Testimonies for the Church Vol 1 - Lansing SDA Church

Conflicts and Victory 559has given can be traced only from memory and from what has beenreceipted in the Review. The fact that we are worth so little, appearingat this time when my husband has been represented as wealthy andstill grasping for more, has been a matter of rejoicing to us, as it is thebest refutation of the false charges which threatened our influence andChristian character.Our property may go, and we will still rejoice in God if it be usedfor the advancement of His cause. We have cheerfully spent the best ofour days, the best of our strength, and have nearly worn out in the samecause, and feel the infirmities of premature age, and yet we will rejoice.But when our professed brethren attack our character and influenceby representing us as wealthy, worldly, and grasping for more, it isthen that we feel keenly. Let us enjoy the character and influence wehave dearly earned during the past twenty years, with even poverty [608]and a slight hold on health and this mortal life, and we will rejoice andcheerfully give to the cause the little there is left of us.The investigation was a thorough one and resulted in freeing usfrom the charges brought against us, and restoring feelings of perfectunion. Hearty and heart-rending confessions of the cruel coursepursued toward us here have been made, and the signal blessing ofGod has come upon us all. Backsliders have been reclaimed, sinnershave been converted, and forty-four have been buried in baptism, myhusband baptizing sixteen, and Brethren Andrews and Loughborough,twenty-eight. We are encouraged, yet much worn. My husband andmyself have had the burden of the work, which has been very laboriousand exciting. How we have, in our feeble state, gone through with theinvestigation, with the feelings of nearly all against us, endured thepreaching, the exhortations, and the late evening meetings, and at thesame time prepared this work, my husband working with me, copyingand preparing it for the printers, and reading proof, God only knows.Yet we have passed through it and hope in God that He will sustain usin our future labors.We now believe that much in the foregoing dreams was given toillustrate our trials arising from wrongs existing at Battle Creek, ourlabors in clearing ourselves from cruel charges, and also our labors,with the blessing of God, in setting things right. If this view of thedreams be correct, may we not hope, from other portions of them notyet fulfilled, that our future will be more favorable than the past?