| The Life of Dr. J.R. Miller |
Chapter 8 |
Page 5 |
“This is far from all that his varied and untiring industry affected in the organic educational and literary work of the Church. His own books, and his editorial services in the book department of the Presbyterian Board of Publication, set new standards of quality and aim, addressed with kindly shrewdness to the changing conditions of thought and life. Denominational acerbities disappear under his touch. Needless frictions are abated. Truth is so presented as to seem at once weighty and winsome. Inanities, crudities, discords, clumsiness and antiquated forms cease to clog our literary machinery. Doctrinal soundness becomes wedded to an engaging manner and modern attire. The entire output of our publications is on a higher level and wears new charm. Subsoil tillage clothes worn fields of truth with living green and adorns the very roadside with fruitage and bloom. Books and periodicals become good to look at, easy to read, and no longer adulterated with material nauseous to taste and trying to digestion. The entire work of generating an authoritative Christian literature has to a notable degree been unostentatiously rejuvenated, and infected with new vigour and attractiveness.
“How did he so accurately forecast events, show such skill in selecting assistants and associates, acquire such sanity of judgment, so fully and firmly grasp a novel and complex situation, and maintain such indomitable and diversified industry to the end? Where did he secure such singular wisdom in adjusting his methods at once to the exacting machinery of denominationalism, to the vigorous mechanism of print, publication and finance, and to the needs and appetites of his vast and inchoate public? The answer is that all this was a vital outgrowth and product. The tides of the divine life coursed freely through his spare frame, and were laboriously wrought into all his energies and capabilities. He was a man of heart, and at the same time of ideas, method, momentum and ceaseless activity. His achievements, here as in other domains of toil, are the embodiment of his spirit, his conception and his unhurried but ceaseless labour.
“He brought to his great task a life thoroughly disciplined. He had schooled himself to be always gentle, considerate, appreciative, and wary; and thus he seldom or never failed in his judgment of persons sought neither as associates and helpers, nor in winning and inspiring them, and in holding them steadfast. He had acquired decision of character, serenity of spirit, a persuasive winsomeness of manner, and an aromatic piety fed daily at the springs. If ‘the final aim of art is to reveal the attractiveness of personality,’ then Dr. Miller was a great artist. But he did not arrive at his unique power of specific and large achievement without assiduous toil reaching daily to the roots of his being. Sympathetic study of Dr. Miller, perhaps most notably in presence of his career as editor, is that most interesting and alluring thing, the study of a gracious and charming personality highly vitalized by the Spirit of God.”
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