Kohelet 4

(one who addresses an assembly) 

12 The words of a wise man's mouth are gracious; but the lips of a fool will swallow up himself.

In extolling the life and writings of Dr. Thomas we are not men-worshippers.

Those who raise this cry talk foolishly. To extol the Doctor is no more wrong than it is to extol Moses or Paul. The Doctor was a faithful instrument in God's hands to perform for us, as our late brother Roberts has expressed it, the work of an apostle. He has unveiled to us the only true life-giving faith. No one claims that the Doctor was inspired.

In our generation it was not an inspired man that was required, but a competent, bold, truth-loving man to make clear and enforce what inspiration has already said. Such was the Doctor.

How interestingly—how naturally—did God manipulate this wonderful man. God did not cause him to disclose the truth all at once, but by degrees, and to a large extent by allowing enemies to oppose and revile. How many are the benefits that accrue to us through the painful and stormy experience through which the Doctor passed. His sterling counsel is largely the result of that experience, as for instance in his weighty exhortation to the late editor of the Christadelphian in the Ambassador for 1886, pp. 26–34.

So also are the expositions and explanations contained in his writings. What question is there of any moment that came not under his notice? In our simplicity we sometimes think that we have hit on something unknown to him, but only to find eventually that he had already considered it.

Sometimes also we have thought the Doctor wrong in his conclusions, only to find later on that the mistake was on our part. If brethren are wise, they will pause long before pronouncing as erroneous the well-threshed conclusions of the Doctor. The most instructed of us are but children in comparison with him.

Bro AT Jannaway

The Christadelphian, Sept 1904