Part of a chapter (Vol 2)

Food for Thinking Christians

            True to his word, Russell released the small paperbound book, Food for Thinking Christians, in August 1881. It reprinted Bible Students Tracts one through five and the Chart Supplement and contained some additional matter.[1]

The archive that owns relevant material has been reluctant to share it, and we have been unable to consult key documentation. But some documentation has come to us, and from it one can conclude that plans for a major tact distribution in the United States and United Kingdom were formulated at least by February 1881 with the formation of Zion’s Watch Tower Tract Society as an unincorporated association.

As indicated in a pervious chapter, a handwritten document dated “February 1881” was drawn up and signed by the principals. Those signing the document – C. T. Russell, A. D. Jones, W. H. Conley and J. L. Russell – stated their belief that much good would be accomplished by a “judicious and thorough distribution of tracts” that would share their beliefs about God’s “plans.” They intended to target all the large cities of North America and the principal cities of Great Britain. This would require millions of tract-pages, thousands of dollars and thousands of distributors. They explained their belief that their money belonged to God from the day they gave themselves to him. The document was a commitment to finance the work.

Unless the widely circulated donation amounts found on various websites are derived from another document, they are in error. This document committed the four principals to significant (for 1881) amounts: Charles Russell committed to $7000.00; Albert Delmont Jones committed to $2000.00; William Henry Conley promised $4000.00; and Joseph L. Russell promised $1000.00. These amounts were to be paid in two payments. The first half was paid on signing and the remainder on demand after six months. The money was entrusted to C. T. Russell who in turn committed to keeping an open and accurate set of books.[2]

            Russell envisioned circulating at least three hundred thousand copies of the tract. That large number required contracts with more than one printing firm, and Russell contracted with firms in Columbus, Lockport, Philadelphia and New York City.[3] Contracts with delivery services, primarily American District Telegraphy Company, were let.

Though the Watch Tower Society is reluctant to release documentation, some details are known. Russell shepherded the monies donated for the tract work. Instead of using the paper provided by the printing firms with which he contracted, he provided them paper, buying it from the wholesale firm of Hand & Ellsworth. We don’t know the final figure, but there is a record of one payment of $2299.86.[4] R. H. Forestal Company of Philadelphia provided the paper for printing there. The cost was $1727.29. Russell contracted with various freight and mass mailing companies, electrotyping companies and printers. What little of the original ledger we’ve seen indicates that he sought the best prices. If Russell contracted in person, the publication and circulation of Food for Thinking Christians was an immense personal commitment.[5]

Russell personally contracted with the American District Telegraph Company instead of using one of the brethren in New York City or Newark as his agent. A newspaper report says: “Mr. C. T. Russell … dropped in upon the offices of the American District Telegraph Company in this city on Wednesday afternoon. He was turned over to Superintendent Jackson of the Circular Department. Mr. Russell said that he desired to have distributed 100,000 copes of the pamphlet. Mr. Russell said that he was going to different cities to engage people to distribute the pamphlets.”[6]

Several sources describe Russell as nearly six feet tall.[7] The Sun described the person who contracted with American District Telegraph messenger service as “medium-sized.”  Perceptions differ, but the Sun’s reporter was obviously more observant than other reporters were. Russell was five feet nine inches tall.[8]

Russell reported that A. D. Jones “gave valuable assistance in the tract distribution” in New York City and Newark.[9] We do not have more specifics. Russell explained that the tract was “distributed gratuitously at the church doors in all the largest cities of the United States and Great Britain by the messenger boys of the District Messenger Service on three successive Sundays and in the smaller towns through the mails.”[10]

In some of the smaller towns individual Watch Tower evangelists took charge of circulating the book. Some of this was organized from the Watch Tower office and some was volunteered. An instance of the last is found in a letter from a reader in Kansas: “I would like a few copies of ‘Food for Thinking Christians.’ I will treat and place each one as though it were pure gold..”[11]

A letter from Austintown, Ohio, dated January 16, 1882, reported: “‘Food for Thinking Christians,’ was duly received a few weeks ago, and I have carefully distributed the greater portion of them among such as would appreciate such teachings.”[12] In the June 1882 Watch Tower, Russell announced that “Bros. Leigh and Spears have started on a trip down the Ohio river in a small boat belonging to the latter. They purpose (D.V.) to visit all the river towns between here and Cincinnati or St. Louis, spending about a week at each. This will require all summer or longer.” The purpose of this trip was to circulate Food for Thinking Christians.

