The expansion is arousing much comment in the community, even prompting a sermon at the Plymouth Church (Congregational), located just two blocks away. More than a century ago, the church’s first minister, Henry Ward Beecher, lived on property that is now part of the Watchtower Society’s headquarters complex.

The sermon was delivered by Dr. Harry H. Kruener and was entitled “A Good Word for the Witnesses.” At the outset he declared: “I have to say that they are wrong, wrong in so many of the beliefs I count essential to true religion.”

However, he then commented: “But I can still secretly admire them and this is my theme of the morning.” He said:

I admire the Witnesses for talking about their religion. . . . We [in his church] indulge in a conspiracy of silence. Religion is the one thing we never talk about. . . .

“I know I myself seldom mention I am a minister because it tends to put an awful damper on the conversation. . . . The other day I saw a bulletin board outside a church which caught my eye. it read: ‘If you were on trial for being a Christian would they have enough evidence to convict you?’ . . .

“Most of us have seen to it that there would be mighty little they could pin on us. The Witnesses give evidence, verbal evidence every day of their faith. They speak out.”

In his sermon, the minister noted this additional point:

“I admire their discipline. They not only talk about their religion, not only support it, not only are amazingly brotherly; they train themselves, they keep themselves in trim, to be Witnesses. They study the Scriptures, . . . They even seem to me to jog to their meetings. By contrast, the Catholics step along trying to make early Mass, and the Protestants saunter, usually looking at the trees and the flowers in our patio as they pass. But the Witnesses, they march. I might say that they are the ‘happy joggers’ in the army of the Lord.”