Watts Flats, Chautauqua Co.
By Chas. B. Reynolds
I COMMENCED meetings here Nov. 7. Friends from Blockville have fitted up a suitable hall, and furnished it with all necessaries. There is bitter opposition here. Strenuous efforts are made by the Methodists and the United Brethren to compel people to stay away. The weather favors the enemy at present; but people are beginning to come; our congregations increase in numbers and interest. The Blockville church is firmly and unitedly moving forward, bearing the cross, with eyes steadily fixed upon the crown. The Jamestown church, despite much bitter hostility, are all holding on. Miles Grant’s book against the Sabbath and the testimonies is being circulated here. This, in the end, will help us; for honest-hearted people are eager to read the testimonies, and find it makes quite a difference whether we study them to find faults in them to cavil over; or to find faults in self to prayerfully correct. The miserable subterfuges and petty meannesses to which enemies of the truth claiming to be Christians resort, is, to every intelligent mind, good evidence of the soundness and truth of our position. Men always use the best arguments they have. The Bible condemns them; truth overthrows them, and in despair they fall back on idle denunciations, gross personalities, malicious misrepresentations. Such poison carries its own antidote. “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”