p. 181 | A Scene in the Fulton Street Prayer-Meeting

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 3, 1875

A Scene in the Fulton Street Prayer-Meeting.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

The Examiner and Chronicle for April 15 relates the following:—

“One of the little episodes that give variety to the Meeting occurred the other day. Among the attendants at Fulton Street are half-a-dozen men, more or less, who have not committed any sin for several years. They know the exact time when they ceased their wrong-doing. These men speak every time they can get a chance. They never fail to repeat their personal story, and inform the audience how long they have been kept pure. One of this number spoke, and assured the Meeting that he was entirely free from sin, and basked every hour in the sunlight of the Saviour’s smile. Shortly after, a modest gentleman took the floor, and said it was a great comfort to him to know that the Bible Christians were men of like passions with us. They had human infirmities, temptations, trials, conflicts, and victories; and they expected to conquer, not by rapture or enthusiasm, but through the blood of the Lamb. This greatly disturbed our “perfect” brother. He went for the speaker. In violation of the rules, he denounced him as possessing a devilish spirit, as being an enemy to the cross, &c. He refused to come to order at the call of the leader, and was finally sung down—the voice of the excited man rising higher at times than the song. He subsided after awhile, white with temper which he called a holy indignation.”

This is a fair illustration of that miserable spirit of self-conceit which always and invariably characterizes these perfectionists. So far as I have known them, this is the spirit with which they are filled. D. M. CANRIGHT.

Stockton, Cal., May 9.