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Review and Herald, Vol. 48, No. 3.

TRACT & MISSIONARY OPERATIONS

Review and Herald

Jul 13, 1876

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 13, 1876

TRACT & MISSIONARY OPERATIONS.

By Stephen Nelson Haskell

BY ELD. S. N. HASKELL.
It is five years last November since the first Conference adopted the present system of missionary work among our brethren and sisters. In the spring of 1872, New York and Ohio adopted the same system, and the following year it was received by nearly every Conference this side of the Rocky Mountains. An endeavor to carry out the suggestions made by Bro. White and others at the General Conference resulted in this system. We also saw the same defects in independent local organization that there would be in local church organization without State Conferences.
Two leading ideas have been kept in mind from the commencement: First to unite all the Seventh-day Adventists in the world in co-operating for the spread of present truth; secondly, to provide a way so that all might be without excuse for not using the talent God has committed to them.
The appointment of officers over certain districts was designed to make the work special with each individual. The director should therefore be acquainted with each individual in his district; he should visit the people, labor with them as may be necessary; see that their influence is in behalf of present truth while furnishing reading matter to their neighbors and friends; and also that they are taking an interest in sustaining the cause in all its branches upon the Bible principle of equality.
The want of this kind of labor is one great cause why our missionary efforts are not more effective. Self-sacrificing men and women, who will inspire in others the self-sacrificing spirit, are wanting. There should be persons to do this, so that we might have hundreds of men and women to visit our villages and cities everywhere, talk and pray with the people, and provide them such reading matter as will interest them in the solemn truths which pertain to the present time.
In this way subscribers should be obtained for the SIGNS OF THE TIMES. It may not always be proper to take names for our periodicals the first time you visit a person, unless something is paid toward the paper. On making the second visit the individual can better decide who are really interested in reading. This work should be carried on week after week and year after year. Obtaining subscribers by offering a premium is a plan which is found very successful where it is entered upon with zeal, faith and hope. To find self-sacrificing men and women who will enter cities and villages as colporteurs is as difficult as to find self-sacrificing ministers, and two extremes threaten the effort: 1. The danger of giving individuals not fitted for the work too much encouragement by offering them support; and, 2. The danger of not giving proper encouragement to proper persons. The first extreme is more to be dreaded than the second one.
The REFORMER should not be neglected. The Household Manual has been prepared for the express purpose of offering it as a premium. It can also be used as a premium for the SIGNS, as can any of our one-dollar books.
The plan of subscribing for a number of copies of the SIGNS and REFORMER with which to obtain subscribers, is a branch of the work which should not be passed by without notice. In it is labor. It requires much close thought, and will lead the person who enters upon it, realizing the importance of the work, to earnest prayer that God may help in the matter. Perhaps there is no branch of this missionary work in which it is more difficult to get our brethren and sisters fully enlisted than this. Neither is there any other one branch of the missionary work that will have more of a molding influence on the character of the individual than this; and by it we extend our influence to very many of whom we least think. The opening of correspondence, and thus introducing the SIGNS, is very important. When one interested reader is found (perhaps isolated and poor) it not infrequently happens that scores are reached through him. As a general rule, the less of a denominational character the letter assumes the better. Let our publications, written under the soul inspiring influence of the truth, and the Spirit of God do the arguing.
