[From Bro. Brigham] by B. B. Brigham

Publishing Committee · Saratoga Springs, N. Y. · Sep 2, 1851

[From Bro. Brigham]

By B. B. Brigham

DEAR BRO. WHITE: The Extra No. 1 for July 21st, is the last I have yet received. It is just what I have been long wanting to see. In fact every paper has seemed directed by the Lord, and food in season. The fact of having so long desecrated God’s Holy Day, and yielding one seventh part of my whole life in keeping a sabbath set apart by the beast, the power that has slain sixty millions of the saints of the Most High, because they would not obey him rather than God, and for years giving my influence to the man of sin, in breaking God’s law and teaching men so, is humiliating in the extreme. A retrospect of my past life affords me but little ground for hope. Within the year past I have had more doubts of my final salvation than for twenty years previous. My constant inquiry now is, what shall I do to be saved? Oh, that I could wash away the mark of the beast. Whatever my business, I aim to suspend labor and begin the Sabbath at six o’clock P. M. of sixth day. The people were much excited, and exclaimed that my business was so connected with theirs, that I could not keep the Seventh day. They now see their mistake, and are silent. This seems to me the only course to adopt, in order to a separation from the world as the gospel requires. As matters are now arranged, I have but little to do with the world. The perils of the last days seem thickening. The unusual growth of crops, I think, will contribute to form the snare in which the world will be taken. I can hear of no prevailing sickness in the state, and there is general peace among the nations. No present indications of famine, pestilence, or war that alarms the world. The Nominal Adventists generally say that they feel ashamed to proclaim any longer, that “Christ is at the door,” and boldly say that they will give no more occasion for the scoffer to say “Where is the promise of his coming?” I can scarcely find one that does not say, “My Lord delayeth his coming;” while at the same time reproach those who were their fellow-servants, when filled with brotherly love, unitedly proclaiming (in ’44) “behold the bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet him.”

An Advent Editor, speaking of the commandments of God and faith of Jesus, proclaimed by Bro. Case in Cincinnati, termed it “a blighting influence.” An aged Advent Lecturer, in the “Harbinger,” for July 12th, speaking of some in Manlius who were keeping the Seventh day, says, “they had caught the disease of witch-craft,” and renders that as a reason why they kept the Sabbath! With equal propriety he could say that those holy women [Luke xxiii, 56,] who rested according to the commandment, “had caught the disease of witch-craft,” which had inclined them to keep the commandments of God. Not less than six or eight times in the same journal he mentions the sabbath, [meaning the first day,] and how and where he kept it, “once in particular, he says he “put up at a tavern over the sabbath” and went and heard a Lutheran preach two sermons. I speak of these features in the conduct of some of the leading Adventists, only to show the fulfillment of Scripture, and point at the waymarks that we may know our whereabouts.

B. B. BRIGHAM. North Plains, Ionia Co. Mich. July 11, 1851.