The two-hundred-page Testimony No. 29 came from the press in early January, 1880. It contained articles on "The Relation of Church Membership," "Dishonesty in the Church," "Unscriptural Marriages," "The Cause at Battle Creek," et cetera. These were important messages of reproof and correction. Some Adventists in Battle Creek, forgetting that the Lord had declared, "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten" (Revelation 3:19), and overlooking the appeal "Be zealous therefore, and repent," reacted negatively and turned to the public press in Battle Creek to express their bitter feelings. The matter was quickly picked up in Lansing, Detroit, and Chicago. The Lansing Republican of January 17 reported:
Mrs. Ellen G. White, of Battle Creek, well known in Lansing as an able speaker of the Advent persuasion, is receiving a large amount of criticism on her recent vision, marking out a track in which her people should travel.
The Chicago and Detroit dailies, according to Uriah Smith, resident editor of the Review and Herald, were "publishing the most false and unjust statements and insinuation against Sister White and her writings" (The Review and Herald, January 22, 1880). A Battle Creek "morning daily" went far beyond the limits of reporting, according to Smith. He said they "put in whole paragraphs of their own, and place them in quotation marks as if from the writings of Mrs. White. And again, paragraphs are run together with no indication of any omission, which in the book are on different subjects and fourteen pages apart."--Ibid.
The Battle Creek article asserted that the writings had never before been "presented to the world." Smith answered this in an article he asked to have published in the Battle Creek Journal. It appeared in its issue of January 14, 1880:
Will you allow us space in your journal to say to the public that if they believe what a morning daily is publishing concerning the writings of Mrs. White, they are most grievously imposed upon. It asserts that these writings have never before been "presented to the world." ...
They have always been free to the public, and many not of our faith have purchased and read them. And those who will look at the record of the proceedings of our late conference will see that steps were taken to give them still greater publicity, as we are persuaded that they inculcate the highest morality, both public and private, the scrupulous practice of which would be vastly to the advantage of both the church and the world.
The notice informed the public that the book under attack could be had both at the Review and Herald office and at F. E. Peaslee's bookstore in Battle Creek.
The editor of the Lansing Republican in his January 17 issue quoted the Journal:
I would that all other religious beliefs in Battle Creek were as true to morality as Mrs. White and her adherents. Then we would have no infamous dens of vice, no grog-shops, no tobacco stores, no gambling hells, no air polluted with the fumes of rum and that fell destroyer of man, tobacco.
Seldom did Ellen White turn aside to engage in a defense of her work. This was left to others. In this case, through January and February she and her husband continued to visit and strengthen the churches within driving distance of Battle Creek.
Meeting the Needs of California
J. N. Loughborough had pioneered the work in California and for ten years had given good leadership to the church on the Pacific Coast. In 1878 the General Conference Committee, observing his talents and sensing the needs of the newly opened work in England, assigned him to that field. However, they did not at the same time make proper provision for the growing work in the West. As a result, that work suffered. Poor management at the Pacific Press put its activities in a precarious position. James and Ellen White had not been in the West since mid-1878. According to a report in the Review of February 12, the General Conference Committee, on receiving reports from the brethren on the Pacific Coast, "thought it advisable that S. N. Haskell and W. C. White spend some three months in California."
Two weeks later it was reported on the back page of the February 26 Review that
Elder S. N. Haskell, accompanied by W. C. White and wife, and Mrs. E. G. White, left for California, via the Chicago and Northwestern Railway, the twenty-third. Elder H. and WCW will spend a few months there before their contemplated visit to Europe.
James White remained in the East to care for the many administrative duties he willingly accepted at the General Conference session, to pastor the Battle Creek church, and to push ahead with such publishing interests as the issuance of Life Sketches of James and Ellen White and the republication of some of the earliest E. G. White pamphlets and books. As time and strength permitted, he would continue to visit churches in Michigan in the interests of spiritual revival.
The group of workers traveling westward were seven days in making the journey from Battle Creek to Oakland, arriving Sunday, February 29. Ellen White was able to get in some writing en route. In her diary she mentions work on Spirit of Prophecy, volume 4, and letters that she would send back to Battle Creek.
As she and those with her picked up the threads of the situation in Oakland, she was troubled. Monday morning she noted in her diary:
My heart went up to God for wisdom and judgment to know how to move, how to advise. Important decisions are being made. God help us to decide aright.--Manuscript 7, 1880.
The next day she wrote further of the situation:
My heart is heavy, my mind [is] pressed with care and anxiety. The tangled condition of affairs here is distressing.--Ibid.