We will now refer to some things that have been accomplished by the tract societies.
1. A delinquent debt of about $10,000 has been settled with the Publishing Association, and the advance-pay system on our periodicals has been brought about.
2. Our best bound books have been placed in all the principal public libraries this side the Rocky Mountains, where our Conferences are organized.
3. By means of the trial volumes of the REVIEW and REFORMER, and also the VOICE OF TRUTH, scores have been brought into the truth, notwithstanding there was not that caution used by all in gathering up names that should have been manifested. This move showed the strength of systematic effort, and the utility of doing business through one channel, instead of having hundreds of individuals writing to the Office.
4. There have been more than $30,000 raised and expended in placing reading matter before the public within the last five years. New England and New York alone have raised and expended more than $12,000.
5. Correspondence has been established with more than five hundred individuals, and with reading rooms, public libraries, and benevolent societies, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and China, in short, in all parts of the world, including this country. Benevolent societies, public libraries and reading rooms, throughout Europe as well as in this country, wherever the English language is spoken, receive our almanacs, and where they manifest the least interest, our denominational publications are sent. To enumerate individual cases where an interest has been awakened in the truth, and a goodly number have embraced it, by means of this correspondence and sending our publications and periodicals, would only be to mention incidents of almost daily occurrence. One man upon receiving two of our papers which contained one of our thirty-two page Sabbath tracts embraced the Sabbath; he has had, to our knowledge, two editions of the tract published, and is actively distributing it.
6. Steps are being taken by parties outside of our people, if the work is not already accomplished, to translate Sufferings of Christ and other tracts into the Russian and Chinese languages.
The question may be asked, What good can arise from furnishing the REFORMER, SIGNS, etc., to people in different parts of the world, where we do not see individuals immediately embracing the truth? We reply, Let us forestall the enemies of God, so that such a battle against prejudice will not have to be fought as is usually required when the truth is presented.
We would make a few suggestions, if thought worthy of consideration.
1. Steps should be taken to blend more closely the interest of the people of God in all parts of the world in missionary efforts. The work of lay members, as companies and individuals would thus be secured from devouring wolves.
2. Ways and means should be devised to reach all classes, and at least make a favorable impression on them.
3. One or more pages should be put into our almanac, giving notice of our TRACT SOCIETY, the extent of its operations, and such items as would leave a favorable impression upon the mind relative to our existence as a people, and to our work. We should also notice those societies which are favorable to us.
4. One edition of the almanac should be printed as early as October, so that those Conferences located the farthest off can get them as freight as early as November 1st. Another edition can be printed later.
5. A tract of sixteen or at most thirty-two pages on Bible Hygiene would add much to the interest of the work, especially in the Old World, as many improper articles of diet and drink, such as a great variety of meats, wine, etc., are extensively used among the clergy, who give them a Bible sanction; and the person who would change his habits in this respect is branded either as a skeptic or a fanatic, or both.

