On Friday, July 8, Ellen White and those traveling with her arrived back in Washington, where she would stay for another month, in the Carroll Manor House. She was pleased that the construction of the college was under way. The basement for the boys' dormitory was about completed, as well as the excavating for the dining hall. Mr. Baird was managing the construction work well.
Almost every day Ellen White and Sara drove out with the horse and carriage. She enjoyed these little journeys. One day while they were driving through Rock Creek Park they were approached by an impressive-looking carriage traveling in the opposite direction. As they came closer they recognized Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States. Ellen White, reporting the meeting, said simply, "He bowed to us as we passed him."--Letter 357, 1904.
Mr. Baird resided in the house just across the street from the Carroll Manor House. A number of the workers who assisted him in building stayed in his home, many of them young men who would be students at the school. Each morning at half past five the workers gathered in the large room on the first floor of the Carroll Manor House for morning worship. After a period of singing, Scripture reading, and prayer, Ellen White talked with them for about fifteen minutes. On Sabbaths she spoke in nearby churches or to the group in Takoma Park, who worshiped in Takoma Hall, near the railroad station.
While living in the Carroll Manor House, Ellen White received a vision in which she seemed to be in a large company. "One not known to those present stepped forward" and sounded a message of warning to Dr. Paulson and Dr. Sadler, urging them to break their bonds with Dr. Kellogg and to be careful not to spoil their experience with philosophy and vain deceit. "Cut loose, cut loose is my message," she wrote in a letter to the physicians.--Letter 279, 1904. The text of the letter was much the same as in the letter addressed to Elders Jones and Waggoner, who were now associated with Dr. Kellogg in Battle Creek. The messenger who was speaking to them indicated that these men were in a mist and a fog, unaware of the seductive sentiments in The Living Temple. She quoted 1 Timothy 4:1,"Be not deceived; many will 'depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils.'" She added, "We have now before us the alpha of this danger. The omega will be of a most startling nature."--Letter 263, 1904. She also wrote to Dr. Kellogg, commenting on the Berrien Springs meeting and its aftermath:
You might have gone from the Berrien Springs meeting a very different man had you understood the real situation, had you realized that Satan in a masterly way was playing the game of life for your soul. Had you seen your peril as it was presented to me, you would have fallen on the Rock, and been broken. Your only hope is to fall on the Rock. If you do not, it will fall on you, and will break you beyond remedy.--Letter 271, 1904.
In this letter she also reproved Dr. Kellogg for boasting that while in Berrien Springs, Elder Prescott had made confession but that he and his followers had not.
The four final weeks spent in Washington were devoted to giving counsel about the developing work, speaking in the several churches on weekends, and in writing. She described a meeting held there during that time:
Last Sunday an all-day grove meeting was held on the school grounds. The weather was beautiful, and about 240 people came. In the morning Brother Bland, Brethren Sutherland and Magan, Willie, and Brother Thompson spoke. I had been sick, and it was feared that I could not speak. But the appointment was given out, and in the afternoon, with fear and trembling, I took my stand before the people. The Lord gave me tongue and utterance, and I spoke for an hour.
Oh, I was so glad that I could speak to the people on this occasion. Quite a number of those not of our faith were present, and their interested faces showed their pleasure and satisfaction.--Letter 357, 1904.
Starting Home
Ellen White and her helpers left Washington on Thursday, August 11, for the trip home, which would take them through New England, Michigan, Nebraska, and points west.
After a weekend stop in Philadelphia, where she spoke on the Sabbath, they went to the New England Sanitarium in Melrose, Massachusetts, arriving on Monday, August 15. They spent a little more than a week there, relaxing and enjoying the breathtaking beauty of the place. She wrote of the institution, "As far as the sanitarium itself is concerned, I have traveled extensively, and have seen many sanitarium sites, but I have never seen a place more nearly perfect than this one at Melrose."--Letter 305, 1904.
The Sanitarium was situated on Spot Pond, which at the time supplied Boston with some of its water. Because of this, the surrounding area was restricted; it had been only by God's providence that it was possible to locate the Sanitarium there. Just at the opportune time the way opened to buy land; then the matter closed up and no more of the park had been sold since. Ellen White said:
The situation of the sanitarium property is one of the most favorable that I have ever seen for this work. The spacious lawns, the noble trees, the beauty of the scenery all around, answer to the representations shown me of what our sanitariums ought to be.... The roads through the park are very well kept, and the scenery is lovely. I rode out every day, and I cannot find words to describe the beauty of what I saw. I enjoyed looking at the many different kinds of trees in the park, but most of all I enjoyed looking at the noble pine. There are medicinal properties in the fragrance of these trees.--Letter 293, 1904.
