AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
93
The following note in The Berean Expositor for June 1911 reads, `Editor's Proposed Book. - We are pleased to
be able to acknowledge the following donations ..... these sums together with promised donations and the
approximate value of advance orders for copies amount to £37, so we are encouraged to believe that the work is
desired. £38 is still needed, and of course we shall not place the MSS in the printer's hands until the full amount is
assured'. These sums of money now seem trifling, but in 1911 and in my then financial position they seemed
wealth. From such poor and insignificant beginnings can the Lord in His grace produce a harvest if He so wills.
When Dispensational Truth, was at length issued in 1912, I sent a copy to the surgeon who had performed the
operation. He wrote from Upper Wimpole Street, W., saying:
`... I am glad to hear that the operation was a complete success and did not interfere with your labours. The
latter must have been stupendous.
Yours sincerely,
P.M.H.'.
I have often wondered what effect the book had and where that individual copy is now. In the Preface to the
work occur the words:
`Its production, whether viewed from the financial standpoint or the standpoint of actual labour, is the result of
much self-sacrifice and loving fellowship'.
The whole of the MSS was passed on to Mr. Brininger, who rose early and worked for an hour or so each day
before setting out for daily business, and so produced the typescript for the printer. The reading of proofs and the
whole of the business side largely fell upon him, whether the accounts with the printer or the despatch of orders
when the book was finished.
Among those who wrote to express interest in the volume was one very near the Royal family in Russia.
Countess Leiven, who was among the nobility massacred in the Bolshevik uprising, was a reader of Things to Come
and a believer in the Word Rightly Divided, and while I did not receive many such letters, there are evidences that in
other high ranks of society, humble members of the One Body were to be found.
While the exceedingly limited nature of our work and the extremely unpopular teaching which was its mission to
make known, deprived us of help that might otherwise have been received from Bible lovers and evangelical
believers, some work was accomplished in `the regions beyond' our own immediate circle and it is a joy to record in
these latter years, a ministry that extends, literally, to the ends of the earth.
I received a letter asking whether I could supply material for many gaps that were in the structure of the Acts
which Dr. Bullinger had left unfinished. Seeing that the last member Acts 28:23-31, was not given its distinctive
place, but split into two sections, I supplied a complete structure, along the lines found in From Pentecost to Prison,
chapter 1, but this was rejected.
Mr. Wm. Barron of New Zealand who had suggested The Companion Bible to Dr. Bullinger and largely financed
it, immediately upon receiving news of the Doctor's death, sent a cable `Put Welch on to the Epistles'. This too was
rejected, one of the reasons being `he would ruin the sales'. Most likely I would have done, but that was not the real
objection. The co-editors adopted the canon `We do not know what Dr. Bullinger would have written we can only
go back and adopt what he has already written' although his last book, The Foundations of Dispensational Truth,
makes it clear that he fully accepted Acts 28 as the Dispensational Boundary and the segregation of `The Prison
Epistles'. I quote one or two extracts which should be read together with the above comments.
`In regard to "Things to Come" you have confirmed what I have been saying to my friends here that "Things
to Come" is going back ever since the Dr's Editorials and supervision stopped. Take your articles out of
"Things to Come" and we have gone back quite ten years'.
Another letter dated 25th March 1919
`Had Miss Dodson fallen in with our request that you should be identified with Mr. Bowker in the
Companion Bible work all the present trouble which has arisen would not have occurred'.
In another letter dealing rather with the financial features of The Companion Bible, Mr. Barron said: