about the future of man and I see no hope for one who willingly goes on in wrong ways. But I no longer teach that all the multitudes of peoples who have not known God as Jesus reveals him are gone tumultuously and hopelessly into hell. The saving grace of God is broader than any theology conceived.

Likewise, a personal devil became useless in my business. The old idea that God permitted such a being full of ingenious malice to run at large deceiving, bewildering, and ruining immature and untrained folk became simply impossible to my conception of a fatherly God, that is, a God fit to be the father of such a son as Jesus. I let the Devil pass unused for a good many years without raising a theological question concerning his existence, for after all, devil or no devil the problem of sin is with us. But I was brought straight up on that problem by a high school girl in a Baptist Summer Assembly a few years ago. She became concerned about her salvation. She was a member of a Baptist church, a teacher in the Sunday School, but dissatisfied. She had not found God in any satisfactory experience. She came to me with her problem. We sat on the veranda of my cottage talking the problem over. Finally I said to her, "Do you know what is in your way? Can you not believe in a good and fatherly God?" Her answer arrested and startled me. It was this, "I could believe in a good and fatherly God but I cannot see what use such a God has for a devil to help him run the world and to mix things all up." That was concrete. That put the matter up to me. I had to say yes or no. My answer was, "Is your real difficulty that you cannot find a place for the devil in the scheme of things?" She replied, "Yes, I think that is my real difficulty." "Well," said I, "Are you intellectually hearty? Can you stand it for me to talk straight to you?" She replied, "I think I am ready for the truth, as far as I can understand it." "Well," said I, "Look at me." She looked straight into my eyes. I said, "God has no more use for a devil than you and I have. Of course he does not need a devil to help him. There is no devil. Forget him." For answer she opened her blue eyes wide threw up her hands and said, "You don't know what a load you've taken off of my mind." "Well", said I, "Now take it to God and ask him to let you know the truth about his presence as a fatherly God. The next morning I met her at the breakfast call, she came racing up to me and said "I am the happiest girl on these grounds this morning. I have found God." Thus I had verified what I had believed long before; that I had no need of a devil to help me bring souls savingly to God. Thus my old Bible had become a new Bible with all of the old values. The old gospel had become a rich new gospel with all of the old experiences. The old Savior had become a new human Jesus verifying all the values of the old theological Christ. The Cross had become a symbol of everlasting love which would be experienced without the old theological explanation. Salvation became not merely an emotional incident but a way of life in fellowship with Jesus. Eternal life came to be a richer, surer prospect whose values were already entering into the experience of the believer here and now. It ought to be mentioned that certain liberalizing factors had come into my experience early in my ministry. Rev. Allen Hill placed in my hands right at the beginning of my ministry a volume of Horne's Introduction to the Study of the Scripture, from which I gained glimpses of the literary character of the Bible. Mr. Hill also placed in my hands the works of Andrew Fuller, "The Father of Baptist Theology", and Mr. Fuller, as any acquainted with his works will know stood for a somewhat free type of faith. Perhaps the most important single factor was a saying of my old teacher, John A. Broadus, of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which he used to din into the ears of his students. It was this: "Let the Bible mean what it wants to mean." Such liberalizing factors operated in my mind more or less unconsciously but influentially to break up the rigidity of my early notion of the fixed and errorless text of the Bible. Another contributing factor was the appearance of the Canterbury revision of the New Testament. In that Revision I discovered passage after passage in the New Testament appearing in the old King James version which the Revisors assured the reader did not belong in the New Testament at all. The fact set me thinking. It would be impossible to trace all the incidents, readings of current literature, conversations and other influences operating through a long course of experience to bring me to a new view of God, of human life, of the world and of redemption. It can hardly be said that I have abandoned the old doctrines. I simply see them in a new and larger light, and my intellectual process of theological interpretation simply handles them in a new way which seems to me to conserve all of their real values for truth and experience and to maintain a real continuity between the faith of the fathers and the faith of the moderns. Certainly no element of experimental union with God through faith in Jesus Christ which ever came into my life is of less significance and glory than it ever was.

SOCIALISM ^top

For many years my interpretation of Christianity has taken such a color of community interest as to win for me the general reputation of being a socialist. Perhaps it is well to record the course of experience which has led to my being so classed.

My interest in social problems began at my mother's knee. Before the Civil War, Uncle Tom's Cabin came into our home and she gave me snatches of the story. She was an ardent abolitionist and my father, though more regardful of the practical aspects of politics was intensely opposed to slavery. After the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, our sympathies followed the fortunes of the unhappy negroes during the period of Reconstruction. The literature of the period which came into our home was all politically colored by the hostility of the Republicans to the people lately in secession, and we did not appreciate the unhappy situation in which the southern whites were also placed. Gradually in the course of years that aspect of the case became more familiar to me and I learned to take a balanced view of the problem of Reconstruction.

Soon after the Civil War social problems arising out of the development of capitalism in the north began to stir my interest. Before I had reached maturity I came to see clearly that a plutocracy was in the making in the United States. Against such a development all the sentiments of sympathy for the underdog which have been stirred by slavery in my childhood returned and revolted. Besides, I had been educated in the common schools of the period and had acquired an exalted conception of the rights of man and of democracy. But at that time I had never heard of the Industrial Revolution, of worldwide capitalism, or of any social philosophy. I had however, heard the story of the New Harmony Community, founded by Robert Owen.

The religious experience of my youth further and progressively developed the trend of my social thinking, and when I began my ministry I had already formed an elementary conviction that Jesus sought to create among men under the name of the Kingdom of God a free, enlightened, democratic, fraternal, and cooperative community life. Still, at that period I had no general acquaintance with the facts and principles of social science and no developed social philosophy. Hints, however, were beginning to appear of the Marxian theory, to which, of course, all references in the newspapers of the time were decisively adverse. In 1882 I preached a sermon in bitter denunciation of socialism, and then after the fashion of youthful preachers to speak first and think afterwards, if at all, I began for the first time to study socialism. My interest in this study was stimulated by certain liberal political movements, particularly, the Greenback, Prohibition, and Populists Movements. It was not difficult for me to see that these movements as defined at the time were more or less superficial and were not going to the bottom of the evils at which they were directed. In 1883 at Rensselaer, Indiana, I gave an exposition of the primitive Christian communism in the church at Jerusalem and indicated that it was suggestively normative for a sound community life. The next day the president of a local bank called me into his office, denounced my sermon and warned me that if I continued that line of preaching, respectable people would refuse to join my church. My answer was that if he refused to accept the social ethics of the Gospel he would not be permitted to join my church. This incident further stimulated my purpose to look more deeply into the whole subject.

Just then, Edward Bellamy's story of Utopian Socialism in "Looking Backward" appeared in our community and became the fad of social clubs and polite study groups, creating a popular sensation and making a study fashionable. Of course, I shared in the popular interest, but the whole study was more sentimental than scientific and with most people was a matter of passing curiosity rather than a matter of serious interest. My own study of the subject had not reached the point of scientific carefulness or of philosophical thoroughness. It followed largely the currents of Populism and Prohibition. Especially, I was active in the Prohibition movement. So matters ran along until 1893.

Then came the panic. I was located at Anderson, Indiana. Nearly all of my people were mill workers. They wandered the streets with other thousands jobless and impoverished. They began to hold cottage prayer meetings. I met with them night after night in their shabby homes. They encouraged one another to trust in God and be patient. They talked about how to get food and clothes for their children. They resorted to all sorts of pathetic devices to earn bits of money. The compared experiences and consulted about ways to keep from starvation. Every night they closed their meetings by standing together and singing "My Country 'Tis of Thee". I was their pastor and religious leader. They looked to me for an interpretation of the tragic situation but the pity of it was that I was not prepared to show them what it meant nor what to do about it. The thing went like iron to my soul. I recognized an inescapable call of God on behalf of these unfortunate people to find out where the root of the difficulty lay and what the remedy was. Then I began in earnest to study textbooks on social science, particularly on economics. Of course, in such a study I could not escape Karl Marx. I soon became convinced that without some sort of acceptance of a materialistic interpretation of history, of the universal struggle for existence, of economic determinism, of the class struggle, of the Industrial Revolution and modern Capitalism, and of the principles of the cooperative commonwealth, there could be no satisfactory explanation of existing social conditions and no creation of an adequately remedial program. But the acceptance in any degree or form of these principles made one a socialist, no matter whether he accepted the title or not. It was equally clear to me that both theology and human psychology had definite contributions to make to an ethically sound social life. Thus, I became what I have continued to be, a Christian communist, philosophically guided by Marxian principles. That is, my original elementary Christian concept of a free, enlightened democratic, fraternal and cooperative community life has found for itself a cosmic interpretation which ties the social life of man up to God through all the ways of nature.

This discovery immediately impinged upon my conception of the Prohibition movement. I saw clearly that the liquor traffic did not stand alone as a great parasite on the life of the people, but that it grew out of the common root of capitalistic avarice which was cursing humanity in a thousand ways, and that neither the liquor traffic nor various other parasitical business could be successfully overthrown except by a fundamental attack on capitalism itself. Indeed, in the earlier stages of the Prohibition movement this connection of the liquor traffic with the economic structure of capitalism had been tentatively recognized. It had been a common saying in Prohibition circles, "We are building a new civilization." But capitalistic supporters of the Prohibition movement began to take alarm at the socialistic tendencies of the movements. Especially since such leading Prohibitionists as Frances Williard, Walter Thomas Mills, and others were declaring themselves openly favorable to socialism. Accordingly a definite movement within the Prohibition party arose to limit the program of the party to the single issue of prohibition. This movement succeeded so far that in the national convention of 1896 after a warm debate committed a party to this single issue. As a result of this action I immediately announced in a local meeting of the party organization, held in the Courthouse of Anderson, that I regarded myself as no longer under moral obligation to support the Prohibition party. The same course was followed by other active Prohibitionists, notably Walter Thomas Mills, Summer W. Mosel, W.D. Wattles as well as many others who later joined the Socialist party.

The Socialist party was not and still is not committed to prohibition, and the act of these Prohibitionists enjoining the Socialist party requires explanation. First, none of us ceased to be prohibitionists. We continued to advocate prohibition, to work in local prohibition campaigns on a non-partisan basis and to advocate statutory and constitutional prohibition. But we frankly said that no local regulation, statutory prohibition, or constitutional amendment could achieve real and lasting success until the breeding ground of the liquor traffic, in our predatory economic system, was cleaned out. Our forecast has been largely verified by experience. We are still prohibitionists. The Socialist party is still opposed to prohibition but we are convinced that socialism, in order to succeed in the creation of a socially and economically sound society will be driven by experience to eliminate all such parasitical businesses as that of the liquor traffic. About the beginning of this century a social awakening of a very definite sort began in the American churches. Records of the several religious bodies began to be loaded with declarations pointing to a new social order. In 1898 on my motion, a committee on temperance and morals had been created in the Indiana Baptist Convention. Later the name of this committee was changed to that of social service and the scope of its activities extended. I was continued in the chairmanship of that committee.

On the year following the creation of the Social Service Committee, in 1910 as I remember the date. This committee made a comprehensive inductive study of the class struggle from the Christian point of view and presented a report on the subject at the annual meeting of the Indiana Baptist Convention held that year at College Avenue Baptist Church, Indianapolis. (My memory of the date may be inaccurate, but the precise date of this meeting may be found in the files of the Indiana Baptist Annual.) This report was somewhat sensational as being an entirely new departure from the customary religious programs of the time. It was reprinted and circulated largely over the country, used in campaign propaganda by the Socialist party and brought to me letters of inquiry from prominent liberal leaders.

