The Power of Early Influence Upon Character by MRS. M. ADELAIDE GRIFFIN

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 11, 1915

The Power of Early Influence Upon Character

By MRS. M. ADELAIDE GRIFFIN

MRS. M. ADELAIDE GRIFFIN

I AM often interested in the articles which I read in the Home department, and have felt that I, too, should like to contribute my mite, but have hesitated because I have never been a mother. Although I have been a teacher for twenty years, I believe that some good grandmother, who has never perhaps been through long division, but who has brought up a family in the love and fear of God, caring for them in sickness and health with her own hands, is much better fitted to speak or write on this subject than I am. However, two experiences in my own childhood may perhaps be of help to some one, and so I pass them on.

Returning home from school one night at the age of eleven years, I said that I did not think much of my teacher, as she was allowing the boys to use profane language. As a matter of fact, the teacher was a devoted Christian girl, but was troubled with a growing deafness which soon made it necessary for her to give up teaching. My grandfather, a man of the stern old Puritan type, said, “Do you not know better than to swear?” “Yes, sir,” I replied. “Well, then, what difference does it make to you what she lets the boys do?” My grandfather’s answer at this time accomplished two things. It taught me that it was useless for me to find fault with my teachers at home, and it also impressed upon my childish mind the fact that I was expected to stand by myself, and that I should receive no sympathy if I did wrong because others did wrong. The latter lesson was forcibly impressed upon my mind during the next few years.

When I was fifteen years old, God sent me (not to a church school, for at that time I had never even heard of a parochial school) into a cotton mill in one of our large manufacturing cities, and I took my meals at a corporation boarding house. No, do not pity me because I had to go to work so young. It was no harder for me than for my parents, or for Lucy Larcom, David Livingstone, and many others who had a similar experience. Of course I heard much profanity among those who worked with me, and heard and saw many things which I knew to be wrong and improper. My grandfather’s words were my safeguard, for as yet I had not learned to ask help from above. A year and a half passed in this manner, and then I was led to give my heart to Christ.

I see before me now the place where I stood at my frame. I can hear the clatter of machinery and see the great belts going round. I can almost distinguish the faces of the Irish and French Catholic girls by whom I was surrounded, when, like a flash of sunset glory from a darkened sky, I felt the joy of sins forgiven through the merits of a risen Saviour. There was only one Christian girl in the room, and very few Protestants. Soon afterwards I went to work in another room with more unfavorable surroundings, yet I can honestly say that I never found an easier place in which to serve the Master, and I look back upon the three years spent there as among the happiest of my life.

Only a few days ago I went to see one of the women who worked with me then. She is a stanch Catholic, but old and feeble. Many times she swore at me, and used her influence in every way to have me dismissed from the mill, but I had learned from grandfather’s admonition that what she did was no affair of mine, so I treated her as kindly as I could; and when the Sabbath came to me, and I found other employment, none regretted my leaving more than she did. I was really sorry to leave the mill, for I had learned to love the girls for what they were instead of holding aloof from them for what they were not.

I kept the Sabbath for nineteen years before my marriage, and was in the employ of Sabbath keepers less than two years of that time. For fourteen years I did not enjoy church privileges, but I never once had cause to regret the stand I had taken. The fact that others, among them those near and dear to me, kept another day, did not disturb me in the sense of being a temptation, any more than their profanity and theatergoing. Why should it? I had been taught to think independently, in religious and moral matters at least.

When I first learned of the Sabbath truth through reading, I felt that as I must stand before the judgment bar of God alone in the last great day, I could not afford to delay acceptance of what my heart told me to be the truth. The decision belonged to me alone. I had never seen a Seventh-day Adventist minister or a Bible worker; I had never heard a word of the third angel’s message at this time.

Recently I stood by the lifeless form of the pastor who bade me Godspeed as I went out from the church where I first learned of the Saviour’s love. The old church building is now in ashes, and the unbidden tears come to my eyes tonight as I think that never again within those hallowed walls shall I hear the voice of prayer and praise.

“The heart has many passages through which the mind may roam, But the middle aisle is sacred to the old, old home.”

My pastor and his wife never saw the Sabbath truth, but notwithstanding our differences in creed they were true and constant friends, and respected me for having the courage of my convictions. I loved and honored them because for fifty years they did good to all men as they had opportunity.

As a student and teacher in the public schools, and as a waitress in summer hotels, I have not failed to see many sides of life. In some of these hotels I think I was the only woman who did not use profanity, but I saw no more need of using it, nor felt any more temptation to do so, than in a prayer meeting; and no more temptation to dance, or to go on the street and look in shop windows on the Sabbath, than to use profanity. To God be all the praise for his keeping power. But under him I feel that I owe more to the fact that no wrongdoing of mine was ever excused because those who were with me did wrong than to any other cause.

Auburn, N. H.