At Glendale, Elder J. A. Burden was leading out in the establishment of a second sanitarium in southern California. He was the manager of the St. Helena Sanitarium when Ellen White returned from Australia in late 1900. Shortly, however, he responded to a call to Australia to help lead out in the establishment of institutions there.
Dr. Daniel Kress was in charge of the church's Australian medical work. His wife, also a physician, worked by his side. The Kresses had some strong opinions as to how the medical work of Seventh-day Adventists should be conducted, and it seems that this was not quite the perspective that the Burdens entertained. There was some friction, and in the third year of his service in Australia Ellen White wrote to Elder Burden that although she did not have any special light on the question, he could, if he felt his work in Australia was done, be used in southern California (Letter 252, 1903).
The Burdens returned to the States in February, 1904. He picked up the words from Ellen White's pen that "a sanitarium should be established near Los Angeles" and "it is the expressed will of God that this shall be done."--Letter 211, 1904. To Burden, this was a challenge. He knew that she had also written:
I have been unable to sleep after half past eleven at night. Many things, in figures and symbols, are passing before me. There are sanitariums in running order near Los Angeles.... As in the vision of the night I saw the grounds, I said, "O ye of little faith! You have lost time."--Manuscript 152, 1901.
On April 26, 1904, two days after her arrival in Washington, D.C., she declared:
Light has been given me that a sanitarium should be established near Los Angeles, in some rural district. For years the need of such an institution has been kept before our people in southern California. Had the brethren there heeded the warnings given by the Lord, to guard them from making mistakes, they would not now be tied up as they are. But they have not followed the instruction given. They have not gone forward in faith to establish a sanitarium near Los Angeles.--Letter 147, 1904.
On June 30, while in Tennessee visiting Edson, she wrote that it was "the expressed will of God" that a sanitarium should be established near Los Angeles. She observed:
Why this work should be delayed from year to year is a great mystery.... Had the light given by God been followed, this institution might now be in running order, exerting a strong influence for good. Arrangements could have been made to utilize for sanitarium work buildings already erected.--Letter 211, 1904.
In response to her urging, Burden looked around for likely properties in southern California that could be secured at a reasonable sum. In the late 1880s many establishments had been built for tourists and health resorts, but the businesses had failed.
The building that now seemed most likely to provide what was needed was the castlelike Glendale Hotel, built in 1886 and situated on a five-acre tract of land bordered by dirt roads. At that time Glendale was a country settlement of five hundred inhabitants, eight miles from Los Angeles.
A seventy-five room, unfurnished structure that had cost $60,000 was available. Because of the business failures in southern California, it had never been used as a hotel. It served for four years as an Episcopal school for girls; then in 1901 and 1902, before the Glendale High School was built, it was used as a public high school.
On the property were shade trees and orchards. Around it were chicken ranches and a scattering of modest homes. In 1904 a real-estate developer, Leslie C. Brand, controlled the property. The asking price was $26,000, which Burden knew was far out of his reach.
As he sat in his buggy looking over the hotel grounds, Burden decided that if he could buy it for $15,000 he would regard this as a sign of divine approval. Taking several of his brethren with him, he approached Mr. Brand and explained, "'Our money will have to come from church members. Can you help us by reducing the price?'"
Brand thought a moment and then asked, "'How does $12,500 sound?'" Burden responded that it sounded fine. He took out a $20 bill and gave it to Brand as a deposit on the purchase (Johns and Utt, eds., The Vision Bold, p. 163).
At the conference headquarters Burden was dealing with the same administrators who had hesitated so long about investing in the Paradise Valley Sanitarium. Mention has already been made of the small memberships and heavy indebtedness of the conference. The conference lacked even the thousand dollars needed for a down payment on the Glendale property. The president of the Pacific Union Conference had made it very clear to the local conference administration that there must be a stop to increasing indebtedness, and there must be a turnaround in financial affairs of the Southern California Conference.
Burden took the matter to the constituency at the camp meeting in September, 1904, and to his disappointment, they rejected the purchase for lack of money.
At last Elder Burden was able to enlist the help of Elder Clarence Santee, the Conference president. The two men decided to advance the money for the down payment out of their own pockets. Just at this time Sister White sent a message urging in strong terms the purchase of the property, and Elder Santee read it to the conference delegates in session.
"Why is this work delayed?" she asked. She also persuaded two of the church members to advance a thousand dollars each toward the purchase of the institution. The delegates rallied and pledged $5,200 to buy the Glendale Hotel. A cash payment of $4,500 was made, and a three-year mortgage was agreed upon for the balance. A board of trustees was set up with Elder Santee as chairman, which took steps at once to develop the institution.
