R.R. Clark in Greensboro News
That larger part of the public which knew Tom P. Jimison only through the newspapers, in which he manages to appear in season and out, were no doubt surprised when he was overtaken in fault. He was a minister in good standing holding a pastorate until about six months ago. When he yielded the ministry to take the field as a labor agitator, to which he had given part time in connection with his pastoral labors, those who felt sufficient interest to form an opinion doubtless granted his right to go his way without criticism. That he was erratic, unstable, was apparent, but that he was morally weak, if he had hitherto exhibited that weakness, was not generally known. The blaring weakness now exhibited is not so much that he has yielded to an appetite for liquor, which he inferentially admits has been with him all along, but in trying to lay the blame of his wrong-doing on others. “They have eaten me alive,” he laments. Who “they” are and the manner of the eating, is not definitely explained. The voluntary confession, “I have never been a teetotaler,” is inferentially offered in extenuation of his offending. If that be so, the fact that Jimison, while preaching righteousness to others, was violating the proprieties and the law, as he was if he was not a teetotaler, will hardly raise him in public estimation. Then follows the whine about the strength of the sentiment against the liquor traffic, and he offers further excuse for himself by remarking that if he had committed murder he might have been excused. Even as a layman he has been a preacher of civic righteousness; and even a lay preacher of civic righteousness can hardly expect to be excused for wantonly and brazenly violating the law. He invites the greater condemnation when he fails in whit he demands of others.
If Jimison in admitting his guilt has taken the blame on himself, where it belongs; or better still, had held his peace, he would have deserved that sympathy which he alienates by a futile attempt to make excuse for himself. Parenthetically it may be remarked that outsiders who mixed in and under took to tell the Methodist conference how to treat Jimison when his case was before the conference last fall, doubtless ow realize that the Methodist brethren knew exactly what they were about when they accepted Jimison’s credentials as a minister and gently separated him from the conference.
From page 2 of the Concord Daily Tribune, April 11, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1925-04-11/ed-1/seq-2/#words=APRIL+11%2C+1925
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