FIELD NOTES by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 30, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 26.

FIELD NOTES.

By Editor

DURING eight days of meetings held at Shelby, Mich., by Elder R. C. Horton, twenty-five persons made their first start to serve the Lord.

AN Upper Columbia Conference institute is to be held at College Place, Wash., from May 9 to 29. The Conference camp meeting will be held May 30 to June 6.

It is announced that a general meeting for New England will be held at South Lancaster, Mass., May 3-13. Elders U. Smith and S. N. Haskell are to be present.

SINCE last June, under the labors of Elder W. W. Steward, thirty-three persons have been added to the church at Boise City, Idaho, and eight others were awaiting baptism at date of his report.

"STEPS TO CHRIST" is now printed in the Italian language, and is being circulated in Italy. Elder H. P. Holser reports that some have been added to the church among the Waldenses, and a number have been gained in Turin, the former capital.

It has been suggested in the West Virginia Conference to raise a fund to buy tracts to place in the hands of field workers for free distribution in their travels about the country. It is designed to put some phase of the truth in every house where it will be accepted.

ELDER J. E. GRAHAM, of Portland, Oregon, has been selected to take the general management of the movements of the missionary ship Pitcairn on her next voyage, and Dr. J. E. Caldwell, formerly of California, now of Battle Creek, Mich., is to go to the island of Raiatea as a medical missionary.

AFTER a stay of twelve weeks at Green Springs, Ohio, Elder E. G. Van Horn organized a church of thirty-two members and a Sabbath school of fifty members. This new company has begun the work of building a new house of worship. The interest at this place was started by the circulation of tracts.

As a result of meetings held within a few miles of Grant's Pass, Oregon, by Elder W. C. Ward, a Sabbath school of twenty-three members was organized. This included a Sunday school superintendent and all the teachers. In other words, it was the conversion of a Sunday school into a Sabbath school.

BROTHER GEORGE A. KING, one of our veteran canvassers, reports that thousands of dollars worth of our books are being sold on the island of Jamaica. The organization of a comparatively strong church at Kingston has awakened the enemy to the fact that there is a power in the truth being disseminated in that region, and the characteristic plea for help from the civil authorities is being made.

ELDER W. G. KNEELAND, who is laboring in Demarara, South America, writes that he has met with some success. There is a company of twenty at Georgetown, besides several brethren scattered through the country. There is also a small company at Ulverston, ninety miles from Georgetown. Of ten others at Georgetown who were to be baptized, one was a Church of England minister. Brother Kneeland says there is a great call for reading matter, especially small leaflets written in very simple language. The people are quite generally poor, and they expect to get something gratis at open-air meetings. Everyone begs for tracts, and feels hurt if not given something to read.

THE condition of the world is favorable to the designs of the enemies of the truth we proclaim. In nearly all the world there exists in some form a union of Church and State. In many parts the persecuting spirit underlying this union is more or less dormant, waiting to be aroused as soon as the sentiment of last-day enmity to the truth can awaken the masses. The blast and the fuse are already laid, waiting but the touch of the match. Even in our own land of boasted freedom, where the Federal Constitution is nominally against the manipulation of the State machinery to further the purpose of a corrupt and bigoted church element seeking for the mastery, the dragonic Church and State union is hidden in Sunday laws and court decisions.

Here and there its fangs and talons crop out, showing that it is only waiting until the harbingers of truth become a little more aggressive, when all the hidden forces of the enemy will be brought into action. Shall we withhold the message for fear of arousing the dragon?—No; the work of warning the world must be done before the Master comes. The longer it is delayed, the more difficult it will be to reach the people. The sooner it is accomplished, the sooner will our Deliverer appear to take us beyond the reach of the destroyer. "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature," and "lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."

In order to oppose the Sabbath truth as taught in the law of God, six ministers of Oliver Springs, Tenn.—Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian—found it necessary to indorse the antinomian theory of a Disciple minister, who was opposing the work of Elder H. W. Reed. It seems that when ministers set themselves to the work of opposing the law of God, they become utterly oblivious of the absurdity of their position in the light of their own denominational creeds. They seem to have forgotten, if they ever knew, that it is the "carnal mind" that is "not subject to the law of God." They succeeded in having Brother Reed shut out of all the churches, halls and schoolhouses because he maintained the obligation of man to obey the law of God.