Sister Prentiss’s Testimony
By Elizabeth M. Prentiss
DEAR BRETHREN AND SISTERS: I am often cheered by the letters which appear in the Review and have long thought that it would be a pleasure (perhaps duty) to add my testimony to the list of those who have resolved to keep all God's commandments. For more than a year I have been striving to keep the Sabbath of the Lord our God. I am not weary, but delight in the law of the Lord. My heart glows with gratitude to him who first arrested my attention, opened my blind eyes, and turned my feet into the way of truth. I cannot praise him enough that I ever heard and heeded this last call of mercy. I was awakened to the present truth during the labors of brethren Andrews and Sperry in the N. Y. tent, over two years in the past. I felt very secure however at that time. I was a Methodist and looked upon them as the false teachers of which we are told to beware. Their doctrine (for I did not suppose it was Bible) was very irritable to me. But I could not resist their oft repeated entreaties to lay aside prejudice and prove them. It was while trying to disapprove of them that God drove the light of his truth home to my heart. Glory and honor belongeth to him who has so graciously delivered me from error and made me to rejoice in the truth which was once so repulsive. He is still leading me and I can truly say that I now love both parts of the message—the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. For a long time I shut from my heart the light upon the gifts. The weight of evidence was so strong however that I could not help but admit that they would be in the true church; but I placed them away in the future. Fear of reproach or loss of a carnal friendship kept me from heeding the testimony which was already being given us. I thought it too severe. I would at least wait until I could see and then judge. There was no light in this position. I had bolted the door of my heart, and it was dark. In the bitterness of my soul I cried unto the Lord. He heard and helped me to take another step in the light. The joy of former days returned doubled, yes, tripled, when I believed and obeyed the voice with which he is now speaking to us. Praise the Lord for the way in which he is leading his people. It severs the cord of friendship from this popular world, but what are the pleasures, the fashions, the pride, of this life, when compared with the glory which awaits the faithful and obedient? O, I want to share in that incorruptible inheritance, though it be by the sacrifice of all that is earthly. Our nearest and best friends may look coldly upon us, but we have one Friend in whom there is no variableness, not a shadow of turning, and a precious promise given us that 'the angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them. O I rejoice in these glorious truths. They lose none of their brilliancy to me, but like the pure gold shine brighter and brighter. Our Saviour is soon coming. How cheering the thought! But I sometimes fear that I shall not be ready, I find a warfare daily, having many, many foes within. But my only hope is in Jesus who is worthy. I feel like striving more earnestly to gain a home in the earth made new and with all the redeemed partake of the fruits of the tree of life and live. Yours hoping to overcome.
ELIZABETH M. PRESTISS.
North Parma, N. Y.