CAMP-MEETINGS; A SUGGESTION by A Mother

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, June 10, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 24

CAMP-MEETINGS; A SUGGESTION.

By A Mother

BY A MOTHER.

I have been seriously pondering the question in my mind whether the mothers who have infants in their arms should go to camp-meetings. Will any one solve my doubts on this point? It is a noticeable fact that there is always a large number of these little innocents at the yearly feast of tabernacles. It has been my fortune at every camp-meeting that I have attended, except one, to have a little one in my arms, and many times have I been obliged to leave in the most interesting part of a sermon, with the thought that baby was going to cry, and I should hear the familiar command, “Take that baby out.”

I have felt not a little sympathy for the mothers I have seen sitting with anxious faces, on seats without backs (for they must not go to the front, and there are no backs to the seats in the rear), trying by every imaginable device to keep the little ones quiet, that they might receive a few droppings from the altar. I have known by experience what a cross it is for these mothers to come, some of them many hundred miles, not a few all alone, with the care of a large, active baby. If you watch them, before the meeting is nearly over, you will see how tired these mothers look. They have a double task upon their hands, that others do not realize. Now I ask, Should mothers who have the care of these little ones go to camp-meeting? If you say they certainly ought, I would suggest that it would be a good plan to have a few seats in the rear with backs to them, reserved for “mothers and babies.” I think if this sign were to be put over them, the crowd would not interfere; for they are not fond of babies.