Important Testimony
49
and lives to be searched as closely and publicly as they have searched
Brother-----’s, some of them would appear far worse than they have
tried to represent him.
I dare not longer remain silent. I speak to you and to the church at
Battle Creek. You have made a great mistake. You have treated with
injustice one to whom you and your children owe a debt of gratitude
which you do not realize. You are responsible for the influence you
have exerted upon the college. Peace has come because the students
have had their own way. In another crisis they will be as determined
and persevering as they have been on this occasion; and, if they find
as able an advocate as they have found in Brother-----, they may again
accomplish their purpose. God has been speaking to teachers and
students and church members, but you have cast His words behind
you. You have thought best to take your own course, irrespective of
consequences.
God has given us, as a people, warnings, reproofs, and cautions, on
the right hand and on the left, to lead us away from worldly customs
and worldly policy. He requires us to be peculiar in faith and in
character, to meet a standard far in advance of worldlings. Brother--
---came among you, unacquainted with the Lord’s dealings with us.
Having newly come to the faith, he had almost everything to learn.
Yet you have unhesitatingly coincided with his judgment. You have
sanctioned in him a spirit and course of action that have nought of
Christ.
You have encouraged in the students a spirit of criticism, which
God’s Spirit has sought to repress. You have led them to betray confi-
dence. There are not a few young persons among us who are indebted
for most valuable traits of character to the knowledge and princi-
ples received from Brother -----. To his training many owe much of
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their usefulness, not only in the Sabbath school, but in various other
branches of our work. Yet your influence encouraged ingratitude, and
has led students to despise the things that they should cherish.
Those who have not the peculiar trials to which another is subjected
may flatter themselves that they are better than he. But place them in
the furnace of trial, and they might not endure it nearly as well as the
one they censure and misjudge. How little we can know of the heart
anguish of another. How few understand another’s circumstances.