The present is a most remarkable camp meeting season for our people. The early meetings held in Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, were the best ever held by us in these States. As the reports of these meetings came in, each better than the previous one, we were looking for an unfavorable change, as is almost always the case in any series of religious meetings. But no change came. The expectations of our people, and the most ardent hopes of our ministers, were more than met at each of our early camp meetings.
And when the time came for the great Michigan camp meeting we feared that the time had also come for a change. The responsibilities of that mammoth meeting were great. It was doubtless the largest assemblage of Christians who revered the ancient Sabbath of Jehovah ever held in America. Our people in the States had been almost destitute of ministerial labor. Their efficient ministers had been laboring in other States and Territories, and their young men were constantly in new fields.
Would there be a general rally of our people at Battle Creek? would they come in the right spirit, trusting in God for his blessing and help? and would the Lord graciously meet them with his presence? were mental inquiries which grew more anxious as the time of this great central gathering drew on.
The weather was very fine with the exception of heat and dust. The grounds, shade, and water were ample, and our people turned out not less than fifteen hundred different persons during the twelve days the meeting held. Many of the friends returning home after the first Sabbath that other members of the same families might attend over the second. And the attendance from the outside was very large.
There were some very remarkable features of this meeting, which are generally true of all our camp meetings, of which we are happy to give particular notice. The people, with very few exceptions, gave as good attention to the word spoken, and were as orderly, as congregations in houses of worship. And from the first day of the meeting, August 6th, to the last day, the 17th, there was most perfect harmony in the religious services, public and social, and in the business sessions. We here state the fact that not one jarring note was heard from first to last.