A little later she declared: "Things here require much thought, deep study, careful management. Everything must move slowly, and time alone will effect permanent changes and will promise prosperity."--Letter 19, 1880.
She entertained deep concern for the publishing house in Oakland. At its opening in 1875, W. C. White had been selected to manage it, a responsibility he carried well for two years, bringing the new institution through with a modest financial gain. Then plans were laid for him to go to Europe and establish a publishing house in Switzerland. He was released from the work on the Pacific Coast to go to Battle Creek College, where he and his wife, Mary, were to gain a working knowledge of French and German. At a meeting attended by neither James nor Ellen White, the California constituency replaced W. C. White by his older brother, Edson, not fully aware of the latter's weaknesses in financial management.
Edson's relationship to financial matters had given his parents great concern. His mother had sent him many warnings and admonitions, most of which went unheeded. In spite of his efforts and the counsel of his parents, who were not on the Pacific Coast during most of the time, he floundered, and the Press came close to disaster. Men brought in to help salvage the institution also faltered. Three weeks before taking the train for the West, Ellen White, with divinely inspired insight, wrote to Edson:
In my last vision [November 23, 1879] I was shown that God gave you another trial, let you pass over the ground again. You have had the most favorable position and chance that you will ever have. You could have redeemed your failures of the past, but you have failed, utterly failed. You will never again have as good a chance to become a man of trust and honor....
I will not give my voice to hold you one hour in that office. You have imperiled the office again and again and it is time you resigned all position there, for your course has proved to others your unfitness to be there.--Letter 3a, 1880.
On his mother's counsel Edson resigned and went to Battle Creek. His brother was again called upon to manage the publishing house. Bringing in W. C. White and Haskell to help salvage the situation meant postponing plans for their going to Europe, but California had to have help.
Ellen G. White Labors in California
Ellen White threw herself into the program of strengthening the church. She spoke the Sabbath after her arrival in Oakland, with the San Francisco members invited to attend.
On one of the weekend trips she was in the Napa Valley attending meetings at St. Helena and Napa. She visited the newly established health institution and reported:
While at St. Helena last week we visited Crystal Springs, where this Health Retreat is located. It is our opinion that a more beautiful spot could not have been selected as an asylum for the sick and weary. A place of greater natural loveliness we have seldom ever seen. High mountains, stretching their peaks upward toward heaven, seem to surround the place, giving evidence to all of the mighty power of the Lord.
No one who sees God in His created works could view these lofty mountains from the piazza of the Retreat without feeling that he is surrounded by the presence of God and covered by the overshadowing of His glory. Peak rising above peak carries the mind instinctively up to Him who set fast the mountains and girded them with His power so that no human might can move them out of their places.--The Signs of the Times, April 22, 1880.
Little did Ellen White at this time dream that her home for the last fifteen years of her life would be within a half-mile of this institution. But she had to go to meetings in the neighborhood of Fresno, and a camp meeting at Lemoore scheduled for April 22 to May 3. The work in California was in a period of recovery, and James White published the following encouraging report in the May 13 Review and Herald:
At no time in the history of the cause upon the Pacific Coast have we had as lively an interest in the work as during the present season. Mrs. White and our son and daughter are there, and news from that part of the wide field is most cheering.
The camp meeting held at Lemoore, California, April 22 to May 3, was one of the deepest interest. Mrs. White has enjoyed great freedom in speaking at many important points in California, and there is a state of general good cheer all over the State. Her labors have been incessant, yet she reports improved health.
It seems very evident that it was according to the will of God that she should visit the Pacific Coast at this time. And we are laboring under the impression that we are in the line of our duty in remaining at the old post of duty at the present. We may join her in California in autumn.
A singular experience occurred during the Lemoore camp meeting. Ellen White mentioned this in her letter to James written May 2.
What a peaceful hour it was when the Sabbath was welcomed in with its holy sacred hours. Peace was in my soul.... Peace, peace was like a river and the righteousness thereof like the waves of the sea. Why, it seemed that I could feel the presence of heavenly angels upon the encampment.
That night, Brother Eagle was on watch till past twelve; then he was relieved.... It was about midnight, he said, when he saw a man about nine feet high pacing back and forth before our tent. He thought this was singular and he would come nearer and see if it was an illusion.
He held out his lantern and let it shine full upon the form and he saw a man. His limbs and body could be distinctly seen, but he could not see the face. He kept his eyes fixed upon it; [it] looked like amber, transparent, towering up above the tent....
