The following is an article by Brother Robert H. Boll which comes from a relatively early period in his life as a preacher, in 1905. He had just settled in Louisville's Portland Ave. Church of Christ after seriously contemplating a position as college professor in the newly founded Southwestern Christian College in Denton, Texas, a forerunner of Abilene Christian University. At the time he was also a frequent contributor to several journals, including Brother James A. Harding's Christian Leader and the Way.

The article exhibits a trait which is characteristic of Brother Boll: independence of mind and spirit. In fact, during his dispute with the Gospel Advocate in 1915, he made the freedom of the Christian a main point in his discussions and considered his views on prophecy to be included in such evangelical freedom. He saw that freedom vanishing when only one party line was being propagated. Thus he defended his eschatological views with reference to a wide spectrum of millennial thinking in the past. He wrote in a letter of 26 May 1915 to J.C. McQuiddy:

If old Bro. J L Martin can publish the Voice of the Seven Thunders; Johnson his Vision of the Ages; A M Morris his Prophecy Unveiled; if the Standard can give Battenfield's book seriatim to its readers and no one fear any divisions of Churches from these causes, why should my humble teaching cause it? Unless, indeed, some should rise up in unbrotherly intolerance and by unbrotherly practices try to force a division; but in that case, those men would themselves be the dividers, and the Lord will hold them to account.

In yet another letter to McQuiddy, of 19June 1916, he refers to Bother David Lipscomb's freedom of espousing controversial views in his Civil Government and positions himself squarely within a biblical theology that is only responsible to the Word, wherever that may lead. He writes:

As for myself I have only this to say that I expect to stand for the word of God in toto; ready to teach fearlessly all I find in it; ready always to adjust myself to its increasing light. And whatever comes and goes, a sectarian I will not be. If any brethren should wish to cut themselves off from me on sectarian principles, and thus constitute themselves a sect, I could not help that. As for me I stand four-square on God's word; ready at the same time to fellowship all other children of God, and that even regardless of their positions on the prophecies.

For him, the holding of differing views on the prophecies became a touchstone of Christian freedom. He rejected especially the demand by the other editors of the Gospel Advocate, to present a Gospel Advocate position and wrote on 2 December 1915 to A.B. Lipscomb :

... and when Brother Kurfees asked, "Do you subscribe to the position of the Advocate then?" I promptly replied "I will do no such thing, I do not know what the "position" of the Advocate is, or might turn out to be. I can subscribe to nothing and nobody except Jesus Christ."

Boll is fierce and without compromise in his defense of the individual, so much so that at times the word coined by Ernst Troeltsch for his friend Max Weber can be applied to this German immigrant as well: "Wahrheitsfanatiker," truth-maniac (I owe this translation to Richard David Ramsey). It's half compliment, half reproach or warning, because such pathos for truth can all-to-easily turn into hybris, a danger Boll was aware of.

The following publication, written long before the premillennial controversy, breathes the same spirit of independence and was directed, I think, to his fellow Christians in the Churches of Christ. It is telling that Boll invokes in the final sentence Martin Luther's famous dictum at the Diet of Worms. Here it becomes a plea for private judgment and individual responsibility, which had a rough ride in our tradition during the century that was then beginning and is now drawing to a close.

Editor.

When a teacher forgets his true work and begins to work for admiration, when he makes efforts to show his pupils how clever he is, and how much more he knows than they, he is like the salt that lost its savor -- he is good for nothing.

When a preacher is taken up with his reputation, and works to make an impression, and to have it said of him that he is a great and learned and powerful man, he loses all his worth. Besides, he is pursuing small game; for what if he gains his end? People speak in highest terms of a man to- day and forget him to-morrow. Next day they may hiss him. Is it worth while?

The heart feels more than it knows. If you are a man-pleaser, a flatterer -- if you are self- seeking in your work, courting smiles when you should woo souls, grasping at recognition and glory when you should snatch brands from the burning, you may earn the praise of men's lips for a season, but their hearts will despise you. On the other hand, if you are true to God and to yourself and your fellow-men, they may condemn you with their lips, but in their souls they will respect you. Strange dual beings, men are! They may not know why, they may not be conscious of it sufficiently themselves to even state the fact, but the heart of the most ignorant, even of a child, feels genuineness and distinguishes it from falseness, and discriminates twixt love and selfishness. On the surface is the flesh, boisterous and blustering, applauding what pleases it, condemning what opposes; but beneath is the truer tribunal, the higher self. When the storm of carnal passions has ceased, it asserts itself. So it happens that though it is

"Right forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne,"

yet "that scaffold sways the future," while the throne built upon rotten foundations falls into night and nothingness. Deal with the hearts of men, not with their flesh or their carnal minds. Behind every human eye sits an awful judge who will justify or condemn you according to your real deserts. If you want real power and abiding praise, you must be true and unselfish. "He that rebuketh a man shall afterward find more favor than he that flattereth with his tongue" (Prov. xxviii. 23).

