The Southern Camp-Meeting by John Norton Loughborough

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 11, 1877

The Southern Camp-Meeting.

By John Norton Loughborough

The southern California camp-meeting, like the northern one, has proved a decided success in every respect. Twenty-two tents were upon the ground, besides the 50-ft. tent which was used for public meetings. The number of campers was one hundred and fifteen.

By request of Brother Church, the mottoes of our northern camp archway were taken to the southern meeting and placed over a similar triple archway entrance. There being no evergreens within fifty miles of the ground, we substituted therefore trimmings composed of red, white and blue cloth, which gave a very neat and pretty appearance. Everything possible was done to make the grounds attractive, and this had its effect, not only in making our own people feel decidedly at home, but in attracting the outside world from far and near to see the grounds, especially when word went out that “at the Seventh-day Adventist camp-meeting all was as quiet and orderly as a meeting-house.”

This seemed to astonish the people, as at all previous camp-meetings in this vicinity there was so much noise and confusion. Even at a camp-meeting held a few weeks since, only eighty rods from our grounds, no less than three arrests were made to quell the disturbance, and one of those arrested was a woman. We were favored with a good outside attendance evenings, and on Sunday not far from four hundred were drawn upon the grounds. There was not the slightest show of a spirit of disorder, but as the people went round admiring the grounds and reading the mottoes, they seemed to catch the spirit of the place, and not a man did we see who even attempted to smoke a cigar inside of our gateway. They seemed to think and act as if we had thrown suddenly an ornamental village into their new country, and to show their appreciation of our kindness they treated us with the greatest respect and courtesy. They could be heard saying, “Well, this looks like business, that is a people in favor of order; I’m going to see what their ministers have to say.”

The Lord gave his servants, Brethren Healey, Wood and the writer, something to say, and the influence of his spirit to help us say it. The preaching was free and pointed, and appreciated by our people, and all. When, on the Sabbath, we called for half-hearted professors and backsliders to enter into a covenant for greater devotion and consecration to the work, the people were ready to respond as rapidly as they could get upon their feet. This call was followed by one for those seeking the Lord for the first time; this brought a score or more forward, who, after prayers in their behalf, responded with earnest testimonies. An invitation was extended to those who desired baptism to manifest it by coming forward, when twenty-nine candidates presented themselves for this purpose. Besides these, four others united with us, making thirty-three in all. One of these was the husband of one of our sisters who has kept the Sabbath alone in the family for about five years.

According to appointment, the meeting should have closed on Monday morning, but a petition from every camper, for the meeting to continue another day, decided the matter. Another day was given them, and every one stayed. Monday was a glorious day. The forenoon was occupied with the baptism. We were obliged to go four and one-fourth miles to the place of baptism. There were twenty-five teams on the ground, as all the campers came with teams, and a number of neighbors joined in the procession, which went with a perfect order to the water as a funeral procession. The procession was nearly one-fourth of a mile long. The administrators were in a carriage at the head; the three sisters who were to wait on the candidates next; then came the candidates, followed by the solemn spectators. We told the people we were going to a burial, but unlike common funerals, this had a resurrection connected with it; we were going to commemorate the burial and resurrection of Christ, and as it was an event that did not occur often in one’s life-time, we could afford to give dignity to the occasion, if it did take a little more time. The baptism was pleasant. The sandy beach of Kings river, strewn with mica, a yellow substance that looks like gold, especially under the water, made the place selected one most lovely. It was not a long stretch of the imagination, as we saw handfuls of this mica on the beach, washed up by the slight waves of the river, to think of the golden banks of the river of life, where all the faithful shall stand, after the resurrection, in the glorious city of God.

In the afternoon of Monday we had four meetings, one of which was a business meeting. An early morning meeting was held Tuesday, when some wholesome advice was given to our people, how to diligently watch as they should go to their homes and again meet the trials and temptations of life. And thus closed our first southern California camp-meeting.

It was with some trembling that our people looked forward to this camp-meeting. First, most of them never saw a camp-meeting, save those where more or less confusion reigned, and they feared we might fare no better than the others in their new country. Secondly, they feared also it would be a financial burden hard to be borne, as it has been an exceedingly dry year, one of the hardest California has ever known. In both these respects they are happily disappointed. Under the energetic management of Brother Dimmick, who had just made a success of the store and restaurant at the northern meeting, the southern meeting has, from a like source met all its expenses and earned about $20 as a nucleus of a camp-meeting fund for next year.

In our business meeting a call was made for the district to raise the sum of $83 to pay its indebtedness to the State Society. In fifteen minutes, with no urging, $106 was pledged and all paid but $9. It was voted to appropriate the surplus over the $83 to the sum still due for the 50-ft. tent purchased last summer. The sum of about $200 per year was added to the S. B. funds by the pledges of new members, and a goodly number of missionary members were obtained. So financially, as otherwise, our southern meeting was a success.

When the meeting opened, I wrote to some that the southern meeting was just like the northern one in quality, all the difference seemed to be in quantity; but before we closed I made up my mind that, when we consider that the cause was only one and one-half years old in these southern counties, that this was their first meeting, that the country was sparsely settled, and that it was hard times, and that half as many took their stand as at the northern meeting, they had discounted the quantity so that that would compare well too.

There were many interesting incidents in this, as in all meetings of this kind, which I have not room to notice here, but I must mention some, however. A young lady living a few miles from the ground, came to the meeting because she had some relatives who were going to be there, and whom she wished to visit. After being there a day she said, “My mother must come and hear this.” So she went home and let her mother come, agreeing to stay by the “stuff.” After the mother had been there a day she thought that would not do; all the family must have the benefit of the meeting. So home she went and found some one to take care of their affairs, and the family all came and remained through the meeting. On Monday Brethren Healey and Wood baptized the daughter who came first, then the mother and another daughter. Brother Meeker and family came from Bakersfield, Kern county, a distance of about two hundred miles, in a wagon, and were all baptized. Brother and Sister Brown of San Pasqual, San Diego county, came three hundred and fifty miles in their wagon to attend this meeting, and said they could cheerfully go back over the long journey again, feeling that they were richly paid for the seven hundred miles of carriage travel, which would take them twenty-seven days to accomplish. God bless them!

The camp-meeting has had a wonderful influence to give permanence and stability to the work in this southern field. A great interest has been awakened in the vicinity of the camp-meeting. Elder Wood commences a course of lectures immediately at Lemoore. Brother Rice is to join him to assist in the work. Brother Eugene McCapes of Fairview, who received a colporteur’s license at the camp-meeting, enters without delay upon his work from house to house, in the vicinity of the camp-ground.

It certainly should give a spring of joy to the hearts of our people, and serve as a stimulus to greater efforts on the part of our ministers and missionary workers, when we think that through the instrumentality of two camp-meetings nearly one hundred have taken their stand with us.

Four weeks since, I made the report to the General Conference, and put the number of Sabbath-keepers in California at seven hundred. Were I to do that over to-day, I should have to say eight hundred instead.

J. N. Loughborough.