Earlier text: The SermonWhy Don’t You Keep the Sabbath?
By Burton S. Barnes
BRO. SMITH: Will you allow me through the Review to address a letter to my young friends who do not keep the Sabbath of the Lord? DEAR YOUNG FRIENDS: I am going to propose a very plain and serious question, one well worth your consideration, and one that demands your careful attention. In so doing, I beg you to realize that I am not inviting you from the Bible or a near communion with our Saviour, but shall urge you to take the Scriptures as your only safe counsel, and Jesus as your perfect guide. The question is, Why do you not keep all the commandments of God? Why do you knowingly violate the fourth, when you profess to love and follow the statutes of our Lord? Our Creator at creation gave us a command to keep holy the seventh day; and this command is embodied in the decalogue that says, Thou shalt have no other gods before me, Thou shalt not steal, &c. As soon as God had finished the work of creation, he rested on the seventh day, and sanctified it; that is, he set it apart for a sacred use. If God, at the close of the first six days’ labor, set it apart for a sacred use, he must necessarily have instituted the Sabbath at creation. The time and circumstances under which this was done, sufficiently indicate that it was intended to apply to the whole race of man, and to extend through all time. Christ and his apostles never speak of the decalogue but as of permanent and universal obligation. Now, if we are unable to show where and when God has released us from his holy law, certainly he will no more hold us guiltless for the violation of the fourth commandment than he will for the first. God has told us to keep holy the seventh day; men tell us the first day. Christ told us to be baptized in commemoration of his resurrection; men tell us to celebrate Sunday for that purpose. Christ says, If ye love me, keep my commandments; men, Obey the customs of the church. When God has made mention of his righteous commandments one hundred and thirty-five times in one chapter (exix Psalm); when he once spoke them so as to shake the earth; when he has said, Blessed are they that keep my commandments; how can you ask God to speak more plainly or with a louder voice? Shall we dare change even the least of God’s commandments? The apostle says, He that breaks one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of Heaven. But say you, Does God require us to keep the seventh day in direct opposition to the custom of almost the whole world? My dear friends, has the meek and humble way of the Lord ever been in accordance with the customs of the world? Is popularity found in the way that Christ would lead? Can we expect to obtain eternal life without suffering with Jesus? The apostle says, He that will live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer persecution. In our spirit, as well as our aim, we must differ from the world. Say you, What evidence have you that the world are not keeping the seventh day for the Sabbath? Why do you ask me to prove a point that you so readily admit? You have no trouble to prove that Sunday is the first day; and can we not as easily prove which is the seventh? Most certainly they know which was the seventh day at Christ’s crucifixion, for “they returned and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment.” Luke xxiii, 5, 6. It is not probable that the true reckoning of days has been lost since that time. What excuse have you, then, for not regarding the true Sabbath of the Lord? To keep the Sabbath of God, my dear friends, requires that you should be entirely consecrated to his will. You will have to throw away worldly hopes; you will have to bear the almost insupportable cross that even those in the popular churches will cast upon you137 for keeping holy the Sabbath of the Lord. But, is not the object in view worth all this? Is not eternal life worth all our pains and endeavors? Ought we not willingly to bear every cross for the sake of Jesus? In fact, when God commands us to keep holy the seventh day, what right have we to disobey? What right have we to substitute another day, even if it be for our own convenience? Dear friends, seek eternal life by keeping all the commandments of God. Let your life be a preparation to meet Jesus, and a pilgrimage to a better land. We are now in the wilderness, beset on every side by enemies that would allure us from the path of righteousness. Let us be wise, and put on the whole armor of God. Let us seek first the kingdom of Heaven. The storms and temptations that swell around our pilgrimage here will soon subside; and then, oh! then, if we are found walking in the way of the Lord—keeping his righteous law—we shall see “Sweet fields arrayed in living green,
And rivers of delight.”
