The Ashfield camp meeting closed November 5, 1894, with no decisive action concerning the location of the school. This was most disheartening. From the light given to her there was no question in the mind of Ellen White that the estate at Cooranbong was the place, but several members of the locating committee hesitated and questioned. They battled in their minds between their understanding of Ellen White's clear convictions and their judgments supported by adverse soil reports rendered by the government agricultural experts.
Sunday morning, November 4, the last full day of the camp meeting, Ellen White was certain the time had come for action. That day she wrote, in part:
This morning as I awoke I was repeating these words to my son Willie:
"Be careful that you do not show any distrust of God in your decisions concerning the land upon which our school should be located. God is your Counselor, and we are always in danger of showing distrust of God when we seek the advice and counsel of men who do not make God their trust, and who are so devoid of wisdom that they do not recognize God as infinite in wisdom. We are to acknowledge God in all our councils. When we ask Him concerning anything, we are to believe that we receive the things we ask of Him.
"If you depend upon men who do not love and fear God, who do not obey His commandments, you will surely be brought into very difficult places. Those who are not connected with God are connected with the enemy of God, and the enemy will work through them to lead us into false paths. We do not honor God when we go aside to inquire of the god of Ekron."--Manuscript 1, 1895.
In harmony with these deep impressions, Ellen White summoned W. C. White, chairman of the locating committee, and A. G. Daniells. In most earnest tones she demanded of them: "Is there not a God in Israel, that ye have turned to the god of Ekron?"--As told to the author by W. C. White.
The records available seem to indicate that the committee planned to return to Cooranbong to take another look at the Brettville estate. Monday, November 5, she addressed a letter to those who would be going:
Dear Brethren,
As you go to Dora Creek, my prayers shall follow you. This is an important mission, and angels of God will accompany you. We are to watch and pray and believe and trust in God and look to Him every moment. Satan is watching to communicate to you through men those things which will not be in harmony with the mind and will and work of God. Only believe. Pray in faith as did Elijah. Let prayer be the breath of the soul. Where will God direct to locate the school? "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much."--Letter 154, 1894.
In the meantime, however, members of the Foreign Mission Board found it difficult to put out of their minds their knowledge of the fact that Ellen White, with the light given her of God, was firm in the conviction that the Brettville estate at Cooranbong was the place for the school. By formal action they removed their objection to plans to establish the college there. Word to this effect brought courage to the committee on school location in Australia. On November 20, the Australian Union Conference committee took the following action:
Whereas, The Foreign Mission Board has withdrawn its objections to our locating the Australasian Bible School in the Brettville estate at Cooranbong, and ...
Whereas, We believe that the Brettville estate can be made a suitable place for our proposed school....
Resolved, That we proceed to the establishment of the Australasian Bible School on the said Brettville estate.--Minutes of the Australasian Union Conference, November 20, 1894, in 5 WCW, p. 197.
Canning Time at the White Home
When Ellen White returned from the campground to Norfolk Villa, in Granville, flowers were blooming in all their glory, and the fruit season was coming on. When they had moved to New South Wales ten months earlier, it was near the end of the fruit season. They had to gather odds and ends of everything they could find to get them through the winter. It took some doing to feed a family of a dozen or fifteen adults, with two to four visitors nearly every day. Now as the fruit came on, they prepared to move into a heavy canning program. On Thursday, December 20, as she wrote to Edson and Emma she gave a little insight into the involvements:
Well, we are now in the midst of fruit canning. We have canned one hundred quarts of peaches and have a case more to can. Emily and I rode out five miles in the country and ordered twelve cases of peaches, one dollar a case. A case holds about one bushel. The ones we canned are the strawberry peach, called the day peach here....
Emily has canned fifty-six quarts today of apricots, and we have twelve cases yet to can. We did have such a dearth of anything in the line of fruit desirable, that we are putting in a good supply.--Letter 124, 1894.