Identifying Leigh and Spears was difficult. The primary identifier is that they sailed from “here” or Pittsburgh. This suggests that they were residents of either Allegheny or Pittsburgh. The only Leighs in the city directories include an S. M. Leigh, a teacher at The House of Refuge, a home for juvenile offenders. Unfortunately, this is a “Miss S. M. Leigh,” thus not qualifying as “brother” Leigh.[13] A later directory lists a William Leigh, a waiter.[14]  The 1880 Directory lists a Valentine Leigh, a laborer. Other directories list a Samuel Leigh, a glass molder, and an E. C. Leigh, a student living on Federal Street.  The evidence points to Samuel Leigh.

Samuel Leigh connects to “Brother Spears” through a shared occupation.  The 1880/81 Directory lists a number of people with the last name “Spear” but only one with the name “Spears,” and thereby we might make the connection. James Spears was a glass cutter, living on Carson Street. It may be no more than coincidence that Samuel Leigh and James Spears worked in the same industry, but I am inclined to believe these are the two we seek. There isn’t enough evidence to say with surety. James Spears drops out of the directories not long after, either moving away or dying. As much as one wishes for more detail, it seems not to exist.

 [photo here]

The Ohio River at Cincinnati. Note the One Man Steam Launch.

Positive Response and Adverse Reaction

            Reaction to the tract was immediate and mixed. The Buffalo, New York, Daily Courier of August 19, 1881, commented: “Within a day or two past large numbers have been distributed in this city of a tract entitled ‘Food for Thinking Christians; Why Evil was Permitted, and Kindred Topics.’ … Its contents are of a character to command the attention of intelligent Bible students.”

            Others were far less commendatory. In Newark, New Jersey, the American District Telegraph Agency caused considerable confusion by prematurely dropping off bundles in front of churches and leaving them untended or asking that they be handed out to parishioners. The New York Sun reported that “men in carriages left packages containing 100 copies or more at the churches, with the request that they be given out to the people. At some churches they were distributed, but in most instances the sextons showed them to the ministers, and were told by the latter to keep them, which they did. At [South] Park Presbyterian Church the pamphlets were left on the stoop, and were then taken to the Second Precinct police station. No clergyman could find out from whom the pamphlets came.”[15]

[photo here]

South Park Presbyterian Church – Library of Congress Photo 

            At The House of Prayer, a “High Church” Episcopal parish, its rector Dr. Hannibal Goodwin[16] “intended to burn the books, but concluded he had no right to do so.”

Someone took the matter to The New York Sun which duly reported:  

Shortly before the close of the morning service in the House of Prayer, an Episcopal church in Newark, on Sunday morning, two men drove up to the church in a carriage and called the sexton out. They showed him about 300 small pamphlets and asked him to hand them to the people as they left the church. As tracts and pamphlets on church doctrine are frequently distributed in the church parish, Mr. Marshall, the sexton, consented to do what the men asked. He and a boy carried the pamphlets to the rear porch and laid them upon a chair.

 

The sexton then began to have misgivings, and as soon as the rector, the Rev. H. Goodwin, had passed from the church into the choir room the sexton showed him one of the books. Mr. Goodwin at once stopped their distribution, but not before about thirty had been carried away by the congregation. In the evening he referred to the matter in church, and said he would have the pamphlets burned. He asked that those that were carried away be also burned. They were filled, he added, with fanaticism and rank heresy.

 

Last evening Mr. Goodwin said the book was a conglomeration of strange views about evil, the resurrection, and various Scripture topics. He has heard that copies were left in a similar way at St. Paul’s and St. Stephen’s churches last Sunday, and that at the latter they fell into the hands of the people.[17]

 

When the messenger service boys showed up a week later to reclaim the books and circulate them as intended, he refused to give them up “until ownership was proved.” It was the only way of halting, at least temporarily, the circulation of material to which he objected. He made the affair part of his sermon that Sunday, August 14, 1881, saying that “he admired the zeal of the owners of the books and thought their impudence was grand.”