The occasion of presenting this report was one of a number of critical experiences in my life. I know that its radical character was likely to produce sensational reactions of thought and feeling in the traditionally conservative Baptist denomination. When I arose to read the report before an audience of Baptist leaders from all parts of Indiana which crowded the house I realized keenly that I was taking the life of my ministerial career in my hands. At first this sensation of crisis and peril almost overwhelmed me, but I had gone too far to retreat or weaken. Accordingly I summoned my voice to its clearest and fullest expression and read the report so that every word could be heard by every person in the house. Before I had read half a dozen sentences every eye was fixed on me with an expression of surprise. But I read the whole through to the last word and sat down. Then occurred one of the great surprises of my life. Several leading ministers from different parts of the state arose simultaneously to move the adoption of the report, and it was adopted by a unanimous vote. This action of the Convention meant that we had crossed the bridge and that henceforth among Indiana Baptists an analytical discussion of the whole economic and political life ahead become among us a legitimate subject for religious inquiry. It should be added that this report had been signed by all of the members of the Social Service Committee, although I as chairman had made the inductive survey and had drawn up the report. From that date the consideration of the social implications of the Gospel has never been absent from the programs of the Indiana Baptist Convention.

But some of the Baptist leaders of that period could hardly realize what had happened. They thought that the Baptists of Indiana were accepting the annual reports merely pro forma. Without much concern for the character of the reports. President Elijah A. Hanley of Franklin College was one of the men who shared this misgiving. At a meeting of the Union Association in the summer of 1913 he asked me whether I knew where we were going with our reports. I replied that we knew precisely where we were going. He then inquired whether the Baptists of Indiana knew where we were going. My answer was that at the next meeting of the Indiana Baptist Convention to be held at Bedford I should try to find an answer to his question. Accordingly in addition to our formal annual report on Social Service, and after it was adopted, I stated to the Convention Dr. Hanley's question. I then read a statement which I had prepared and all the members of the committee had signed, stating that in our view the present competitive and inquisitive economic order is opposed to the principles of Christianity and that in its place Christians ought to seek to "create democratic, fraternal, and cooperative commonwealths everywhere." I then stated that in order to ascertain whether this declaration of the committee actually represented the mind of Indiana Baptists, I would ask that all who personally under- stood it agreed with it should express themselves so by standing. I further stated that neither this statement nor the vote upon it was to be taken as official or would appear in the records, and I expressed the hope that nobody would stand except those who wished, without regard to what others might do, to express themselves as in individual agreement with the statement I had just read. When the invitation to stand was given all persons in the house but four acrose and stood silently. Later I asked President Hanley whether his question had received a satisfactory answer. He replied that he believed that they did not know what they were doing.

In the summer of 1918 I was invited to teach a course on the social ethics of the Gospel in the Indiana Baptist Assembly at Franklin. I had a very large class and animated discussions. Most of the members of the class were adults who had already more or less settled views pro and con on the subject. Some of the members of the class pronounced my teaching socialistic and would have no more of it. Accordingly I was never invited to teach in the Assembly again until 1925 when I was invited to repeat the course and paid $50.00 and expenses for doing so. During the same year I taught essentially similar courses in Baptist Assemblies in Ohio, Idaho and Kansas and in later years in Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and Indiana with repeated engagements in some of these states.

About the year 1919 I was appointed a member of the Social Service committee of the Northern Baptist Convention, and served on the committee about a dozen years, part of the time as its chairman. During that period and until 1932, I drew most of the reports of that committee to the Convention. In 1932, Dr. John W. Elliott, then chairman of that committee, still supposing me to be a member of the committee, wrote asking me what suggestion I had to make for the report of the committee to the Convention that year. I replied that in my judgment the time had come for the committee to present a careful thesis upon the Christian Reconstruction of Society which might serve for Christianity around the world. Some such purpose as the Communist Manifesto had sought to serve for the Socialist movement. He replied, requesting me to prepare such a thesis. I did so and sent it to him with an earnest request that all the members of the committee study it critically and leave no word in it that could not be defended in any forum anywhere. The members of the committee took their task seriously. When all their replies had come into Dr. Elliott's office he brought the original copy and all of their letters to Chicago where we spent several hours together going carefully over all of the material in hand. Then he left all of the material with me with the request that I rewrite the thesis in the light of all of the criticisms which the members of the committee had submitted. I did so. No essential changes in the thesis had been suggested. I incorporated all of the minor changes which seemed to be warranted by careful study and sent the revised copy to Dr. Elliott with the request to all members of the committee that they refuse to sign it unless in their judgment the whole could be defended in any forum anywhere. All of the members signed it without comment, except the Reverend Mr. Pearce of Minneapolis, who as a premillenarian, had theological reasons for dissenting from some of the statements in the thesis. When the thesis was presented at the meeting of the Northern Baptist Convention it was unanimously adopted. The American Baptist Publication Society immediately published it in pamphlet form for wide free distribution under the title, "For a Christian Social Order."

From 1917 to 1929, in the columns of the Baptist Observer and of The Baptist, I gave editorial expression to my views on the events of the times in keeping with my general interpretation of the social meaning of Christianity. For the most part those views were welcomed by the readers of both papers, although occasionally some reader would write in a protest. It is an interesting fact that, so far as I know, every such person who wrote in an indignant protest became, before the close of our correspondence, my cordial friend.

Within the last two or three years I have been active and in demand for Assembly work for minister's conferences and for lectures in churches, all bearing on various aspects of social Christianity, and at this writing I have engagements ahead for more than six months.

More than thirty years ago the problem of my political attitude came up for revision. Manifestly, at that time the only political party in the field in America which was not positively hostile to my views of the kingdom of God as implying a free democratic fraternal and cooperative community life was the Socialist party. It seemed to me that my political attitude ought to be consistent with my religious view, and while the Socialist party was not, as not party can be, a complete organ of my religious views it stood for the same general ideal of community life as mine. But there was the danger that membership in the Socialist party might awaken a hostility toward me and my message among the people generally. On the other hand, there was the danger that unless I committed myself to some program and organ I should be guilty of a cowardly evasion of the practical consequences of my religious teaching. Accordingly, I applied for membership in the Socialist party and have continued in its membership until the present time. I distinguish clearly between the Socialist movement in history and the Socialist party in American politics, the socialist movement in its essential aim, not merely as Marx defined it, but as it was evolved in actual human history as indicating the future movement of civilization. But the Socialist party is a temporary organ of political action, to be used only so far as it seems to be politically useful as a factor of the common good.

FUNDAMENTALISM ^top

The conflict between Christian tradition and the advance of human knowledge seems endless.

I was reared and spent most of my public life in an area of traditional conservatism. The essential theological ideas which came later to be known as fundamentalism were the only ideas which in my early religious life were regarded as even permissible. But even in my school days Darwinism was rife among scholars and the critical controversy was beginning to develop in theological circles. Within the first ten years of my callow ministry the famous Briggs case arose in the Presbyterian church and created a storm in the leading Evangelical denominations. Of course, all of us orthodox folk were against Darwin, Briggs and all that either stood for. It happened however, that our opposition did not prevent men from thinking or talking. And it came gradually to pass that evolution however defined, and the results of the historical criticism of the Bible edged their way into orthodox seminaries and ceased to create the effect of a nightmare upon the rank and file in the Evangelical churches. We began to find out how we got our Bible. We began to discover obvious errors and questionable texts in it. We began to realize that God is the author not merely of special revelations but of this whole factual world and that a fact, once clearly ascertained is as sacredly luminous as any quotation from a book can be. Such ideas spread slowly and piecemeal among the people and of course are not yet accepted by all Christians.

Perhaps everything might have gone along more smoothly but for a controversy which arose in the Catholic church. In that body a group of scholars calling themselves Modernists began to insist upon freedom of thought and to think some thoughts unacceptable to the Roman Catholic Church. The outcome was that they were ousted from that communion and carried their case to the larger forum of all Christendom. Their pleas for a free and spiritual faith, added to the intellectual ferment already existing about evolution and criticism soon set a tempest blowing in protestant circles. In all the leading protestant denominations men began to insist upon a faith and fellowship larger than traditional denominationalism and free to pursue all lines of scientific inquiry. Naturally, their advocacy of these views stamped them as modernists and provoked a hostile, conservative reaction among those who were religiously committed to traditional opinions. These latter conceived themselves as champions of the fundamentals of the Christian faith and at length came to call themselves Fundamentalists.

At the outset of this discussion my attitude was that of a moderate Fundamentalist. But I appreciated the plea for a free, spiritual and scientific faith, and was persuaded that a period of free intemperate discussion would develop an essential agreement and a broader fellowship between these two groups. Consequently, throughout the entire controversy I have stood for a free, temperate and open discussion of all the points involved in the controversy without attempting to force the issue at any point to a vote which might have the effect of setting up a standard creed as a test of fellowship. Perhaps the best method of indicating the part which I have taken in this whole controversy may be exemplified best by a series of incidents.

About the year 1916, Dr. James Orr, known throughout America as a most distinguished champion of Fundamentalism, published a book in which he accepted frankly the composite character of the Pentateuch. Thus, he at once surrendered the basis of Fundamentalist opposition to the processes and results of modern criticism. From that point it seemed to me clear that Fundamentalism must give up a verbally inspired, errorless and traditionally canonical Bible. This did not in my judgment involve any weakening of the claims of the Bible as a revelation of God, but it shifted the interpretation and defense of those claims, definitely, to modern ground.

In 1916, at a meeting of Union Baptist Association held at Bicknell, Indiana, I preached a sermon on advocacy of a free, spiritual and scientific approach to the interpretation of Christianity. Mr. Hamlet Allen, principal of the Washington High School and for many years a leading Baptist in all southwestern Indiana, moved that the sermon be printed in the annual minutes. The motion was opposed by Mr. W.C. Johnson, a lawyer of Vincennes, and I requested that the sermon not be printed in the minutes because it clearly failed to represent the mind of all the members present. My request was granted.

In 1917 I wrote an article for the Biblical World, then published under the auspices of the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, with Dr. Shailer Mathews as editor. In that article I expressed the view that in the various representative religions of the world, there might be common elements of faith which ought to be considered in contemplating the present and future task of Christianity. I regarded that article as likely to create considerable adverse reactions among Fundamentalists. To my surprise the only person who ever sent me any expression of his reaction to the article was President Emeritus W.T. Stott of Franklin College, and his letter was a note of warm approval. In the meeting of the Indiana Baptist Convention at Terre Haute in 1917, a threatening situation arose. Rev. E.L. Dakin of Logansport had expressed to somebody, or had been so understood as skeptical about the virgin birth of Jesus. A report of his attitude gained quick and wide circulation among the brethren, who came to the meeting at Terre Haute with their guns loaded for Mr. Dakin. The matter was somewhat complicated by the fact that Rev. J.F. Fraser of Muncie, who had been Mr. Dakin's immediate predecessor at Logansport was the chief champion and spokesman of the opposition to Mr. Dakin. All of the elements contributing to a huge embroilment were present. Rev. R.E. Neighbor, D.D., of Indianapolis, an old experienced and sagacious Baptist leader, presented a resolution affirming the traditional view of the Virgin birth, but it was drawn in such terms as to leave the question open for scholarly inquiry. I knew that the whole subject had been prematurely thrust upon the Convention, that Mr. Dakin was not without sympathizers, who would probably hesitate to speak, that a vote condemning him would be ruinous to him as a young minister, and that in any case a division in the Convention at that time on that subject might lead to long and bitter controversy. Accordingly, I hurried privately to Mr. Dakin, pointed out to him the critical state of affairs, showed to him that whatever his views of the virgin birth might be he could accept the resolution as Dr. Neighbor had drawn it. And I urged him to vote for the resolution and to advise his friends to do the same. After some discussion, all of it in defense of the orthodox views, a standing vote was taken. It was unanimous, Mr. Dakin and his friends voting with the rest in favor of the resolution. Such a result was a trifle vexatious to some of the brethren who did not hesitate to express their disappointment at their failure to "get Dakin."

