As the union conference session closed on Sunday, July 23, and the delegates parted, none realized the changes that would take place during the year ahead or how, in the providence of God, the field was becoming well prepared to cope with these changes. They knew, of course, that they were losing Elder and Mrs. Haskell, for Elder Irwin, feeling America's need, was taking them back with him. They had been a bulwark of strength, both in the school and in evangelism. They would sail within a few weeks. The delegates did not know that A. G. Daniells, who had been in the Australasian field for more than ten years and had developed into a strong leader, would be leaving the coming April for South Africa and then the United States. Nor did they have any idea that Ellen White and her staff would be leaving in August, 1900, just a year away, and of course, W. C. White and his family would be going with her. Not even Ellen White dreamed of such changes.
For her, things would go on, following the union conference session, for some months about as they had. At her Sunnyside home she would continue with her writing, and with her staff continue article and book preparation. She would continue to go out over weekends to meet with the churches and companies of new believers. As summer came she would attend the camp meetings at Toowoomba in Queensland; at Maitland, nearby; and then Geelong, near Melbourne in Victoria. Not until March, 1900, would she make it known that she must return to America, a decision reached reluctantly, motivated by direction from heaven.
The Early Camp Meetings
It was planned that the camp meeting season would open in Toowoomba, Queensland, and the dates were set for October 12 to 23. The notice appearing in the October 1 Union Conference Record stated that Ellen G. White would be attending. Writing on September 11, she stated:
The next camp meeting held in Queensland will be at Toowoomba, a beautiful city about one hundred miles west from Brisbane. It is the business center of a large, fertile, and wealthy district. There is a small band of Sabbathkeepers in this place, and much prejudice against the truth, but we trust that the camp meeting will sweep this away, and that this may become the center of an important work.--Letter 139, 1899.
The city, with a population of seven thousand, was some 1,800 feet above sea level and located in a region of great natural beauty. Twenty family tents were pitched on neatly kept grass on grounds provided by the Agricultural Society. The new canvas pavilion, eighty by fifty feet, stood near the entrance (UCR, November 1, 1899). Toowoomba was a resort city, strongly Catholic, and attendance at the meetings, in spite of a wide circulation of notices, was disappointing (Letter 248, 1899). Ellen White spoke the first Sabbath afternoon to about a hundred persons and on Sunday afternoon to two hundred. Her six addresses during the meeting were on practical subjects.
Of the location and surroundings she declared:
We have never had a tent meeting, since my acquaintance, in any place so pleasant and so beautiful, with trees and with green grass. The tents so clean and new make a nice appearance.--Letter 234, 1899.
There were four churches in Queensland, with an aggregate membership of 211, and those at the camp meeting urged the organization of a conference. Elder Daniells, the union president, was there, and joined in the steps appropriate to form the new organization (UCR, December 1, 1899). G. C. Tenney was chosen president, and Herbert Lacey, assigned to Queensland for evangelistic work, was selected secretary. As evangelistic meetings were to continue in the tent after the close of the camp meeting, Lacey and his wife were left in the town for the follow-up work.
The Maitland Camp Meeting
The next camp meeting was in Maitland, a little less than thirty miles northwest of Cooranbong, in the mountains. The meeting, opening Thursday, November 2, was to run for ten days. Ellen White and Sara McEnterfer drove from Cooranbong Thursday morning. The weather was rainy and attendance small the first day or two, but on Sunday the sky cleared, and there blossomed forth a large and gratifying attendance. The meeting was very much like the one held in Newcastle the year before, with good interest and good attendance (six hundred to one thousand), and even included a bad storm that struck the camp midweek, flattening twenty-two of the twenty-seven family tents.
[The storm] damaged quite a quantity of literature, and thoroughly drenched a large number of the campers and their effects. Although soon over, its fury was terrific while it lasted, breaking large ropes like threads, bending one-inch iron stakes into semicircles, and tearing several of the poorer and older tents into shreds.--Ibid.
But the campers kept up their courage. As at Newcastle, the occupants of nearby homes invited the distraught campers into their homes; tents were repitched, and the large tent, wet and torn, was soon repaired and up again, and meetings were in progress. The principal speakers were A. G. Daniells, G. B. Starr, W. A. Colcord, Mrs. E. G. White, and Dr. Edgar Caro (Ibid.). Ellen White spoke on all three Sabbaths and Sundays (Letter 194, 1899). The interest was such that the meetings were continued through the third weekend. When the camp meeting was over, the large tent was moved near the center of the city, and evangelistic meetings continued.