A month later she could report, "We have canned no less than three hundred quarts, and no less than one hundred more will be canned"--some from the peach trees in their little orchard. She commented, "If I continue to keep open a free hotel, I must make provision for the same."--Letter 118, 1895. She reveled in the fruit in the Sydney area, especially the peaches and the grapes.
Correspondence with Joshua V. Himes
Ellen White continued to meet with the new companies of believers, entertaining those who came to her home. And of course, she kept busy with her heavy correspondence. One letter, written January 17, was addressed to Joshua V. Himes, who in the early 1840s worked closely with William Miller in the Great Second Advent Awakening. Himes was now 89 years of age and at the Battle Creek Sanitarium for treatment of a cancer of his cheek. In attending an evening meeting in the Battle Creek Tabernacle in mid-September, he heard the reading of several letters from Ellen White in which she gave a little report of the work in Australia and made an appeal for financial assistance. The next day he took his pen and wrote to her, recounting briefly some of his experience. "It is more than twenty years," he wrote, "since I met you and James in the Sanitarium and had our last conversation on the Adventist movement." He reported that he had returned to the church affiliation of his childhood, Protestant Episcopal, and was serving as a deacon of St. Andrews church in Elk Point, South Dakota, where he had ministered for fifteen years. He wrote:
I preach the Advent as being near, without a definite time, and I believe it. I do not look far into the future of the present dispensation. You and your associates have done a great work since 1844, and still go on.... Well, I finished my work really in 1844, with Father Miller. After that, what I did at most was to give comfort to the scattered flock....
God bless, and guide you to the end. I enclose five dollars for your own use. Truly in Christ, J. V. Himes.--September 12, 1894.
Ellen White may have hastened off to Himes a handwritten note thanking him for his letter and the gift, but the typewritten file contains no record. However, Himes wrote her a second letter on November 7, reporting that under Dr. Kellogg's care he was improving in health and hoped soon to be able to return home cured. The believers in Battle Creek had many warmhearted conversations with him concerning the Advent movement, with which he had been so intimately connected. In this letter he wrote:
My visit here has been very pleasant and I hope a blessing to the waiting ones. You know my mission ended in 1844. I did my work faithfully, and have waited faithfully for the Advent and still wait in hope.
You have your mission with which I have no right to interfere.
He appended a postscript in which he mentioned a second gift of $40, money he had raised in Battle Creek for the work in Australia.
To this Ellen White responded on January 17, 1895:
My Brother in Christ Jesus,
I received your donation of $40. In the name of our Redeemer I thank you. Be assured we shall invest this money in the best possible way to accomplish the most good for the salvation of souls.... It costs money to raise the standard of truth in the "regions beyond." ... We are working upon missionary soil in the most economical manner to make a little means go as far as possible, but the treasury is often drained in order to supply the necessities of the workers.
The spirited participation evidenced by your donation for this field has rejoiced my heart, for it testifies that you have not lost the missionary spirit which prompted you first to give yourself to the work and then to give your means to the Lord to proclaim the first and second angels' messages in their time and order to the world. This is a great gratification to me, for it bears an honorable testimony that your heart is still in the work; I see the proof of your love to the Lord Jesus Christ in your freewill offering for this "region beyond."--Letter 31a, 1895.
The Battle Creek Sanitarium nurse, Mrs. Austin, who attended Himes at the Sanitarium and reported his death, wrote to Ellen White that he treasured dearly her letter and often said that the work being done by Seventh-day Adventists "was but the continuation of the work he and Father Miller had begun," and if he were 25 years younger, he would take hold with the Seventh-day Adventist Church and do what he could (undated letter attached to J. V. Himes's letter).
The Visit from Mother Wessels and Her Family
The visit of members of the Wessels family of South Africa in late December brought joy to Ellen White's heart. There were Mother Wessels, with whom she had had some correspondence; two sons, Daniel and Andrew, ages 16 and 14; and her daughter Annie along with Annie's husband, Harmon Lindsay, and their 4-month-old child (7 WCW, pp. 105, 106). The family were on a one-year around-the-world trip, timed to give opportunity to attend the 1895 General Conference session to be held in Battle Creek.