It was apparent that the controversy was not ended. Mr. Fraser was elected president of the Convention. Immediately I conferred with him and urged him to set up a conference procedure among the brethren with a view to thinking through together all points of controversy in an effort to reach a fraternal understanding. He expressed his approval and said that he would undertake to set up such a procedure. He never did so. He was and is a man of integrity and ability and doubtless had good reasons for his failure to undertake such conferences, but I never mentioned the matter to him afterwards. No such conferences were held.

I had just become editor of the Baptist Observer and naturally, the Fundamentalists brethren had misgivings about my orthodoxy. They began to communicate their suspicions and before long it was coming to be pretty well understood that McGuire, to use a phrase then becoming current in describing modernists, was "Rotten." The center of propaganda for such a view of my attitude was in Indianapolis and was located in certain individuals who were and continued to be my personal friends. I decided for the sake of my work to force the issue. Accordingly, in a meeting of the Baptist Minister's Union of Indianapolis, I arose, called attention to the rumors regarding my orthodoxy which were being circulated, stated that I knew who were chiefly instrumental in circulating them, that those persons were friends and were present, and that they had doubtless acted in good faith. But I denied the truth of the rumors, stated that I was ready to be examined upon the question of my orthodoxy, by any regular Baptist Council in the State of Indiana and would welcome a summons to appear before any such Council for that purpose. I then further stated, that the circulation of the rumors in question was likely to do serious harm in the denomination and I demanded that either the rumors be stopped or a regular Council called at once. Furthermore, I said that if one course or the other was not taken at once, I should request the calling of a Council to consider the conduct and standing of some of the brethren who were present and whom at the proper time I would name personally. This direct method of handling the matter was successful. The rumors stopped and those who had been spreading them continued my personal friends.

The first conference of Baptist Fundamentalists was called, if I remember rightly, in connection with the meeting of the Northern Baptist Convention at Buffalo. I was then editor of the Baptist Observer. I understood the call to propose a fraternal consideration of the issue between Fundamentalists and Modernists and I gave the call cordial editorial support. Dr. W.B. Riley of Minneapolis was a leader in the movement. On the other hand, such a man as Dr. Frederick L. Anderson was one of the speakers on the program, and the conference promised at the outset to be what the call proposed. It soon became clear however, that the inner purpose of the conference was to set up a Fundamentalist propaganda for the purpose of driving Modernism out of the Northern Baptist Convention. From that time until the present, such a conference of Fundamentalists has been held annually in connection with the meetings of the Northern Baptist Convention, but in very recent years its sessions have taken a less military turn and the fires of the controversy are nearly burned out.

In the winter of 1920-21 I received an invitation as editor of the Baptist Observer to attend a conference at the First Baptist Church, Evanston, Illinois, to consider some matters affecting the welfare of the denomination, but the character of those matters and the personnel of the conference were not clearly stated. I smelled a mouse or two and decided to attend. When I arrived I found Dr. F.E. Taylor, pastor of the First Church, Indianapolis, had also received an invitation and was present. A small group of picked men from the various parts of the country, all of them generally regarded as Modernists, assembled and devoted their attention to the discussion of a number of aspects of liberal Christian thought and practice. The program as it proceeded developed a decidedly modernistic view of the atonement and an attitude favorable to open membership in Baptist churches. I saw at once that the view of the atonement which had been expressed would be unacceptable to both Dr. Taylor and myself, and that, if broached in Indiana would start a storm. The proposal for open membership was not entirely novel and I was persuaded that unless a propaganda for it were started there would likely be no serious disturbance in the denomination with regard to it. A committee was appointed to bring in findings. It was composed of Rev. Charles N. Arbuckle, D.D., of Newton Center, Mass.; and Rev. Lathan Crandall, D.D., of Minneapolis; and myself. When the committee met Dr. Arbuckle drew from his pocket a copy of findings which had been prepared a few days before by a similar conference at Wallace Lodge, N.Y. It was a brief and simple document, liberal in tone and it suggested that the Northern Baptist Convention open for consideration the propriety of open membership among our churches, with a presumption in favor of this practice. I informed Dr. Arbuckle immediately that I could not consent to such findings. My reason was not in any uncompromising hostility to the practice of open membership in such churches as cared to practice it but that a propaganda in favor of this practice in the Northern Baptist Convention would awaken such hostility all over the country. Dr. Arbuckle was irritated by my attitude and insisted on presenting the findings as he had prepared them. My answer to him was that he and Dr. Crandall were free to so present them but that if they did so I would open a fight against them on the floor of the conference. Dr. Crandall finally came to my view and we agreed on a report favoring a continuation of fraternal conferences on faith and fellowship among Baptists. Dr. Arbuckle yielded and we all signed the report. But when it was presented it occasioned surprise and some indignation. The brethren had evidently assembled knowing precisely what they wanted to do. Rev. Robert A. Ashworth, D.D., of Milwaukee, spoke decisively. He denounced the committee because, as he said, "It had not kept faith with the conference," and he insisted that the conference adopt the findings which had previously been adopted by the Wallace Lodge Conference. I spoke for the committee, giving the reasons for our action. I further stated that certain expressions on the floor of the Conference concerning the atonement were subject to serious question, and that if the Wallace Lodge findings, or any commitment to open membership were adopted by the Conference I was prepared to introduce a resolution on the subject of the atonement which would call for a clear declaration of the Conference on that subject. I had previously conferred with Dr. Taylor, who assured me that he would support me in the introduction of such a resolution. Moreover, I warned the Conference that if it insisted on some such declaration as Dr. Ashworth proposed I would go home and open a full discussion of the action of the Conference in the columns of the Baptist Observer. The result was that Conference by an almost unanimous vote adopted the findings which our committee had brought in, with amendment. Dean Shailer Mathews gave the Conference some fraternal advice to the effect that it was dealing with trifles in the face of the world's great need. And the Conference adjourned in a sober and kindly mood.

During the years 1919 and 1920 there was considerable agitation among the Fundamentalist brethren over what they regarded as a dangerous growth of modernism in Indiana. Every few days some minister would come into my office at Indianapolis and tell me of some person who, in the uniform language of such reports was "Rotten in his theology." My uniform answer was, "Have you talked personally to this brother about the matter?" The uniform reply to this question was that my informant had not held any such interview, knew nothing personally of the case, but wanted me to take the matter up in the columns of the Baptist Observer of which I was editor. To all such requests my reply was that the only right procedure would be for the informant himself to interview the supposed heretic personally and then to proceed as the results of such an interview might indicate. I never heard of such interviews being held. There seemed to be among those who were disturbed by the supposed inroads of modernism in Indiana a feverish desire to resort to exposures either in public resolutions or in the columns of the Baptist Observer. I systematically discouraged both methods of procedure and nothing was done by either method.

About the year 1918 Dr. W.B. Riley of Minneapolis, published his book, The Menace of Modernism and sent me a copy for review. I reviewed it editorially pointed out what seemed to me unfair and unwise treatment of the whole dispute in the book, suggested that the line of agitation pursued by Dr. Riley tended to disturbance of fellowship and was needlessly divisive, that there was a better way of procedure, and that the Baptist denomination represented in its unity values that ought not to be lightly thrown away. I had made up my mind and so expressed myself that so far as I could prevent it the movement represented by Dr. Riley should not gain an organized foothold in Indiana. While I remained in the state and edited the state paper no organization of military fundamentalism was effected in the state.

About the same period President E.Y. Mullins of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary published his new text book in theology, Christian Experience in its Doctrinal Expression. Upon its appearance I called attention to the fact that President Mullins had shifted the approach to theology from traditional ground to modern scientific ground and had based the interpretation of theology upon the facts of human psychology in conformity with the scientific method in modern education. This notice created a sensation. A committee of brethren came to my office and requested the privilege of examining my office copy of the book. I granted their request. They carried the book away and after some time returned it without comment and without even thanks.

When I was transferred to the editorial office of the Baptist in 1921, Dr. Riley came into the office and had a conference with the senior editor in which he said that he viewed my presence in the office with misgivings. Naturally he would so view it, and his so expressing himself was merely a frank statement of an obvious situation. But shortly afterwards, Rev. J.W. Hoyt, D.D., pastor of the Belden Avenue Baptist Church, Chicago, came to interview me. He stated that he represented a Fundamentalist group, that my editorial position was a matter of some concern to his group and that he had come to say to me that unless my course as a member of the editorial staff of the Baptist should be acceptable to his group I would not be permitted to continue in that position. I replied to him that they could have my position at any time by asking for it, but whether my course should be acceptable to his group would depend entirely upon what his group wanted. I assured him that I desired to promote harmony in the Baptist denomination and would do whatever I could to this end, but that I would have no part in any factional movement and must be asked to serve the interests of any such movement. After he had left the office I wrote him a letter in which I restated the subject matter of our conversation, told him that from the nature of his request it was clear to me that he and his group had already been canvassing the subject of my orthodoxy and that the passing about of suspicious reports on this subject was bound to be harmful to the denomination in view of my position as a member of the editorial staff of the paper which stood as an organ of the Northern Baptist Convention. I told him in the letter that I was ready always to appear before a regular Baptist Council for full examination as to my orthodoxy and that I invited such an examination. I further told him that I should expect any person or group suspecting my orthodoxy and unable to receive from me satisfactory assurance on the subject to call such council without delay and that any person or group of persons circulating statements derogatory to my doctrinal standing as a Baptist would be called to account by me in a regular denominational procedure. Finally, I told him that since he had come to me representing a group interested in this matter I should hold him responsible for seeing that his group was fully informed of my attitude and that in the case of the circulation of derogatory statements I should expect him to contradict them effectively. I never heard any more about this incident and never had any difficulty with the Fundamentalists of Chicago.

From 1917 to 1930 my work was mainly editorial. First in the office of the Baptist Observer and afterwards in the office of the Baptist. Almost all that I had to say concerning Fundamentalism and other subjects of current interest in found in the columns of both papers covering that period either as editorials or as contributed articles. I need not therefore include in these notes the progress of the debate between Fundamentalism and Modernism among Northern Baptists during that period. As a matter of course I participated in none of the public debates on the subject because my position as editor and reporter required me to hold an objective and impartial attitude. I let it be understood however, that I did not personally espouse the cause of either party, but that I held for a program of patient, tolerant and fraternal conference between the parties with a view to thinking through together the problems involved and that in the meantime all of us should support together the working program of the Northern Baptist Convention. That course I have consistently pursued from the beginning of the controversy down to the present hour. In consequence I was never invited into the party conferences and caucuses of either party. Even in private conversation I have maintained a moderate and mediating position. My reason for this attitude was not any fear of an open avowal of my opinions. On this fault at least I have never been guilty, but I believe that time is a clarifying element in such discussions and that in the real fundamentals which lie deeper than all the issues brought to the surface in that controversy there is a ground of fundamental agreement. On all occasions in which a proposal involved in the controversy came to a vote I did not hesitate to vote on the particular question involved. For instance, when the issue of open membership came to a vote in the Chicago Association I voted against a motion to bar open membership churches from the Association. On a motion before the Northern Baptist Convention to refuse contributions with creedal conditions attached I voted for the motion. In the meeting of the Convention in 1922 on a motion to adopt as a creedal standard of the Convention I voted against the motion. In the conference at Chicago Beach Hotel to formulate a policy for the Convention with regard to admitting delegates from churches practicing open membership, after much discussion a proposal was formulated providing that such churches might be represented, but only by immersed members. The proposal was a plain compromise, I voted for it. When it came before the Convention at Washington the same year, again I voted for it. These are only a few instances in which in one form or another some phase of the issue came to vote. It is a matter of some satisfaction to recall that in every instance my vote coincided with the majority judgment of the Convention or Association and so far as I remember no such decision has ever been reversed by subsequent action by the Body.

