A Boy Named Uriah
Twelve-year-old Uriah had been looking at the calendar carefully for the past few months. Finally, at long last the special day had arrived. Soon his family and all the other people who believed in the Lord's return would be safe with Jesus and would not be teased and ridiculed like they had been over the past year.
As Uriah waited for the Lord to come that fateful day of October 22nd, 1844, he remembered back to an incident that happened to his mother, his sister, and himself a few months before that. The three traveled by buggy from their home in West Wilton, New Hampshire twenty-five miles south to some meetings being held just outside Fitchburg, Massachusetts.
Tent Trouble
While Uriah and his sister Annie quietly listened to the preacher's message with their mother inside the evangelistic tent, evil men ran through the huge cloth tabernacle and smashed all the lanterns so the people were in the dark. If that wasn't enough the men then shoved a pig inside.
After that the ruffians cut the rope attached to the poles, which caused the tent to collapse on the congregation. Then the possessed men lobbed apples from a nearby orchard at the forms of the people groping around within the confines of the tent. Inside, the two Smith children could hear the squealing of the spooked pig as it bumped into people and chairs trying to find its way out of the collapsed canvas.
When Jesus didn't Come
Several months had passed since then. And now the day had come. Just any minute now, Jesus would come for his faithful and they would all go to a place where there was no hate, no crying, no dying, a place where Jesus and the angels would be their companions forever. How Uriah had longed for this day. But neither Uriah, nor the Adventist preachers of his time truly understood the prophecy.
The prophecy concerning Jesus took place in Heaven, not on the earth. So Jesus didn't come to earth as many had expected he would. Young Uriah searched the skies until the stars came out and a new day dawned. But the long anticipated event he had waited for never happened in the manner which he and thousands of others believed it would.
Like many other Adventists of the time, he was quite disappointed and began straying away from the Lord somewhat. Then about a year later, at the age of thirteen, Uriah became even more disappointed.
Lost Leg
For quite some time he had complained of a sore on his left leg. Eventually the sore seemed to get worse. None of the home remedies his mother used on the pink area seemed to make it better. Eventually his mother asked the doctor to stop by the house to look at his leg.
After examining Uriah's leg, the physician asked to speak to Mrs. Smith in private.
"Mrs. Smith, I hate to inform you of this, but your son's leg will have to be removed," the doctor informed her. "The infection has gone too deep. If we don't remove his leg, he will soon lose his life."
Uriah's mother had hoped that it would not come to this. She then entered the room where Uriah was. Wondering how Uriah would feel about such an operation, his mother asked him, "Are you willing to have your leg amputated, Uriah?"
"Why certainly," he replied bravely. Then, adding a bit of humor to a serious situation, Uriah added, "The doctor tells me I'll either lose my leg or my life. I think I'd rather lose my leg."
A short time later both Uriah's seventeen-year-old sister, Annie, and his mother were holding Uriah down on the kitchen table, while the doctor sawed off the seriously infected limb just above the knee.
There was no anesthesia in the year 1845. Tears dripped down his face as Uriah screamed out in pain.
Several weeks later after the skin had healed around his stub, the doctor fashioned a crude wooden leg for him. Uriah became so discouraged. He didn't see how he could ever amount to anything.
O Brother be Faithful
Eventually, as Uriah became willing, he allowed the Lord to do great things through him. He realized a very important lesson. And that is that none of us can do anything without God helping us, whether we have one leg or two.
Though he couldn't look into the future, he learned to do all that he could and leave the future up to God. Little did he know then that God would later help him to become a poet. His first poem was 35,000 words in length and was divided up and printed in the church magazine over several issues. He also became a hymn writer. One of his hymns is found on page 602 of the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal. Uriah also became an author, an inventor, an editor for the Review, and the first Secretary for the General Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists.
In 1853 he wrote the words to the hymn 'O Brother, Be Faithful'. The poem was soon sung to a tune that Isaac Woodbury had written a few years before. In the words that Uriah wrote, we learn that his belief in Jesus' second coming was restored as we read the third verse:
O brother, be faithful!
He soon will descend,
Creation's omnipotent King,
While legions of angels His chariot attend, And palm wreaths, of victory bring.
O brother, be faithful!
And soon shalt thou hear
Thy Savior pronounce the glad word,
Well done, faithful servant,
thy title is clear, To enter the joy of thy Lord.
Uriah Smith, 1853