            The premature delivery caused difficulty elsewhere too. The messenger boys were rebuffed. The New York Sun reported that “at several churches they were told that there were no books there, and when they undertook to give them out at other churches they were hustled away, or ‘booted off,’ as some of them expressed it.”

Agustus M. Bergner[18] (spelled Burgner in the 1880 Census), one of the pillars of the infant Newark ecclesia, retrieved the books from the police station, returning them to circulation. A reporter from The New York Sun traced him to his residence: “He frankly said he had been engaged in circulating the pamphlets,” The Sun reported, “and was willing to talk on the subject.”

 

Being ushered into the dining room, this reporter ascertained that a religious meeting was in progress in the parlor. Mr. Bergner is about 40 years old, with a fair face and light hair and beard. He is of medium height and has clearly cut and rather handsome features.

 

“I belong,” he said, “to a company of Christians who have no common name. We are not Second Adventists, as has been inferred from the pamphlet, and we are not the ‘Holiness’ or ‘Higher Life’ sect. … We are opposed to the teaching of the churches on several points. What they teach about hell and immortality is nonsense. There is no hell. There will be eternal life for those who serve God; the wicked will also be resurrected and have a second probation during the millennium. But you can’t understand our doctrine unless you read the pamphlet; about which so much fuss is made. … To-day I went to the Park Presbyterian Church and the Belleville Avenue Congregational with 120 copies, and the people eagerly took every one. I went to the Park Presbyterian because of the minister’s audacity in putting them out on the stoop last Sunday without first reading one. … I am told that in the Sunday school of the Fifth Baptist Church the superintendent wrote on the blackboard: ‘Food for Thinking Christians. Take one,’ and the children received them.

 

 [photo here]

Hannibal Goodwin – Library of Congress Photo

 

            The Sun reported that six thousand copies had been sent out on August 7^th, with the misdirected delivery, and that twenty thousand more would be delivered at church doors in New York City on the 14^th. The Kingston, New York, Daily Freeman reported that 54,000, copies were distributed in the New York City and Newark area on the 14^th.[19]

            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.”[20] Puck’s squib was spread through the press as well.[21] 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.’”[22]

            The New York Daily Tribune of August 18^th carried a brief explanatory paragraph datelined Pittsburgh the day before saying: “‘Food for Thinking Christians’ – a free pamphlet, of which 400,000 copies have been distributed to all the principal churches of all the large cities, and which has excited widespread comment, some ministers fearing it was an infidel work – is a publication by a tract society of this city, and is designed to counteract infidel teachings and tendencies and to promote interest in and study of the Bible.”[23] With a snipe at clergy who demanded fees for every service, The Kingston, New York, Daily Freeman reported:

 

The gospel is remarkably free in Newark, New Jersey. Yesterday, as the people assembled at or dispersed from church, they were handed a pamphlet entitled “Food for Thinking Christians” … The pamphlet had been issued by an entirely new sect … which does not believe in hell, but expects a resurrection of both the good and the wicked, the latter to have a second probation during the millenium. [sic] … The pastors of the churches, not knowing the contents of the harmless documents, treated them as something incendiary, but it was found on reading them that there was nothing dangerous about them. They were as free from nihilism and dynamite as from hades. The only suggestion pertinent to the appearance of such a pamphlet is that there are already a great many more religions in this country than can be lived up to.[24]

 

The Newark disturbance resulted in a personal interview with Russell and a subsequent article in the August 18, 1881, Chicago Daily Tribune. The article quoted Russell as saying that his instructions had not been followed by ADT messengers and that they did “not expect an assistance of this kind from the churches.”  They had no creed, Russell told the reporter, adding that they weren’t a church. The article described him as “a very respectable business man of this city.”

