We are trusted to spread the spirit of love. Tenderness in judgment, the habit of thinking the best of one another, unwillingness to believe evil, grief if we are forced to do so, eagerness to believe good, joy over one recovered from any slip or fall, unselfish gladness in another’s joys, sorrow in another’s sorrow, readiness to do anything to help another entirely irrespective of self – all this and much more is included in that wonderful word love. If love weakens among us, if it ever becomes possible to tolerate the least shadow of an unloving thought, our Fellowship will begin to perish. Unlove is deadly. It is a cancer. It may kill slowly but it always kills in the end. Let us fear it, fear to give room to it as we should fear to nurse a cobra. It is deadlier than any cobra. And just as one minute drop of the almost invisible cobra venom spreads swiftly all over the body of one into whom it has been injected, so one drop of the gall of unlove in my heart or yours, however unseen, has a terrible power of spreading all through our Family, for we are one body – we are parts of one another. If one member suffers loss, all suffer loss. Not one of us liveth to herself.
Amy Carmichael

Jehovah’s Witnesses: The Brooklyn Daily Eagle

This entry is part 44 of 130 in the series CULT or NOT

CULT or NOT

Jehovah’s Witnesses: The Brooklyn Daily Eagle: November 1, 1916

    A year after this publication, The Watch Tower, had been established, Russell married Maria Ackley in Pittsburgh. She had become interested in him through his teachings, and she helped him in running the Watch Tower.
    Two years later, in 1881, came ‘The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society,’ the agency through which in later years ‘Pastor Russell’s sermons were published (as advertisements) in newspapers throughout the world. This Society progressed amazingly under the joint administration of husband and wife, but, in 1897 Mrs. Russell left her husband. Six years later, in 1903, she sued him for separation. The decree was secured in 1906 following sensational testimony and ‘Pastor’ Russell was scored by the courts.
    There was much litigation then that was quite undesirable from the ‘Pastor’s’ point of view regarding alimony for his wife, but it was settled in 1909 by the payment of $6,036 to Mrs. Russell. The litigation revealed that ‘Pastor’ Russell’s activities in the religious field were carried on through several subsidiary societies and that all of the wealth which flowed into him through these societies was under the control of a holding company in which the ‘Pastor’ held $990 of the $1000 capital and two of his followers the other $10.