In a few years, at most, the conflict will end; sighing grief will weep no more; and this bitter world will be exchanged for a place on the throne of Him who hath loved us and given his life that we might obtain pardon. Oh! let the hope of soon seeing Jesus stimulate us to increased ardor in the work of our Master. Is not the hope of those who shall be prepared to meet Jesus worth striving for? Can we not bear the scoffs and frowns of the wicked for Jesus’ sake? “The Spirit and the bride say, Come.” Dear friends, throw away all those forms of religion in which you have no confidence; seek that which has in it the approving smile of our heavenly Father; have regard to the way of the Lord. Let it become the full, fixed, absorbing purpose of your hearts to obey God, to obey him in spite of all allurements, and then will you enjoy the smile of his approbation, and be prepared to meet Jesus. What are all the attractions of this frail world, compared with so great a prize? And oh! if you decide to obey the righteous statutes of our Lord, follow in the way he has commanded, angels will be glad, Heaven will reverberate with the sound of jubilee, and it will be your happy lot to be among those to whom Jesus will soon say, Ye loved me, for ye kept my commandments. You cannot talk of God with propriety, you cannot talk of him in love, your hearts will never bound at the mention of his name, your eyes will not glisten at the thought of his attributes, while you are disobedient to any of his commandments. Study the word of God with an honest heart—a heart that is willing to be fed, and anxious to bear any burden for the sake of Jesus. This will try your love. This will prove whether you love self and the world more than you love God. In keeping all the commandments, you cannot expect honor from the world; you cannot expect to mingle with the gay and thoughtless; but, on the contrary, all this must be sacrificed, and you must be willing to follow whithersoever Jesus leads. I cannot close without again urging you to seriously investigate this subject, and know for yourselves that it is the word of God. Oh! let us live for God, let us make his commands our delight, let us sacrifice self; and then with holy longings for the appearing of our blessed Saviour, we can say, “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.” That the third angel’s message may find a place in your hearts, and you be prepared for Jesus’ soon coming, is the prayer of your unworthy friend, Battle Creek, Mich., Feb. 20, 1867. Tell me the meaning of Scriptures. One gem from that ocean is worth all the pebbles of earthly streams.—M'Cheyne. A few days before the death of Archbishop Whately, the chaplain watching beside him, quoted the words, Who shall change our vile body. ‘Read His own words,’ said the Archbishop. Not having a Greek Testament at hand, the chaplain repeated from memory, ‘This body of our humiliation.’ ‘That’s right: not vile—nothing that He made is vile.’ The Evil Which the Lord Creates.
Isa. xlv, 7. “I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I, the Lord, do all these things.” GOD says: “I make peace, and create evil.” But what kind of evil? Not moral evil, or sin, by any means; but physical evil, such as was threatened against Nineveh. “And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do unto them, and he did it not. Jonah iii, 10. Did God repent of the sin he was about to commit against the Ninevites? All evil, which God is said to create, we understand to be judgments which he brings upon men for their disobedience. Thus it is said: “Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?” Amos iii, 6.—Campbell. “Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God, until that he have mercy upon us.” This passage derives a striking illustration from the customs of the East. The servants or slaves in eastern countries attend their masters or mistresses with the profoundest respect. Maundrell observes, that the servants in Turkey stand round their master and his guests in deep silence and perfect order, watching every motion. Pococke says, that at a visit in Egypt everything is done with the greatest decency and the most profound silence, the slaves or servants standing at the bottom of the room, with their hands joined before them, watching with the utmost attention every motion of their master, who commands them by signs. De la Motraye says, that the eastern ladies are waited on even at the least wink of the eye, or motion of the fingers, and that in a manner not perceptible to strangers.—Watson. “And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.” The venerable book of Job, which in all probability is considerably the oldest in the Sacred Canon, (as will be proved in the sequel,) notices the circumstance of Adam’s hiding himself after his transgression, xxxi, 33; and in another passage seems to have recorded an oracular saying, omitted by Moses, which may thus be more correctly rendered, xxviii, 28. “And unto Adam He said:
Behold, the fear of THE LORD, this is wisdom,
And to depart from evil is understanding.” The word Adam here, should not be rendered man, in general, as in our public translation; but Adam, our first parent, as it is rendered in the former passage. “Whether it was spoken to him before or after his fall, is not easy to determine. If after the fall, as seems rather more probable, the words carry with them a reproof as well as an instruction highly seasonable, and suited to the circumstances of his unhappy change. As if God had said: You, who in defiance of the prohibition I had given you, have been seeking after another sort of wisdom and knowledge than was proper for you; go learn from sure experience, that your truest wisdom is to fear Me, and to pay an implicit obedience to My commands.”—Peters on Job, p. 460. Oliver Goldsmith once remarked that true merit consisted, not in a man’s never falling, but in raising as often as he falls. The Conflagration of the Earth.
