Henry Holsinger, 1833–1905

by Charles R. Munson

“Independent in all things neutral in nothing.”[1] With this strong personal statement Henry Holsinger began his newspaper career, though not his printing career, in Tyrone, Pennsylvania. He set before his readers at the top of his first page an attitude and a philosophy which were to guide him until his death. He was an independent spirit throughout but he was certainly never neutral. That spirit brought him to a position of leadership in the church; it brought him separation from a church he loved. It also thrust him to the forefront in leading a denomination whose history could not be written without his name figuring prominently.

Those who remembered him at his death in 1905 remembered him as a man who carried his early statement of principle to fulfillment. Balsbaugh said of him, “… It might have been said of him that the zeal he cherished had eaten him up… His one theme was more work for the advancement of the kingdom of Christ and more discretion in conducting it…. There were other men who believed as he did on the questions at issue. There were other men of ability who were his compeers in the ministry. There were other men of equal courage of convictions. But it fell to Brother Holsinger to bring the man and the opportunity together which marked an epoch in the history of the Brethren.”[2]

Who was this man who, perhaps more than any others, precipitated the division of the German Baptist Church in 1881 and following, a church which had existed since its founding in 1708 in Germany? What were the internal forces which motivated him and kept him in the forefront of turmoil?

Holsinger had a strong church background: his father and grandfather were preachers, and he was a grandson of a great-grandmother of Alexander Mack, Jr., one of the founders of the church. Despite that, he says that he was a “little wild in our time,”[3] and he regrets that he “remained outside of the Church” for a period of his youth. He admits, “The only cause of regret that I have experienced is that I did not start out sooner and keep closer to the path.”[4] He was baptized into the Tunker Church in 1855, at Clover Creek, Pennsylvania, elected to the ministry in 1866, ordained to the eldership in 1880,[5] and then elevated to the office of bishop.[6]

And after a very brief life review he asks a question and answers aright, “The remainder of my history, is it not written in the Chronicles of the Church?”[7] Indeed it was.

The publishing business, education, and the church provided almost equal motivation to Henry; perhaps the church was primary. He began rather early in the printing business, working as an apprentice under Henry Kurtz in Poland, Ohio, where the Gospel Visitor, a church paper, was published. Holsinger wanted Kurtz to make the paper a weekly publication; and when Kurtz rejected the idea, Holsinger went back to his home in Morrison’s Cove, Pennsylvania, where he taught school and worked as a farmer.[8] Sometime in 1865 or earlier he moved to Tyrone, Pennsylvania, where he published the Christian Family Companion, thus turning his real interests into practically.

While in Tyrone he purchased a newspaper office and established the Tyrone Herald.[9] But the newspaper was not his real desire; instead he preferred to direct a religious paper. The Christian Family Companion combined his publishing desires with his Christian convictions. He says of this publishing venture. “A free rostrum was announced for the discussion of all subjects pertaining to the welfare of the church.”[10] Henry Holsinger had an overwhelming desire to inform the church and to let the church speak to its own issues. Thus, in his very first religious publishing venture he allowed a “free rostrum” to provide that forum. “I do not believe,” he said, “that the press is the most effective medium for the spreading of these truths. I am persuaded, that for the present at least, it is the most expedient. This may be accepted as one of the motives that has originated this publication.”[11]

His zeal was expressed as the paper developed and as he recounted how seriously the church was in “need of reformation.”[12] He never imagined that his avid desire for a church paper and what he believed to be the benefits of the same would ultimately contribute so greatly to a division he abhorred. He says of his early recollection of the paper, “I distinctly remember my emotions on first sight and handling of our church paper [Gospel Visitor], and with what interest I read every column.”[13]

In 1870 Holsinger began The Pious Youth, a sixteen-page weekly. He wanted to supply “our youth with reading matter adapted to their special wants, in language that would be pure, and in ways that would be interesting and helpful.”[14] The year 1878 saw the beginning of The Progressive Christian, perhaps the most controversial of all his publications. Its avowed purpose was also to allow a “free rostrum” and to advance ideas which at least Henry thought would be beneficial to the church. Holsinger and J.W. Beer were responsible for the paper but they disagreed on how radical the paper ought to be, Holsinger favoring a more radical, progressive nature. When Beer bought out Holsinger and could not make the paper succeed, Holsinger bought it back and proceeded to make it more “progressive” than ever. It was the publication of this paper which ultimately led to Holsinger’s basic problems, for all issues were publicly “aired” through this medium.

