p. 149 | SAVED BY FAMILIES by S. M. I. H.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 6, 1900

SAVED BY FAMILIES.

By S. M. I. H.

As the time for the camp-meeting approached, the child began to make arrangements to go. Her father, in desperation, told her that he would lock her up before she should go with those people. But the mother, an invalid, interposed. She felt that this would not mend matters, and decided that she would herself go with the child and take care of her. Her husband remonstrated, saying that she was not able; but the mother, sure that she was able to do anything that would save her child from disgrace, insisted that she should go and take care of her, and by this means win her back to her old-time obedience. The father at last consented, stipulating that they should both return on the last Friday morning of the meeting. Delighted at the prospect of her mother's attendance at the meeting, and filled with the hope that she might “see the truth,” the child readily agreed to return at the specified time.

I should probably never have known anything about these events but for the fact that on Thursday the girl announced to her mother that she must remain until after Sunday; for she must be baptized. Then there transpired a condition that led one of the brethren to ask me if I would see what I could do for a certain mother and daughter on the grounds, who had consented to come to me for counsel, and abide by the advice given. I, of course consented, and so was brought into the controversy, all unconscious of what was involved in it.

The mother came first alone to my tent. Her salutation was after this manner: “You people believe in keeping the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, I understand?”

“We do, most certainly,” I said.

“Well, then,” she demanded, “how can you take a child out of her home and teach her to disobey her parents while pretending to get her to keep the Sabbath?”

“What do you mean?” was my astonished reply.

Then the facts, hard and cold as ice, were rained upon me. I “took them with salt,” considering the mother's evident anger, until I had time to investigate. This I did as soon as possible, and found that without question she had the law of God on her side.

The opposition that I encountered in prosecuting this investigation was of a nature that constrained me to go to some of our leading brethren with a question that had arisen before me in ugly proportions.

“I wish to know,” I said, “if our people are supposed to be warranted in influencing children to disobey their parents for any cause; for if they are, I am not with them.”

Asked to explain, I told all I knew of the circumstances, and was fully reassured. “Go ahead, straighten out this tangle, and we will stand by you,” was the comforting word with which I was sent away from the minister's tent.

The only thing for me to do was to open up to that mother and daughter those principles that make for righteousness, and to which both parent and child must answer; and I had the satisfaction of seeing confidence expressed in the face of the mother, and conviction in that of the daughter, who arose with a cry of confession, and threw her arms about her mother's neck.

At this I slipped out, leaving them alone. I did not see them again together, but later, as I was walking across the camp-ground, the girl came running toward me, and expressed her gratitude to God for the light that had come to her, and said, “Mamma sees everything differently, too. She says that she will stay over Sunday if I wish her to; but I think we had better go home to-morrow, just as papa said, unless we can get his permission to stay.”

I had not thought to report this, which happened many months ago, but I find that the case is not an isolated one; that there is need of some utterance against such a perversion of the truth as led to this mischief.

For some reason we have a reputation of dividing families, from which we should clear ourselves by letting the light that is in us have an opportunity to shine upon the domestic problem. God has no use for divided families. His plan is to save his people by families; and a child who has been converted to the Sabbath can give no better testimony to its truth than to pay still greater honor to her parents, even if she must live the truth alone and unaided to do so.

The world needs to know just what “the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus” do really mean to us as a people; and we all need to remember that God has so bound himself up in one bundle with the family that no one can touch it anywhere without touching him.

I am reminded again that many will feel like quoting Luke 21: 16 and Mark 13: 12 at this point; and so I will again say that division has a necessary part in the gospel plan; for every man must be so separated from every other that he shall stand alone with God. But it is the office of the Word, which is the sword of the Spirit, to make that separation. Division by the Word is the first step toward that quickening which makes the unity of the Spirit possible. It is the beginning of that healing process by which harmony may become possible to a disjointed family life. Division by the word of men is like a blow on flesh and bone, which can only bruise and break. When God divides, it is a clean cut, capable of healing. It is our part to give a good, sound, living testimony to the Word of life, and leave God to perform whatever of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division may be necessary in making up his sum total.

S. M. I. H.