By F. W. Gotch, M. A.
2 Pet. iii, 10. “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also; and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” If, with the majority of interpreters, we refer this prediction to the end of the world, to which it seems most naturally to apply, we could not have a more distinct statement of the fact that the present order of things is to be terminated by the world we inhabit and all the works of man it contains being ‘burnt up.’ There is no reason for assuming that the whole material universe is to be involved in this catastrophe; the mention of the heavens leads our thoughts no further than the atmosphere and vapors surrounding this planet. Nor should we regard this conflagration as involving the absolute destruction or annihilation of the world: it is more consistent with the narrative itself, as well as with physical science, to consider it as introductory to a new and better state of things—‘new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness’ (ver. 11). By what means the conflagration is to be effected we are not informed, and all attempts to explain how this is to be accomplished must be mere speculation, into which we do not think it necessary or advantageous to enter. We have only at present to remark that such an event is not inconsistent with physical facts. We know that the temperature of the earth increases gradually and with considerable regularity as we descend below the surface (Phillips, Geology, vol. ii, p. 232), and have every reason to believe that the central mass is intensely hot. We know, moreover, that there are subterranean fires of great extent, if not forming a part of this heated central mass. The means, therefore, of combustion are near at hand. But even if there were no such central heat, chemistry points out very easy means by which the conflagration may be effected through the agency of various elementary substances. Phillips, Geology, vol. ii, p. 211.—F. W. Gotch, M. A. A SONG OF PRAISE.
By L. E. Miller
I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live: I will sing praise unto my God while I have my being. Psa. civ, 33. O hear, my Father, while I raise,
My cheerful voice, in songs of praise.
Let sweetest notes my tongue employ,
And fill my soul with sacred joy.
I’ll sing of Jesus’ wondrous love,
Which brought him from the realms above,
To die, that we, a sinful race,
Might taste the riches of his grace. To him, who doeth all things well,
My heart with rapture sweet doth swell,
I will not sigh for worldly fame
While Jesus owns my humble name,
For he will be my sun and shield
While I the Spirit’s sword do wield;
He will give grace and glory too,
And lead me all my journey through, I’ll praise him for rich stores of grace
That all the stains of sin efface;
With perfect love our hearts he’ll fill
While we obey his sovereign will.
O come, ye saints, no longer sigh,
Lift up your heads, redemption’s nigh,
With me adore his precious name,
And all the Saviour’s love proclaim.
