OUR WORK AND WORKERS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 12, 1895

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 21, No. 36.

OUR WORK AND WORKERS.

At the camp meeting recently held at Newark, Del., sixteen persons were baptized.

New York canvassers report sales of books to the amount of $601.60 for the week ending August 23.

At the local camp meeting held at Ironton, Mo., August 22–25, five persons were baptized by Elder A. P. Heacock.

We have a report that ten have taken a stand for all the commandments of God, as a result of labor done at Carbondale, Kan., by Brother E. A. Morey.

At the close of the local camp meeting at Pittsburg, Kan., ten were baptized, and the following week six more were baptized, and a church of thirty members was organized.

Of the meetings being held at St. Joseph, Mo., by Elder H. K. Willis it is reported that “seventeen dear souls have decided to walk in the way of God’s commandments.”

The annual conference of our churches in Denmark was recently held in Frederikshavn, attended by about three hundred representatives of the work, including some of the laborers in the neighboring conferences of Norway and Sweden. That the work is prospering in Scandinavian countries is shown by the report of sales of publications the past year, aggregating over $40,000.

An Iowa canvasser reports selling one of our books and taking an order for another from a man who has been in the habit of burning Adventist literature. In this we see the practical encouragement of Eccl. 11:6: “In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand; for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they shall both be alike good.”

Some people have tried to sneer down the idea that our brethren serving terms in the chain-gang of Rhea County, Tenn., are persecuted because of their religious faith. It is alleged that their punishment is solely because they violated the civil law in working on Sunday. But the fact of their being persecuted for conscience’ sake, and that, too, by the officers of the law, is now fully demonstrated. Because they were not compelled to work on the Sabbath during their confinement, the authorities have added that much more to their term of imprisonment. This is, beyond dispute, official punishment on account of their faith. Yet the constitution of that state provides that “no man shall in time of peace be required to perform any service to the public on any day set apart by his religion as a day of rest.”

Not until the final summing up of the judgment will Seventh-day Adventists be able to give anything like an accurate enumeration of their adherents. The preaching is so extensively done through their publications that it is impossible to follow up results. It is getting to be so common that it is no longer a surprise for itinerant laborers to come across heretofore unknown believers who have become such through reading. The real numerical strength of those who “keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus” will not be known even to the faithful themselves until it is disclosed in the judgment.

The bailiff of the Clerkenwell Police Court, London, recently seized and sold enough of the property of the International Tract Society’s publishing house to satisfy a judgment for liens and costs amounting to about $80. The fines were for allowing some women and girls to work on Sunday, in violation of the Factory Act. This act is ostensibly for the protection of women and girls, and to prevent their being overworked, by securing for them a weekly day of rest. The spirit of the act was not violated, inasmuch as the laborers in the publishing house all rest on the Sabbath day (Saturday), and the law makes an exception in favor of the Jews who rest on that day instead of Sunday. We are often met with the plea on the part of Sunday observers that in keeping the first day of the week they keep the spirit of the fourth commandment, which says that “the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” But when it comes to keeping the spirit of man’s law in that way, although it be acknowledged by the authorities that the object of the law has been practically subserved, the technical violation of the letter must be punished by infliction of the full penalty.