In early August, 1897, A. G. Daniells and W. L. H. Baker, presidents of the two principal conferences in Australia, [Note: When the general conference at its 1897 session released W. C. White from administrative responsibilities to enable him to give more assistance to his mother in her literary work, A. G. Daniells was appointed in his place to the presidency of the australasian union conference. Daniells continued to serve as president of the Australian Conference, with headquarters in melbourne. Baker was president of the New South Wales Conference.] had gone up to Cooranbong to counsel with Ellen White and others there regarding the two camp meetings to be held in the early summer. The first was to be held in a suburb of Sydney, October 21 to November 1 (The Bible Echo, October 4, 1897), and the second in a suburb of Melbourne, November 18 to December 5 (Ibid., December 13, 1897). Ellen White was requested to attend both, and she planned to do so, particularly the meeting in Sydney. On receiving a letter from Daniells suggesting that a company of workers should be put in Sydney some weeks in advance of the camp meeting to work up an interest, Baker wrote to Ellen White seeking advice. He enclosed a copy of Daniells' letter.
"That night," she wrote, "after receiving Brother Baker's letter, enclosing a copy of the letter from Brother Daniells, the Lord gave me light":
I saw that it was not the best thing to do to make our plans known and advertise the meetings to be held, for in doing this we would prepare the ministers of the churches to arm themselves with all their implements of warfare, and by their falsehoods in their publications make the people bitter opponents to the truth.
I was shown that the best plan on this occasion was to come on the people as a surprise, and let them have an opportunity to hear for themselves before the ministers of all denominations should rally their forces to misinterpret our work and pour in their false reports..... The light given was, When the seed of truth has been sown in the hearts of the people by the laborers at the camp meeting, then those who remain to follow up the work will, through the Spirit's power, be prepared to ripen off the work and gather in the harvest.--Letter 37, 1897.
Immediately Ellen White addressed a letter to "Dear Brethren," bearing the date of August 27, 1897. It opened, "I must place before you ideas that I cannot withhold. Is it at this time best to let everyone possible know that there is to be a camp meeting held by Seventh-day Adventists? ... Will it not rather be best to set up the tents, and then let the people know, after the meeting has commenced doing the work of advertising? In spreading the intelligence of a Seventh-day Adventist camp meeting, are we not furnishing ammunition to our foes?" She added:
After an interest has been created by the camp meeting, then is the time that a special work should be done in following up the interest created. The greatest secrecy is needed in some cases, lest there be created an intense opposition that will prevent the people from coming to the meeting to hear for themselves....
If a camp meeting can be started to break in upon the community unexpectedly, the opposing elements will not be aroused with an intensity moved by Satan's agencies to hold the people in error and darkness. The warning must be given, but let us give as little chance as possible for Satan to work, by moving cautiously and making no stir before. Let all the effort possible be put forth after the meeting closes.--Letter 13, 1897.
The suburb of Stanmore was chosen for the meeting. Ellen White described it:
Stanmore is only a few stations from Sydney. It is a thickly settled suburb, and is a very popular place. Here we found a most beautiful, grassy plot of ground, so thickly carpeted with grass that we needed no board floors.--Letter 136, 1897.
Just before the meeting opened, Ellen White sent her entire staff, except Marian Davis, who would not leave her work on The Desire of Ages, to the camp meeting. She followed the next day. W. C. White's entire family also went, not only for the camp meeting but to meet W. C. White, who arrived in Sydney from America the day before the meeting opened.
The village of tents, speedily erected, surprised the inhabitants of Stanmore. At the last moment small notices were distributed by diligent workers. Eagerly the workers and campers awaited the hour for the first meeting, Thursday evening. Then the people began to pour onto the grounds. The big tent was crowded, and Ellen White, in a letter to Edson, reported:
A wall of people several feet deep stood around the tent. Elder Daniells spoke with excellent freedom. Friday morning there was an early meeting at six o'clock, and a good representation of our people was present.... The meetings have opened well.--Letter 148, 1897.
With this propitious opening, the meeting moved along well. The big tent was crowded, and people stood outside in the afternoons and evenings. Ellen White's first meeting came Sabbath afternoon. Through the ten-day meeting she spoke six times to the large assembly and five times at smaller meetings of church members and workers.
