I need a good, clear scan of this

"Patience is a Virtue"

I'm overwhelmed with many projects. So unless "Jerome" has something to post, it will be a while before anything other than fluff is posted to the blog. I am open to your submissions. Anything you write for the blog should be supported by original sources.

After years of avoiding social web sites and posting boards, I am now on twitter. You can find me @SchulzBw . Please focus on history writing. I am, however, open to other discussions if you must.

I need a good translation of this

New Amazon Review

Reviews are helpful. This is the latest.

The Professor

5.0 out of 5 stars 

 

a comprehensive study

 

May 23, 2019

Format: Paperback Verified Purchase

 

This is a mammoth study of the early Bible Student and related groups. It is 358 pages of 8.5 x 11 paper in small print. Of what I read so far it is accurate. I know of no other study that is even close in comprehensiveness, documentation and breath, looking not just at Russell but related groups and persons including Barbour, John Paton and others. The author looks at not only historical record but also critics of the movement including Professor Penton and Carl Johnson. The last page was intended to be an index which never was finished. It would have been an invaluable addition to the book. This book was clearly a lifetime work.

Worth Supporting

The library at UC Santa Barbara is building their religion collection. They have a very small collection of Watchtower material. If you're seeking a home for your material, this is an excellent place. Contact information on this page:

https://www.library.ucsb.edu/special-collections/support

Query

Someone has written in asking if there is anywhere one can access the WW1 issues of the Watchtower in German. Can anyone help? I personally would be interested in this too, although my German is non-existent.

I have scans [not best quality] of the German Tower for 1914-1917. I do not have 1918. I have used WeTransfer to send to "jerome" and to the person who sent the query. Let me know when you receive the files and if the transfer was successful. - Bruce

Files received - very many thanks.  Jerome

History's Mysteries

One of the unfinished chapters destined for Separate Identity vol 2 has languished because it was becoming repetitious, and the outline for the 'second half' was unsatisfactory. A chance find has led to better path. It has also led me into unsolvable puzzles. Below is a letter that appeared in the December 1885 issue of Zion's Watch Tower. It is from 'a brother.' My best efforts to attach this to a name have yielded no result. Can you do better than I have?

Cairo, [Caro] Mich., Nov. 3, 1885.

DEAR BRO. RUSSELL: I have not been able to do much in the

Master's service. I just got a number of samples of Z.W.T. when

diphtheria became epidemic in this place, and two of my children

were taken sick, but they have both recovered. One family here lost

three children, another two, and some one by the scourge. We were

quarantined for a while. Since I am allowed out I have gathered up

some of the samples. I traveled all one day in the country, where I

had twenty samples out, and only took one subscription; and on my

way home at night, weary with my day's walk, and trying to take a

kind of an inventory of the visible fruit of the day's labor, the

adversary tried to discourage me. Well I soliloquised like this: If I

were working for dollars and cents I should have a poor showing

for the day's work, but thank God I was not looking at the things

that are seen, neither was I seeking to lay up treasures in a bag with

holes in it. The Lord blest me with these words--Be not weary in

well-doing, for in due season we shall reap--upon this condition--

"that we faint not." Oh, I am so glad that we have such a good

Paymaster and a Captain who is able to lead us on to certain

victory. I am glad that God reveals himself to me as an Almighty

God, and one whose mercies are over all his works, and that the

groaning and travailing time of creation is soon to be followed by a

time of rejoicing. I find that the spiritual pulse beats very feebly

among the people. I find people of the world and professors in

general the same--interested more in everything else than they are

in the subject of religion. The great mass will not read anything on

the subject, but there is now and then one who has a spiritual

appetite, and is strengthened by the truth. I am hoping soon to get

out and hold some meetings, and by the grace of God to stir up the

minds of the people, so that they will be inclined to search and see

whether these things are so. On the whole I am greatly encouraged

in regard to the work here. Praying that God may strengthen us

more and more to carry on the war against the powers of darkness, I

remain your brother in Christ,

This blog ...

According to google stats interest in this blog has precipitously declined. I do not know whether to believe this or not. Comments?

Photo Drama Slides and Cards

https://archive.org/details/PhotoDramaOfCreationSlidesPartOne

https://archive.org/details/PhotodramaOfCreationPostcards

Jokes

In the 1880s, the North Wales Express, an English language newspaper for North Wales, UK, had a regular column called Varieties, full of excruciating puns and jokes that haven't generally translated well for the present day. It is interesting to note their joke at the expense of Food for Thinking Christians in the issue for November 25, 1881, page 6. For this to make any real sense to readers they would need to have heard of the publication's extensive distribution in the UK.