The New York Daily Graphic, in its usual clipped fashion reported: “Fifty thousand copies of pamphlets distributed at church doors, wherein doctrines of hell and eternal punishment are declared to be nonsense. Man in Newark says an association without a name has put up $30,000 to popularize these views. Pamphlet is addressed to ‘thinking Christians’ and based on the Bible. Maintains that evil in world is part of divine plan to sift out good people from bad. Good people go straight to life everlasting and bad people sleep in death until millennium, when they are given another chance. If they don’t do better then they are diffused in universal chaos or annihilated. Who can say faith is death when $30,000 can be raised to propagate such theories?”[25]

While the Newark incident was the most widely reported, generating the most column inches, there were other indignant and forceful reactions. In Philadelphia Henry R. Percival, a Protestant Episcopal clergyman, preached a series of sermons entitled “Infidelity: Against a Book Entitled ‘Food for Thinking Christians.” The first in the series was preached in late February 1883, “to a large and appreciative congregation.”[26]

Not all church-door tract distribution received a negative reaction. That Watch Tower teachings resembled those of their contemporaries in many areas gained them admittance to some churches. Though it comes from a later time, the comments of James M. Gray, a clergyman who opposed Russell, probably apply here too:

 

The zeal of the movement not infrequently shows itself in the distribution of such literature at meetings … either within the hall if liberty be granted or at the street doors as the audience is dismissed. Page after page of it may be read revealing no serious errors in the light of the Word of God until finally one comes upon something startling in its almost pagan strangeness as compared therewith.[27]

 

With the October/November 1881 issue of The Watch Tower, Russell could report that the initial press run of three hundred thousand copies, “though very large,” was not “sufficient and it was increased to 500,000 copies” in the United States. Another three hundred thousand were published in the United Kingdom. Russell or a representative approached “the principal paper of New York City” and the manager “agreed to send a copy of the tract to their entire list of subscribers.” Papers in Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia followed suit. He left the papers un-named “to save them inconvenience.”

A special edition of Food in “newspaper shape” was printed for the purpose, “and as such it constituted the September number of The Watch Tower.” This accounted, he explained, for the increased size and change of shape of the September Watch Tower. He arranged for Food to be distributed as newspaper-sized inserts with various weekly and monthly journals that appealed to rural readers, hoping to “reach many Christians in country districts.” Over four hundred thousand copies were distributed in the U.S. and U.K. as supplements to secular journals.[28]

Russell was reluctant to name the papers that circulated Food for Thinking Christians to his order. If there is any implication that the papers circulated it out of the goodness of the managing editors’ hearts, it is false. Russell provided the tracts, of course, and paid the mailing and delivery expense. The New York City paper was the Tribune. A payment of $404.90 ensured the delivery of one hundred thousand copies. Other papers circulating Food were The Chicago Inter-Ocean (90,000 copies), The Chicago Tribune (10,000 copies). The Western Rural, a weekly published in Chicago but with a wide circulation through out the American mid-west, circulated twenty-three thousand copies. Another journal meant for rural distribution, The Farm Journal of Philadelphia, circulated thirty-six thousand copies at a cost of $171.65. Massachusetts Ploughman, another rural weekly, and New England Farmer were also used.[29]

The extent of the work surprised Russell and his associates. They hadn’t planned on anything approaching the circulation that resulted:

 

The work has been so much greater than we had anticipated, and seemingly was impelled by an unseen hand and at such a special time, too, that we cannot doubt that it is all of the Lord, and it is probably designed as a ripener to some grains of “wheat,” to prepare them as a part of the “first fruits” of the wheat or spiritual harvest--members of the Bride of Christ; and also, one of the many instruments to be used in the overthrow of “Babylon” and the deliverance of God’s children within her. But while an unseen hand seemed to impel the onward progress of the work, another unseen hand seemed at work seeking to thwart our purposes, but “if God be for us, who can be against us?” In his strength one could chase a thousand opposers, and two put ten thousand to flight.[30]

 

            The reaction of clergy wasn’t entirely negative. “A few clergymen said he was right, and, with gladness, joined with him in the work. The greater majority of the clergymen, instead of explaining these Scriptures to the people and helping them, began a cruel and systematic persecution.”[31]

            William R. Coovert, [alternately spelled Covert] [32] a clergyman with the Church of God (Winebrennerites), challenged Russell to a debate. Coovert saw himself as an expert debater, and printed copies of several of his debates are available. He was less than stable and was involved in the Harlem Commons Swindle, serving for a while as manager of the syndicate claiming damages from New York City. He issued false claims about the involvement of prominent men, changing his story as every false claim was exposed.[33]