But to the Whites, a high point was the reunion of the W. C. White family after a separation of ten months. "The twins soon became acquainted with their father. May feels very well indeed over the arrival of her husband. She has behaved excellently."--Ibid.
As to the accelerating interest in the meetings, which continued over two Sabbaths, she wrote to a friend in America:
I spoke Sabbath, Sunday, and Wednesday afternoons. At each meeting the large tent was crowded. To the very last of the meeting there was no falling off in numbers. On Sunday, in order that the crowd might be seated, the children were called into a forty-foot tent to a meeting of their own. Then our own people were invited to give the outside people room. I believe the angels of God were upon the ground.--Letter 136, 1897.
The light given her concerning advertising the camp meeting, she said, "has been followed to the letter" (Letter 148, 1897).
The Crucial Friday-Morning Workers' Meeting
There was one special meeting that was particularly trying to Ellen White. That was the October 29, Friday-morning meeting with all the ministers and leading workers in the reception tent. With her special insights into situations, which gave her glimpses of the soul experiences of individuals, she had called this meeting. She saw a repetition of some of the situations that she had dealt with at the Ashfield camp meeting in 1894, "which will, if known," she stated, "help some to take heed to be very careful in their words and in their deportment." Her diary carried the record:
We met at half past five, and I read many pages of that which the Lord had presented to us at that camp meeting. Then I bore a very plain testimony to correct existing evils that would lead to serious consequences. Confessions were made, and all seemed to feel that the Spirit of God had appealed to them in the testimony given.
Elder Daniells expressed himself as greatly relieved, and all who spoke seemed to feel it was a real blessing to have their mistakes and dangers laid open before them.
She noted further in her diary, "This duty was done at great cost to myself. I returned to my room and for some hours my heartache was so intense it seemed to me I could not live. But the Lord mercifully gave me rest and relief in my efforts to lay my burden upon Him. I was afflicted with physical suffering throughout the day."
She was to speak in the big tent Sabbath afternoon. But she would not speak of her feeling of helplessness lest the adversary, who cannot read man's thoughts, should take advantage of her depression. Her diary continued:
Oh, how helpless I felt, how utterly weak, compassed with infirmities, yet not daring to express unbelief by drawing back. I could only say over and over again, "Without Thee, My Saviour, I can do nothing. Become my Strength. I may venture only because Thou hast promised, 'Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.'"
I dared not open my lips to say to anyone, "I am weak; will you take my place?" lest I give the enemy advantage over me. Yet, sensing my littleness, I said, "Lord, I will go not in my own strength, but in Thy strength. Thou canst strengthen me."--Manuscript 177, 1897.
Sabbath afternoon she spoke for one hour and twenty minutes to an audience that crowded into the tent and overflowed, and held their interest to the very close.
She spoke again on Sunday afternoon. Monday morning she found herself exhausted, and she noted in her diary, "I was admonished this morning that it was wisdom for me to return home without delay."--Manuscript 178, 1897. Accompanied by Mrs. Haskell, she did so. Tuesday morning she reported that she had had a hard night, and she could "reason from cause to effect" (Ibid.). Plans for her to attend the next camp meeting to be held in Melbourne were called in question.
The Camp Meeting Follow-up
Interest was at its very peak when they came to the last Sunday of the camp meeting. The question was put to the audience,"Shall the meetings be continued one week longer?" "The outsiders," Ellen White wrote, "voted decidedly for it, with upraised hands."--Letter 136, 1897.
The decision was made to continue night meetings. The big tent had to go to Melbourne for the meeting that would soon open there, but a splice was put in the forty-foot tent, and with a few key ministers remaining to foster the interest, the meetings continued (Letter 91, 1897).
Ellen White gave up any expectation of going to Melbourne for the camp meeting there, but she promised to run down from Cooranbong to Sydney for some weekends. On November 22 she reported: "Forty have now commenced keeping the Sabbath in Stanmore, and still the interest is widespread. I believe we shall have a church of one hundred souls."--Letter 20, 1897. People were beginning to ask, both Sabbathkeepers and some not yet decided, "What about your meetinghouse? Are you deciding to build?"--Letter 205, 1897.
On December 20, she wrote:
I am to look at the site for the meetinghouse here, and it is considered a good location in Newtown.... We must "arise and build." We cannot delay.--Letter 163, 1897.