Let me add to Jerome's post. This is from a vol 2 chapter entitled Food for Thinking Christians:

            The controversy in Newark was picked up by other papers and reports of it, sometimes garbled, made their way into print far outside Newark. The Cleveland, Ohio, Leader carried a report as did The Chicago Tribune in its August 18, 1881, issue. Puck, an American humor magazine, quipped: “Some tramps who got hold of one of the four hundred thousand copies of Food for Thinking Christians, were disgusted on opening the book to find no cold meat in it.”[1] Puck’s squib was spread through the press as well.[2] Another attempt at humor appeared in The Cheyenne Transporter, a semi-monthly published in Darlington, Oklahoma, “in the interest of Indian Civilization and Progress.” The September 10, 1881, issue reported: “A little girl accompanied her father to church in Bangor last Sunday. She is a bright child, but was unable to understand the tract presented to her when leaving the Church, entitled, ‘Food for Thinking Christians, Why Evil was Transmitted [sic] and Kindred Topics.’ The child was tired when she returned to her home and told her mother to take that ‘food’ (the tract) and give her some ‘milk.’”[3]

---

[1]               See the August 31, 1881, issue, page 432

[2]               An example of this appears in The Chester, Pennsylvania, Daily Times, September 10, 1881. It was also reprinted in Puck’s Library No. X: Tramp, Tramp, Tramp! Being Puck’s Best Things about the Great American Traveler, Keppler & Schwarzmann, New York, 1888, page 19.

[3]               She Preferred Milk, The Cheyenne Transporter, September 10, 1881.

H B Rice - An Impecunious Man

by Jerome

(revised and reprinted)

Photograph from Ancestry

A name that occurs in many histories of the Watchtower Society (although omitted from the Proclaimers book) is H.B. Rice – full name Hugh Brown Rice. His name is found in the first issue of Zion’s Watch Tower as a contemporary of CTR. Rice had attempted to start his own journal The Last Trump – but financial woes resulted in failure. CTR offered to send the new ZWT to Rice’s subscribers, and listed him as a regular contributor to ZWT. However, Rice never actually wrote a word for CTR’s new paper.

From our vantage point now, perhaps the most useful detail about Rice is that he was not an Adventist but a firm convert to the Age to Come movement. This is why he and CTR would be in touch. This is why Rice’s readers would logically be attracted to the message of the new ZWT. It is why he offered to write for ZWT and might have done so if financial woes had not diverted him.

Financial difficulty was a recurring theme throughout Rice’s association with the Age to Come movement.

Hugh Brown Rice was born in Eden Ridge, Tennessee, in 1845. He married Sarah Gideon Edwards in 1872 and they had seven children in 12 years. He initially trained for a conventional mainstream ministry. In a letter written in 1887 to The Restitution, the main Age to Come paper of the day (and reproduced in full at the end of this article) Rice gives some brief biographical details of himself. “I was educated at Amherst College, Mass., (class of 1870) and was for a time in Auburn Theological Seminary at Auburn, N.Y….I preached for a short time among the Presbyterians and then for some seven years among the “Disciples,” but…seeing the way of the Lord more clearly in reference to the life eternal and the gospel of the kingdom, I was baptized on the confession of this faith by Brother Richard Corbaley in Yale County, Cal., in 1878 or ’79.”

Class of 1870, from 1879 directory

Richard Corbaley (1820-1903) was an old-timer in the Age to Come movement, who had travelled west in the early 1870s along with Benjamin Wilson. Corbaley was credited with founding the first Church of God congregation on the Pacific Coast in the Restitution for May 24, 1876. His life story is given in his obituary in the Restitution for September 9, 1903.

A letter from a Thos. Hughes in the Restitution for March 13, 1878 reviewed the personnel in his area, which included Richard Corbaley, along with “Bro. Wilson, Rice and wife at Sacremento.” Whether this is H B in early 1878 is unknown, but certainly by 1879, H B Rice is very much in evidence as a featured speaker with Corbaley at the annual Church of God conference in California. This was held over August 14-17, 1879 and a full report then published in the Restitution for September 10, 1879. This report indicates where Rice’s main loyalties and interests lay so soon after ZWT began publication and now that his own paper The Last Trump had folded.

