A LETTER | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 30, 1878

A LETTER.

Mrs. I. F. Howell, writing from Ringgold county, Iowa, says:—

EDITOR REVIEW AND HERALD, Dear sir: It has been with much pleasure and profit that I have perused the pages of your excellent paper, sent me by a friend at Sigourney, Ia. I am a member of the M. E. Church, yet I think you are right on the Sabbath question. Some of your doctrinal tracts sent me by friends abroad have afforded me great comfort. Your positions, so far as I have examined them, seem to be well supported by proof from the inspired record. There seems to be something so real and so well adapted to our understanding, and so well calculated to strengthen our faith in the word of God, in the teachings of the Adventists that I have found my prejudice against this people giving way; and I believe that their literature, which is being scattered throughout the land, will be instrumental in accomplishing much good. You that are sending these pages freighted with words of consolation and hope,—perhaps to friends, perhaps to those you have never seen and never will see till this mortal shall have put on immortality,—remember that you are bestowing much more than “a cup of cold water,” and your reward will be sure. “He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.”

Who is there that has an interest in the up-building of the cause of God but deplores the wide departure from “the old paths” there is in so many of the churches of the present day; the striving to conform to the customs and fashions of the world; the utter ignoring of the plain declaration of our Saviour, who said, “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it”? Ah! I fear the day of Judgment will be a day of unlooked-for terror to the tens of thousands of fashionable professors, who, counting on long years of pleasure here, are seeking little or no preparation of heart for that day when our gracious Saviour, shall lay aside his mediatorial robes, and come, attended by the hosts of Heaven, to take vengeance on those who know not God. May he “guide us with his eye, and afterward receive us to glory.”