This man [Brother Eagle] has recently been converted from infidelity. He has had no faith in the visions, has taken Brinkerhoff's paper and read Carver's book and Chandler's; but since hearing me for himself, is convinced that my visions are of God.... He is a man of sound judgment, free from vagaries. All say he is an entirely different man; he is a converted man.--Letter 27, 1880.
James White East and Ellen White West
In his Review report of the state of the cause on the Pacific Coast, James White expressed the conviction that it was best for him to work in the East and his wife in the West. Ellen shared this conviction. She reflected on this in one of her letters to James:
I am rejoiced that you have the blessing of God in your labors. This may be just as the Lord would have it--you doing your work, and I doing my work here. We are evidently both in the way of duty.--Letter 24, 1880.
Writing from Oakland on April 6, she told James:
Never doubt my love for you. But I find my duty calls me from you sometimes, and I shall be obedient to the call. My influence at times will be more favorable alone than if you are with me. I shall be with you when I can, but in the future we both may have to endure the trial of separation more in our labors than in the past.--Letter 19, 1880.
At about the same time he wrote to Ellen: "I hope by your good counsel and help of the Lord to avoid any breakdown this spring."--JW to EGW, April 11, 1880. On May 4 he wrote Willie:
I undertake to do too much work. I shall not deny that I love to work, and am inclined to take too much on my hands.
As the duties he had assumed at the headquarters of the work pressed in upon him, James was inclined to become irritable. He misconstrued things told him or written to him, and at times lashed out at those he felt were not handling their part of the work as they should or were undermining his administration. As the time approaches for a change in leadership in an organization, there are often opportunities for misunderstandings. There is strong evidence that this was taking place in the case of James White. For one who has nurtured an enterprise from its inception, it is often difficult to relinquish the burden.
White was particularly upset by what he supposed was the attitude toward him by some in California, and in his correspondence he made rash and unfortunate statements. Ellen White attempted to temper this by way of letters to him. When he was dealing unevenly with men, preferring some above others, she wrote in her letter of March 25:
One man's mind and one man's judgment must not mold the cause of God, for his peculiar, personal feelings may come in to be exercised in various ways and may injure greatly the cause of God....
Our special preferences should not control our actions in decisions. Here, I have been shown, was your danger. If you take to a man you will be in danger of ruining him by exalting him and doing too much for him. If you dislike him, you will do the very opposite of this, and you imperil souls and mar the work of God.
The angel of God in my last vision presented this to me very distinctly. He pointed to you and said, "Praise not, exalt not, any man. Censure and humiliate no man. Be cautious in your words, trust not too much to your own judgment, for it is liable to be biased by your feelings. Mar not the work of God by your likes and dislikes. I was shown that you must give respect to the judgment of your brethren while you shall advise and counsel with them.--Letter 49, 1880.
During this rather critical time she wrote significantly:
It would be hard for you to cease being general; nevertheless, you must begin to accustom yourself to this position for your own good spiritually and for the good of the cause of God.--Letter 53, 1880.
In the interchange of correspondence during the five months the pair were separated by half the continent, there were expressions of loneliness and words of encouragement. As she closed her letter written the morning of April 17, she declared:
I am most of the time very happy, very cheerful in God. I miss you at times very much, especially when not engaged heart and soul in active labor.... The call comes, Breakfast; then it is the cars for my journey. Good morning--God bless you with the riches of His grace and lift up daily the health of His countenance is the most earnest prayer of your wife, Ellen.--Letter 23, 1880.
She studied and worked to aid her husband in gaining and maintaining right attitudes and perspectives. On March 18, responding to a letter in which he had expressed his hurt, she wrote in part:
I know it is natural to wish to be appreciated, and those in California have not all shown appreciation, for I have been shown that this was the case.... But I think you are entirely deceived in thinking that there is great prejudice against you. I have not been able to see or hear one lisp of it yet....
I have been shown that in the future we shall see how closely all our trials were connected with our salvation, and how these light afflictions worked out for us "a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." We shall have enough to praise God for in the future life. We shall thank the Lord for every reproof which taught us our own weakness and our Saviour's power, patience, and love....
I feel so grateful that the Lord is of tender pity, full of mercy.... I must not let one thought or one feeling arise in my heart against my brethren, for they may be in the sight of God more righteous than I. My feelings must not be stirred. We have battles to fight with ourselves, but we should continually encourage our brethren. We should lay no stumbling blocks in their way, and should cherish only the very kindest feelings toward them. Satan is willing and anxious to tear them down. Let us not unite our forces with his. They have their conflicts and trials. God forbid that we should add one trial to those they have to bear.