L. E. MILLER. Our Father Knows Best.
By L. M. GATES
Happy indeed is it for us that all our affairs are ordered by an unerring Parent, who knows the end from the beginning, while we have the assurance that “all things work together for good to them that love God.” Though “in heaviness through manifold temptations,” though our trials should be of a kind peculiarly hard for human nature to bear, still we may ever surely know that our heavenly Father knows just what is best for his wayward children, and perhaps this very thing, which we feel that we ought not to have to bear, may be one of the “all things” which shall eventually work for our eternal good. Though sorrows encompass, and the waves of affliction threaten to overwhelm us; though bereavements come unexpectedly upon us in such a manner that our lacerated hearts, bleeding at every pore, seem crushed beneath the blow, still our “Father is at the helm,” who has promised, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” I have in my mind at this moment the cases of those two devoted servants of God who suffered violent deaths almost one year ago, nearly at the same time; Bro. Lawton, of Mackford, Wis., who, far from friends and home, came to his end so suddenly by a fall from a bridge, and Bro. Orton, of Rochester, N. Y., who fell by the ruthless hand of an assassin. I have asked myself, Why were these tried and faithful ones taken, who were blessings to their families, pillars in the church of God, and who, in their daily lives, were “living epistles, known and read of all men?” To us it seemed that nothing could ever swerve them from the truth, and that we could not well spare them from our ranks. But our Father in infinite wisdom suffered them to come under the power of death for a season, why, we may never know in the present state. Jesus says, “What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.” Who, since the days of the apostles, ever espoused the cause of truth, with whole heart and soul, more fully, or labored in the service of his divine Master more arduously, than did Wm. Miller; and yet we learn that God saw it necessary to lay him in the grave, to save him. Again, I am reminded of Eld. Taylor, and many others, myself among the number, whom death has written childless, within the past few years. Oh! it was not a blind chance that removed those loved ones; the arrow of death was not suffered to thus enter our dwellings without the permission of our Father, who doeth all things well. While mourning for my lost one, I have at times almost seemed to hear an audible voice, saying, “From that child’s earliest infancy thou hast prayed for her salvation, and in no other way could the Lord answer thy prayers, surrounded as she was by every influence calculated to draw her young heart from God, except what little thou couldst feebly exert.” I have felt rebuked, dried my tears, and thanked God that my little one was so safe, so sure of eternal life. What abundant reason have we for thankfulness that we are not left to mark out our own path, to choose our own trials or even our own blessings. How often would the coveted good we so earnestly sought, have proved a snare to our unwary feet. I bless the Lord in my heart that we, and ours, are in the hands of Omnipotent Wisdom, “who is too wise to err, and too good to be unkind.” Labors in Wisconsin.
By R. F. Andrews
My last report closed with an account of the meeting at Little Prairie, Wis. Jan. 4, Bro. Olds took his team and carried me to Oakland, where I found a hearty welcome, and a good pilgrim's home, at the house of Bro. A. Olson. I held ten meetings with the brethren, during which I preached seven times. There is some interest outside of the church to hear the truth. I trust the Lord will bless these dear brethren, and help them to be faithful to the end. Jan. 9, left for Mackford. Held seven meetings with the brethren here. The Lord gave liberty in presenting the truth, and the dear saints were encouraged to press forward with renewed zeal. The 16th and 17th, I spent with the little company at Dell Prairie. These dear brethren and sisters are trying to overcome and be ready to meet the dear Saviour when he comes. The 18th, Bro. Gilding took his team and carried me to Mauston to attend the Quarterly Meeting there. The Lord sanctioned our meeting by his presence, and we felt that it was good for us to be there. There is quite an interest to hear among the people. We trust that God will help his saints, to take a course that will exalt the truth. Bro. Russell gave a very instructive and interesting lecture on the Health question, to which the people paid excellent attention. As we left the place we felt to thank God that we were ever permitted to hear the present truth, and that we had strength given to receive and embrace it. The Lord is leading his people. The truth is shining brighter and brighter, and we above all people ought to praise the Lord for his lovingkindness to us. The 21st, returned to Dell Prairie. Held meetings with the brethren there till the 24th. The youth and children are interested in the truth, and for their own salvation. Our heart's desire is that God may strengthen them to take upon them the yoke of Christ. These parents have a work to do. God grant that they may have wisdom from above to do it well. Lead your children, dear parents, to the arms of Jesus, remembering that they that come unto him he will in no wise turn empty away. Precious Saviour! always willing to hear the cries of the truly penitent, and to rescue those that want to be rescued from the thralldom of sin. Soon his mediatorial work will be done. Then mercy will have fled forever. Oh! how important to improve the present time. The 24th, I left for Hundred Mile Grove. Bro. Gilding took his team and kindly carried me there, a distance of forty miles. The Lord reward him for this act of kindness. The brethren here have had some trials to pass through, and on account of a lack of thorough confession and humility, on the part of the erring, there was not that freedom in our meetings that we would like to have seen; but before we left, things assumed a different aspect, and we trust that confidence and sweet union may be restored among these dear brethren and sisters. How much we need to cultivate the graces of the Spirit of God in our hearts. Dear brethren let us try to excel in love and good works. “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his.” The 30th, I left for Sand Prairie. Our meeting here was truly refreshing. There was one load of brethren and sisters from Waukon, Iowa. It cheered our hearts to see these veterans in the cause of present truth, and to hear them tell of the power of God manifested among his people under the proclamation of the first and second angels' messages. The Lord met with us and poured out his blessing upon us. Praise his blessed name! The cause has suffered much here on account of the unrighteous course of L. G. Bostwick; but the brethren and sisters are doing all in their power to redeem it from reproach. The people have manifested quite a desire to hear the truth, and a few are almost persuaded to go with the remnant to Mount Zion. I leave this place for Monroe to-morrow. R. F. ANDREWS.
