SEQUEL TO THE BIBLE READINGS AT BREWER’S.
By M. B. Duffie
FOLLOWING the Bible readings given by Mabel Brewer, and the many books, papers, pamphlets, and tracts that had been sold, loaned, or given away in the neighborhood by the colporters and other workers who came down to follow up the interest thus awakened, and so great was the desire upon the part of the people to hear the themes presented by word of mouth, that a corps of ministers came and began a regular course of meetings in the town hall. After several discourses had been given, and the variance between the themes presented and the preconceived ideas of the people became so apparent, the steady attendants began to take sides, and little knots of people could be seen congregated upon the street corners and elsewhere at almost any hour of the day or night with their Bibles open in hand, all engaged in earnest discussion of the subjects which were so visibly agitating the public mind. The village pastors also became very much wrought up over the frequent appeals made to them by the more spiritual-minded members of their flocks for some scriptural buoys by which to keep them afloat, being all at sea in the quagmire of uncertainty. In the fold of the Rev. Mr. Bronson, was a young Mr. Draper and wife, who had become somewhat interested in the new doctrines that were being so industriously promulgated, and hence the good man was feeling no little troubled over it. Mr. Draper was a well-to-do merchant of the place, and he and his wife had been influential and active members of Mr. Bronson’s church, Mr. Draper occupying the official positions of deacon, superintendent of the Sunday school, and trustee. His wife held the position of secretary and librarian. So the prospect of losing one and possibly both of them was a very serious thing in the mind of Mr. Bronson. Mrs. Draper had not gone so deep into the research as had her husband, and at first really looked with no little concern, if not alarm, at the interest and enthusiasm which Mr. Draper manifested in the matter, especially so when she thought he might consider it necessary to relinquish his lucrative business and step out and obey what he seemed to regard as truth, as required by the fourth commandment. She had always had a great and inherited regard for Sunday herself. Her mother, long since dead, had kept it religiously, and had taught her to do the same, and when Mr. Draper finally yielded to his convictions of duty, and stepped out, it looked more dubious to her than ever. In a frame of mind bordering almost on desperation she was passing down the street, when she chanced to meet Mr. Bronson, her minister. He noticed her agitation and redness of eyes, and tried to say something to comfort her. “Oh, can you not come to our house tonight, Mr. Bronson,” she said, “and get Edward out of the terrible tangle in which he seems to be? I cannot, must not, have him keep Saturday when I keep Sunday. It is just too bad! I do wish those folks had stayed away, and not come here to stir us all up in this way, when we were all so peaceful and contented.” Mr. Bronson thought, no providence preventing, he could call on them that evening, and do what he could for them, but, owing to engagements which had not, of course, occurred to him, he did not appear, and so Mr. Draper and his wife sat down and calmly investigated the matter for themselves. When they retired Mrs. Draper was not quite so sure as she had previously been that Sunday was the day the Lord referred to in the Sabbath commandment. The next day Mrs. Draper met Mr. Bronson in the post office. He was profuse in his apologies for not having kept his appointment. He said that it was not so much the particular day that was required to be kept holy, as it was to devote one-seventh part of our time to devotion after any six days of labor. “Do you mean to say, then,” queried Mrs. Draper, “that one day is just as good as another?” “In a general way, yes,” said Mr. Bronson, “for Paul says, you know, ‘Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.’ That means that one day in seven is just as good as another.” “Well, if that is the case, I can keep the seventh day if I want to, and be justified therein, can I not?” “You no doubt could, so far as the Sabbatic law is concerned, though you no doubt realize that public opinion must always have more or less of a bearing upon such questions. We must, of course, avoid doing anything to cause us to be regarded as odd, or eccentric, you understand, in the minds of our fellows. Of course, while one day is, perhaps, as good as another, it is no doubt better to keep Sunday in the spirit, which I am quite sure we ought to do.” Mrs. Draper bade him good-day, and went slowly up the street towards home, soliloquizing thus: “Well, if one day is just as good as another, as Mr. Bronson admitted, and as Edward believes in keeping the seventh, and has chosen that seventh part of time, and as Edward has proved to me that that day is the seventh, or Sabbath, and that no other day is—I am now almost persuaded to keep it myself.”761 Nor was she alone in this decision, for, after a sermon by Mr. Bronson, in which he took the same position, that any day would do, and that Sunday was just as good as any, several other persons who had been connected with his church, some of them in prominent positions, asked for letters of withdrawal. To the various committees appointed to wait upon them for the purpose of trying to induce them to remain in the fold, the almost uniform reply, in substance, was this: “Elder Bronson says that one day is just as good as another, and as the Bible chooses the seventh day, we think it will be fully as safe to keep that day.” This was not just the result Mr. Bronson had looked for, and, seeing the bad break he had made, he tried to fix it up by saying that, on account of the rotundity of the earth, it was impossible to keep the Sabbath anyway. Then the committee again called upon the disaffected ones, but when they asked the said committee how it would be possible to know when Sunday got around if they could not tell when Saturday came, that seemed to be a question upon which the committee had not sufficiently pondered, and wished to have more light before committing themselves. So, after a few casual remarks about the weather, they gracefully withdrew to further consult with Brother Bronson. He said it was easy enough to answer that question, and that was by asking another, namely, how anyone could possibly know to an absolute certainty when the Sabbath actually does come, on account of a day being lost out of the reckoning, away back in the past somewhere, so long ago that he had about forgotten when, or just what day it was, even. When the committee again called to unravel their tangles, and sprung this new impossibility in the way of obedience, the question was raised, “If it is true that a day has been lost, how are we going to determine but what that day was Sunday?” While the committee thought they could clearly see that the estrayed day was Saturday, it apparently had never dawned upon their minds that Sunday had ever had so narrow an escape. When Elder Bronson became acquainted with the fact that so many of the main pillars had been withdrawn from the support of his church fabric, and that there was therefore a danger of collapse, he caught the echoes of a call from a more distant and peaceful field. As no one had been found who cared to take up the burdens he had so suddenly and gladly laid down, and as the few sheep who had not strayed from the pen found themselves without a shepherd, and were soon lost in the highway and byways of the world, the church property was finally bidden in by the seventh-day people, or commandment keepers, as they are sometimes called, who now occupy the premises for church and Sabbath school purposes. Quite a few of the other members of Mr. Bronson’s old flock, all heads of families, as well as several who have been prominent in the work in the other churches of the place, have also decided to cast their lot with this people, who, though poor in this world’s goods, many of them, are, it is hoped, rich in the kingdom of heaven.