| The Life of Dr. J.R. Miller |
Chapter 8 |
Page 3 |
A veteran pastor and editor gave this remarkable tribute:
“The efficiency of Dr. Miller as editor and executive was highly complex in process and product, but its secret is simple. A tornado has been known to drive a soft pine board, end on, through the bole of a hardwood tree without fracture of the board. Dr. Miller’s character was disciplined to compactness of fibre; but also he had accumulated the tremendous momentum of a man consciously operating ‘under authority,’ and thus had constantly back of him the incalculable force of the Unseen. From his early years he accustomed himself to be in vitalizing, close and constant touch with God, acquiring a profound, tender and intimate sense of his presence as Father, Redeemer, Lord, Guide, Friend, Comrade and Portion. His life thus became saturated with a sense of obligation to ‘redeem the time,’ or as the phrase is now read, to ‘buy up opportunity’; so that, automatically, waste of energy and time was eliminated. He prolonged no interview in dilatory pleasure or pause of vacancy or indecision; no speech or writing was pressed beyond due limits; prompt to begin a task, he was direct and quietly forceful in the performance, and facile in adjustment and transfer; and he always knew when to quit. No willfulness, no selfishness, no momentary vacuity, remained perceptible among his traits so that he easily weeded out from his manner and utterance all that could hinder or offend, and thus became distinguished for noiseless and effective performance. And we must add to this his genius for friendships, which gave accumulative power to his work as organizer and leader.
“The depths of his secret are not probed until we reach the magic word, love. Probably more than any other executive of his time, his life served to redeem that word from the sentimentality, inanity and feebleness which characterize the common notion of its meaning. With him love was absorbed direct from God, and thus had breadth, depth, height and scope; substance, tang and force; the texture of polished steel; the momentum of light; the propelling power of electricity and the generative force of a great dynamo; directness of action like that of gravity, with its impeccable precision; and the rhythmic harmony of perfect machinery. ‘God is love,’ and J.R. Miller was God’s own child, to a very remarkable degree reflecting the likeness and reproducing the majestic but quiet force of Him who is set before us as ‘the express image; of our heavenly Father; so that in his career, somewhat as – supremely – in that of Jesus Christ, we come to see how practical and potent genuine love is, how fit for harnessing to the wheels of daily life and modern enterprise, how skillful in adjusting effort to human machinery and providential occasion.
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