Nashville Christian Advocate, October 3, 1913.
Reported Deaths
Dr. James Russell Miller
By James Riddick Laughton
On the afternoon of July 2, 1912, a glory passed from the earth. “O, how happy Jesus must be now!” exclaimed one of his little grandchildren when Dr. James Russell Miller went to be with his Friend.
“The best known and most widely read writer of devotional books in the world,” Dr. Robert E. Speer wrote of him. But he was more than that. “He was an irrefutable evidence of the truth of Christianity,” also wrote Dr. Speer. Could it have been otherwise with him who wrote, “To me religion can all be expressed in one little line, Jesus and I are friends’? That is my creed”
That was indeed the creed of J. R. Miller. Through the seventy-two years of his life he exemplified friendship with Christ. During the Civil War, as assistant field agent and later as general field agent of the Christian Commission, he showed soldiers of both sides what it was to be friends with Jesus. Through pastorates covering over forty years and through more than thirty-two years of service as an editor he lived his simple creed in such a way as to win men and women and children as few have ever won them.
It would be impossible to give within a brief compass an adequate sketch of Dr. Miller’s life. The facts of his life are few and simple. He was born March 20, 1840, near Frankfort Springs, Beaver County, Pa., of good Scotch-Irish ancestry, the second child in a family of ten children. He graduated from Westminster College, at New Wilmington, Pa., and from the theological seminary of the United Presbyterian Church at Allegheny, Pa. He was with the Christian Commission from March, 1863, to July, 1865. He served the First United Presbyterian Church of New Wilmington, Pa., from September 11, 1867, to August 24, 1869; the Bethany Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, from November 21, 1869, to 1878; Broadway Presbyterian Church, Rock Island, Ill., 1878-80; Hollond Memorial Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, 1881-1897; and St. Paul Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, 1898-1912. He was assistant to the Editorial Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Publication from March, 1880, to 1887, when he became Editorial Superintendent, in which position he served until his death.
To say that as pastor and editor Dr. Miller was eminently successful would be trite. During the nine years of his pastorate at Bethany Church 1,620 persons were received into its membership, an average of 180 a year. During the sixteen years of his association with Holland Memorial 1,817 persons were received, an average of 113 a year. During the fourteen years of his connection with St. Paul Church 1,904 persons were received, an average of 136 a year. In the thirty-nine years of his pastorate in these three Churches 5,341 persons were received, an average of 137 for every year.
As editor Dr. Miller’s fame was world-wide. Dr. W. B. Greene, of Princeton, pronounced him the “greatest religious writer of our day,” Dr. C. R. Blackall, of the American Baptist Publication Society, wrote him on his seventieth birthday: “You don’t belong to one Church or to one denomination; you belong to all Churches of all denominations.” Another editor likened him to Spurgeon in the voluminousness and variety of his literary output. “Both in continuousness and in literary charm and lasting quality even his rare genius seems to me outshone by your work, while also you kept it up to a riper age,” he wrote on the same occasion.
Though indefatigable as a pastor and editor, though the author of more than sixty books and booklets, their total circulation during his lifetime being over two million copies, this man found time to carry on a private correspondence that would have overtaxed the energies of most other men. His letters were just as he was and as his writings are sweet, helpful, simple, Christlike, with a literary finish as choice as his published writings, for Dr. Miller never slighted any work. His correspondence was scattered over the world.
J. R. Miller literally lived for others. He did not regard his time as his own, but as belonging to others for Christ’s sake. He loved people, and they loved him. At all hours of the day people were coming into his office to seek his counsel-his own members, strangers, and many who had traveled hundreds of miles to seek his advice. People came from abroad to talk with him. They were never denied, no matter how busy he was. “His secretary’s room, where the visitors waited their turn, frequently looked like the anteroom of a famous specialist,” says a biographer. He talked with all who called at his office or at his home, regardless of time or self, regardful only of their needs. Often he would go out into the city to look up some wanderer in sin of whom he had just been told, and usually he found the object of his search. Nights as well as days he was in homes of sorrow and need, helping, counseling, praying, always carrying sunshine. In age and feebleness, when unable to walk without assistance, he continued his visits in the homes of the people, going there in a cab. “His legs have been worn out in the service of St. Paul Church,” said his physician, who was one of the elders of the Church.
A woman asked Dr. Miller to visit her daughter who was dying of consumption. “She heard you pray in the house of a friend, and she wants you. We are Catholics, but that won’t make any difference, will it?”
A young woman had been detected in shoplifting by an officer in a Philadelphia department store. In the private office of a member of the firm she confessed and asked for mercy. The business man told her she would be released on one condition-that she go to Dr. Miller, tell him about her wrongdoing, and listen to what be would say to her. And this man had no personal acquaintance with Dr. Miller, and was not a member of the Church.
A visitor to St. Paul Church looked from the characteristic Sunday evening audience that filled the building to the speaker, who could be heard only with difficulty in the back of the room, and said, “ How does he do it? Where is that man’s power?” One standing near said; “O sir, if you were in trouble and Dr. Miller called on you or wrote to you, you would never ask that question again. He has built up this Church by his wonderful pastoral work.”
What was the secret of Dr. Miller’s marvelous life and powerful influence? Let him answer: “Our errand in this world is in a small way the same that Christ’s errand was. He does not now go about doing good. We are to go for him. The only hands Christ has for doing kindness are our hands. The only feet he has to run the errands of love are our feet. The only voice he has to speak cheer is our voice.”
In 1910 a young minister, in the West wrote to Dr. Miller, asking him to tell him how to make his ministry a success. A part of his reply was: “Cultivate love for Christ, and then live for your work& The supreme motive in every minister’s life should be the love of Christ& If a man is swayed by the love of Christ, he must also have in his heart love for his fellow men& I have always loved people. I have had an intense desire all my life to help people in every way& If yon love people, they will love you; and you can lead them anywhere and make anything of them it is possible to make” He delighted to quote Dr. Alexander Maclaren’s words: “To efface self is one of a preacher’s first duties.”
Dr. Miller lived up about as nearly as a man could to the ideal of Louis Kossuth: “I would like my life to resemble the dew, which falls so noiselessly through the night and just as silently passes away as soon as the rays of the morning’s sun beam upon the earth. Unnoticed by men’s eyes, save for an occasional iridescent sparkle here and there upon some blade of grass, it is drawn upward and passes away; but all that it has touched is freshened and beautified by its silent yet potent presence.” Truly
“Just the art of being kind
is all the great world needs.”
And J. R. Miller had a genius for kindness.
Source: www.tngenweb.org/records/davidson/nca/nca11-09.htm
Dr. Robert Elliot Speer (1867 - 1947) author and secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Missions. Defined the "The Four Absolutes"
- Absolute Purity,
- Absolute Unselfishness,
- Absolute Honesty,
- Absolute Love
in a book called "The Principles of Jesus" (1902). Speer was a strong supporter of the Lords day denouncing the reading of Sunday newspapers:
"Certainly no one should take long railroad journeys on Sunday. & Sunday golf, newspapers, and all that sort of thing are bad and weakening in their influence. There are particular evidence of the trend of the man who thus abandons his birthright."
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-92) was Englands best-known preacher for most of the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1854, just four years after his conversion, Spurgeon, then only 20, became pastor of Londons famed New Park Street Church (formerly pastored by the famous Baptist theologian John Gill). Nearly all of Spurgeons printed works are still in print and available from Pilgrim Publications, PO Box 66, Pasadena, TX 77501.
As an example of a website dedicated a single Christian life and works
is well worth a
visit