But publishing was not Holsinger’s main concern, though he did call it “my favorite profession.”[15] The Church was really at the heart of Henry Holsinger’s life; publishing was only a means to an end. He saw the church in need of reform and advancement in order to “keep pace with the times.” To him and to others it was essential that the church meet the challenges of the day. It meant an “onward, a forward movement, in the right direction. To be still a little plainer: a movement by the direction of God’s Word…. Our motto is: Go on and seek to know the Lord, and practice what you know.”[16]

He wanted the church to be firmly based on the Bible and that required always a more careful understanding of the Scriptures. For instance, “We come a little nearer obeying the ordinance of feet washing, according to the example of Christ, as we learn where we could do so, by our improved facilities for learning and understanding the word of God…. The Savior does not command us to wipe one another’s feet except in the example, and the expression ‘do as I have done to you.’ Therefore we wash and wipe one another’s feet. But the Savior does not say either by precept or example, that we should salute one another with a kiss immediately after we have washed one anothers’ feet; therefore, it is not required of us to do so by authority of God’s word. And as it was not so done by Christ and the apostles when the ordinance was instituted, we hold that it would be progressing nearer to the word of God by omitting the salutation at the time of feetwashing. We would give honor to God’s word, and also to God’s silence.”[17]

For Holsinger the church had to be the church by being close to the Bible or moving closer to it. The “Bible alone” principle was a paramount issue with him. If something was not stated in the Bible it was not valid for the church. When the division approached, he reflected on what he called “their bundle of nearly 3,000 decisions—laws which they made themselves.” This he refuted by saying, “… if your creed contains more than the Gospel, it is adding to it; if it contains less, it is taking from it; if it is the same, leave it in it. If it is something different, we don’t want it. They can not show a particle of gospel authority for hundreds of these mandates.”[18]

He believed, as he said, “My church right or wrong. When it is right to keep it right, and when it is wrong to be made right.”[19] “I believe the Church is right, and its sentiments are true, but individual members may be wrong. Let us ‘prove all things and hold fast to that which is good!”[20] His church, as it became after the division, was the true church, he said, because they (Old Order and Conservatives) “hear the gospel interpreted through the church and we hear the church defined through the gospel. We accept the gospel as it says; they [Old Order and Conservatives] as AM [Annual Meeting] interprets it.”[21] In sum the church was being divided, according to Holsinger, because the church was acting out of principles that went beyond the gospel. It was not only that the church refused to incorporate the advances he urged, but that they went further than the gospel would allow.

Holsinger’s position was “… that things that are not revealed, however convenient and useful they may be, are not essential for salvation; hence, we will let the churches decide those things for themselves, for they are not essential to salvation. Whenever the Lord has commanded us to cross Fox river there we will find the bridge, and wherever we do not find the bridge there we need not cross the river.”[22] Therefore, church practices which became hardened and mandatory and unsupported by Scripture were not valid. For example, on the question of forward or backward baptism, Holsinger was asked, “Who should decide?” His reply was direct: “It would not matter who decided it for it is not essential to salvation…. But our custom is to baptize while kneeling and by forward motion…”[23] He would conclude then that the acts are by custom. He considered the Lord’s Supper in the same manner: “… the gospel has not specified it [the nature of it], and therefore it is not essential.”[24] “Where God’s word is plain we will obey and where he is silent we will be silent, and thus we will honor his silence as well as his word.”[25] Again he says, “… let us all be united in giving entire liberty in matters not taught in the Gospel.”[26] In a discussion over the cut of a certain brother’s coat, Holsinger asks: “Where do we find that order? Is it in the Bible? No, but Annual Meeting made that order, and it has no right to make rules where the Bible is silent.[27] Thus, for Holsinger, a true church acts on the basis of strict Gospel mandates and not on what he called “man-made” mandates. Those on both sides of the question were trying to learn how to face the world; they differed only on how to do it.

