The Great Second Advent Movement: Its Rise and Progress

Guardians Appointed

The character and principles of those who left their crops standing unharvested and their shops desolate, to scatter the printed page or to talk and pray with the people questioned not that such men and women believed every word they said, and withal, such a power attended them that the honest hearted could not gainsay nor resist their words. Thousands were by this means led to believe the truth, and sought and found God’s mercy. GSAM 168.2

The scoffing sinner and the worldly professor, however, decided that this work of scattering advent publications must be stopped. These men who were taking a township or a whole county and going from house to house with this advent doctrine, and neglecting their business and families, must be beside themselves, they said, and must therefore have guardians placed over them. The alleged evidences of an unsound mind exhibited by the believers (being simply labor for the salvation of their fellow-men, without testimony that the families were suffering because of the leaving of their business), were insufficient proof of insanity; consequently but few persons were placed under guardianship. Judging by the glibness with which opponents of the present day speak of the fact, one would think there were many instances; yet in all my labors as an Adventist minister, covering a period of over fifty-six years, I have met with only two cases of “Millerites” who were placed under guardians. A brief notice of these may not be out of place. GSAM 169.1