VERMONT

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 26, 1879

West Jamaica, June 15.—Have just closed a short series of meetings here. Gave in all fifteen lectures. The interest increased from first to last. God blessed in our efforts to lead the unconverted to seek an interest in the Redeemer, and some enlisted for the first time in the cause of religion. Eight persons signed the covenant to keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. Many others acknowledge it to be their duty to keep the Sabbath. Brethren from the Jamaica church will meet with them weekly in a prayer-meeting. We are called away to labor with the tent.

R. S. OWEN.

Cabot.—I have recently spent two Sabbaths with the church here. A solid foundation is laid for a house of worship 30x40, and most of the lumber is ready. The brethren have labored hard to advance the work thus far. Those to be relied upon in carrying forward this enterprise are few in number, nearly all being in moderate circumstances, if we except those laboring under financial embarrassment; yet the motto of the workers is, “Onward with the work.”

It is questionable whether we could have found a place for the tent where greater success would have attended the labors, or where more opposition would have developed itself, than has been here since the close of the tent-meetings. And still the conflict between truth and error deepens.

One brother, whose circumstances demand his labor what time God has given him, has been prosecuted for Sunday labor, and the papers are made out for others. A decision of the prosecution is pending. An editor in giving this prosecution a passing notice, suggests that inasmuch as it is deemed advisable to lift the arm of the law in favor of “the obsolete Sunday,” it might also be well now, in the same vicinity, to use the same power to suppress the violation of the statute law of the State against profanity. Others do not understand why our no-law friends should object to labor on Sunday.

Last Sabbath a sermon was followed by an excellent social meeting. I seldom hear better testimonies. The meetings and Sabbath-school will be much better, we trust, when we have a more convenient place to assemble than a dwelling-house.

Will our brethren and sisters remember this people in their prayers? and will it not be a privilege to contribute somewhat of your means to help them on the house? Some have already done so without solicitation, for which we are all thankful. We ask no greater favors for them than others have shared in this direction. The cause is one, and we hope many of our brethren and sisters in Vermont may yet attend meetings here, if we are prospered in building, and that Eld. G. I. Butler may hold a general meeting here next fall.

A. S. HUTCHINS.

June 18, 1879.