The Intelligencer

HIGHEST PRAISE FOR DR. JOHN E. WHITE
ATLANTA MAN WRITES TO BAPTIST COURIER REGARDING HIM.
GREAT MINISTER
Victor I. Masters Regards Him in Many Respects as Best in South's Baptist Ministry.
The following is taken from the Baptist Courier and will be of interest to many people in Anderson. Mr. Victor I. Masters, the writer of the article, formerly lived in this city and is well known here. His words are full of praise for Anderson's new pastor for whom welcoming services are to be held tonight.
The article follows:
While Dr. John E. White, pastor for the last fifteen years of the Second Baptist church of Atlanta, is well known among South Carolina Baptists, both in connection with his distinguished service in Atlanta and in the equally responsible and faithful years preceding when he was State Mission secretary in North Carolina, I believe the brethren of South Carolina will be glad to have a word from me about Dr. White, in connection with his coming to the pastorate of the First Baptist church at Anderson.
This is Monday, July 26. On yesterday Dr. White was the central figure in farewell services in which, at the Second church in the morning and at night on the State capital steps and lawn across the street, where he preached to a throng of 4,000 people, participated in not only by the representatives of other Baptist churches of the city, but by a number of leading churches of other denominations.
At night Dr. White preached from the text, "Now abideth faith, hope, love these three; but the greatest of these is love."
During the day the departing pastor and his wife were presented with a number of beautiful presents from the church and others; tokens of love and admiration.
This morning at the Baptist Ministers' Conference we had a love feast, with Dr. White as the central figure. It was all impromptu and spontaneous.
There are perhaps about forty ministers in the Atlanta conference, and for all the years of his service here Dr. White has been a strong personal force in this body, working always toward the magnifying of good fellowship and fellow helpfulness in kingdom service. This he has done with consummate tact and without ostentation. This morning we had a fine time. Dr. White made one of the most remarkable addresses I have heard and it melted us all, though Dr. White is not emotional in his method, and the effect was with no purpose of his.
It gives me pleasure to write for The Courier these words, and to tell my brethren and friends in South Carolina how much I esteem and admire the gentleman who is coming to serve one of the greatest churches in the state or in the south. I suppose there is no man in Atlanta, which with its urban-tract environs now numbering more than 225,000 souls, who during the last decade has been more influentially associated than Dr. John E. White has been with the constructive, forward-going, up-looking forces of society.
Pastor of a church which has in its membership not a few of the most prominent business, political and professional men of Georgia, Dr. White has never for a moment lost or allowed his church to lose sympathy for the great body of laboring people, or for the poor and the outcast.
In the Men and Religion Movement which in recent years has wrought so ably in the fight for purity and cleanliness in this city, he has been one of the most trusted leaders and counsellors. When the houses of ill fame were closed, he went in person among the poor social outcasts and offered them homes and a chance to come back to lives of self respect.
But to try to tell all the various ways in which a man of large and gracious personality and broad sympathies is called on to serve society, when he becomes pastor of a large urban church, is beyond the scope of this article. The big city church offers a "killing" task to a minister. With more work for him to do than any man can do, looking after its internal welfare, his prominence at once makes him the center of a concerted movement by literally dozens of religious and civic forces of the community at large, which seek his membership on boards and committees galore, his presence on platforms to give vogue to this, that and the other, and his service in delivering this special sermon, that special address, etc.
I have for years been privileged to be "somewhat closely associated with quite a number of these pastors of big city churches.
Really I do not see how the pastors hold up under the intense strain. It requires great brains, great physical vitality, great tact and a great heart. It is enough to squeeze the life out of a man.
The big city church pastor's position is an anomaly. He has prominence. Poor man, how well he earns all he gets, full measure, pressed down, running over.
Dr. John E. White is one of the biggest personalities I have ever had the privilege to come in contact with. I say this deliberately. He is a Christian statesman, a lover of his brethren, a denominational work-in-harness man, a friend to every needy and every worthy cause, fearless, poised, always cool, always in command of himself and his unusual resources of heart and mind, always ready to help.
In theology he is a conservative progressive. If this hyphenated word may be used in taking a squint at theology. I mean he is in fullest sympathy with the effort to preach the gospel in terms of the needs of our own complex civilization, including social welfare in its abounding moods and tenses; but back of all and inspiring him to all is the fact that he always sees Jesus, the Christ and Saviour, and only in him expects to find a spiritual dynamic to cure the evils about which social science gathers its staggering statistics.
My church membership is in one of the suburban churches near my home, but sometimes I have gone to hear Dr. White at the Second church and always with profit. I share fully in the general sense of regret here at his leaving Atlanta. How much we seem to need him here as citizen, Christian, pastor, preacher, writer, board member, Georgia Baptist, what not—he has served and served ably and with distinction in all these and many other relations.
But, as a native of Anderson and a member in my boyhood of the First church there, I have also joy at Dr. White's removal to Anderson. I know how whole-hearted and big-brained and manly and loyal those Anderson and Anderson county folks are. I have pride and satisfaction in thinking how many of them are my kinsmen and friends.
I want to tell them all and severally: You will be glad to love and admire Dr. White and Mrs. White and their children. Dr. Vines led the great church with splendid ability and truly remarkable success.
Under Dr. White the old church will continue its remarkable upward movement.
May I say a word to Saluda association churches:
Dr. White announced this morning to our conference here his purpose to form a Saluda Association Pastors' conference.
Dr. White does things like that because he cannot but do them. I suggest to my friends in the country churches to accept this minister with open hearts at once. Do not waste time sizing him up. He is all gold and has been tried in many a fire.
Come along to that conference for you need it. And I prophecy you will come, even though I know that some of you may be half disposed not to do it, because I said you should and would.
Thanks to The Courier for space to say these intimate things about a man whom I regard in many respects the greatest Southern Baptist minister we have today. Congratulations to Anderson and to the noble South Carolina Baptist fraternity.
Keep this gentleman as long as Atlanta kept him and be good to him, for amid his multifarious responsibilities he has found time and a heart in him to be both good and helpful to me in a number of ways.
Victor I. Masters
Atlanta, Ga.