I no longer need von Zech's Erklarung, Supplement to Zion's Watch Tower, December 1885, thanks to a very nice sister who mailed me a copy.
I urgently need F. W. Grant's booklet in reply to Food for Thinking Christians. I can't locate it anywhere. The details are in an earlier post.
In 1881, W. R. Covert, a Church of God Elder, challenged Russell to a debate through a letter to the editor of The Pittsburgh Dispatch. The parties couldn’t reach agreement, and in typical Church of God and Disciples fashion, he declared victory in another letter to The Dispatch.
I need help locating these articles. I have no access to The Dispatch. There are copies on microfilm, I’m told. Perhaps there is someone in Pennsylvania who is curious enough to look these up and share them?
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Revisions to A. D. Jones Biography - Update!
Albert Delmont Jones
Albert Delmont Jones[i] is the most frustrating to research of all of the principal contributors to Zion’s Watch Tower. Almost nothing is known of his life. The 1880 Census gives his age as 26, making him about two years younger than Russell. His birth place is listed as Pennsylvania, and his residence was in Pittsburgh’s 32nd Ward, Precinct two. He is listed as a married “store keeper” with a one year old daughter.
Jones was Russell’s employee, and it was through this connection that Jones began attending the Allegheny Congregation and reading The Herald of the Morning. Russell converted Jones about 1878: “I was much encouraged by the accession [sic] of Mr. A. D. Jones, then a clerk in my employ in Pittsburgh--a young man of activity and promise, who soon developed into an active and appreciated co-laborer in the harvest work”[ii]
Jones name appears as a monetary contributor in a few issues of The Herald of the Morning. When the Atonement controversy erupted in 1878, he wrote to Barbour trying to persuade him to abandon his new views.[iii] Jones came to brief prominence after Zion’s Watch Tower was started and would contribute articles to it. In 1881 he started a new magazine with Russell’s blessings.
Jones moved to New York to pursue business interests and be closer to some of the larger groups of Zion’s Watch Tower readers. By 1885 he was connected with the Hoosac Tunnel and Saratoga Railroad and is listed as one of the directors.[iv]
One gets the impression that A. D. Jones was less than stable. Certainly Russell showed considerable restraint in 1890 when explaining his relationship with Jones, focusing only on doctrinal differences. The most Russell said about Jones’ deflection was, “Mr. Jones ran well for a time, but ambition or something eventually worked utter shipwreck of his faith, and left us a painful illustration of the wisdom of the Apostle's words: ‘My brethren, be not many of you teachers, knowing that we shall have the severer judgment.’” [v]
Jones appropriated money for personal use that came from bonds used by Russell to back a loan to J. Blakeley Creighton who was the son of the famous admiral of the same name. The case reached the New York Supreme Court in 1891, and the record reports that the bonds were “made and endorsed to replace bonds and stock delivered to Charles T. Russell, of Pittsburgh, upon what was represented to be a loan of that sum of money obtained from him for a company in which the defendant was the owner of both stock and mortgage bonds. The notes were delivered to A. D. Jones, the treasurer of the company, to be used for that object. But he used no more than $6,000 in amount in that matter. The residue he misappropriated and used for his own benefit.”[vi]
The total amount of the bonds was $16,500.00. I can find no record of a criminal case against Jones or a record of what use he made of the money. An article in The New York Times adds very little:
Among the decisions handed down by the General Term of the Supreme Court yesterday were three in favor of J. Blakeley Creighton, who killed himself Wednesday night. Suits had been brought against Creighton, growing out of his unfortunate business transactions, by Archibald C. Haynes and Thomas Vernon, to recover $8000, representing promissory notes made and indorsed by Creighton and delivered to A. D. Jones to be delivered by him to Charles T. Russell of Pittsburgh, to replace bonds and stock delivered to Russell upon what was represented to be a loan for about $16,000. …
It appears that Jones did not use more than $6,000 of the promissory notes for the purpose for which they were delivered to him but misappropriated the remainder. [vii]
In 1914 Jones is back in Pittsburgh and listed as a notary public.[viii] Jones wrote at least one pamphlet on protectionist issues. It is undated but published about 1888. The title is Protection in America: A Speech by A. Delmont Jones, an Independent Protectionist. The full story of Russell and A. D. Jones’ separation is best told later.
[i] His middle name is given in: W. S. Gibbons, editor: New York State Reporter, Albany, New York, 1890, Volume 33, page 822.
[ii] Russell, C. T.: Harvest Gatherings and Siftings, Zion’s Watch Tower, May 1890, page 4.
[iii] A snippet of his letter is quoted by Barbour: Questions and Answers, The Herald of the Morning, June 1879, page 102.
[iv] Second Annual Report of the Board of Railroad Commissioners of the State of New York, Albany, 1885, Volume 2, Page 259.
[v] Russell, C. T.: Harvest Gatherings and Siftings, Zion’s Watch Tower, May 1890, page 4.
[vi] Archibald C. Haynes, Respondent v. J. Blakeley Creighton, Appellant, Reports of Cases Heard and Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Marcus T. Hun, Reporter, Volume 65, 1891, (1904 edition), page 141.
[vii] In the Dead Man’s Favor, The New York Times, October 25, 1890.
[viii] Annual Report of the State Treasurer of the Finances of the Commonwealth for the Fiscal Year ending November 30, 1913, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 1914, page 247.
Albert Delmont Jones[i] is the most frustrating to research of all of the principal contributors to Zion’s Watch Tower. Almost nothing is known of his life. The 1880 Census gives his age as 26, making him about two years younger than Russell. His birth place is listed as Pennsylvania, and his residence was in Pittsburgh’s 32nd Ward, Precinct two. He is listed as a married “store keeper” with a one year old daughter.
Jones was Russell’s employee, and it was through this connection that Jones began attending the Allegheny Congregation and reading The Herald of the Morning. Russell converted Jones about 1878: “I was much encouraged by the accession [sic] of Mr. A. D. Jones, then a clerk in my employ in Pittsburgh--a young man of activity and promise, who soon developed into an active and appreciated co-laborer in the harvest work”[ii]
Jones name appears as a monetary contributor in a few issues of The Herald of the Morning. When the Atonement controversy erupted in 1878, he wrote to Barbour trying to persuade him to abandon his new views.[iii] Jones came to brief prominence after Zion’s Watch Tower was started and would contribute articles to it. In 1881 he started a new magazine with Russell’s blessings.
Jones moved to New York to pursue business interests and be closer to some of the larger groups of Zion’s Watch Tower readers. By 1885 he was connected with the Hoosac Tunnel and Saratoga Railroad and is listed as one of the directors.[iv]
One gets the impression that A. D. Jones was less than stable. Certainly Russell showed considerable restraint in 1890 when explaining his relationship with Jones, focusing only on doctrinal differences. The most Russell said about Jones’ deflection was, “Mr. Jones ran well for a time, but ambition or something eventually worked utter shipwreck of his faith, and left us a painful illustration of the wisdom of the Apostle's words: ‘My brethren, be not many of you teachers, knowing that we shall have the severer judgment.’” [v]
Jones appropriated money for personal use that came from bonds used by Russell to back a loan to J. Blakeley Creighton who was the son of the famous admiral of the same name. The case reached the New York Supreme Court in 1891, and the record reports that the bonds were “made and endorsed to replace bonds and stock delivered to Charles T. Russell, of Pittsburgh, upon what was represented to be a loan of that sum of money obtained from him for a company in which the defendant was the owner of both stock and mortgage bonds. The notes were delivered to A. D. Jones, the treasurer of the company, to be used for that object. But he used no more than $6,000 in amount in that matter. The residue he misappropriated and used for his own benefit.”[vi]
The total amount of the bonds was $16,500.00. I can find no record of a criminal case against Jones or a record of what use he made of the money. An article in The New York Times adds very little:
Among the decisions handed down by the General Term of the Supreme Court yesterday were three in favor of J. Blakeley Creighton, who killed himself Wednesday night. Suits had been brought against Creighton, growing out of his unfortunate business transactions, by Archibald C. Haynes and Thomas Vernon, to recover $8000, representing promissory notes made and indorsed by Creighton and delivered to A. D. Jones to be delivered by him to Charles T. Russell of Pittsburgh, to replace bonds and stock delivered to Russell upon what was represented to be a loan for about $16,000. …
It appears that Jones did not use more than $6,000 of the promissory notes for the purpose for which they were delivered to him but misappropriated the remainder. [vii]
In 1914 Jones is back in Pittsburgh and listed as a notary public.[viii] Jones wrote at least one pamphlet on protectionist issues. It is undated but published about 1888. The title is Protection in America: A Speech by A. Delmont Jones, an Independent Protectionist. The full story of Russell and A. D. Jones’ separation is best told later.
[i] His middle name is given in: W. S. Gibbons, editor: New York State Reporter, Albany, New York, 1890, Volume 33, page 822.
[ii] Russell, C. T.: Harvest Gatherings and Siftings, Zion’s Watch Tower, May 1890, page 4.
[iii] A snippet of his letter is quoted by Barbour: Questions and Answers, The Herald of the Morning, June 1879, page 102.
[iv] Second Annual Report of the Board of Railroad Commissioners of the State of New York, Albany, 1885, Volume 2, Page 259.
[v] Russell, C. T.: Harvest Gatherings and Siftings, Zion’s Watch Tower, May 1890, page 4.
[vi] Archibald C. Haynes, Respondent v. J. Blakeley Creighton, Appellant, Reports of Cases Heard and Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Marcus T. Hun, Reporter, Volume 65, 1891, (1904 edition), page 141.
[vii] In the Dead Man’s Favor, The New York Times, October 25, 1890.
[viii] Annual Report of the State Treasurer of the Finances of the Commonwealth for the Fiscal Year ending November 30, 1913, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 1914, page 247.
Revisions to Sunderlin Biography - Update!
John Corbin Sunderlin
He was born June 20, 1835, at Fort Ann, New York. His original name was John Corbin Vorce, but his mother died when he was three months old, and his name was changed when he was adopted when he was nine. He married Harriet A. Penny August 19, 1855. They had five children. In 1856, Sunderlin abandoned farming and “mechanical pursuits” for photography.[i] He became an itinerate photographer with a studio in a horse-drawn wagon, and made his own photographic plates.[ii] He died of pneumonia April 23, 1911, in Blairstown, New Jersey.[iii]
He enlisted in the Fifth Vermont Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War, reaching the rank of Sergeant.[iv] His obituary found in The Blairstown, New Jersey, Press, says: “He served in the United States army during three years of the Civil War, was present in eight hard-fought battles and a number of skirmishes, was shot through he body at the battle of Fredericksburg, and after partially recovering from his wound and the typhus fever at Georgetown Hospital, he was mustered out and, like so many other men in like conditions, was left largely to himself to find a place in the business world from which he had been excluded by the call to arms.”
After the war he settled in Fort Edward, New York. He was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic and the Odd Fellows. He joined the Masonic Order too, and is listed as a member in a Masonic membership list. He was a member of the New York State Prohibition Party.[v]
After the war he returned to photography and pursued that profession “until 1870 when he was ordained by the Methodist church and preached in a number of important charges in the Troy conference.”[vi] The sole reference to his ministerial training is in a family history, and all it says is that he “was educated for the ministry, ordained at Plattsburgh, N.Y., and held pastorates at Kingsbury and Schroon Lake, N.Y., and Arlington, Vt.”[vii] When he began active association with Russell, Sunderlin resigned his Methodist ministry and restarted his photography business.
Sunderlin’s name appears in the list of money receipts printed in the February 1879 issue of The Herald of the Morning. His first notice in Zion’s Watch Tower is a letter appearing in the October 1880 issue. The June 1881 issue of The Watch Tower noted that “Bro. Sunderlin … has been in the [preaching] work for three months.”[viii] This fits with a statement in the Blairstown Press obituary:
Finding, after preaching for a number of years, that his views were not those of the denomination with which he was connected, always faithful to principle, he left the Methodist denomination and became a free lance; although always loyal to the great doctrine of salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ. About the year 1880 he relinquished the work of the ministry and resumed his occupation of photography.
Sunderlin moved from Fort Edward to Flemington, New Jersey. In 1902, he purchased a studio in Blairstown, New Jersey, and spent the last years of his life in that city.[ix] His work received favorable review from The American Journal of Photography in 1893 and from Wilson’s Photographic Magazine in 1899. Wilson’s called him “one of the veterans of the craft” and said that he “has upheld the honor of the craft by good work.”[x]
[i] Obituary: J. C. Sunderlin: The Blairstown, New Jersey, Press, April 26, 1911.
[ii] The Southern Literary Messenger, Volume 3, 1941, page 104.
[iii] Obituaries: The New York Times, April 26, 1911.
[iv] General Orders of the War Department Embracing the Years 1861, 1862, and 1863, Volume 2, Derby and Miller, New York, 1864, page 432,
[v] Most of this biography comes form Bascom, Robert O.: The Fort Edward Book, Containing Some Historical Sketches with Illustrations and Family Records. James D. Keating, Fort Edward, New York 1903, page 266. His membership in the Free and Accepted Masons is verified by Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of the Free and Accepted Masons of the State of New York, May 1912, J. J. Little & Ives, New York, 1912, page 169. Activity in GAR noted also in The Trenton, New Jersey, Times, March 14, 1904.
[vi] Obituary, The Blairstown Press, April 26, 1911.
[vii] Vorce, Charles M.: A Genealogical and Historical Record of the Vorce Family in America, with Notes on Some Allied Families, Cleveland, Ohio, 1901, page 63.
[viii] Russell, C. T.: To the Readers of The Watch Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, June 1881, reprints page 239.
[ix] Items of Interest, St. Louis and Canadian Photographer, January 1902, page 40.
[x] American Journal of Photography, 1893:53; Wilson's Photographic Magazine, 1899:124.
He was born June 20, 1835, at Fort Ann, New York. His original name was John Corbin Vorce, but his mother died when he was three months old, and his name was changed when he was adopted when he was nine. He married Harriet A. Penny August 19, 1855. They had five children. In 1856, Sunderlin abandoned farming and “mechanical pursuits” for photography.[i] He became an itinerate photographer with a studio in a horse-drawn wagon, and made his own photographic plates.[ii] He died of pneumonia April 23, 1911, in Blairstown, New Jersey.[iii]
He enlisted in the Fifth Vermont Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War, reaching the rank of Sergeant.[iv] His obituary found in The Blairstown, New Jersey, Press, says: “He served in the United States army during three years of the Civil War, was present in eight hard-fought battles and a number of skirmishes, was shot through he body at the battle of Fredericksburg, and after partially recovering from his wound and the typhus fever at Georgetown Hospital, he was mustered out and, like so many other men in like conditions, was left largely to himself to find a place in the business world from which he had been excluded by the call to arms.”
After the war he settled in Fort Edward, New York. He was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic and the Odd Fellows. He joined the Masonic Order too, and is listed as a member in a Masonic membership list. He was a member of the New York State Prohibition Party.[v]
After the war he returned to photography and pursued that profession “until 1870 when he was ordained by the Methodist church and preached in a number of important charges in the Troy conference.”[vi] The sole reference to his ministerial training is in a family history, and all it says is that he “was educated for the ministry, ordained at Plattsburgh, N.Y., and held pastorates at Kingsbury and Schroon Lake, N.Y., and Arlington, Vt.”[vii] When he began active association with Russell, Sunderlin resigned his Methodist ministry and restarted his photography business.
Sunderlin’s name appears in the list of money receipts printed in the February 1879 issue of The Herald of the Morning. His first notice in Zion’s Watch Tower is a letter appearing in the October 1880 issue. The June 1881 issue of The Watch Tower noted that “Bro. Sunderlin … has been in the [preaching] work for three months.”[viii] This fits with a statement in the Blairstown Press obituary:
Finding, after preaching for a number of years, that his views were not those of the denomination with which he was connected, always faithful to principle, he left the Methodist denomination and became a free lance; although always loyal to the great doctrine of salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ. About the year 1880 he relinquished the work of the ministry and resumed his occupation of photography.
