MINNESOTA CAMP-MEETING by D. P. Curtis

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 5, 1877

MINNESOTA CAMP-MEETING.

By D. P. Curtis

This meeting convened at the time appointed at Hutchinson, McLeod Co. The grounds were convenient and pleasant. The brethren began to come in early. Some arrived from the southwest corner of the State, on Monday. Tuesday night several tents were on the ground and pitched. Wednesday, they came in in force from all quarters of the Conference. Great anxiety was felt in regard to help from abroad. Many had anxiously looked for Bro. and Sr. White, and had confidently expected to see Bro. Canright. The outside interest to see and hear Bro. Canright was great.

But the time for the opening of the meeting came, and no help was on the ground, except

our own ministers. These felt a burden resting upon them which seemed almost insupportable. Bro. Pierce opened the meeting with a discourse from Prov. 23:23: “Buy the truth, and sell it not.” He exhorted the congregation to “look beyond the watchman.” This motto was taken up by the brethren, and faithfully acted upon throughout the entire meeting. The sisters had it placed over the stand, in sight of all the congregation.

The social meetings commenced with something of a feeling of depression, on account of the disappointment; but this soon passed off as the brethren drew near to the Lord in earnest, pleading for the divine interposition in behalf of the cause and for the success of the meeting. As day after day passed, and the brethren who went to the cars returned each time without any help, the importunities for help from the Lord became more earnest, and all seemed to settle down to the determination to work with the Lord, to make the meeting such as he could bless.

In answer to the earnest pleadings, and in harmony with the desires of the brethren, the Lord’s Spirit rested down upon the encampment, and it became a place where the lovers of God delighted to be. Freedom was given to the brethren in preaching the word, and the Lord sealed it to the good of those who listened. At the 9 o’clock meeting on Sabbath morning, 162 testimonies were given. In the afternoon, a call was made for those who desired a greater degree of consecration, and those who wished to give themselves to the Lord for the first time, to come forward. About 125 came forward, a large proportion of whom came for the first time. Many of them spoke, expressing a desire and determination to devote their future life to the service of the Lord.

The number of those encamped in tents and wagons on the ground, on Friday, was 506, while several lodged in a barn adjoining the camp-ground, and a number of families of the Hutchinson church and society lived at home, but attended the meetings regularly. The regular attendance was not less than 550 to 600. The number of tents and wagons used as homes on the ground, including the different compartments of the forty-foot tent, was about 75. The outside attendance, as we expected would be the case, was not so large as on many previous years. On Sunday, there were probably 1000 to 1200 on the ground. On Monday, Bro. W. B. Hill preached upon the subject of baptism, after which we repaired to the Crow River, about half a mile from the camp, and Bro. Grant and Elds. Ellis buried sixty-one willing candidates in the likeness of Christ’s death, nearly one-half of whom took their first step at this meeting. One licensed preacher from the Methodist Episcopal Church, who commenced to keep the Sabbath one week before the meeting, took his stand with us, and was baptized; and one leading man of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, whose wife and daughters had begun to keep the Sabbath some little time before, came with his daughter 125 miles or more, to reconnoiter, was constrained to surrender unconditionally, and take his stand with the people of God. Other interesting cases might also be mentioned, showing the power of God’s truth in the hands of his feeble servants, to bring conviction and a change of life and purpose.

Credentials were renewed to eleven ordained ministers, and licenses given to sixteen brethren, to go out and preach the message as the Lord may open the way. Bro. John I. Collins was set apart to the work of the ministry by ordination, at the closing meeting. When the question of sending out the tents was raised, and it was found that there was no money in the treasury to defray expenses, the sum of $74 was raised by voluntary contribution, in a very few minutes; and on the last morning, when the President stated that the Conference was owing about $100, for the care of an aged and infirm sister, notwithstanding the contribution for starting the tents, and another one of about $50, previously raised, to assist one of our ministers in regaining his health, and notwithstanding the fact that the crops of many of the brethren were harvested by the grasshoppers before they left home, upwards of $67 were paid into the hands of the chairman, faster than the clerk could write the names of the contributors. On the whole, we believe we can say, “to the praise of the glory of His grace,” that, all things considered, the Minnesota Camp-meeting of 1877 was one of the best meetings, if not the best, that has ever been held in the State.

Elds. Ellis and Curtis will go with one of the tents to Dodge Centre, Dodge Co., and be ready to begin work, the Lord willing, on the first Sabbath in July; Eld. W. B. Hill and Bro. S. Fulton go with one tent to Pierce Co., Wis.; and Eld. G. M. Dimmick and Bro. J. W. Moore, with the third one, go to Rock Co. On Sunday evening, at a meeting for the purpose of hearing applications for labor, appeals for help were urged from no less than twenty-six different localities within the bounds of the Conference, many of them new fields where no labor save that of tract distribution has ever been expended.

The business meetings were well attended, and perfect harmony prevailed in them, while the disappointment experienced at the commencement of the meeting, instead of producing a feeling of discontent and murmuring, resulted in the opposite course of action; it drew the brethren nearer together, and nearer to the Lord, and begot a sympathy between the people and the preachers, such as only those whose hearts are attuned to the harmonies of divine truth are wont to feel and manifest, and proved the truthfulness of Bro. White’s remarks in the REVIEW of June 21, that “it takes the Lord to make a good camp-meeting.” It is believed that the effect of the meeting upon the outside attendance and upon the community in and around Hutchinson, has been good, and that a favorable impression has been made.

D. P. CURTIS.

Hutchinson, June 27, 1877.