Seventh-day Adventists are a people highly favored in the greatness of the responsibilities laid upon them. Everyone who is attracted by the light of the truth for which they stand is, at first, naturally led to believe them to be a perfect people. It would seem that the custodians of such a faith should be like it. The newly enlightened soul regards those who have been brought up with these great principles with longing eyes, and envies them because of the high point of privilege which they occupy. The convert supposes that every one of them must be a teacher, because he must know much to believe so much; and he must also be true to the core. To be a Seventh-day Adventist must, of course, take all of self out of any man; for, as was said of Christ, there is, to the superficial observer, no beauty in this his body that any should desire it. Nothing is in it to lead any one to come into it except an unconditional surrender to naked truth, such as would involve a renunciation of every fleshly lust, every unchristlike thing, and a purpose to endure to the end. It spoils a man for anything in this world to have ever professed this truth; and to have really seen it as it is, is to have had the world spoiled for him.
This far-sighted view of what a Seventh-day Adventist must necessarily be, is what God intends he shall prove to be upon the closest inspection. Is he not to be presented before the glory of the Father without spot or wrinkle or any such thing? Not one thing in the line of perfection has been expected of this people by any newcomer, which God does not intend they shall each reach. For myself, since I have come to be one with you to whom I am writing; since I have accepted the reproofs which have come as personal to me as well as to you; since my heart and life have been knit together with yours in these bonds of Christian fellowship and labor; I may be allowed to say that we are driven by every possible consideration to climb to those heights of attainment which mean all of that perfectness in Christ which can possibly belong to human character in its highest development. And since this is demanded of us by God and man, who shall help us if we fail?
The world has a right to expect more from us than from any other people. It is right that it should be slow to excuse grievous failures in us, because of the profession that we make of the faith of Jesus. That profession is so luminous that no man can stand in it without revealing just what he is; and, being fallible, sinful as we are, if we are ever able to meet the expectations of God and a lost world, there must be a great work done in every heart, in every home, in every youth and child among us; and the time is short! It is with us as a people now as when, sometimes, the neglected work of the whole week seems piled in on preparation day. The world's preparation day is nearly passed; its momentous hours have been frittered away; the sun hangs low in the west; the last Sabbath of earth is almost here; the gospel proclamation must begin to run and fly; at last the King's business truly requires haste; and it is our work as women to send forth messengers fully equipped for their holy errand. And, if she will, every mother may speak with as many tongues, run with as many feet, and work with as many hands as she has children.
The Child a Publisher
Every child is a publisher. A family of children is a publishing association. By that which the children themselves are they publish abroad, they cry aloud on the street corners that which has been uttered in the secret heart of the parent; that which it was supposed had been hidden in the four walls of the home. Alas, if the message as they proclaim it has not the ring of the everlasting gospel!
By nothing have I ever been kept so busy since I came among this people as by inquiries of fathers and mothers concerning how they shall be able to correct the living of their children; and I always feel like replying, Why not make the correction of the heart the first care? for out of it are the issues of life.
"What can I do with my boy?" writes a father. The boy is fifteen or sixteen years old, and has already begun to slip away. He is out on the street, is forming associations with street-boys; smokes cigarettes; uses bad language; and has become unteachable. What shall be done with him?
"Why is it that my children do not obey me?" is the question which comes continually from fathers and mothers.
It is not the purpose of this booklet to go into the discussion of the why and how of all this. It has been discussed at length elsewhere; but I must indicate the root of the trouble. If it does not apply to you personally who are reading these pages, it applies to somebody whom you ought to reach with the message of truth upon these points.
The child in the home deals by the father, mother, and the principles which they represent, precisely as father and mother deal by the Heavenly Father and the principles which He represents. The only deviation from this rule is found in the personal repentance and conversion of the child. This may seem like a hard thing to say, but it is so awfully true that it must be said, no matter how hard it may strike home. The time may come when your child will see where you have failed, and correct himself by the light of the Holy Spirit, and in so doing give you a little taste of the judgment-day in your own soul. Pray God that it may be so, and not too late.
The True Purpose in Life
A continual cry is going up, "How can we save our young people?" Recently I opened a letter in which one sister wrote for a mother and father whose hearts were breaking. Too heartsick and sore themselves to write, they had asked this friend to write for them and tell me about their boy, and ask advice. He had been a good, kind, gentle boy in the home; but, as the scribe said, a change was coming over him. She wrote: "He says that he has got to begin to do for himself pretty soon, and that he does not see how he can do for himself and earn a living and keep the Sabbath." Then in her sympathy she cries out in her letter, "O, I am so discouraged! I am so disheartened! How can we preserve our young people
And that is the one cry; for the obligation is upon this people to preserve their children unto the Lord's coming. How shall we answer for our children when our names are called in judgment? How shall we appear when our Lord comes and asks for them if we cannot say, Here am I, and the children whom thou hast given me?
