CHARLES H. WELCH
18
The ideals of my parents, the attractions of both music and art, the devoted lives of one or two whose names are
recorded and their influence recognized later in these pages, all combined, under God, to shape and fashion the
plastic clay of adolescence into the vessel foreknown by sovereign Love.
Following my conversion came four or five years of rigourous discipline wherein I must confess `I lived a
Pharisee'. This period proved to be the crucible used in finishing the earthen vessel. The fires were stoked with
high Calvinism, Pharisaic Puritanism, a false application of the words `Touch not, taste not, handle not' and the
effects on mind and character that `eternal conscious torment' even upon `an unevangelized heathen' and `babes in
slums' must most surely have.
Elsewhere we have given full credit to the positive teaching that this period provided, but the `perfecting work'
was a discipline endured with much heart searching, questioning and bewilderment.
The final touch was the meeting with Dr. Bullinger at Bury Street in 1908, when the `earthen vessel' which had
been twenty-eight years preparing was at last entrusted with the `Treasure' that alone makes this record of any
worth.
We make no claims either to scholarship, or to superior sanctity, and writing this memorial so late in life, the
feeling of awe and wonder still persists and finds an echo in the words of a greater and more consecrated servant:
`Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given' (Eph. 3:8).
Whatever else the reader of the following lines may feel, he will at least find a semblance of such a passage as 1
Corinthians 1:27,28:
`God hath chosen the foolish ... the weak ... the base ... yea the things that are not ... that no flesh should glory in
His presence'.
At the time of writing this biography, the subject, Charles H. Welch, has just reached his Jubilee as Editor of The
Berean Expositor and has about fifty books and booklets to his credit, all devoted to the exposition of the Scriptures,
and all honouring that first principle of sound interpretation, namely `Right Division' (2 Tim. 2:15). No other
periodical has stood squarely for the concept that Acts 28 and not Acts 2 constitutes the Dispensational Frontier, and
no other publications set forth the logical consequences that follow the recognition of this Frontier, namely the
unique ministry of Paul as the `Prisoner' of the Lord for us Gentiles, who alone, at the beginning, received the
dispensation of the Mystery, hitherto `hid in God' (Eph. 3:1-13). Perhaps the unique character of this ministry will
justify the following attempt to cover the early years of this very earthen vessel in the hope that others, intimidated
by a similar humbleness of origin, and lack of academic qualifications together with the absence of any social
advantages, may take courage from the example set forth in the following pages, and believe that `God's commands
are also God's enablings'.
Before embarking upon such a ministry that stood alone against Ritualist, Rutualist and Rationalist, that
questioned the very foundations even of much that passes for Evangelical teaching, and which challenged
`Churchianity' at its centre, it might have been expected that the vessel chosen would have had a College training
and had some social standing; but the fact remains that he had neither a Christian upbringing nor any advantages,
so-called, whatever, and could read with much sympathy the slur cast upon the Saviour in such words as `How
knoweth this man letters, having never learned?'
`Hath not the Potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto
dishonour' (or unto a menial purpose)? (Rom. 9:21).