Letter from England

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 19, 1874

Letter from England.

We have just received a letter from a young brother in England, from which we extract the following interesting particulars:

Two years ago I left England for America. After being there about nine months I was led by curiosity to inquire of one of the members of your church in Brookfield, N. Y., concerning your distinctive doctrines, when he offered some explanations and also lent me the book entitled “Which? Mortal or Immortal?”

I was converted among the Wesleyan Methodists in England, at the age of fourteen, with whom I remained a member until I went to America. I began to preach at the age of nineteen years (three years since), and continued the work in America, so that at the first I regarded the doctrine with something like horror. Notwithstanding I read the book and compared it with the word of God, and I need scarcely tell you that my former views received a thorough shaking.

I procured several of your minor publications upon the subject, and the consequence was that I fully and joyfully embraced it.

I fell sick, and one of the S. D. A. brethren practically manifested his charity by taking care of me and treating me as his own son in a land of strangers.

I had to return to England to recruit my health. Of course I did not leave my new-found truths behind me. However, I did not publicly avow them, but recommenced to preach among the Wesleyan Methodists. Eventually they requested me to offer myself, and they cordially recommended me at the last quarterly meeting of their circuit, for their ministry. I am now engaged as hired local preacher, and if I comply with the recommendation, I shall have to be examined in London next month by Rev. Morley Punshon. If I should pass that, I should be subjected to a literary one in July, and succeeding there, should have to go to the college for three years.

I have been endeavoring to conceal my views upon this subject for this long time, and have succeeded; but how can I violate my conscience when I am asked plainly to give my views upon it? And I am sure that I shall be; and the consequence will be that I shall be rejected, not only by the ministerial brethren, but I shall, I apprehend, be like Jesus when “they all forsook him and fled.” But if it is truth, God’s truth, I have no fear. I’ll dare to be true, daring not to be otherwise.

I have formed an acquaintance with the village schoolmaster. I lent him the books to read; he is convinced. If he should openly avow it he must forfeit his situation and future hopes in that line, as it is in connection with the Established Church. I also lent them to a local preacher in the village—a very intelligent man. He also is convinced. I went out to him one day while he was at work in his garden to tell him the dreadful feelings that had passed through my heart while reading on eternal torments in one of our popular systems of theology, and before I could fully state my case, he took the precedence and told how he had just before been constrained to leave his work and hide himself and weep upon the reflection of the endless torment of his fellow-creatures who should fail of the grace which he had received. I thought it something remarkable that such feelings should possess us both at the same time, unknown to each other. I lent him some of your other publications, and he told me last evening the reading of them made him feel that he knew nothing of Scriptures.