Ellen White's Visit
This was the situation when Ellen White stopped at the new Glendale institution. She went through all the rooms of the new Sanitarium, many of which were freshly painted. She wished there were more land than the five acres connected with the building, but she observed, "It is certainly in the country for there are no buildings very near it. It is surrounded by large fields of strawberries, and by orange orchards."--Letter 311, 1904.
In spite of the fact that men were painting here also, Ellen White decided to stay over the weekend. On Monday, December 5, she went over to Redlands, some sixty-five miles to the east. Elder E. S. Ballenger, pastor of the new church that had been raised there as the result of an evangelistic effort, had invited Ellen White to come. She stayed in the Ballenger home for a few days and there completed some Review and Herald articles.
Sabbath morning she spoke for about thirty minutes in the Redlands church, which was about as much as she dared venture in her state of health. She later observed that "just such places [as Redlands] had been presented to me in vision as places to which we must give special attention."--Manuscript 30, 1905. Describing her visit there in a letter to her friend, Mrs. Crawford, she remarked, "I wish that a small sanitarium could be started there."--Letter 349, 1904.
She noted, "The climate in this valley is very good."--Letter 321, 1904. Sunday morning Mr. Boles and his wife took her and Sara the eleven miles to Riverside, where Mrs. White was to speak in the new church. On the way they passed through one orange grove after another. She spoke for half an hour and then went for a treatment at a nearby treatment room operated by Dr. J. R. Leadsworth. After resting a time, she returned to Redlands and then back to Glendale and headed for her home in the north.
As Ellen White traveled north, she was not able to meet as large a number of speaking appointments as she ordinarily would have. Her health had not been good. On the trip south she had spoken at Fresno on Sabbath, and then was invited to go down to the Hanford-Lemoore District, where she agreed to fill appointments every afternoon for four days at missionary meetings being held in nearby towns. Going on to Los Angeles, she stayed Sabbath and Sunday and spoke on both days in a large tent in which Elder W. W. Simpson, a successful evangelist, had been holding meetings. Sabbath there were twenty-five hundred people present and Sunday there were a thousand (Letter 311, 1904).
While staying at the Paradise Valley Sanitarium and really not well, she was urged by the members of the San Diego church to hold a meeting there. So on a Sunday morning she drove six miles to San Diego, but after speaking for fifteen minutes she found that she could not go on. She had to give up and return the six miles to Paradise Valley Sanitarium. This was a very unusual experience for her. Many times the Lord had given her special strength to meet her speaking appointments, but this time was an exception, and she and her audience were disappointed. Then there was the speaking appointment in Redlands and the one on Sunday at Riverside.
On her trip back home to St. Helena, she made a stopover at Mountain View to consult with the brethren. She wrote in her diary while there:
I am strongly impressed that my family shall locate here to be near the printing establishment, but the Lord must direct us, for it means a great deal to us to uproot and to resettle and perhaps have to build. St. Helena has been my refuge, but I have much printing to be done. May the Lord spare my life to do His work before I shall rest in the grave is my prayer.--Manuscript 147, 1904.
W. C. White, Sara McEnterfer, and Maggie Hare had been with Ellen White on the trip. They were all glad to be home, arriving on Tuesday, December 20. Later she wrote, "We are home again, and I am in my own room, writing to you."--Letter 341, 1904.
Seven months of the year 1904 Ellen White had spent away from home (Letter 349, 1904).
Completion of the Ministry of Healing Manuscript
Back in her home environment she and her helpers took up the work of completing the manuscript for the health book to be called The Ministry of Healing.
This book was long in the planning stage. For a decade or more it had been Ellen White's hope to produce a book that presented the health message in its fullness--a book not for the reading of Adventists only, but for the general public.
In 1864 she published her first writing on health, presenting it in a thirty-one-page chapter in Spiritual Gifts, Volume IV. This was a resume of what was revealed to her in the June 6, 1863, vision. A year later she prepared six articles on the main phases of healthful living for publication in the six pamphlets entitled Health: or How to Live. In the following years she presented various phases of healthful living in chapters of the Testimonies and articles in the Health Reformer, Review and Herald, and Youth's Instructor.
In 1890 a compilation was made from materials appearing in these sources and the unpublished E. G. White manuscripts available, for the book Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene. The first part, "Christian Temperance" (156 pages), was from her pen; the "Bible Hygiene" section (105 pages) was from James White's editorials and articles in the Health Reformer.
"The work of compilation," the preface denotes, "has been done under the supervision of Mrs. White, by a committee appointed by her for the purpose, and the manuscript has been carefully examined by her."
Dr. J. H. Kellogg, who served on the committee and wrote the preface, declares that the compilation of Ellen White's teachings was prepared for "those for whom they were specially intended"--in other words, Seventh-day Adventists. The book had wide distribution. Portions, and some chapters, are found today in Counsels on Health and Fundamentals of Christian Education.
