Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1547

Carbon of a letter from Heath at 11 Waverly Place, New York City 3, to Wilford O. Cross, University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee.

June 28, 1955

Dear Dr. Cross:

     I have thought of you many times since I was last in Sewanee, remembering pleasantly your public presenta­tions and discussions and even more pleasantly those direct personal communications which I enjoyed a number of times but not often enough. I think your “Christian Doctrine of Man” is about the most interesting single topic that ever engaged my attention. I have been happy to find in it the foundation for a great deal of my own thinking. It is one of my personal misfortunes that I have not through most of my years enjoyed much personal intercourse with competent minds engaged similarly in the search for wonder and beauty.

     With Dr. McCrady’s kind approval, I have been making plans with Mr. Sutherland to have his department of the University look after at least the printing and binding of my manuscript, Citadel, Market & Altar, with a view to at least getting it into the hands of a good many competent, prospective reviewers, leading perhaps to a wider and more general publication. It seems to me enormously important that the better brains of the world should become well apprised of that mighty, spiritual alternative that Jesus Christ presented in his practical precepts against the political coercive, and thereby destructive, powers of the world as represented locally by the Sanhedrin and universally by the Roman power of taxation and war. I am impatient for men to awaken to the fact that since the early Renaissance, the Christian nations have had blessedness and abundance of life in direct proportion as they have practiced through contractual engagements the golden and spiritual rule laid down unremittingly in the New Testament as passport to the abundant and eventually eternal life.

     From a remark by Dr. McCrady, I am happy to feel that your mind has been looking somewhat in this same practical and objective direction. This makes me some­what reluctant to ask return of the manuscript I left with you. But as most of them have been annotated, I am calling them all in for a final going-over before put­ting it into the hands of Mr. Sutherland for composition. To save you the trouble of packing and posting, I have asked Mr. Sutherland to have his office do that if you will kindly turn it over to him for that purpose.

     My grandson and I are looking forward to being in Sewanee again before very long, where I have been so cordially received heretofore both personally and intel­lectually. I look forward with pleasure to further personal association with you.

Sincerely,

SH/sm