| The Life of Dr. J.R. Miller |
Chapter 8 |
Page 6 |
A more intimate message was given by Louis F. Benson, D.D., for many years a member of the Board’s Editorial Committee:
“When I became a member of the Board of Publication, now many years ago, Dr. Miller was well started on his work as Editorial Superintendent, but had not as yet developed the periodicals and lesson helps to anything like their present proportions. His beautiful character and personality, and something of his work and writings, were of course already known to me, but I was nevertheless by no means prepared for all that I found in him, and for the remarkable development of the periodical work under his hands of which I became the witness.
“The scope of the Board’s work is very wide, and few of its members can be expected to have the time and ability to cover the whole area. One has to choose the special department in which he hopes his own resources or experience can contribute something to the common stock. In this way my own attention was turned toward the periodical and book making sides of the Board’s work and I came into very close personal and official relations with Dr. Miller.
“To know him intimately was a great privilege to any man, and such knowledge had inevitably a retroactive effect. Your heart went out to him for what he was, and in the process of admiration and affection, it became greatly enriched also. His point of view was so high, his aims were so unselfish, his methods were so self denying, that you could not but regard them with a deep admiration and even reverence; but with them all you discovered a humility that was not a garment but a constitution. You came to feel that it was not your admiration that was being sought, nor any expression of it that was wanted, but only your sympathy in the aims and the work. Your special task was not to compliment Dr. Miller, but to try to lift yourself, for the occasion at least, to the level which with him was habitual.
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