On the first Sunday after the moving of the tent, Ellen White spoke. It was her birthday, and she was entering her seventy-third year. As she recounted the experience in a letter to Dr. Kellogg, she declared:
Before me I saw the very faces that were presented to me more than a year ago as sheep having no shepherd, men and women who were receiving from their ministers chaff instead of wheat. Many of them I have seen bowed before God in prayer. Others with arms outstretched pleaded, "Come over and help us. We are hungering for the bread of life." Still others I saw coming from the different churches who were distressed and cast down. All were in need.
My Guide said to me, "These are as sheep having no shepherd. Speak My word faithfully to them, for unless their ministers are converted, they will sleep on until the judgments of God will come upon the world. Cry aloud, spare not; lift up thy voice like a trumpet and show My people their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sins."
She wrote of the influence of Dr. Caro's work and told of how gratefully the medical missionary work was received in Australia, and added:
This place has been presented to me as second in importance to America, and the same work which has been carried forward there is to go forward in this country, only in more advanced lines.--Letter 198, 1899.
So keen was the interest following the camp meeting that for several weeks she insisted on being there for weekend meetings.
Ellen White and Sara made the twenty-seven-mile trip between Cooranbong and Maitland by carriage. As it was in the heat of the summer, they usually started very early in the morning, one time at three o'clock.
The Avondale Health Retreat
Again and again in 1897 and 1898, Ellen White had mentioned the dire need of a small hospital in Cooranbong. Writing on April 21, 1899, she made the situation plain:
Sister McEnterfer is nurse and physician for all the region round about. She has been called upon to treat the most difficult cases, and with complete success. We have at times made our house a hospital, where we have taken in the sick and cared for them. I have not time to relate the wonderful cures wrought, not by the dosing with drugs, but by the application of water.--Letter 74, 1899.
W. C. White pointed out why the particular need existed: "With no physician living nearer than Newcastle [twenty-five miles distant], it is impossible to secure proper attention for the sick, even when the sufferers can afford to pay the usual charges." In the case of emergencies, the city hospitals were just too far away (13 WCW, p. 84). During this time, Sara, working night and day with the sick, was nearly dead with exhaustion. Ellen White earnestly declared: "We want that hospital so much."--Letter 73, 1899.
On March 26 the newly appointed board of the Cooranbong Hospital held its first meeting and organized the work. Its objectives were set forth by W. C. White:
The purpose in view is to provide a place in which to properly treat the sick of the neighborhood; a convalescent home for the Sydney Sanitarium patients; and a health retreat for worn and weary aged workers in the cause. A place to accommodate about thirty to forty persons will be the ultimate capacity.--13 WCW, p. 70.
Earlier in the month, a self-appointed group--A. G. Daniells, Dr. Edgar Caro, Ellen G. White, W. C. White, Iram James, and Sara McEnterfer--had driven over the school grounds and had selected a likely site near the entrance to the school grounds from the Maitland road. There were nineteen acres comprising the site thought to be most suitable (Manuscript 184, 1899). In early April, work began, and Ellen White wrote to Elder and Mrs. Haskell:
We are now at work on the hospital ground. We are securing volunteers to clear at least two or three acres. Today the students from the school under Brother Palmer's direction will make a bee to help in this work....
I expect to speak today to those who shall work on the hospital ground. A dinner is to be prepared by the school, and served on the grounds for the whole school family, making the occasion a kind of picnic in the open air.
We are trying to make every move possible to advance. This hospital must now be erected without delay. If the Lord favors us, we shall put up a two-story building, and several small houses around it for patients sent out from the Sydney hospital.
Regarding finances she wrote:
As yet we have received not quite $1,000 for the hospital. The appeals sent to America have not yet brought returns. Dr. Kellogg states that if I say so, he will raise $5,000 from our people.--Letter 61, 1899.
The terms Kellogg proposed were unacceptable to Ellen White. A short time later she wrote to John Wessels that she had directed that everything she had in America should be sold, which would provide but little, but it would help (Letter 63, 1899). This was just the time the school was suffering so severely for want of money and Elder Daniells was in Melbourne and Adelaide seeking relief. A few months later, at the union conference session held in Cooranbong when the building was under construction, Ellen White reviewed the experience, and told of the part played by repeated visions given to her relating to the health retreat.
In the night season I was looking at a building. "What is this?" I asked. "The building in which you shall take care of the sick and suffering." "But," I said, "I did not know that we had such a building." "No," was the answer, "but you must have it." This building presented was very nearly like the building now being erected here.
