PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
By James White
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.
Since our return from California last August, we have been confined at Battle Creek, excepting flying visits to the Ohio and Northern Michigan camp-meetings. We have never worked harder, and yet we feel stronger for labor than five months ago. We have had special trials and hardships to endure, and have been wonderfully sustained. But the time has fully come for us to change our labors and relation to the cause. We found matters in bad shape in several respects at headquarters, and have labored incessantly to improve them, to the neglect of the work of greater importance to which God has called us. Our people have too long laid the burden of general management of the working of the cause upon us. We have finally fully reached the point of decision to lay these burdens down, a point from which we can never be induced to go back. Let these cares and burdens be divided among our younger men. We, from this time onward, give ourselves to the word of God and to prayer. In this new relation, we come closer to the vital interests of the cause for which we have given a quarter of a century of the strength of life, and to which we most devoutly consecrate the balance. We leave for the Pacific Coast in a week or two, to avoid what remains of winter and a Michigan spring, to counsel with the brethren in California relating to publishing and other matters, to speak to our people as the way may open, and write for our periodicals. God has raised us up to health again, and we solemnly covenant with him not to abuse it under the cares and labors of a printing establishment in Michigan, California, or anywhere else. We hope to visit all our Conferences and home missions during the present year, in company with Mrs. W. We take time for rest, reflection, prayer, and preparation to speak and to write, and design for the future to undertake less, and do better what we attempt to do.