Nothing pleased Ellen White more than to engage in an evangelistic thrust, and she seemed energized by the eager interest of those who for the first time were hearing the message. She was true to her promise to return frequently for speaking engagements. On January 1, 1898, she reported:
Since the camp meeting I have visited Stanmore often, and have spoken eight times, on Sabbath and Sunday afternoons. The interest is wide and extended.--Letter 143, 1898.
On the occasion of one visit, Ellen White remained longer than usual and stood before the people again on Tuesday night. Describing the meeting, she wrote that no effort on her part was required to speak, for it seemed that the Spirit of the Lord spoke through her. The response was excellent, and someone proposed that she stay over and continue with night meetings. The people promised that they would come every night to hear her. But for two good reasons she could not accept the invitation. Evening meetings were too great a drain on her strength, and the book work at Cooranbong pressed hard (Letter 38, 1898). However, the movement to erect a meetinghouse to serve this new company of believers and become the "Sydney church" continued gaining impetus (Letter 6, 1898).
Beginning the Health-Food Business
The session of the Australasian Union Conference was held in connection with the Stanmore camp meeting. Ellen White attended but few of the meetings, but the groundwork was laid there for the manufacture of health foods in Australia. While in the United States, W. C. White, at the request of the union conference committee, had made quite a thorough investigation in Battle Creek of what might be done in health-food manufacture in Australia.
On July 2, 1897, he had addressed a communication to the executive committee of the Australasian Union Conference reporting on his findings regarding the arrangements that could be made with the Kelloggs. In this letter he stated:
Believing that the granose [wheat flakes] was a very valuable health food, that it would find a large sale in the colonies, and that it would aid us greatly in building up the market for a fine line of health foods, I had several conversations regarding its manufacture, during which I learned that the doctor [Kellogg] had expended more than £1,000 in experimenting with the manufacture of granose and developing the method of making it, and that his plan for permitting those in foreign countries to make the product was to lease them the mill and charge them a small royalty on all that they made.... I concluded to accept the terms and have ordered a granose mill which will be forwarded with some other machinery to Sydney to be held in bond there until we shall decide where it shall be put in operation.--11a WCW, pp. 63, 64.
Two days later he reported in a letter to the Australasian Union Conference executive committee that he had secured the services of Mr. Halsey, who was skilled in the manufacture of the Battle Creek health foods, to come to Australia and lead out in the making of the new products. White also sent samples of the foods for the members of the board to taste, so they would be better prepared to make decisions on his return (Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students, 80). So following the union session in Sydney, W. C. White, after spending just a few days at home, was off to Melbourne, where he would give full reports to the appropriate committees, and actions could be taken in pioneering this new line of work in Australia.
W. C. White's work in Melbourne moved slowly, and his mother grew a bit impatient. She felt he was not treating his wife and children and her fairly by being away for so long a time following so closely a ten-month absence. On December 7 she wrote first of activities at Sunnyside that involved her books in preparation, and then disclosed her feelings:
I think you should be with me and not spend weeks just now in Melbourne. One thing, the Lord has not appointed you to be an agent in the manufacture of home health foods. You have other work to do. I seem to be hedged about on every side. In regard to the manuscript for the life of Christ, it is done, waiting for you to look it over. There are several chapters on temperance waiting for you to look over.... I have no objections to your staying in Melbourne two months if you know it is the Lord's will. But there are matters on this end of the line fully as urgent as the matters on that end of the line. But I have no more to say.--Letter 206, 1897.
Three days later she wrote again. The opening paragraph contains an intimation that the Lord was tempering her thinking about what W. C. was doing:
I have been in great perplexity what to do. I cannot say anything more to you in reference to our work here. There is need enough of help, but the situation of things in Melbourne has been opened to me, and I have no more to say.... If you would tell us when we expect to see you, then we could know better how to act.--Letter 208, 1897.
This gave W. C. White the assurance that he should carry through his endeavors in the interests of health-food manufacture. As the church leaders worked in Melbourne, there emerged a "Report of the Committee on Health Foods" consisting of thirteen points, among them:
6. That we proceed at once to establish a health-food factory in Melbourne....
10. That immediate steps be taken to make and place upon the market Granola, and Caramel Cereal, and that these be followed by Granose Biscuits, and a general line of healthful biscuits, and other foods, as quickly as possible.--11a WCW, p. 358.
The Adventist-sponsored manufacture and distribution of health foods in Australia was on its way.