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MEETINGS IN MAINE

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 27, 1869

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 34, No. 5.

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MEETINGS IN MAINE.

By L. L. Howard

We have had some cause of encouragement in our fields of labor, and in the churches this season. Our last two Monthly Meetings, one in Canaan and the other in Cornville, were interesting and, I hope, profitable, both to ministers and people. We had good liberty in preaching the word, and the brethren and sisters listened with unusual eagerness. Our social meetings were lively, animating, and very cheering to me.
About all the preaching that our churches have is what they have at their Monthly Meetings; therefore they are looked forward to with interest by the most, if not all. But there is one thing that I sincerely regret, and that is the habit our brethren and sisters are getting into of going a dozen or fifteen miles on Sabbath morning and returning the same day, leaving the meeting to go on as best it can till Sunday night. This ought not to be so. In the first place it looks very much like breaking the Sabbath, and in the next place it is discouraging to those who remain. It detracts a great deal from the interest of a meeting to go in Sunday morning and find perhaps half of the brethren and sisters missing. If ministers can spend their time and all their energies in preaching the truth, surely it ought to be worth spending one day in a month to hear it. And instead of losing the day, as some say, it is possible they gain something that is infinitely more valuable. It is too late in the day to allow the world to drive us away from duty. We find that those who make a sacrifice of their time, and remain with us to the last, helping all they can by their prayers and exhortations, are the ones who make the most advancement in present truth. If only those are going to be gathered who have made a covenant with the Lord by sacrifice, shall it be the few, or will all take hold of the work together? Let serving the Lord in faithfulness, be the primary object of all our lives, and the world secondary, then it will be well with us, both in this world and in that which is to come.
L. L. HOWARD.