1901 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



721 



For almost 25 years, dear brother, I have 

 been able to hold up my head and look every- 

 body in the face, and say I had nothing to 

 conceal in any part of my life — nothing that 

 I would hesitate to have fully exposed or un- 

 folded to the full light of day. The thing 

 that troubled me, and which brought out the 

 confession you object to, is that there was at 

 least some sort of deliberate transgression. 

 May God help me so to live that there may 

 be no need of having at any time any thing 

 to confess. 



The last words of your letter are a little the 

 hardest of all, "from one who has read 

 Gleanings for 25 years," and then decided 

 to drop it and turn his back on his old friend 

 A. I. Root. Very likely this would have nev- 

 er occurred had I not listened to the voice 

 of the tempter, and decided to do that which 

 I knew had at least the " appearance of evil." 



Perhaps the other readers of Gi-Eanings 

 may care to know that some others felt helped 

 and encouraged in their spiritual life by my 

 frank confe?sion. Here is an extract from a 

 letter that was put into my hand at just about 

 the very time I read the severe censure from 

 friend Fehr. Of course, this letter, too, was 

 not intended for print, or I should not have 

 thought of using it ; but it illustrates how 

 differently constituted we are, and how things 

 strike one person in one way and another per- 

 son in another way. 



Mr. Root : — Under God I thank you — yes. I thank 

 vou Do you say to me, " What have you to thank nie 

 for?" Because I see yourcandor in publicly condemn- 

 ing wrong-doing as an ex-imple. That is enough to 

 call forth the grateful thanks of any one desiring to 

 do right. To one who is conscious of his own weak- 

 ness in many ways, being so much greater than youis 

 (for which you have so publicly and earnestly con- 

 demned yourself), it comes home, I tell you. Then 

 in the second ot your texts you quote from David, 

 showing how he struggled, or, rather, how the good 

 in him struggled to oveicome the evil that was also 

 there. The outcome of living the good, and overcom- 

 ing the evil by the good, is joy, pleasure, gladness, 

 happiness — a boldness, a courage, a nobleness, all to 

 that degree th it comes not without such living and 

 such overconiing. 



I have thought of you often thisyear. Had I known 

 when you were at your " little ranch " I should have 

 tried to get there, and I think I should. To-day I got 

 the August 1st issue. It seems providential that I 

 should have opened and read your article. 



Traverse City, Mich., Aug. 5 Z. C. F.airb.\nks. 



In the fore part of my talk I suggested 

 there was one other letter referring to this 

 matter of confession. I give it here: 



Mr. A. I. Root.— 



In Gle \nings for Aug. 1st you take as a part of the 

 subject of your discourse some verses from the olst 

 Psalm. It should be borne in mind that this Psalm is 

 mostly a sobbing-out to r.od his penitence for the 

 deadly sins of murder and adultery. By their com- 

 mission he had placed himself with' the outcasts, the 

 pariahs of his people Did he go about proclaiming 

 his sin and his penitence, and exhorting to righteous- 

 ness? I think not. What influence for good could 

 his exhortations have on those who knew of his trans- 

 gressions? If I mistake not, the consequences of his 

 sin followed him to the end of life, and he found the 

 rest and peace for which he so earnestly prayed only 

 beyond the grave. In a life of threescore and ten, in 

 which I have not been unobservant, I have noticed 

 that the converted murderers, adulterers, thieves, 

 gamblers, drunkards, and whoremongers have not 

 been kindly listened to by persons who have led clean 

 and upright lives. !t takes long, sometimes, to expel 

 the devil from one of these ; and until he is expelled, 

 and the man knows it, he had better be modest before 

 his fellow-men. I would not venture to write this, 



onlj' that I am older than you, and that my experi- 

 ences have not been dissimilar to your own. 

 L,eon, la., Aug. 8. J Edwin Bevins. 



Dear friend B., permit me to thank you for 

 the very kind and Christianlike way in which 

 you make your suggestions. You are right, 

 and I thank you for your thought in regard 

 to that wonderful prayer that seems wrung 

 from the very heart of one guilty of deadly 

 sins and even crimes. I did and do recognize 

 that the circumstances are far different ; yet 

 somehow, when I was thrown in daily and 

 hourly contact with people who cared little or 

 nothing for Christianity or Sabbath observ- 

 ance, it brought vividly to my mind David's 

 touching and beseeching prayer — " Create in 

 me a clean heart, O Gjd, and renew a right 

 spirit within me."* No, David did not go 

 about proclaiming his sin ; and I think you 

 are a little hard on me, dear brother, if you 

 think I was a little too ready to confess and 

 (as you put it) " proclaim " my sins. I know 

 from one standpoint it might look that way, 

 and I hesitated about it for the very reason 

 you mention ; and yet my conscience was 

 easier after I had decided to own up before 

 the readers of Gleanings as I did. 



There is still another point : One who criti- 

 cises Sabbath-breaking and Sabbath-breakers 

 should know exactly what he is talking about; 

 and after my experience I felt less like cen- 

 suring severely those who venture to go on a 

 trip that takes in and includes the Sabbath 

 day with other days. They were, on the 

 whole, a nice, orderly set of people. I saw 

 no drinking whatever, and ihere was little or 

 no objectionable talk of any sort. I did not 

 commit a crime ; in fact, it was more because 

 I did not "shun even the appearance of evil " 

 than any thing else. Your point is a good 

 one — that the consequences of .Mn usuallj' fol- 

 low us to the end of life, even if we do repent 

 in sackcloth and ashes. I too have many 

 times felt as if I did not care to hear some 

 converted criminals sptak from the pulpit. 

 It is certainly prai.seworthy to reform and re- 

 pent ; but it is better, far better, to lead clean 

 and upright lives, as }ou express it, from 

 youth to old age. May' God help me to be 

 modest and careful, even as the language of 

 our text exhorts. Permit me to thank you 

 a^ain, friend B , for I feel sure I shall profit 

 from your kind words and exhortations. 



Here i-; another letter that comes to me like 

 oil on the troubled waters, after having read 

 the letter from friend Fehr: 



Fiiend Root:— I wish I could tell you how much 

 good j'our writings have done me. Your little book, 

 " What to Do," aroused my enthusiasm some years 

 ago, and now I am the proud possessor of the dear old 

 homestead of 100 acres worth S8000. Had it not been 

 for the writings of such men as Root, Henderson. 

 Terry, and others, strangers would have stepped in 

 and turned me out with a broken heart. 



Pyrmont, O., Aug. 19. C. Rho.vds. 



♦Perhaps the beautiful lines of the old hymn by 

 Cowper will express better what I felt after the expe- 

 rience of that Sabbath day than the words of David: 



Return, O heavenly Dove, return. 



Sweet messenger of rest ; 

 I hate the sins that made thee mourn 



And drove thee from mj^ breast. 



