p. 5 | Things That Can Not Block the Way by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 20, 1906

Things That Can Not Block the Way

By W. A. S.

The laborers in Europe learn the lesson of “doing the next thing.” When one way is made impossible, they work another way. If they can not sing or pray in a public meeting, they read a psalm or prayer from the Bible, and preach the message. If preaching is forbidden, they hold a prayer-meeting. If a public meeting is prohibited, they hold a private meeting.

Where public baptisms are impossible, the service is attended to in the darkness of night. One sister told me that where it was forbidden the older ones to sell papers, they sent the little children out with them, and so they raised, with the help of the children, a nice little sum for the East African Mission.

It gives the laborer in Nuremberg, Bavaria, for instance, a strange sensation to have people start at every knock at the door, wondering if a policeman is waiting to enter.

In Rome, priests stir up employers to set a watch at the door of our meeting hall, to see that none of their men attend meetings. On the German border of Holland, the workers were shadowed everywhere they went. The shadow—some person sent by priest or Lutheran pastor—followed the worker’s steps, stopped by door or window while the worker made a call, and followed him the whole round of his work till he reached his home at night.

In Flemish Belgium, workers were assailed with water pitchers or flower-pots, or perhaps the priest would set thirty or forty children clattering down the street after the worker, crying, “Heretic!” In eastern Prussia a pastor may take his stand at the door of a village meeting place, and order away those who come to hear. Brethren from north, south, or central Russia tell of revolution raging, with death abroad in the streets.

But all the time, and everywhere, these fellow laborers of ours are working away, sowing the seed of the word in honest and good hearts; and companies and churches are springing up, and governors and judges, and even royal courts, are hearing of the progress of this truth.

W. A. S.