Encouragement from Camp-Meeting Blessings
By Lydia Jane Shaw
DEAR BRETHREN AND SISTERS: I feel it a privilege as well as a duty to speak to you through the REVIEW; to acknowledge the benefit I have received in attending the camp-meeting, and other privileges I have enjoyed. I have been encouraged and strengthened, and have experienced in some degree the love of God in my heart, and have realized his blessings, and feel that I do in a measure realize the time in which we live, and what we must be to receive eternal life. I have a desire and a determination to follow on to know the Lord, whom to know aright is life; for he is the way, the truth, and the life. Never did the truth look so precious to me as now; and I hope to be sanctified through it, that I may be found a perfect overcomer. But I often fear; for I feel and realize how frail is human nature, how deceitful and desperately wicked the heart is, so prone to do evil, that I often say in my heart, Lord, who shall be saved? who shall escape the unmixed wrath of God which is soon to be poured out upon a guilty world, and stand acquitted before God? This is for us to decide; then let us be up and doing, forsake the world with its lust and pleasure, and choose that better part which cannot be taken away. We can secure a heavenly inheritance if we perseveringly try. Is it not worth striving for? My prayer is that I may have the Holy Spirit to guide me into all truth, protect me from every evil, and help me to overcome temptation, and bear the trials and cares of this world. I want to press forward with my heart fixed on Christ, and be found worthy of a place among the redeemed of the Lord. Yours in hope, LYDIA JANE SHAW. Wyoming Co., N. Y.