In 1897, while Ellen White was in Australia, the medical missionary board of Battle Creek, Michigan, published, under the title Healthful Living, a 284-page compilation of "the various teachings upon the subject of health, health reform, and allied matters, which are to be found in the writings of Mrs. E. G. White" (p. 3). This was described as being in "the most concise and condensed form possible'' (Ibid.). Dr. David Paulson led out in arranging this reference work, which presented her teachings in selected numbered paragraphs, with appropriate source references. It was somewhat of an encyclopedic work, and was much loved by health-minded Seventh-day Adventists. This book, prepared in Ellen White's absence, came short of being a book for the general public and served for the reading of the rank and file of Seventh-day Adventists.
Not until her return to North America could consideration be given to a new comprehensive book on health, and even then it must await the preparation of the book Education. In a letter to Elder Daniells written June 24, 1901, she mentions the "temperance book" that "should ... be published" (Letter 55, 1901). As that project neared reality, she wrote in September, 1903, "My next book is to be on temperance and the medical missionary work."--Letter 209, 1903.
Twelve months later she told of how "Marian [Davis] is collecting that which I have written and placing it in order to frame the book now being prepared, The Ministry of Healing."--Manuscript 144, 1904.
How the Work was Done
Ellen White had written extensively on health. For forty years following the health-reform vision of 1863, she had made repeated presentations. So, with the help of Marian Davis, who had assisted her for nearly twenty-five years, the writings on health had been drawn together and placed in an effective sequence.
Though all the material was drawn from writings portraying the light given to her, Ellen White welcomed the opinions of her working staff on the selection and arrangement of materials and the relative amount of space a particular topic should be allowed, and even in the choice of words used. She was eager that the important truths on health should be set forth in the clearest, most appealing, and most effective manner. But her word was final as she painstakingly read and reread the chapters as they were being compiled. While Mrs. White's literary assistants drew matter together, arranging it carefully, at no time did they attempt to augment the E. G. White text. Ellen White worked closely with Marian Davis, filling in here and there what was needed to round out the subject.
The plan for The Ministry of Healing was a broad one and called for much painstaking work. The first section of nearly one hundred pages was released as a series of articles in the Pacific Health Journal while the overall manuscript was in preparation.
On February 1, 1905, she reported, "I have been reading the matter prepared for Ministry of Healing, and I feel much relieved to think that the book is ready for publication, and that it will soon be in circulation."--Letter 73, 1905.
At another time she reported that "the manuscript will go to press as soon as I can give it a final critical reading."--Letter 303, 1904.
But there was more to do than prepare the manuscript. Denominational publishers in 1904 were not in any position to make the large investment called for in typesetting, illustrating, and plate making for such a book as The Ministry of Healing. These expenses would run about $3,000. Ellen White herself approached Seventh-day Adventist acquaintances for loans to help capitalize the project.
To a sister in the faith who possessed some means, she wrote on July 11, 1904:
Sister Marian, I have a request to make. Can you lend me one thousand dollars? I need money to help me in getting out my books. I have one book, The Ministry of Healing, which is almost ready for the printer.--Letter 231, 1904.
A week later she approached a brother in the faith:
I now wish to ask you if you could lend me one thousand dollars, to be used in bringing out some important books.... The Ministry of Healing is now almost ready for the printer.--Letter 247, 1904.
Not a few Seventh-day Adventists were pleased to lend Ellen White money to assist her in book publication and as an interest-bearing investment in her books.
Then there were the illustrations. The Ministry of Healing was planned as a book for sale to the general public. W. C. White arranged with Adventist artist W. A. Reaser to serve as art director and do the sketches for the book. Another Adventist artist, Pedro Lemos, designed the texts and mottos.
Now another element was interjected. Even though in debt, Ellen G. White four years earlier had made a gift of the book Christ's Object Lessons to aid in lifting the debts resting heavily on the denomination's educational institutions. More than $300,000 was brought in as publishers, ministry, and laymen cooperated in the effort (Letter 102, 1908).
Now Ellen White proposed to make The Ministry of Healing available for a similar effort to assist the sanitariums, but she reserved the privilege of designating the institutions that would benefit. In 1907 she wrote:
It was God's purpose that by the sale of Ministry of Healing and Christ's Object Lessons the necessary means would be raised for the work of our sanitariums and schools, and thus our people be left free to donate of their means for the opening of the work in new fields.... Wherever the work of selling Christ's Object Lessons has been taken hold of in earnest, the book has had a good circulation. And the lessons that have been learned by those who have engaged in this work have well repaid their efforts. Our people should all be encouraged to take a part in this missionary effort.... Christ's Object Lessons and Ministry of Healing ... are books which contain precious truths, and from which the reader can draw lessons of highest value.--Letter 276, 1907.
She felt clear on this even though she was carrying an indebtedness of $20,000.