Holsinger was also keenly interested in education, though he had only had a “common school education.”[28] As with his printing interests, so with his educational interests, he believed that “the leadership of the church must be informed and educated.” He lamented the fact that so many of the persons in leadership could not read or write. He could, he said, “… even now close my eyes and name a dozen churches with whose elders I was personally acquainted who could not read intelligently a chapter from the Bible or a hymn from a hymnbook, nor write an intelligent notice or announcement for a communion meeting for the paper.”[29] Such positions of leadership carry more responsibility than to be simply pious, “… it bears with it a fitness to teach and a capability to use sound doctrine, to exhort and to convince gainsayers. And even more so accordingly to the usages of the church and in religious literature.”[30]

So Holsinger advocated education and gave it his full support. He coveted for others what he himself did not have, except a self-education. “He had been a school teacher in Bedford County and was successful with young people. He was a most persuasive preacher and very well read. He was an extensive traveler in the United States and visited the Land of our Lord. This he felt he must do in order to understand what he was reading and preaching from God’s Word.”[31] Undoubtedly this rather extensive self-study made him, what A.L. Garber, onetime editor of the Evangelist, called a person with “… ponderous reasoning powers.”[32]

Perhaps his own lack of education made him zealous for it in others. Well known is his advocacy for Sunday schools, but beyond that he was a prominent individual in an enterprise to establish in Berlin, Pennsylvania, a “school of higher grade.”[33] The plan was to raise $100,000 to establish the school. In less than 10 days almost $20,000 was raised. A total of $60,000 was raised by S. Z. Sharp and Holsinger, but the total amount was never reached and the school at Berlin never materialized.

The most taxing of his efforts on behalf of education came in his efforts to save Ashland College from bankruptcy. This was an extremely trying time for him. He spent more than two years trying to raise $20,000 to pay off an indebtedness. Something of his spirit emerges as he says, “This is my last call. I feel that I have done my full duty both to the college cause and in the way of admonishing you to your duty. I have a good conscience toward God and man. I have sacrificed my favorite profession and the comforts of home to myself and family, have given over two years of my time, have subscribed one hundred dollars toward paying the debt, and am over eighty dollars short on traveling expenses. … I have visited all the churches once and some twice. I have not courage left to go again, and could not afford to do it if I had.”[34] It was his most discouraging time. He encountered men with money who would not support the cause and it angered him, primarily because he had sacrificed so much himself. But he fulfilled the “duty” that was all important to him.

Yet, despite his efforts to establish or maintain a college, he did not believe that everyone should go to college. He lamented the sad intellectual state of pastors before and after the division of the church. And though he spoke often to college graduating classes, and though he became president of the Board of Trustees of Ashland College, he hesitated to recommend college for every pastor. In 1902 he observed “that many of the congregations have left the old method of calling ministers from among the laity, depending entirely on importation of their help in that line of service.… Call your own congregation together and give the members an opportunity to select from their own ‘rank and file’ those whom they would have to serve them… In congregations where the rule is continued there is no lack of ministers… I also see that some churches depend on the college to supply them with preachers. That, too is an error that will eventually ruin the denomination if persisted in… Ashland College is simply an institution of learning, to which those who have been called to the ministry by the church, may be sent to be taught the things pertaining to the duties required of them, providing the congregation that called them deems it prudent to do so. All men do not require a college education to preach the gospel. Some are hindered by a course. Each congregation will know what is best for the servant whom she has called into her service.”[35] But as he says, “I never could see that education was a dangerous thing, and had a great thirsting for more of it. I always preferred to hear a man preach who knew more than myself.”[36]

When P. J. Brown commented on William Spanogle’s assessment of progress brought about by Holsinger’s policies, he said, “Brother Spanogle has abundantly shown that brother Holsinger has led the advance guard in every movement tending toward the upholding of a higher type of intelligence in our ministry, and Brotherhood in general, and toward the breaking down of tradition, ignorance and superstition…”[37]

Holsinger recalled with displeasure a situation where conforming to the order of dress was more important than being able to be educated to preach properly. Speaking of a man of high importance who gave his preference regarding learning or conforming to the “order” he says, “If he were required to give the casting vote between two brethren with equal qualification as to spirituality and moral character, the one a man of learning and a preacher of eloquence, but who did not conform to the order in wearing his hair and clothing, and another who did conform to the order but could not preach, he would unhesitatingly accept the latter.”[38] It was the holding of such attitudes which prodded Holsinger to react and, one could say, attack.

