Vol.IV No.VII Pg.1
August 1967

"My Record" In 1890

Robert F. Turner

Searching for "quote" material in Gospel Advocates of 1890, we found the following -- too long for our regular "quote" page, too good to be cut or left out. Read it with care!!

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"Bro Lipscomb, and Bro. Wilmeth, and the CHRISTIAN COURIER, and several others have been looking up my record to see whether or not I have changed my convictions concerning missionary societies and such like. Bro. Lipscomb thinks I have changed, the COURIER seems to doubt it, and Bro. Wilmeth thinks I am nothing but aTrojan horse anyhow and a very poor specimen of decidedly scrub stock at that.

I am perfectly willing for the brethren to amuse themselves and while away their spare time discussing my convictions, but I hope they will handle my record very tenderly. It is a good enough record if let alone, but it will not bear rough handling or a close inspection. Still, it is no slouch of a record after all considering that it is the first one I ever made. I could make a much better one now if I had time and needed it, but this one is good enough for all the use I have for it. I don't expect to go to heaven on my record or pedigree anyhow. In earlier years I damaged my record very seriously by using it too much. The fact is, I was very proud of it, and, not knowing exactly what it was good for -- or, rather, that it was not good for much of anything -- I tried to do all sorts of absurd and impossible things with it. If people seemed to doubt the rectitude of my life or the orthodoxy of my doctrine, I tried to silence the gainsayer by a great parade of my record. If I wanted a job of preaching or a situation in business, my record had to bear the strain of proving my fitness. If I moved into a new neighborhood or tried to court a strange girl, I straightway unrolled my record and spread it out to be trodden under foot of men. Indeed I was fool enough to think that if I could only get one end of that everlasting record fastened to the top of the Jasper Walls of the New Jerusalem, I could yank myself over the walls into the heavenly

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