Sunderlin moved from Fort Edward to Flemington, New Jersey. In 1902, he purchased a studio in Blairstown, New Jersey, and spent the last years of his life in that city.[ix] His work received favorable review from The American Journal of Photography in 1893 and from Wilson’s Photographic Magazine in 1899. Wilson’s called him “one of the veterans of the craft” and said that he “has upheld the honor of the craft by good work.”[x]
[i] Obituary: J. C. Sunderlin: The Blairstown, New Jersey, Press, April 26, 1911.
[ii] The Southern Literary Messenger, Volume 3, 1941, page 104.
[iii] Obituaries: The New York Times, April 26, 1911.
[iv] General Orders of the War Department Embracing the Years 1861, 1862, and 1863, Volume 2, Derby and Miller, New York, 1864, page 432,
[v] Most of this biography comes form Bascom, Robert O.: The Fort Edward Book, Containing Some Historical Sketches with Illustrations and Family Records. James D. Keating, Fort Edward, New York 1903, page 266. His membership in the Free and Accepted Masons is verified by Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of the Free and Accepted Masons of the State of New York, May 1912, J. J. Little & Ives, New York, 1912, page 169. Activity in GAR noted also in The Trenton, New Jersey, Times, March 14, 1904.
[vi] Obituary, The Blairstown Press, April 26, 1911.
[vii] Vorce, Charles M.: A Genealogical and Historical Record of the Vorce Family in America, with Notes on Some Allied Families, Cleveland, Ohio, 1901, page 63.
[viii] Russell, C. T.: To the Readers of The Watch Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, June 1881, reprints page 239.
[ix] Items of Interest, St. Louis and Canadian Photographer, January 1902, page 40.
[x] American Journal of Photography, 1893:53; Wilson's Photographic Magazine, 1899:124.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
John C. Sunderlin
John Corbin Sunderlin died in Blairstown, New Jersey, April 23, 1911. His death date notice is in The New York Times, April 26, 1911.
Does anyone have his photo?
Does anyone have his photo?
Thursday, September 18, 2008
In All the Earth
Rough draft Chapter 5A. Cite as B. W. Schulz and R. M. de Vienne: Development of Eccesia Among Readers of Zion's Watch Tower: 1879-1887, as retrieved from TruthHistory.Blogspot.com on [insert date]
5. In All the Earth
The United Kingdom was the target of the first concentrated missionary activity by Zion’s Watch Tower. It is impossible to gage interest in Britain before the publication of Food for Thinking Christians. Previous to its publication the only letters appearing in Zion’s’ Watch Tower were doctrinal, and few names and few or no locations were noted.
There had been some notice of the work in The Rainbow. A British clergyman, Elias H. Tucket had been a Barbourite and written two articles for Rainbow. There may have been some residual interest from that. Later the magazine reviewed The Three Words, though somewhat negatively. If that book saw any circulation in Britain, it was very small. There is also come indication that Paton mailed material to his relatives in Scotland, but this seems to have born almost no fruitage.
Russell asked John Corbin Sunderlin and J. J. Bender to travel to the United Kingdom to publish Food for Thinking Christians and to direct a massive circulation campaign. Sunderlin had prior experience as an itinerate photographer and may have been chosen on that basis. Less is known of J. J. Bender. Historians including Watch Tower writers have never profiled him.
There seem to have been two Pittsburgh residents using the name J. J. Bender. One was Jonathan J. Bender, a Homeopathic Physician. He was Treasurer of the Homeopathic Medical Society of the Cumberland Valley and was a Free Mason.[i] The other J. J. Bender, assuming they aren’t the same individual, was a publisher and book collector. He seems the most likely candidate as Russell’s representative in Britain. This J. J. Bender had published The Standard Class-Book for Sunday-School Teacher’s Minutes in 1871, which was favorably reviewed by The Sunday School Journal that year.[ii] In May 1886, He and a partner purchased The Bookmart, a magazine devoted to book and autograph collecting published in Pittsburgh.[iii]
Sunderlin and Bender were in Britain by July 11, 1881, when Sunderlin registered with Gillig’s American Exchange in London, “a familiar and popular resort with Americans in the English metropolis.”[iv] He would receive their mail and make currency exchanges at Gillig’s.
It appears that the British edition of Food for Thinking Christians saw publication before the American edition of September 1881, but this is uncertain. Sunderlin returned to America probably in late October 1881, suffering from what was called “over-exertion incident to the arrangements for the distribution of ‘Food’ in Great Britain and Ireland.”[v] This left Bender with sole responsibility for completing the work. He sent a report to Russell dated from Edinburgh, Scotland, October 1, 1881:
I write in haste a few words. Arrived in Glasgow on Wednesday, and spent the day in hunting up some party, but could find none. Advertised in paper my wants and left for Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen, to extreme north, intending to distribute at each place. I succeeded without delay and returned in the night to Glasgow, having 18 replies to my advertisement. The first I called upon I made a contract with, and came here again to hear from London, but received no letter.
I telegraphed to learn how things were getting along, and enclosed find a favorable reply. So far—
100,000 pamphlets for London,
30,000 pamphlets for Glasgow,
20,000 pamphlets for Edinburgh
10,000 pamphlets for Dundee,
5,000 pamphlets for Aberdeen.
I will now go to Carlisle and New Castle next, which will be distributing on my way down as near right geographically as I can to Liverpool, Manchester, Hull, Leeds, etc. Think I can get through all well.
I had time to call on Mr. Robert Young, critical translator of the Bible and author of “Young's Analytical Hebrew and Greek Concordance,” and I asked his opinion of the text in 2 John 7, in regard to the Coming of Christ in the flesh, and he says that there is no doubt about the passage referring only to Christ's first Coming. I mentioned the quibble regarding the Rochester phase of it, and he said: “O no, no, it means only the first Coming.”
Am enjoying good health, of which you may inform any inquiring friends and trust you are enjoying the same. Working in hope that the labor bestowed will fall upon good ground, and produce many fold to the glory of God.[vi]
The advertisements Bender mentions were for people to distribute the booklet. In London nearly five hundred boys were employed as distributors with other cities employing numbers in proportion to their size.[vii]
Before he totally succumbed to exhaustion Sunderlin sent from London some reflections on Christian duty: “Do you say or think: ‘I fear this race will be the ruination of all my worldly prospects?’ Of course it will so far as having any pleasure in them is concerned. You will be a very foolish man to divide your energies now, or thoughts either. … But do you say: ‘Why, there's my reputation right there in the dust.’ Poor fellow! How sorry I am you noticed it; but it's only the reputation you once had. Don't you know that none of those who are noted racers on this course have any reputation? The greatest racer who ever stepped on it ‘made himself of no reputation.’ But do you say: ‘This awful run will be the death of me?’ Yes; of course it will; but you are a poor culprit under sentence of death any way, and if you undertake to save your life you will lose it, but run yourself to death and you'll have a life that is life everlasting, and more -- immortal. Don't be foolish now. Press on.”[viii]
One of the first to take notice of Food for Thinking Christians was the spiritualist journal The Psychological Review. The December 1881, issue contained a mixture of criticism and approval:
An American religious paper, published in Pittsburgh, Pa., rejoicing in the cognomen of “Zion’s Watch Tower,” has recently issued a free supplement in the form of a book of 160 pp., of which I am informed upwards of a quarter of a million copies have been printed for gratuitous distribution. Some of these have found their way to England, and one to myself. … It contains dissertations on various theological and other topics, amongst them Spiritualism, supported in the main by numerous textual quotations from the Bible. Now while desiring to recognize and appreciate the general temperate tone taken by the writer of the book in question, I contend that there is no more delusive and ensnaring source of erroneous and false deductions than the dangerous habit of Bible text quotation. You can prove anything and nothing by it, and the writer under consideration has fallen into this error when treating Modern Spiritualism.
He found certain agreements with Russell’s treatment of Christ’s spiritual body but in the main took exception to his treatment of Spiritualism, writing: “I must join issue when he comes to deal with Spiritualism. The claim put forward is that ‘what is at the present time called Spiritualism, is a counterfeit of the true as taught in the Bible.’” Still, the editor felt that “the general tone of the book is so moderate that I am induced to take up the gauntlet, believing that ignorance of the truer and higher aspects of Spiritualism is the basis of the condemnation, and new light on the subject will not be rejected without effect.”[ix]
Even less welcoming was the reaction of the English clergy. A very bitter and denunciatory comment appeared in the February 1882, issue of The Prophetic New and Israel’s Watchman. Though the article does not name Food for Thinking Christians, it is evident that it is meant. N. S. Godfrey, at one time the Incumbent of Worley, Leeds, and a prolific pamphleteer on the subject of spiritualism, preached a sermon against “a pamphlet which has been very widely distributed amongst the congregations of the various religious denominations in the borough.” He sent a report of his sermon to Prophetic News:
His advice was, and he repeated it, “Burn it.” He had now looked through it and examined it. At first sight it seemed to read fairly well, and to contain many of the views which were known as those of the Plymouth Brethren. But, after careful examination, he had no hesitation in pronouncing it to be the most damnable book he had read in his life. It was Spiritualism in the most refined subtlety of its Satanic character … the teaching of demons or spirits and wicked men and women …. He pointed out the free use of the Scripture and the Satanic perversion of its meaning and application which they found all the way through the book, giving it a colouring of good, although they only need to read half a dozen lines to see how full of mischief it was. …
Having read a number of lengthy extracts from the book, Mr. Godfrey said there was enough mischief in it to require a hundred sermons to dispose of. There was no difficulty about it to those who knew the Word of God. Again, pointing out the subtlety with which it was put together, and the Scriptures quoted, he announced that on an early occasion he proposed to answer the question, How was it that Holy Scripture seemed to have so many meanings?[x]
The October 1882 issue that was sent to over ninety thousand Sunday School teachers and Food for Thinking Christians reached James Leslie, once a fairly influential Toronto resident but then living in Eglinton, Ontario, Canada.[xi] He forwarded the special issue to the editor of The Rainbow in England with the comment:
There seems among the believers in the second coming and reign of Christ upon the earth, a strong tendency to return to what appears to be the simplicity of believers in the Apostolic age. I send you a number of one of their papers published in Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S., giving indication of this, but embracing some views not clearly taught in the Scriptures. They believe that Christ has come in one sense, and that the dead in Christ are being immortalized now. Yet this does not harmonize with the teaching of Paul in this first epistle to the Thessalonians, for to precede those events the “shout, the voice of the Archangel, and the trump of God” will be heard. Such is the zeal of these brethren that they are sending 90,000 of the paper I send you, “Zion’s Watch Tower, and Herald of Christ’s Presence,” to that number of superintendents of Sunday schools in the United States. The same parties have issued and circulated about a million or more of a good-sized pamphlet entitled “Food for Thinking Christians,” on both sides of the Atlantic.[xii]
Nottingham
Still, some of the British clergy did show interest. A letter from a minister in Nottingham appears in the June 1882 issue of Zion’s Watch Tower. It contained a request for a dozen copies of Food and a like number of Tabernacle Teachings. “Eternity alone will reveal the good these books are doing,” the clergyman wrote, “and several of my friends here are hungering for more information upon these great themes. I lend my Watch Tower every month, and look eagerly for each new one. May God continue to bless the work.”[xiii]
Other interest from Nottingham was revealed in letters published in Zion’s Watch Tower. A letter dated November 8, 1881, seems to be from another clergyman. Though the writer, whose name is omitted from the letter as printed, said he found a few minor points in which he differed from Russell, he requested more copies:
I can never feel sufficiently thankful that out of the thousands of copies of your book, “Food for Thinking Christians” distributed in this town--a copy fell into my hands: apparently it was the merest accident; but really I regard it as a direct providence. It has thrown light upon subjects which have perplexed me for years; and has made me feel more than ever, what a glorious book the Bible is, how worthy of our profoundest study. At the same time, I came from the study of your book with the conviction that a very large proportion of the Theology of our Churches and Schools, is the merest scraps of human notions, and that our huge systems of Theology upon the study of which, some of us have spent so many laborious years--only to be the worse confused and perplexed--are infinitely more the work of mistaken men, than the inspiration of the all-wise God.
However, I may differ from the book in a few minor details, I found the main argument to be resistless, commending itself to both my head and my heart. Again let me thank you on my own behalf, for the good I have received.
I find at the close of it, you make an offer to send copies to any who have reason to believe they can make a good use of them. In my church and congregation, there is a number of intelligent persons who are interested in the second coming, and who would be only too glad to read your book, I could distribute 60 or 70 copies with advantage, you say, “ask and ye shall receive”--I have faith in your generosity.[xiv]
Russell sent not only more tracts but a copy of Day Dawn and of Tabernacle Teachings along with issues of Zion’s Watch Tower. The clergyman remains unnamed, but he wrote thanking Russell:
I thank you most sincerely for what I have received from you this last few days. The “Day Dawn,” reached me … and what I have already seen of it, has both pleased and instructed me. Like its fellow – “Food for Thinking Christians,” it needs much careful thought; but I am sure it will amply repay it. … I received the “Watch Tower” and “Tabernacle supplement,” and I am looking for more blessing through the perusal of this valuable paper, as each month brings me something fresh.
Tears came to my eyes this morning, as I read the letters of your correspondents who had received so much help and comfort from the December number. To me also it was indeed a “feast of fat things.” … I feel as though I must read my Bible all over again, for the difference between Ransom and Pardon, pointed out in your closing article, had never struck me, though obvious enough when you put it before your readers. I wonder if it will ever be my lot to come over to some of your meetings. I very much long to see this happy type of Apostolic Christianity Revived --for such I think it must be--in the persons of its professors and preachers. The books and papers I regard as a blessing sent to my house; and which will bring forth fruit in my own soul, and I trust in my people also.[xv]
Another Nottingham letter praised Food for Thinking Christians and praised it highly: “I am indeed grateful to you for the manner in which you have explained several of the most difficult points in theology. God … must have opened your eyes to see these wonders of His divine plan, and I am thankful that I have lived to see this day. I may say that I fully indorse a great deal of the new teaching, and shall adopt it for the future. I pray God to abundantly bless you for your great philanthropic resolve to bless the world by giving away these pamphlets.”[xvi]
One of the Nottingham correspondents wrote again in September 1883, saying that “the work here is progressing amongst my own congregation, and also amongst outsiders. … The work makes no great show at present, but it is advancing in many minds. I have little trouble with those people who have been accustomed to go straight to God’s Book and abide by that …. To let go old prejudice is comparatively easy to a mind made receptive by the Spirit of God. I have endeavored to act wisely, and not to ride roughshod over old views, as that might have aroused opposition and have defeated my object, which is to ‘lead into the light.’ Acting upon this method, I think I am finding my reward in a more ready reception of the truth than one might have expected.”[xvii]
Despite early interest and hopeful comments from readers, interest in Nottingham grew slowly. A report from 1914 shows only fifty-five attending the Lord’s Supper.[xviii] Nevertheless, Nottingham produced one of the first zealous workers, Aaron P. Riley, a teacher connected with the recently opened Buttler’s Hill School in Nottingham.[xix] He was a fairly young man, born in 1856 according to the 1881 British Census and twenty-five that year.
It is tempting to connect some of the other letters to him, but the first that is definitely from him appears in the September 1885 issue of Zion’s Watch Tower. It’s apparent from his letter than he spread the message found in Food for Thinking Christians by word of mouth, by loaning Food and other tracts, and by preaching to what ever group would have him. His reputation served him well, and though he disconnected himself from his previous religious associations, they were unwilling to see him go. His father was an unemployed coal miner, and Aaron was probably the main support for the household. He had an older brother in the Methodist ministry.
