In an interesting letter in the Christian Index recently, Dr. M. D. Jeffries of Knoxville says: "Certainly Tennessee Baptists ought to have the liveliest interest in all the missionary operations of the Southern Baptist Convention, if furnishing the men to carry on the work signifies anything. We have, the Sunday-school Board located in our midst; Secretary Willingham and Assistant Secretary Barton went from Tennessee pastorates to take up the management of the Foreign Board, and it has recently developed that Secretary Kerfoot of the Home Board was born in Tennessee; Dr. Hawthorne, so long president of the Home Board, was for several years immediately after, a pastor in our State. We now have two Tennesseans as professors in the Seminary, and had Prof. Whitsitt as teacher there for more than a quarter of a century, and as president for several years. We have nearly always some representative among the missionaries on the foreign fields, and have just recently sent quite a company of our best pastors as missionaries to Mexico. To tie us yet more closely to the Southern Baptist Convention and its work, we have captured the veteran secretary of the Convention, Dr. Lansing Burrows, and brought him over from Augusta, Ga, and installed him as pastor of the First Church, Nashville. Who will say that we have not the lion's share of the Convention? Logically that carries with it the lion's share of giving." Just here our brag stops! Oh! doctor, what made you add those last two sentences? Why did you not stop before you got to them? You filled us full of Baptist brag, and with one blow knocked all the wind out of our sails. But we are improving along that line.
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[From the Baptist and Reflector, February 8, 1900, p. 9, CD edition. The title is supplied. Transcribed and formatted by Jim Duvall.]

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