The women in the White home were in the midst of canning when Mother Wessels and the family reached Norfolk Villa. Writing of their entertainment, Ellen White declared, "I am glad that I can present the party from Africa plenty of fruit, and plenty of good vegetables fresh from the gardens."--Letter 124, 1894.
"It was our good fortune," wrote W. C. White, "that Mother had a large house, so that we could entertain them all, and we enjoyed the visit immensely."--7 WCW, p. 98. Ellen White noted,"They are very social and enjoy company very much."--Letter 124, 1894. After spending a few days in the White home, they were persuaded to go up to Cooranbong to see the school property, spending a day or two there. White describes the fruitage of that visit:
They were much pleased with many features of the place and after inquiring into our financial situation, Brother and Sister Lindsay gave us £1,000 [$5,000] toward the enterprise. This was accepted with thanksgiving, knowing that it was providential, and especially as it came at a time when we needed some encouragement.--7 WCW, p. 186.
W. C. White averred that the gift was "wholly unsolicited on our part," and commented, "They saw our needs, and gave according to the liberality of their hearts."-- Ibid., 99. Tuesday, January 8, the Wessels family sailed from Australian shores to Tasmania, New Zealand, and points east, seemingly carrying with them "very pleasant thoughts" (Ibid., 98).
Developments at Cooranbong
Arrangements had been made by the Foreign Mission Board for a builder, W. C. Sisley, who had been giving counsel on the erection of denominational buildings in England, Denmark, Germany, and South Africa, to spend a little time in Australia working with the brethren in the drawing of plans for school buildings and estimating their cost. He came with the Wessels (The Bible Echo, December 24, 1894) and threw himself wholeheartedly into the challenge of the task. He worked in Melbourne for nearly a week with Adventist builders called from Tasmania and Adelaide, and then he went up to Cooranbong to assist in getting things started there.
In the meantime, Ellen White, sensing the need for rest and a change, decided to go up to Cooranbong for a somewhat extended visit. She hoped to ride around the country in the two-wheeled trap and, having two boats available, to row on the water and see the lake, which she understood to be "very beautiful" (Letter 130, 1895). She took with her May Lacey, her new traveling companion and assistant, and Maude Camp, her cook. She was eager that both these young women receive the benefit of instruction in dressmaking from Mrs. Rousseau. Maude, who was unable to continue to carry the heavy load in the White kitchen, was eager to gain new skills, and May would find a knowledge of sewing to be most useful.
A few weeks before, May Walling had been sent back to America to be on hand if the Walling lawsuit were pushed. W. C. White encouraged his mother to bring May Lacey, whom he had met at the Bible school in Melbourne, into the home in May Walling's place. "I have employed her," wrote Ellen White to Edson while she was at Cooranbong, "and she fills the bill nicely." She commented:
I soon learned why Willie was anxious for May Lacey. He loved her, and she seems more like Mary White, our buried treasure, than anyone he had met, but I had not the slightest thought when she came to my home.... You will have a new sister in a few months, if her father gives his consent. She is a treasure. I am glad indeed for Willie, for he has not had a very happy, pleasant life since the death of Mary.--Letter 117, 1895.
The visit to Cooranbong, aimed largely at affording some change and rest for Ellen White, was cut short by constant rains and threatened floods. So, taking Mrs. Rousseau with them, they started back to Sydney on Tuesday morning, January 22.
The Baptism at a Lake
With the progress of the evangelistic work in the Sydney area, there were baptisms, many of them. The first two, resulting from work in the tent in Ashfield, had been conducted in the Baptist church at their invitation. But when some of their key members were rebaptized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church, a tender point was reached, and this privilege was cut off. Ellen White saw it as a blessing and witnessed a baptism of twenty at a lake, attended by about two hundred persons (Manuscript 60, 1895).