In the reply to this letter I said, "Tell those parents that their boy ought never to have been left to think of such a thing as 'striking out' for himself."
What does that mean,—"striking out" for himself? What does it mean to "try to earn a living"?—It means either a misunderstanding, or a repudiation, of the whole obligation of the individual to Christ. That boy should have been so taught that he would have known better than to try to "earn a living." To live to earn a living is the purest selfishness. That purpose in the heart of father and mother is as a thistle-seed, out of which will grow a whole harvest of thistles in the plans and purpose and efforts of the children.
"To earn a living!" I know from things which have been already said to me since I first touched this point ' with my pen, that in homes to which this leaflet will go there are those who are burdened as to just how they are going to get along to-morrow in this mercenary struggle after a livelihood. To all such I must say again that in this effort there can be no permanent comfort.
There is nothing in the world so hard for a Christian man as to live and labor for his bread; because God is not in the effort. He cannot have the help of God in that kind of work. A man who will try to earn a living must fight God with every stroke, disobeying one of the plainest utterances of our Lord; for He said in so many words, "Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life." John 6:27.
God sent every individual into the world for another purpose; first of all, himself, to seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness just as Christ did; just as He did, to trust that all things would be added as he should have need, by Him who had assumed the responsibility of both his work and his wages.
"As he is, so are we in this world" (1 John 4:17),—simply to try to bring back to God that which Satan stole from Him; to help each other to get back to God; to bring the home back, up to the plane upon which it was started; to bring up to the gospel level all of business with which we must have anything to do; to be true representatives of Jesus in handling the raw material of the world. We are here for that one purpose, and for no other.
God intends that we shall use everything that comes to us,—shall handle the affairs of the world, run the farm, keep the home, the store, the shop, build houses, teach school, make dresses, work up the raw material about us, as opportunity offers, for Him; and that we shall be used by Him as instruments for manifesting Christ amid our daily toil; speaking always as witnesses to the practical power of the Holy Spirit; settling ourselves nowhere but in Him; holding ourselves ready for every good work; caring for nothing but that we do His will, leaving all things to work together for our good under His orders.
To facilitate this, which is His purpose concerning us, He has set us in families, has placed individuals together in the relations of husband and wife, parents and children, that in that intimate and close connection there may be possible the most rapid transit of the gospel from life to life; that the children may be quickly prepared in the few years of their youth to go out and take the world at its worst, just as Satan changed it, and, instead of being overcome by it, to overcome it, subdue it, and bring back for each family at least one little section of the world,—the home,—redeemed from the curse, to the glory of His name.
The children in Seventh-day Adventist homes should go out clothed with more power than any others. If these children are not stronger to resist evil than any others, it is not the fault of God nor of the truth; but because there is something wrong in their homes.
Is it a hard saying? If hard, its hardness consists in its truth. Let us take a look at the truth. Let us accept it, even if it is a stone. Stone makes vastly better building material than soap.
The Work of the Home
The home was God's first institution. He created it, like a machine, for a certain specific and definite work. He gave it its work; and for that work He set apart a certain proportion of power.
Every good machinist, in making provision to apply power, will take into consideration three things: the amount and kind of work that the machine is to do, the application of sufficient power, and the necessary friction that must be overcome. According to these calculations he makes provision for the application of so much power as shall be necessary to do the work, to overcome all friction, and besides this also to leave a reserve upon which to draw in case of any sudden emergency.
God was that kind of a machinist. The work to be done by the home was the production of men and women who should be able to go out and take the world as they found it, and instead of being overcome by it, to subdue and overcome it.
This being the case, if the children who go out are overcome by the evil, where is the blame?—With God, or with the home? You may say, "It is with the child himself." But he was not responsible for his birth, nor for those things that gave him his first start downward. He has his share of responsibility, for which he must in turn reckon with God; but that part of it which still remains for the authors of his being, his teachers, and the maker of his home to answer for, is neither small nor insignificant.
If any boy or girl goes to ruin out of a Christian home, God can not be charged with a shadow of carelessness anywhere, from the construction of the machine to the application of power. He can only be charged with having manifested confidence in the ability of man to succeed if he chose; and with trusting him with liberty to either use or reject the power and to refuse or consent to do his part of the appointed work.