THE COMING OF THE LORD DRAWETH NIGH.

An extract from a sermon by T. De Witt Talmage, at the Brooklyn Tabernacle, Sunday evening, Sept. 19, from James 5:8.
The feelings with which we await the coming of any person or thing depend very much upon the nature of the person or thing advancing, or upon our fitness to meet him or it. It is evening in a very pleasant household. There is a key heard at the front door. The children come down the stairs with a bound, clapping their hands, and shouting, “Father’s coming!” But disaster has entered that home. The writs have been issued. It is time for the furniture to be levied on. From the oldest to the youngest member of the household the feeling is that the home must be broken up. The front door bell rings, an official is about to enter, and the whisper all through the rooms of that house is: “The sheriff is coming!”
March weather gets through scolding, and one day the windows toward the south are opened, and the apple blossoms, the peach blossoms, and the plum blossoms garland the field. Old age feels the flush of new life in its veins; infirmity looks up and smiles, and all through the land, the word is: “Spring is coming!” December hangs icicles on the eaves of the poor man’s house—no wood gathered—no coal. The cracked window pane invites the sleet to come in. The older sister, with numb fingers, attempts to tie the shoe-latchet of the little brother, and stops to blow warmth into her blue hands; and the father shiveringly looks down and says, “Alas! alas! winter is coming!” Well, it is just so in regard to the announcement of my text. To one it sounds like a father’s; to another, like an executioner’s footstep. To one, it is the breath of a June morning; to the other, it is the blast of a December hurricane. “The coming of the Lord draweth nigh!”
I do not see how God can afford to stay away longer. It seems to me that this world has been mauled of sin about long enough.
The church has made such slow headway against the Paganism, the Mohammedanism, the fraud, the libertinism, the drunkenness, the rapine, and the murder of the world that there are ten thousand hands now stretched up beckoning for God to come now. Enough corn in the United States and Great Britain annually wasted in brewing and distilling to feed five million men. Every grog-shop, every house of infamy, every gambling saloon, every dishonest store, bank, insurance company, declares there is no God, or if there be, let him strike if he dare! Corruption in most of the city governments—corruption reaching from the weather-vane on the top of the city halls down to the lowest stone in the foundation. Thousands of men anxiously waiting for Tweed, the apostle of scoundrelism, to get free from the law; churches with men in their membership not clean enough to swab the door-step of the pit; the theatres, huge houses of shame; three-fourths of the newspapers, with their editors, reporters, and printing presses suborned of the devil; American and European society rotten to the core; France and Prussia feeling for each other’s throats, and, although the dead in battle outnumber five times all the present population of the earth, yet nations longing for war, and this hour six million men in Europe arming for conflict, while applauding nations look on, and the cry is “Blood! give us more blood!” the earth staggering under the successive shocks like a foundering ship at the moment when the passengers cry, “She’s going down!”
The imminent necessity for the world’s reformation and purification, I take as a proof of the fact that “the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.”
That God is coming with his judgments among the nations I cannot doubt. Look at the floods on both sides the sea. France going down under the wave; the wealth of nations swept off in a day; harvests, vineyards, villages, unmoored. Look at the insectiferous assault which was first considered hardly worthy of a small item in a newspaper; but the grasshopper, the Colorado bug and the army worm have gone on until public fasts have been declared, and the Lord Almighty invoked to arrest the national calamity. Look at the marine disasters and hear the voice of the shipwrecks. Listen to the roar of the unparalleled conflagrations in Chicago, and Boston and London. See the toppling over of great commercial establishments everywhere. I tell you that God’s controversy with the nations has begun. “The coming of the Lord draweth nigh.”