Books for New Believers
She wanted to do all she could to bring stability to the experience of the new believers. She sent to the Echo office for a good supply of her books to give to the destitute, determined to supply those who wanted to read but could not buy. "The reading matter treating on present truth," she said, "the people must have."--Manuscript 59, 1895. Reaching out further, she wrote to Lucinda Hall in Battle Creek, asking for bound papers and also books, specified by titles that she could lend or give away (Letter 160, 1895).
The aid she gave in clothes, food, literature, education, and the building of meetinghouses drew heavily on her resources, as did her assuming the support of three workers in the Sydney area that the conference, for lack of means, could no longer employ (Letter 110, 1895).
As to meetinghouses, her investments included:
One hundred dollars in one, and $150 in another; in four other meetinghouses, £5 each.... We have purchased a new tent to be erected in Canterbury, a new location to lift the standard of truth. Five pounds I donated to this enterprise. But I shall continue to invest as long as I can command any means, that the cause of God shall not languish.--Letter 46, 1895.
Government Favors and Grants
She longed to get on with her book work, but first came the correspondence. On January 30, 1895, W. C. White read to her a letter he had received from S. N. Haskell, who was spending some months in South Africa. It dealt largely with a matter Haskell wished brought to Ellen White's attention, which was giving him and workers and believers in South Africa considerable concern.
The background was found in actions taken by the General Conference at its session of 1893 aimed at dealing with the separation of church and state and their response to the proposition of a gift of land for a mission station. The British South Africa Company was offering grants of several thousand acres each in Mashonaland (known later as Rhodesia and now as Zimbabwe) to mission bodies who would go in, take up the land and cultivate it, and educate the nationals. The brethren in Africa saw in this the providence of God for the advancement of the cause. Peter Wessels, from Africa, attended the General Conference session of 1893 and early in the meeting reported that such land was available to the church.
At the same session, propositions thought to be in the interests of separation of church and state were introduced. These would repudiate tax exemption for church property, insist on paying to the government sums equal to past exemptions, and in addition, endeavor to persuade State legislatures to require the payment of taxes on all church properties regardless by whom held. The session had two issues before it simultaneously. Two days were given to animated discussion, only a part of which was recorded in the General Conference Bulletin. The president of the General Conference and a number of his associates were perplexed; they felt some things were being carried to extremes by the religious-liberty men. Nonetheless, the actions taken March 3, 1893, revealed the general trend of the moment:
Whereas, In view of the separation which we believe should exist between the church and the state, it is inconsistent for the church to receive from the state pecuniary gifts, favors, or exemptions on religious grounds, therefore,
Resolved, That we repudiate the doctrine that church or other ecclesiastical property should be exempt from taxation, and further,
Resolved, That we use our influence in securing the repeal of such legislation as grants this exemption.--The General Conference Bulletin, 1893, 475.
These actions were moderated a day or two later by the following amendment:
Whereas, This conference has clearly stated its position on the taxation of church and other ecclesiastical property, and
Whereas, There are certain institutions incorporated under the laws of the state which occupy confessedly disputed grounds, therefore
Resolved, That matters in which the taxation of such institutions as do occupy this disputed territory is involved--orphanages, houses for aged persons, hospitals, et cetera--we leave to the action of the legislature, without any protest against their taxation, or any request for exemption.--Ibid., 486
The debate over accepting the South African land grant grew tense. Peter Wessels told the session "that though six thousand acres of land were offered to any denomination who would inaugurate a mission, and that we expected to accept [the] land for our mission, it was not from the government that we looked for the gratuity, but from a company."--Ibid. Developments, however, indicated that the disclaimer was not justified. This matter seemingly was left in the hands of the Foreign Mission Board and took several months to develop fully.
The outcome was that the denomination should not accept the twelve thousand acres offered as a gift, but should pay for whatever was felt would be needed for a mission.