God took into account all necessary friction. He weighed and measured an evil heredity clear back to Adam. He knew just what part it was going to play in the life of that special child. He took up the evil influences that might be in the environment. He estimated the power that lurked in the temperament of the father and the mother. He was not unmindful of the saloon down on the corner, nor of the house of sin, nor of any one of the evils that Satan could possibly bring to bear.
I do not believe that God was ever taken by surprise by one thing that Satan ever did; nor that He was careless for an instant concerning what an evil world might mean to any boy or girl in any home. And in the face of all these things He has uttered the most comforting words to those who have the care of children.
In the second chapter of Acts, concerning the manifestation of the Holy Spirit as it is to come upon the church, we read: "Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you AND TO YOUR CHILDREN, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call."
The promise of the Holy Ghost, which is the fulness of all power, is to you and to your children. This is equivalent to the plainest declaration that there shall be enough to run this machinery of the home, so that the children who go out of it shall be able to act like men and women, to be true and reliable, able to meet the world full of falsehood and duplicity and apostasy, and to stand for the truth like the Rock of Ages.
The Home-Support of the Truth
Just think what it would be to this message if the children as they mingle with their young companions in the school, in the every-day work, should by what they are, support the truth which the father preaches on the Sabbath; which the canvasser is selling in his book; which the medical missionary is dispensing; and which, in her gentle services, the Christian-trained nurse is imparting; which is taught in the principles of health reform; and which the mother is living out in her womanly ministry in the home. Then would people say, "I believe in that man's preaching, because I know his children. I believe in that woman's testimony, because I know her home. I will buy this man's book, I will follow the principles of this reform in living, because I can see what the teaching has done for the children who are taught in these things."
And I would like to encourage you who read these pages, to know that even now it is possible to do a work for those children who have gone astray. That is one thing upon which I have set my heart. One burden which is upon my soul is that there shall be received in the homes of this people the power which shall, by the force of love, bring back the wandering ones to the truth. But before that can be, a work must be done for, and by, many a discouraged mother.
I have had letters from many mothers. More than one has written me, "Your letter came just in time; I was so discouraged!" I have received letters from women who had already in their discouragement begun to slip down that incline that leads to unbelief and infamy, and were upon the verge of suicide. You and I may not know just what it means to be caught in such a fog; but the very fact that any poor soul who was brought up in and still holds the truth with us could be so caught, should arouse the earnest sympathy of every heart.
In this woman ministry there is need of a line of motherly teaching in certain truths and principles which are indigenous to the home, which must have the most delicate treatment, and which, because they lie so close to God in nature, and to nature in God, must always suffer if they are torn up out of their native privacy, and dragged out into the open and planted in the public common of indiscriminate discussion.
The average mother has failed more especially in this line of teaching. This failure has become hereditary, like a family debt; accumulating its arrears of ignorance, impurity, and disgrace through long lines of ancestry: until now the time has come when it must be paid.
The women of these last days find their hands thrust full of questions, like notes on demand, which must be quickly turned into the gold of truth; and they are at their wits' end to meet the obligation; while the children wait, large-eyed with expectation, or shamefaced with wonder, at the queer coin of the half truth—worse than a whole lie,—which has been palmed off upon their ignorance.
A Sanctuary and a School
The imperative need of our day is that the Christian home shall be indeed a sanctuary and a school,—the father and mother united in the ministry of the word of life, and in the teaching of every vital truth; by careful instruction, setting each in its true proportions in its right place in the mind of the growing child; and that every woman who knows the truth shall find and love her own work in her own God-appointed place, and become a true minister to all who come within her reach or who can be sought out and helped.
And our woman's gospel work is an effort to help each other to bring all this to pass.
A startling thing confronts us,—a growing unbelief even among mothers. There is a reason for it, but it would require more than the compass of this leaflet to spread out this reason in all its proportions. It will take the searching power of the Spirit of God to make it clear to those who most of all need to understand it. It is found in the neglected work of the father as well as of the mother. The father has a duty in his home. A tremendous responsibility rests upon him; and while I am writing more especially for the women, I must ask the fathers to try to find out why so many mothers are losing their faith in God.
The present question, which is most intimately related to the present truth, is, How can we stop this growing unbelief, how turn the tides of faith into the center of influence which the home is, so that it will flow out from the home, instead of having to be carried in small measures and poured into it. The situation is like that of a standpipe, upon which a whole community depends for its water-supply, which, being found empty, the people are trying to fill by bringing water in small pails and cups from some distant fountain with which to replenish it. The standpipe to be of any use must be in direct connection with the fountain. The home, which is the moral standpipe of the world, to be of any service must be connected directly with the source of all power, which is the Holy Spirit. It should be filled to overflowing with that Spirit, so that every influence which goes out from it shall be life and light; so that, as the center of all things in the earth, it shall be so continually replenished that the church, the social, the business life of the world may constantly draw upon it for every good word and work; so that even if the whole world should be dried up and parched with the fervid heats of lust, if even the church should become empty of power, yet the tides of life kept flowing through the homes of God's faithful few may irrigate the whole field, and quench the thirst of every soul that, caught in the desert of sin, is still longing after God and truth.
