To commute each year between the East and the West had become, it seems, a way of life for James and Ellen White. A telegram calling James to Battle Creek to supervise the enlarging of the sanitarium triggered their leaving for the East in harmony with promises made months before (Testimonies for the Church, 4:271). They took the train on the morning of Friday, May 11, bound for Omaha and Battle Creek.
James White described the first few hours of the trip:
After numerous valises and lunch baskets were properly adjusted by the assistance of the porter, we found ourselves well located in a good sleeper with quiet companions in travel.... As evening came on, there were signs of recent rains on the foothills, and by bedtime the air was cool and refreshing. Slept well all night as our train moved up the ascent, around among the mountain peaks, and on through the dreaded snowsheds. Awoke in the morning feeling that we had gained a great victory over weariness.--The Signs of the Times, May 17, 1877.
Whenever they could, the Whites avoided travel on the Sabbath, but in this case they were on the cars. White gives a description of their activities:
It was Sabbath morning, and how to spend the sacred day to the acceptance of the Lord of the Sabbath became a matter of counsel. We decided that after the morning repast from our lunch baskets of plain bread, oranges, and cherries, we would spread our adjustable table with copies of the Signs, Review,
Reformer, and the blessed Bible. With these, full of truth and interest, to enjoy, the hours of the Sabbath passed sweetly by.--Ibid.
From Oakland to Battle Creek was a six-day trip, bringing them to their destination on Thursday, May 17. The home they owned in Battle Creek had been rented, so was not available to them. Arrangements were made for them to have a room in the Review and Herald building, and friends did what they could. It was not long until James White took his pen and wrote, "Battle Creek has never seemed more like home, so far as a pilgrim and stranger can have a home in this world."--The Review and Herald, May 24, 1877.
He spoke Sabbath morning to a congregation that filled to overflowing the house of worship, with five hundred persons present, and he noted that "a fourth house of worship must soon be erected, capable of comfortably seating not less than one thousand persons." But this would have to wait until the next year and the building of the "Dime" Tabernacle. He found what he termed "our beloved Battle Creek College" in encouraging circumstances with a good enrollment. Dr. J. H. Kellogg had recently arrived to take charge of the Health Institute and it was "prospering gloriously." Patronage had grown to the point that there were between ninety and one hundred guests and another twenty-five who came in from the community for treatment. "Dr. J. H. Kellogg," wrote the local editor of the Review, "has the entire confidence of the patients, by whom he is justly held in high esteem."--Ibid., June 7, 1877. The Health Reformer, James White noted, "is the ablest and most practical health journal printed" (Ibid., May 24, 1877).
Of the Health Institute, renamed by Dr. Kellogg the "Medical and Surgical Sanitarium," White wrote:
When we have been urged to build during the past three or four years, we have objected on the ground that our buildings and facilities were equal to our doctors. Now that we have men of ability, refinement, and sterling sense, educated at the best medical schools on the continent, we are ready to build. Not less than $25,000 will be laid out in building the present summer.--Ibid.
White went on to tell of how five years before he and Ellen became certain that the institute could not rise to its full measure of usefulness without thoroughly educated physicians, and plans were laid to gain the point. Young men were chosen to train to serve as physicians. As to the result:
Dr. J. H. Kellogg has been as true as steel. Drs. Fairfield and Sprague, who are studying under him, will graduate at the highest medical school on the continent in the spring of 1878. It is a disgrace to Seventh-day Adventists to do a second-class job in anything.--Ibid.
Before long the foundations were being laid for an institution that would measure with the skills of the newly trained physicians.
Most earnestly James White engaged in forwarding the several interests. His activities also included "preaching, writing, and holding board meetings at the Review office, the college, and the sanitarium, nearly always working into the night" (Testimonies for the Church, 4:272). As for Ellen White, she had suffered pain in her heart for several months, and this did not leave her. As the pressures increased they thought to get away for a time, going to Colorado where they could find rest and retreat as they had occasionally done in the past. But of this she wrote:
While [I was] planning for the journey, a voice seemed to say to me: "Put the armor on. I have work for you to do in Battle Creek." The voice seemed so plain that I involuntarily turned to see who was speaking. I saw no one, and at the sense of the presence of God my heart was broken in tenderness before Him. When my husband entered the room, I told him the exercises of my mind. We wept and prayed together. Our arrangements had been made to leave in three days, but now all our plans were changed."--Ibid.