Sand Prairie, Feb. 5, 1867. Unguarded Language.
By ADOLPHUS SMITH
“Let your communication be yea, yea, nay, nay; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.” It is the pleasure of Satan to perplex and irritate the child of God, so that if it be possible he may be brought under condemnation to the above law of Christ. Knowing that he cannot provoke the Christian to open blasphemy, he takes advantage of circumstances, betraying the unwary into the use of unnecessary interjections and idle phrases. “These things ought not so to be.” The ungodly are continually watching the righteous, and we know not how often a complaining Christian, unsanctified in word and manner, may decide them to remain in their sins. I well remember the pain I felt, when a boy, and soon after my conversion, at hearing my Sabbath-school teacher, whom I thought a model Christian, exclaim, “George!” because he stubbed his toe and came near falling. The Christian should cultivate a cheerful spirit, obliging manners, and a chaste conversation, and, true as the needle to the pole, should turn to Christ and the glory to be revealed. “Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt.” “But I say unto you that for every idle word that man shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” The Church in Battle Creek.
SUFFER us, brethren and sisters abroad, to say a word concerning ourselves. As a church, we doubtless have the worst things thought of us, and perhaps the best things, of any church in the land. We have a class of bitter and virulent enemies. We also have a class of sincere and fervent friends. Both these classes may be in danger of going to extremes. Our enemies may think too ill of us, and our friends too well. We do not wish to be looked upon in the extreme light either way. We trust we are not the worst folks in the world; and, on the other hand, we are well aware that we are not perfect. But we wish to speak more particularly here concerning our friends. What our enemies think or say of us, we care very little. We shall endeavor so to live that what evil they have to utter shall be false, and that those who know us, will not believe it. But we do not wish our friends to get too high an opinion of us, and then, when they learn our true condition and Christian standing, be disappointed. Very many apparently think that Battle Creek must be the gate of Heaven; that the fervor of the church here will always be found up to the boiling point; that there can be no careless or indifferent ones here, no dull meetings, no draw-backs to the Christian life; and that if they can only come to Battle Creek, they will find an easy road thenceforward to the kingdom of Heaven. Such greatly misapprehend the spirit and tactics of the Enemy. If you wish to find a place where he plants his heaviest batteries, and makes his fiercest assaults, and encamps his most experienced legions, it is here. Would not this naturally be so? The office of publication being located here, and more recently the Health Institute, make this an important place; and the enemy well knows that whatever wounds he can inflict here, and whatever victories gain, the effect will be more wide-spread than if accomplished in any other place. Hence he strives hard to exert his cruel power here. We do not plead this as any excuse for neglect of duty on our part; but simply to remind those not already aware of it, that there are trials and conflicts with the powers of darkness to be met here, fiercer and more numerous, doubtless, than at any other point along the line of battle. At the same time, we hold neglect of duty to be as heinous a crime here as in any other place, and even more so; for here it is more important that all such remissness should be guarded against. There are great responsibilities resting upon us here. The various enterprises connected with the cause of truth, which are located in our midst, bring these responsibilities. They are daily increasing. And there are some who realize them, and are endeavoring with all earnestness to meet and bear them as they should be borne. There are members of this church who are striving as zealously and persistently to live the life of the true Christian, raise high the standard of piety, press toward the mark, and be overcomers, as can anywhere be found. But yet there are others who seem to have but a faint idea of the responsibilities resting upon them, who take upon themselves no special burdens, and whose efforts to do duty are few and feeble. And doubtless some from this church, as well as from others, will meet the fate pronounced against the lukewarm in Rev. iii, 16. Brethren connected with small churches of from ten to twenty-five members, where all take part in every meeting, making the meetings lively and free, sometimes think if they could come to Battle Creek, what good meetings they should have. They come, and perhaps find the meeting not so lively and spirited as with their own little church at home; more time running to waste, more of a restraining influence, and numbers who take no part at all. They do not know what