It is probable, though not certain, that Riley’s first contact with Russell was through a letter dated April 5, 1882. His name isn’t attached to the letter as printed, but the circumstances are similar. The writer of the April 5th letter says: “I have a brother, a D. D. in the Methodist Church, and have been always told I was called to preach the blessed glad tidings, but I never have felt satisfied with orthodoxy, although I have been a member for twenty-five years. I threw out the doctrine of natural immortality five years ago, the Trinity three years ago, and with the Em Diaglott and Bible with other helps have been feeling after the truth.”[xx]
A letter printed in the September 1885 issue of The Watch Tower is not identified with his name, but in the next month’s issue Russell referred to it, saying it was from “our dear brother Riley.” His letter, sent from a village not far from Nottingham, reveals some of the difficulties encountered by those who sought to separate themselves from their past religious associations:
Since I last wrote to you, my brother who was in the Methodist ministry, has come out of her," not being able to hold the traditions and dogmas of the deceived elders. He will not accept all my views, but is very much more in favor of Zion’s Watch Tower, "Food" and "Tabernacle" teachings than he was some time ago.
My position is a most peculiar one. I have had my name taken off the books and refuse to subscribe towards the connectional funds, but the people with whom I have labored so long are not willing that I should leave them. They know my views, in some measure at any rate, and are willing for me to teach them, saying we are Christians, brethren in Christ, and on that ground we claim your fellowship; we don't care what you believe; we know you are a Christian and that is enough for us. It is the fellowship we desire not the name.
They are a most loving little band of people, and you may rest assured that the grains of truth let fall and those scattered, are not lost. If I am doing wrongly I only want the Lord of the vineyard to show me and give me something to do somewhere else. I cannot live without working for the Master, but it seems very slow work.
I have to preach for these people next Wednesday, and intend taking "The Lord's Coming" (discourse) from the Tower, with additions. May the Lord of the harvest separate the wheat. I have had some severe conversations with one of the ministers here which only confirms my faith in God's word and the Watch Tower’s interpretation; it is by such things we are made strong.
I do long for the manifestation of the Son of God, though I am by no means certain of being amongst specially favored ones. I was only a very nominal Christian until after 1881. I am totally unworthy and unfit for such a glorious high calling, but I know my joy will be full if I'm only a meek inheritor of the earth.
It is a great trial for the members to be separate. I don't know how others feel, but I do long for the fellowship, face to face with another who holds Zion’s Watch Tower's teachings as fully as myself; but organizations are not to be desired, therefore, we must wait patiently and if the Lord will, I'll praise him in company with the other brethren in his kingdom.
I would not part with my Towers for their weight in gold. I am reading all carefully through again and making notes. May the Lord bless you ever more and more abundantly.
Another letter from Riley found its way into print after the publication of Millennial Dawn was announced. He sent money for “as many copies” as it would pay for, apparently sending British money in payment, but expressed some disappointment in the results of his missionary effort: “I am sorry I cannot report any marked improvement in the work here, but every number of the Tower encourages us to go on quietly doing what we can, leaving results, though we are thankful for some evidences of good being done. If men will not come right out, they confess we are right.”[xxi]
Aaron Riley continued his active support at least until 1895, writing periodically to Russell. He is mentioned for the last time in the January 1, 1895, issue of Zion’s Watch Tower. Russell explained that Riley had been supplying libraries with sets of the Millennial Dawn series. In a letter to Russell, Riley mentions actively seeking subscribers for their magazine. He was ill and trying to work around it. He had a history of illness, mentioning a stay in a "convalescent home” in a letter to Russell ten years previously. He seems to have died shortly thereafter.[xxii]
London
By April 1882 interest was great enough that Russell extended a call for preachers in England: “We have many inquiries from England, relative to preaching—if there are among those interested in these things there, some who can declare them publicly, they have a great and grand field. Let us hear from you. Some one or two should be in London.”[xxiii] If there was an immediate response, I cannot find it.
A ‘brother from London’ wrote to Russell in late 1882 suggesting that the ideas from Food for Thinking Christians were affecting the sermons and thought of British clergy. He visited Spurgeon’s tabernacle and came away with these impressions:
It was on an occasion in which his audience was supposed to be entirely of strangers, and we were very gently led to suppose that possibly if we were not brought to the light in this age, there might be a chance in another, but that after all it is better to be converted at once so as to make sure of it. This man has vastly changed in regard to what he preaches since I have known him. He has evidently read the book “Food” and is breaking it gently. It may be bias, though I think not, but I fancy that the “Food” must have been read in many thinking quarters, because I very distinctly recognize in many of the leaders of pulpit thought, the spirit of the work. I believe that the fruit is ripening.[xxiv]
Other interaction with Spurgeon’s temple was reported. One cannot say with certainty if it was through the same individual since neither letter was printed with a signature, but in May 1882 a British correspondent wrote:
I have held up the thoughts given in your works of “Tabernacle” and “Food” to some of Spurgeon's people, and they were unable to gainsay me. It does seem to be too good to be true, but nothing is too hard for God, and I confess I see a harmony between the infinite Creator and created (fallen) man, given in the Bible as brought out by the light from your exposition that I never have seen before. It satisfies my understanding and my longing spirit. Can I with fair speaking ability be exalted by our dear Lord to the high honor of telling or preaching the glad tidings, which are to all people, that Jesus anointed tasted death for every man, and all may look and live? Whatever tracts and instructions you have in the divine mysteries of truth will you have the kindness to forward by return mail, as I may be required to leave London by the 1st of May, and please instruct me how and what to preach so as to accomplish the blessed work God wishes done.[xxv]
Among the many requests for additional tracts was one that said, “Will you please send two or three copies of the Tabernacle and its Teachings, for which we shall wait, with great desire, to be fed with more food from our Master's table. Will you please send also another copy of Food, because the one that we have is getting so much worn, that we have to paste some of it together. If we had many copies of it we could judiciously give them away. We pray that the Lord will bless you more abundantly. Though strangers in the flesh, we can say we are one in the bonds of the Lord Jesus.”[xxvi] This letter is especially interesting because it reveals an inclination among readers to circulate the tracts. Much of the work in the British field would be accomplished by “clubbing” subscriptions and loaning publications.
Among the first permanent associations built off receipt of Watch Tower pamphlets was a small group in Islington, London. The brief history in the 1973 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses says:
Tom Hart of Islington, London, wrote for and received three pamphlets. He also received Zion’s Watch Tower regularly for nine months, all without charge—a new experience in the religious field. From then on he became a regular subscriber. He was struck by the theme that ran through each issue, namely, “Get out of her, my people”—a Scriptural call to leave Christendom’s religious groups and follow Bible teaching. He and a fellow railwayman, Johnathan Ling, began studying together. This led to Hart’s formally resigning from the chapel in 1884, soon to be followed by Ling and a dozen others who began to meet together. This appears to be the first record of regular meetings of this sort in Britain. Many who shared in such meetings also showed a willingness to engage in the work of spreading enlightenment to others.
Thom Hart was born in Calcutta, India, in 1853. At the time of the 1881 Census he had moved his family from the Islington address to 5 Lavinia Grove, Middlesex, London. He was “a carman” for one of the railroads. In another place he is called “a railroad shunter.”[xxvii] He and his wife had three children, two sons and one daughter, all under the age of four. I can find no helpful information about Johnathan Ling.
That the group organized by Tom Hart was the first in the U.K. is mistaken, but a small group was meeting in London by March 1884. It may have been Tom Hart who wrote a letter appearing in the March issue of Zion’s Watch Tower. Whoever the writer was, he expressed his continuing appreciation of the Watch Tower. He always prayed for its safe arrival and was thankful that he had not missed one issue in two years. “I am able to report a little progress for the last twelve months,” he wrote. “Our meeting is the most liberal that I know of; brethren who are expelled from other meetings for change of belief find refuge amongst us. I have gained the attention of two young men who live near me, and they visit me two or three evenings a week, to enquire ‘what is truth?’ One comes oftener than the other and makes more progress. He goes and spreads the good news as a steward of the manifold grace of God. These two enclose subscriptions with me for the Tower.”
The same letter reported continuing opposition to message in Food for Thinking Christians: “Some time ago I heard read in my presence in a most solemn manner 2d Pet. 2:1, in condemnation of ‘Food for Thinking Christians.’ If I had not seen the tower explanation of the ‘image of the beast’ I should have been frightened out of my wits.”[xxviii]
Another letter from London dated January 1885 shows those interested using every opportunity to share their beliefs:
I had the pleasure of finding a man preaching in the Park, who had been a member of a chapel 8 years, and had left it and despaired of finding a church what it ought to be. He was preaching against the hypocrisy of the Church of England, and the oppression of the poor. … He was so delighted after about two hour’s conversation, you would think he had had a fortune left him. He preached tower views the following Sunday, read parts of Food for thinking Christians to them, showed them the plan of the ages, and quite interested the people generally. “The Christian Evidence Society,” sent out to oppose him, but they had no good news for the people, and as he had, they were anxious to hear it. He was about emigrating to Australia, so we did not have his company more than three weeks. He told the people how he would spread the ‘glad tidings’ in Australia and borrow a barn or shed to keep the rays of the sun off himself and his hearers. As soon as he is settled there he will write to you and order the watch tower. … We have interested another in the tower, who is now in Liverpool. He has ordered and received it. We have some profitable times, about a dozen of us, but have not yet begun to preach or lecture to the public, although our hall will hold about three hundred.[xxix]
A letter dated June 29, 1885, seems to come from the same correspondent. The letter thanks the Russells for the literature sent and recounted both the spiritual benefit received and his practice of loaning it out. He asked for more. His practice of approaching individuals or small groups somewhat estranged from the established church continued. He told of this encounter:
At one place, having found a quiet earnest body of believers on a retired street--belonging to no particular sect, I offered to lay before them all that I myself had learned. They received me cordially, and requested me three times to meet them, once at a general assembly. Having made a large wall copy from your Chart of the Ages I hung it up on the wall and sat amidst those earnest thirsty people to tell them the good news, inviting them to question me afterwards, which they did; some very sharply, and as if to trip me; but let the Lord receive all praise! It was given me to answer quietly, and one of the most arrogant of my opponents came up afterwards wrung my hand and thanked me begging I would return again. But the Salvation Army, it seems had begun to influence these Christians so that my teachings offering to go further than it’s teachings made them afraid, I think, to give ear beyond the time I was with them. I left a copy of “Food” which they promised to meet together and study with the Scriptures; but curiously enough so soon as I had left for London --the book was lost. However, many men and women have become interested in the teachings, to whom I distributed the sample towers. My work lies chiefly at the present time among detached individuals; and in writing to the absent. Only one, truly enlightened, lives near me, a police constable, who is too poor to send the money he would, to you, having a large family. He longs for a Diaglott of his own: I have lent him mine occasionally. Before long I could buy him one I think, and if so, will send the money to you; but can you supply him with regular towers and some of the books? He has a wide means of working; at present, he has my papers to read and that is all.[xxx]
Another letter in this series appeared in the October 1885 issue of The Watch Tower. Meetings were more regular, but small. Interest was increasing:
Our little Bible class does not grow very large, but we are not building on numbers. We find we get some very precious seasons with about four, and I think up to the present our best meetings have been the smallest; and during the week when two or three meet for a few minutes we often part with some new thought or reminder of the grandeur of the plan or character of God, and go forth with renewed energy to serve him. I find the experience vastly different from my previous experience in the nominal church, then doubting and fearing with a very indefinite idea of what was future both for the servants of God and those who did not serve him.[xxxi]
By 1887 another small group developed in London. A man signed in The Watch Tower as “Fred S. D____” wrote that he had “been … reading and praying with friends over the truths contained in the book entitled ‘Food for thinking Christians.’” He felt guided to the book by “our loving Father.” He explained that he had the book for about five years and “never thought of reading or becoming in any way, interested in it … but blessed be God! He has caused us (a few young men and women) to thirst and hunger after righteousness, and also implanted within us a desire to ‘come out and be separate,’ and to fully consecrate ourselves to Him who has redeemed us: and also to know of the things of God that we may be the better able to serve Him.” He asked for more literature.[xxxii]
Birmingham
Zion’s Watch Tower first noted interest in Birmingham in March 1883 with a letter from a correspondent there. The letter reveals that at least one person was street tracting in Birmingham: “The book was put into my hands last winter as I passed up a main thoroughfare in the above town, on my way home from work.” The writer recalled setting Food for Thinking Christians aside to pursue what they then thought was more interesting reading, but had returned to it. He found it lucid, easy to understand and convincing, and asked for literature to circulate among his friends.[xxxiii]
Another letter from Birmingham appeared in the August 1883 issue. The writer referred to prejudice against the material because it came from the United States, apparently connecting it to issues remaining from the American Civil War. Nevertheless, they found the message in Food for Thinking Christians to be consoling and instructive. The writer said “the good news appears to be most acceptable to ‘Dissenters,’ and still more so to those who are sectarians in name only, but to the ‘Orthodox’ ones it is most objectionable. ... A great stumbling block to many is the fact that we have no sectarian badge, and while seeing but little truth in many so fettered, they cannot realize any in those who are absolutely free.”[xxxiv]
Glasgow
A. O. Hudson, editor of Bible Study Monthly a British Bible Student publication, says that the first organized meetings were in Glasgow starting in 1883. He presents no other details.[xxxv] It appears that Hudson is correct or nearly so. A letter dated 1884 from an unnamed Glasgow correspondent reported that “the brethren and sisters in Glasgow” met in their house to celebrate “the Passover,” meaning the Lord’s Memorial Supper.[xxxvi] Also, a “brother in Christ” reported meeting with four sisters and six brothers in Glasgow. Their meetings seem to have very irregular. He reported only two meetings within the month previous to his letter, but he stated their intention to meet for the Memorial meal.[xxxvii] In a follow-up letter he reported an attendance of twelve, though he observed that “One brother remarked there were thirteen present, Jesus being in the midst of us.”[xxxviii]
Edinburgh
One of the first letters to Zion’s Watch Tower was from Edinburgh sent by a missionary and divinity student “in the last session” of his course. He expressed a desire to preach on the themes found In Food for Thinking Christians and asked for additional copies, and some copies of the booklet Tabernacle Teachings.[xxxix]
Other Cities
The message reached Halifax at least by 1885. A letter found in the July 1885 issue said its writer was greatly interested by Food for Thinking Christians. He wrote that “It has greatly instructed and interested me, and led me into a new region of biblical teaching, presenting many aspects of truth altogether overlooked, the importance and scripturalness of which appear to me most clear and well founded. I have a strong desire to receive further teaching in the same direction.” He requested a copy of Tabernacle Teachings.[xl]
A letter headed simply Yorkshire came from someone “working in an empty house” who found a copy of Food for Thinking Christians minus its title page. He was persuaded by reading the lose pages and found Russell’s address. He asked for more literature.[xli]
Organizing
In most localities organization was spontaneous. People shared the tracts, discussed them with others, and, finding some agreement, met together. This left individuals and small groups disconnected from fellow believers.
As early as July 1882, there was a call for organization. An individual from Sunderland, England, asked: “Could you not arrange some plan by which we, who rejoice in the same blessed truths, might have the opportunity of at least corresponding with each other, on this side of the Atlantic? You see there may be others only a short distance from me who, like myself, are yearning to find some with whom they may hold sweet communion on our blessed hope.” In the same issue of Zion’s Watch Tower was a letter from Sunderland noting that some where meeting together regularly: “we have now a Bible-class every Monday at 7 P.M. ‘The Food’ we keep circulating in ‘good ground,’ so far as human judgment can discern; and it is delightful to hear their expressions of surprise and gladness at our kindness in thinking of them. One brother here tells me he lent the ‘Food’ and ‘Tabernacle’ to one of their ministers, and the subjects have laid hold of him.”[xlii]
Russell was not immediately forthcoming with an organizational plan and made no printed reply to the request for one. We can safely suppose that he provided the correspondent who felt isolated with the address of the regular meeting in Sunderland.