Ellen White and the Sanitarium
Ellen White had taken a special interest in the developments at the Sanitarium. She understood, perhaps better than others, its potential field of fruitful service. With burgeoning patronage and a capable staff, the care of the guests broadened to include recreational activities such as driving about the town or visits to Goguac Lake, two miles to the south. On Wednesday, May 30, a picnic at the lake was planned for the staff and guests. Of her participation in this she reported:
I was urged to be present and speak to the patients. Had I consulted my feelings I should not have ventured, but I thought perhaps this might be a part of the work I was to do in Battle Creek.
At the usual hour, tables were spread with hygienic food, which was partaken of with a keen relish. At three o'clock the exercises were opened with prayer and singing. I had great freedom in speaking to the people. All listened with the deepest interest.--Ibid.
As she wrote to Edson and Emma of the occasion, she mentioned that "it was one of the fairest days of early summer. The blue waters spread out like a mirror under the sunlight, while the groves skirting the lake were reflected upon its placid surface."--Letter 45, 1877.
About fifty were in her audience, and she endeavored to lead their minds from nature to nature's God. She described Christ's ministry by the lake as He taught the multitude on the shore, drawing lessons from nature and the common events of life. From a stand she raised a large bouquet of flowers in a vase, and, according to editor C. W. Stone:
With language the most eloquent she inspired her hearers with hope and trust in the great Teacher, representing Him as a Being of tender love and infinite goodness. A few steps away was the border of the lake, with the boats in waiting by the shore. Everything conspired to carry the mind right back to the days of our Saviour's preaching by the seashore.--The Review and Herald, June 7, 1877.
As to the response she reported:
All listened with the deepest interest. After I had ceased speaking, Judge Graham of Wisconsin, a patient at the sanitarium, arose and proposed that the lecture be printed and circulated among the patients and others for their moral and physical benefit, that the words spoken that day might never be forgotten or disregarded. The proposition was approved by a unanimous vote.--Testimonies for the Church, 4:272.
The address was published in a pamphlet entitled "The Sanitarium Patients at Goguac Lake." One person to grasp her hand warmly as she stepped down from the stand was R. Hutchinson, a minister and a fellow laborer of William Miller and Joshua V. Himes, back in 1843 and 1844. He was in despair, but the talk given by the lake reached his heart and he called on her for help. "Wonderful!" exclaimed James White, as he wrote to Willie of the experience. "He is a splendid, good, sweet Christian gentleman hungering for living religion."--JW to WCW, June 10, 1877.
Triumphant Close of the School Year
The close of the school year for Battle Creek College was right upon them. Ellen White had been anxious for those students who were either unconverted or backslidden. She had desired to speak to them, but felt too feeble to undertake labor; the experience at Goguac Lake provided evidence that God would sustain her in working for the salvation of the students. Meetings were held, and she devoted a week to revival and instructional efforts. Of this she wrote:
I tried to impress upon them that a life of purity and prayer would not be a hindrance to them in obtaining a thorough knowledge of the sciences, but that it would remove many hindrances to their progress in knowledge.... I sought to impress upon the students the fact that our school is to take a higher position in an educational point of view than any other institution of learning, by opening before the young nobler views, aims, and objects of life, and educating them to have a correct knowledge of human duty and eternal interests.--Ibid., 4:273, 274.
As the closing exercises of the college were to be held at Goguac Lake, it was decided that a baptism should be a part of the program. Four hundred people assembled in the grove by the lake. James White led fourteen students into the water and buried them with their Lord in baptism. Ellen White gave an address, later reported in Signs of the Times, February 7, 1878The Signs of the Times, February 14, 1878.
Large Temperance Meeting
On their return from the lake Ellen White was met by a committee consisting of Mayor Austin; W. H. Skinner, cashier of the First National Bank; and C. C. Peavy. They invited her to speak Sunday evening, July 1, in the new Michigan tent, lent to the temperance forces in the city for a mass meeting. Barnum's circus was to be in Battle Creek on June 28, and the Michigan Conference tent was used for a temperance restaurant aimed at keeping the crowds from seeking their repast at the saloons. The Sanitarium table in the center of the tent, more than thirty feet in length at first and then extended, with the addition of another table, to about fifty, proved to be the most popular of all tables set. Wrote James White:
It was really encouraging to hygienists to see scores of hungry citizens and country people turning away from the side tables, laden with their favorite pork and beans, roast beef, salads, tea, coffee, et cetera, and crowding about the Sanitarium table with an almost childlike eagerness to secure a square hygienic meal. Not a seat was left vacant a moment, and there were usually a score or two of persons standing behind the long lines of diners, ready to drop into a seat the instant it was vacated.