She recalled how James White would say as they were driving among pine trees, "'Life, life. Breathe deep, Ellen; fill your lungs with the fragrant, life-giving atmosphere.'"-- Ibid.
While she was at Melrose an older sister, Mary Foss, who was then 83 years of age, came down from her home in Maine and visited with Ellen a few days. May Walling had been sent up to bring her.
The Central New England camp meeting opened on Thursday evening, August 25. Ellen White had tarried at the Sanitarium to be present. The tent was pitched about a mile from the Sanitarium and she spoke five times during the camp meeting. She had to contend with a rather erratic church member who was on a crusade to save Seventh-day Adventists from the belief that the world is round. He sought her support for the flat-earth theory. Her answer was:
I have a message to this people in regard to the life they must live in this world to prepare them for future life which measures with the life of God. We have nought to do with the question whether this world is round or flat.--Manuscript 145, 1904.
She noted in her diary:
Last night the Lord gave me words to speak to the people. Satan has a multitude of questions to bring in through various minds and ingenuity as all-important. Take the Word plainly.-- Ibid.
Early in September she left Melrose for Middletown, Connecticut, and the Southern New England camp meeting. She found the place rich in nostalgia, and in her letters and in her diary she recalled the visit she and her husband made to Middletown in 1848 to attend the first of the Sabbath conferences. She recounted their work there of writing and publishing in 1849. She spoke four times during the week.
Early Sunday morning two ministers came to her tent to apologize in advance for what they thought would be a sparse attendance on Sunday. They explained that Connecticut Sunday laws were quite rigid and some people might consider it a sin to come to an Adventist meeting on that day.--Letter 380, 1904.
Ellen White told them, "'Instead of talking unbelief, let us tell the Lord how greatly we desire that the people may hear the truth.'"--Letter 293, 1904. When she spoke that day, the tent was filled to overflowing, and "several young men were kept busy bringing extra seats from the smaller tents" and placing them in the aisles. Describing the meeting, she said that she carried the subject of temperance strongly, yet the interest did not flag (Ibid.).
Monday, September 5, she was on the train on her way to Battle Creek. She arrived there on Tuesday and was given one of the best rooms in the Sanitarium. This was her first visit to Battle Creek since the fire and the building of the new sanitarium. She spoke the next morning to the patients in the parlor, dealing with basic Christian principles and the power of Christ to transform those who come to Him in simplicity and faith (Ibid.). After the talk, Dr. Kellogg introduced her to several of the guests; she was surprised to see how powerfully the Word spoken in simplicity and earnestness had affected them. Ellen White reported that that night she received a special blessing from God.
The next morning she spoke in the gymnasium to a group of about three hundred, composed mainly of physicians, nurses, and other workers. Her topic was the love of Christ, how He showed His love in good works, and how these good works begat love in the hearts of others (Ibid.).
At the last minute it was decided that she should try to speak in the Tabernacle that afternoon. As there was not much time to get word out, she expected rather a slim attendance. To her surprise, the Tabernacle was crowded with 2,500 people and seemed to be as packed as it had been at the 1901 General Conference. Again her sermon was a simple exposition of Christian faith. Ellen White warmed to the subject, speaking for more than an hour (Ibid.; Manuscript 90, 1904).
Just before the service began, Elder A. T. Jones asked her whether she would be willing to stay over the weekend. He urged her, she consented, and during the meeting he announced her decision. But that night W. C. White who had been in Canada, arrived in Battle Creek and pointed out that already they were committed to Sabbath meetings at the Omaha, Nebraska, camp meeting. So she promised to return to Battle Creek after the Omaha appointment.
One of the chief purposes of the Battle Creek visit was, of course, to help Kellogg, if that were at all possible. She had received letters from him at Melrose indicating some softening of his attitude. In writing from Battle Creek to W. C. White in Canada, she said she knew that Kellogg was like a blind man with a cane, striking about to find the road, but everything so far appeared to be surface work. But she said she must do her best to speak in Battle Creek. After her talk to the workers on Wednesday morning, the seventh, Kellogg did make a brief attempt at confession. He declared:
I want you to know that I feel in my heart to accept all the reproofs and all the instruction that the Lord has sent me through Sister White. I do not want to have any ambiguity about my position and attitude.
The Lord has sent Sister White here, and she has given us instruction this morning for our good, and I hope the Lord will help us all to take this to our hearts and profit by her instruction.--24 WCW, p. 325.
But Dr. Kellogg had become a very vacillating man, and the repentant attitude was shallow and short-lived.
