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LETTERS OF INTEREST

Dear Brother Russell:—

All that I can do is to thank you very sincerely for your kindness to me during the last three years in sending me copies of all the good things which you have been giving to the world.

Looking back over the past, I do not see how I could have gotten along without them.

For 45 years, including boyhood, I could find no “Bible Story” that satisfied me: whichever way I turned I found an incomplete gospel. I was so constituted that I could believe nothing that was not complete and rational,—fitted to my intellectual capacity.

I believed that God’s words of guidance and admonition if for me would be that which I could understand. Many cardinal errors as preached and understood by many, called from me only indignant denials. I said, If it were for me I could understand it, and not be dodging around obstacles to my reason, in a vain effort to hold on and believe.

You can imagine my eager and glad surprise when the 1st Vol. of “Millennial Dawn” came into my hands. I could take it up and read it 10 minutes or an hour at a time with the greatest satisfaction. It was a never failing satisfaction, very unlike any other book I ever read. I had read the Bible a great deal—and as I followed you along,—so calmly and dispassionately—each deduction so built up by quotations from the Bible, most of them being “old friends” of mine, and as I saw that you built nothing except on the “solid rock” the Word of God, I said, At last! At last I do understand!

And so with great joy and comfort I am still following on—feasting on the truth day by day. I shall be 72 years old on the 14th day of January, 1902.

I am yours gratefully,

F. B. Browne,
California

Dear Brother Russell:—Thank you very much for your welcome letter of the 4th.

I had a good letter from a sister, who says of herself something very encouraging to me—that she read a little in the DAWNS for seven years before she became really interested. About a year or more ago, she and her husband left the Methodist Church in which both held prominent positions, and have been alone in the truth in their town since then, though she says others are partially interested.

How very true is the suggestion in our last Sunday’s lesson about our life here being to our Lord’s life on earth as 1 to 100! I can easily see myself 99-hundredths dead as compared with a perfect human being; and yet how Christ hath sweetened the scrap of life I possess, so that it is full of blessing despite its enveloping and pressing and constant limitations. Such a poor little scrap as to be quite despicable in the eyes of worldly health and healthy mental quickness and strength, yet how far I am from being willing to exchange with any one else! Once in a while I realize how my old friends stand aloof and former acquaintances have forgotten me, and feel like protesting with a bit of indignation, Why, I’m not dead! And then I recollect that I am dead, with Christ, and that hence am privileged to live with Christ, as I look up and give thanks to be in Him. And I often think of even Emerson’s words “No man ever yet stated his griefs as lightly as he might;” so if he could say that, it is much more true of the little flock. Who can so easily afford to lose earthly friends as we who have tasted of the heavenly friendship! And besides, our loss is but temporary, maybe only in appearance now. The Lord is able and willing and glad to be our all, in all, and fills our needs better than everything else could do.

Your Sister in Christ,
Alice L. Darlington,
Pennsylvania

Dear Brother Russell: I have been reading the “Dawns” and “Towers” for over three years, and have never written to thank you; but I can assure you they have been appreciated, and have established us in the precious faith. I am a widow and advanced in years; have been a member of the Baptist Church for twenty-five years, but am now excluded, with fourteen others for advocating the “Millennial Dawn” doctrines. Dear brethren I am so glad that God has given me “ears to hear” the good tidings of great joy. I have been loaning my “Watch Towers” to all that had ears to hear that I could supply.

Yours truly,
Mrs. J. E. Cox,
Tennessee

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— May 1, 1902 —