A rather belated hangover of this controversy in my personal experience occurred in the fall of 1933. At that time I was touring the state of Indiana with Rev. Willard R. Jewell, Rev. W.E. Houghton, Miss Myrtle Huckleberry, and Mr. Charles A. Wells in the interest of religious education. One cold winter morning our party arrived at Hammond where Rev. J.C. Horton is the efficient pastor of the First Baptist Church. We hurriedly distributed our collection of books on the tables prepared and made ready for the program of the day. Just at the juncture Mr. Jewell with much embarrassment informed me that he had received notice from the pastor forbidding me to speak at his church. I assured him that the matter was perfectly agreeable to me, although I knew no possible reason for such a prohibition, but that I would quietly sit in the audience through the day or if more agreeable to him and the pastor I would go to a hotel for the day or even, if it would reduce his embarrassment, I would find some emergency reason for leaving the city immediately. But I said to him that it would be a personal satisfaction to me to know why Mr. Horton, whom I had long known on friendly terms, should have issued such a mandate. Mr. Jewell informed me that he had alleged my heretical opinions as the reason. I replied that was all perfectly legitimate, that the pastor had a right and was under a responsibility to protect the orthodoxy of teaching in his congregation and I would take no part in the program, but that it would be a pleasure to me to meet the pastor personally and hear the matter from his own lips. On that hint Mr. Jewell arranged with Mr. Horton that I should meet the latter in his study. When we sat down I assured him that I recognized his responsibility as pastor and that there was nothing personal in the matter, but that if he felt free to state to me the precise ground of his objection it would be very gratifying to me to have him do so. He produced a letter from the Rev. Mr. Ketcham, pastor of the Baptist church at Gary charging me with heresy and demanding that Mr. Horton forbid me to speak at his church. The particular item which Mr. Ketcham cited as offensive was taken from Sunday School notes written by me for the Baptist World and published in that paper. I do not now recall what the offensive expression was.

I called Mr. Horton's attention to the obvious meaning of the expression, which he said contained nothing offensive. I then said to him that if any brother anywhere at any time reads or hears from me any word which seems to him to compromise the truth of the gospel he can do me no greater favor than to bring such expression to my attention. I said that Mr. Ketcham had a right to call in question in any manner in which he saw fit any words of mine which seemed to him to bear heterodox meaning, but that it would have been far better if Mr. Ketcham had communicated with me directly on the subject. I further said to him that if Mr. Ketcham or he or any other person in Northwestern Indiana had any doubt about my fidelity to the essential principles of Christianity and of the Baptist denomination, I should be disposed to request him or them to call a meeting of a regular council of the churches in their association to investigate my doctrinal teaching. I told him that it would be a positive pleasure to me to meet such a council and bear before it my personal witness to the gospel. I requested him if he were not completely satisfied to take the initiative himself in calling such a council.

Mr. Horton replied that he was completely satisfied and that he would gladly have me speak in his church. He expressed the wish and hope that I would take the regular part assigned me on the program for the day and that he would gladly be present and participate in the discussions. I did so. In fact which I had delivered my address the audience became so deeply interested that I was kept on the floor three hours, answering questions, and Mr. Horton who participated in the discussion took full notes for use in a future meeting of the Social Service Committee of the Indiana Baptist Convention of which he was chairman.

This incident closes so far as I know, all of my personal experiences in the Fundamentalist Modernist controversy, except those incidents which are more directly connected with my editorial work of which a record is found in the file of the Baptist Observer for 1917-21 and of the Baptist for 1921-30.

EDITOR ^top

A bit of journalistic hankering always lurked in my system. Even when I was a country schoolboy I began to write local news notes to our County paper, the Vernon Banner. Such scribbling in a small way continued occasionally until I began preaching. From that time, a trifle more pretentiously, I wrote for both local and denominational papers, occasional news reports and articles on current topics. Later I published occasionally church bulletins in the form of small periodical papers. As my boys grew up all of them sold daily papers or distributed such papers on regular routes, and all of them graduated successively from that position into newspaper offices. Three of them became later publishers of newspapers and one of them is a professional advertiser. In consequence I was rather habitually immersed in journalism by proxy.

In the year 1916 I was a member of the executive committee of the Indiana Baptist Convention. At that time the Rev. T.C. Smith, editor of the Baptist Observer, was about closing his work on account of his age. The executive committee appointed a special committee to consider the whole subject of continuing the publication of a state paper. I was a member of that committee. In order that I might consider the subject intelligently I took my son, Paul, into counsel. The result was that when our committee met I was prepared with an intelligent and comprehensive statement covering practicably all aspects of the business. Out of my statement came a report of the committee which was adopted by the executive committee, which authorized plans for continuing the publication of the state paper.

By the summer of 1917 the question of securing an editor for the paper came up. The Rev. Carlos M. Dinsmore, state superintendent, proposed that I accept the editorship. I was then pastor at Bicknell and pleasantly situated. Besides I had misgivings about my ability to edit the paper acceptably. I so expressed myself to Mr. Dinsmore, but upon his plea that he did not know where to look for an editor at that time if I should refuse, I agreed to undertake the task as an emergency arrangement until he could find a regular editor. Accordingly I began work as editor of the paper with my office at the state headquarters in the new Occidental Building, Indianapolis, in the month of October, 1917, just preceding the annual meeting of the State Convention.

Within a few weeks it became apparent that my work as editor was becoming highly acceptable to the Baptists of the state, and clearly I was to be the regular editor. I found also that the work was highly congenial to my own mind and that I was happy in it.

The general course of my editorial experience with that paper may be traced in the files of the paper during the period of my editorship. But certain incidents which do not appear in those files may be worthy of note as sidelights. Upon one occasion in reply to a correspondent I had written an editorial comment on the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew. This editorial greatly grieved one of my dearest friends, the Rev. C.M. Carter, D.D., then located, I believe, at Muncie, Indiana. He wrote a vigorous protest against the liberalism and modernism of the editorial and declared that he could not permit his children to see the copy of the paper containing that editorial. Since I knew that he was himself quite generally regarded as liberal and modernistic in his theological attitude, I was greatly surprised to receive such communication from him. I wondered whether I had gone wildly modernistic in the editorial in question. But after reading it over carefully I became fully persuaded that it was not the heretical and dangerous thing it seemed to him to be. I wrote to him a friendly note expressing my view of the matter. This ended the case. Of course, the incident did not affect our friendship which continued to the day of his death. He was a Hoosier boy. He died in California and life has been a trifle more lonesome for me since he passed away.

At another time I wrote an editorial, the subject of which I cannot now recall. The Rev. C.P. Stealey, editor of the Oklahoma Baptist, came out the next week with a resounding editorial under the caption "Sound the Alarm". It was a protest to the Baptists of Indiana warning them against my dangerous heresy and urging them to take immediate action. He sent copies of his paper to all the Baptist pastors in Indiana. An exchange copy came also to my desk. When I read his editorial I wrote him a personal letter in which I told him that I would take no editorial notice of his article, that I recognized his right to communicate with Indiana Baptists as he saw fit, but that there was a possibility of his being surprised at the reaction to his editorial from Indiana pastors. Within a few weeks I received a letter from him stating as I now remember, that my prediction was correct, and that Indiana pastors had taken off his skin and hung it on the fence. Thus, the incident closed with good will all around.

At the meeting of the Northern Baptist Convention at Buffalo, the Rev. J.W. Porter, D.D., of Kentucky was present as correspondent for the Western Recorder. He and I sat side by side at the press table. Debate was warm in the Convention over Fundamentalism. He was a militant fundamentalist. He had come from Kentucky fully convinced that the Northern Baptists were pretty well gone to the dogs with Modernism and other errors. Again and again in the course of the discussions he would make some sneering remark. Of course I paid no attention to it. He was a brother, Baptist and a free man. But sitting on the opposite side of the table was a Presbyterian layman, a hard-boiled reported for the secular newspapers. This gentleman whose name I have now forgotten manifested irritation at Dr. Porter's remarks. Finally he flushed deeply and said to Dr. Porter, "You're a damn fool. You are a guest of this convention and if you cannot show it proper courtesy you had better go home." It was Dr. Porter's turn to flush. I expected from him a bitter retort, but he said not a word, and presently gathering up his papers he left the convention and did not return. Whether he went home or not I made no effort to ascertain.

In the meeting of the Northern Baptist Convention at Denver in 1919 a proposal was adopted to combine the several papers published within the territory of this convention into one high grade magazine. Immediately the question arose whether the Baptist Observer should merge with the new periodical. There was a good deal of talk among Indiana Baptists, most of it at the time favorable to the merger. In order that any interest of mine as editor of the Baptist Observer might not interfere with free action in regard to the merger I published a notice of resignation giving as a reason that there seemed to be a disposition on the part of Indiana Baptists to enter the merger. Their response to this notice was a vigorous protest from many Baptists in different parts of the state. The matter came up at a meeting of the Executive Board. In this meeting the official who had indicated to me that he was favorable to the merger rose and said that of course, we could not let the Baptist Observer go and he could not conceive how such an idea ever originated. Naturally, I could not publicly remind him of his former attitude and there was nothing for me to do but to fall in with the prevailing sentiment and to continue my editorial work. Several papers went into the merger. The Northern Baptist Convention bought the Standard of Chicago, renamed it the Baptist and placed in editorial charge the Rev. Lathan A. Crandall, D.D., of Minneapolis and the enterprise was thus fairly launched. But from the first it was doomed to failure by the fact that the Watchman Examiner, the Baptist Banner of West Virginia, The Baptist Observer of Indiana, and the Baptist state paper of Iowa refused to enter the merger and the further fact that a considerable section of the denomination with conservative or fundamentalist leanings suspected the new paper of liberal or modernist tendencies.

At the beginning of the year 1921 the Rev. E.L. Killam, editor of The Baptist came to my office in Indianapolis and offered me a position on the editorial staff of The Baptist. At that time the staff was composed of himself and the Rev. A.W. Cleaves, D.D. The Baptist seemed fairly prosperous and there was still hope of bringing it up to the point where it might serve as the leading magazine and authentic voice of the Baptist denomination around the world. After considering the situation with some care I accepted the position, first making sure that the Rev. T.J. Parsons should be put in my place as editor of the Baptist Observer. He has filled the place with success till the present time and still continues in that position. My position in the office of The Baptist placed me in the relation of a junior to the other two editors, but it soon became clear that in my editorial work I was getting the attention of the denomination. Relations among the three of us were perfectly cordial. We never had any misunderstandings, and our teamwork was that of brothers of equal official standing.