Friday, September 9, Ellen White and W. C. White reached Omaha. She was feeling a little stronger than she had for the past few days and was pleased to observe that at the Omaha station she could walk through the large waiting rooms and up and down stairs as easily as ever (Letter 283, 1904). Unfortunately, she took a cold on the trip and was afraid she might have difficulty speaking on the Sabbath. However, she went ahead and spoke anyway.
In order to be heard by the audience of 1,500 in the tent, she found that she had to breathe deeply and speak slowly. There were no amplifying systems in those days. "Were I to speak quickly," she said, "my throat and lungs would suffer. And when I speak slowly, the hearers are given an opportunity to take in sentence after sentence, and to gather up ideas that would otherwise be lost."--Letter 287, 1904.
It was here at this Omaha meeting that one of the laymen, Jasper Wayne, sought an interview with her. He presented his newly developed plan for soliciting funds from non-Adventists by calling at their homes and leaving with them a church paper. This was the inception of what came to be known as the Harvest Ingathering Plan (later simply Ingathering), which has brought in hundreds of millions of dollars to help advance the work.
She spoke three times in Omaha, then went on to College View, where she and Willie were given rooms in the Nebraska Sanitarium, situated on the crest of the hill near Union College.
Then it was back to Battle Creek to fulfill her promise to be with the people there on Sabbath. She was given a hearty welcome and spent five days there. She spoke three times in the Tabernacle to large congregations, once to the medical students, and once to sanitarium workers.
An Unguarded Statement
An interesting event occurred at one of the Tabernacle meetings. On Sunday, October 2, Ellen White addressed an audience of 2,500, including many Battle Creek citizens. She took this occasion to talk about herself and her work, and she spoke without notes. Reminding them that they had heard her speak many times, she declared that she bore exactly the same message now as she always had--the same message she had written in her books. "The truth that we proclaim today," she said, "is the same truth that we proclaimed for the last fifty years."--Manuscript 140, 1905. Then she startled her hearers by saying:
"I am not, as I said yesterday, a prophet. I do not claim to be a leader; I claim to be simply a messenger of God, and that is all I have ever claimed."--DF 108a, W. E. Cornell report, in AGD to WCW, May 23, 1906.
Her reference to the Sabbath meeting was to words she used in speaking of the appellations people had applied to her. Here are her words from the Sabbath meeting:
They say she is a prophetess, they say she is this and that and the other thing--I claim to be no such thing. I will tell you what I want you all to know, that I am a messenger that God has taken from a feeble, very feeble child, and in my girlhood gave me a message, and here you see the effects that made me what I am, a cruel stone thrown by a hand and broke my nose, and thereby I have been made an invalid for life.... Now I want to tell you this, that Mrs. White does not call herself a prophetess or a leader of this people. She calls herself simply a messenger....
Some who are not belonging to our church ... listen to Mrs. White, and you know what my testimony has been though, and the same testimony has been borne from that time that you have heard, and long before, to the people. I have not gone back on one sentiment on temperance, not one sentiment religiously. It is just the same, and that is why I was to write it, that it should go to the people, and that it should live all through the half century.-- Ibid.
What she said in the Sunday meeting was this:
I want you ["those who have got the books that God has bidden me to write when that hand trembled so that it seemed an impossibility"] to read the books--Patriarchs and Prophets (I expected to have them here on the stand before us), Great
Controversy, Desire of Ages, Ministry of Healing[, which] is nearly done, and a great many other books. I am not, as I said yesterday, a prophet. I do not claim to be a leader; I claim to be simply a messenger of God, and that is all I have ever claimed.-- Ibid.
Monday, the newspapers at Battle Creek heralded the news: The woman the Adventists had believed in all these years as a prophet had now come straight out and said she was not a prophet after all! This naturally brought questions from Adventists as well. Ellen White and church leaders found that an explanation must be made. She took opportunity on several occasions to explain carefully the thoughts she intended to convey by her statement. W. C. White observed in a way that throws considerable light on the matter, as follows:
When she spoke these words she had in mind the ideas of the people regarding a prophet as one whose chief office was to predict events, and she wanted them to understand that that was not her place in the world. I am fully persuaded that John the Baptist cherished the same idea when he denied being "that prophet."--WCW to A. M. Taylor, July 6, 1933 (see DF 108a).
Within a few weeks Ellen White recalled for the readers of the Review what she said, and gave the following clarification:
Sunday afternoon I spoke again in the Tabernacle. The meeting had been advertised, and there were present many citizens of Battle Creek who were not of our faith. At this meeting I assured my hearers that we held the same principles of truth that we had so many times set before them in past years....
