Birmingham age-herald., 1895-04-21
WISDOM COMES WITH YEARS

Rev. Dr. c. B. Riddick, former pastor of the First Methodist church in Bir- mingham, has joined the Northern Meth odist church. He did not make this change to get better and larger ap- pointment than the southern church could give him, for he has retired from the pulpit and has an independent for tune. He evidently changed because his views had changed. It is this that sur prises his friends While In Birmingham he was a Southern Methodist after "the most straitest sect" He opposed Sam Jones and all other evangeliSts because he thought evangelism opposed to the policy of his church. He was very severe on Little Joe Cook the boy preacher. He believed with St. Paul that women should be kept silent in the church, and often boasted that no woman had ever run the church of which he was pastor He was a strict churchman, and created a senSa- tion by demanding that the Methodist church should be represented on the board of education. He believed in strong centralized church, and when the proposition was made to divide the First Methodist church into several congrega- tions with small churches in different parts of the city, he opposed 1t with all the force of his great eloquence and all the power of his strong personality. He bent all the energies of his indomitabe will, and put into play all the executive powers of his Napoleonic nature toward building up the First Methodist church. and succeeded in erecting church edifice as magnificent as any in the Methodist denomination, and achieved his purpose by welding together a congregation as numerous and as influential as any in the southern connection. It is then almost miraculous that he should forsake his church and unite himself with a church holding views diametrically op- posed to those he had advocated so ably. His change can only be explained on the ground that men broaden as they grow older. Not only do they broaden but like fruit they become mellow with age.
 It Is not such an unusual thing, after all, for men to change their views after they have grown older. Wisdom should come with the growth of years; as a man climbs the mountain side his view ex- bands and broadens. He has left behind him those elementary principles that he so zealously espoused when younger Hence we read that the great South early life an ardent protectionist. There is no doubt but that protection is an ele- mentary theory in the art of govern ment; 1t is the A, B, C's of political econ omy. The theory of protection is easy to e %prehend-it Is nothing more than building Chinese wall around your country The most childish of all na- tions Is China, and it hit upon that plan centuries ago. It takes broader mind to grasp the benefits flowing from an in- terchange of commodities; it takes a wider grasp to realize that this country cannot sell to other nations unless it buys from them Hence, the broader and deeper a man becomes the further does he crawl out of his shell of protec- {tion
 In the practice of finance we find men contending that this government can en- hance the value of all the silver in the world by throwing open its hints to free and unlimited coinage. This is an ele- mentary belief It was held by the fore fathers of the government. They tried it and failed. They were forced to limit the coinage of silver. Even as late as 1893 the government pursued the old pol icy. In that year Certain amount of silver was being coined, and yet silver kept going down, while now it is going up, although only a small amount is be- ing coined. The broader and wider man becomes the more does he outgrow the primary fallacies of finance.
 D. B. GRACE.