Within a few months it became apparent that the management of the paper was not happily arranged. A committee of the Northern Baptist Convention had control. This committee was frequently changed. It usually assumed the position that it must keep a careful eye on the editors and tell them what they must and must not do. The committee was accustomed to hold meetings without the presence of any of the editors and to decide policies without conferring with them. Finally one day the Rev. James Stiffler, pastor of the First Baptist Church at Evanston, came into the office as a representative of the committee, protested keenly against an editorial that appeared in the paper (which I have now forgotten), and announced that hereafter the editors would be expected to be governed by the orders of the committee. In reply Mr. Killam earnestly requested a meeting of the committee with the editors to go over the whole policy of the paper. This request the committee denied. At that point it became clear to me that nothing short of some drastic and sensational action would cure the difficulty. Mr. Killam and Mr. Cleaves both had families residing in Chicago. I had none. It seemed to me that matters were swiftly reaching the point where the whole editorial staff would be compelled to resign unless the resignation of one member sensationally staged might lead to a better system of management. Accordingly since I seemed to be the cheapest sacrifice I announced my resignation in a letter in which I protested against the existing management and proposed that some arrangement for harmonious action be made. My resignation produced the sensation that I intended. Mrs. Montgomery, president of the Northern Baptist Convention, wrote to me urging delay. At her suggestion written to Dr. Stiffler, he invited me to a luncheon at the University Club and in a long conference stated that he regarded his action in the matter as probably a mistake and expressed the personal wish that I continue with the paper. I explained to him the whole situation and the impossibility of continuance under the existing method of management and assured him that my resignation was designed to forestall the necessity of the resignation of the whole editorial staff. I assured him further that I had not the least personal feeling of estrangement towards him or any member of the committee, but that under the circumstances I could not withdraw my resignation. I wrote a letter to Mrs. Montgomery to the same effect and explaining the situation to her. About the same time I received a note from the Rev. J.Y. Aitchison, D.D., Executive Secretary of the Northern Baptist Convention, requesting a conference with him upon his passage through Chicago a few days later. Before the time for the conference arrived I ascertained that while in the west on that tour he had conferred with another Baptist minister with a view to securing him to take the editorial position held by Mr. Cleaves, and that Mr. Cleaves was totally unaware that any such step was under consideration. Consequently, when I met Dr. Aitchison, I had not only the general situation to present to him but also information of his part in a surreptitious effort to remove Mr. Cleaves. I told him frankly that such action on his part did not look to me like playing a square game, and that if existing relations were such that we who had the responsibility of leadership could not be entirely frank with one another conditions were worse than I supposed. In spite therefore, of his request that I continue in service I told him that I could not possibly do so and that my reasons would have to be given to any of the denominational leaders who inquired for them. My whole contention was that the committee in control of The Baptist, having selected an editor should do teamwork with him in free conference and cooperation.

My work closed at the end of the year 1921. Shortly before I left the office Mr. Cleaves asked my opinion of the whole situation. I replied that in my opinion he would do well to seek another location at an early date. He did so. He became the honored pastor of the old First Baptist Church in Providence, Rhode Island and still holds that position. A year or two later Mr. Killam resigned and a new regime began.

On closing my work with The Baptist I supposed that my editorial career was ended. Presently I became pastor of the Baptist church at Greencastle, Indiana and continued in its service to the end of 1924. Meanwhile the Rev. John A. Earl, D.D., had become editor of The Baptist. Shortly after his accession he wrote to me inviting me to make suggestions about the conduct of the paper. I suggested to him that he arrange to carry a page of paragraphs under the head of "The World in Transit" and containing incisive comments on current events. He replied, inviting me to supply the copy week by week for such a page. This I did for several years. At the beginning of the year 1925 my daughter, Mrs. Elia M. Randolph, having been placed in charge of the missionary education work of the Northern Baptist Convention for the Chicago area requested me to go to Chicago with her. I went. Within a short time Dr. Earl called me to the office and requested me to assist him in a general way in editorial work. I did so and while he lived we worked together like twins. When his health broke down the entire editorial responsibility fell upon me and after his death the committee in charge requested me to continue the publication until the next meeting of the Northern Baptist Convention when an editor could be regularly appointed. At that meeting of the Convention several denominational leaders inquired of me what I wanted with reference to the editorship of the paper. My uniform answer was "Nothing on God's earth." Naturally I supposed that my age would put me out of consideration, but to my surprise I was chosen as editor. I agreed to accept on the condition that the girls in the office, all of whom had been faithful and efficient, should be retained. It was so agreed.

In 1929, when I had reached the age of 75, it became apparent to me that the whole policy and plan of publication of The Baptist should be carefully reconsidered with a view to the adoption of a program of advance covering at least five years. I had reached an age at which such a program could not safely depend upon my being able to carry it through. Accordingly, again I offered my resignation, stating as a reason the need for a younger man to assist in projecting and to lead in carrying out such a program. At that juncture a group of wealthy Baptist business men offered to buy the paper and publish it as a private enterprise. When the transaction was completed, at their request I remained some time longer to give them opportunity to select and install a new editor. The chose the Rev. Robert A. Ashworth, D.D., of Yonkers, New York. When he entered upon the duties of his office he requested me to remain with him three months longer. This I did, and our relations together were of the happiest sort. During my connection with The Baptist two incidents occurred which seemed to me to have some significance for this story. In 1921 the Northern Baptist Convention met at Des Moines. The Fundamentalists held their customary preconvention conference. In the midst of much debate they adopted a short creed. Upon inspecting that creed I saw that they had omitted from it the usual exacting tests of orthodoxy. Particularly, as I now remember, they had omitted the virgin birth of Christ and the premillennial second coming. The creed itself appears in The Baptist containing a report of the meeting of the Convention for 1921. When this creed appeared I wrote immediately to a number of the liberal leaders calling their attention to its character and urging them as a measure of conciliation to signify their approval of it. My argument was that their approval would be not only conciliatory in the existing controversy between Fundamentalists and Modernists, but that it would estop the Fundamentalists from reverting to a demand for the acceptance of the creed and the Christian Fundamentals Association. Thus, all real ground of controversy would be actually removed. Not only so, but they could consistently approve this creed without violating any of their principles of liberalism. Finally, there was no danger of their committing themselves to a creed bound fellowship, because, as I thought likely, the Fundamentalist churches themselves would not adopt this creed. My advice was not followed, and nothing ever came of either the suggestion or the creed.

An amusing incident occurred in the meeting of the Convention at Atlantic City in 1923. The Fundamentalist controversy was still hot in that Convention. I was writing up the Convention, and becoming tired, I had taken a walk to enjoy the scenery and the fresh breeze from the ocean. By and by I strolled back deliberately to the Convention hall. Just as I reached the door, out burst the Rev. Justin Wroe Nixon, D.D., then a teacher in Rochester Theological Seminary, now pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church in Rochester. As soon as he saw me he exclaimed, "Get in there, McGuire; get in there quick; Hell's breaking loose." I hurried into the Hall and found some phase of hot debate going on, but I forget what it was all about. Probably Dr. Nixon has also forgotten all about it. He was a principal speaker on the program of the last meeting of the Northern Baptist Convention where the progressives had all their own way, there was no dissension, and everything was as lovely as a June morning.

In the course of my editorial work I struck frequent snags in my remarks about the war. A man named Bookston, of Seattle, sent me a fiery letter denouncing me as a pacifist stating that members of his family had been in every war fighting for the government since the American Revolution. I replied somewhat jocularly, told him that my relatives had the same sort of record, but that it seemed to me it ought to be possible for either the Bookstons or the McGuires to make a little progress in their thinking in a hundred and fifty years. The outcome was a friendly understanding between us. A certain Colonel Pendleton, a retired Army officer of Washington City, became keenly offended by some editorial remark, and poured out to me by mail the great grief of his soul, that his denominational paper had so degenerated into pacifism. I replied reminding him that we were both old men, not likely to change our opinions, that I understood his state of mind and I must plead with him to try to understand mine, and that since we should both probably meet in another world we ought to begin to practice kindly feelings and speech toward each other here, lest we find the situation embarrassing there. He replied inviting me to take lunch with him when the Northern Baptist Convention should meet in Washington within a few weeks. I did so and we spent a delightful hour together in his home.

Some paragraph written by me on the economic situation, aroused the ire of one of the leading women of the denomination. She swept indignantly into the office of Dr. Earl, who was then editor-in-chief, and demanded that I be dismissed immediately. She said that the denomination would not stand for any such sentiments as I had expressed and that she came to speak for a million and a half Baptists. Dr. Earl, who was pretty wise in public affairs, inquired what organization of the denomination had sent her. She replied that she had come on her own initiative. He remarked to her significantly that he represented also a million and a half Baptists as official spokesman, and that he had received no official instruction to act as she demanded. She departed telling him that she would use all her influence against The Baptist while I remained in the office. Some months later I wrote another editorial which pleased her greatly. Thereupon I received from her a note of high appreciation and her assurance that she would do her best to promote the circulation and success of the paper.

In 1921 a prominent business man in Chicago became greatly irritated over my attitude in editorials on social subjects. He also announced his purpose to drive me out of the office. My resignation at the close of that year relieved him of the trouble of driving me out, but when I came back in 1925 he found himself plagued more than ever and reiterated his purpose not to endure what he characterized as my attacks on Christian business men. His prominence in Chicago Baptist affairs made his threat one to be seriously reckoned with but I ignored it and went on saying my say in such terms as I deemed from time to time advisable. Late in the year 1928 I received a telephone call from him inviting me to take lunch with him that day at the Union League Club. I reported the invitation immediately to Dr. Earl, his reply was "Mac, pull yourself together; you're going to get yours today." At the lunch table there was a bit of tension between us, but all was courteously done until the lunch was almost ended. Then I received one of the great surprises of my life. He laid down his knife and fork, looked across the table at me with big dark and troubled eyes and said, "Brother McGuire, this country is headed for troublesome times. I am greatly perplexed. Business seems to be headed for disaster. I called you to ask you whether you can see any way out, and if so, what that way is. And this from him to me! We talked more than an hour and when we separated our understanding of one another was perfect and happy.

Shortly before the meeting of the Convention in Washington City, heretofore mentioned, it became apparent that the question of open membership was sure to arise in the Convention under conditions which promised hot and divisive controversy. Dr. James Whitcomb Brougher, President of the Convention, at the suggestion of Dr. Earl called a conference of denominational leaders from different parts of the country to meet in the Chicago Beach Hotel for the consideration of that question. I was present as news reporter and editor's assistant for The Baptist. After long and serious discussion the conference agreed on a procedure upon which the members would unite in Washington. In the conference were Drs. J.C. Massee and John Roach Straton, both of whom had for years been among the most militant fundamentalist leaders. In that conference Dr. Massee announced what had already become publicly known that he had withdrawn from the fundamentalist controversy and henceforth purposed to work in harmony with the organized activities of denomination. He gave as his reason for such withdrawal that he had found the controversy damaging to his own spiritual life and disastrous to his fellowship with his brethren. And he pleaded with Dr. Straton to follow his example. The latter so far yielded as to sign his name along with all the members of the conference to the conclusions at which the conference had arrived. The conclusions were given to the press with a roster of the signers. The next day Dr. Earl was called out of the city and left the editorial responsibility to me. After the weeks the issue containing the report had been set up and was in form to go immediately to the press, I received through Dr. M.P. Boynton, of Chicago, a statement sent through him to The Baptist from Dr. Straton explaining and qualifying his position as a signer to the conference report. In that statement he referred to certain denominational leaders in derogatory terms. I immediately mailed the statement to him with an explanatory letter in which I told him that the statement had been received too late for insertion in the week's issue, and that it contained derogatory statements of other Baptist leaders such as we never admitted to our columns from whatever source. I requested him to eliminate the objectionable references and return the statement thus amended to me so that it might appear in the next week's issue. I heard no more from him on the subject. But in the convention at Washington I chanced to pass by just as he was saying to Dr. Boynton, "They refused to publish my statement as I knew they would." I stopped and said to him, "Dr. Straton, that statement is not true in fact and you know it. If it is repeated so as to become current in the Convention I will myself tell the Convention the whole story." To my surprise he made no reply and I never (heard) of the matter again.
This narrative of editorial experiences must end here. I remember the men and women who have appeared in these incidents only as kindly Christian men and women of good intention, towards whom I never had feelings of personal alienation, who were doing their best as Christians according to their light at the time, and to any of whom I would have gone for any friendly service which I might have needed. Any of them also might have come to me for any service in my power with the certainty of receiving from me the consideration of a friend and brother. Some of them have left the earth. Some of the rest of us who participated in those experiences will have gone. And so far as I know, they have gone and the rest of us will go taking nothing into the future world that will not contribute to the harmony of the heavenly estate.

