EAST SALISBURY AND NEWBURYPORT, MASS.
By C. W. Stone
We shall close our lectures at East Salisbury next Sunday, March 24. The attendance has been small. The meetings have awakened a deep interest in several that have attended, besides awakening the Methodists to a spasmodic zeal in holding some extra meetings to keep people away from the sound of the truth. Last Sabbath we had a meeting. Four, all heads of families, kept the Sabbath for the first time. The church at Newburyport came over to help us en masse. We had a good meeting; and it was a means of much encouragement to those just starting. We hope for some others who are deeply interested. Eld. G. F. Haines has given most of the lectures. This is his first course. The Sabbath question has been receiving considerable attention of late at Newburyport. Eld. D. P. Pike, Christian Baptist, a man of ability, who has led his church in that city for many years, perhaps thirty, a custom-house officer, and a man who has been a candidate for the mayoralty, lately preached on two Sundays against the Sabbath. He does away the law, takes a no-sabbath stand, calls all days alike, and then sets up Sunday as the Lord’s day. After his second sermon, there appeared in the daily a breviary of nineteen points, said to have been made in his argument, and well sustained by Scripture. I wrote a reply to each point, filling a column and a half of the same paper. It is worthy of remark that the secular papers are free to publish our views, and readily open their columns to our strongest arguments. We try to improve this opportunity. Last Sunday, Eld. Pike spoke a third time on the subject, inviting me to be present. I accepted, and listened to his tortuous endeavor of an hour and three-fourths, to get around the law of God. His own members beginning to go, he closed, when I arose and appointed to review him at Central Hall, Tuesday evening, which I did, with much freedom. Is not the Sabbath question the next to form the basis of public discussion? At Seabrook, where Eld. Canright gave a few discourses in December, and where the first-day Adventists were so bitterly opposed, there is now an interest to hear, and they have thrown open their doors and challenged Eld. Haines to discuss the Sabbath three evenings next week, March 26, 27, and 28, with Eld. E. S. Moulton, which he has decided to do.