Letters and Manuscripts — Volume 5 (1887-1888)

Lt 22, 1887

Canright, D. M.

April 20, 1887

Portions of this letter are published in 5T 621-628.

Elder Canright

My brother:

I have received your letter and need not express to you the sadness of my heart at the very sudden turn you have recently taken. I review in my mind your past experience and call to mind your experience in Colorado, while upon that rock where descent seemed impossible; your reflections on that occasion, your afterwards partial recovery to the faith, your temptations through false and ambitious hopes to be a greater man away from our people than with them; when you entered in so heartily to elocution; your disappointment; your praiseworthy course of remaining silent; the prayers and sympathies of God’s people that were ascending to heaven in your behalf—my constant pleadings have been, Do not let him alone; make efforts to save him. He is ensnared. He has lost his hold upon God. 5LtMs, Lt 22, 1887, par. 1

I remember the last time I rode out with your wife before she died. Her burden was for you and for her children. She said she had great trembling for the future because of her children and the skepticism of her husband. “If I should die and he should give up the faith, and lead my children to give up the Sabbath, how terrible it would be after he has had so great light; so many evidences. For this reason I have clung to life. He has not had that deep inwrought work in the soul that will anchor him should temptations come to him. Oh, Sister White, it is for the soul of my husband and my children that I have clung to life; and I want right here to tell you that I am heartily sorry that I did not receive in a different spirit the testimonies given me, and for my husband. I see now that the message to us was just what we needed; and had we accepted it, it would have placed us both in a better, far better position spiritually than we have been in for some time. We were both proud in spirit, and from that time I have felt like shunning you, for I thought you had no faith and confidence in us. But for a few months this has all disappeared, and I have felt the same confidence, the same close sympathy and love for you as I have done in my past life. But I know my husband does not feel thus, and it is but little use for me to try to talk over these things with him, as I am too weak to set the matter before him as it is in my mind. He is too strong in his ideas and feelings, but I want to tell you I have implicit faith in the testimonies and in your work, and have long been wanting an opportunity to tell you this, and I shall now feel free. Will you forgive me for my words and feelings against you? I have grieved the Spirit of God, and sometimes I have felt that God had forsaken me, but I do not, neither have I had these feelings for a long time. I never realized the danger of talking unbelief as I have for a few weeks past. I fear greatly for Dudley, for he expresses unbelief, and I fear that he will give all up and become an infidel. Oh, how I wish I could help him.” 5LtMs, Lt 22, 1887, par. 2

Brother Canright, when you told me that Lucretia died disbelieving the testimonies, I did not contradict you, but I knew better. I thought you did not tell me the truth, but afterwards decided you were greatly in the dark, for I have a letter which she sent me, saying she had the fullest confidence in the testimonies, and knew them to be true in regard to yourself and her. When I attended the camp meeting in Jackson, Michigan, you were present at that meeting, and then had an experience that would have proven of lasting value to you if you had remained humble before God as at that time. You then humbled your heart. You asked me while upon your knees to forgive you for the things you had said about me and my work. You said, “You have no idea how mean I have talked of you.” I assured you that I would just as freely forgive you as I hoped and believed that Jesus would forgive my sins and errors. You stated there in the presence of others that you had said many things to my injury, all of which I assured you I freely forgave you, for none of these things were against me; I was only a servant bearing the message God gave me. 5LtMs, Lt 22, 1887, par. 3

It was not against me personally that you were arrayed, but it was against the message God sent to you through His humble instrument. It was Christ that you injured, and not me. I do not want you, I said, to confess to me. Make all straight between your soul and God, and all will be straight between you and me. You had taken some expressions written you in altogether too strong a light, and after reading them again carefully, you said they did not appear to you as they did, and everything was reconciled. You stated after this interview and meeting that you had never known what conversion was before, but that you felt you were born again, had been converted for the first time. You loved God, loved your brethren, your heart was light and happy, you saw the sacredness of the work as never before, and you expressed the deepest change wrought in you by the Spirit of God. And yet I knew you would be brought over the ground again, and tested on the very points where you had failed. 5LtMs, Lt 22, 1887, par. 4