to make of it; and it is so different from what they expected, that they feel greatly disappointed. The cause of this we have partially stated above. Another cause of no little weight, may perhaps be found on the part of those who come in. It may be that they come with the idea that there are plenty of workers here and hence they can sit as spectators. This is not right. Now we ask all who come here either as visitors or to locate, to come to help; not to look at those who hold back, but at those who are struggling to urge the work forward; not to be disappointed and surprised to find poor meetings, but to take hold to help make them as good as possible; come as fresh recruits to the aid of those who have long been warring against the powers of darkness. It was the remark of one of the best of judges in spiritual things, who lately spent a few weeks in this place, that no person had any business in Battle Creek who was not a worker. In that remark we heartily concur; for if there is a church in all the ranks where there is need of every one's standing at his post, instant in season, out of season, it is here. And at times we do have most cheering and refreshing seasons. A series of meetings is now in progress, under the superintendence of Bro. Loughborough, in which good advancement has already been made. With great unanimity of effort, the church is laboring to reach a better state. Those who have been upon the back ground are beginning to come up; and all are encouraged. The prospect before us was never better. We should not pattern after one another; yet we admit that the brethren abroad have reason to expect great things of us here in Battle Creek; and while we earnestly endeavor to meet our great responsibilities, we ask the sympathy and prayers of all who hold with us the like precious faith, and are engaged in the same great work. Spiritual Blindness.
By Merritt E. Cornell
It is affirmed in the scriptures of truth that men will call evil good and good evil, and put darkness for light and light for darkness. Isa. v. 20. How true this is if applied to the present day. How wonderfully hath Satan blinded the minds of many well-meaning people! In how many ways the truth is perverted and changed into a lie! This principle was first introduced into the world by Satan, when he said to our first parents, “Ye shall not surely die,” “shall be as gods,” &c. Disobedience will not abase as punishment, but exalt as a blessing—the penalty will be a change to your advantage—saith Satan, “Ye shall be as gods.” It was from the beginning of sin in this world, and by the author of sin, it was first hinted that immortality was in man's nature, so that he could not really die. It was the father of lies who first taught that man was in possession of a part of God, or that in a state of transgression he would become as God. Thus the way was prepared to rob the resurrection of its importance, and the second advent of Christ of its glory, by promising all the change necessary, at, and through, death. Thus blinded by Satan, men are led to stigmatize the only Bible Sabbath as an “old Jewish Sabbath,” “yoke of bondage,” &c., and exalt a counterfeit Sabbath as “holy,” “Christian,” Lord’s day,” &c. The only day of divine appointment, or that was ever sanctified for man, they refuse to keep, because forsooth it was not commanded over again, in so many words, in the New Testament; but the day first set apart by heathen nations for the worship of the sun, they willingly honor without its ever being commanded. So darkness is put for light. In like manner scriptural baptism is pronounced “immodest,” “dangerous,” &c., and the Catholic sprinkling is confidently declared to be baptism proper. Having instituted a morality of convenience, they have substituted sprinkling in the place of being “buried with Christ.” Sunday keeping and sprinkling appear to be twin substitutes introduced or fostered by that Pagan Emperor. But those who advocate these errors, make Constantine a Christian, and almost a patron saint. The historian is well aware that Constantine prepared the way for the Catholic church; that he was still a Pagan idolater after his pretended conversion to Christianity. Constantine professed to favor Christianity, from policy. No genuine conversion can possibly be proved in his case. The following testimony found in Wesley’s Sermons, vol. ii, p. 97, is to the point: “A wonderful instance of this spiritual blindness is given us in the very celebrated work of a late eminent writer, who supposes that the New Jerusalem came down from Heaven when Constantine called himself a Christian! I say called himself a Christian, for I dare not affirm that he was one any more than Peter the Great. I cannot but believe he would have come nearer the mark if he had said that it was the time when a huge cloud of infernal brimstone and smoke came up from the bottomless pit; for surely there never was a time wherein Satan gained so fatal an advantage over the church of Christ, as when such a flood of riches, and honor, and power, broke in upon it, particularly on the clergy.”