This seemed most unreasonable to the workers and laity in South Africa. On January 1, Haskell wrote to both F. M. Wilcox, secretary of the Foreign Mission Board, and W. C. White for Ellen White's attention, protesting the decision taken in Battle Creek and pointing out the position taken in South Africa in accepting the land. When W. C. White received the letter, he took it immediately to read to his mother, along with the enclosed documents. She took her pen and addressed a letter to Haskell:
You inquire with respect to the propriety of receiving gifts from Gentiles and heathen. The question is not strange; but I would ask you, Who is it that owns our world? Who are the real owners of houses and lands? Is it not God? He has an abundance in our world which He has placed in the hands of men, by which the hungry might be supplied with food, the naked with clothing, the homeless with homes.
The Lord would move upon worldly men, even idolaters, to give of their abundance for the support of the work, if we would approach them wisely, and give them an opportunity of doing those things which it is their privilege to do. What they would give we should be privileged to receive.
Ellen White pointed out that church workers should become acquainted with men in high places and "obtain advantages from them, for God would move upon their minds to do many things in behalf of His people." She declared that she had letters to write to the workers in Battle Creek, and continued:
Our brethren there are not looking at everything in the right light. The movements they have made to pay taxes on the property of the Sanitarium and Tabernacle have manifested a zeal and conscientiousness that in all respects is not wise or correct. Their ideas of religious liberty are being woven with suggestions that do not come from the Holy Spirit, and the religious liberty cause is sickening, and its sickness can only be healed by the grace and gentleness of Christ.
She cited Bible illustrations in which God moved on the hearts of kings to come to the help of His people in ancient times. She added:
I am often greatly distressed when I see our leading men taking extreme positions, and burdening themselves over matters that should not be taken up or worried over, but left in the hands of God for Him to adjust. We are yet in the world, and God keeps for us a place in connection with the world, and works by His own right hand to prepare the way before us, in order that His work may progress along its various lines.--Letter 11, 1895. (For the full message, see Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers, 197-203.)
Copies of this letter to Haskell were sent to F. M. Wilcox, of the Foreign Mission Board, and O. A. Olsen, president of the General Conference. With the exception of one or two men in Battle Creek, it was received with deep gratitude and a sigh of relief. The land grant was accepted in South Africa, and any steps being taken in Battle Creek to adjust the tax-exempt status of churches and institutions were promptly dropped. In an article published in The Southern Watchman, March 15, 1904 (quoted largely in Christian Service, 167-172, 202, 239), Ellen White elaborated further on the principles involved.
Things at Home
More correspondence delayed Ellen White's book work. In Mid-February, diary entries read:
This day [February 17, 1895] we have earnest work to do to prepare the American mail. Oh, that the Lord will make me a channel of light to impart light to those who need it so much in America! My heart takes in the situation, and I am praying and writing to those who need the letters of encouragement and caution.
February 18: Cannot sleep past 2:00 A.M.... It was and ever has been a trying time to send off so large a mail to America, to Africa, and to London, England.
I am writing now upon New Testament subjects on the life of Christ. Fannie [Bolton] will prepare the matter for the papers, and Marian [Davis] will select some portions of it for the book "Life of Christ." Some days my head is weary, and I cannot write much.
February 19: Slept until four o'clock. I praise the Lord when I can sleep, for I am aware I do not get the sleep I should. I cannot write much the last part of the day. The subject I am writing upon is of intense interest--"The Call to the Supper."--Manuscript 59, 1895.
In early April, Ellen White could give a good report on her state of health. "I am glad to inform you," she wrote to Edson and Emma, "that my health, strength, and activity are about equal to what they used to be before my long experience with rheumatism. I can get in and out of a carriage with as much activity as a young girl.... I always have to be careful of my right hip, or else I have trouble.... But this infirmity does not prevent my activity, except in the matter of taking long walks.... If I guard myself diligently, I am able to get about with marked alacrity."--Letter 88, 1895.
It was well that this was so, for a few days later she wrote to Edson that she would soon be off to Tasmania to be present at the wedding that would unite her son William in marriage with May Lacey.