Then she spoke of how she determined to relate herself to that special situation she alone must face in her heaven-appointed work of bearing testimonies:
I will write out the testimonies of reproof for anyone and then my feelings shall not be exercised against them. I will look within. I will seek to make my ways in the strength of Jesus perfect before God. And when tempted to feel unkindly or to be suspicious and to find fault, I will put this out of my heart quickly, for the soul temple is surely being desecrated and defiled by Satan. The love that Jesus possessed, it is the duty of us both to welcome and cherish, and to have that charity that thinketh no evil; then our influence will be fragrant as sweet perfume.
Bringing the letter to a close, she urged:
Let us, dear husband, make melody to God in our hearts. Let us not be found accusers of our brethren, for this is the work Satan is engaged in. Let us talk of Jesus and His matchless love.... Let us bring ourselves into harmony with heaven and we will then be in harmony with our brethren and at peace among ourselves. Let us now, both of us, redeem the time.--Letter 5, 1880.
From time to time, in writing to Willie and to Ellen, James reiterated his intention to heed the counsel given to him. His letter to his wife written April 18 is to the point and yields some insights:
You exhort me to throw off responsibilities. This I shall not neglect to do. It is necessary to save my strength and proper balance of mind, that I let others take the responsibilities. But never shall I consent to go here and there, and to do this and that, by the direction of others. When I come to that point, it will be time for me to retire. A retreat is the most skillful part of military action, which you and I should be considering, but we must avoid extremes.
I am considering these things with great care. Whatever the Lord has shown you respecting my duty, take time to write it out carefully and give me the complete idea.... We both see a great deal to do in the line of writing, and our brethren are constantly urging us into the field to speak. In the fear of God, we must take this matter in our own hands, and be our own judges of what we should do and how much.
The Oregon Trip
Two camp meetings were planned for late spring in the North Pacific Conference, which comprised the State of Oregon and the Washington Territory. The first was to be east of the Cascade Mountains at Milton, May 20 to 31; the second, west of the mountains, June 9 to 15, in the vicinity of Salem. "Mrs. E. G. White will be present at both our camp meetings" read the notice in the April 22 issue of the Signs of the Times. "It will be a most favorable opportunity for all our brethren and sisters to become acquainted with her, and receive the valuable instruction she is able to give." After wrestling with the matter of the proposed trip for some days, she wrote to James:
If the Lord places the burden on me I must go, however unpleasant I may regard the matter. I do not want to move one step farther than the Lord shall direct by His Holy Spirit. I fear sometimes it is a cowardly dread of the water that makes me not decide at once to go to Oregon. But I mean not to study my will but the will of God.... Oh, I tremble for myself, lest after I have preached to others, "I myself should be a castaway."--Letter 22, 1880.
The Lord did place the burden on her. Three days later she wrote: "I shall go to Oregon the sixth of May--shall remain two months unless I see more clear light."--Letter 24, 1880. She made the trip, accompanied by Mary White and S. N. Haskell. They sailed from San Francisco on the steamer California, Thursday, May 6; they arrived at Portland Sunday morning, May 9 (The Signs of the Times, May 13, 1880), then hastened on up the Columbia River to eastern Oregon and Walla Walla. For a few days she and Haskell held meetings there, speaking Sabbath and Sunday, May 15 and 16. She also spoke in Walla Walla on three nights. This gave her a few days for her writing.
The Milton Camp Meeting in Eastern Oregon
Thursday the camp meeting near Milton opened with tents pitched in "Brother Nichols'" grove. "No pains were spared," reported Haskell, "to make the grounds pleasant and attractive."--Ibid., June 17, 1880. There were forty tents besides covered wagons, accommodating in all more than two hundred persons. On the two Sundays of the meeting, between a thousand and fifteen hundred crowded in. Ellen White participated actively in the various features of the program. A decision was reached at this meeting to divide the Oregon Conference, using the Cascade Range as the boundary. G. W. Colcord, sent by the General Conference to assist in the camp meeting, was elected president. Here Ellen White again met both A. T. Jones and W. L. Raymond, young ministers who would feature in later visits. She continued to push ahead with her writing, Mary White assisting her and also assisting in the meetings. Of her, Ellen wrote:
She worked very very hard in many ways at the camp meeting, copying, cooking, playing the organ, acting for Willie in the Sabbath school work.--Letter 32, 1880.
The journey back to Portland was by boat, on the Columbia River. Mrs. White felt honored to be assigned to the captain's table for meals (Ibid.)