The popular prejudice, usually expressed in such terms as "bran bread," "starvation diet," and similar epithets, melted away "like mist before the rising sun": and words of commendation were in the mouth of everyone. The whole affair was a grand success. More than one third of the tickets sold at 25 cents each were taken up at the Sanitarium table.--The Review and Herald, July 5, 1877.
One evening in the tent, Dr. Kellogg gave a lecture on temperance from a medical and scientific standpoint. Sunday evening Ellen White addressed five thousand and spoke for ninety minutes on temperance, from the religious and home standpoint, to an audience who listened in "almost breathless silence" (Testimonies for the Church, 4:275).
Writing and Mary Clough
Without the help of Mary Clough (who had been left ill in California), and pressed with other tasks, Ellen White laid aside her writing on the life of Christ. "We are here without a home and without help," James White wrote to Willie on June 10, but in his letter he rejoiced that Mary was getting better. But it was not alone for Mary's physical health that Ellen White was concerned. For a year and a half Mary had been assisting her, and the acceptance on her part of the truths of the third angel's message that Ellen had hoped for seemed to be growing more distant. To Edson in Oakland, she wrote:
We have felt that unless Mary should give her heart to God and live and obey the truth, she will be of but little advantage to us in our work. If her heart is at variance with the truth, it does not look reasonable that she should be long engaged with us in the work. If she does not accept the truth we love and cherish, she will decide against it.--Letter 2, 1877.
She further commented: "Persons are not generally apt to continue long in the position she now occupies. We love Mary....I have just sent her a letter of sixteen pages urging upon her the necessity of giving her heart to God."
When James and Ellen White reached Battle Creek in mid-May, camp meetings were in progress, and he knew many would be expecting him and his wife to be attending them. Of this he wrote: "We are invited to attend the camp meetings; but we dare not risk the strain."--The Review and Herald, May 24, 1877. He anticipated that the next few months would be given partly to his writing, but mainly to the interests right there in Battle Creek, with the enlarging of the Sanitarium buildings taking priority.
In an editorial in the Review of June 21, White rejoiced over the cheering reports coming in from the camp meetings. He observed:
Our people are learning to trust in God as never before. Our young ministers are learning to take responsibilities. Let them have a chance. It is a great mistake for a set of preachers to get the idea that nobody is exactly qualified to speak at our camp meetings excepting themselves. We fear that in some cases we have been in the way of younger men.
Thus James and Ellen White excused themselves from the early camp meetings and remained in Battle Creek. Ellen White soon returned to writing on the life of Christ for Spirit of Prophecy, volume 3, and James White attended to the many interests of the cause. Late in July he wrote:
We have been much occupied with the plans [for the enlargement of the Health Institute], and the general oversight of the execution of those plans, for far greater facilities for the treatment, board, and lodging of the sick. A bathroom 50 by 60 feet, with three stories, is being built, and pushed forward as fast as possible. And the foundation of the main building is being laid, 136 by 46 feet, three stories besides a basement kitchen, all to be heated with steam....
We build this year, and at the close of the winter's course of lectures at Bellevue, New York, Medical College, at the opening of next spring, God favoring the work, we shall have three or four young men holding diplomas from the highest medical school on the continent, imbued with the true spirit of the great health reformation.--The Signs of the Times, August 9, 1877.
At about the same time Ellen White described their situation to Edson and Emma: Willie and Mary White had come from California and were now in Battle Creek with the intent that Willie would take some school work, learning German and French, preparatory to going to Europe to assist in getting a publishing house started there in a strong way. "We are truly itinerants," she wrote to Edson and Emma. "We are engaged in getting settled again at housekeeping. Your father has been absent in company with Willie one week in Indiana and Chicago."--Letter 7, 1877.