GENERAL BAPTISTS ^top

In the spring of 1912 I assumed pastoral care of the First Baptist Church of Princeton, Indiana, as a Missionary of the Indiana Baptist Convention. Shortly after my settlement there I discovered a considerable Baptist population not connected with my church. Some of these Baptist people were Missionary Baptists who had never transferred their membership from other places to Princeton. Some of them were primitive Baptists belonging to a small local congregation; some of them were general Baptists holding membership in different congregations located in the country surrounding Princeton.

These general Baptists were especially interesting. About a century (ago) a Baptist minister named Benoni Stinson, preaching among the pioneers of southwest Indiana, proved to be an unusually successful evangelist. He was in regular standing among Missionary Baptists but he preached the doctrine of a general atonement, whose benefits were available to all upon their free personal acceptance. The pioneer Baptists of that section were generally strongly Calvinistic, and presently they withdrew fellowship from Mr. Stinson. Accordingly, he began to organize churches on the principals of the general Baptists as they were known in England. The work thus begun by him grew until at last the general Baptists had grown to about forty thousand members located mainly in the Ohio valley. Their stronghold was in southern Indiana, where they had established Oakland City College and general denominational headquarters.

As a basis for future work, I undertook a complete house to house canvass of the city of Princeton. At the completion of this canvass I had discovered about four hundred families of general Baptists who constituted the largest group of Baptists in the city, but with no local organization. I found further that many of these were growing careless about their church life, and that the local Methodist Church was making active efforts to draw them into its fellowship. In this effort of the Methodists they won few adherents among the general Baptists, but succeeded in disseminating among them the impression that the First Baptist Church was hostile to them.

After a careful study of their history and principles I became convinced that the causes of separation between the general Baptist and the Missionary Baptists in that region had long ceased to have any vital and divisive significance, and that the interests of the Kingdom of God would be best served by creating among them a common fellowship and cooperation. I conceived that such fellowship and cooperation, as well as the conservation of the disintegrating general Baptist community, might be effected in one of two ways; first, the creation of an organization among general Baptists to rally and conserve their forces for cooperation while retaining their membership in the several churches to which they belonged; second, the alterative of seeking them into the membership of my congregation. Accordingly I undertook a series of interviews with persons both private and official among both members of my own church and those of the general Baptists, with a view to projecting some program of cooperation. The project at first (met) with no favor from either group. Some of my own members were hostile to any such attempt and threatened unless I gave it up to withdraw their support from me as pastor. But by and by the idea of some sort of understanding and cooperation began to win its way, and when I became convinced that my own church was prepared for definite action I called the official leaders of the general Baptist denomination into conference, with the result that they found themselves in favor of the effecting a local organization of their people for cooperation, and they formed a committee authorized to act as conditions might warrant.

A new phase of our problem at once arose. As a local Missionary of the Indiana Baptist Convention, I could take no further steps without this specific approval of that Convention. The Rev. O.M. Dinsmore, D.D., was the executive secretary of that body. I invited him to visit Princeton. He came. I laid the case before him, introduced him for interviews with a number of persons interested, and as a result he declared himself enthusiastically in favor of cooperation along the lines already proposed.

This led to another problem. My church held fellowship with Evansville Association. The temper of this body may be judged by the fact that two years before it had unanimously passed a resolution deploring the action of the Northern Baptist Convention in admitting free Baptists to membership in that body. At that time a Rev. Mr. Parker, was pastor of the First Church, Evansvile, and a Rev. Mr. Green, pastor of the Calvary Church in the same city. I knew that unless these two men were cordially in favor of our proposal for cooperation it could not be carried out. But I was also reasonably sure that if these two men were favorable to the project the Association as a whole would approve it. Accordingly I took Mr. Dinsmore to Evansville to confer with these two men. We met for conference in the private office of a business man who was a member of the First Church. Mr. Parker was an eastern man, but Mr. Green was a Kentucky Baptist of the strictest sort. In the presence of Mr. Dinsmore and with his approval I stated the case to these two men, told them what was involved in it and assured them that unless our project had the unqualified approval of both of them we should not take another step toward carrying it into effect. Having thus stated the case I referred it first to Mr. Parker. He replied that no argument was necessary to convince him of the wisdom and propriety of the project and that he would give it his full approval and support. Then I turned to Mr. Green and said to him "Mr. Green, I know your theological position and training. I am aware that I am presenting to you a problem to which many Baptist people think there is but one answer, and that a negative answer. I know that such an answer would be the first to come to mind among our Kentucky Baptist Brethren in whose habits of thinking you have been trained. But our problem at Princeton is a concrete one involving vital interests of the Kingdom and of the Baptists. I come now to submit it finally to you. Your yes or no will decide the matter. If you say yes, we go on: if no, we take not another step. what so you say?"

He looked at me with clear frank blue eyes and said, "You have asked me a hard question." I replied, "Yes I know I have, and I know how hard the question is for you. But it is up to you. I await your answer." He meditated a long time while the rest of us sat in silence. Finally, he looked up at me and said, "If you can do it, do it, and I will give you all the help in my power."

Not long afterwards the Association met, heard a statement of the case and voted unanimously in favor of admitting general Baptists to its fellowship.

But at this point arose another problem. We could not create a plan of fellowship and cooperation at Princeton which was exposed to the danger of being regarded as irregular by the Baptists of Indiana. Accordingly at the next meeting of the Indiana Baptist Convention the case was laid before that body, fraternal delegates from the general Baptists were introduced and cordially welcomed and the Convention formally opened its doors to general Baptist Churches to send regular delegates to the meetings of the Convention.

But at this point the problem took another turn. A good many general Baptist Churches were located in other states than Indiana within the field of the Northern Baptist Convention. It was important that the general Baptists in Indiana should enter into no denominational fellowship from which their churches in those other states would be excluded. In 1915, therefore the whole problem was referred to the Northern Baptist Convention and that body voted to recognize the right of any general Baptist Church to representation on the same terms as other Baptist churches. This final action was reported by me to the general association of General Baptists meeting at Sebree, Kentucky, in 1916. That Association made official note of the cooperative relations thus established.

Meanwhile at the beginning of the year 1913, I was transferred to the pastorate of the Baptist Church at Sullivan, Indiana. Before leaving Princeton I secured action by the cooperating groups calling President William P. Deering, of Oakland City College to serve them jointly as pastor, with both congregations united in work and worship. After two prosperous years of such service he resigned. Later a Baptist minister, named Conway was called to the pastorate. At the first Communion Service after his settlement he announced the exclusion from the Communion of all who were not regularly in the fellowship of the First Baptist Church. Thereupon the general Baptists withdrew and organized a General Baptist Church. Both of those congregations have enjoyed prosperity and growth since that time.

Since the action of the Northern Baptist Convention in 1915, committees on conference and cooperation between Northern Baptists and General Baptists have been maintained and have cooperated to clear the way for full fellowship and cooperation among these two bodies. Relations between them tend to become more cordial every year.

January 31, 1935

PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH ^top

Experimentally, at least in my case, faith has a spiritual function preceded any formal conception or statement of my philosophy. But logically and according to the mature working of my mind my philosophy underlies my faith. In this sketch no full development of either my philosophy or doctrinal definition of the subject matter of my faith can be attempted. But I shall attempt to indicate something of the nature of the range of both.

I am an experimentalist. All philosophy reduces itself to ways of knowing. A study of the human ways of knowing is therefore fundamental to a sound philosophy. Some human ways of knowing are merely the elementary states of awareness with which all people of ordinary common sense are familiar; others wait on the investigations of psychology. For the purpose of my philosophy those ways of knowing which lie in the field open to common sense without special scientific training necessarily constitute the runways of my thinking about philosophical subjects. It does not yet appear that any line of scientific investigation has invalidated common sense in any of its normal modes of awareness.

Reality is what we know it to be. It is functionally known. We know what is by what it does within the field of our experience. To say that God is unknowable is merely to say that there is something about God which we do not know, but to speak of Him as absolutely unknowable is to speak an unknown tongue. Whether God is knowable, and if so, how far he is knowable, can only be determined by a full survey of human experience. All human experience is the revelation of reality. Assuming the existence of God all human experience rightly understood is his supreme revelation to men. If experience says nothing about God, then for the purpose of either faith or philosophy there is no God. What does experience say?

We observe a sort of being which functions in our experience in terms of mass form and motion. We call it matter. As far as our observation goes, matter is cosmic. It is structural for the universe. Common sense never doubts its reality, and the minutest researches of science into the composition of matter equally affirm its reality, though greatly modifying our common conceptions of its nature. Likewise we observe a kind of being which functions in our experience in terms of energy, life and mind. We call such being spirit. It is no less real in matter to common sense. And science, in its most minute researches validates common experience and affirms the reality of energy, life and mind as universal working data for the interpretation of the universe. So far as we can observe spirit is as inclusively cosmic as matter. The reality of spirit, life and mind is self-evident to common sense because common sense observes all of them at work. And just as mass, form and motion are inseparable functions of mater in our experience, so likewise, do energy, life and mind register in our experience as inseparable functions of that kind of being to which we give the name spirit. Indeed, energy, life and mind seem to be more nearly interchangeable terms for one kind of reality than mass, form and motion do. That is, spirit as a reality seems no less evident than matter does.

Now, God is simply the name which in the English language is applied for convenience of speech to that cosmic reality to which we apply the other name, Spirit. Other languages have their own peculiar name symbols for the same reality. That is, in Jesus' simple formula God is spirit. At his point my philosophy shades off into religious faith.

I believe in God. Conceiving God as Spirit, that is, as reality functioning in terms of energy, life and mind, I find no better word within my vocabulary to express God intelligibly to myself than the word, personality. Frankly this word is inadequate, but it is the fittest symbol that I know for making the being of God real and intelligible to myself. That is, I believe in a personal God, whose nature is more nearly reflected in human personality than in any other object within the field of my vision. Energy, life and mind within us register the nature of God in that mode, which of all modes of reality we know, makes God most at home as reality in our experience.

Concerning the Trinity nobody has said a fully intelligible word. A fatherly God exists. The claim made for Jesus that he is the Son of God appeals to the best thought of God of which we are capable. The Holy Spirit is so manifestly of the nature of God and so comes to fruitage in our experience in the most perfect aspects of personality in us that we can find no adequate symbol short of personality to express the agency whose functioning brings our own personality to its highest and best realization and expression. But to say that the Holy Spirit is personal is just another way of saying that God is Spirit. Yet to speak of three persons in one Godhead is to talk language descriptive not of what we know the nature of God to be but simply of ways in which we know God.

All organic life is permeated by the struggle for existence. Human life is no exception. This struggle seems to inhere in a necessary cosmic law of organic life. How life could have been introduced into a world of matter in any other way than as a struggle for existence is not apparent to human reason. This struggle accompanies the evolution of all forms of organic life. In the area of human life where a rational mind becomes a factor the sense of the good life supervenes and turns the struggle for existence into a struggle culminating in the best life on the plane of Spiritual experience. The urge to such a life warrants itself to common sense in terms of moral obligation. It speaks as with the voice of God and as a law of life. In such a setting sin becomes any missing the mark in the struggle for the best life. It is the universal experience of human beings. As persons become conscious of it. They experience in varying degrees, chagrin, regret, sorrow, remorse and in general the sense of guilt and the discovery of many unhappy consequences. Among these consequences is a disturbance of normal and ideal relations with God.

