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The Poor

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 7, 1875

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 46, No. 14.

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The Poor.

By A. S. Hutchins

Some remarks of a brother in a recent issue of the REVIEW, relative to visiting the poor, scattering tracts among them, and laboring for their salvation, are worthy of consideration. With suitable missionary labor in this direction, I have no doubt much good may be done.
The “common people” heard the Saviour “gladly,” as he proclaimed the words of life. And he said, “The poor have the gospel preached to them.” It is certain with many of this class, if the gospel is preached to them at the present time, it must be at their homes, or outside of fashionable churches.
Soon after our tent was pitched at Essex Junction, I visited a family some of whom had attended a few meetings at the tent. I found the lady with a tract and the Bible in her hand. Before leaving the house, she said to me, “You are the first preacher who has been into our house for twelve years, except on a funeral occasion.” From this time, she and her daughter, a young woman who never had professed religion, kept the Sabbath of the Lord. At my last visit to their home, they both signed the covenant to keep the commandments of God.
As we talked of the love of God to poor sinners, and of his willingness to save them, and bowed in prayer to ask the blessing of Heaven upon us, the husband, though an unconverted man, wept. May the message we bear to the world, be carried to thousands of homes neglected by others. And may “the deaf hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind see out of obscurity, and out of darkness.” Is not the present, and the future of probation, the time for the fulfillment of the prophecy: “The meek also shall increase their joy in the Lord and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel”! Oh! may we believe and act with reference to a greater gathering of souls, and for the success and ultimate triumph of the all-important truths of the last message to man!
A. S. HUTCHINS.