Holsinger would have chosen, without question, the man with the education. He never questioned “The Ancient customs of the church;” they “should be respected,”[39] he said; but he wanted them not to stand on an equality with the Word of God. And he didn’t want the “customs” to stand in the way of education, which he felt was necessary to meet the challenges of the day. It was this advocacy that led him and others to question the organization of the church and its authority structure. He found some of the leadership opposed to that view and to what appeared as a disregard for the “orders of the church.” Quite the contrary for Holsinger, education was in order; the customs of the church were in order; but neither was in order if it broke with the “gospel alone” principle.

True, Holsinger was a churchman, a publisher, an advocate of education, but he was also a pastor-preacher. His record is replete with dedication sermons preached, college baccalaureate sermons delivered, pastorates held, and free-lance preaching in a variety of places.

He recalls his first pastorate, while responding to a brother despondent over his own first pastorate and not winning one sinner to repent: “I had the same trouble to contend with, and was wonderfully tempted to quit. In addition to my own trouble, I had in my employ at the time a Baptist minister who shared his temptation with me.” The Baptist preacher suggested that both of them quit preaching, and Henry responded, “I have no doubt… but that our weak effort to do right may be leading someone in the good way we are trying to point out. And so if I hold out faithful to the end, I will be sure of saving at least one soul by preaching the gospel, and one for whom I could have no assurance if I had not preached. And that one soul is worth more to me than the whole world. And so from that time on I did my best in preaching the word and left the results with the Lord.”[40]

His attitude toward preaching is that it should be, as he called it, “distinctive preaching,” meaning from both testaments. He says, “I seldom get too much Gospel distinctiveness… These principles [here he means Hebrews 6] should receive the special attention of every pastor … at least once a year at every appointment in his charge. … I especially love to hear a good solid sermon on the subject of repentance during revival services. There is no subject better calculated to break up the great fountain of every sinner’s true inwardness than that of repentance from dead work…”[41]

While not many of Holsinger’s sermons are available there are enough to know that he appears to have been an orderly preacher. “Give us plain, logical arguments,” he urged, “based upon the evident teaching of the Gospel, written in the spirit of love, so we may hope to win those who may be of contrary opinion.” In addition he asked that the sermons not be in “controversial form.”[42] His were not. Albert Trent, Holsinger’s secretary for his so-called Berlin trial, recorded a message of his on “Perfection.” He defines the term, gives numerous illustrations, then uses Biblical examples, after which he gives examples of Christian characteristics. He then urges his hearers to redouble their efforts “in pressing onward in the Christian life. “I desire to make my sermons practical… I want that you should desire to excel, not that you should take advantage of your brethren, but that you may become more holy, more truthful, more honest, and more sincere…”[43] With a few more illustrations and a brief conclusion he leaves his audience to ponder his message. He gives every evidence of being orderly, not only in his preparation, but also in his delivery. Certainly he must have had ability to have been called upon to preach so often.