Camp Meetings Again
Pressure built for James and Ellen White to attend the later camp meetings. In anticipation of the Indiana camp meeting she was to attend, she wrote: "I commence traveling again while at the same time I am preparing volume 3 of Spirit of Prophecy." She added, "God may spare my life to complete it. The future is with the Lord."--Ibid. Friday, August 10, she was at Kokomo, Indiana, for the opening of the camp meeting. Mary White traveled with her, for James was so deeply involved in publishing and Sanitarium interests, and much worn, that he did not go. The meeting was held in a grove, with excellent attendance--on Sunday the people turned out en masse from neighboring cities, villages, and country until there were seven thousand on the ground. Ellen White addressed them, speaking for an hour and a half (The Signs of the Times, August 23, 1877). And of course she took other meetings.
The plans for the Massachusetts camp meeting, to be held again at Groveland, were too enticing to resist. The Review of August 16 carried the word that James White might accompany his wife. D. M. Canright and S. N. Haskell were expected at the Massachusetts meeting and might go on with the Whites to Maine and Vermont.
On Sabbath morning, August 18, White spoke to the believers in Battle Creek; in the afternoon he gave close attention to hearing the reading of a portion of the manuscript for Spirit of Prophecy, volume 3, on the trial, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. Sunday, he began work at five o'clock in the morning and continued until midnight. Monday morning he was ill. As the Whites later looked back on the experience, they felt it was probably another stroke of paralysis, for it left him greatly debilitated (Testimonies for the Church, 4:276, 277). As the time for the Groveland camp meeting neared, Ellen felt she would probably have to go without James, but when the time came to leave Battle Creek, he decided to go with her, even if he was not well.
The 1877 Groveland Camp Meeting
As the year before, the crowds attending the Groveland camp meeting on Sunday, August 26, were huge. Accommodations had been improved over those of the year before. The seats had backs, and a "fine organ" lent by a local merchant added to the services. The Haverhill Daily Bulletin for August 27 had this to say about the Sunday afternoon meeting:
The great occasion of the day was the afternoon service. The trains from all directions had brought immense crowds upon the ground, and the grove literally swarmed with people. Mrs. White spoke on the subject of Christian temperance. This lady is a forcible and impressive speaker, and holds the crowd with her clear utterances and convincing logic.
The great pavilion was crowded to its utmost capacity, while a living wall three or four tiers in depth stood around the outside. Those who wished to listen had an opportunity, while those who came to stroll, strolled, and so all seemed to be satisfied.
The Meeting in the Danvers Tent
On Monday evening Ellen White slipped away from the Groveland meeting to speak in nearby Danvers, where Canright was conducting an evangelistic tent meeting. Writing of the experience, she said:
I was sick and had but little strength; yet the cars were fast bearing us on to my appointment in Danvers. Here I must stand before entire strangers, whose minds had been prejudiced by false reports and wicked slander. I thought that if I could have strength of lungs, clearness of voice, and freedom from pain of heart, I would be very grateful to God. These thoughts and feelings were kept to myself, and in great distress I silently called upon God. I was too weary to arrange my thoughts in connected words; but I felt that I must have help, and asked for it with my whole heart. Physical and mental strength I must have if I spoke that night. I said over and over again in my silent prayer: "I hang my helpless soul on Thee, O God, my Deliverer. Forsake me not in this hour of my need."
As the time for the meeting drew on, my spirit wrestled in agony of prayer for strength and power from God. While the last hymn was being sung, I went to the stand. I stood up in great weakness, knowing that if any degree of success attended my labors it would be through the strength of the Mighty One.
The Spirit of the Lord rested upon me as I attempted to speak. Like a shock of electricity I felt it upon my heart and all pain was instantly removed. I had suffered great pain in the nerves centering in the brain; this also was removed. My irritated throat and sore lungs were relieved. My left arm and hand had become nearly useless in consequence of pain in my heart, but natural feeling was now restored. My mind was clear; my soul was full of the light and love of God. Angels of God seemed to be on every side, like a wall of fire.--Ibid., 4:280, 281.
Two hundred people stood outside the crowded tent, and Ellen White spoke to the attentive audience for an hour and ten minutes. Returning the next day to Groveland, she found the meeting breaking up--a meeting she declared to be one of the best camp meetings she ever attended. Soon they would be leaving for the Haskell home in South Lancaster, but before leaving the grounds, Canright and Haskell, James, Jenny Ings, and she found a quiet and secluded place in the grove where they united in special prayer for the abundant blessing of health and grace to rest upon her husband. Ellen White reported:
This season of prayer was a very precious one, and the sweet peace and joy that settled upon us was our assurance that God heard our petitions.--Ibid., 4:281, 282.