God reveals himself to men through human experience. No other method of his revelation to men is possible. All human experience, rightly understood is the body of his revelation. His revelation is therefore as universal as human experience. In greater or less degree the inspiring and illuminating presence of his spirit is equally universal. But the clearness of man's understanding of his revelation varies under varying circumstances. Christians have inherited a line of revelation which comes to them chiefly through the experience of the Hebrew people. In the course of that experience, responsive souls of great religious leaders received unique glimpses of God in relation to human life. The writings which Jews and Christians selected and assembled soon after the beginning of the Christian era, and which composed our common Bible contained sketches of that religious experience, including the visions of seers of the times to which they refer. In this character they register an unique line of God's revelation and are uniquely illuminated by his spirit. In this sense they are divinely inspired and have the religious values that belong to a luminous and saving revelation of God. But it cannot be rightly said that the original writings nor any translation of them were verbally and inerrently inspired. Such a view affirms more than any man knows and more than the Bible itself says. Clearly, the Bibles which we now have in standard translations do contain errors, and yet they are still the message of salvation from God. If such a message of God can be conveyed to us through books which contain errors there is no logical reason to affirm that his message was ever conveyed to man in books of any other character. It is therefore not correct to speak of the Bible as the word of God. The Bible never so calls itself and the use of such a phrase to describe it is merely the convenience of religious cant. Nevertheless, the Bible is of unique and priceless value to mankind in view of the fact that it presents Jesus Christ to human faith and understanding as the Savior of the world. In its interpretation and translation however, all human beings are equally free to mediate it to their own understanding.

Jesus, called the Christ, is presented to the world primarily as a man, a human figure in history. This he is, whatever more he may be. In so far as he is more than human, the fact that he is so and the degree to which he is so, are revealed in and through his character as a man. Clearly, he was more than an ordinary man. There appeared to be in him a sharing in the nature of God in a way and to a degree not apparent in human nature as we are acquainted with it. This surpassing quality in his person is variously defined in theology as the nature of deity. But it is beyond the range of any human understanding with which we are acquainted and to define it in terms of deity is to go far beyond the bounds of human understanding. The best interpretation of the nature of Jesus to men is the experience of fellowship with him in the actual struggle for the good life. In such fellowship every person entering into its experience and pursuing it in the spirit of Jesus realizes new values of life for which no better word is known than salvation. The experience in which one consciously enters into such a life is called theologically regeneration, and the experience of restored ethical harmony with God which accompanies it is called justification.

The fundamental function of the human mind by which one attaches himself to Jesus and commits himself to Jesus' way of life is called faith. It is accompanied by a purpose to turn away from a wrong course of life to a right one. Such a turning is called repentance. It is a mistake to speak of faith, repentance and consecration to Christ as absolute. Human nature does not function in absolute terms. It is sufficient simply that our adherence to Christ for salvation be honest to the limit of our power.

What Jesus did for our salvation was to give himself. His crucifixion was an incident in that course of his self-giving. Only as his crucifixion is interpreted as an experimental event occurring naturally in the course of the life he lived can it be understood. To interpret it as an event which made the forgiveness of sinners possible to God is to carry it beyond the bounds of human understanding and beyond the bounds of any clear revelation made to man. On the other hand, if God be conceived as interested in human life at all, he cannot be conceived as indifferent or neutral toward the death of Jesus. God takes account of it and does something about it and the benefits of that something which God does inure to us in the experience of salvation. This in not to say that God would not also and equally take account of any sacrifice of love on the part of human beings for the sake of human beings and would not equally do what a good God might properly do. The principle seems to be that God will back to the uttermost any effort of men to achieve the best life in themselves or others. The value of Jesus' sacrifice is unique and far reaching as he was himself unique and cosmic. In this sense Christ died for our sins and made atonement for transgressors.

Through all human experience run tendencies which if understood appear to be clear forecasts in that which is, concerning that which is to be. The idea that God sees the end from the beginning and has ordered the course of events seems to accord with the facts of experience and with the insights of men of prophetic spirit in many generations. In this view one may readily think in lines fairly parallel with those of Paul, Augustine and John Calvin. But the limits of human thought must be here observed. Men are equally conscious of a free movement of the human will in large areas of experience, and this fact of experience is as valid for the interpretation of the ways of God as any belief in the sovereignty of God can be. Consequently, in a balanced theology the sovereignty of God and the freedom of the human will not be accepted as facts of experience whose common boundary men have never been able to define. They involve the problem of the security of believers. This problem can never be solved in terms of a precarious salvation nor of a wanton security.

What of the future life? It is affirmed as a fact of history that Jesus appeared alive after his death and burial in such ways and under such circumstances as left his followers in no doubt of his resurrection and his continued post-resurrection life in his proper person. This fact, if true, would be conclusive evidence of a future life to those who follow him. But the acceptance of a fact of history must be based upon evidence that is historically valid, and if the story of Jesus' resurrection were the only evidence available, the hope of a future life must rest upon a course of historical investigation prosecuted by each person for himself and never completed. There are, however, two corroborating facts. First there is the universal longing for a good life after death. This longing as a fact of human experience must be regarded as interpretative for human existence and for the universe in which we live. What organic life longs for exists in the cosmic scheme. To this principle there seem to be no exceptions. To the human longing for immortality there are of course individual exceptions arising from a certain desperate skepticism, which conceives immortality as either not achievable or as holding no better conditions of living than the present life. But such exceptions are not normal to the human spirit. If the possibility of a happy immortality be postulated, the human mind naturally responds with a desire for it. In the second evidence arising out a common human experience is the natural reaction of the human line toward the happiness which arises out of the union with God through faith in Christ. The primary characteristic of such union is the awakening of a joyous love. Such love, when experienced, carries its own persuasive sense of cosmic and eternal value. Out of it the hope of immortality in the sharing of good with God himself arises spontaneously. One cannot conceive a situation or a time when such an experience will become stale, undesirable and unreal. It is the warrant written in the deepest sense of reality native to the human soul that a life characterized by such love is imperishable. This persuasion is of course intuitive. But if the subject be transferred to the field of human reason no person can conceive a cosmic reason why such love and the good life to which it gives birth should not exist.

At this point the question whether all human beings are to share in a happy immortality arises. To this question no equally certain answer can be given. We only know that such an immortality is humanly achievable and God-given. What measure of hope this truth affords to any particular person is registered only in that person's own experience. But one principle seems impregnable, namely, that all who want the good life have it whether for time or eternity and to the measure of their longing.

At this point arises the problem of the unseen world. Allowance must be made for the play of human imagination over an area of existence for which we have no definite plans and specifications. Among the imaginary creations are the ancient and medieval conceptions of a personal devil, a hierarchy of demons, a corresponding hierarchy of angels, Hell as a pit of burning and Heaven as a golden city. Of course, also, to this realm of imagination belong all the tribes of ghosts, goblins, fairies and the like which haunted human life in past ages. With all of these creations of the human imagination eliminated from theology, prudence limits our affirmations to the clear varieties of God and the good life for human beings in the realm of the unseen and the future.

Much has been made in theology of the second appearing or premillenial coming of Christ. Concerning such teaching it must be said that the scriptural material is highly imaginative and oracular, and that nobody has yet succeeded in working out a coherent scheme of eschatology on the basis of a literal interpretation of this material. In fact, any reasonable interpretation of this material must allow a margin for the play of imagination, and once that margin is granted, no man can tell where to place its limits. It is enough to say that Jesus lives and is coming, in what modes and time who can tell? That any person shall ever see his physical face again is not at all clear but his presence, his coming and the fulfillment of his purpose fill the loom of the future.

It is clear that the foregoing statements raise important questions about the value and interpretation of the Bible as a source material for the Christian faith. Concerning it the utmost freedom of individual interpretation must be allowed and the most keenly critical processes of investigation invited. If the Bible is not, as we have seen, a fixed and rigid frame of words but a freely expressive human language then, it must be considered, interpretated and valued in the full light of all that we know in any age. Modern scientific thinking has been apparently fully warranted in revising the chronology, astronomy, biology and historical narrative of the Bible. The results of scientific inquiry in these lines appear to be too far assured to permit any expectation that the primitive and medieval views of the Bible as source material can ever be recovered. But this does not mean that the Bible has ceased to be the unique and rich source of information concerning the most vital truth that underlies human life. In a far deeper sense than that usually attached to the words it may be properly and devoutly called God's Word.

A question is also raised concerning the authority of Jesus' teaching on theological questions. What was he trying to teach? Certainly he formulated no system of theology. He made large use of existing religious ideas of the people as being fairly serviceable for his purpose, without passing any judgment upon the validity of those ideas in themselves. If human life could be set in the right direction, experience might be trusted to eliminate the unreal and to clarify the real in the religious thought of men. This idea of Jesus appears in his words to his imperfectly instructed disciples that the spirit would thereafter provide guidance for them into all truth. Many sayings of Jesus embodying existing religious ideas of the people and used by him as arguments for pursuing the good life must be understood on this principle. The student who would arrive at the truth concerning the teaching of Jesus must inquire how far the available source material gives to us an actual transcript of Jesus' teaching: how far the sayings of Jesus incorporate current views which he used to enforce his teachings without passing a definite judgment upon the final truth of those views; how far the knowledge which Jesus possessed actually covered the range of universal reality and of the historic sequence of events; and what modification of his reported teaching is indicated by the actual course of human experience. Of course, such range of inquiry lies only to a limited degree within the field of information surveyed by the ordinary person, and it is not wholly accessible to the most highly trained inquirer. But to the expert and to the non-expert alike the teaching of Jesus as recorded in the Bible, as verified to the normal and spiritual intuitions of common sense and as illuminated by experience, are ample for stimulus and guidance in the pursuit of the good life as Jesus lived it.

Those who believe in Jesus experience the fellowship of a common interest in him. This common interest makes them a unique community. In the New Testament this community is called the church. The church takes its character from the nature of this fellowship, and is a free association of believers in him, united in faith, hope and love, governed by the common agreement of its members and devoted to their welfare and his service. In this character it possesses all of the elements of spiritual reality and validity. Any device of organization administration or program of action not consistent with this simple character of the church is a perversion and corruption of Christianity. The unity of the church consists in this simple spiritual fellowship and is coextensive with it. The apostolicity of the church inheres in the same principle and not in any formal line of historical succession. The sanctity of the church lies in the reality of its faith and fellowship and not in any assertion of objective authority. The catholicity of the church is co-extensive with the distribution of true believers in Christ throughout the world. Rites and modes of teaching are subject to the ordering of any local group for its own constituency, and membership in any group must be purely voluntary.

The world is the field for the redemptive work of Jesus. What he did in individuals was done in social situations and was directed to social results. It is so still. His whole life, his spirit, his teaching, his program and the goal of his efforts were all designed as contribution toward a sound community life in any locality and throughout the world. To this end he contributed his religious faith in the fatherhood of God, in human brotherhood, in the rule of God among men and in love as the law of life. His essential ethical teachings sought the same end. They contemplate the common good as socially fundamental. They embodied the principle of sharing, so ordered that the common burdens shall be borne according to ability and the common benefits distributed according to need. The method through which he sought to create a sound community life was scientific. It took account of the facts of human life and of the reality of human obligation. It trusted to the guidance of human experience in all the ways of life. He contemplated the testing of the value of methods and of the course of human experience by the results in human well being. As corollaries of these general principles, it contemplates an economic life based upon the principle of the common good, of Christian sharing and of democratic control; a political order based on the same principles; a pleasure life in which the common good and human wholesomeness shall be regulative and final; and a responsibility residing in the community as a whole for making the common good effective throughout the whole social structure. "All For All, Now" might be accepted as the appropriate and peculiar slogan for a Christian community life. All of the natural resources and all of the labor power in any local community and throughout the world belong inalienable to all of the people in common for the purposes of the good life. By this principle every individual, and the people collectively are morally bound. The common good must be interpreted in terms of the most whole- some living and of the highest cultural achievement which the community is able to provide for all equally and to the measure of individual capacity. An underprivileged person, class, race or other group must not be permitted to exist. The collective responsibility involves the supremacy of the collective judgment intelligently formed and expressed in a peaceable and orderly way. That is, a Christian community is essentially democratic. These requirements of a Christian community life are immediately and universally imperative. Under existing conditions their immediate and universal establishment may not be practicable. But it is the duty of the church to teach them and to make their acceptance an essential element in that process of the changed mind which it calls conversion to Christ. Only as it produces converts definitely committed to faithful efforts for the establishment of a Christian community life everywhere is its evangelistic duty adequately fulfilled.