I see also a sign of the divine advance in the opportunity for repentance which is being given to the nations—revivals in India; revivals in Italy; revivals in Germany; revivals in Great Britain; revivals in the United States. If there were not something tremendous coming, God would not be sourgent or importunate in his call. Churches are calling; Christian and secular printing-presses calling; Young Men’s Christian Associations calling; God and angels and men are calling. Messengers of salvation are in the air. Telegraphs flash the gospel news. Steamships carry Christian ambassadors to and fro. Yes, we are on the eve of a great universal earthquake. “The coming of the Lord draweth nigh.”
But there is a deeper stop in the organ of my text that needs to be pulled out, and that organ stop is the Judgment trumpet. My text distinctly points toward that august arrival. Now there is one secret that God has never told even to an archangel. There are no spirits so exalted in Heaven that God has ever told one of them. It is the secret of secrets. It is the secret of the ages. If all Heaven should rise up and beg God to tell them that one secret he would not be prevailed upon to tell it. That secret is the chronology of the Judgment—the time when. I cannot tell. No angel can tell. The Bible distinctly says man nor angel can tell. But the fact that such a day will come cannot be disputed. The Bible intimates, yea, it positively asserts that in that last day God will come in by a flash of lightning.
I suppose that on that day there may be rolled up dun storm clouds, and that there may be folds of darkness all around the perimeter, and that there may be a background black as midnight. Then while the beasts are moaning with terror, and while the housewife is lighting the candle at noonday; and while the janitors of public buildings are lighting the chandeliers, and the nations are trembling and half suffocated with terror, there may be in the distance a faint sound of thunder that will roll louder and louder and louder, as though a thousand tempests were gathering in battle array, and that then there may be a silence, a deep hush, a silence of complete expectancy; and that while the world is hushed in that dreadful stillness, instantaneously with the crash that shall split the hills, there shall burst upon the world a fiery cohort, a book of reckoning, a throne and the Lord omnipotent.
I do not know but that the lightning flash that hurls that paraphernalia into the world may set the world on fire; for we are distinctly told that the world and all things that are therein are to be burned up. I see it burning. The ships take fire mid-Atlantic—brig, bark, White Star line and Cunarder. The cities send up jets of flame higher than the spire or dome of Trinity or St. Peter’s. Banks and moneyed institutions with consumed bonds, melted bullion—all the investments of the world not worth a cent on a dollar. The picture canvas of the Louvre and of Luxembourg, and of Dresden and of Berlin, and of Naples, and of Florence, and of Rome, curled up in the hot blast; Gothic arch and Grecian columns falling down low as the hut on the commons; Mount Washington and the Alps and the Himalayas, flat on their faces. A wrecked world! A ruined world! A burning world! A calcined world! An ashen world! An extinct world! Let the stars beat their dirges. Dead cities! Dead mountains! Dead seas! That scene is not something that we are reading about as occurring four or five thousand miles away—at Stockholm or St. Petersburgh. It will occur here, and you and I will be participants. When the roll-call of that day is read, your name and mine will be read in it, and we will answer, “Here!” These very feet will feel the earth’s tremor, these eyes will see the scrolled sky, these hands will be lifted in acclamation or in horror when the Lord shall be revealed from heaven, with mighty angels in flaming fire, taking vengeance upon those who know not God, and who obey not the gospel of his Son. It will be our trial. It will be our judge. It will be our welcome or it will be our doom. If each year be a mile, then over how many miles has that judgment already traveled, and who can estimate the number of revolutions in a minute of the wheel of God’s judgment chariot? It will not be an empty chariot, the occupant flung out by the speed of the travel, or some sharp turn in the way; but firmly seated in that chariot will be the Lord, the most grandly loved and the most outrageously treated Being in all the ages—coming to bless his saints. Rise! O children of the fire, and hail him as he comes to count your wounds. Coming to vindicate his cause! Crouch! O you scientists and infidels, who said there was no Christ, or if there were, he would never appear. Coming to cast out the hard-hearted and rebellious! Oh! bow now before his arrival, that then you may be ready to hail him. Coming with the months! Coming with the weeks! Coming with the days! Coming with the hours! Coming with the minutes! Coming with the seconds—coming! “The coming of the Lord draweth nigh.”—New York Witness.

