MR. WHITE:—Feeling a deep interest in the Advent movement, I take the liberty to send you an extract of a letter which I recently addressed to a foreign missionary Friend, to whom I freely expressed my views of the Advent people. If you think my views are correct, and such as would be profitable to the readers of your paper, they are at your disposal.
MRS. A. C. BABCOCK.
DEAR FRIEND:—I would that I could tell you what I have recently heard of the word of God, which54I have often read, but never understood in its true light, aye, and felt its power: I think it would do you good. I firmly believe that the Sabbath-keeping Adventists are the people of God: a people that God has raised up in these latter days to prepare the world for its final doom. They are, as a people, selected from the haunts of poverty; and as the apostles were called from their fishing-nets or other employments, so many of these leave their secular avocations and go forth boldly and fearlessly in the defense of truth. They are unlearned; that is, untaught, in our institutions of learning; but they present the truths of the Bible in a clearer, more systematical, beautiful and perfect light, than any other people that I ever heard. They flee to no Doctors of Divinity, they consult no ancient Fathers, to sustain their positions or support their sentiments; but simply read the Bible in its plain, obvious, and much of it in its literal sense, comparing scripture with scripture, and using one parable or prophetic writing to explain another. In reading it thus, it becomes a perfect lamp, to guide us through this erring world.
It is truly astonishing how the Bible has been mystified, spiritualized and perverted! Passages which had always looked dark, and which I never expected to understand, now seem as familiar as the alphabet.
They clear away the mists of error and Papacy, and present the pearl of truth, in its true beauty and dignity. How precious the volume of inspiration thus appears! When rightly understood, it answers its very purport of being a revelation from God, a transcript of the divine will. I thought I loved the Bible before I heard them preach; but I now prize it as I never prized it before.
I fancied that I loved and honored the Sabbath commandment, (having been taught from a child that the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord,) but in hearing it preached under the sound of the third angel's message, which they testify is the last message of mercy to this sinful world, I discovered a lustre and glory encircling this truth, that I never saw before. They manifest a zeal which I trust is according to knowledge in their self-sacrificing and untiring efforts to win souls to Christ. Through their exertions, how speedily is the truth cutting its mighty way through the earth, ringing in the ears, and reverberating through the hearts and nerves of the multitudes, who are obeying the institutions of Papacy, and rejecting the fourth commandment.
Fearful indeed will be the doom of that people who still persist in a sinful course, after a full conviction of their disobedience. Says Paul, [Heb. x, 26, 27,] "For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries." Heavily will the wrath of an avenging God fall on those who knew the truth, and would not obey it.
Harmless and inoffensive as this people are, I have wondered at the opposition which they constantly meet. Like the people of God in ancient time, they are scorned, despised, ridiculed and hated, not only by the world, but by almost every other denomination of professed Christians. They bear insult and opposition with all patience and meekness, sustained by the cheering hope that the Saviour in whom they trust, will soon appear in the clouds of heaven, to deliver them from earth's trials, and conduct them through the gates into the great City of God—the New Jerusalem.
You weep over the idolatrous customs and practices of an heathen nation; but I feel that we have greater reason to mourn over the condition of gospel-wise and gospel-hardened sinners; for how much more tolerable will their judgment be, than those who sin against light and truth. Could you see the condition of this people as I now view it, methinks you would join me in the wail of grief, over this sinful, this hypocritical, this oppressive, though boasted Republican Nation. But the day of retribution is hastening on. The cries of the oppressed are entering into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, and he will speedily avenge their wrongs. A. C. B.