Dominica by PHILLIP GIDDINGS

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · May 23, 1907

_Dominica_

By PHILLIP GIDDINGS

THE Jamaica earthquake disaster of the fourth of January, from which God so wonderfully delivered us, abbreviated our program, but not without an impressive preaching of its own in a most realistic way.

The book of Ezekiel, besides visions, similitudes, symbolisms, verbal idealism, etc., contains realisms in miniature, as in the fourth chapter, where the siege of Jerusalem and the consequence are acted, and in the twelfth, where the moving out and captivity are dramatized.

And so, we take it, delegates from United States, Cuba, Central America, Panama, Hayti, Porto Rico, St. Thomas, Antigua, Dominica, St. Lucia, Barbados, St. Vincent, Grenada, Tobago, Trinidad, and Guiana had met in Jamaica—between the Americas—to witness a scene which would give emphasis, positiveness, and dispatch to their message as those who had seen “terrible things in righteousness.”

I have not spoken to any of our ministers, but I believe they feel like telling their message with a new force, as those who know assuredly what they affirm.

What seemed a disappointment at the meeting, was compensated by the attention and interest of the people in the different fields on our home coming. When I landed in Dominica, it was pathetic to see the crowd—Catholic friends and others, and our own people—that came to welcome me, thanking God that I was alive. Mrs. Giddings had mourned for me as killed, and our little girl made the situation still more painful by saying, “Mama, I don’t see papa coming.”

It is an awful experience of a realistic sample of what awaits the world, when Heaven shall say, “It is done!” Till then, may we who read, tell the people to run to escape the ruin!

A committee of leading gentlemen—among them a Catholic editor, a Catholic merchant, the chief of the telegraphic department, a lawyer, and a school-teacher—arranged for me to lecture in the court room on the disaster, at a shilling admission, proceeds going to the sufferers. Accordingly I did so, to an appreciative audience.

We have reaped the first-fruits of our night-school, in the acceptance of the message by two Catholic young men. They started the beginning of the year. One of them is ready for the Jamaica school, to be better prepared for further usefulness. Another Catholic woman has begun the observance of the Sabbath. Just as I was about to close this report, one of the young men came in bringing his Christmas pledge ($1.20), also paying four dollars for books, and giving an order for six hymn-books as a present to the church for strangers.

We are of good courage, and ask our friends everywhere to remember us in their prayers for the success of God’s work in this part of the vineyard.

PHILLIP GIDDINGS.