This is the province of the home, and its responsibility is commensurate with its privilege. But instead what do we find?—That the church must, by some means, be continually pouring knowledge and power into the home; thus the energy which ought to be given to a lost world is spent in the effort to preserve the home and the children of the church, until little heart or power is left to take the gospel to the nations. No strength is left for the outside world, because the home and church cannot keep their own children.
I spent two or three days in a mission home; with us was a dear old brother,—a minister who had come into the home for the purpose of enjoying the services that we were to have together. The first morning during the service a fine-looking gentleman came in and sat down beside this aged brother, and at the close of the study he was introduced as this old minister's son. There was a quaver not wholly of age in the father's voice, a pleading in his face, a pathos in his whole manner, the secret of which was discovered in the fact that this son, who had been brought up in the faith of Jesus, had gone from it into the unbelief of the world. For some reason the power to hold him had been lacking; and there he was, a prosperous business man of the world, loving his father, and respecting the church because his father was in it; but with every personal interest outside. The father's heart yearned over him, and it was pitiful to see these two standing together,—the young man with the stamp of the world upon him, the old father helplessly clinging to him, trying to hold on to him for the kingdom of heaven. And to the question as to why this is so we must still answer that at least the fault is not with God nor in the gospel.
The Power of the Mother
The great question of the church is, How can this be prevented? And the answer lies in the home, principally with the mother. I believe fully in the power of a holy, spiritual woman-ministry to overcome every enemy of the home, and I shall confine this discussion to the part which belongs to my sisters in the work of God in the world. The father must reckon with God for his share of the responsibility. But whatever that father and husband is, God has so arranged that if the wife and mother will truly work with Him, if she will allow the power of the Spirit through a thoroughly subjugated physical and mental being to control and live in her, she, a woman, standing all alone for the truth and for purity in her home, against the influences of an evil father, shall not be robbed of her crown in the character of her children.
You, my sister, to whom these pages come: —O that you might realize the power which you may have from God! that if your child is given honestly to Him in his prenatal life; if you work together with Him from the first moment of the child's existence, and allow the Abiding Spirit to control and in all things, to teach and lead you; if you make of your body a holy temple of the Spirit; if you agree with the Spirit, and let Him work through you all the way, you will be able to make of your son and your daughter, a good, true man, or woman, who shall always walk in white before God, in spite of the most evil influences that any man can bring to bear.
This is a mother's high and holy privilege. God would not have been God if He had not made this thing possible; because He had so related Himself to human life that He must care concerning the destiny of every child that comes into the world. He cannot be indifferent to it. He has left to Himself and the mother this one last chance in every home. Among the causes of friction in the machinery of the home, which must be overcome, He saw a husband and father entirely at variance with the work of the conscientious wife and mother; and must needs so plan that work that He and that mother shall be able to accomplish the salvation of the children that come into it; for the only reward that He expects from the earth is in the children;—they are His heritage.
I feel that this inspiring truth is the one great message now to take to women everywhere; and it can be done only by a woman-ministry,—a patient, plodding, unselfish ministry, carried on amid the every-day duties and the little details of the most common life,—a sort of gospel "chinking" by which the fartheimost, loneliest, most discouraged mother, with a family of young children, and no helpfulness in her husband, with no visible means for their education, and perhaps herself an invalid, shall be able to meet the needs of those children, and preserve them for the kingdom of God.
Every such mother has a right to the inspiration of the Holy Ghost for her own personal instruction. She has a right to the full measure of that power which is for healing of the body as well as salvation from sin. The discouraged woman, who is losing her hold on God and the truth; the bondwoman who is simply a married slave to the evil passions of a man who does not appreciate what the office of husband involves; the ignorant woman who never had a chance to become intelligently informed concerning life and its duties, who perhaps does not even know how to give her children the most simple rudiments of education, and yet knows and loves the truth, and longs to bring her little ones up in it;—these women all have a right to the best that any of their sisters have found in the gospel message.
Every Christian woman has a personal obligation to every needy woman of every rank and grade, and first of all to those of her own home and her own "household of faith."
(To be continued)