Interestingly enough, he never opposed women preachers. Upon hearing Annie Shaw preach in San Jose, he remarked, “I heard Miss Annie Shaw preach an excellent sermon … I am glad I never stood in the way of women preaching, and that I belong to a church that assists them in doing so.”[44]

As a pastor he was held in high regard with much appreciation. His own attitude was that a pastor “should locate among his people, be ordained as their pastor, take charge of the church and minister to all their number, supported by them, accountable to them, and watching over them. Then he can and may be their pastor.”[45] While pastoring in South Bend, Indiana, he said, “I manage to run away sometimes week days, when strongly pressed and that at the risk of my health.” But there, as well as elsewhere, he found “the relation of pastor and people a very pleasant one indeed, and in our case it will be hard to sever; but my father used to say … ‘love binds and love relieves.’”[46]

But it was in Berlin where he received his support during his most trying times. He might also have been his busiest there. On one occasion in Berlin he borrowed a carriage, took his wife and made a sentimental journey. He reflected, “It appeared very much like old times, when we used to traverse these hills and valleys in our pastoral duties. We passed but few places at which I had not served in some capacity of pastoral services, solemnizing marriages, serving funerals, or anointing and visiting the sick.”[47] He always seemed to remember his times in the pastorates as good times, whether in California, or Indiana, or Kansas, or Nebraska, or Pennsylvania or anywhere else. He never recalls struggles with local congregations, only with the leadership of the large body. It is hard to imagine him not being outspoken in a local situation, but he must not have been. Of his experiences in the pastorate he says, “I worked along without jarring with the congregations in which I lived or the officers under whom I served for more than fifteen years.[48]

Holsinger’s reflection of his own life in his later years is rather harsh. He ponders the friends he has and says, “I thank God that I have many good friends in this world, if I have not much money. But it is beginning to be a mystery to me how I came to have them and to hold them, unamiable, outspoken, sarcastic and austere, as I feel myself to have been.”[49] There were many, not his friends, who would have agreed with his statement wholeheartedly.

In a less critical mood he said, “I wish I had another life, better life, purer life.” He never regretted “any sacrifice I made for Jesus.”[50] “I care more to please God,” he said, “than I do to please men, in gratifying a friend or appeasing a foe.”[51] One who reviewed the life of Holsinger and reflected on the criticism that Henry abused the Brethren, remarked, “… I learned that what he [the critic] saw proper to call abuse was only [Holsinger’s] calling things by their right names.”[52]

Undoubtedly it was his candor which brought him his troubles, for he took a different view of confrontation or argument. He would say, “Why can’t we argue without getting angry?” “Agitation,” he would say, “is the natural purifier. Nothing betrays the weakness of a cause so much as to have it shrink from investigation.”[53] In that sense Holsinger felt he was right in probing the church, but he paid a price. He would have to say, thinking of others, “… they were not handled as roughly as we were, nor do they deserve to be.”[54] He seemed to sense that his forthright nature was costly, though he doesn’t appear ever to regret the course he had followed. He said of himself, “We are never too proud to acknowledge a fault or recall an error.”[55]

Seemingly that willingness to admit a fault or error allowed Holsinger to be outspoken. When a contributor to his paper wrote and asked why his article was not printed, Henry replied, “You didn’t give your full name; we do not wish to discuss that issue now; and because there was nothing in it.”[56]

At times Holsinger appears very naive. Once he was asked to open with prayer the Quinter-Mitchell debate on baptism. He says, “I asked the Lord, in my opening prayer, for a special blessing on Brother Quinter, that he might be enabled to successfully defend the truth. And in order to show impartiality, I offered a prayer also for Mr. Mitchell, that the Lord would give him light to see his error and accept of the better way.” He adds, “My prayer evidently irritated Mr. Mitchell’s natural and acquired evenness of temper, as was manifest in his speeches during the day.”[57] Holsinger admitted that this was improper, as he reflected on it later, but there was an innocence about him. As one described him he said, “… his childlike nature forbade diplomacy and he hated truckling to ignorant prejudices. … It was not possible in human nature for an element so hostile to entrenched power to remain at peace within the fold…”[58] He seems often to have spoken his heart to the detriment of himself and the persons receiving.