Similar expressions came from elsewhere in the United Kingdom. A letter sent from Glasgow dated February, 16, 1885, probably stands for the feelings of many: “The monthly visits of the tower are so highly prized by me that I would feel the want of them very much. They are my only comfort now, being cut off from all the sects called churches.”[xliii] As remarked before, meeting sprang up spontaneously in Glasgow, prompted in part by a need for fellowship with those of like faith.
In October 1885 Russell reflected on the interest from the British field and found it disappointing. He tended to measure success against cost, figuring that each of the three hundred British subscribers had cost about forty dollars in expenses, not counting the cost of voluntary labor in the work. Perhaps measuring success in this way was natural for a businessman, but he quickly reconsidered. “These were discouraging thoughts,” he wrote, “and then we though of the great cost—of the Master’s sacrifice—of what the expense of our salvation had been; not in silver or gold, but the precious blood of Christ.”[xliv]
Russell’s statement brought a number of responses from readers in Scotland and England. They pointed out that “interest there is probably much beyond our appreciation or the number of names on our list; because there it is quite customary among the middle classes for several persons to take papers in partnership and read by turn.”[xlv]
The financial situation in Britain that lent itself to clubbing magazine subscriptions helped form a de facto organization at least on a neighborhood basis. Conversations and meetings would be the natural result of discussing a shared subscription.
When Bender and Sunderlin were in the United Kingdom, the plan was to circulate Food for Thinking Christians in Ireland too. The March 1882 issue of The Watch Tower, already quoted, suggests they did. There is no surviving record. Any work in Ireland in the 1880’s produced little result. By 1904 there was a small group in Dublin and another in Belfast. The 1988 Yearbook history suggests they were the result of Russell’s visit to Ireland in 1891. This seems unrealistic. Any growth probably derived from previous interest, particularly among Irish Protestants.
[i] Barratt, Noris and Julius Sachs: Freemasonry in Pennsylvania: 1727-1907, Philadelphia, 1919, Volume 3, page 423. Transactions of the Homeopathic Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania: 1866-1867, Taylor & Hickman, West Chester, 1867, page 13.
[ii] The Sunday School Journal 1871:47.
[iii] See the notice of sale in the June 1886 issue, page 28.
[iv] Americans in London, The New York Times, July 12, 1881. Quotation is from the article “Current Literature,” The Literary World, March 6, 1886, page 86.
[v] View from the Watch Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, March 1882, reprints page 325.
[vi] From Brother J. J. Bender, Zion’s Watch Tower, October/November 1881, page 6.
[vii] Russell, C. T.: In the Vineyard, Zion’s Watch Tower, October/November 1881, page 5.
[viii] Sunderlin, J. C.: Words from Brother Sunderlin, Zion’s Watch Tower, October/November 1881, page 6.
[ix] Notes and Comments: Spiritualism and the Religious Press, The Psychological Review, December 1881, pages 234-237.
[x] Godfrey, N. S.: Latter-Day Spiritualism, The Prophetic News and Israel’s Watchman, February 1882, page 60.
[xi] The only reference to James Leslie I can find is in History of Toronto and County of York Ontario, C. Blackett Robinson, Toronto, 1885, Volume 1, page 295. It says that “the Toronto Mechanics’ Institute was established in January, 1831, at a meeting of influential citizens called by Mr. James Leslie, now of Eglinton.” The Mechanics’ Institute library formed the basis for the Toronto Library system.
[xii] Leslie, James: Denominational Creeds, The Rainbow: A Magazine of Christian Literature, February 1883, pages 90-91.
[xiii] Letter headed Nottingham, England, April 13, 1882, Zion’s Watch Tower, June 1882, reprints pages 356-357.
[xiv] View from the Watch Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, December 1881, page 2.
[xv] Letter headed Nottingham, Eng., Feb. 24th, 1882, Zion’s Watch Tower,May 1882, page 2.
[xvi] Letter headed “Nottingham, England,” Zion’s Watch Tower, March 1882, page 1.
[xvii] Letter headed “Nottingham, England,” Zion’s Watch Tower, September 1883, page 1.
[xviii] The Memorial Celebration, Zion’s Watch Tower, May 1, 1914, page 143.
[xix] See The Practical Teacher: A Monthly Educational Journal, February 1882, page 596.
[xx] View from the Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, May 1882, reprints page 346.
[xxi] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, September 1886, page 2.
[xxii] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, December 1885, page 2 and Encouraging Words from Faithful Workers, Zion’s Watch Tower, January 1, 1895, page 24.
[xxiii] View from the Watch Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, Aril 1882, page 1.
[xxiv] View from the Watch Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, December 1882, page 1.
[xxv] View from the Watch Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, May 1882, page 1.
[xxvi] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, August 1884, page 1.
[xxvii] 2000 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Watchtower Society, New York, 2000, page 69.
[xxviii] Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, March 1884, page 1. This letter is omitted from the reprints.
[xxix] Extracts from Interesting Letters,
[xxx] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, July 1885, page 2.
[xxxi] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, October 1885, page 2.
[xxxii] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, August 1887, page 2.
[xxxiii] View from the Watch Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, March 1883, pages 1-2.
[xxxiv] Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, August 1883, page 2.
[xxxv] Hudson, A. O.: Letters from Readers Re: January/February Diamond Anniversary Issue, The Herald of Christ’s Kingdom, May-June 1994.
[xxxvi] Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, June 1884, page 2.
[xxxvii] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, April 1885, page 2.
[xxxviii] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, May 1885, page 2.
[xxxix] View from the Watch Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, February 1882, page 2.
[xl] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, July 1885, page 2.
[xli] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, October 1885, page 2.
[xlii] View from the Watch Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, July 1882, pages 1-2.
[xliii] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, April 1885, page 2.
[xliv] View from the Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, October 1885, reprints page 785.
[xlv] View from the Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, December 1885, page 1.
5. In All the Earth
The United Kingdom was the target of the first concentrated missionary activity by Zion’s Watch Tower. It is impossible to gage interest in Britain before the publication of Food for Thinking Christians. Previous to its publication the only letters appearing in Zion’s’ Watch Tower were doctrinal, and few names and few or no locations were noted.
There had been some notice of the work in The Rainbow. A British clergyman, Elias H. Tucket had been a Barbourite and written two articles for Rainbow. There may have been some residual interest from that. Later the magazine reviewed The Three Words, though somewhat negatively. If that book saw any circulation in Britain, it was very small. There is also come indication that Paton mailed material to his relatives in Scotland, but this seems to have born almost no fruitage.
Russell asked John Corbin Sunderlin and J. J. Bender to travel to the United Kingdom to publish Food for Thinking Christians and to direct a massive circulation campaign. Sunderlin had prior experience as an itinerate photographer and may have been chosen on that basis. Less is known of J. J. Bender. Historians including Watch Tower writers have never profiled him.
There seem to have been two Pittsburgh residents using the name J. J. Bender. One was Jonathan J. Bender, a Homeopathic Physician. He was Treasurer of the Homeopathic Medical Society of the Cumberland Valley and was a Free Mason.[i] The other J. J. Bender, assuming they aren’t the same individual, was a publisher and book collector. He seems the most likely candidate as Russell’s representative in Britain. This J. J. Bender had published The Standard Class-Book for Sunday-School Teacher’s Minutes in 1871, which was favorably reviewed by The Sunday School Journal that year.[ii] In May 1886, He and a partner purchased The Bookmart, a magazine devoted to book and autograph collecting published in Pittsburgh.[iii]
Sunderlin and Bender were in Britain by July 11, 1881, when Sunderlin registered with Gillig’s American Exchange in London, “a familiar and popular resort with Americans in the English metropolis.”[iv] He would receive their mail and make currency exchanges at Gillig’s.
It appears that the British edition of Food for Thinking Christians saw publication before the American edition of September 1881, but this is uncertain. Sunderlin returned to America probably in late October 1881, suffering from what was called “over-exertion incident to the arrangements for the distribution of ‘Food’ in Great Britain and Ireland.”[v] This left Bender with sole responsibility for completing the work. He sent a report to Russell dated from Edinburgh, Scotland, October 1, 1881:
I write in haste a few words. Arrived in Glasgow on Wednesday, and spent the day in hunting up some party, but could find none. Advertised in paper my wants and left for Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen, to extreme north, intending to distribute at each place. I succeeded without delay and returned in the night to Glasgow, having 18 replies to my advertisement. The first I called upon I made a contract with, and came here again to hear from London, but received no letter.
I telegraphed to learn how things were getting along, and enclosed find a favorable reply. So far—
100,000 pamphlets for London,
30,000 pamphlets for Glasgow,
20,000 pamphlets for Edinburgh
10,000 pamphlets for Dundee,
5,000 pamphlets for Aberdeen.
I will now go to Carlisle and New Castle next, which will be distributing on my way down as near right geographically as I can to Liverpool, Manchester, Hull, Leeds, etc. Think I can get through all well.
I had time to call on Mr. Robert Young, critical translator of the Bible and author of “Young's Analytical Hebrew and Greek Concordance,” and I asked his opinion of the text in 2 John 7, in regard to the Coming of Christ in the flesh, and he says that there is no doubt about the passage referring only to Christ's first Coming. I mentioned the quibble regarding the Rochester phase of it, and he said: “O no, no, it means only the first Coming.”
Am enjoying good health, of which you may inform any inquiring friends and trust you are enjoying the same. Working in hope that the labor bestowed will fall upon good ground, and produce many fold to the glory of God.[vi]
The advertisements Bender mentions were for people to distribute the booklet. In London nearly five hundred boys were employed as distributors with other cities employing numbers in proportion to their size.[vii]
Before he totally succumbed to exhaustion Sunderlin sent from London some reflections on Christian duty: “Do you say or think: ‘I fear this race will be the ruination of all my worldly prospects?’ Of course it will so far as having any pleasure in them is concerned. You will be a very foolish man to divide your energies now, or thoughts either. … But do you say: ‘Why, there's my reputation right there in the dust.’ Poor fellow! How sorry I am you noticed it; but it's only the reputation you once had. Don't you know that none of those who are noted racers on this course have any reputation? The greatest racer who ever stepped on it ‘made himself of no reputation.’ But do you say: ‘This awful run will be the death of me?’ Yes; of course it will; but you are a poor culprit under sentence of death any way, and if you undertake to save your life you will lose it, but run yourself to death and you'll have a life that is life everlasting, and more -- immortal. Don't be foolish now. Press on.”[viii]
One of the first to take notice of Food for Thinking Christians was the spiritualist journal The Psychological Review. The December 1881, issue contained a mixture of criticism and approval:
An American religious paper, published in Pittsburgh, Pa., rejoicing in the cognomen of “Zion’s Watch Tower,” has recently issued a free supplement in the form of a book of 160 pp., of which I am informed upwards of a quarter of a million copies have been printed for gratuitous distribution. Some of these have found their way to England, and one to myself. … It contains dissertations on various theological and other topics, amongst them Spiritualism, supported in the main by numerous textual quotations from the Bible. Now while desiring to recognize and appreciate the general temperate tone taken by the writer of the book in question, I contend that there is no more delusive and ensnaring source of erroneous and false deductions than the dangerous habit of Bible text quotation. You can prove anything and nothing by it, and the writer under consideration has fallen into this error when treating Modern Spiritualism.
He found certain agreements with Russell’s treatment of Christ’s spiritual body but in the main took exception to his treatment of Spiritualism, writing: “I must join issue when he comes to deal with Spiritualism. The claim put forward is that ‘what is at the present time called Spiritualism, is a counterfeit of the true as taught in the Bible.’” Still, the editor felt that “the general tone of the book is so moderate that I am induced to take up the gauntlet, believing that ignorance of the truer and higher aspects of Spiritualism is the basis of the condemnation, and new light on the subject will not be rejected without effect.”[ix]
Even less welcoming was the reaction of the English clergy. A very bitter and denunciatory comment appeared in the February 1882, issue of The Prophetic New and Israel’s Watchman. Though the article does not name Food for Thinking Christians, it is evident that it is meant. N. S. Godfrey, at one time the Incumbent of Worley, Leeds, and a prolific pamphleteer on the subject of spiritualism, preached a sermon against “a pamphlet which has been very widely distributed amongst the congregations of the various religious denominations in the borough.” He sent a report of his sermon to Prophetic News:
His advice was, and he repeated it, “Burn it.” He had now looked through it and examined it. At first sight it seemed to read fairly well, and to contain many of the views which were known as those of the Plymouth Brethren. But, after careful examination, he had no hesitation in pronouncing it to be the most damnable book he had read in his life. It was Spiritualism in the most refined subtlety of its Satanic character … the teaching of demons or spirits and wicked men and women …. He pointed out the free use of the Scripture and the Satanic perversion of its meaning and application which they found all the way through the book, giving it a colouring of good, although they only need to read half a dozen lines to see how full of mischief it was. …
Having read a number of lengthy extracts from the book, Mr. Godfrey said there was enough mischief in it to require a hundred sermons to dispose of. There was no difficulty about it to those who knew the Word of God. Again, pointing out the subtlety with which it was put together, and the Scriptures quoted, he announced that on an early occasion he proposed to answer the question, How was it that Holy Scripture seemed to have so many meanings?[x]
The October 1882 issue that was sent to over ninety thousand Sunday School teachers and Food for Thinking Christians reached James Leslie, once a fairly influential Toronto resident but then living in Eglinton, Ontario, Canada.[xi] He forwarded the special issue to the editor of The Rainbow in England with the comment:
There seems among the believers in the second coming and reign of Christ upon the earth, a strong tendency to return to what appears to be the simplicity of believers in the Apostolic age. I send you a number of one of their papers published in Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S., giving indication of this, but embracing some views not clearly taught in the Scriptures. They believe that Christ has come in one sense, and that the dead in Christ are being immortalized now. Yet this does not harmonize with the teaching of Paul in this first epistle to the Thessalonians, for to precede those events the “shout, the voice of the Archangel, and the trump of God” will be heard. Such is the zeal of these brethren that they are sending 90,000 of the paper I send you, “Zion’s Watch Tower, and Herald of Christ’s Presence,” to that number of superintendents of Sunday schools in the United States. The same parties have issued and circulated about a million or more of a good-sized pamphlet entitled “Food for Thinking Christians,” on both sides of the Atlantic.[xii]
Nottingham
Still, some of the British clergy did show interest. A letter from a minister in Nottingham appears in the June 1882 issue of Zion’s Watch Tower. It contained a request for a dozen copies of Food and a like number of Tabernacle Teachings. “Eternity alone will reveal the good these books are doing,” the clergyman wrote, “and several of my friends here are hungering for more information upon these great themes. I lend my Watch Tower every month, and look eagerly for each new one. May God continue to bless the work.”[xiii]
Other interest from Nottingham was revealed in letters published in Zion’s Watch Tower. A letter dated November 8, 1881, seems to be from another clergyman. Though the writer, whose name is omitted from the letter as printed, said he found a few minor points in which he differed from Russell, he requested more copies:
I can never feel sufficiently thankful that out of the thousands of copies of your book, “Food for Thinking Christians” distributed in this town--a copy fell into my hands: apparently it was the merest accident; but really I regard it as a direct providence. It has thrown light upon subjects which have perplexed me for years; and has made me feel more than ever, what a glorious book the Bible is, how worthy of our profoundest study. At the same time, I came from the study of your book with the conviction that a very large proportion of the Theology of our Churches and Schools, is the merest scraps of human notions, and that our huge systems of Theology upon the study of which, some of us have spent so many laborious years--only to be the worse confused and perplexed--are infinitely more the work of mistaken men, than the inspiration of the all-wise God.