S. N. Haskell, the conference president, had his horse and carriage on the grounds, and James White felt it would be pleasant to drive across country to the Haskell home in South Lancaster. Leaving after the noonday meal, they drove fifteen miles and stopped at a farmhouse for the night. The next morning they continued the thirty miles to the Haskell home. Just a week later the Vermont camp meeting would open, and Ellen White had promised to be there. There were many seasons of prayer in James's behalf, and he was greatly blessed, but not healed. "We are holding fast the promises of God" (Letter 13, 1877), wrote Ellen White to William and Mary in Battle Creek.
Although James would not be able to participate in the work, the feeling among those close to them was that he should accompany his wife to the Vermont meeting.
They returned home just in time for the Michigan camp meeting that opened in Lansing the evening of September 18, and for the sixteenth annual session of the General Conference to be held on the campground commencing Thursday, September 20.
The Michigan Camp Meeting
As the Michigan camp meeting closed on Sunday, September 30, Uriah Smith in his report declared, "It will be safe to say that Seventh-day Adventists never held a camp meeting like the one just closed. We know not in what respect it did not surpass all its predecessors."--The Review and Herald, October 4, 1877.
On the first Sunday there were from six to eight thousand people on the grounds, and the second Sunday from eight to ten thousand. The skies were blue and the sun shone full, which made the shade of the grove in which the meeting was held particularly attractive. Some two thousand to twenty-five hundred believers were present for at least a portion of the camp meeting.
Uriah Smith, as he reported the Lansing camp meeting, could not refrain from thinking of other and earlier meetings. He wrote:
We thought of the first general meeting of this people which we attended, twenty-three years ago, in the house of Brother White, in Rochester, New York. All assembled were conveniently accommodated in one room. The publishing work was then comparatively in its infancy, and the issuing of books scarcely commenced. Yet there the loud cry of the third angel's message was looked forward to and talked about.--Ibid.
He pondered as to what those few gathered there in Rochester in 1854 would have thought could they have seen what surrounded him and the Whites on the Michigan campground. He conjectured: "Would they not have thought that the loud cry they were expecting had already come?"
The General Conference Session
The General Conference session held during the camp meeting was a profitable one. James White was delayed a day or two, and S. N. Haskell was called upon to preside at the opening meetings. Among the actions taken, one read:
Whereas, The Biblical institute lately held in California has proved so instrumental in the preparation of young men for this work, that, by its means, the number of laborers in that State has been almost doubled;
Resolved, That Elders James White and Uriah Smith be requested to continue to hold such Biblical institutes during the coming year, in such States and at such times as the General Conference Committee may advise.--Ibid.
Another interesting action related to the gift of prophecy and its place in the church:
Resolved, That each year's experience in this message confirms our faith that God has chosen Brother and Sister White to fill a leading position in this work; that we never felt the need of their counsel and experienced labors more than now; and therefore we earnestly pray God to sustain them with strength and wisdom for their arduous labors....
Whereas, During the experience of a quarter of a century of this work we have invariably seen those persons and parties who have separated themselves from us in opposition to the gift of prophecy which God has placed in the remnant church go into divisions, confusion, or cease to accomplish anything in the work of present truth; therefore
Resolved, That we hereby express our continued conviction that we are largely indebted to the gift of prophecy, as manifested through Sister White, for the harmony and unity which this people enjoy.--Ibid.
Meetings of the auxiliary organizations--the SDA Publishing Association, the Health Institute, the SDA Educational Society, and the General Tract and Missionary Society--were held one each on successive days, and the reports of each carried the signature "James White, President."
On Sabbath, October 6, following the General Conference session, Ellen White took the morning service in the Battle Creek church. The meetinghouse was filled to capacity, and she made a deep impression on the audience. That evening the ordinances were celebrated, and the church felt they were favored by having James and Ellen White with them in the service. On Monday, October 8, they were off for Oakland and their home in the West. Of this, Smith informed the readers of the Review in the issue of October 11:
Admonished by the chill of approaching winter, Brother White returns to the mild climate of California. As he and Sister White again leave us, the prayers of this people go with them that their going may be a mutual blessing to themselves and the cause on the Pacific Coast, and that in due time they may return to us in the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ.