Seventh-Day Baptists and Seventh-Day Adventists.
By W. M. Jones
It is only thirty years since a Seventh-day Baptist sister, of Verona, New York, conversed with, and gave our Sabbath tracts to Advent ministers and people in Washington, New Hampshire, who received joyfully the blessed Sabbath of the Lord our God. They are now found from Maine to California. They have home missions among the Swedes, the Norwegians, the Danes, and the French, and soon will have them among the Germans. They have representatives in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. The Queen of Denmark reads the Review and Herald of the Sabbath. Eld. J. N. Andrews is about to join the mission in Switzerland, and from thence he will help forward the work in Central Europe. At Battle Creek, Michigan, the Sabbath people have a Health Institute, a Classical School, three power presses and three buildings for printing, and fifty persons at work in the publishing business, and also many cotton chapels and an itinerant ministry moving all over the land. They are said to be orthodox in their belief in salvation only through Christ; they practice believer's baptism, and keep the Seventh-day Sabbath; they reject the use of tobacco and alcoholic drinks, and give largely and constantly of their substance to send forth to every creature their views of the gospel and the doctrine of the Bible Sabbath. They are reputed to be industrious, virtuous and honest, and are certainly very earnest in their work. Verily, they are entitled to the front rank in the work of the restoration of the Sabbath of the Lord. Seventh-day Baptists appeared in England about 300 years ago, at least as early as 1585. For more than a hundred years they were subject to fines, imprisonment, and martyrdom. Two hundred and ten years ago, Stephen Mumford carried the Sabbath doctrine with him to Newport, Rhode Island. It took seven years to form a church of seven members. Persecution through human law and custom hindered the observance of the Sabbath, but the American Sabbath-keepers were not idlers in the Lord's vineyard; they lived for Christ and their names are written in the Lamb's book of life. Thirty years ago our people may have numbered 6,000. There may have been a gain in this time of 2,500. Education has had a large share of our attention and financial strength. The schools do a good and noble work for the churches and for the country. Sabbath truth has through them been preached in Hayti, Lower Canada, Palestine, and China. Their tracts have gone into North Africa, France, Germany, Russia, and Great Britain. The home work is well known. During the past seven years the tract society has taken a fresh start, and seems really to have made a new lease of its life. The home missionaries, chiefly veterans, are hard at work in regions beyond the churches. Still our progress is vexatiously slow, though sure, so cautiously sure, that others are getting ahead of us. We have homes and lands. Most of us have done well at the beginning of life, that is, we left all the world for Christ, but it is to be feared that many of us are ending our days by leaving Christ for our children; and where are thousands of them? Gone from the Sabbath! It has been said at our conventions, that in forty and fifty years, more children are lost to the denomination than are saved to it. In view of what ought to be done, and might be done, who can blame us for a hurried anxiety to see rapid strides made by our people. Let me propose a few things: 1. Daily prayer. The other night I heard a returned missionary from the Santals, India, say in Exeter Hall, that prayer is agony. Let us know what this means. May we know that God hears the fervent prayers of His people. 2. Let each church send her pastor out into the world for one, or two, or three, months of the year, pay his traveling expenses and continue his salary, and bid him go where the true Sabbath is not named, and there preach it. 3. Two brethren have joined to support a missionary in the field. There are farmers and others who could do the same. Suppose that twenty-four brethren unite in pairs to support twelve missionaries in the open field, and choose their own men. Where there is a will there is a way, which way is so simple in practice, that a fool need not err therein. 4. If the Recorder is to be kept at its present size, ought there not to be published a small weekly sheet containing the trenchant editorials of the former, and other matter relating to the progress of the work? We need such a paper by the ten thousand copies to be sent broadcast all over the land. Thousands would read it who would not look at a tract; and besides there is now needed a large number for gratuitous distribution. 5. Let every member of the denomination mail a tract every week to somebody in some part of the country, and give one in person to some friend or stranger. If 8,000 members were to send weekly 8,000 Sabbath tracts into distant parts, and accompany the deed with the prayer of faith, what might we not expect within a twelve month. 6. God has given our youth great advantages. Knowledge and culture are theirs. May they learn to take up the cross and bear it after Jesus. It is to be hoped that those who are studying for the ministry will look forward to the work of gathering churches, rather than to expect to find a comfortable pasture at the end of their theological course. 7. I have referred to the Advent brethren. Praises be to God that Seventh-day Baptists gave to them the truth of the Sabbath. Let not the latter be jealous of the work of the former; nor let us shake the head and shrug the shoulder at some of the odds and ends which our dignified moderation and respectability do not quite approve. “What is the chaff to the wheat?
Saith the Lord.”
Imperfections and mistakes are common to all, and God blesses faithful laborers who are not yet made perfect. They say: “We are not doing one-twentieth of what we might do.” If this be true of Seventh-day Adventists, what shall be said of our lack and ability? Shall it be said that Seventh-day Baptists are not doing one-fortieth of what they might do? In a letter just received from a dear brother, who is in a position to know, he says, “The Adventists are compassing the world; so might we if we were more devoted.” What is herein pleaded for is a general uprising of our people to go up and possess the land. To monopolize the Sabbath we cannot; but we can begin immediately to double the labor; and then to go on increasing it till the Sabbath has been made known in all the earth. If we do so, “the God of heaven will prosper us.” May “we, his servants, arise and build.” Mill Yard, May 7th, 1874.