KINGLY ROBES.

By E. G. Sprague

They tell of wondrous cloth of gold, Spun in some eastern loom; Of costly robes, empurpled o’er With lovely Tyrian bloom.
They tell of garments, rich and rare, Made for earth’s favored ones, Whose every seam is frosted o’er With pearls and precious stones.
But there’s a robe that is not decked With ermine or with gold, And yet a kingdom’s worth is held In every glist’ning fold.
No jewel breaks its graceful flow From throat to simple hem; But oh, it shines with luster far Surpassing any gem!
I’d rather fold above my heart This vesture pure of Peace— Of Righteousness and Hope and Faith, Than one and all of these.
More richly dressed the beggar poor, Who wears this garment white, Than he who recks not of its worth, Though crowned with princely might,
Then take away earth’s robes of state, Christ’s spotless garment bring; I’d wear it far more gladly than The purple of a king.
—E. G. Sprague.

SOCIAL CHRISTIAN CULTURE.

By S. M. Spicer

(Concluded.)
But to be more specific, let us note separately some of the Christian graces to be cultivated, remembering that exercise is the only condition of improvement; and that unlimited opportunities are presented all along the walks of life, and the beautiful, spotless example of the Saviour has been left for our sure guide. Whoever, by close and constant communion with Jesus, drinks deep of his spirit, will find it easy to breathe out that spirit in all the acts of life; hence Christian benevolence and charity will be ever prompting him to do good to all, to unselfishly seek their happiness and welfare, and kindly and patiently bear with their faults.
Kindness usually begets kindness in return, but there is a far higher consideration; for it is a law of our being that love and liberality have a reacting power upon the agent, increasing both his capacity and pleasure in their exercise. For example, when we have done a good deed to others we naturally feel a new interest in and regard for them, and every repetition of such acts increases these feelings. Likewise, on the other hand, if we do an intended injury to any one, even if that injury is never returned, nor even resented, we feel a growing hatred to that person and a desire to injure more. It is this law of perverted human nature that gives foundation to prejudice, which sometimes works great injury even to the innocent. For instance, one may be assailed by an enemy, whether justly or unjustly, and soon the multitude incline to add thrust to the wounded and kick to the falling, till he is ruined, unless there are those with firm Christian principles and moral courage to stem and turn the perverted tide.
To prove this seeming paradox, let the same person, instead of being assailed by an enemy, be publicly lauded by a distinguished friend, the same multitude will be as ready to re-echo the notes of praise, and exalt to the skies; while each effort increases their esteem, just as in the opposite case each act to injure increased the feelings of hatred and prejudice. Such is the law which naturally governs the perverted world, and gives to prejudice its ruinous control over public opinion. In view of this fact, it is especially important that Christians cultivate carefully strict integrity and discernment, and moral courage to sustain the truth and the right without respect of persons. Much oftener then would Christians be found in the place of the good Samaritan, and the social Christian world would esteem that blessed office so conspicuously honored by the divine Friend of the poor and suffering.
The reacting influence of exercising liberality makes it much more easy and pleasing to be generous still. There is perhaps no other virtue that grows by exercise so thriftily as this, and none so dwarfed by disuse and neglect. Hence one cannot afford to be penurious on his own account, to say nothing of robbing God and the world of their just due. When we withhold our sympathies from doing a kindness to a neighbor, or from trying to sustain the public interest and welfare, we are narrowing down our own souls, and may soon verge to that absolute selfishness which would take advantage of a neighbor at the sacrifice of common honesty. Would that the Christian world might be spared these unpleasant extremes of perverted human tendencies. And yet there is need that all should seize upon every day's opportunities to exercise kindness and charity to all.
There is a mutual inspiration in generosity which may encourage one alone to try to sow the good seed which may at some future day spring up and cover the whole field. Study out some noble plan to benefit some individual or society, and you will soon find others to join in the effort. Thus some generous purpose might keep the public mind in healthful exercise, while the wide-scattered seeds of mischief might be left to die for lack of nurturing care.
Liberality of thought and sentiment also needs cultivation among Christians, especially as a means of saving the bitter conflicts that disturb the peace of neighborhoods and churches. The day of bigotry has, in a great measure, gone by, as the general diffusion of knowledge has fostered the spirit of toleration, yet some of the dark relics of barbarism still shadow the Christian world. With due knowledge of human nature, and of the fact that the all-wise God constituted men with different minds and temperaments, we should never allow these differences to grate harshly upon each other, producing discord and alienation of feeling. Individual peculiarities and opinions should not be made too conspicuous, but we should be content to disagree, if need be, in all the non-essentials, and cultivate a common faith and sympathy in all the great truths and doctrines which concern our highest interests. Churches and church members should have less to do with individual peculiarities, and much more to do in cultivating general purity and uprightness of Christian life and character. We should at least be more sparing of judgments upon others, until we are so pure in heart ourselves that, were Jesus standing in the midst, his all-seeing eye could not convict us of the greater sin.
One of the most important attainments for the Christian is the habit of careful, honest self-examination. This habit would naturally promote humility, that most beautiful ornament of the Christian character. Yet nearly allied to this lovely grace, we may rank the highest Christian grace, the spirit of forgiveness. But we spare words, and only invite to study that last, great lesson of Jesus, while upon the cross, suffering the agony of the crushing burden of the sins of the world. He said, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Would that we might consider that picture of patient suffering, infinite love, and divine forgiveness, till we could breathe in, and live out, that same precious spirit of the Master, without which, he says, ye cannot be my disciples.
S. M. SPICER.

CONTINUING IN WELL DOING.

