CRUMBS OF COMFORT by Charles P. Whitford

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 15, 1878

CRUMBS OF COMFORT.

By Charles P. Whitford

The cheering news that we receive in response to missionary labor is too good for us to enjoy all alone. We therefore give a few extracts from letters received, hoping that thereby our missionary workers may have their faith and zeal increased to labor on in this great and glorious cause.

A gentleman writes as follows: “Those books and papers came safely. I have been reading them with much interest. They are filled with sublime and interesting matter. I hope to read them through, and then write you again.”

Another: “Please receive my many thanks for the unmerited favor of books. I spend most of my time in reading and studying them, and think the doctrines they teach must be the truth. I am convinced from the plain Scripture testimony referred to in the tract, ‘Which Day do you Keep, and Why?’ Oh! why have people been so deceived? Why will they love error?”

A gentleman in Virginia writes as follows: “I received the papers you sent me, and am very much interested in reading them, and wish you would send more.”

A first-day Adventist from New Hampshire writes: “I thank, I praise the Lord for his mercy and his loving kindness to me in that he put it into your heart to call my attention to the subject of obedience to his commands, as you have done. I never before saw my duty in the light that I now see it, and I never understood it so before. I hope henceforth, the Lord being my helper, to keep his Sabbath according to his word, regardless of all worldly considerations or consequences. I wish to do the will of God, and gain eternal life.

“I commenced to serve God many years ago. In 1843 I believed Christ was coming; and, though disappointed, I have ever believed the warning was of God. I so believe to-day, and bless his name that I still love his truth. . . . The reports are full of interest—all so good. It seems like 1843 times. Oh how sweet and precious the remembrance of those days of warning and of power, when the world was stirred and moved, almost as by an earthquake. I feel like a pilgrim in this world, and I would be crucified to all its fashions and its customs, and would walk in Jesus’s footsteps.”

It is said by Bro. Haskell and others that there has never been a time when the direct results of missionary labor could be seen as at the present time. Where our publications have been extensively circulated, openings for presenting the truth are appearing in a manner which is without a parallel in the history of this cause. A glance at the reports in the REVIEW will show that God is blessing those Conferences the most abundantly where they have taken hold the most readily in this work.

Brethren and sisters of Vermont, we want the blessing of God here. We have long been stretching out our hands to the General Conference for efficient laborers to be sent among us. Have we done all that we could to prepare the way for the living preacher by the circulation of books, papers, and tracts? If not, then let us engage heartily in this work. Time is short. Now, there is peace everywhere in our field. Printing is very cheap; postage is almost nothing, and mail facilities are unparalleled. May the Lord help us to work for the spread of the truth while everything is favorable.

CHARLES P. WHITFORD.