            He eventually went insane. Heavily involved in a controversy among the Order of Solons, a fraternal order, he demonstrated “pugilistic qualities” by slugging “Ex-supreme Secretary [G. A.] Mundorf.” He called in a reporter from The Pittsburgh Press to make a statement, and the reporter found him delusional and rambling:

 

When a Press representative entered the hotel, he was informed by the clerk that Mr. Covert had a vision during the night and was very much wrought up over something … Mr. Covert was found in an excited state of mind. His hair was disheveled and great drops of sweat were standing on his forehead. He was walking the floor in an excited manner, and papers and manuscripts were scattered in confusion about the floor.[34]

 

He had a spotty reputation among his own denomination, being admired as a debater but was also seen as a “vehement and disturbing.” A denominational history charitably calls him “a man of indefatigable energy, but of a volatile and flighty fancy.”[35] Why Coovert remained in favor with the Church of God despite his involvement with questionable activities, his pugnacious behavior, and his mental instability is unknown.

            Coovert challenged Russell through the pages of The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Dispatch, “to discuss in a public debate the Creed of the Church of God, which is the inspired revelation known as the word of God.”[36]  The History of the Church of God reports that “‘Mr. R failed to come to time,’ so Covert published him in the Pittsburg [sic]’Times’ as having virtually ‘conceded that my position is true.’”[37] Given Coovert’s known instability, it is not surprising that Russell failed to debate him. Coovert was content to declare victory without an actual debate, setting a pattern for others in the general community to which the Church of God belonged. Decades later various Disciples elders would follow suit, declaring victory over J. F. Rutherford without a word of actual debate passing between them.[38]

---

[1]               As with Russell’s Object and Manner, a startling amount of nonsense has been written about Food for Thinking Christians. For example John Butterworth (Cults and New Faiths, 1982) wrote: “Russell gathered a group of friends together to study the Bible regularly and published their interpretations in a magazine, Food for Thinking Christians, later replaced by the bi-monthly Watchtower.” Jim Willis (The Religion Book, 2004) has Russell publishing it in 1879. Amost nothing Willis says is accurate. Why people write such obvious nonsense and why others buy it is one of life’s mysteries.

[2]               Tower Tract Society Organizational Document dated February 1881. Handwritten manuscript.

[3]               Untitled Article: The Buffalo Daily Courier, August 19, 1881. Zion’s Watch Tower Tract Society’s ledger book names Burr Printing of New York City as one of the printers. We know of one payment of $699.70 made to them. Another payment of $249.60 was made to S. W. Green’s Sons, another New York printer.

[4]               Hand & Ellsworth did business at 51 Beekman Street in New York City. Their paper mill was located near Peekskill, New York. They went bankrupt in 1884, caught up in the financial hard times of the mid-1880s. – Paper Merchants Suspend, New York Times, July 25, 1884.

[5]               Zion’s Watch Tower Tract Society Ledger Book, a handwritten accounts book.

[6]               Churchgoers Astonished, The New York Sun, August 15, 1881.

[7]               “Mr. Russell is … probably 35 years of age, nearly six feet in height, and of a pale, thoughtful cast of countenance.” – A New Sect, Chicago, Illinois, Daily Tribune, August 18. 1881.

[8]               Russell’s passport application dated June 24, 1891.

[9]               In the Vineyard, Zion’s Watch Tower, October/November 1881, page 5.

[10]             C. T. Russell: They Kingdom Come, Watch Tower Society, Allegheny, Pennsylvania,  Millennial Dawn, Volume Three, 1902 edition, page 367,

[11]             View from the Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, January/February 1882, page 1.

[12]             View from the Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, January/February 1882, page 1.

[13]             1873 Directory of Pittsburgh and Allegheny City, G. H. Thurston, page 323; 1873/4 Directory, page 43.

[14]             1878 Directory, page 373.

[15]             Churchgoers Astonished, The New York Sun, August 15, 1881.

[16]             Hannibal Goodwin (1822-1900) is best known for his invention of celluloid film, making motion pictures possible. His fight with Eastman Kodak ran on for decades and wasn’t settled until after his death.

[17]             Left at Church Door, The New York Sun, August 10, 1881.