However, I may differ from the book in a few minor details, I found the main argument to be resistless, commending itself to both my head and my heart. Again let me thank you on my own behalf, for the good I have received.
I find at the close of it, you make an offer to send copies to any who have reason to believe they can make a good use of them. In my church and congregation, there is a number of intelligent persons who are interested in the second coming, and who would be only too glad to read your book, I could distribute 60 or 70 copies with advantage, you say, “ask and ye shall receive”--I have faith in your generosity.[xiv]
Russell sent not only more tracts but a copy of Day Dawn and of Tabernacle Teachings along with issues of Zion’s Watch Tower. The clergyman remains unnamed, but he wrote thanking Russell:
I thank you most sincerely for what I have received from you this last few days. The “Day Dawn,” reached me … and what I have already seen of it, has both pleased and instructed me. Like its fellow – “Food for Thinking Christians,” it needs much careful thought; but I am sure it will amply repay it. … I received the “Watch Tower” and “Tabernacle supplement,” and I am looking for more blessing through the perusal of this valuable paper, as each month brings me something fresh.
Tears came to my eyes this morning, as I read the letters of your correspondents who had received so much help and comfort from the December number. To me also it was indeed a “feast of fat things.” … I feel as though I must read my Bible all over again, for the difference between Ransom and Pardon, pointed out in your closing article, had never struck me, though obvious enough when you put it before your readers. I wonder if it will ever be my lot to come over to some of your meetings. I very much long to see this happy type of Apostolic Christianity Revived --for such I think it must be--in the persons of its professors and preachers. The books and papers I regard as a blessing sent to my house; and which will bring forth fruit in my own soul, and I trust in my people also.[xv]
Another Nottingham letter praised Food for Thinking Christians and praised it highly: “I am indeed grateful to you for the manner in which you have explained several of the most difficult points in theology. God … must have opened your eyes to see these wonders of His divine plan, and I am thankful that I have lived to see this day. I may say that I fully indorse a great deal of the new teaching, and shall adopt it for the future. I pray God to abundantly bless you for your great philanthropic resolve to bless the world by giving away these pamphlets.”[xvi]
One of the Nottingham correspondents wrote again in September 1883, saying that “the work here is progressing amongst my own congregation, and also amongst outsiders. … The work makes no great show at present, but it is advancing in many minds. I have little trouble with those people who have been accustomed to go straight to God’s Book and abide by that …. To let go old prejudice is comparatively easy to a mind made receptive by the Spirit of God. I have endeavored to act wisely, and not to ride roughshod over old views, as that might have aroused opposition and have defeated my object, which is to ‘lead into the light.’ Acting upon this method, I think I am finding my reward in a more ready reception of the truth than one might have expected.”[xvii]
Despite early interest and hopeful comments from readers, interest in Nottingham grew slowly. A report from 1914 shows only fifty-five attending the Lord’s Supper.[xviii] Nevertheless, Nottingham produced one of the first zealous workers, Aaron P. Riley, a teacher connected with the recently opened Buttler’s Hill School in Nottingham.[xix] He was a fairly young man, born in 1856 according to the 1881 British Census and twenty-five that year.
It is tempting to connect some of the other letters to him, but the first that is definitely from him appears in the September 1885 issue of Zion’s Watch Tower. It’s apparent from his letter than he spread the message found in Food for Thinking Christians by word of mouth, by loaning Food and other tracts, and by preaching to what ever group would have him. His reputation served him well, and though he disconnected himself from his previous religious associations, they were unwilling to see him go. His father was an unemployed coal miner, and Aaron was probably the main support for the household. He had an older brother in the Methodist ministry.
It is probable, though not certain, that Riley’s first contact with Russell was through a letter dated April 5, 1882. His name isn’t attached to the letter as printed, but the circumstances are similar. The writer of the April 5th letter says: “I have a brother, a D. D. in the Methodist Church, and have been always told I was called to preach the blessed glad tidings, but I never have felt satisfied with orthodoxy, although I have been a member for twenty-five years. I threw out the doctrine of natural immortality five years ago, the Trinity three years ago, and with the Em Diaglott and Bible with other helps have been feeling after the truth.”[xx]
A letter printed in the September 1885 issue of The Watch Tower is not identified with his name, but in the next month’s issue Russell referred to it, saying it was from “our dear brother Riley.” His letter, sent from a village not far from Nottingham, reveals some of the difficulties encountered by those who sought to separate themselves from their past religious associations:
Since I last wrote to you, my brother who was in the Methodist ministry, has come out of her," not being able to hold the traditions and dogmas of the deceived elders. He will not accept all my views, but is very much more in favor of Zion’s Watch Tower, "Food" and "Tabernacle" teachings than he was some time ago.
My position is a most peculiar one. I have had my name taken off the books and refuse to subscribe towards the connectional funds, but the people with whom I have labored so long are not willing that I should leave them. They know my views, in some measure at any rate, and are willing for me to teach them, saying we are Christians, brethren in Christ, and on that ground we claim your fellowship; we don't care what you believe; we know you are a Christian and that is enough for us. It is the fellowship we desire not the name.
They are a most loving little band of people, and you may rest assured that the grains of truth let fall and those scattered, are not lost. If I am doing wrongly I only want the Lord of the vineyard to show me and give me something to do somewhere else. I cannot live without working for the Master, but it seems very slow work.
I have to preach for these people next Wednesday, and intend taking "The Lord's Coming" (discourse) from the Tower, with additions. May the Lord of the harvest separate the wheat. I have had some severe conversations with one of the ministers here which only confirms my faith in God's word and the Watch Tower’s interpretation; it is by such things we are made strong.
I do long for the manifestation of the Son of God, though I am by no means certain of being amongst specially favored ones. I was only a very nominal Christian until after 1881. I am totally unworthy and unfit for such a glorious high calling, but I know my joy will be full if I'm only a meek inheritor of the earth.
It is a great trial for the members to be separate. I don't know how others feel, but I do long for the fellowship, face to face with another who holds Zion’s Watch Tower's teachings as fully as myself; but organizations are not to be desired, therefore, we must wait patiently and if the Lord will, I'll praise him in company with the other brethren in his kingdom.
I would not part with my Towers for their weight in gold. I am reading all carefully through again and making notes. May the Lord bless you ever more and more abundantly.
Another letter from Riley found its way into print after the publication of Millennial Dawn was announced. He sent money for “as many copies” as it would pay for, apparently sending British money in payment, but expressed some disappointment in the results of his missionary effort: “I am sorry I cannot report any marked improvement in the work here, but every number of the Tower encourages us to go on quietly doing what we can, leaving results, though we are thankful for some evidences of good being done. If men will not come right out, they confess we are right.”[xxi]
Aaron Riley continued his active support at least until 1895, writing periodically to Russell. He is mentioned for the last time in the January 1, 1895, issue of Zion’s Watch Tower. Russell explained that Riley had been supplying libraries with sets of the Millennial Dawn series. In a letter to Russell, Riley mentions actively seeking subscribers for their magazine. He was ill and trying to work around it. He had a history of illness, mentioning a stay in a "convalescent home” in a letter to Russell ten years previously. He seems to have died shortly thereafter.[xxii]
London
By April 1882 interest was great enough that Russell extended a call for preachers in England: “We have many inquiries from England, relative to preaching—if there are among those interested in these things there, some who can declare them publicly, they have a great and grand field. Let us hear from you. Some one or two should be in London.”[xxiii] If there was an immediate response, I cannot find it.
A ‘brother from London’ wrote to Russell in late 1882 suggesting that the ideas from Food for Thinking Christians were affecting the sermons and thought of British clergy. He visited Spurgeon’s tabernacle and came away with these impressions:
It was on an occasion in which his audience was supposed to be entirely of strangers, and we were very gently led to suppose that possibly if we were not brought to the light in this age, there might be a chance in another, but that after all it is better to be converted at once so as to make sure of it. This man has vastly changed in regard to what he preaches since I have known him. He has evidently read the book “Food” and is breaking it gently. It may be bias, though I think not, but I fancy that the “Food” must have been read in many thinking quarters, because I very distinctly recognize in many of the leaders of pulpit thought, the spirit of the work. I believe that the fruit is ripening.[xxiv]
Other interaction with Spurgeon’s temple was reported. One cannot say with certainty if it was through the same individual since neither letter was printed with a signature, but in May 1882 a British correspondent wrote:
I have held up the thoughts given in your works of “Tabernacle” and “Food” to some of Spurgeon's people, and they were unable to gainsay me. It does seem to be too good to be true, but nothing is too hard for God, and I confess I see a harmony between the infinite Creator and created (fallen) man, given in the Bible as brought out by the light from your exposition that I never have seen before. It satisfies my understanding and my longing spirit. Can I with fair speaking ability be exalted by our dear Lord to the high honor of telling or preaching the glad tidings, which are to all people, that Jesus anointed tasted death for every man, and all may look and live? Whatever tracts and instructions you have in the divine mysteries of truth will you have the kindness to forward by return mail, as I may be required to leave London by the 1st of May, and please instruct me how and what to preach so as to accomplish the blessed work God wishes done.[xxv]
Among the many requests for additional tracts was one that said, “Will you please send two or three copies of the Tabernacle and its Teachings, for which we shall wait, with great desire, to be fed with more food from our Master's table. Will you please send also another copy of Food, because the one that we have is getting so much worn, that we have to paste some of it together. If we had many copies of it we could judiciously give them away. We pray that the Lord will bless you more abundantly. Though strangers in the flesh, we can say we are one in the bonds of the Lord Jesus.”[xxvi] This letter is especially interesting because it reveals an inclination among readers to circulate the tracts. Much of the work in the British field would be accomplished by “clubbing” subscriptions and loaning publications.
Among the first permanent associations built off receipt of Watch Tower pamphlets was a small group in Islington, London. The brief history in the 1973 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses says:
Tom Hart of Islington, London, wrote for and received three pamphlets. He also received Zion’s Watch Tower regularly for nine months, all without charge—a new experience in the religious field. From then on he became a regular subscriber. He was struck by the theme that ran through each issue, namely, “Get out of her, my people”—a Scriptural call to leave Christendom’s religious groups and follow Bible teaching. He and a fellow railwayman, Johnathan Ling, began studying together. This led to Hart’s formally resigning from the chapel in 1884, soon to be followed by Ling and a dozen others who began to meet together. This appears to be the first record of regular meetings of this sort in Britain. Many who shared in such meetings also showed a willingness to engage in the work of spreading enlightenment to others.
Thom Hart was born in Calcutta, India, in 1853. At the time of the 1881 Census he had moved his family from the Islington address to 5 Lavinia Grove, Middlesex, London. He was “a carman” for one of the railroads. In another place he is called “a railroad shunter.”[xxvii] He and his wife had three children, two sons and one daughter, all under the age of four. I can find no helpful information about Johnathan Ling.
That the group organized by Tom Hart was the first in the U.K. is mistaken, but a small group was meeting in London by March 1884. It may have been Tom Hart who wrote a letter appearing in the March issue of Zion’s Watch Tower. Whoever the writer was, he expressed his continuing appreciation of the Watch Tower. He always prayed for its safe arrival and was thankful that he had not missed one issue in two years. “I am able to report a little progress for the last twelve months,” he wrote. “Our meeting is the most liberal that I know of; brethren who are expelled from other meetings for change of belief find refuge amongst us. I have gained the attention of two young men who live near me, and they visit me two or three evenings a week, to enquire ‘what is truth?’ One comes oftener than the other and makes more progress. He goes and spreads the good news as a steward of the manifold grace of God. These two enclose subscriptions with me for the Tower.”
The same letter reported continuing opposition to message in Food for Thinking Christians: “Some time ago I heard read in my presence in a most solemn manner 2d Pet. 2:1, in condemnation of ‘Food for Thinking Christians.’ If I had not seen the tower explanation of the ‘image of the beast’ I should have been frightened out of my wits.”[xxviii]
Another letter from London dated January 1885 shows those interested using every opportunity to share their beliefs:
I had the pleasure of finding a man preaching in the Park, who had been a member of a chapel 8 years, and had left it and despaired of finding a church what it ought to be. He was preaching against the hypocrisy of the Church of England, and the oppression of the poor. … He was so delighted after about two hour’s conversation, you would think he had had a fortune left him. He preached tower views the following Sunday, read parts of Food for thinking Christians to them, showed them the plan of the ages, and quite interested the people generally. “The Christian Evidence Society,” sent out to oppose him, but they had no good news for the people, and as he had, they were anxious to hear it. He was about emigrating to Australia, so we did not have his company more than three weeks. He told the people how he would spread the ‘glad tidings’ in Australia and borrow a barn or shed to keep the rays of the sun off himself and his hearers. As soon as he is settled there he will write to you and order the watch tower. … We have interested another in the tower, who is now in Liverpool. He has ordered and received it. We have some profitable times, about a dozen of us, but have not yet begun to preach or lecture to the public, although our hall will hold about three hundred.[xxix]
A letter dated June 29, 1885, seems to come from the same correspondent. The letter thanks the Russells for the literature sent and recounted both the spiritual benefit received and his practice of loaning it out. He asked for more. His practice of approaching individuals or small groups somewhat estranged from the established church continued. He told of this encounter:
At one place, having found a quiet earnest body of believers on a retired street--belonging to no particular sect, I offered to lay before them all that I myself had learned. They received me cordially, and requested me three times to meet them, once at a general assembly. Having made a large wall copy from your Chart of the Ages I hung it up on the wall and sat amidst those earnest thirsty people to tell them the good news, inviting them to question me afterwards, which they did; some very sharply, and as if to trip me; but let the Lord receive all praise! It was given me to answer quietly, and one of the most arrogant of my opponents came up afterwards wrung my hand and thanked me begging I would return again. But the Salvation Army, it seems had begun to influence these Christians so that my teachings offering to go further than it’s teachings made them afraid, I think, to give ear beyond the time I was with them. I left a copy of “Food” which they promised to meet together and study with the Scriptures; but curiously enough so soon as I had left for London --the book was lost. However, many men and women have become interested in the teachings, to whom I distributed the sample towers. My work lies chiefly at the present time among detached individuals; and in writing to the absent. Only one, truly enlightened, lives near me, a police constable, who is too poor to send the money he would, to you, having a large family. He longs for a Diaglott of his own: I have lent him mine occasionally. Before long I could buy him one I think, and if so, will send the money to you; but can you supply him with regular towers and some of the books? He has a wide means of working; at present, he has my papers to read and that is all.[xxx]
Another letter in this series appeared in the October 1885 issue of The Watch Tower. Meetings were more regular, but small. Interest was increasing:
Our little Bible class does not grow very large, but we are not building on numbers. We find we get some very precious seasons with about four, and I think up to the present our best meetings have been the smallest; and during the week when two or three meet for a few minutes we often part with some new thought or reminder of the grandeur of the plan or character of God, and go forth with renewed energy to serve him. I find the experience vastly different from my previous experience in the nominal church, then doubting and fearing with a very indefinite idea of what was future both for the servants of God and those who did not serve him.[xxxi]
By 1887 another small group developed in London. A man signed in The Watch Tower as “Fred S. D____” wrote that he had “been … reading and praying with friends over the truths contained in the book entitled ‘Food for thinking Christians.’” He felt guided to the book by “our loving Father.” He explained that he had the book for about five years and “never thought of reading or becoming in any way, interested in it … but blessed be God! He has caused us (a few young men and women) to thirst and hunger after righteousness, and also implanted within us a desire to ‘come out and be separate,’ and to fully consecrate ourselves to Him who has redeemed us: and also to know of the things of God that we may be the better able to serve Him.” He asked for more literature.[xxxii]
Birmingham
Zion’s Watch Tower first noted interest in Birmingham in March 1883 with a letter from a correspondent there. The letter reveals that at least one person was street tracting in Birmingham: “The book was put into my hands last winter as I passed up a main thoroughfare in the above town, on my way home from work.” The writer recalled setting Food for Thinking Christians aside to pursue what they then thought was more interesting reading, but had returned to it. He found it lucid, easy to understand and convincing, and asked for literature to circulate among his friends.[xxxiii]
Another letter from Birmingham appeared in the August 1883 issue. The writer referred to prejudice against the material because it came from the United States, apparently connecting it to issues remaining from the American Civil War. Nevertheless, they found the message in Food for Thinking Christians to be consoling and instructive. The writer said “the good news appears to be most acceptable to ‘Dissenters,’ and still more so to those who are sectarians in name only, but to the ‘Orthodox’ ones it is most objectionable. ... A great stumbling block to many is the fact that we have no sectarian badge, and while seeing but little truth in many so fettered, they cannot realize any in those who are absolutely free.”[xxxiv]
Glasgow
A. O. Hudson, editor of Bible Study Monthly a British Bible Student publication, says that the first organized meetings were in Glasgow starting in 1883. He presents no other details.[xxxv] It appears that Hudson is correct or nearly so. A letter dated 1884 from an unnamed Glasgow correspondent reported that “the brethren and sisters in Glasgow” met in their house to celebrate “the Passover,” meaning the Lord’s Memorial Supper.[xxxvi] Also, a “brother in Christ” reported meeting with four sisters and six brothers in Glasgow. Their meetings seem to have very irregular. He reported only two meetings within the month previous to his letter, but he stated their intention to meet for the Memorial meal.[xxxvii] In a follow-up letter he reported an attendance of twelve, though he observed that “One brother remarked there were thirteen present, Jesus being in the midst of us.”[xxxviii]
Edinburgh
One of the first letters to Zion’s Watch Tower was from Edinburgh sent by a missionary and divinity student “in the last session” of his course. He expressed a desire to preach on the themes found In Food for Thinking Christians and asked for additional copies, and some copies of the booklet Tabernacle Teachings.[xxxix]
Other Cities
The message reached Halifax at least by 1885. A letter found in the July 1885 issue said its writer was greatly interested by Food for Thinking Christians. He wrote that “It has greatly instructed and interested me, and led me into a new region of biblical teaching, presenting many aspects of truth altogether overlooked, the importance and scripturalness of which appear to me most clear and well founded. I have a strong desire to receive further teaching in the same direction.” He requested a copy of Tabernacle Teachings.[xl]
A letter headed simply Yorkshire came from someone “working in an empty house” who found a copy of Food for Thinking Christians minus its title page. He was persuaded by reading the lose pages and found Russell’s address. He asked for more literature.[xli]
Organizing
In most localities organization was spontaneous. People shared the tracts, discussed them with others, and, finding some agreement, met together. This left individuals and small groups disconnected from fellow believers.