The building is so placed that it will get all the sunshine possible, not only in the sleeping rooms, but in the rooms where the patients sit. The sun is God's doctor, which brings health and strength, purifying and giving color to the blood, and we must have it.
It was objected that the building would be askew with the road. "Askew let it be," I said; "that building must be where it will get the sunshine, in whatever position it is." The building is just right as it now is. It will get the sunshine, and I am well pleased with it.--UCR, July 26, 1899.
In late April when the decisions were being made, Ellen White told, in a letter to Dr. Kellogg, of the committee meeting held on the site. Some sat on the trunk of a freshly cut eucalyptus tree; she and Sara sat first in her carriage and then on cushions on the ground. They all debated the way the building would face so as to get the sunshine. She presented redrawn plans that she, Sara, and Miss Peck had spent two days preparing, putting the rooms in the most favorable position. Then the committee knelt among the eucalyptus logs and sought heaven's guidance. She at first feared that the arguments for appearance would prevail. She told Dr. Kellogg, "The matter came out all right. The building will be blessed with plenty of sunshine."--Letter 252, 1899.
Again in the night season light came as the committee, so pressed financially, considered a plan that would cut the size of the building down by four feet.
But a building was presented to me, tall and narrow and disproportionate. I asked what building that was. One came forward and said, "That is the structure that will appear if you take out four feet." I said, "This must not be. Give the full size and merely enclose the building, finishing off a few rooms, but it must not be made smaller."--Ibid.
Thus God guided in the planning stage. Writing of this project to his brother Edson on May 9, W. C. White stated:
Tomorrow we shall begin to dig the foundations and hope to have it enclosed in time to form a shelter for the delegates to the union conference, which is appointed to open July 6.--13 WCW, p. 142.
The scarcity of funds delayed the work, and they were disappointed in having the building serve as they had hoped. On September 11, Ellen White wrote to an old friend, Mrs. Josephine Gotzian:
I am much burdened regarding the dearth of means which delays the opening of our Avondale Health Retreat. The principal part of the building is up, roofed, floored, and enclosed, but it is not plastered. And we are losing precious time, which ought to be filled with effective work in behalf of those for whom this building is erected.--Letter 139, 1899.
Mrs. Gotzian responded with a gift of $1,000, which helped spur the work along (Letter 190, 1899). One gift brought from Ellen White a recognition of sacrifice. It was a dime given by a child in America, and it called forth a tender thank-you note:
My little sister Elsie Wilson, I thank you for your precious offering. It is a small sum, but it is more precious in the sight of God than a large sum given grudgingly. If all the little children would present their dimes to the Lord as you have done, little rivulets would be set flowing which would swell into a large river.
The Lord looks with pleasure upon the little children who deny themselves, that they may make an offering to Him. The Lord was pleased with the poor widow who put her two mites into the treasury, because she gave all that she had, and gave it with a willing heart....
Sister White appreciates your words "This is all I have, but I want to help Sister White": and the Lord is pleased. God is made glad when the little ones become laborers together with Jesus, who loved the little children and took them in His arms and blessed them. He will bless your gift to Him. In love, E. G. White--Letter 155, 1899.
The Union Conference Record dated January 1, 1900, carried an announcement of plans for the dedication of the Avondale Health Retreat on December 27, and stated that it would be open for boarders December 28 and be fully prepared to treat the sick on January 1, 1900.
Recreation at the Avondale School
The Avondale school opened its fourth year on Thursday, February 1, 1900, with more students than any previous year. Ellen White addressed faculty and students with appropriate remarks for the occasion, based on the character of Daniel, a man who had a well-defined purpose in his heart that he would not dishonor God by even the slightest deviation from the principles of righteousness. The noticeable change in the faculty was in the Bible teacher; A. T. Robinson had been appointed to that post. The prospects were good for a profitable school year. But there is an enemy who is constantly alert to divert that which is planned as a benefit into a drawback, and this showed up on April 11, the day set aside as the first anniversary of the completion of College Hall.
E. R. Palmer and C. B. Hughes, principal and business manager, respectively, planned for the day what they thought to be appropriate--a morning service at which Ellen White was invited to address students and faculty, and in the afternoon various recreational games, including cricket for the boys and tennis for the girls. Faculty members and students joined in raising money with which to purchase the equipment (DF 249e, C. B. Hughes to WCW, July 22, 1912). Other games, as remembered by Ella White Robinson included three-legged races; eating apples suspended from a string, with the players' arms tied behind them; carrying eggs in a teaspoon in a knee race, et cetera (Ibid., E. M. Robinson to David Lee, November 9, 1967). Wrote Professor Hughes in his July 22 letter to W. C. White:
The students enjoyed the day very much, and at the close of it felt very grateful toward me, especially, for planning such a pleasant time. You know the Australians very much enjoy holidays and sports. When Mark Twain visited Australia, he found this such a characteristic of the people that he exclaimed, "Restful Australia, where every day is a holiday, and when there is not a holiday, there is a horse race."