The report reads (in part) “Brother R. Corbaley submitted his report as Evangelist…in the (Friday) evening we were profitably entertained by listening to a discourse delivered by Brother H.B. Rice from John xvii.3…by motion Brother Richard Corbaley was elected as Evangelist for the ensuing year…in the (Saturday) evening Brother H.B. Rice delivered a discourse on “the key of interpreting the Scriptures,” during which he dwelt at some length upon the fact that the natural always precedes the Spiritual…(on Sunday) after listening to short but interesting discourses by Bros. H.B. Rice and R. Corbaly (sic) the friends and brethren proceeded to bid each other farewell.”

The same report included the appointment of a future business and conference committee to include a certain C.W. Russell – not to be confused with C.T. Russell - and also a commendation of The Restitution as a “valuable paper” to whom the report was of course sent.

Rice then seems to disappear from view, apart from brief correspondence found in ZWT and Barbour’s Herald. Barbour’s June 1879 Herald mentions Rice’s “business failures” and “lack of means.” CTR’s Zion’s Watch Tower last hears from Rice in its July 1880 issue which again talks of “loss of business.” It mentions that Rice has obtained a situation in San Francisco and has moved there.

Several years go by and then Rice resurfaces in the pages of The Restitution in 1885. His comments indicate that as far as financial woes are concerned, not a lot has changed.  In The Restitution for January 21, 1885, he writes from San Jose, California, that he is now in the Real Estate business, but wants to go preaching and “to devote more time and attention to this matter than I have done for some years.” But there is a problem, “In worldly goods I am very poor, and have a wife and four children to support.” He asks for “a helping hand” – which could be interpreted as someone moving there to preach, or financial help so he could do it further.

A couple of years later, he pops up again, this time from Oleander, California, and indicates that financial woes have continued dogging him. In the Restitution for September 21, 1887, he describes himself as “poor in this world’s goods, and…hampered by business connections entered into for the purpose of providing for my family.” Not much has changed except that there are now five children to feed, quaintly described by Rice as “all young and non-productive of material needs.” Rice is now running “a little country store here but am partly in debt for my building and my stock.” But it is a good location – maybe someone could go into partnership with him or perhaps buy him out? It was a good prospect – honest! Brother Benjamin Wilson was nearby, but organizing anything had proved difficult.

Whether anyone responded to his business suggestion is not recorded, but in the November 7, 1888 issue of Restitution, Rice is now at Delano, California on “a government claim, a homestead of 160 acres,” enthusing about the Philadelphia National Conference to come, and bemoaning (as always) his financial circumstances. He would love to go preaching but “am too much burdened by the cares of a large and helpless family”. Farming is not working out, so “unless the brothers know of my condition and feelings they certainly can never help me to devise ways and means to do gospel work.” Basically, please can someone help me financially?

Something must have worked out temporarily for him, because in the Wilmington Evening Journal for December 1, 1888, he is preaching at a Church of God meeting.

But shortly afterwards, in the January 9, 1889 Restitution, Rice writes two letters about his current preaching tour. Unfortunately – and you could say almost par for the course – Rice has run out of money and is now stranded far from home. Home is California but as the above clipping shows Rice has been preaching on the opposite side of the States in Wilmington, Delaware. The friends there suggest that he moves on to visit his mother and sister in Knoxville, Tennessee, the city of his youth. Perhaps it is reading too much into it, but one almost hears a sigh of relief when Rice moves on, because once in Knoxville, he writes to The Restitution, “I am as yet, of course, unable to return to my family in California, and I suppose God has a work for me to do here yet, else he would send me the money to get home.” How his “large and helpless family” back home are managing during this time is undisclosed.

Somehow, Rice does get back home and almost immediately - indefatigable as ever – he is writing to the Restitution again. From the February 13, 1889 issue: “I reached home Jan. 30^th after a long and eventful absence…It occurred to me…to say that if any of the brethren in California so desire and can arrange to meet the necessary expenses (!) I could preach some this summer.”

This is followed up with another letter that results in editorial comment on February 27, 1889, to the effect that they have received communication from Brother H B Rice at Delano, Ca. “There seems to be a door opening for him there, but he needs some help financially...” In other words – the usual! Rice’s letter was due to be published in the next issue, but unfortunately that issue is not extant.