The Camp Meeting at Salem, Oregon
Haskell's report concerning the meetings in western Oregon read:
We left Milton, Monday, May 31, for western Oregon. Thursday night Sister White spoke to a crowded house at Beaverton; and in Portland, on the evening after the Sabbath, before the Temperance Society in the rooms of the Christian Association. On Sunday she spoke twice in the Methodist chapel. There are about twenty keeping the Sabbath in Portland; these are scattered over the city, and owing to distracting influences in the past, they have not held regular meetings.--The Signs of the Times, June 24, 1880.
The May 6 issue of Signs announced concerning the plans for the Western Oregon camp meeting:
It will be held in the city of Salem. It is a beautiful location. Marion Square is well set with shade trees, and the whole city will have an opportunity to hear, on the same ground where the truth was first proclaimed there.--Ibid.
Twenty-five tents were pitched in the square, and the camp meeting opened Wednesday evening, June 9. The townspeople manifested a good interest. Of the closing meeting held on Tuesday evening, Ellen White wrote to Edson and Emma in Battle Creek:
Last night, weak and trembling, I took the stand, but oh, what a solemn sense of the condition of the people and their unprepared state for the judgment--Letter 32a, 1880.
The plan was that she and those with her would leave at once for California, but some of the Methodists who had heard her temperance address Sunday afternoon sent a request for her to speak on the subject in their church. How could she turn down such an "appeal from outsiders, prominent men," for her to remain over another week (Ibid.)? The meetings in the tent had created a deep interest; prejudice had disappeared. "Now we can do something," she declared.
Haskell returned to California, but Ellen White and Mary remained for a week to fill the appointment in the Methodist church. She described the meeting in a letter to James:
Sunday evening the Methodist church, a grand building, was well filled. I spoke to about seven hundred people who listened with deep interest. The Methodist minister thanked me for the discourse. The Methodist minister's wife and all seemed much pleased.--Letter 33a, 1880.
And Ellen was pleased that a number of people remained after the meeting to chat with her. In her letter she said that "one of the Methodist ministers said to Brother Levitt that he regretted Mrs. White was not a staunch Methodist, for they would make her a bishop at once; she could do justice to the office."--Ibid. Monday night she and Mary left on the return trip to San Francisco.
Between meetings she was busy writing, particularly for some of the workers in the Northwest. [Her messages of counsel and reproof written there and read to those involved, are found in Testimonies for the Church, 5:249-289, 298-309.]
Return to Battle Creek (1880)
For several weeks Ellen White labored in northern California, speaking several times in the tent in Chico. In her mind she debated as to whether she should remain in California or return East to attend the later camp meetings. Then she received a letter from James written July 21:
My dear wife, the enclosed is a sample of the appeals that are coming to me for you to attend our camp meeting. Such appeals are coming to me from Maine to Dakota, and from Michigan to Kentucky. I have nothing to say, only that it seems to me that our testimony was never needed so much in the wide field as at the present time.
From Oakland she responded by telegram that she expected to be in Battle Creek August 4. That would be on a Wednesday (The Review and Herald, July 29, 1880).
With Lucinda Hall she took the train for the trip east on Monday, July 26. Traveling by "slow train"--it cost less--they were nine days on the way, arriving Wednesday noon (The Signs of the Times, August 26, 1880). Then at eight o'clock she, with her husband, caught the train for a two-hour trip to Jackson. They spent the night at the Palmer home and the next morning were on the train for Alma in central Michigan, arriving just before dark. Both immediately entered into the usual arduous camp meeting labor, Ellen White speaking the night they arrived.
The Eastern Camp Meetings
The next trip took them to the province of Quebec, Canada, where at Magog a camp meeting opened on Thursday, August 12. They did not arrive till Friday evening. White reported the grounds good, the weather fine, and non-Adventist attendance large and orderly (Ibid., September 2, 1880). About two thousand heard Ellen White's address on temperance Sunday afternoon. On Tuesday, the last day of the meeting, with a hundred believers present, Elder White led out in organizing "The Seventh-day Adventist Conference of the Province of Quebec."
Through the rest of August and September James and Ellen White went week to week, from camp meeting to camp meeting, spending from three to five days at each, but always including Sabbath and Sunday: Waterville, Maine; West Boylston, Massachusetts; Morrisville, Vermont; Hornellsville, New York; Clyde, Ohio; Rochester, Indiana (attended by E. G. White only); and the national camp meeting at Battle Creek, Michigan, October 2 and 9.