[18]             Agustus M. Bergner was born in Stockholm about 1839 according to the 1880 Census. He is listed as a “cutlery dealer” in the census and in a 1900 Newark City Directory. He was briefly president of the Women’s and Children’s Mutual Benefit Association, which offered inexpensive life insurance. It failed to meet New Jersey State requirements and was closed by order of the New Jersey Secretary of State. (City and Suburban News, The New York Times, May 20, 1884.) He seems not to be mentioned in Zion’s Watch Tower, but his wife Jennie Bergner is. See the article “Out of Darkness and into His Marvelous Light,” Zion’s Watch Tower, August 1, 1893, page 238. Bergner served in the Navy, probably the Civil War. The name Agustus M. Bergner appears in a list of “soldiers and sailors” whose address was sought. The last known address for him in the list was Brooklyn, New York.( See The Washington, D. C., National Tribune, April 17, 1899.) He was a mate on the American Navy’s screw frigate USS Wampanoag during its first sea trails. – Naval Intelligence, New York Herald, April 18, 1868.

[19]             The Gospel is Remarkably Free in Newark, The Kingston, New York, Freeman, August 15, 1881.

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

[21]             An example of this appears in The Chester, Pennsylvania, Daily Times, September 10, 1881. This 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.

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

[23]             The Origin of a Tract, New-York Daily Tribune, August 18, 1881.

[24]             Untitled Article: The Kingston, New York, Daily Freeman, August 15, 1881.

[25]             New York Daily Graphic ,August 15, 1881.

[26]             Philadelphia Enquirer, May 3, 1883. Percival (c. 1854 -. Sep. 22, 1903) was twenty-nine and not yet famous for his writing. A short obituary published in The New York Times of September 24, 1903, says: “He was an extensive writer on theology, many of his books being used as standard works in nearly all of the Episcopal Seminaries of this country.”

[27]             J. M. Gray: Satan and the Saint, Bible Institute Colportage Association, Chicago, 1909, pages 69-70.

[28]             In the Vineyard, Zion’s Watch Tower, October/November 1881, pages 4-5.

[29]             Zion’s Watch Tower Tract Society Ledger Book, a handwritten accounts book kept per the original agreement between the principals.

[30]             ibid.

[31]             Kingdom News, as quoted in “Kingdom News Being Sent Out,” The Watertown, New York, Daily Times, May 3, 1919.

[32]             Coovert was born December 17, 1853, in Fayetteville, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Mercer County, Pennsylvania.  He was married three times. Covert was enrolled at the Edinboro State Normal School, but did not graduate. In 1872 he moved to Wappello, Iowa and was ordained at Harmony, Iowa, in October 1874. He attended Grove City College, but did not graduate. He was pastor of the Townsend Street Church in Pittsburgh from about 1880-1886. He was a member of the Prohibition Party. There is some indication that he spent the first few years of his religious life associated with H. V. Reed and The Restitution and the last few years in association with the SDA church. An article signed “Wm Covert” appearing in the Lake Union Herald, a Seventh-day Adventist Journal, of January 27, 1915, makes this possible. We’re uncertain if this is the same person.

[33]             Claiming New-York City Lands, The New York Times, August 22, 1885; Harlem Commons, The New York Times, June 17, 1886; The Harlem Commons Heirs: One of them Declares that a Swindle is Being Attempted, The New York Times, June 9, 1886; The Harlem Commons: Roscoe Conklin Said to be Retained, The New York Times, June 17, 1886;

[34]             His Mind Impaired: Rev. Covert Succumbs Under a Mental Strain, The Pittsburgh Press, December 8, 1892. See also Pittsburgh Dispatch, December 31, 1892, page 10; The Rev. W. R. Coovert Seriously Ill, The New York Times, December 9, 1892.

[35]             C. H. Forney: History of the Church of God in the United States, Churches of God, 1914, pages 209, 715.

[36]             Quoted by Forney, History of the Church of God, page 206.

[37]             Forney, page 206.

[38]             For a rather stupid and silly example see O. C. Lambert, Russellism Unveiled, Firm Foundation Publishing House, 1940.  See also the letters from John A. Hudson to J. F. Rutherford as published in the second edition of Russell-White Debate, Old Paths Book Club, no date, appendix.