By Chas. B. Reynolds

It is only by overcoming, by patiently continuing in well doing, that we can ever attain to the joys of immortality and eternal life. The prize can only be gained by doing all we can, always. It needs all the grace we have and all we can obtain.
Those efforts and services which are capricious and irregular, or which prompt us only to make partial sacrifices for the cause of God and truth, afford at best but very slight evidences of our sincerity. Called from the darkness and perplexing labyrinths of modern miscalled orthodoxy, to the glorious light and harmony of God’s truth, the love and gratitude of our hearts should be as his mercies,—not fitful and capricious, but steadfast and continual. Our love and gratitude to God should glow with a steady and uniform fervor that no trials or discouragements should dampen or diminish. Our faith in God, the conviction that he is our loving Father and that his word is truth, should give us such reliance on the promised help that no duties, however difficult or arduous, should deter or dismay us.
The sincere child of God, awakened to a true sense of the immense debt of gratitude which he owes, alike to an ever-loving Heavenly Father, and to Jesus, the Redeemer who died to obtain for us the glorious joys of immortality, will not measure his obedience or the amount of his self-sacrifice by the nice calculations of cold and selfish policy. His performance of duty will result from the promptings of a truly grateful heart. His vows of obedience will embrace every sacrifice to which devotion to the cause of his blessed Lord may call him, and will extend to every act of duty by which present truth may be advanced. He will be actuated by the hope of gaining the glorious plaudit, “Well and faithfully done.”
There is a class of people who are apt to be spasmodically zealous. Under favorable surroundings, they suddenly flash and blaze only to flicker out, bring gloom and discouragement, and do actual injury to the cause. It is not the fitful, uncertain burst of enthusiasm, but the steady, continual, burning zeal that is needed. Let not our performance of duty be the fruit of merely a sudden and transitory glow of feeling; rather let our vows and acts of allegiance be founded on a deep and serious conviction of the weighty obligations we are under, of the exalted and ennobling nature of the service, of its brilliant and glorious reward, and let these be our incentives to patiently continue in well doing, “seeking for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life.”
When disposed to murmur at the severity of the sacrifice to which God calls us, at the extent and difficulty of his service, to imagine our burdens greater than we can bear, and that the demands are beyond our capabilities, let us look to Jesus and be lightened; let us contemplate the number and poignancy of his sufferings. He endured the cross and despised the shame; and shall we not blush that for one moment we have indulged in ungrateful murmurs? Rather let us deplore the utter inadequacy of our most zealous service to repay the debt we owe, and, realizing its insufficiency and unworthiness, offer to our gracious Redeemer the best tribute we can render—a zealous and uniform obedience. And that we may do this, let us make the most diligent use of every means of grace.
To work out our salvation is indeed the momentous business that should occupy us; it should call forth our greatest care and exertions. Heaven can never be obtained by spasmodically grasping upward with one hand, while the other digs vigorously in the earth, and we are engrossed in scraping together and hoarding up the perishing things of this world. There is no half-way Heaven, to reward half-hearted service.
It is only by patient continuance in well doing that the glorious prize of immortality can be secured. Consider how potent the sway which sin maintains over the enslaved affections; consider how deep is the unhallowed taint of iniquity which is to be washed away; consider how strong the chain of corrupt passion from whose ignoble thralldom we must be delivered; consider how extensive, how important, how continuous the duties we must discharge; consider how many painful sacrifices must be made, how many obstacles triumphantly surmounted, ere we can be fitted to receive the priceless boon of immortality.
Dare we, then, indulge the vain, the presumptuous expectation that we can overcome—that we can discharge these momentous duties—by feeble and occasional efforts? Having admitted and received the truth, can we fall back in idle serenity, content to simply refrain from violating the Sabbath, to attend to our family worship and church services, and so think all our duty done, our salvation fully secured? Fatal delusion! To resist the spirit of a corrupt world, the seducing pleasures and allurements that from a thousand quarters assail us; to stand against the subtle wiles of Satan and all his insinuating solicitations, and cheerfully go forth, at all times recommending the truth, both by precept and example; to let our light so shine that others shall see our good works, and so be led to glorify our Father in Heaven;—to do these things requires the most vigorous, persevering effort, the most constant endeavor, the most earnest prayer, the most vigilant watchfulness, failing which, we shall assuredly fail of immortality.
Yet, praise His holy name, the grace of God is all-sufficient for the most difficult and dangerous trials. His strength will be gloriously perfected in the weakness of the most humble of his children. “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.” Isa. 41:10. He imposes no restrictions or duties without giving all needed aid. He calls us to the battle, but himself supplies the armor, and imparts strength for the encounter. He has promised that as our day, so shall our strength be.
How is it with us? Are we doing all we can? Are we in earnest? Do we realize the times in which we live? Are we seeking to learn what work God would have us do, and striving to accomplish it? Soon, very soon, Jesus will leave the sanctuary and will say, “Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.” Are we making sacrifices for Jesus? Can it be said to us, “Well and faithfully done”? Are we doing well? If so, wherein? Which of our acts deserves this encomium? Are we as much in earnest in advancing the proclamation of the last message of mercy, in seeking immortality and eternal life, as we are in seeking the things of this world?
May the Lord revive his work; may we be up and doing now while it is yet day; “for the night cometh, when no man can work.” Remember it is by “patient continuance in well doing” that we must “seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life.” God help us to strive for this blessing, and through Jesus obtain it.
CHAS. B. REYNOLDS.