After giving her morning address, Ellen White returned to her Sunnyside home and her work. But "during the following night," as she was to write later, "I seemed to be witnessing the performances of the afternoon."
The scene was clearly laid out before me, and I was given a message for the manager and teachers of the school. I was shown that in the amusements carried on, on the school grounds that afternoon, the enemy gained a victory, and teachers were weighed in the balances and found wanting.--Manuscript 73, 1912 (see also Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students, 348).
In her diary she noted, "The whole transaction was presented to me as if I was present, which I did write out."--Manuscript 92, 1900. She later declared:
The Avondale school was established, not to be like the schools of the world, but, as the Lord revealed, to be a pattern school. And since it was to be a pattern school, those in charge of it should have perfected everything after God's plan, discarding all that was not in harmony with His will. Had their eyes been anointed with the heavenly eyesalve, they would have realized that they could not permit the exhibition that took place that afternoon, without dishonoring God.--Manuscript 73, 1912 (see also Ibid., Teachers, and Students, 349).
Apparently there was much involved, in a country given to holidays and sports, in allowing any beginning toward what could easily become an infatuation.
The next morning, as Hughes was leaving his house for the school, Ellen White's carriage drove up, and he was informed that she wished to speak to him. As he wrote of this in 1912, Hughes bared his soul:
I went out to her carriage, and she leaned out toward me and said in very earnest tones, "I have come over to talk to you and your teachers and your students about the way you spent yesterday. Get your teachers together. I want to speak to them before I go in to speak to the students."
If Sister White had struck a blow full in my face, I do not think I would have felt so hurt as I did at her words. What she said sounded so unreasonable to me. I believed that what I had done the day before was for the best interests of the students....
I was very much troubled, knowing as I did the attitude of the Australians toward holidays and games. I felt that Sister White was acting rashly.... I was very much tempted to advise her not to talk to the students that morning.
We went into the chapel and she delivered her talk, but it did not produce the commotion that I had expected. In fact, the students generally seemed to receive it quite well, but not so with myself.--DF 249e, C. B. Hughes to WCW, July 22, 1912.
We cannot here trace in detail the personal struggle Professor Hughes experienced. When, through Miss Peck, he inquired of Ellen White why, in the light of her counsel that teachers should play with their students, he should be reproved for what they had done, the answer came that the students at Avondale were not children but young men and young women preparing to be laborers for God. Then, with his concordance, he searched his Bible. One of the first references he turned to related to the children of Israel, when they "sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play." Nor were other texts any more helpful. When he came to recognize that winning in games meant others must fail, he was led to conclude that the spirit of most games and sports was not the right spirit of the adult Christian. "These thoughts," he declared, "brought me out of darkness into light, and I left behind me an experience which was a very trying one."-- Ibid.
As was usually the case when counsel was given regarding the perils of a certain course, constructive alternatives were suggested. Ellen White did so along two lines:
In the place of providing diversions that merely amuse, arrangements should be made for exercises that will be productive of good. Satan would lead the students, who are sent to our schools to receive an education that will enable them to go forth as workers in God's cause, to believe that amusements are necessary to physical health. But the Lord has declared that the better way is for them to get physical exercise through manual training, and by letting useful employment take the place of selfish pleasure. The desire for amusement, if indulged, soon develops a dislike for useful, healthful exercise of body and mind, such as will make students efficient in helping themselves and others.--Manuscript 73, 1912 (see also Ibid., Teachers, and Students, 354).
After Hughes and Palmer sought Ellen White's help in planning activities, she wrote:
They said they were perplexed to know what to do with the students' Sunday afternoons. They thought they could unite with them in these games and they would not be strolling around in the bush. I said, "Is there not an abundance of work to be done on this farm where all the energy and tact would be turned to the most useful account in a good work?" ...
All are to be rightly educated as in the schools of the prophets.... Let another teacher ... educate how to do work in helping some of the worthy poor about us. There are houses that can be built. Get your students under a man who is a builder and see if you cannot find something that can be done in the lines of education and in the lines of holiness.--Manuscript 92, 1900.
