Sketch of Experience by Wm. B. Palmer

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 17, 1871

Sketch of Experience.

By Wm. B. Palmer

About eleven months since, Bro. Sanborn visited the neighborhood in which I reside, and preached a few times. I was somehow induced to attend the meeting and hear what he had to say. I had been a Methodist about twenty years, and armed with a considerable amount of prejudice, I went to the meeting. I did not feel at home; but as he began his sermon, I became interested, and at the conclusion of the meeting my mind underwent quite a change. I could see the spirit of Christ in his servant, and was almost convinced that I should give up Sunday and keep the seventh day as the Sabbath. I however kept my feelings to myself. I had for a number of years been quite backward in religious matters, and as the Holy Spirit began to warm up my heart, and caused me to feel as I used to, the question would come up, Would you be willing to keep the seventh day as the Sabbath with the reproaches of the church and the world heaped upon you, and have the love of God shed abroad in your heart?

I must say that this thought gave me a great deal of uneasiness; and perhaps I might have gone no further in that direction, had I not been induced to attend the camp-meeting at Kilbourn City. The arguments brought forward at that meeting decided me; and on my journey home I made up my mind to cast in my lot with the Sabbath-keepers.

Full well I knew what I must encounter by so doing; but by the grace of God I have been enabled to stand, and feel that I am on the Rock. I had been for a good while almost convinced that Sunday was not the Sabbath; but I did not want to see the light. There are very many in trouble on this point. They will not read for fear they may be convinced; and as the drowning man will grasp at anything within his reach, so they will fly one way and the other, and come to conclusions that are so foolish that a person of good sense feels almost ashamed to reply.

I can say with an honest heart, that I have been glad when I have thought of the course that I have been led to pursue. I want more humility, more of the mind of Christ, a deeper sinking into his will. How true are the words of the psalmist, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” It is only when we take the teachings of men instead of the word of God that we go into darkness. How plain are the teachings of the word of God! When I look at the condition of the world and note how fast the prophecies are being fulfilled, I wonder that people cannot see. Satan was never so busy as at the present time; for he sees that his time is short.

Wm. B. Palmer.

Waushara Co., Wis.