Civil government is the organization of the community as a whole to promote the common good with the power of compulsion. The church whose bond of fellowship is purely voluntary cannot properly function in the exercise of the powers of civil government. The line of separation between the church and the state lies in the fact that the church can never use compulsion and the state can never dispense with it. In relation to their common object, namely, the creation of a community life dedicated to the common good, the work of the church is to create community-minded people, while that of the state is to organize and administer compulsory community action. But while these functions are kept carefully distinct, the people of the community associated whether in the church or in the state are bound by the same obligation of the common good, secured by effective democratic control.

The right of private property is involved. In any social order some things must be privately owned and used, while others are collectively owned and used. In practice the limit between private and public ownership and use must be determined by experience on the principle of the common good. That all rights of private property are subordinate to those of the community, is a moral obligation upon which the church is bound to insist, and which the state may rightly enforce under the principle eminent domain.

The Kingdom of God to which Jesus called his followers found its root idea, of course, in the ancient Jewish Theocracy, but Jesus expanded it to mean the conformity of human life with the will of God in all social relations throughout this world and the world to come. In its practical relation to human life in this world it is synonymous with a Christian community life. It means the elimination of all competitive economics and all wars, and the adjustment of all conflicting claims among nations and groups by democratic processes of reasoned agreement. It means the Commonwealth of God, the true Cooperative Commonwealth of human good will.

NOTE
Documentary material relating to communications between myself and General Baptists, between myself and others regarding General Baptists and between the General Baptists and Northern Baptists may be found on file in the library of Franklin College in the Northern Baptist Convention Annual, in the Indiana Baptist Annual, in the minutes of the general association of General Baptists and in letters and papers preserved in my files.

FUNERAL NOTICE ^top

IN MEMORY OF ULYSSES MELVILLE MCGUIRE

Funeral Services held at First Baptist Church, Sullivan, Indiana at Four P.M. July 8, 1939. Laid to rest 5:15 P.M. July 8, 1939 at Center Ridge Cemetery, Sullivan.
Music by Mrs. Bessie Black, Pianist and
Special Song Selections: "O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go" vocal solo by Kathryn Kirkham Reid with Dorothy Stratton accompanying. "Rock of Ages" by Male Quartet:
John Harbaugh,
Ross Harbaugh,
Jesse Smith,
and Harold Campbell.

Bearers: (Sons)
Arthur G. McGuire,
Clive McGuire,
Vane McGuire,
Paul McGuire
and (Sons in law)
Walter F. Wood,
John A. Barnett

Flower Bearers (Grand-daughters)
Adah Wood Willis,
Gertrude Wood,
Dona Fern Smith,
Rebecca McGuire,
Virginia McGuire,
Lois Jean Barnett

Relatives Attending:
Mr. and Mrs. Paul R. McGuire
Bruce G. McGuire
Don A. McGuire
John U. McGuire
Mr. and Mrs. Arthur McGuire
Mr. and Mrs. Gus Hash
Mr. and Mrs. Oscar A. Thayer
Mr. and Mrs. Chloral Smith
Rebecca Jane McGuire
Virginia Anne McGuire
Dr. and Mrs. E.M. Deputy
Flora M. King
Nancy Ransdell
Earl Ransdell
Fern Barnett
John Barnett
Lois Jean and Paul Barnett
Mr. and Mrs. Eldo Dodd
Walter F. Dodd
Mrs. Ella M. Randolph
Mr. and Mrs. Walter Wood, Sr.
Mr. and Mrs. John W. Gill
Mr. and Mrs. John Niblack and Nancy
Mr. and Mrs. William Willis
Mr. and Mrs Clifford Folts
Miss Gertrude Wood
Walter Wood, Jr.
Rev. and Mrs. Clive McGuire
Harvey McGuire
Joe McGuire
C.V. McGuire

Floral Tributes:
First Baptist Church of Anderson
First Baptist Church of Greencastle
Garden (Indianapolis) Baptist Church
First Baptist Church and Sunday School of South Bend
Exeter Avenue Baptist Church of Indianapolis
Fireside Friends' Class of South Bend
First Baptist Choir of South Bend
B.P.O. Elks #911 of Sullivan
M.W.A. Sullivan Camp #3567
Dugger Baptist Church
Men's Bible Class, H.B. Campbell Class and Mission Circle of Sullivan
Mrs. Woods' S.S. Class of Sullivan
Wood Grandchildren
McGuire Girls, Grandchildren
Mr. and Mrs. Carl Randolph
M Mr. and Mrs. Harvey McGuire
Indiana Baptist Convention
Sullivan Lodge #263-F.&A.M.
Eldo Dodd Family
City Hall Boys of Sullivan
First Baptist Church of Jefferson, Iowa
Family Blanket of Roses
Mr. and Mrs. C.H. VanTine, Detroit
Central Pharmacal Co., Seymour
Neighbors of Arthur McGuire
Neighbors of Mrs. Wood
Mr. and Mrs. M.L. Pigg
Mr. and Mrs. A.C. Owens and Family
Verne Crowe, Fred Dutton and Max Powell (Art's Employees)
Seymour Lions' Club
Mr. and Mrs. William Powell
Sullivan Co. Friendship Association
Henry Mackey of Bicknell
Mr. and Mrs. T.R. Black of Indianapolis
Mr. and Mrs. Paul S. Dunkin of Washington D.C.v Dr. G.G. Billman
Mr. and Mrs. Lewis E. Chowning
Eugene C. Foster
Rev. and Mrs. Moseley
Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Smith
Mr. and Mrs. Harold Campbell
Mr. and Mrs. Ross Harbaugh
Mr. and Mrs. Noble Coryell
Mr. and Mrs. J.L. Wilsonv Mrs. Hilda Daubert
Miss Elva G. Knox
Mr. and Mrs. Alec Schafer
Miss Josephine Wagner
Mrs. Flora M. King
Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Chambers
Orchard Workers
Miss Jeanne Hudson of Chicago

Messages and Letters
B.Y.P.U.A. Office, Chicago
Rev. Thomas Bush Family, Scottsburg
Rev. W.H. Dillard, President Indiana Baptist Convention
Charles L. Major, A.B.P.S. Chicago
D.W. Hufferd, Indianapolis
Rev. Morris H. Coers, Bluffton
Rev. C.M. Dinsmore, New York
Rev. Louis P. Jensen, Director of C.S. Chicago
Dr. A.M. McDonald, Chicago Baptist Association
Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Bartruff, Chicago
Miss Elva Knox, Chicago
Miss Jeanne Hudson, Chicago
Mr. and Mrs. Will Connor, Sullivan
Dr. and Mrs. Richard Barnes, Olivet Michigan
Fred F. Bays, Indianapolis
Arthur Greenwood, Washington, Indiana
Adult Woman's Bible Class of Woodlawn Church, Chicago
H.B. Campbell Class, Sullivan
Mrs. Ella Custer, Jefferson, Iowa
Rev. S.W. Haertsock, Indianapolis Tabernacle
Rev Vasile Prodan, Indianapolis Roumanian
Robert Snyder, Carlisle
Mr. and Mrs. H.B. Wiltsie, Brazil
Miss Dru Fisk, Indianapolis
Thomas J. Gallagher, Sullivan
South Bend Council of Churches
Rev. Charles T. Holman, Chicago
Ministerial Association, South Bend
Mrs. Clede Hash, Chicago
Jay C. Smith, Lakeland, Florida
Mr. and Mrs. F.E. Guyett of Bergennes, Vermont
Mary Brian Scott, Sullivan
Bernadine and Elsie Pinkston, Sullivan
Eva Willis and family, Carlisle
Adelia Conklin Bennett, Terre Haute
Nettie, Margaret and Lela Black of Sullivan
Mrs. John Paige, Terre Haute
Mr. and Mrs. R.I. Spaulding and son of Indianapolis
Mr. and Mrs. Earl Boles and daughter Kay of Miami, Florida
Rollin and Sadie Plunkett, California
Rev. F.L. Crutchlow, Crooked Creek & Indianapolis
Rev. C.A. Wade, Indianapolis Westview
Mrs. K.W. Culpepper, Mr. and Mrs. G.L. Lefilo, Mrs. Mees and Miss Alexia, Mrs. A.W. Moran,
Miss Mary Stones, Geneva Florida
Mrs. William Kelly, Springfield Mississippi
Mrs. Ethel Coe, Woodstock, Illinois
Misses Marcia and Adah Rogers of Lovingston, Virginia
The Baptist Kinsington of Jefferson, Iowa
Mr. and Mrs. F.F. McNaughton of Pekin, Illinois
Mr. and Mrs. R.E. Osborn of Yuma, Arizona
Will H. Hays of New York City
Alpha Delphian Club, Sullivan
Mary and Emmett Avery of Pullman, Washington
Churches and Community of Geneva, Florida:
Baptist: W.L. Sieg, Hazel Prevatt and W.D. Ballard
Methodist: A.W. Davis, Lula Moran and L.A. Sheldon
Townsend Club: W.G. Kilbee, J.A. Logan and Nannie A. Moran
Melvin and Effie Jameson, Rocky River, Ohio
President William Gear Spencer of Franklin College
Rev. R.J. White of Marion, Indiana
Dr. Walter E. Woodbury - A.B.H.M.S. - New York
Rev. John M. Hestenes and Rev. John M. Thomas - A.B.H.M.S. - New York
Dr. W.H. Thompson, Ohio Council of Churches
First Baptist Church of Greencastle
Mr. Pleasant Baptist Church of Indianapolis
Rev. William O. Breedlove, Calvary Baptist Church of Indianapolis
Rev. C.A. Mets of Leganon, Indiana
Royal McClain, Indianapolis Woodruff
Rev. R.H. Lindstrom of Southport, Indiana
Walfred Linstrom of St. Petersburg, Florida
Kemp Sisk of Indianapolis
Paul E. Dorsey of Indianapolis - Tuxedo
Rev. Harold W. Ranes of Indianapolis - Central
Rev. W.R. Seat of Washington, Indiana
Rev. L. F. Mosely of Madison, Wisconsin
Rev. F.A. Hayward of Indianapolis - Emmanuel
George Ostheimer of Acton, Indiana
Rev. J.P. Wilbourn of Franklin, Indiana
Charles F. Remy, Mrs. S.C. Fulmer, Indianapolis
L.E. York - Indiana Anti-Saloon League
Rev. O.A. Cook - Cumberland, Indiana
Rev. Cletus Brown - Kokomo, Indiana
Rev. E.J. Smith - Anderson, Indiana
Rev. J.W. Herring - Peru, Indiana
Rev. Isom H. Ferris - Acton, Indiana
Rev. H.T. Rafnel - Rocherster, Indiana
Rev. A.J. Esperson - Terre Haute First
Rev. J.W. Kinnett - New Castle, Indiana
Rev. C.W. Atwater - Indianapolis First
Rev. W.F. Buckner - Indianapolis New Bethel
Rev. L.G. Crofton - Indianapolis Garfield
Rev. George T. King - Indianapolis - Emerson
Rev. Frank Lansing of Franklin - 2nd Mr. Pleasant
Rev. Walter P. Halbert - Shelbyville, Indiana
Rev. William Melton - Connersville, Indiana
Rev. George Ritchey - Lafayette, Indiana
Miss Bessie Vincent, Mrs. Florence Haddon and Mrs. Losia Beasley, Sullivan, Indiana
Mrs. Bertha B. Dinsmore of Teaneck, New Jersey
J.E. McGuire of Comiskey, Indiana

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