This the Lord did for the children of Israel, and this He has done with His people in all ages. Where they have once fallen He will prove them, He will try them, and if they fail under the trial a second time, He will bring them around to the same test and proving again. My heart aches every time I think of you. My soul is sad indeed. Every soul is precious because purchased by the blood of Christ. I sometimes fear that we do not place anything of a correct value upon the purchase of the blood of Jesus in the redemption of the soul. When I consider the great price paid for the redemption of the individual soul, I then think, What if that soul is finally lost? What if they refuse to be learners in the school of Christ, and fail to practice His meekness and His lowliness and refuse to wear His yoke. This, my brother, has been your great failure. If you had taken less counsel of yourself and made Jesus your counselor, you would now be strong in growth of grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. You have not yoked up with Christ. You have not be imbued with His Spirit; but, oh, how much you have needed the divine mold upon your character. We have, my brother, much to answer for considering the superior advantages we have had; and knowing we must be judged by the light and privileges the Lord has granted us, we cannot plead that we are less wanting in light than that people who have been for ages the astonishment and reproach of the world. We cannot expect judgment will be given in our favor because, like Capernaum, we have been exalted to heaven. The Lord has wrought for His commandment-keeping people. The light which has been reflected upon us from heaven was not granted to Sodom and Gomorrah, or they might have remained unto this day. And if the mighty works and knowledge and grace which have been manifested to this people had been made known to the nations who are in darkness, we know not how far in advance of this people they might be now. We can determine how much more tolerable it would be for them in the day of judgment than for those who have had the clear light of truth shining upon them as you have had, and from some unexplainable cause have turned from the holy commandments delivered to you. 5LtMs, Lt 22, 1887, par. 5

We can only point to your case with sorrow as a beacon of warning. “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” [1 Corinthians 10:12.] The Lord seeth not as man seeth. His ways are not what blind, selfish mortals believe they are or wish them to be, but the Lord looks on the heart and works in and with His creatures to will and to do whatever He commands or requires of them, unless they refuse His counsel and refuse to be obedient to His commandments. The greater part of your life has been employed in presenting doctrines that you will [spend] the last part of your life to repudiate and condemn. Which is the genuine work? Which is the false? Can we trust to your judgment, can we rely upon your interpretations of the Scriptures? We would not. We would be in danger of being misled. You cannot now feel, nor at any future period of time, that your feet are standing on solid rock. I have been unable to sleep, thinking of your future. The truth to me is a living reality. I know it to be truth. The Word of God is true. To the law and to the testimony, if they speak not according to this Word, it is because there is no light in them. Will your light go out in darkness? 5LtMs, Lt 22, 1887, par. 6

I am writing out more fully Volume I of Great Controversy, the fall of Satan, the introduction of sin into our world. I see and sense this great controversy between Christ, the Prince, and Satan, the prince of darkness, as I have never done before; and as I see the various devices of Satan to compass the ruin of man, and make him like himself, a transgressor of God’s holy law, I wish the angels of God could come to this earth and present this matter in its importance as it really is. 5LtMs, Lt 22, 1887, par. 7

Then I feel so intensely for souls that are wilful departers from light and knowledge, and obedience to God’s holy law, like Adam and Eve, to gain some flattering position as gods, hoping to rise to greater heights, I am so anxious that hours I spend in prayer while others are sleeping that God may work in such mighty power as to break the fatal deception upon human minds and lead them in simplicity to the cross of Calvary. Then I quiet my soul with the thought, all these souls are the purchase of the blood of the Son of God. We may have love for these souls, but Calvary testifies how God loves them. The work is not ours, but the Lord’s. We are only instruments in His hands to do His work, not our own. 5LtMs, Lt 22, 1887, par. 8

We look and tremble at souls who are doing despite to the Spirit of grace, and we feel sorry for our own disappointment that they prove untrue to God and the truth; but we feel deeper sorrow as we think of the disappointment of Jesus who has purchased with His own blood. We would give all our possessions to save one soul, but find we cannot do this. We would give life itself to save one soul into life eternal, but this sacrifice would not do the work. The one great sacrifice has been made in the life, the mission, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Oh, that minds would only contemplate the greatness of the sacrifice, then they might be better able to comprehend the greatness of the salvation. 5LtMs, Lt 22, 1887, par. 9

