God’s Guidance in Present Duties
By E. MACOMBER
DEAR BRETHREN AND FRIENDS: I feel like adding my testimony with yours on the Lord's side. Truly, the Lord has remembered us in much mercy. Since returning from the New England Camp-meeting, my mind has been much exercised upon present duties: First, in the morning to seek the Lord with all my heart, and ask with confidence his guiding Spirit; then, as duties appear before me, to discharge them faithfully. God is very near to help. I have experienced it, and one circumstance in proof, I will mention. When in Newport, R. I., with my wife, visiting her relatives, and Sabbath had come, and no Sabbath-keepers in that wicked city of pleasure-seekers, my mind was directed to visit a noble-minded and kind-hearted minister of one of the popular churches. I was greeted with kindness, and felt that I had found the right place to spend the passing hours of the holy Sabbath. I told him my business. He drank of the good Spirit, and commenced to relate his experience concerning the Sabbath. Said he, “I was called upon, when in college, to write an essay on the first-day Sabbath; and, to my utter astonishment, I could find no proof whatever for first-day observance. The time came for me to bring forward my production, and I had none. I asked for two weeks more to investigate the matter more thoroughly. The time passed, and I found myself no better prepared to treat the subject than before. I plainly told the professor of the Institute that I could not write an essay from the Bible, for there was no authority for the first-day Sabbath, in the word of God. I was dealt with.
“Time passed on, and I left college fitted for the ministry. The time for ordination came. I was questioned175upon the articles of faith of the Baptist denomination; all went well until the question of the Sabbath was introduced by one of the venerable body. I told them frankly that there was no authority in the Bible for the first-day Sabbath. They came near rejecting me, but concluded finally to let me pass. Ever since, I have occupied a position among them as a Baptist minister.” He inquired to know if the Seventh-day Advent people believed in the gift of prophecy now in the church, and if they practised the washing of the saints’ feet as recorded in St. John xiii, 14, and healing the sick, and the anointing with oil, &c., &c. These he considered to be duties and privileges belonging to the church of Christ to-day. I passed the afternoon with much satisfaction, and we closed the interview with a melting and cementing season of prayer. The angels of God were there; we were “in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.” I was strengthened to move in the order of the Lord. Dear brethren and sisters, you that have access to the throne of grace, remember the little flock in Rhode Island, and this dear brother of whom I speak. The cry of the third angel comes welling up in my soul, and the power and spirit of the first and second messages are being renewed in my whole being. Let us move in harmony with God’s great plan, and victory is ours. Ashaway, Washington Co., R. I.