Samuel Ingham Merrill

Samuel Ingham Merrill (1856-1932) was a businessman who worked in many fields, from school supplies to steel and oil. In 1901 he co-founded the California Industrial Company of which he became president in 1908. Merrill was an active and generous lay member of the First Baptist Church. His Christian philanthropy in southern California can be traced in institutions like the Los Angeles Y.M.C.A., the Industrial Home Society for homeless boys (now the McKinley Children's Center), the Pacific Gospel Union Mission (now the Union Rescue Mission),and the Bible Institute of Los Angeles.

Merrill was one of the first directors of the Institute, and a signatory of the 1908 Articles of Incorporation.

Merrill spoke at the Institute's June 1910 Christian Workers Conference on the subject of laymen. After an unpromising "Webster's Definition of 'layman'" beginning, Merrill focuses on his subject by punning on the meaning of "to lay" as "to cause to lie flat," arguing that the clergy has often done this to the layman: "There was a time when all of these definitions fitted the layman. When he had no learning. When the clergy placed him in a low position so they could walk on him. They not only put him down, but they sometimes beat him down. But as Lincoln said, 'God must have loved them for He made so many of them.' And so dense was their ignorance and so well nigh universal the ignorance that when one, by superior talents, forced himself up above the common h erd, he found himself as lonely as a ham sandwich in a Jew picnic. But now how changed. Now the laymen are the scholars in distinction from the clergy. Once laymen was spelled "lameman" mentally and spiritually. Now, most of the limping is done by the clergy in the mental and spiritual realm. Once the clergy knew all that was known of God's Word, and the laymen knew but little about it. Now the thing is reversed. If some of the clergy don't sit down low at the feet of the laymen, it is because their knees are so unaccustomed to bending that they can't sit down on the low seat assigned them."

http://www2.biola.edu/kingsbusiness/view/1/8/6

External Links
Wikipedia entry on Merrill: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Ingham_Merrill