The Violet and Humility

THE violet grows low and covers itself with its own tears, and of all flowers yields the sweetest fragrance. Such is humility.

GOD BLESS NEW ENGLAND.

By A. S. Nason

EARNEST prayers have ascended throughout New England that the blessing of God may rest upon his people in this their hour of need. And as they humble themselves under his mighty hand his arm will be stretched out to help and save. New England is called a hard field for labor. The hearts of the majority of the people have seemed as difficult to impress as the flinty rocks that cover its surface. But let this people become thoroughly awakened to the importance of the last solemn message, and they will manifest a power before which the world will have reason to tremble.
There is not a nobler people to be found upon the wide earth than New England contains. They possess hearts as true and firm as the eternal hills among which they have been reared. The men and women who have led out in present truth have been cradled here. There is a great deal of iron in the composition of this people, and the cause here needs men to lead it, who will pursue the straight path of duty, regardless of censure or of praise. Thank God, some such are in our midst, and the Lord is blessing their labors.
The members of the little church in Ipswich are rejoicing in victories gained, and, like Jacob, are wrestling for still greater liberty. The Lord has distilled his blessing upon us like the gentle dew, and fainting hearts have revived under its sweet influence. There are those among us who have known and loved the truth almost from its beginning, and it can be said of them that they are true burden-bearers.
This church is worthy to be an example to others, in that the labors of God’s faithful servants are appreciated, and the members feel like uniting their efforts with these men of God to advance the cause. When every church in New England shall cease murmuring, and with unselfish motives and childlike trust in God shall firmly resolve to go forward, there will no longer be the cry among us, “My leanness, my leanness.”
God is speaking to his people in the message to the Laodiceans, bidding them be zealous and repent. How many in New England are faithfully heeding this message will soon be known. How many, alas! will find too late that they have made only a surface work? Those who truly repent will manifest it by the softening influence which will take possession of their hearts. Such love for perishing men will influence them as will make them forgetful of selfish interests, and the affections will be broken off from worldly objects and centered in Heaven.
If the Saviour could be bodily in our midst, should we not see him weeping over us as he wept over Jerusalem? Would he not say, Oh, that “thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things that belong unto thy peace”? Will we close our eyes to the light that is shining upon our pathway, and willfully shut our ears to the notes of warning? God forbid! But may we continue our prayers for God’s blessing to rest upon New England until hill and valley shall re-echo with songs of praise from souls new born to Christ.
And throughout earth’s wide domains may the message increase in power and strength until its work is accomplished. Then will the reward be given to those,
Who’ve “fought unyielding on the field To win an everlasting crown.”
A. S. NASON.
Ipswich, Mass.
Continue reading: IMPRESSIONS AT BATTLE CREEK.— PUBLISHING HOUSE