As Ellen White addressed the students and faculty, she was disappointed that there was dead silence. She wrote a few days later:
I knew after I had borne my testimony that the teachers and students might have taken a stand.... But not one word was said in response to the testimony; not one word spoken before that school to say, "The Lord has spoken to us through His servant and we will thank God for the light that is come to us and will receive the light and prayerfully ask God to give us clear perception of right and wrong."--Ibid.
It seems that teachers and students were too stunned to speak. But the message sank into hearts and was effective. Faculty and students did some prayerful studying and thinking. Hughes reported that the equipment was disposed of, and recreation was found in activities other than sports and games.
The author, when visiting Australia in 1958, talked with a physician who was one of the students at Avondale in 1900. He volunteered the experience of some of the students, the memory of which had not dimmed in his mind. He and another young man banded together, in the light of Ellen White's counsel, to study what they could accomplish in helping others in the community. They found many places where they could help those in need, and this positive type of recreation provided soul-warming experiences in Christian service. In just a short time they sensed the advantages of finding recreation in activities that bring strength to the character as well as to the body. The grueling experience bore a good harvest.
On June 11, 1900, Ellen White could joyfully record in her diary:
I can but praise God for His goodness and mercies and blessings which are coming to the school and to the church. The Spirit of the Lord has come into the school, and the report is that every student is now a professed Christian. May the Lord bless them and sanctify them and refine them by His Holy Spirit that they may from henceforth reveal the character of the only true Model which is the character of Christ.--Manuscript 94, 1900.
The Union Conference Record included the following under a note entitled "Students Building Churches":
Many of the older students, under the direction of Brother and Sister Robinson, are working up the missionary interests in the neighborhood. Children's meetings and a Sunday school are being held at Awaba, Sabbath services and Sabbath school at Dora Creek.... A little church is now being erected at Morisset for the accommodation of the meetings held there. This undertaking originated with the students. They have raised the money, and with the exception of a little help from experienced carpenters, they have done the work. Thus the students are learning the ABCs of church building. One important feature of the lesson is to be how to dedicate a church with no debt upon it. When this church is finished, they intend to build another at Martinsville.--August 1, 1900.
In the April confrontation Ellen White had suggested as an alternative to engaging in sports, "There are houses that can be built."
Balancing Counsel Regarding Simple Ball Games
The review of this experience cannot properly be left without calling attention to Ellen White's balanced counsel to a medical student in Michigan. Edgar Caro, from New Zealand, in 1893 had made inquiry of her by letter. Her reply sets forth several principles worthy of close study:
I do not condemn the simple exercise of playing ball; but this, even in its simplicity, may be overdone.
I shrink always from the almost sure result which follows in the wake of these amusements. It leads to an outlay of means that should be expended in bringing the light of truth to souls that are perishing out of Christ. The amusements and expenditures of means for self-pleasing, which lead on step by step to self-glorifying, and the education in these games for pleasure produces a love and passion for such things that are not favorable to the perfection of Christian character.
The way that they have been conducted at the college does not bear the impress of heaven. It does not strengthen the intellect. It does not refine and purify the character. There are threads leading out through the habits and customs and worldly practices, and the actors become so engrossed and infatuated that they are pronounced in heaven lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. In the place of the intellect becoming strengthened to do better work as students, to be better qualified as Christians to perform the Christian duties, the exercise in these games is filling their brains with thoughts that distract the mind from their studies....
Is the eye single to the glory of God in these games? I know that this is not so. There is a losing sight of God's way and His purpose. The employment of intelligent beings, in probationary time, is superseding God's revealed will and substituting for it the speculations and inventions of the human agent, with Satan by his side to imbue with his spirit....The Lord God of heaven protests against the burning passion cultivated for supremacy in the games that are so engrossing.--Letter 17a, 1893 (The Adventist Home, 499, 500).
Ellen White also recognized the importance and place of the school gymnasium:
The question of suitable recreation for their pupils is one that teachers often find perplexing. Gymnastic exercises fill a useful place in many schools; but without careful supervision they are often carried to excess. In the gymnasium many youth, by their attempted feats of strength, have done themselves lifelong injury.
Exercise in a gymnasium, however well conducted, cannot supply the place of recreation in the open air, and for this our schools should afford better opportunity. Vigorous exercise the pupils must have. Few evils are more to be dreaded than indolence and aimlessness. Yet the tendency of most athletic sports is a subject of anxious thought to those who have at heart the well-being of the youth. Teachers are troubled as they consider the influence of these sports both on the student's progress in school and on his success in afterlife.--Education, 210.