As early as July 1882, there was a call for organization. An individual from Sunderland, England, asked: “Could you not arrange some plan by which we, who rejoice in the same blessed truths, might have the opportunity of at least corresponding with each other, on this side of the Atlantic? You see there may be others only a short distance from me who, like myself, are yearning to find some with whom they may hold sweet communion on our blessed hope.” In the same issue of Zion’s Watch Tower was a letter from Sunderland noting that some where meeting together regularly: “we have now a Bible-class every Monday at 7 P.M. ‘The Food’ we keep circulating in ‘good ground,’ so far as human judgment can discern; and it is delightful to hear their expressions of surprise and gladness at our kindness in thinking of them. One brother here tells me he lent the ‘Food’ and ‘Tabernacle’ to one of their ministers, and the subjects have laid hold of him.”[xlii]
Russell was not immediately forthcoming with an organizational plan and made no printed reply to the request for one. We can safely suppose that he provided the correspondent who felt isolated with the address of the regular meeting in Sunderland.
Similar expressions came from elsewhere in the United Kingdom. A letter sent from Glasgow dated February, 16, 1885, probably stands for the feelings of many: “The monthly visits of the tower are so highly prized by me that I would feel the want of them very much. They are my only comfort now, being cut off from all the sects called churches.”[xliii] As remarked before, meeting sprang up spontaneously in Glasgow, prompted in part by a need for fellowship with those of like faith.
In October 1885 Russell reflected on the interest from the British field and found it disappointing. He tended to measure success against cost, figuring that each of the three hundred British subscribers had cost about forty dollars in expenses, not counting the cost of voluntary labor in the work. Perhaps measuring success in this way was natural for a businessman, but he quickly reconsidered. “These were discouraging thoughts,” he wrote, “and then we though of the great cost—of the Master’s sacrifice—of what the expense of our salvation had been; not in silver or gold, but the precious blood of Christ.”[xliv]
Russell’s statement brought a number of responses from readers in Scotland and England. They pointed out that “interest there is probably much beyond our appreciation or the number of names on our list; because there it is quite customary among the middle classes for several persons to take papers in partnership and read by turn.”[xlv]
The financial situation in Britain that lent itself to clubbing magazine subscriptions helped form a de facto organization at least on a neighborhood basis. Conversations and meetings would be the natural result of discussing a shared subscription.
When Bender and Sunderlin were in the United Kingdom, the plan was to circulate Food for Thinking Christians in Ireland too. The March 1882 issue of The Watch Tower, already quoted, suggests they did. There is no surviving record. Any work in Ireland in the 1880’s produced little result. By 1904 there was a small group in Dublin and another in Belfast. The 1988 Yearbook history suggests they were the result of Russell’s visit to Ireland in 1891. This seems unrealistic. Any growth probably derived from previous interest, particularly among Irish Protestants.
[i] Barratt, Noris and Julius Sachs: Freemasonry in Pennsylvania: 1727-1907, Philadelphia, 1919, Volume 3, page 423. Transactions of the Homeopathic Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania: 1866-1867, Taylor & Hickman, West Chester, 1867, page 13.
[ii] The Sunday School Journal 1871:47.
[iii] See the notice of sale in the June 1886 issue, page 28.
[iv] Americans in London, The New York Times, July 12, 1881. Quotation is from the article “Current Literature,” The Literary World, March 6, 1886, page 86.
[v] View from the Watch Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, March 1882, reprints page 325.
[vi] From Brother J. J. Bender, Zion’s Watch Tower, October/November 1881, page 6.
[vii] Russell, C. T.: In the Vineyard, Zion’s Watch Tower, October/November 1881, page 5.
[viii] Sunderlin, J. C.: Words from Brother Sunderlin, Zion’s Watch Tower, October/November 1881, page 6.
[ix] Notes and Comments: Spiritualism and the Religious Press, The Psychological Review, December 1881, pages 234-237.
[x] Godfrey, N. S.: Latter-Day Spiritualism, The Prophetic News and Israel’s Watchman, February 1882, page 60.
[xi] The only reference to James Leslie I can find is in History of Toronto and County of York Ontario, C. Blackett Robinson, Toronto, 1885, Volume 1, page 295. It says that “the Toronto Mechanics’ Institute was established in January, 1831, at a meeting of influential citizens called by Mr. James Leslie, now of Eglinton.” The Mechanics’ Institute library formed the basis for the Toronto Library system.
[xii] Leslie, James: Denominational Creeds, The Rainbow: A Magazine of Christian Literature, February 1883, pages 90-91.
[xiii] Letter headed Nottingham, England, April 13, 1882, Zion’s Watch Tower, June 1882, reprints pages 356-357.
[xiv] View from the Watch Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, December 1881, page 2.
[xv] Letter headed Nottingham, Eng., Feb. 24th, 1882, Zion’s Watch Tower,May 1882, page 2.
[xvi] Letter headed “Nottingham, England,” Zion’s Watch Tower, March 1882, page 1.
[xvii] Letter headed “Nottingham, England,” Zion’s Watch Tower, September 1883, page 1.
[xviii] The Memorial Celebration, Zion’s Watch Tower, May 1, 1914, page 143.
[xix] See The Practical Teacher: A Monthly Educational Journal, February 1882, page 596.
[xx] View from the Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, May 1882, reprints page 346.
[xxi] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, September 1886, page 2.
[xxii] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, December 1885, page 2 and Encouraging Words from Faithful Workers, Zion’s Watch Tower, January 1, 1895, page 24.
[xxiii] View from the Watch Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, Aril 1882, page 1.
[xxiv] View from the Watch Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, December 1882, page 1.
[xxv] View from the Watch Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, May 1882, page 1.
[xxvi] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, August 1884, page 1.
[xxvii] 2000 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Watchtower Society, New York, 2000, page 69.
[xxviii] Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, March 1884, page 1. This letter is omitted from the reprints.
[xxix] Extracts from Interesting Letters,
[xxx] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, July 1885, page 2.
[xxxi] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, October 1885, page 2.
[xxxii] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, August 1887, page 2.
[xxxiii] View from the Watch Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, March 1883, pages 1-2.
[xxxiv] Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, August 1883, page 2.
[xxxv] Hudson, A. O.: Letters from Readers Re: January/February Diamond Anniversary Issue, The Herald of Christ’s Kingdom, May-June 1994.
[xxxvi] Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, June 1884, page 2.
[xxxvii] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, April 1885, page 2.
[xxxviii] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, May 1885, page 2.
[xxxix] View from the Watch Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, February 1882, page 2.
[xl] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, July 1885, page 2.
[xli] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, October 1885, page 2.
[xlii] View from the Watch Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, July 1882, pages 1-2.
[xliii] Extracts from Interesting Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, April 1885, page 2.
[xliv] View from the Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, October 1885, reprints page 785.
[xlv] View from the Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, December 1885, page 1.
William Conley
I am researching the fragmentation that occurred among Watch Tower readers in the 1880s. William Conley is one of the people who will find a place in this chapter. I've found some surprising things. Here are the first few paragraphs of the section that considers him. Any comments that address documentation issues would be helpful. [footnotes have been omited.]
William Henry Conley’s association with Russell was short-lived but significant. Conley was born June 11, 1840, in Pittsburgh to George Washington Conley and Matilda Balsley. His father died about 1852, when Conley was twelve years old, and Conley went to work in a woolen mill in Alleghany.[i] In 1855 he was apprenticed to an uncle, a printer in Blairsville, Ohio. In 1857, he moved with his uncle to Plymouth, Ohio, where he met Sara Shaffer (also spelled Shafer), two years his junior and a transplanted Pennsylvanian. They married in 1860.
Significantly, Conley associated with the Lutheran Church in Plymouth, Ohio. There is little documentation for Conley’s life in Ohio, but it is into this time that one can fit his first acquaintance with George N. H. Peters, later the author of the massive three volume Theocratic Kingdom. Peter’s obituary as found in The Lutheran Observer of October 22, 1909, notes his service to the Plymouth, Ohio, church.[ii] Another source shows him serving as pastor in Plymouth during the years of Conley’s residence.[iii] While it is possible that Russell met Peters through another, it is likely that he met him through Conley. It is also extremely likely that Conley’s interest in the Lord’s return and last-times events derived from his association with Peters.
There are three William Conleys listed among Civil War soldiers from Ohio, but none of the biographical notices of William H. Conley list Civil War service. At or toward the end of the war the Conley’s moved back to Pittsburgh where he joined a commission house, a brokerage firm. Later he became a bookkeeper for James M. Riter whose company, established in 1861, worked in sheet metal and copper. The business seems to have been prosperous though not large. Riter supplied major portions of the iron work for the Escanaba furnace in 1872.[iv]
Riter died in 1873 Conley “took a half-interest in the business with Thomas B. Riter, the firm name being changed to Riter & Conley; he attended to the financial and office work while Mr. Riter attended to the outside and mechanical part.” Eventually Riter & Conley “became the most extensive of its kind in the world.” [v] That Conley focused on a major business venture that year is a strong indicator that he did not take the predictions of Jonas Wendell, Nelson Barbour and others seriously.
William Henry Conley’s association with Russell was short-lived but significant. Conley was born June 11, 1840, in Pittsburgh to George Washington Conley and Matilda Balsley. His father died about 1852, when Conley was twelve years old, and Conley went to work in a woolen mill in Alleghany.[i] In 1855 he was apprenticed to an uncle, a printer in Blairsville, Ohio. In 1857, he moved with his uncle to Plymouth, Ohio, where he met Sara Shaffer (also spelled Shafer), two years his junior and a transplanted Pennsylvanian. They married in 1860.
Significantly, Conley associated with the Lutheran Church in Plymouth, Ohio. There is little documentation for Conley’s life in Ohio, but it is into this time that one can fit his first acquaintance with George N. H. Peters, later the author of the massive three volume Theocratic Kingdom. Peter’s obituary as found in The Lutheran Observer of October 22, 1909, notes his service to the Plymouth, Ohio, church.[ii] Another source shows him serving as pastor in Plymouth during the years of Conley’s residence.[iii] While it is possible that Russell met Peters through another, it is likely that he met him through Conley. It is also extremely likely that Conley’s interest in the Lord’s return and last-times events derived from his association with Peters.
There are three William Conleys listed among Civil War soldiers from Ohio, but none of the biographical notices of William H. Conley list Civil War service. At or toward the end of the war the Conley’s moved back to Pittsburgh where he joined a commission house, a brokerage firm. Later he became a bookkeeper for James M. Riter whose company, established in 1861, worked in sheet metal and copper. The business seems to have been prosperous though not large. Riter supplied major portions of the iron work for the Escanaba furnace in 1872.[iv]
Riter died in 1873 Conley “took a half-interest in the business with Thomas B. Riter, the firm name being changed to Riter & Conley; he attended to the financial and office work while Mr. Riter attended to the outside and mechanical part.” Eventually Riter & Conley “became the most extensive of its kind in the world.” [v] That Conley focused on a major business venture that year is a strong indicator that he did not take the predictions of Jonas Wendell, Nelson Barbour and others seriously.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Monday, September 15, 2008
William Brookman
I get repeated "hits" from someone searching for a photo of William Brookman. The photo is in the earlier posts section. As far as I know, it is the only photo of him still existing. If you wish further information post your question, and I'll try to answer it.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Article on Barbour
Rachael de Vienne and I have written an article about Nelson Barbour. It appears in the Spring 2008 issue of Journal From the Radical Reformation, a historical journal published by Atlanta Bible College and available through their web site.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Help Needed. Seeking Documentation.
I urgently need a clear photocopy of: F. W. Grant: "Food for Thinking Christians:" A Review of a Tract So Called, no date but c. 1882. Published by Loizeaux Brothers .
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Nelson Barbour
One occasionally sees his name printed as Nelson Homer Barbour. This is wrong. The British patent for his steam generating machine gives his middle name as "Horatio."
See: Bennet Woodcroft: Alphabetical Index of Patentees and Applicants of Patents for Invention for the Year 1870, London, 1871, page 12.
See: Bennet Woodcroft: Alphabetical Index of Patentees and Applicants of Patents for Invention for the Year 1870, London, 1871, page 12.
Orion Green
Orion Green was one of the delegates to the Worchester Prophetic Conference in 1872. The conference examined confilicting chronological views including Barbour's speculations. Orion Green produced this booklet in 1871.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Nelson Barbour
I'm getting may referrals from Wickipedia for material on Nelson Barbour. His biography is found in the Older Posts section. There is a link at the bottom of this blog.
As it looks now, the finished book will be out in the Fall of this year.
As it looks now, the finished book will be out in the Fall of this year.
