ENCOURAGING ITEMS by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 10, 1876

ENCOURAGING ITEMS.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

I HAVE just received a good letter from a Baptist minister in Alabama, in which he says:—

"Bro. Canright: Having received four numbers of the Review, I am well pleased with its articles; but there are some things about which I would like to be informed. I would like to see your church order, how applicants are received in your church," &c.

"Allow me to say that your visit among us did a great deal of good. There is no opposition here. All that I have heard express themselves want you to come back. A great many of us are strengthened in the doctrine of the soon coming of our Lord, and non-professors are aroused. Several speak favorably of your Sabbath. As I told you, I have been impressed about it from childhood, but since I saw you I have had to work so hard all the week in the field, and Sunday in the pulpit, that I have not had any time to investigate it particularly. If you could visit us again, I think it would be attended with good. If any portion of the above is worthy of note, or would tend to forward your cause, you are welcome to it. I am with much respect, yours in Christian bonds,"

"Hardy Jones."

May the Lord bless this dear brother, and bring him to see the whole truth and to advocate it. Also in a letter from Virginia, Bro. Lane says:—

"I think your visit down here has done much good. My wife met with the brethren at Soliloquy last Sabbath and reported good courage on the part of all, and a good meeting. Quite a number took part in bearing testimony. She has prayer-meetings from house to house among them this week. I met with the brethren at New Market and had a good meeting."

He also writes that they are having a deep interest in the tent. And Bro. Spicer, from Renville Co., Minnesota, writes me as follows:—

"You may perhaps remember that when you were holding tent-meetings at Hutchinson, McLeod Co., you held some conversation after service one evening with a man who was about to go out on a United States surveying contract. I am that person. Your discourse that evening was on the commandments. Although I had been a member of the Baptist church for a score of years, I got wounded in the house of my friends that time. I have thought much on what you said concerning the fourth commandment. I thought when about eighteen years of age that when I said, 'Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?' it came from my heart. But your sermon that evening in all its plainness, simplicity and power, I could not banish from me.

"After returning from the pineries, I united with the Christian church, or Campbellites as they are sometimes called, was ordained an elder, and have sometimes administered the ordinances. Indeed, I held a preacher's license while with the Baptists. Since the time I saw you, I have been anxious to hear more on the subject treated on then and there. I have occasionally got hold of a stray number of Review and Herald. Last winter there was quite a revival with the Methodists at Beaver Falls where I then lived, and in my hungering and thirsting after my first love, zeal and freedom of speech, I made a covenant with God that if he would loose my tongue I would speak for his cause. He took me at my vow, and gave me such freedom of tongue and thought that some thought and said, 'Spicer is crazy; the staid and quiet one is more earnest than the regular old shouters.'

"I commenced to keep the seventh day as the Sabbath of the Lord, resigned my eldership in the Christian church, and I am all alone."

I well remember the conversation with that stranger, but never heard of him afterwards till now that he is a Sabbath-keeper. Thank the Lord! Thus we cannot tell what seed will prosper, this or that.

D. M. Canright.

Rome, N. Y.