An Item of Experience by R. J. Lawrence

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 8, 1870

An Item of Experience.

By R. J. Lawrence

While reading to-day in REVIEW, No. 11, I saw a heading, “S. D. Adventists,” and under it, a notice of the Oneida camp-meeting, taken from the True Reformer, published in Scott, N. Y., the place from which I emigrated thirty-five years ago. It was there that I first sought the Lord, two years before, at a Seventh-day Baptist annual Conference, at which time a protracted meeting was held, which resulted in a general revival of religion in that vicinity. I united myself with the first-day Baptists in the place, and soon became strongly prejudiced against the seventh-day Sabbath, by the frequent allusions to it as Jewish, and to those that keep it, as Jews, and also by the arguments held forth for the change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week; so that I never gave the subject an investigation until fifteen years since, when my mind was forcibly impressed with that subject. While I was investigating the nature of man, I also examined the Sabbath question, and was enabled to see the truth on the subject; and, as Paul says, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood, but was obedient to the heavenly vision. And I can say to-day, that I delight in the law of God after the inward man. “All thy commandments are righteousness,” “and thy law is the truth.”

The writer in the article above mentioned, after describing the camp-meeting and what he heard, further says, “We believe that this people are doing a great and good work as able defenders of God’s broken law. We have never felt like opposing them, although we do not see with them in every point of doctrine, and now, more than ever before, we bid them God speed in their efforts to defend his truth.”

When I read this, my very soul went up to God in earnest prayer that the only two classes of Christians that are advocating and defending the whole of God’s law, might become united on all points, and stand together in the accomplishment of the great work that is before us. And I feel like saying to them, Dear brethren of the Seventh-day Baptists, Oh! make those points of doctrine on which we differ, subjects of earnest, prayerful study. Let us not differ, so long as the Bible does not teach two doctrines on the same subject. I suggest that the two denominations make their points of difference a subject of earnest prayer, that they may become reconciled.

Yours, R. J. LAWRENCE.

Prairie City, Mo.