The final reference to H.B. Rice that this writer has been able to find in The Restitution was a month or two later in the issue for April 10, 1889. Referring back to an announcement in the previous week’s issue (which again sadly is missing) there is an editorial note that they were in error last week saying that the Executive Board had passed a resolution that Bro. Rice should receive some money from the Evangelical Fund – it should have been Bro. Niles...  Oops! One wonders what the story was behind that.

At this point the impoverished H B Rice disappears from the pages of the Restitution – this time apparently for good.

There had been a repeating theme to his writing over a ten year period; however, at this distance it would be harsh to judge the man’s sincerity. He obviously lacked the financial acumen of a CTR, and for whatever reasons his early forays into commerce generally ended in disaster. However, his frequent appeals for financial help were always linked to his desire to preach as he saw fit.

But once he disappeared from view, Rice finally obtained what might be termed “a proper job,” a position enabling him to feed his family. Being an Age to Come preacher had not really worked out and perhaps that decided that his religious interests (however they now evolved) should remain as a spiritual hobby rather than livelihood.

A year later the name H B Rice turns up in the Los Angeles Herald for 25 May, 1890. Rice is involved in organizing tours.

This finally seems to work. By the time of his death in 1905 he was running his own travel agent company.

He ended his days – no longer impecunious – but also no longer apparently in association with the Restitution. When he died, there was no mention in its pages. And his connection with CTR had ended almost as soon as it began.

His obituary was published in the Los Angeles Herald for November 3, 1905. It mentioned that he was a religious man, but the main subheading concentrated on his business activities – “Pallbearers Are Selected From Intimate Business Friends of the Deceased Steamship Agent.” The account stated that he “was president of the Hugh B. Rice company, steamship and touring agents.” The funeral service had been conducted by “Rev. J.W. McKnight, pastor of the Magnolia avenue Christian church…assisted by N.W.J. Straud, leader of the Bible class of which the deceased was a member.”

We do not know the nature of this Bible class, whether Rice stayed within the Age to Come family or reverted to something more traditional. Neither he or Straud are mentioned in the Restitution or the Christadelphian papers of the day.

The complete obituary along with a photograph of the family gravestone can be found on the Find a Grave site under Hugh B Rice, born October 6, 1856, died October 31, 1905, Mountain View Cemetery, Altadena, Los Angeles County, California.

Historically there were two disparate stories for Hugh Brown Rice. There was the impoverished Age to Come preacher who nearly wrote for Zion’s Watch Tower and then wrote repeatedly to The Restitution begging for financial help. And there was also the prosperous businessman in the travel industry. You could be forgiven for wondering if these were two different men, both coincidentally named Hugh B Rice. Stranger things have no doubt happened in history. But here we are helped by another obituary notice, this time found in the Obituary Record of Graduates of Amherst College, for the Academical Year Ending June 27, 1906, Amherst, Massachusetts, 1906, page 158.

Although this adds a little more detail and joins the dots so to speak, it has to be said that the memory of surviving relatives lets the side down. It states: “During the last twenty-five years of his life he regularly taught a large and enthusiastic Bible class in Los Angeles. He was a frequent contributor to religious publications, and for several years published a small monthly paper called The Last Trump.”

Let's do the math here. (Quote) he regularly taught a large and enthusiastic Bible class in Los Angeles for twenty-five years? That would take us back to around 1880, the time he had a brief association with CTR and Nelson Barbour. Was his Bible class large and enthusiastic and continuous? As noted above, in the second half of the 1880s many letters from Rice were published in the Restitution newspaper. They showed Rice struggling to make ends meet as an unsuccessful farmer and storekeeper, and bemoaning his isolation from those of like faith. They repeatedly ask for financial help so he can go preaching. On one documented occasion he leaves his family in near penury, goes preaching far away and runs out of money and has great difficulty getting home. Two typical letters from the period are reproduced at the end of this article, which stress both his isolation and lack of funds.

The Amherst obituary also mentions his paper The Last Trump running as a monthly “for several years.” This would appear to be a “folk memory” on the part of his family. Available evidence suggests it ran for only about three issues and then folded prior to the start of Zion’s Watch Tower. When a dramatic reversal occurred in Rice’s fortunes at the very end of the 80s, he disappears completely from the pages of extant One Faith/Age to Come publications.  For Rice to have published for several years would have meant his re-starting it when he finally got on his feet financially in the 1890s. While the old adage holds true that absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence, it would seem doubtful.

