Our work is to put on the armor and make aggressive warfare. Laborers are not to be encouraged to work in the slums and filth of the cities, where they will only secure converts who need watching, and that continually. There are fields all ripe for harvest, and all the time and money is not to be devoted to gathering in those who through indulgence of appetite have trained themselves in pollution. Some of these may be saved. And there are those who can labor in the lowest places of the earth without becoming deteriorated in character. But it is not safe to give young men and young women this class of work to do. The experiment would be a dear one. Thus those who could work in the highways would be disqualified for work of any kind.... (WM 259.1) MC VC

Men’s feelings may become deeply moved as they see human beings suffering as the result of their own course of action. There are those who are specially impressed to come into direct contact with this class, and the Lord gives them a commission to work in the worst places of the earth, doing what they can to redeem outcasts and place them where they will be under the care of the church. But the Lord has not called Seventh-day Adventists to make this work a specialty. He would not have them in this work engross many workers or exhaust the treasury.—Manuscript 16, 1900. (WM 259.2) MC VC

Support From the World Not From Churches—Constant work is to be done for the outcasts, but this work is not to be made all-absorbing.... No one should now visit our churches and in the present pressure obtain from them means to sustain the work of rescuing outcasts. The means to sustain that work should come, and will come, largely from those not of our faith. Let the churches take up their appointed work of presenting truth from the oracles of God in the highways.—Letter 138, 1898. (WM 259.3) MC VC