Seeking Research Material
I need help locating volumes 3 and 5 of Paton's magazine The World's Hope.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
What Russell Meant
Continuous Sermon
When announcing one of his early speaking tours, Russell wrote:
“By the above, it will be seen that the stay at each place will average about two days. I shall expect almost continuous meetings while with you.” – Zion’s Watch Tower, June 1880
Here is what he meant:
The Cato, New York Citizen: August 28, 1897
C. T. Russell, the leader of a new sect called simple “The Christians” who hails from Allegheny, Pa. delivered a continuous sermon in Park Square hall, Boston, a few days ago, lasting from down to twilight without an appreciable break. It was a remarkable performance in may respects. When he concluded he was still in good voice and spirits and some of his patient audience were left. There were several controversies with his hearers. …”
When announcing one of his early speaking tours, Russell wrote:
“By the above, it will be seen that the stay at each place will average about two days. I shall expect almost continuous meetings while with you.” – Zion’s Watch Tower, June 1880
Here is what he meant:
The Cato, New York Citizen: August 28, 1897
C. T. Russell, the leader of a new sect called simple “The Christians” who hails from Allegheny, Pa. delivered a continuous sermon in Park Square hall, Boston, a few days ago, lasting from down to twilight without an appreciable break. It was a remarkable performance in may respects. When he concluded he was still in good voice and spirits and some of his patient audience were left. There were several controversies with his hearers. …”
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Help with a mystery?
A Chicago newspaper ran the following on August 18, 1881. The article does not explain what the distubance actually was. Anyone in New Jersey interested enough to check the Newark newspapers for August 1881?
A New Sect
Special Dispatch to The Chicago Tribune
Pittsburgh, Pa., Aug. 17. – A New York telegram of yesterday gave some account of a sensation in a Newark (N. J.) church caused by the distribution of a tract entitled “Food for Thinking Christians – Why Evil was Permitted, and Kindred Topics.”
Special Dispatch to The Chicago Tribune
Pittsburgh, Pa., Aug. 17. – A New York telegram of yesterday gave some account of a sensation in a Newark (N. J.) church caused by the distribution of a tract entitled “Food for Thinking Christians – Why Evil was Permitted, and Kindred Topics.”
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Clinton Colegrove
I am seeking information on Clinton Colegorve. I’m interested in knowing the details of his association with Barbour.
Colegrove produced a hymnal entitled Colegrove's hymns on the second coming of Christ : the resurrection of the dead : the true nature and destiny of man : the return of Israel, and related subjects. It was published in Arcade, New York, in 1872.
He also published a booklet identifying Louis Napoleon as the antichrist in 1866 and another on the great pyramid in 1877. A brief obituary appears in The Buffalo Medical Journal of December 1906.
I'm especially interested in seeing the title page and introduction to his hymnal.
Colegrove produced a hymnal entitled Colegrove's hymns on the second coming of Christ : the resurrection of the dead : the true nature and destiny of man : the return of Israel, and related subjects. It was published in Arcade, New York, in 1872.
He also published a booklet identifying Louis Napoleon as the antichrist in 1866 and another on the great pyramid in 1877. A brief obituary appears in The Buffalo Medical Journal of December 1906.
I'm especially interested in seeing the title page and introduction to his hymnal.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
More Help!
An early reader of Zion's Watch Tower in the Newark, New Jersey, area was R. Wakefield. He also wrote an article for Zion's Watch Tower refuting "the no-ransom" theories. I need help identifying him.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
HELP!
I need copies of the Millenarian published by George M. B. Myers from 1883 to 1890.
P
hotocopies or microfilm will do.
P
hotocopies or microfilm will do.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Early Evangelist and Early Missionary in China
Sometimes one actually does find what one is seeking. One of the first prominent workers was a man named Tavender. His name appears at least three times in Zion's Watch Tower, but never with a first name.
His name was Joshua Tavender. His obituary appears in The Utica, New York, Weekly Herald of October 15, 1895, on page 12. It mentions his connection with Charles T. Russell, the author of Millennial Dawn.
I am in urgent need of the first name of Miss C. B. Downing, the first Watch Tower missionary in China.
I NO LONGER NEED THE FIRST NAME. HER FULL NAME WAS CALISTA B. DOWNING.
Here is her history as I have it:
A letter from Chefoo (now Yantai), China, was printed in the May 1883 issue. Miss C. B. Downing, the missionary who wrote to Russell wasn’t the one to whom an issue of Zion’s Watch Tower was mailed. Instead, it was shown her “as a curiosity.” She read it carefully and with interest, explaining that he (or she) was “somewhat out of the orthodox ruts”:
If you will send me the paper I will try and get the subscription to you in some way--for, though a self-supporting missionary, I cannot quite call myself one of the "Lord's poor" to whom you offer the paper gratuitously, for Our Father has bountifully supplied all my needs, since I gave up my salary, three years ago. I think I can get a few subscribers among my friends in China, for I find not a few who are trying to reconcile the “mercy that endureth forever” with the final irrevocable doom of all who, since the fall, have died without a knowledge of the Redeemer of the world. We have no "Post-Office Order" arrangements here, else I would send the subscription at once. [1]
Her name isn’t associated with the letter; as was most often the case the letter was published without signature. But, in 1900 another missionary, Horace A. Randle, recalled:
There has been in China for years one solitary witness for the present truth, Miss Downing, of Chefoo. This lady was formerly a missionary of the Presbyterian Board and she chanced to meet with a stray Watch Tower, about the year 1883, in which she read an article on restitution, and at once decided to subscribe for the paper. [2]
C. B. Downing was viewed as a bit odd by other missionaries. “Amongst the missionaries of Shantung I am afraid Sister Downing was considered a queer old lady having some odd notions,” Randall wrote.
As with many of the early Watch Tower readers, finding biographical information on Miss Downing is difficult. A Miss C. D. Downing appears in the 1850 Census as a resident of Boston. That Miss Downing was born about 1825. I cannot state with certainty that she is the same as the missionary teacher in China.
C. D. Downing was a school teacher in Red Wing, Minnesota, before becoming a missionary, and as a missionary was supported with contributions from Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis. [3] She arrived in China in 1866 as part of the American Presbyterian Mission, to found a girl’s boarding school at Chefoo which she did by the next year. She continued to run until sometime before 1896. [4]
Downing participated in The General Conference of Missionaries in China. She was a delegate to their convention held in Shanghai May 10-24, 1877. She was associated with C. W. Mateer’s mission in Tung-Chow (now Tongzhou) and assigned to the station at Chefoo at least by 1871 and was still there at the time of the conference. The mission at Chefoo, “the chief foreign port of the province of Shantung” was established in 1862, the year after the mission in Tunchow. [5]
China wasn’t the United States. China’s population lived in abject poverty and superstition was rampant. It was heart wrenching. Probably seeing conditions in China as they were in the mid to late 19th Century had some influence on her ready acceptance of the message of the Millennial Restitution, the restoration of an Edenic earth.
Writing to the journal Woman’s Work for Woman in 1872 she recounted some of the heart-breaking and difficult situations she met: “In my visits from home to home I see many girls growing up in sin and ignorance whom I long to get, but their heathen relatives would ‘rather they starve’ than let them come to use. Many times they reject our offers to train their girls in our school, and sell them for slaves or for worse than slaves. Poor ignorant people. They will not believe we will keep our word with them, but think we want their girls ‘to take to foreign countries or to make medicine of them.’” [6]
Two years later, another letter from Miss Downing addressed the issue of child prostitution and slavery as she encountered it. The letter was addressed to a group that “had undertaken the support of a child in her school.” She wrote: “This little girl was a slave bought from a bad woman who had become ill and sold this child to get money to buy medicine. I do not know, nor does she, what her father’s name was. … I have another little slave girl who is very pretty. Of her parents we know nothing.” [7]
By 1894 at least she was no longer associating with the American Presbyterian mission in China. The Directory & Chronicle for China, Japan, Corea, Indo-China, Strait Settlements, ect. for that year lists her as independent. [8] She moved from principal of the girl’s boarding school to the staff of Temple Hill Chinese College in Chefoo. The educational directory that lists her as on staff says: “This school is not directly under mission control. It is self supporting. The strong religious character of the school and the establishment of similar schools in the city have somewhat retarded its growth.” With a Mrs. W. C. Booth, Downing was one of two foreign teachers. There were also six Chinese instructors. [9]
Though her most obvious missionary work was loaning Watch Tower publications and discussing the message of the impending Restitution of All Things with European and American missionaries, it is certain that her message went to her students too. A contemporary publication, The Encyclopedia of Missions, said of the boy’s and girl’s boarding schools at Chefoo: “Many have been received into the church who became interested in Christianity through what they heard from the children in these schools.” [10] So while it is true as observed by Carolyn Wah, that Watch Tower missionary activity in Asia “did not start among the Asians, but among foreign missionaries,” the tendency of C. B. Downing’s activity was to reach her Chinese students. [11] Even if her contemporary missionaries and teachers saw her as a bit odd, The China Mission Handbook reported that under her care, “the school has been a great blessing to our work.” [12]
Still, her primary mission field using publications was among English speaking missionaries. Writing to Maria Frances Russell in 1887 she said: “I am giving away and lending my copies of Millennial Dawn and my papers, and any time you can send me extra copies of the Watch Tower I can use them to advantage. I expect to see a good many missionaries from other parts of the country during the summer, as this is a health resort, and I shall scatter my Towers, and lend Millennial Dawns. The last bound copy I gave away before taking the wrapper off.” [13]
Still later, in 1888, she explained her work more fully:
The Dawns reached me on the 23d of September, for which many thanks. Three of the books are now in Shanghai. The good and thoroughly orthodox Methodist sister, to whom I gave one, said, "The restitution theology is very interesting, and I am glad you have found such rest and peace in believing it." I am sure she will read the book carefully, and be benefited by it. Another book has gone into a Baptist family. And the third I gave to Rev. Dr. W., who believes in the Millennial coming of Christ, and is, I think, somewhat prepared for Dawn. One book has gone to Ching-chew-fu into the Eng. Bap. Mission. The others I shall send--one to Peking, one to Amoy, one to Tang-chon, etc. The papers also arrived in due time and will soon be scattered over China. The books ordered came by last mail, received two or three days since. Since writing the above, the Concordance and Diaglott came. I cannot thank you enough for the kind letter received at the same time. I am using my Dawn, and the others and the papers are being scattered broadcast over the land. The Rev. Bp. S. has a Dawn. You may be sure I lose no opportunity to tell the glad tidings.14
1 View from the Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, May 1883, page 1.
2 Randal, Horace A: Present Truth in the Far East, Zion’s Watch Tower, May 1, 1900, page 150.
3 School teacher: Rasmussen, C. A.: History of Red Wing, Minnesota, 1933, page 217. Church support: Fifth Annual Report of the Woman’s Presbyterian Missions of the North-West, Chicago, 1876, page 92.
4 The China Mission Handbook: First Issue, American Presbyterian Mission Press, Shanghai, 1896, page 199. Arthur H. Smith: Rex Christus: An Outline Study of China, The Macmillan Co., New York, 1904, page 112.
5 Records of the General Conference of the Protestant Missionaries of China, Held at Shanghai, May 10-24, 1877, Presbyterian Mission Press, Shanghai, 1878, pages 2, 5. Survey of Missions of the Board, The Foreign Missionary of the Presbyterian Church, January 1871, page 203.
6 Woman’s Work for Woman, September 1872, as quoted in Margaret E. Burton: The Education of Women in China, Fleming H. Revell Company, pages 45-46.
7 Woman’s Work for Woman, January 1874, as quoted in Margaret E. Burton: The Education of Women in China, Fleming H. Revell Company, pages 50-51.
8 Hong Kong, The Daily Press, 1894 edition, page 100.
9 Nathaniel Gist Gee: The Educational Directory for China, Second Issue, Education Association of China, 1905, page 22.
10 Bliss, Edwin Munsel, editor: The Encyclopedia of Missions, Funk and Wagnalls Company, New York, 1891, Volume 2, page 252.
11 Wah, Carolyn R.: Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Empire of the Sun: A Clash of Faith and Religion During World War II, Journal of Church and State, January 1, 2002. The article contains several errors of fact. She identifies William T. Ellis, a noted opponent of Russell’s, as a Watch Tower representative. She dates missionary activity outside the United States to “as early as 1892,” at least eleven years after it began.
12 The China Mission Handbook: First Issue, American Presbyterian Mission Press, Shanghai, 1896, page 199.
13 C.B.D.: A China Missionary Writes, Zion’s Watch Tower, October 1887, page 2.
14 C.B.D.: The Truth in China, Zion’s Watch Tower, February 1888, page 2.
His name was Joshua Tavender. His obituary appears in The Utica, New York, Weekly Herald of October 15, 1895, on page 12. It mentions his connection with Charles T. Russell, the author of Millennial Dawn.
I am in urgent need of the first name of Miss C. B. Downing, the first Watch Tower missionary in China.
I NO LONGER NEED THE FIRST NAME. HER FULL NAME WAS CALISTA B. DOWNING.
Here is her history as I have it:
A letter from Chefoo (now Yantai), China, was printed in the May 1883 issue. Miss C. B. Downing, the missionary who wrote to Russell wasn’t the one to whom an issue of Zion’s Watch Tower was mailed. Instead, it was shown her “as a curiosity.” She read it carefully and with interest, explaining that he (or she) was “somewhat out of the orthodox ruts”:
If you will send me the paper I will try and get the subscription to you in some way--for, though a self-supporting missionary, I cannot quite call myself one of the "Lord's poor" to whom you offer the paper gratuitously, for Our Father has bountifully supplied all my needs, since I gave up my salary, three years ago. I think I can get a few subscribers among my friends in China, for I find not a few who are trying to reconcile the “mercy that endureth forever” with the final irrevocable doom of all who, since the fall, have died without a knowledge of the Redeemer of the world. We have no "Post-Office Order" arrangements here, else I would send the subscription at once. [1]
Her name isn’t associated with the letter; as was most often the case the letter was published without signature. But, in 1900 another missionary, Horace A. Randle, recalled:
There has been in China for years one solitary witness for the present truth, Miss Downing, of Chefoo. This lady was formerly a missionary of the Presbyterian Board and she chanced to meet with a stray Watch Tower, about the year 1883, in which she read an article on restitution, and at once decided to subscribe for the paper. [2]
C. B. Downing was viewed as a bit odd by other missionaries. “Amongst the missionaries of Shantung I am afraid Sister Downing was considered a queer old lady having some odd notions,” Randall wrote.
As with many of the early Watch Tower readers, finding biographical information on Miss Downing is difficult. A Miss C. D. Downing appears in the 1850 Census as a resident of Boston. That Miss Downing was born about 1825. I cannot state with certainty that she is the same as the missionary teacher in China.
C. D. Downing was a school teacher in Red Wing, Minnesota, before becoming a missionary, and as a missionary was supported with contributions from Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis. [3] She arrived in China in 1866 as part of the American Presbyterian Mission, to found a girl’s boarding school at Chefoo which she did by the next year. She continued to run until sometime before 1896. [4]
Downing participated in The General Conference of Missionaries in China. She was a delegate to their convention held in Shanghai May 10-24, 1877. She was associated with C. W. Mateer’s mission in Tung-Chow (now Tongzhou) and assigned to the station at Chefoo at least by 1871 and was still there at the time of the conference. The mission at Chefoo, “the chief foreign port of the province of Shantung” was established in 1862, the year after the mission in Tunchow. [5]
China wasn’t the United States. China’s population lived in abject poverty and superstition was rampant. It was heart wrenching. Probably seeing conditions in China as they were in the mid to late 19th Century had some influence on her ready acceptance of the message of the Millennial Restitution, the restoration of an Edenic earth.