Once Rice finally got his finances in order, his dreams of an active ministry disappeared into the relief of actually making a reasonable living for a growing family. He still retained an interest in religious matters and The Los Angeles Herald obituary mentions Bible class he attended, but as noted earlier neither he or Bible class leader Straud are to be found in extant Age to Come materials of the time.

The main thing the Amherst obituary does for us is draw two diverse pictures together. On one hand we have the financial failure and on the other we have the prosperous businessman. The Amherst obituary shows this was clearly the same man – even if the details have been blurred and distorted in the telling.

Basically, Rice’s obituaries highlights the major flaw in all obituaries – the one person who could verify the information is unfortunately not there to do so.

Below are reprinted two of H B Rice’s letters to The Restitution, covering a little bit of his history, and showing his keen desire to preach the word as he saw it, in spite of continued personal adversity.

Letter from H.B. Rice as published in The Restitution for September 1, 1887, page 3.

OLEANDER, Cal.

Dear Restitution:

I notice with interest and joy all attempts to organize effort in the spread of the glad tidings of life through the Son of God. I, too, long to preach the good news of the kingdom, but, knowing that the very many of the called, chosen and faithful are, like myself, poor in this world’s goods, and being hampered by business connections entered into for the purpose of providing for my family things honest in the sight of God and men, I have supposed it were impossible to obtain the needed means to enable me to devote my time to preaching. So I have kept silent. But when I read of the call for laborers, when I see the fields white for the harvest, when I go to hear professed gospel preachers who are blinded by the errors of the apostasy and see how the people are feed (sic) on husks while our Father’s storehouse is full of rich food for the hungry, ready for their use if only the shepherds would give it to them.

Oh, my heart burns within me, and I long to give all my time, all my energies to this work. My heart is full of love and pity for the erring, the blinded, the famishing, the dying men and women around me on all sides. Starving, but not for the food which perishes – this is a land of plenty – but for the bread which comes down from heaven. But how can one who has a wife and five children, all young and non-productive of material needs, who has no money except as earned slowly by daily toil, to feed, clothe and educate these dependent ones, how can such as one go out and the preach the word in a land containing but a handful of brethren?

I have a little country store here but am partly in debt for my building and my stock. It is a good location, in the very midst of the fruit and raisin industry which makes this part of our State famous already. My store is situated between and about one hundred yards distant from two packing houses and fruit driers. Last season the Curtis Fruit Company, which owns one of them, put up 23,000 boxes of raisins, and this year the two institutions together will probably put up 60,000 boxes. This gives employment to many men, women and children at fair wages. It is a new but prosperous neighborhood, all the while improving. We have either a family or young bachelor living on nearly every twenty acres. We are nine miles south of Fresco and five west of Fowler, and have most of the conditions necessary for a good country business. We have a good school house and a postoffice, and with the exception of about three months of hot weather (in June, July and August) a very fine climate indeed. Eastern people are usually delighted with it.

My house is new, worth about $1500, stock and fixtures $500 more. Hence $2000 is about what I consider my place worth as I have it now. With an additional $2000 the place and business can be put in fine shape for a comfortable home and moderately remunerative income for one or two small families. The postoffice, which can be had in the store if desired, pays now $10 a month and would draw trade besides. Now if some brother who has the capital and a taste for the mercantile life in a humble way in the country will join me or buy me out possibly I can devote more if not all my time to the ministry or gospel preaching. I have been lecturing in the school house on Life and Death and trying to interest and instruct people. Considerable interest has been manifested.

Perhaps I should say that I was educated at Amherst College, Mass., (class of 1870) and was for a time in Auburn Theological Seminary at Auburn, N.Y., that I preached for a short time among the Presbyterians and then for some seven years among the “Disciples,” but that, seeing the way of the Lord more clearly in reference to the life eternal and the gospel of the kingdom, I was baptised on the confession of this faith by Brother Richard Corbaley in Yale County, Cal., in 1878 or ’79. Since then I have been isolated from brethren a good deal but have been giving myself to reading and the study of God’s word as I have had opportunity, never neglecting to speak a word in private or in public as occasion occurred if I could aid a fellow mortal or honor my Father in heaven and our elder brother Jesus of Nazareth the Christ of God and our only true life-giver.

