READER'S EXCHANGE

 

I finished your Stone-Campbell Movement. It is the best of all the histories of this movement I have read, and I suppose I have read most of them. This is my conclusion: Stone and the Campbells said that we are not to require anything of people unless there is a clear expression of it in the Scriptures. As time went on this freedom plea was changed to a bondage cry that said we are not to allow anything unless there is a command, example or necessary inference for it. That change broke down a great and a good movement and has brought division after division. —Frank Poynor, Portales, NM.

After all of these years it is time for the Stone-Campbell churches to accept each other as fellow Christians and let the differences take care of themselves over time. I didn’t think I would live to see the beginning of such a movement. I don’t believe the Lord will let it die, provided He can find those of us who are willing to try to continue it. —Ralph E. Davis. Kirkwood. Mo.

Keep us in your prayers. The challenges are enormous. I have seen miracles. I take great comfort in Jer. 32:17: “Ah, Lord God! Behold, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for you.” My wife asked me the other day what my six favorite magazines were. I listed Restoration Review first. —Larry O. Toney, pastor, First Christian Church (Disciples), New Kensington, Pa.

I want you to know that my brother Harry Sutton died on Sept. 6. We wept but we also rejoiced. At his last Sunday at church he had to quit teaching in the middle of his class because he was so weak. We remember in one of his prayers he quoted what Ouida said about Carl Ketcherside, “He stays with his knitting,” and he often quoted you in class. My greatest grief is that when the churches in the county got wind that he was no longer against an instrument in worship for those who chose to use it they quit calling on him to pray. He always prayed such a beautiful prayer from the heart, so when he attended revivals all over the county they would call on him. But they hadn’t for years. He was hurt, but he shouldn’t have been. It is the ones that treated him that way that I feel sorry for.- Tena Carmack, Curve, Tn.

(This dear brother, Harry Sutton, called me to preach at his country church in Tennessee when I was still in college. We were friends for a half century. Our condolence! to his dear wife Jewel. As for those who rejected Harry because he refused to draw the line on his brothers in Christ over matters of opinion, I can only hope that they will die as free in Christ as he did. May God forgive us our petty sectarianism! —Ed.)