And now, D. M. Canright, who has had so great light, such an abundance of evidence of Bible truth, goes not onward and upward with those who will triumph with the truth at last. He now takes the side of the great first rebel to make void the law of God, and he will engage to lead others in the same path of transgression of God’s holy law, and to ridicule our faith. When the judgment shall sit, and every soul be judged according to those things that are written in the books, how will your case then appear? You will look on this one and that one in full view of you who would have walked in the way of God’s commandments if you had not surrounded their souls with an atmosphere of unbelief; if you had not misinterpreted the Scriptures, perverted their true meaning, and led them away from obedience to God’s holy law. Can you look on these countenances then with pleasure? You will hear the voice of great Jehovah, saying, Who hath required this at your hands? 5LtMs, Lt 22, 1887, par. 10

(Your present wife has had no deep religious experience in self-denial, in self-sacrifice, and in communion with God, and belief in the truth. She would easily be led from obedience to God to transgressing. Your children will follow when their father leads the way, and unless some special providence should rescue these, their disobedience and transgression will be laid upon your soul.) And the Judge of all the earth confronts you with that holy law, whose claims you were not ignorant of. Your character, the character of your wife, and of your children are to be judged by that holy standard of righteousness. The characters of those you have led to transgress the holy law of God charge their ruin upon you. Through various devices with which Satan is fully acquainted, you have worked for time and for eternity, trying to make others believe you are an honest man in leaving the light of truth. Are you so? No, no. It is a deception, a terrible deception. What can you answer to God in that day? You have then a terrible dread and fear of your Creator. You try to frame some excuse for your course, but everything seems to evade you. You stand guilty and condemned. You may feel angry with me because I thus put the case; but so it is, so it will be to every transgressor of God’s holy law. Keep ever before you this truth, Wheresoever I am, and whatsoever I do, “Thou, O God, seest me.” [Genesis 16:13.] It is not possible that the least item of our conduct will escape the eye of the One who says, “I know thy works.” [Revelation 3:15.] The depths of every heart is open to the inspection of God. 5LtMs, Lt 22, 1887, par. 11

Every action, every purpose, every word is as distinctly marked as though there were no one else in the universe but our own individual selves, and all the watchfulness and scrutiny of God were employed on our deportment. Shall we, then, break even one precept of His law, and teach others to do so by evasions, by assertions, by falsehoods in the very sight of the Law-giver? Shall we brave the sentence in the very face of the Judge? In this there is a hardihood which would seem to surpass the most daring human presumption. 5LtMs, Lt 22, 1887, par. 12

I know, my brother, you, whom I expect to meet around the judgment bar, that you will have no words to excuse your recent defection. Oh, that I could present before you and before others of my brethren the necessity of ever keeping an abiding sense of God’s presence, which would put such restraint on the life, that there would be with them a far different moral and religious standing before the people. We must reach a higher standard. If every soul in the going out and in all the business transactions of life, and in all places and at all times, should act with the consciousness that he is moving under the inspection of God and heavenly angels—that the being who will judge every man’s work for eternity accompanies him at every step, observes all his doings, and scrutinizes all his motives, an apprehension of the presence of God and the peril of violating His precept would take possession of his soul, and what a change would be seen! What a reform in society! What evils would be left undone! There would be confessions in all ranks and among all ages, “I cannot do this great wickedness and sin against God.” [Genesis 39:9.] 5LtMs, Lt 22, 1887, par. 13

Who shall enter in through the gates into the city? “Blessed are they that do His commandments, for they shall enter in through the gates into the city, and have right to the tree of life.” [Revelation 22:14.] You know what these commandments are as well as myself. I love your soul. I love the soul of your wife. I love the souls of your innocent children—and this is why I now address you and entreat you to carefully consider the way your feet are bending. I have more to say, but not now. Will you please to answer me, and please return to me the letters containing the dream as I requested you to do. Address me at Battle Creek, Mich. from whence it will be forwarded to me where I may be. 5LtMs, Lt 22, 1887, par. 14

Yours with much sorrow, and pity, and love. 5LtMs, Lt 22, 1887, par. 15