The Beef Trust or the Standard Oil is not the worst menace in the trust line. What when men form trusts, tyrannizing and iron-handed, controlling God's truth, so that none under their power can get the word of life except as it passes through their hands? They have done that, and are doing it. They will let you have truth, some truth, but it must bear their stamp and trade mark, and be limited, qualified, and sometimes adulterated, according to the peculiar "orthodoxy" of the combine. They keep their customers cowed; they cow one another.

In passing through Colorado, my train stopped at a small town, and a swarm of boys came, crying out, "Cherries; ten a bag! Ten a bag!" Now, the "bag" looked like it might hold a dozen or so of cherries. They did not sell hardly one bag. When they stood discussing I stepped out on the platform and said: "Boys, that's outrageous -- you know that a few cherries are not worth ten cents. You must be fair, and `live and let live.' If you try to make exorbitant profits, you will be losers in the end. If you put the price down to five cents, it will still give you a fair profit, and you will sell more. No reasonable man likes to be robbed, even of one nickel. I will take a bag for a nickel, and probably a good many others would." The boys looked guilty and half minded to give in. The question was who would give in first. Probably all were anxious to sell at a nickel (for that would have evidently paid them well enough), but each one was afraid of the rest. One little fellow dared to advance on the proposition. "Say you'll take one for a nickel?" I told him I would. He hesitated, took a sack from his basket, half held it out to me, the others looking on with queer expression, and looking at one another. Just then one of the boys cried, "Scab, Jack!" And quickly Jack put the sack back into the basket, and turned away saying, "You're too cheap for me."

I have thought about that little scene often since. Those boys had an understanding, a combine, and had one another mutually cowed. How often that is done in larger spheres of life -- even (I might say especially) in spiritual spheres. You have seen men convicted of the truth, and afraid to acknowledge it. Afraid of what? Afraid of their comrades, fellow-members of the spiritual combine. And they perhaps equally anxious to accept the truth, but each one afraid of the rest; yea, and each one ready to wall up his eyes and utter pious anathemas upon the head of him who should first dare to follow his conviction. Strange, wonderful power of a combine -- and hard to tell where the power is located! You may say that it is vested in the people that compose it and manage it -- but each one of them may feel the bondage and be anxious to escape, but where is the hero who will burst the fetters and face the meanness and weakness of those whom he is emancipating? It would be interesting to read the deeper thoughts of some assembly that have met for mutual fortification. How many have doubts as to the strict truths of a tenet they are loudly contending for, even to the very leader himself! If they would just speak out their real heart, perhaps they would all be found like-minded on some higher and nobler conception of truth. But, no! The leader cannot afford it, partly because of his reputation, partly because he is afraid to put notions into the head of the flock and turn them away from the good, beaten path; whereas of the rest each trembles at the thought of being stigmatized as heterodox or unsound by his fellows. So they talk much and loud, and condemn the heretics, and call one another orthodox, and instead of being true to the light they saw, they choose darkness, comforting themselves in one another and in the crowd, all because of sheer moral cowardice.

There is no way of escape from such bondage, except via the Word of God. You must lay aside all that preoccupies your heart and your mind, and go straight to God's Word. There listen, there learn, and obey, no matter where it may lead. For shall any middle-man and manufacturer come between you and the Fountain? What man has more right to the pure and whole truth than you? What man has authority to limit you to such and such portions and interpretations of it? Must you howl with the wolves? Is the name of being "orthodox," "straight," "sound," and whatever else they call it, more to be coveted than sincerity and truth? As for being with the crowd and the multitude -- can that help you? Nay, you are alone. Alone you will be judged. What others believe and call true cannot affect your individual responsibility before God. You must know your own way, must hear with your own ears, must see with your own eyes. No man may dictate to you what you must believe. No man may lord it over your heart and conscience. No threats or smiles, commendation or condemnation, honored prejudices, granted tenets, popular voices, must influence you. Nothing is true but the truth. Before I can accept anything it must stand the test of truth to my mind. But if you follow that principle, you will have occasion to face enemies and say, as Luther once said, "Here I stand -- God help me! I can not do otherwise."