I have thus told you of myself and how I wish to give myself wholly to the gospel word. Do you know of any way to accomplish this end? Or do you know of any brother who would trade for my store or go in with me in such an enterprise. My idea would be, so far as I am concerned, to make the store only a means of support while I gave myself mainly to preaching and teaching the word. We have a few brethren and sisters here but no regular organization. Brother Benj. Wilson is here, two Brothers Balch (?) and Brother Calder and their wives, about a dozen of us in all. Circumstances have made it out of my power to do more than speak to them and others who were interested to come and hear. There are causes not necessary to name here which have operated to prevent any attempt at organization, but which I hope soon will be removed. If you see fit to state my case in an abbreviated way (what I have written is too long and rambling to print) in THE RESTITUTION, I would like to see if the Lord may by such means open a door for me. I am with much love,

Your brother in Christ,

H.B. RICE

Below is another typical letter from H B Rice, as published in The Restitution for November 7, 1888, page 4.

DELANO, Cal.

Dear Restitution:

Although far away from any church organization and having none of that “fellowship of kindred minds” which Christians so much need and which I so much covet, I must write to express my deep interest in the movement now being towards organization of our forces. Co-operation is certainly Scriptural and wise and needful in our work. How I would rejoice could I be present in Philadelphia at the General Conference. May God direct you all in your planning and may the much needed union of effort be well begun and enthusiastically carried out.

Since it has pleased God by the “foolishness of preaching” (not foolish preaching), to save those who believe, we canst preach if we save any. Now I am too much burdened by the cares of a large and helpless family, and poverty, brought on by sundry mistakes in business enterprise and consequent indebtedness, to hope to be able to give my whole time to this glorious work soon. Some who have heard me preach in years past urge that I ought to give my attention to that work. Surely I am not a Jonah! I would rather preach the gospel than any other work. Hardships and privations for myself I mind not at all. But when my honest debts state me in the face, and a wife and five children appeal to me for bread and clothing, how can I go forth among strangers, most of whom are not in the least interested in such things, with no brethren able to aid me, no organized or systematic methods among them to sustain me while my time and labor is given to gospel work?

I do preach, not often in public, for I have no opportunity for that, but by the wayside, on the path, on the road, in private houses, to individuals, to all who will listen anywhere and everywhere. I lend books and tracts, and can see some fruit of my labor. But after various wanderings in search of a home for my family, I am at least located here on a government claim, a homestead of 160 acres, two miles from Delano. One year has rapidly passed away. I have a plain but comfortable house of four rooms, and a fence enclosing less than an acre about the house, a few grape vines and a dozen fruit trees growing misely, a two-horse wagon, a two-horse buggy, a gang plow and seeder, eight or nine tons of hay, and four work animals.

It is too dry to slow saw. We have had no rain except a light shower not sufficient to lay the dust well, since the forepart of last March! Last season was too dry to raise a crop except on irrigated land. But water is only twelve to fourteen feet from the surface on my land, and windmills would enable me to put in and raise an orchard and vineyard and a few acres of alfalfa; if I could only get them. Two or three cheap mills would be needed for ten or fifteen acres. The soil and climate are exceedingly favorable if we only had water. Rabbit-proof fencing is also a necessity. But here I am, unable to get work, without means to make these needed improvements; among strangers, no brethren anywhere near me, and, at present, no work of any kind by which I can earn a dollar. As soon as it rains I can get all the plowing I can do at good prices, but that does not supply present needs. Well, perhaps I ought not to say so much of my present condition, but it just occurred to me it might serve as an example of how some who long to preach cannot.

No one is more ready and anxious to help himself than I am, and in fact, when one reflects that a year ago I had nearly nothing and had to borrow from an old San Francisco acquaintance the money to file on my land, I feel great gratitude to our Heavenly Father for the success attained. Educated and trained for the ministry in the Presbyterian Church, having seven or eight years of practical experience as a preacher, in that church first, and then in the Christian Church or among the Disciples, having been pastor of a church for two years at Rock Island, Illinois, and then in San Francisco, California, and preached in many other places acceptably while knowing only a meagre part of the truth as it is in Jesus, I feel certain that I could do good heralding forth the “glad tidings of great joy which shall be to all people” were it in my power. It is my purpose, if the Lord tarries so long, to give my whole time to preaching as soon as I can get my farm into a condition that will enable my family to support themselves thereon. I am trying to teach my children (for I cannot send them to school at present) and am not neglecting the word of the Lord. This work may be more important now than any other, but of course when I get work to do I must be busy at that and may be compelled to be away from home, when such teaching will be interrupted.

