p. 69 | TO THE BRETHREN IN NEW YORK AND PENNSYLVANIA

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 24, 1876

TO THE BRETHREN IN NEW YORK AND PENNSYLVANIA.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

Dear Brethren and Sisters: In a few days more comes your camp-meeting, to be held near this place. By the advice of the General Conference Committee, I am now laboring in your Conference for a short time, and shall be at your camp-meeting. We feel very anxious that this camp-meeting shall be a good one. As you well know, for some reason, there has not been much done in this Conference for some years, and a spirit of discouragement, more or less, has rested upon the old churches and brethren. Very few young people have embraced the truth and many of your children have grown up and gone into the world. Not much has been done in new fields. This is bad, and could not be otherwise than discouraging to those in the Conference. But for a year or so past many of you have felt that there must be a change, and that something must be done in this Conference; and the live, earnest men have been trying hard to have something accomplished. Means have been freely sacrificed, and earnest appeals for help have been made. This has not been without effect.

Some very encouraging results have been witnessed in different places this present Conference year, and this season you have three tents running, and each one has had a fair degree of success, so that several new churches have been raised up and scores are keeping the Sabbath to-day who were entirely ignorant of it at the time of your last camp-meeting.

I am thoroughly satisfied that New York is a good field, a rich field; and that there are just as good openings for the truth in this State as in the other States where such great success is attending its proclamation every year. Our work in this city is proof of this. We could not reasonably ask any better or more extensive interest than has been manifested in this place. The people are just as willing to hear, just as free from prejudice, and just as ready to embrace the truth, as in any State where I have ever labored. Bro. S. B. Whitney is also having hundreds out to hear him.

I am anxious, for my part, to spend the next year in this Conference. I hope it may be the will of God and our brethren that I shall. I am confident that our brethren generally need to make a mighty effort to wake up and catch up with the spirit of this message. Our camp-meeting is a good time to commence in this State. We shall have a large church of beginners here, all of whom will attend the camp-meeting. They will naturally look to our older brethren for example, and will drink into their spirit more or less. It is natural and right that they should. How important, then, brethren, that you bring the Lord with you, and that you come filled with the Spirit of God and of his work.

This should be by far the largest camp-meeting we have ever held in this State. Everything seems favorable for such an one. Some of you have not attended a camp-meeting for two or three years. Brethren, in the name of the Lord and of the present truth, and for the sake of your souls and those of your friends, I entreat you, Do not stay away from this meeting. Especially do we want to see the young people and the children here. We cannot give them up so easily. God has worked in a special manner for the youth in all our camp-meetings, and he is willing to do it here. You should sacrifice almost anything for this purpose. If you have any neighbors who are at all interested in the truth, do everything in your power to get them to this meeting. Finally, we ask you to pray, with us, that God may give us great success in this meeting.

D. M. Canright.

Rome, N. Y., Aug. 14, 1876.