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YSLUMS 3SVEN
NUMBER FIFTY-ONE
A GREAT LEADER S FALLEN
Dr. Henry Wise Tribble President of Columbia College, Lake City, Meets Tragic Death at Rodman.
The State and Columbus in Tears.
L
Baptist Convention at Ocala, where the cam
paign for the endowment of Columbia College
had just received the glorious “launching gift”
of Twenty-seven Thousand Dollars. Covering
the distance between the main line and Rod
man (where he was pastor for two Sundays in
each month) his motor-car collided with a log
train, and his leg was broken.
In the home of Henry S. Cummings, the
widely-known Christian saw-mill man, who was
so devoted to Dr. Tribble and his work, with
heart and purse, the great educator and preach
er received every attention which love, skill
and money could provide, but heart-complica
tions set in and, on Tuesday, with the coming
of the morning light, and in the full triumph of
Christian faith, which he had preached to oth
ers, President Tribble entered into the glories
of God’s everlasting day.
He Sleeps on the Campus.
Before his body was laid to rest on the lake
girdled campus of the college, to which he was
giving his life, one of the most beautiful and
impressive funeral services we ever witnessed
was held.
The pall-bearers the trustees, the ministers,
the family, the faculty, the students, marched
in silent, solemn, sorrowful procession to the
college chapel, where the citizens and public
school children were waiting. The music seem
ed an echo of angel voices—“ Face to Face” al
most lifted the veil —the prayer of Pastor Keith,
of the Presbyterian Church, seemed to put all
hearts “in tune with the Infinite.”
Dr. L. B. Warren, with gentle grace, was in
charge and those making brief addresses were
Dr. Tribble’s life-long friend and former pastor,
Dr. A.. J. Holt, of Kissimmee; Dr. S. B. Rogers,
Secretary of Missions, Gainesville; Dr. C. W.
Duke, of Tampa, a college-mate of Dr. Tribble,
and Wm. D. Upshaw, Editor of The Golden
Age._ In substance, Mr. Upshaw said:
Upshaw Pays Tribute to Tribble.
My heart feels helpless in such a tragic, ten
der hour. When I try to speak the deepest
things that I feel about Dr. Tribble and his un
timely going “somehow within my bosom the
prisoned words stick tight. ’ ’ Perhaps, it is fit
ting that a voice from a sister state should have
some part with Floridians in the loving memo
rials of this hour, for the greater part of his
IKE a lightning stroke from a radi
ant sky came the telegram announc
ing the death, last week, of Dr. H.
W. Tribble, the great and beloved
President of Columbia College. He
left his home at Lake City, Fla.,
Saturday morning, February 3rd,
in unusually high spirits—for he
had just returned from the Florida
TABERNACLE BIBLE CONFERENCE—Page Four
ATLANTA, GA., FEBRT 1 Y 15, 1912
royal, unselfish life was spent beyond the bor
ders of Florida —and I loved him for the sake
of his own great heart and for the sake of his
heroic work for God and humanity in the cause
of Christian education.
Why? —that eternal “why” which so often
challenges the highway of our faith, struggles
up from our hearts and trembles on our quiver
ing lips. Gov. John Johnson, the honest idol
of the common people of Minnesota, died when
it seemed he was on his march to the White
House. Henry Grady, apostle of peace and na
tional fraternity, “finished his work at ten
o’clock in the morning” of life’s wonderful
day; and Henry Wise Tribble, though past his
meridian, seemed “rejoicing as a young man to
run a race,” as he fronted the mighty task be
fore him when suddenly he fell — fell upward
in the day-dawn of our hopes, and the noon
night of our grief!
From a fruitful field in his native Virginia,
Dr. Tribble was called to Columbia College, in
the high and ardent hour of her need and her
opportunity. Napoleon, with his consuming
ambition, “like a vaulting devil in the human
heart,” went over Europe “tying crowns on
his head with heartstrings,” and wading
through slaughter to a tottering throne; but
Hik i mp!
DR. HENRY WISE TRIBBLE.
Henry Wise Tribble, in the short space of two
years, had waded through the arduous but
beautiful fields of love and labor to a throne se
cure in Florida hearts —for the sunshine of his
smile, the warmth of his handclasp, the hearti
ness of his laughter, the brightness of his intel
lect, the poise of his judgment, the prowess of
his arm, the wealth of his energy, the richness
of his eloquence, and the splendor of his pow
erful personality, all — all were consecrated with
inspiring devotion on the altar of the college
he was building for the glory of the God whom
he loved and served so well.
That he should have been stricken when we
thought he was needed most —stricken at the
very beginning of the campaign for endowment
—stricken when the wife of his bosom and the
children of his hearthstone were thirsting most
for the crystal draught of his fellowship and
the guiding wisdom of a father’s hand, rushes
us afresh, tearful but trustful, into the presence
of Spurgeon’s beautiful truth, “where compre
hension stops let faith take hold!”
In an hour like this we love to think —
“God’s plans, like lilies pure and white unfold,
We must not tear the close-shut leaves apart—
Time will reveal the calyxes of gold,
And if by patient toil we reach the Land
Where tired feet with sandals loose may rest —
Where we shall known and understand
1 think that we shall say ‘God knew the best.’ ”
Our beloved leader will call with “beckoning
hands” and a n.ew voice from his Heavenly
Home —a sacred, wooing, compelling call to
consort and children to catch his fallen mantle,
follow his starry ideals and multiply his useful
ness; a call to the great-hearted trustees to
find a new way to lay on the altar of Columbia
College a practical loyalty which, otherwise,
perhaps, they could not have known; a call to
the faculty, to close ranks and put into italics
more than ever the vital truth which Tribble
taught his students—that education without re
ligion is like a flower without fragrance—like a
statue without a soul; a call, a heart-breaking
call, to the student body to remember that
Henry Wise Tribble lived in vain so far as their
individual lives are concerned, if a single stu
dent goes beyond the campus gate at commence
ment, without having laid the foundation stone
of life’s pyramid on the Rock of Ages.
Somehow, I feel that God will overrule this
mysterious Providence to the spiritual and ma
terial good of the institution, which our great
leader loved so well.
It is an old, old story, but ever inspiring in
its heroic coloring—how the Scotch Crusaders
(Continued on Page 5.)
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