Men, under the influence of this blindness, are led to persecute the true and build up the false. In this way Satan led the wife of Ahab to kill the true prophets of God, and feed the prophets of Baal at her own table; and it was the same influence that led the woman Jezebel, of the Apocalypse, to “frame mischief by a law,” and put to death so many millions of the saints of God. The Mother of Harlots has done her work of causing the nations to drink of this mystical wine, and now the daughters have come on to the stage, and are acting out the same spirit, differing only as a grain of arsenic differs from an ounce. Professedly religious men still “turn away from the truth, and are turned to fables,” and, “many follow their pernicious ways, by reason of whom the way of truth is evil spoken of.” The Dragon is still making war on the truth and its advocates, and the remnant, who keep the commandments, will not escape his ire. How strange that men, otherwise intelligent, are so ignorant in regard to Bible truth. Is it not because Satan hath blinded their minds? “They are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink.” They are intoxicated with the wine of Babylon. All nations have partaken of the cup, so that there can be no hope of the masses. A few that have not known the depths of Satan will receive light, when the earth shall be lighted with the glory of that mighty angel, Rev. xviii, 1, 2, and this will manifest the blindness of those who exalt tradition above God’s law. Then, as always in the past, the fiercest hate and persecution will come from formal professors. The lovers of pure truth must now gird on the armor and be ready; for the battle is coming, fierce and strong. The irrepressible conflict is before us, but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. Blessed promise. The great controversy will close, and there will follow a mighty shout of victory over the beast, image, mark, and the number of his name. Praise God for the glory which awaits the overcomer! Report from Bro. White.
By James White
Since our last report we have held meetings at Greenville and Bushnell as follows: Sabbath, the 16th, we found assembled at the House of Prayer in this place, in good season in the morning, the two churches mentioned above, and some from Winfield and Orange. We again spoke one hour and a half. In the afternoon Mrs. W. spoke two hours. We are glad to say, that she does not have to go before the people alone with the reform dress. Eight sisters have already put on this modest apparel, and most of the others are preparing. It is quite a curiosity in the proud little village of Greenville, but many of the best citizens commend them, not only for their moral courage, but for their neat appearance. First-day morning we spoke two hours, and Mrs. W. one quarter of an hour. In the afternoon she spoke to a large and promiscuous congregation for two hours, with great freedom and power. There were many139 tobacco-eaters present. And when she drew the contrast between a modern temple, polluted with tobacco spittle and its effluvia, and the temple of God where the priest washed their feet lest a particle of dust should be carried into the sanctuary, the sensation was great. This was given her the previous night in a dream, and she spoke as from a living reality. There is a general waking up to these things, and we are expecting a crowd at Orleans next Sabbath. Monday, the 18th, we led a business meeting of the Greenville or Eureka and Fairplains church, for three hours, and spent much time in speaking upon Systematic Benevolence. The brethren came up nobly. Their figures for 1866 were $225.44. For 1867 they were $271.88. But upon hearing our testimony on the subject they became dissatisfied with their figures, and the 18th, they raised them $132.44, so that now the amount stands for the present year $404.32. One of the wealthiest in this region says, “This is the best meeting we have had yet!” The 19th, we went to Bushnell, twelve miles, and spoke one hour and a half. Mrs. W. spoke an hour. This little branch is reviving. They have much to learn, but as they seem willing to receive instruction, the brethren seem encouraged about them. They had ten dollars for the Michigan Conference fund. To-day we received fifty copies of Testimony to the Church, No. 11. May it go abroad and find every S. D. Adventist. More soon. Greenville, Montcalm Co., Mich. Feb. 20.