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Testimonies for the Church Volume 4
I saw no one, and at the sense of the presence of God my heart was
broken in tenderness before Him. When my husband entered the room,
I told him the exercises of my mind. We wept and prayed together.
Our arrangements had been made to leave in three days, but now all
our plans were changed.
May 30, the patients and faculty of the sanitarium having planned
to spend the day two miles from Battle Creek in a beautiful grove that
bordered Goguac Lake, I was urged to be present and speak to the
patients. Had I consulted my feelings I should not have ventured, but I
thought perhaps this might be a part of the work I was to do in Battle
Creek. At the usual hour, tables were spread with hygienic food, which
was partaken of with a keen relish. At three o’clock the exercises were
opened with prayer and singing. I had great freedom in speaking to
the people. All listened with the deepest interest. After I had ceased
speaking, Judge Graham of Wisconsin, a patient at the sanitarium,
arose and proposed that the lecture be printed and circulated among
the patients and others for their moral and physical benefit, that the
words spoken that day might never be forgotten or disregarded. The
proposition was approved by a unanimous vote, and the address was
published in a small pamphlet entitled: The Sanitarium Patients at
Goguac Lake.
The close of the school year of the Battle Creek College was now
at hand. I had felt very anxious for the students, many of whom were
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either unconverted or backslidden from God. I had desired to speak to
them and make an effort for their salvation before they should scatter
to their homes, but I had been too feeble to engage in labor for them.
After the experience I have related I had all the evidence I could ask
that God would sustain me in laboring for the salvation of the students.
Meetings were appointed in our house of worship for the benefit of
the students. I spent a week laboring for them, holding meetings every
evening and on the Sabbath and first day. My heart was touched to
see the house of worship nearly filled with the students of our school.
I tried to impress upon them that a life of purity and prayer would
not be a hindrance to them in obtaining a thorough knowledge of the
sciences, but that it would remove many hindrances to their progress in
knowledge. By becoming connected with the Saviour, they are brought
into the school of Christ; and if they are diligent students in this school,
vice and immorality will be expelled from the midst of them. These