Speaking as openly as he did he expected others to respond similarly. He asked that it be in love, saying, “In reasoning upon these subjects let the Brethren set forth an example that will confirm our profession of loving one another.”[59] He seems honestly to have a desire to carry out that same theme in some statements in his own written history of the church, though that certainly is not universally true. In writing of the German Baptist part of the division he remarks, “in the item of mission it is astonishing to notice the progress the German Baptist denomination has made during the last decade. I can truly say that I rejoice in their progress…”[60]

Perhaps no one sums up the nature of Holsinger better than the editor of the Evangelist, A. L. Garber, who wrote in response to an editorial from Henry criticizing Garber for not placing his name as editor in the periodical. Garber responds that it is his business what he does with his name and then reflects on Holsinger: “There is no person in the Brethren church for whom I have more sympathy than for Brother Henry R. Holsinger. This is because he has great excesses and deficiencies in his mental organization, with a burning desire to do the best he can for the comfort, happiness and enjoyment of all our people in earth and eternity. But to attain this righteous end, his mental excesses and deficiencies cause him … to do that which he would not, and that he would do he does not… Brother Holsinger is born for the field of contest. The combative element is strong in his nature, but his peace sentiments are also strong, and consequently he is never satisfied with himself.”[61]

Garber continues: “Bro. Holsinger is a man of great benevolence and devotion. He will do anything for a friend…. His devotion and disposition to sacrifice self are noble traits of his character… His sympathy for the distressed is great, and his hand and substance are ever ready to administer to their wants. We have this highest opinion of his devotion to duty, his kindness and generosity, his sterling intergrity, thorough honesty, and conscientious desire to do his duty before God and man.”[62] It must be remembered that this is a response to a criticism to the author of the statements. While in total it is not without its own criticism, it is still quite a testimony to Holsinger.

People did love Henry Holsinger. When his friend Howard Miller reviewed Henry’s life he said, “Before Henry grew helpless I advised him to make a tour of the old church. I wish that he had done so. Animosity had died out, and he would have had the time of his life among his one-time friends. One reason for that is the fact that Henry Holsinger was as honest as the day is long.”[63]

He seemed to have had special graces which attracted women to him. Some of the women of Pennsylvania made him a silk quilt. He requested that it be placed on his casket and then returned to them after the funeral. One sister remarked, following his receipt of the quilt, that, “brother Holsinger cast a gloom over the donation service by his doleful reference to his funeral.” Holsinger replied that he had come to “dread the grave as little as my bed.”[64] And it was the women of the church who raised a pension fund for him. When he thanks the sisters in print, he includes a remark from a man present when the fund was raised. His reference to Henry reflects the sentiment of the women and Holsinger. “If you could have heard” he says, “all the loving things which were said about you, you would have concluded that instead of being forgotten by your brethren, as some pretenders tried to make you believe, you have more true friends and admirers in the Brethren church now than at any other previous period in your useful life. The statement was confirmed and emphasized by the secretary and treasurer in their official announcement of the donation.”[65]

It was once recommended that a monument be erected somewhere near Ashland to Henry Holsinger, in the form of an “Old Folks Home.” That never materialized. But perhaps a monument stands as one reflects on his life and work. He gave his life to a church which still exists, a church, in its broadest sense, which has incorporated all the advances Henry once advocated. Had he been more subtle, more patient perhaps, things would have been different. But, as one friend said of him, “Holsinger was not a politician. He was an idealist. He did not concern himself with the infinite details of a siege progressing step by step, but charged straight for the citadel … If there was one trait of character which was so strong as to be a weakness, it was his uncompromising spirit. Yet, before the Annual Meeting which expelled him, he made extreme concessions to avoid division, but not such as would compromise his principles.”[66]

“If God hates a quitter how He must have loved Henry Holsinger. Nor was he a good waiter.” As one said of him, “To brother Henry R. Holsinger belongs the honor of being the first to point out to the church her larger duty. He saw that she was not meeting the Master’s thought of the Church’s mission in the world. Others may have seen this larger duty with him; some few before his day may have seen it, but he was first to publish it abroad. It was a tremendous conviction that grew upon him. He was restive under it. He had to give it expression. He did, and he suffered. Suffered as the prophet suffers. Thank God he lived to see the day when practically the whole Church sees the same vision.”[67]