In the meantime were the Lord to open any door for me to engage in my chosen work, I would try to do that rather. I have threatened several times to write to THE RESTITUTION and announce myself ready to fill calls in California to preach if any were interested and would pay my expenses to reach the place and return home. But I have been so isolated and so busy I have hesitated. This letter is written on the impulse of the moment, in view of the notices I have read concerning the General Conference and its aims. The thought came, unless the brethren know of my condition and feelings they certainly can never help me to devise ways and means to do gospel work, and perhaps, if they knew, some might be able and willing to join hands with me and so the good news be sounded out in California.

Your brother in Christ

H.B.RICE

It occurs to me ...

As long as we're referencing really, really old books and booklets, a little education may be in order ...

"Soul's Awakening"

https://www.ebay.com/itm/The-Souls-Awakening-1891-Artist-James-Sant-Engraver/153402178463?hash=item23b77b7b9f:g:puMAAOSwdA5bNPpF

His sense of spiritual and mental awakening was epitomized for him by James Sant’s portrait of a young girl entitled “Soul’s Awakening.” Prints of Sant’s painting were given out as premiums by religious magazines. Russell felt that the picture represented something in the experience of “practically all who have come to the Lord”:

Perhaps in your case, as in mine, it was not a case of awakening out of a condition of sin, but we had been God’s people all our lives, had never known anything else. I am sure that is the case with a great many people who are of the Lord’s family; trained as Christian children, they never knew anything except the Bible, hymns and prayers; and yet the soul was not awake. It was going through the form of singing the hymns without really thinking of what the words meant. They were asleep – somnambulism, as it were, going around half stupid, not knowing what they did or said. I had my own experiences in that way. I remember very well the period of my soul awakening. It was when I was about 15 years of age, and I thought, as I looked at that picture called “Soul’s Awakening,” that the young person in the picture looked to be about 15, and that gave me the thought that perhaps there were a great many of about that age when they reach thoughtful conditions. There seems to be a great change, you know, in human nature about that time, and it is a splendid time for the forces of spiritual growth to come toward these, and for parents and guardians to have in mind that it is a very favorable time for soul awakening. I do not mean to say that we should delay our endeavor to bring the child to a knowledge of the Lord. Quite to the contrary, from the time the child is born it should always be trained in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We believe the training of the child should begin nine months before it is born

He saw this as his true dedication, writing that he “when fifteen years of age” gave the Lord his heart “and reverenced and worshiped him with what amount of knowledge we had.” He was confident of God’s acceptance even though “indoctrinated … to believe that only the elect would reach glory, and that all the non-elect would experience eternal torment, we were [He often used the royal “we” when speaking of himself] accustomed to think of our self as one of the elect, and to appreciate the love of God, which had provided for the salvation of the elect.”

Jonas Wendell's nephew

Rufus Wendell, an associate of George Storrs and Jonas Wendell's nephew, published this book. I own a copy. Marginal Watch Tower interest, but some of you may be interested

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Life-of-Christ-Farrar-1875-First-American-Edition-Fine-Binding/254217117257?hash=item3b30855e49:g:c8IAAOSw3fZZ74g3

Thanks!

Donations have resulted in adding this to the research collection. Rachael's introductory essay touches on the period and thought connected to this pamphlet.

I need to raise ...

I need to raise $40.00 to purchase a period pamphlet I cannot acquire as a scan.

Rachael

Tributes, memories of Rachael ... Feel free to add your comments

https://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/2019/05/my-heart-is-broken-rachael-devienne.html

To answer a question

I've had two off blog requests for scans of the Bible House sermon book. I cannot oblige at this time. It is very fragile, as you can imagine. It will not stand being copied on a flatbed scanner. I do not have an adequate camera. And, as one sometimes must, there is another party who has a document I wish to see, and who has refused to allow access, so we're negotiating a 'trade.' I do not expect that to work out. It depends on how badly they want to see this. The negotiations will collapse if I pay someone to photograph this page by page and make the images available.

In place of many scans or images, I am posting a few, one at a time, as I work through this document.

Herewith is the first sermon. It is by von Zech and dated November 27, 1892.