The Johnson City comet. (Johnson City, Tenn.) 1916-1917, 1916-10-19
DIR. JOHN NJ. GROVES VEL
COME ADDRESS AT HOLST0N
CONFERENCE LAST WEEk

l am chargeable tonight with the
anomalous offense of having prepar-
ed an extemporaneous address. l am
not going to bore you, but if | should
you will please to remember that l
am merely the gimblet and brother
Emmert is the borer. He has thrust
upon me a very sup%erfluous honour,
that of welcoming my big sister to
my household. | am admonished that
if | undertake to Crow too long | am
to be curtailed.
In ten minutes l must do all my
counting, and so | must regard you
all as very susceptible to my wooing.
OF course you are welcome. Come in
and make yourselves at home, and if
you do not see what you want ask
for it, and we will try to get it for
you. You will not find us in the same
fix thirty pastors caught Or. Morris
one morning in Louisville, Ky. He
ran out of chairs, and f~aceteously re-
marked, II have plenty of chairs but
too much company" We have chairs
and cheers for all our callers.
You are come into a city of broth
erly love. We have been baptized
into one body of fraternal unity. But
lstt1o 10 cnoto rinr ihioptru ~ org
the harmony of our inter-denomina-
tional fellowship. Our Gospel Special
is we'll equipped for through passage.
With the Methodist fire and the Bap-
fist water we have an abundance of
steam and noise. Our brave Riddell
of the Christian church make a splen-
did engineer, with his hand upon the
throttle and his eye upon the rail-"
and no side-tracks. Our royal Rowe
of the United Brethren church keeps
the finest fuel under the engine, and
she never cools off, even on a stand
still. Our bestowed Dobbs of the
Presbyterian order makes a very
trustworthy conductor, if you have
a through ticket, for he allows no stop
overs. Our well-gowned Jonnard of
the ~Episcopalian faith has charge of
the Pullman coach and will entertain
you in the observation car, where SUI
pe%rintendent Green of the Baptist
company will show you the ever
green fields of unfailing grace and
beauty. At hungry time please to
join us in the Diner under our genial
and generous Chef, brother Emmert.
If you are too poor to go to the Diner
call on our big-hearted Clemens of the
Associated Charities and get you a
square meal. And there is no Slack
in giving the Staff.
Johnson City is a city of magnifi-
cent manhood and musical woman
hood, of cultured parenthood and
cheerful childhood, of an ideal home
life nesting amid the t~ree-crowned
hills as beautifully as did the City of
David amid the hills of the Holy Land.
Our atmosphere, fragrant with the
elixir of life, will give you a feeling
of climatic felicity. Our crystal wa
ter out of the M|ountain-heart you vii
find almost as pure as the river that
makes glad the City of God. Our
schools adorn crests and Wales, width
er come over 80 per cent of our chill
dren, and they are under the leader
ship of the finest trained minds to be
found in any city. Over a thousand
men are in our Bible classes and the
same number make the wheels hum
in our industries. At least three
thousand are enrolled in our various
Sunday Schools, and about three
fourths of Il poulation are identi-
fled with our church-life.
We can say with st. Paul, that we
are citizens of no mean city" Our
Comet" flashes that fact to the ends
of the earth. Under such conditions
l am glad to welcome you all in the
name of a sister Methodism. We once
kept house together, but our brother
in black got us into a little trouble
and we agreed to separate, but
though distinct as the pillows we
have been one as the sea-" The best
minds and hearts in our common
Methodism have kept in view the gol.
den motto of C~hristendom, "in essen
tials, unity; in n~on-essentials, liber-
ty; in all things, charity"
We undertook the experiment of
self-government as a church, in de-
fiance and defeat of any foreign ruler
ship, at the same time this American
nation undertook the same thing. And
we have kept the genius of our church
politics in accord with the genius of
II civil statutes. Our very creed
commits us to such a career. We
brought into the nation our distinc-
tive gospel propaganda, four-fold, (a)
salvation for all men, (b) salvation
from all sin, (c) salvation that may
be known, and I'D salvation that
must be told. And this salvation,
impartial, universal, conscious, and
confessed, was made possible, practi-