The Sabbath & the Youth of Paris Hill, Maine Season 2 | Episode 12
Paris Hill, Maine is today a small and quiet town
with leafy streets and well-kept houses.
Yet despite its quiet and rural location,
it was the home to some giants of the faith.
Three families of note that lived here
were the Stevens family, the Stowell family, and the Andrews family.
J. N. Andrews was the son of Edward Andrews
and the nephew of Charles Andrews, a state representative of Maine.
Cyprian Stevens had two daughters,
one of whom married Uriah Smith and the other married J N Andrews.
Today the home of Edward Andrews stands behind me
as the Paris Hill Country Club,
and Cyprian Stevens' farm is located just down the road.
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But we start the story with another family,
when in the spring of 1845
a tract by T M Preble on the Sabbath
made its way to the home of Lewis B Stowell.
He set the tract aside,
but his 15-year-old daughter Marion picked it up and decided to read it.
She was convinced on the truth of the Sabbath and decided to keep it.
She then shared the tract with her brother Oswald
and he also decided to keep the Sabbath.
They then called J N Andrews who was only 15 years old
but was respected as having an intelligent mind.
He read the tract and also decided to keep the Sabbath.
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It was later on that the parents of the Stevens, Andrews, and Stowell families
decided to keep the Sabbath, which I believe is a key point.
It was the teenagers who made the decision to keep the Sabbath based on God's Word
regardless of what others thought.
This really is the essence of Protestantism
and a continuation of one of the key tenets of the Reformation:
to follow conviction rather than tradition,
to let Scripture be our guide no matter what others may think.
[music]
Lewis B Stowell sent a letter and ten dollars
to the Seventh-day Baptist minister in Hopkinton, Rhode Island
to obtain some more materials.
Soon the tracts arrived and a small company of sabbath-keeping Adventists
was established in Paris Hill, Maine.
These families would go on to be pillars
in the new and fledgling movement that was being birthed.
[music]
Paris Hill, Maine is also the birthplace of the Review and Herald,
today published as the Adventist Review.
From August to November of 1850,
a magazine was published here called the Advent Review,
and then from November 1850 to June 1851
the Review and Herald was published here in a building near this site.
It would then move on to Saratoga Springs, New York;
Rochester, New York; before moving to Battle Creek, Michigan.
[music]
In 1856 the Stevens and Andrews families would move to the state of Iowa
and the town of Paris Hill, Maine would become just a memory
of the early beginnings and challenges of sabbatarian Adventism.
Though the action has moved on from this town,
their example of faithfulness under conviction lives on today
and stands as an example of how we ought to live our lives.
It doesn't matter who else makes a decision
or what authority is trying to instruct and guide us,
we need to be true to the convictions of our conscience first and foremost.
It was Peter who said that 'we ought to obey God rather than men.' (Acts 5:29)