Notes

1. The Tyrone Herald, Volume I, No. 3, August 23, 1867.
2. Brethren Evangelist, Volume XXVII, No. 13, March 29, 1905.
3. Brethren Evangelist, Volume XXI, No. 39, October 4, 1899.
4. Christian Family Companion, Volume I, No. 4 (Tyrone City, PA: October, 1864).
5. Henry R. Holsinger, Holsinger’s History of the Tunkers and the Brethren Church (Oakland, CA: Pacific Press Publishing Co., 1901), p. 8.
6. Ibid., p. 491.
7. Ibid., p. 8.
8. Ibid., p. 472.
9. Ibid., p. 472. Holsinger says he purchased the newspaper in 1863 but the newspaper itself is dated 1867. Since he kept the paper for only 18 months he could not have purchased it in 1863 and still be publishing in 1867. It appears to be a lapse of memory; yet he says it was during “the darkest days of the rebellion,” and since that would have been prior to 1867, he could hardly have confused that.
10. Ibid., p. 473.
11. Christian Family Companion, Volume I, No. 2, October 4, 1864, p. 1.
12. Holsinger, History of the Tunkers, p. 473.
13. Ibid., p. 470.
14. Two Centuries of the Church of the Brethren (Elgin, IL: Brethren Publishing House, 1909), p. 348.
15. Brethren Evangelist, Volume VIII, No. 43, October 27, 1888.
16. Progessive Christian, Volume III, No. 10, 1881, p. 2.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid., Volume IV, No. 26, p. 3.
19. Brethren Evangelist, Volume XVI, No. 10, p. 113.
20. Christian Family Companion, Volume I, No. 3, p. 28.
21. Brethren Evangelist, Volume VI, No. 18, p. 4.
22. Progressive Christian, Volume III, No. 11, p. 7.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid., No. 14, p. 7.
25. Ibid., p. 4.
26. Ibid., p. 20.
27. Ibid.
28. Holsinger, History of the Tunkers, p. 470.
29. Ibid., p. 474.
30. Ibid., p. 475.
31. Cooper, H. A., Two Centuries of Brothersvalley (Westminister, MD: Times, Inc., 1962), p. 295.
32. Brethren Evangelist, Volume VIII, No. 40.
33. Two Centuries of the Church of the Brethren, p. 319.
34. Brethren Evangelist, Volume VIII, No. 43, p. 14.
35. Ibid., Volume XXIV, No. 20, p. 16.
36. Holsinger, History of the Tunkers, p. 3.
37. Albert T. Ronk, History of the Brethren Church (Ashland, OH: Brethren Publishing Company, 1968), p. 134.
38. Holsinger, History of the Tunkers, p. 475.
39. Ibid., p. 486.
40. Brethren Evangelist, Volume XX, No. 31, p. 7.
41. Ibid., Volume XXII, No. 19, p. 13.
42. Ibid., Volume VIII, No. 22 p. 12.
43. Progressive Christian, Volume III, No. 31.
44. Brethren Evangelist, Volume XVII, No. 23, p. 8.
45. Ibid., Volume X, No. 3, p. 6.
46. Ibid.
47. Brethren Evangelist, Volume VIII, No. 3, p. 4.
48. Holsinger, History of the Tunkers, p. 3.
49. Brethren Evangelist, Volume XVII, No. 18, p. 6.
50. Ibid., Volume VIII, No. 13, p. 8.
51. Ibid., Volume IX, No. 34, p. 9.
52. Ibid., Volume VI, No. 15, p. 11.
53. Ibid., Volume XVII, No. 28, p. 7.
54. The Pilgrim, Volume VII, No. 3.
55. Christian Family Companion, Volume IV, No. 33, p. 322.
56. Ibid., Volume VI, No. 23, p. 220.
57. Holsinger, History of the Tunkers, p. 384.
58. Brethren Evangelist, Volume XXVII, No. 13, p. 2.
59. Christian Family Companion, Volume I, No. 2, p. 3.
60. Holsinger, History of the Tunkers, p. 273.
61. Brethren Evangelist, Volume VIII, No. 40, p. 6.
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid., Volume XXVII, No. 13, p. 14.
64. Ibid., Volume XX, No. 42, p. 7.
65. Ibid.
66. Ibid., Volume XXVII, No. 13, p. 7.
67. Ibid.