Untitled article by S. N. Haskell; Editor

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, March 3, 1868

FromReview and Herald, Vol. XXXI, No. 12

Obituary Notices.

By S. N. Haskell; Editor

Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth.

DIED, in Vernon, Vt., Feb. 1, 1868, sister Rachel Preston, aged 59 years. She has been helpless for five years. She experienced religion when 17 years of age; was baptized and united with the Methodist church. At the age of twenty-eight, she became interested in the Sabbath question. Was much opposed by the Methodist minister, who finally told her she might keep the Sabbath if she would not leave them. Notwithstanding the opposition, she joined the Seventh-day Baptist church of Vernon, Oneida Co., N. Y. She, with her husband, moved to Washington, N. H., about 1841, where she embraced the Advent doctrine. She then requested her name to be dropped from the S. D. B. church book. But they refused, saying she had done nothing for which they should take it off. In 1844, after the passing of the time, she introduced the Sabbath among the Adventists, as referred to in Bro. White's report of Jan. 22: "Soon after this they moved from Washington, and hearing much said against Bro. and Sr. White, at different times, by individuals who were disaffected in consequence of reproof which they needed, and who sought to relieve their minds by poisoning others, she became cold in religion, and prejudiced to some extent against the Testimonies, having never seen Bro. and Sr. White. But we were happy to learn that after reading Testimony No. 13 (which some unknown friend in kindness had sent them), her mind underwent a decided change."

Her heart was made to rejoice, a short time before her death, in hearing of the result of the Washington meeting, at the recent visit of Bro. and Sr. White. She expressed her willingness to die, and expressions like the following were among her last: "Jesus is good," "Jesus is my friend," &c.

She sleeps, but the result of her introducing the Sabbath among Adventists lives. May her husband be sustained in his affliction, and have the prayers and sympathy of his brethren and sisters.

S. N. HASKELL.

DIED, in Battle Creek, Mich., Feb. 19, 1868, of typhoid fever, Edwin B. Dickinson, youngest son of Preston and Celesta B. Dickinson, in the 25th year of his age.

At the commencement of his sickness, he placed himself under the care of the physicians of the Institute, and was doing well, when imprudence in partaking of unsuitable food, unknown to his physicians, threw him into a relapse, from which it was impossible for nature to rally. The mourning parents and friends have hope in his death. In death-bed repentances, those which are wholly such, we cannot have much confidence; but hope, in this case, is based on convictions and resolutions to give himself to the service of God and obedience of the truth, formed and expressed before the hand of disease came upon him, and of which the full consecration be manifested during his sickness, seemed to be but the carrying out.

By one of those striking and solemn coincidences which sometimes occur in the events of this life, the day in which he was conveyed to the tomb, was the one which had been set for his marriage. An appropriate and comforting discourse was delivered by Bro. M. E. Cornell to a large and sympathizing congregation.

ED.