Out of context paragraphs

 ... from volume three in progress:

            Adams wrote at the request of “a number of friends” near Beverly, Massachusetts. His letter itself seems to belie that claim. Instead, it seems that he wrote the letter, taking it from person to person to gather signatures. The initiative was his, though that does not diminish the support given by those endorsing it. “I can only say for myself and the little band of believers here,” he wrote, “that in the light of Scripture, type, prophecy and parable, and in the light of our past experience up to the present point, our position never was so satisfactory and convincing, to those who have eyes to see, as now.”

            This complex sentence shows them as far removed from the literalism that existed in the ‘movement’ before 1878 and which was the position Watch Tower adherents maintained. They saw in themselves the antitype of imagined Scriptural types. They saw each failure as progress. And there is a strong element of exclusivity. They saw their fragile, about to collapse, typology as truth, identifying themselves as those having “eyes to see,” apparently an allusion to Deuteronomy 29:2. At this point – late 1883 – there was nowhere else to turn. Adams quoted one of the Beverly adherents: “As one of our number has frequently said, though we sometimes, with heartsickness of hope deferred, grow weary in the way we never grow weary of it; sometimes with trembling hand we have clung to the silver cord of faith that as yet is our only claim to eternal life, and yet, thank God! we have held on.”

            Barbour strongly objected when, in 1894, Russell assumed the mantel of “the faithful and wise servant.” He did not object to Adams’, “The ‘prepared victuals’ fully sustain us,” an unmistakable reference to Matthew 24:47. This exposes the underlying conflict between Barbour and Russell. Each saw himself as the divinely appointed teacher.