Report of Eld. S. Burdick,
By Stephen Burdick
DELEGATE FROM THE S. D. BAPTISTS TO THE LAST GEN. CONF. OF S. D. ADVENTISTS. Your delegate appointed to attend the last annual session of the Seventh-day Adventist General Conference desires to submit the following report:— The sessions of the Seventh-day Adventist General Conference, and also of the Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, were held at Battle Creek, Mich., within the week commencing March 11, 1873. The General Conference is made up of delegates from the several State Conferences, and is the only body authorized to speak and act in behalf of the denomination, and is everywhere recognized as their highest denominational authority. It represents a constituency of some fourteen State Conferences, 239 churches, 5,875 members, 51 ministers, and 83 licentiates. To these are claimed, in order to an approximate estimate of their full strength, the addition of the considerable but unknown number of scattered brethren and sisters so located as to be without membership in their organized churches, and yet are essentially with them, taking their papers, purchasing and circulating their books, and contributing to their funds. The committee annually appointed and known as the General Conference Committee exercises a general supervision and control over their missionary and general work. Their system of organization is compact, giving unity of action and efficiency in operation. Their method of raising funds, or Systematic Benevolence, is quite efficient and satisfactory in its results, as would appear from the fact that their gifts or pledges for the year amounted to something over thirty thousand dollars. As the result of the system adopted, they are able to report themselves as free from embarrassment from the want of funds for the prosecution of their work. The Publishing Association is a compact body, having for its object the publication of periodicals, tracts, and books, for the wider dissemination of their views and doctrines. These publications are largely relied upon as important agencies for the successful prosecution of their work. The Association possesses a property of about seventy thousand dollars or upward, about one-half of which has been added from the proceeds of the business. The sessions of the Conference and Association were characterized by general harmony of feeling and action, and the manifestation of an active interest on the part of the people. The reports of the laborers from the various fields were of a very encouraging character, and such as to indicate steady progress in the work to which they are committed as a people. They are learning by experience what every really earnest Christian people must learn, that the more they do, the broader will the field open before them, and the more numerous and imperative will come the calls for labor. They have in our own country a prosperous mission among the Danes and Swedes, and one of considerable promise among the French, and also a foreign mission numbering about seventy-four converts among the Swiss. They recognize, as their present greatest need in order to efficiency, more men, qualified to do efficient work as preachers and lecturers. To prepare their young people for future usefulness under circumstances in which they can control the moral influences which surround them, they have opened at Battle Creek, the past year, a school, and are now maturing the plans to make it a permanent denominational school. With the view to harmony of doctrine and Biblical interpretation, and in the way of preparation for their distinctive work, they have developed a plan for the delivery of several courses of theological lectures, at several points, during the year. These are designed mainly for the young men who have entered, or anticipate, the work of the ministry. Others, who desire, may, however, avail themselves of the privileges they afford. They are, as a people, very much in earnest, and are disposed to employ the most direct means to given ends. The reception of your delegate was cordial and frank, and the desire was voluntarily expressed by their representative men, that, as Sabbath-keeping bodies, the Seventh-day Adventists and Seventh-day Baptists may live in peace with each other, and co-operate so far as the circumstances may admit. They are also disposed to discountenance in any of their preachers or lecturers the habit or disposition to press upon our people those doctrines which have been the occasion of trouble among some of our feebler churches in the past. The appointment of a delegate from that body to this meeting was referred to their General Conference Committee. STEPHEN BURDICK, Delegate.