The County House | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 19, 1901

The County House.

The word county house, or, as it is more commonly called, the poorhouse, has a sound we dislike, and none of us would look forward with pleasure to a sojourn therein. No; we hope to be taken care of in our helplessness and age without going to the county house. The fathers and mothers who have spent the best of their lives in hard toil, laboring early and late that their boys and girls may have an education, and be prepared to take their place with the learned and scholarly,—these parents, after spending not only their strength but their living with the one purpose in view,—that of seeing their children do well and have good homes of their own,—in many cases have found a small corner in one of those homes in which to pass their last days. To be sure, some of these corners are not very bright, but they are more to be desired than the misfortune, or, as some would say, “disgrace,” of going to the county house.

You may vow, and perhaps have already done so, that your father or mother shall never go to the poorhouse. But do you know we are living in perilous times? Read 2 Tim. 3:1-5, and look around you to see if any of those signs are in process of fulfillment.

I visited our county house not long ago, and as I talked with a lady past eighty years of age who had been kept by the county for nearly twenty years, I could not help thinking of the scripture referred to above. She was telling me about the people she used to know. I asked her some questions: “Have you any children?”—“Yes; a daughter.” “Is she living?”—“Yes.” “Married?”—“Yes.” “Has she a good home?”—“Yes, but there is no place in it for mother.” Sad thought! mother, who nursed her early and late, caring for her in sickness and health,—surely this daughter is “without natural affection.” In another room I saw a man not yet sixty years old, but helpless, or nearly so, with paralysis. He has a son living in town, in sight of the county house. “He does not come to see me very often,” the father said. I talked with another aged man whose only son is a minister. He said, “My son told me that I should never come to the poorhouse while he lived.” But it seems that the son has a family of his own, and the parsonage is not large enough for his father and stepmother to have rooms with them; so they are spending their last days in the county house.

If this life ended all, it would be sad indeed; but some of the poorhouse people have bright hopes for the future. They told me that they expect a mansion in heaven. They have treasures laid up there, and realize that this life with its changeableness will soon end.

I listened to Elder Luther Warren preach one evening. His text had only three words: “Thy kingdom come.” He asked if we were saying it or praying it? I am not going to try to tell you all he said, although it made a deep impression on the minds of those present. One point he made was this: If some people get to heaven at all, they will have to live at the county house. Then I thought of my visit. These people I talked with, when young, did not expect to spend their last days at the county house. Perhaps we do not expect to live at the county house in heaven, but what assurance have we that we shall

not?” Where are we storing our treasure? Jesus said, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.”

There are many things that can sweep earthly riches away from us, but what we lay up in heaven is safe. “He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord.” There is no better way to invest money than to lend to the Lord. How much have we in the bank of heaven? Enough to keep us out of the county house? Is our bank account such that we can draw on it throughout eternity and not exhaust it?

Elder Warren used this only as a figure. In reality there will be no place in heaven for those who have lived for self here on earth. Let us arouse from our slumber, and pray, not only in words but in deeds, “Thy kingdom come.” May the Lord help us to realize we are living in perilous times.