I said that I did not claim to be a prophetess. I have not stood before the people claiming this title, though many called me thus. I have been instructed to say, "I am God's messenger, sent to bear a message of reproof to the erring and of encouragement to the meek and lowly." With pen and with voice I am to bear the messages given me. The word given me is, "You are faithfully to reprove those who would mar the faith of the people of God. Write out the things which I shall give you, that they may stand as a witness to the truth till the end of time."--The Review and Herald, January 26, 1905.
But there was a continued misuse of her unguarded statement, and further explanations were called for. She prepared an article entitled "A Messenger," which was published in the Ibid., July 26, 1906. In this she explained:
When I was last in Battle Creek, I said before a large congregation that I did not claim to be a prophetess. Twice I referred to this matter, intending each time to make the statement, "I do not claim to be a prophetess." If I spoke otherwise than this, let all now understand that what I had in mind to say was that I do not claim the title of prophet or prophetess.
I understood that some were anxious to know if Mrs. White still held the same views that she did years ago when they had heard her speak in the sanitarium grove, in the Tabernacle, and at the camp meetings held in the suburbs of Battle Creek. I assured them that the message she bears today is the same that she has borne during the sixty years of her public ministry. She has the same service to do for the Master that was laid upon her in her girlhood. She receives lessons from the same Instructor. The directions given her are, "Make known to others what I have revealed to you. Write out the messages that I give you, that the people may have them." This is what she has endeavored to do.--Ibid., July 26, 1906 (Selected Messages 1:35).
Further explanations appear in this article, now published in full in Ibid., 1:31-35. We refer to some:
Some have stumbled over the fact that I said I did not claim to be a prophet; and they have asked, Why is this?
I have had no claims to make, only that I am instructed that I am the Lord's messenger; that He called me in my youth to be His messenger, to receive His word, and to give a clear and decided message in the name of the Lord Jesus.
Early in my youth I was asked several times, Are you a prophet? I have ever responded, I am the Lord's messenger. I know that many have called me a prophet, but I have made no claim to this title. My Saviour declared me to be His messenger. "Your work," He instructed me, "is to bear My word."...
Why have I not claimed to be a prophet? Because in these days many who boldly claim that they are prophets are a reproach to the cause of Christ; and because my work includes much more than the word "prophet" signifies....
God has made plain to me the various ways in which He would use me to carry forward a special work. Visions have been given me, with the promise, "If you deliver the messages faithfully and endure to the end, you shall eat of the fruit of the tree of life, and drink of the water of the river of life."--Ibid., 1:31-33.
After describing the breadth of the work she was commissioned to do, she declared:
To claim to be a prophetess is something that I have never done. If others call me by that name, I have no controversy with them. But my work has covered so many lines that I cannot call myself other than a messenger sent to bear a message from the Lord to His people, and to take up work in any line that He points out.--Ibid., 1:34.
I am now instructed that I am not to be hindered in my work by those who engage in suppositions regarding its nature, whose minds are struggling with so many intricate problems connected with the supposed work of a prophet. My commission embraces the work of a prophet, but it does not end there. It embraces much more than the minds of those who have been sowing the seeds of unbelief can comprehend.--Letter 244, 1906, addressed to elders of Battle Creek church (Selected Messages 1:36).
Journey Across the Plains and the Mountains to California
Ellen White left Battle Creek on Monday, October 3. Because of delays she was unable to reach St. Helena by Sabbath, so she stayed over on Friday and Sabbath in Reno and spoke to the people there. Her granddaughters Ella and Mabel were in Reno; Ella taught church school and Mabel engaged in other work. After a pleasant weekend, Ellen White and her party hastened homeward. As she passed through Oakland, she found the workers at Pacific Press busily packing up the last of their things to take them to Mountain View. "The empty buildings at Pacific Press look lonesome," confessed Willie; he had known them since 1877 (24 WCW, p. 370).
When they reached home, they found Marian Davis desperately ill at the St. Helena Sanitarium. Illness which could be traced to a cold contracted during the 1903 General Conference led to tuberculosis. During Ellen White's trip in the East she grew progressively weaker, although she continued with her literary work. This situation was exceedingly painful to Ellen White. For twenty-five years the two had worked together.
Although Marian rallied a bit when Ellen White returned, she passed to her rest early in the afternoon of Tuesday, October 25. On October 26 she was buried in the St. Helena Cemetery where Elder J. N. Loughborough and a number of other early workers await the call of the Life-giver. Of her and her work, Ellen White wrote:
For twenty-five years Sister Davis had been a most faithful helper in my work. She was greatly appreciated by me and by all who were acquainted with her and her work, and we miss her very much. Of her it can truthfully be said, "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord ..., that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them."--Letter 29, 1905.