Writing to the journal Woman’s Work for Woman in 1872 she recounted some of the heart-breaking and difficult situations she met: “In my visits from home to home I see many girls growing up in sin and ignorance whom I long to get, but their heathen relatives would ‘rather they starve’ than let them come to use. Many times they reject our offers to train their girls in our school, and sell them for slaves or for worse than slaves. Poor ignorant people. They will not believe we will keep our word with them, but think we want their girls ‘to take to foreign countries or to make medicine of them.’” [6]
Two years later, another letter from Miss Downing addressed the issue of child prostitution and slavery as she encountered it. The letter was addressed to a group that “had undertaken the support of a child in her school.” She wrote: “This little girl was a slave bought from a bad woman who had become ill and sold this child to get money to buy medicine. I do not know, nor does she, what her father’s name was. … I have another little slave girl who is very pretty. Of her parents we know nothing.” [7]
By 1894 at least she was no longer associating with the American Presbyterian mission in China. The Directory & Chronicle for China, Japan, Corea, Indo-China, Strait Settlements, ect. for that year lists her as independent. [8] She moved from principal of the girl’s boarding school to the staff of Temple Hill Chinese College in Chefoo. The educational directory that lists her as on staff says: “This school is not directly under mission control. It is self supporting. The strong religious character of the school and the establishment of similar schools in the city have somewhat retarded its growth.” With a Mrs. W. C. Booth, Downing was one of two foreign teachers. There were also six Chinese instructors. [9]
Though her most obvious missionary work was loaning Watch Tower publications and discussing the message of the impending Restitution of All Things with European and American missionaries, it is certain that her message went to her students too. A contemporary publication, The Encyclopedia of Missions, said of the boy’s and girl’s boarding schools at Chefoo: “Many have been received into the church who became interested in Christianity through what they heard from the children in these schools.” [10] So while it is true as observed by Carolyn Wah, that Watch Tower missionary activity in Asia “did not start among the Asians, but among foreign missionaries,” the tendency of C. B. Downing’s activity was to reach her Chinese students. [11] Even if her contemporary missionaries and teachers saw her as a bit odd, The China Mission Handbook reported that under her care, “the school has been a great blessing to our work.” [12]
Still, her primary mission field using publications was among English speaking missionaries. Writing to Maria Frances Russell in 1887 she said: “I am giving away and lending my copies of Millennial Dawn and my papers, and any time you can send me extra copies of the Watch Tower I can use them to advantage. I expect to see a good many missionaries from other parts of the country during the summer, as this is a health resort, and I shall scatter my Towers, and lend Millennial Dawns. The last bound copy I gave away before taking the wrapper off.” [13]
Still later, in 1888, she explained her work more fully:
The Dawns reached me on the 23d of September, for which many thanks. Three of the books are now in Shanghai. The good and thoroughly orthodox Methodist sister, to whom I gave one, said, "The restitution theology is very interesting, and I am glad you have found such rest and peace in believing it." I am sure she will read the book carefully, and be benefited by it. Another book has gone into a Baptist family. And the third I gave to Rev. Dr. W., who believes in the Millennial coming of Christ, and is, I think, somewhat prepared for Dawn. One book has gone to Ching-chew-fu into the Eng. Bap. Mission. The others I shall send--one to Peking, one to Amoy, one to Tang-chon, etc. The papers also arrived in due time and will soon be scattered over China. The books ordered came by last mail, received two or three days since. Since writing the above, the Concordance and Diaglott came. I cannot thank you enough for the kind letter received at the same time. I am using my Dawn, and the others and the papers are being scattered broadcast over the land. The Rev. Bp. S. has a Dawn. You may be sure I lose no opportunity to tell the glad tidings.14
1 View from the Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, May 1883, page 1.
2 Randal, Horace A: Present Truth in the Far East, Zion’s Watch Tower, May 1, 1900, page 150.
3 School teacher: Rasmussen, C. A.: History of Red Wing, Minnesota, 1933, page 217. Church support: Fifth Annual Report of the Woman’s Presbyterian Missions of the North-West, Chicago, 1876, page 92.
4 The China Mission Handbook: First Issue, American Presbyterian Mission Press, Shanghai, 1896, page 199. Arthur H. Smith: Rex Christus: An Outline Study of China, The Macmillan Co., New York, 1904, page 112.
5 Records of the General Conference of the Protestant Missionaries of China, Held at Shanghai, May 10-24, 1877, Presbyterian Mission Press, Shanghai, 1878, pages 2, 5. Survey of Missions of the Board, The Foreign Missionary of the Presbyterian Church, January 1871, page 203.
6 Woman’s Work for Woman, September 1872, as quoted in Margaret E. Burton: The Education of Women in China, Fleming H. Revell Company, pages 45-46.
7 Woman’s Work for Woman, January 1874, as quoted in Margaret E. Burton: The Education of Women in China, Fleming H. Revell Company, pages 50-51.
8 Hong Kong, The Daily Press, 1894 edition, page 100.
9 Nathaniel Gist Gee: The Educational Directory for China, Second Issue, Education Association of China, 1905, page 22.
10 Bliss, Edwin Munsel, editor: The Encyclopedia of Missions, Funk and Wagnalls Company, New York, 1891, Volume 2, page 252.
11 Wah, Carolyn R.: Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Empire of the Sun: A Clash of Faith and Religion During World War II, Journal of Church and State, January 1, 2002. The article contains several errors of fact. She identifies William T. Ellis, a noted opponent of Russell’s, as a Watch Tower representative. She dates missionary activity outside the United States to “as early as 1892,” at least eleven years after it began.
12 The China Mission Handbook: First Issue, American Presbyterian Mission Press, Shanghai, 1896, page 199.
13 C.B.D.: A China Missionary Writes, Zion’s Watch Tower, October 1887, page 2.
14 C.B.D.: The Truth in China, Zion’s Watch Tower, February 1888, page 2.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Research Needs
The 1979 Yearbook history of the work in Canada mentions a Thomas Baker. It says (pp 78-79) that he published a booklet to explain his withdrawl from his previous church. I need a good photocopy of this. Anyone out there have one? Any photos of Thomas Baker?
A letter from "Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses" dated 06/11 says they do not own a copy of the booklet. I still need this. Anyone???
There were two advertising tracts for Day Dawn. Both reprinted chapters from the book. I need a clear photocopy of each.
The other material noted in a pervious post is still of interest. I've located von Zech's 1885 tract published by the Watch Tower. I can't afford the copy fees. Anyone out there want to split the fee? 20 dollars plus ten cents a page. The tract is in German.
As an update on other research requests:
I no longer need Vol 2 and 4 of World's Hope. I still need vol 1, 3, 5-8.
A letter from "Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses" dated 06/11 says they do not own a copy of the booklet. I still need this. Anyone???
There were two advertising tracts for Day Dawn. Both reprinted chapters from the book. I need a clear photocopy of each.
The other material noted in a pervious post is still of interest. I've located von Zech's 1885 tract published by the Watch Tower. I can't afford the copy fees. Anyone out there want to split the fee? 20 dollars plus ten cents a page. The tract is in German.
As an update on other research requests:
I no longer need Vol 2 and 4 of World's Hope. I still need vol 1, 3, 5-8.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Early Work in Canada
Documenting the work in Canada is difficult. The 1973 Yearbook and Penton's Jehovah's Witnesses in Canada both lack detail. Both are dependant on a report done by three members of the Canadian Branch Office of the Watch Tower Society.
Above is a very scarce photo of one of the early workers, William Brookman, and what follows is some of the history of the work in the 1880's. Much of this was new to me. I'm sure it will be new to most who read my posts. This is part of a chapter entitled "In all the Earth" that details the work in international fields.
Cite this material as: B. W. Schulz: The Development of Ecclesia Among Readers of Zion's Watch Tower: 1879-1887, as retrieved from truthhistory.blogspot.com
[Rough draft; comments appreciated]
The Work in Canada
There was interest in Canada during the Barbourite era. Some from Canada attended the Worchester Conference in 1872. Russell’s booklet Object and Manner of Our Lord’s Return saw circulation in Canada. A profile of his work done when he died said: “Many students of the Bible throughout the United States and Canada responded to the information derived from that book, and his correspondence became voluminous.”[1]
It is very likely that Canadians were on the original subscription list, but not certain. Russell felt no need to send special representatives of Zion’s Watch Tower Tract Society to Canada to circulate Food for Thinking Christians, so there must have been sufficient pre-existing interest upon which he could rely.
The two most significant examinations of Watch Tower history in Canada both gloss over the 1880’s, and the writers seem to have not seen the period as worthy of extensive research or they simply lack the resources. Almost exclusively documentation of the work in Canada is found in the pages of Zion’s Watch Tower. Finding other documentation is very difficult, and the lack of thorough treatment of the period is understandable. Almost the only external reference to preaching in Canada is the letter sent to the editor of The Rainbow mentioned in the section on the United Kingdom.
The earliest correspondence from Canada noted in The Watch Tower is a letter from Ontario published in the January/February 1882 issue. The writer is, as was usual, unnamed. He thanked Russell for sending “the papers,” asked to be entered as a regular subscriber and asked, “Will you kindly advise me in regard to severing my connection with the church of which I am a member?” He explained that they should no longer attend their previous church “because it would be consenting to their teaching, which I do not now believe.”[2]
While tracing interest among Canadians during the 1880’s is difficult, there are hints of it. In October 1883, Paton included a notice in his magazine that he couldn’t use Canadian postage for subscription payments.[3] Since most of Paton’s early readership came from those who also read Zion’s Watch Tower, this notice presupposes Canadian interest.
A “Pastor Brookman” appears in the pages of Zion’s Watch Tower first in 1886, as on of the principal evangelists associated with the Watch Tower movement. He attended a meeting of evangelists in Allegheny held in connection with the Lord’s memorial meal in April that year.
William Brookman, originally an Anglican clergyman, was born in England. After living in “the East Indies” for a period, he immigrated to Canada in the late 1840’s.[4] He is listed a Gazetteer published in 1869 as a traveling agent for The Upper Canada Bible Society.[5] One source claims an association with Methodism from which he separated “on the eternal torture question,” and another with a Baptist congregation.[6] The connection to Methodism is a misstatement. Brookman, balding and with a huge fluffy beard, was briefly pastor of the First Baptist Church at Brantford.[7]
Brookman organized “a purely undenominational organization, no possessing any distinctive appellation” in June 1881 “when about thirty of the present members with their families nearly all of whom had seceded from the Yorkville Baptist Church formed a new congregation, unattached to any religious sect.” The history just quoted says:
Previous to the separation—which was based upon the rejection of the doctrine of endless life in misery being the punishment for sin—Mr. Brookman had been in charge of the above-mentioned church for about a year, and prior to that again had ministered in the Church of England for nearly a quarter of a century. The main features of the belief professed by this little congregation, which numbers only fifty-six members [in 1885] , are, in addition to that already mentioned; the adoption of the great central truth of life only in Christ; the acceptation of the Word of God as the sole rule of faith and practice, and, whilst holding alone to the immersion of believers as true baptism, practicing loving-fellowship with all who love the saviour.[8]
The exact date of Brookman’s introduction to Watch Tower theology is unknown, but it was at least near the time he and those with him started their independent chapel. He continued his association with Russell into at least the 1890’s and maybe to his death in 1907, but he also corresponded with Paton and wrote an occasional article for The World’s Hope. The earliest article from him seems to be the one entitled “Eternal not Endless” printed in the January 1884 issue of The World’s Hope.[9]
It is likely that the small congregation led by Brookman were responsible for the circulation of Food for Thinking Christians in Toronto mentioned in the Rainbow article. Certainly Brookman was circulating Watch Tower material by 1886 as noted. He attended the annual Lord’s Supper in Allegheny, April 18, 1886, and on the following day spoke on the Ransom doctrine. Russell found his sermon interesting and edifying.
The morning of the memorial gathering, Brookman and others active in the work “in a more or less public way” related “how they each found the work to progress in their hands, and the methods they found most successful in their efforts to ‘preach the Gospel to the meek.’”
A brief letter addressed to Brookman from “one of the Toronto brethren” appears in the same issue of Zion’s Watch Tower that reported his presence in Allegheny for the memorial and conference. It suggested a certain amount of hesitation on the part of some to accept both the invisible presence views and Russell’s belief in the heavenly resurrection of the saints.[10]
Little more is heard from Brookman. A member of the Toronto group wrote Russell in 1891 that “Bro. Brookman is very desirous that you should be with him at his hall.” Russell spoke to the group “by urgent request” on February 22, 1891. No hint is given either as to the urgency.[11]
Russell addressed a public meeting twice before speaking to Brookman’s congregation. Four hundred heard him speak on Restitution and on the Kingdom of God. That evening he spoke to the Toronto Believers at there meeting place, Jackson Hall at the corner of Young and Blood streets. No topic is mentioned, but from comments made by S. D. Rogers, a colporteur working in Toronto, the church there was suffering under some form of opposition:
While the harvest work is thus progressing, and the wheat is being gathered, we cannot expect that the tares will all be gathered into bundles for burning without some resistance, and so we are not surprised to find some gnashing of teeth and gnawing of tongues. And this will no doubt be seen more and more as the servants of the Master are the more faithful and enterprising in proclaiming the message of present truth. The "hirelings" say: It is all right for you to hold these views but you should not go about telling them to others. The Good Shepherd says: "Feed my sheep." And the more we feed the sheep so much the more will the false shepherds complain. In Canada, as well as elsewhere, some of the would-be shepherds are speaking all manner of evil things against the messengers of the truth. They do not understand us a bit better than the Jews understood our Lord and his little band of disciples. Light hath no concord with darkness. At least two nominal ministers in Ontario have publicly burned the MILLENNIAL DAWN, and heaped all kinds of reproach on the author and those who are circulating this peculiar book.
The last reference to Brookman is in the September 1, 1892, Watch Tower where appears an article by him entitled “Future Probation for the Dead.”[12] Certainly not all of the Toronto Believers were favorably disposed toward the Watch Tower. The memorial report for 1899 returned a figure of twenty-one who participated. One is tempted to speculate that the urgent request for Russell’s presence in 1891 had been the fragmentation of the Toronto Believers into those who were favorable to the Watch Tower message and those who were not.[13]
The little congregation in Toronto had the same difficulty finding a suitable name as did the rest of those associated with The Watch Tower. Eventually they adopted the name Church of the Baptized Believers. It was dissolved by his request when he died on April 2, 1907.[14]
Brookman and others were active in Canada from an early period. Even if the period is poorly documented, the activity of small groups and individuals can be presupposed. Russell mentions no extraordinary efforts in Canada, probably because he had a small but active base of fellow believers.
1. Biography, The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ’s Presence, December 1, 1916, page 357.
2. View from the Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, January/February 1882, reprints page 312.
3. See the notice in The World’s Hope,October 1883, page 8.
4. Finley, Mike: Mount Pleasant Cemetery: An Illustrated Guide, Canada, no date, page 51.
5. McEvoy, H.: The Province of Ontario Gazetteer and Directory, Robertson & Cook, Toronto, 1869, page 478.
6. Methodists: C. Pelham Mulvany: Toronto Past and Present: A Handbook of the City, W. E. Caiger, Toronto, 1884, page 184. Baptists: History of Toronto and County of York, C. Blackett Robinson, Toronto, 1885, volume 1, page 318.
7. Shenston, Thomas S.: A Jubilee Review of the First Baptist Church: Brantford 1833-1884, Bingham & Webster, Toronto, 1890, pages114-115. He served them from April 3 to May 6, 1880.
8. History of Toronto, pages 317-318.
9. Brookman, W.: Eternal Not Endless, The World’s Hope,January 1884, pages 57-60.
10. See: View from the Tower, Zion’s Watch Tower, May 1886, page 1; Blessed Dying—From Henceforth, same issue, page 3
11. See: Extracts From Letters, Zion’s Watch Tower, February 1891, page 30, and see the announcement Meetings in Toronto that follows.
12. The article is on pages 282-285 of that issue.
13. Memorial Widely Celebrated, Zion’s Watch Tower, April 1, 1899, page 95.
14. Finley, Mike: Mount Pleasant Cemetery: An Illustrated Guide, Canada, no date, page 51.