During the closing months of 1905 Ellen White was at Elmshaven and pressed hard with writing. On two occasions testimonies were sent that reached their destinations on just the right day to bring victory to God's cause. Both the matter of the proposed sale of Boulder (Colorado) Sanitarium, and the proposition of separating the several language groups of believers in North America into national conferences had been introduced at the General Conference session in Washington, D.C., in May.
The Boulder, Colorado, Sanitarium
Boulder Sanitarium was established in 1895 by Adventists. The plant consisted of a five-story main building of brick, two fourteen-room cottages, a barn, powerhouse, bakery, and laundry building (Record of Progress and An Earnest Appeal In Behalf of the Boulder-Colorado Sanitarium, 3). Money for construction had been borrowed from the General Conference Association. The plant, which was not to cost more than $30,000, when completed cost $75,000. The General Conference money came from funds invested in the cause by Adventists at low interest rates (28 WCW, p. 451).
It was expected that the organization making the investment in the Sanitarium would control it, and that the earnings of the institution would not only meet running expenses, but in time repay the capital investment.
Three factors militated against this: (1) poor management both at Boulder and Battle Creek; (2) the John Kellogg-inspired philosophy that it was wrong for conferences to own and control sanitariums and wrong for ministers to direct the work of physicians and nurses; and (3) the idea that inasmuch as Seventh-day Adventist sanitariums were philanthropic institutions, a sanitarium would do well if it paid running expenses without an interest obligation, let alone retire its indebtedness (Ibid., 452).
In the spirit of the last two of these propositions, Boulder Sanitarium was transferred to the supervision of the Kellogg-controlled International Medical Missionary Association. The General Conference was given a note for $45,000 in return for its investment of $75,000. Officials of the Colorado Conference were dropped from the board. For years the institution struggled financially, but in 1904, under F. M. Wilcox's management, it was able for the first time to pay one year's interest and, a year later, $4,000 on the note.
These were the circumstances when at the General Conference of 1905 in Washington, D.C., Dr. O. G. Place, who several years earlier had been a physician at Boulder Sanitarium, came forward with the proposition that he purchase the institution. He offered $50,000. Some time before, Dr. Place had purchased a hotel within a half mile of the Sanitarium and had opened a competing institution, one with less discipline, lower standards, and higher employee remuneration. One deficiency was that in this institution the patients and guests were served meat.
During the months preceding the General Conference session, Dr. Place had succeeded in making friends of the members of the Colorado Conference committee who had been left off the Boulder Sanitarium board. Taking all factors into consideration, he expected to be able to work out a deal while in Washington.
Ellen White, learning of the plans, went before the General Conference on Monday, May 29, with a vigorous protest against selling Boulder Sanitarium. Her message was based not only on the disclosure of the propositions made but on a vision given to her while there in Washington (Letter 163, 1905). "Recently," she said, "the question has been raised, What shall we do with the Colorado Sanitarium?"--Record of Progress and An Earnest Appeal In Behalf of the Boulder-Colorado Sanitarium, 39. She then discussed the situation:
The light given me has been that the plans followed in the building up of this institution were not altogether in accordance with the mind and will of God. Too much money was invested in the building.-- Ibid.
She pointed out that the solution in this case, as in other cases of a similar character, was not in selling and getting out, but in making the institution a success in spite of the problems. More than money was at stake:
After the investment has been made, the buildings erected, and our workers have gone in there, and wrestled and wrestled to make the work a success, and the Sanitarium has accomplished much good, shall we turn over the place to private parties? After the workers have wrestled all these years, shall those now connected with it give it up, and say they are beaten? We cannot have it so. No such representation of our work is to be made before the world.-- Ibid.
Every employee was to stretch his energies to make it a success. She declared:
God wants this institution to stand as an educating power in the medical missionary work, and He desires that those who have been struggling with all their might to make it a success shall not have labored in vain.... The light given me is that we should not rest until the Boulder Sanitarium is a decided success. What we need is to gird on the armor, and advance in unity.--Ibid., 39, 40.
She was positive in her position:
God wants us never to do such a thing as to part with the Boulder Sanitarium. This institution will yet do its work, and will do it well.--Ibid., 41.
Then she pointed out that it was not in the order of God that another medical institution was started in Boulder. God had not sent a second sanitarium to Boulder. There were plenty of places a physician could go to establish another sanitarium.
Those carrying the responsibilities at the Sanitarium knew nothing prior to the General Conference session of the proposition that the institution be sold. When they learned what was going on, and that the president of the conference was a party to it, they were shocked; relationships were really strained.
Later Ellen White wrote more in regard to a second sanitarium in Boulder:
The light which God has given me is that Dr. Place has not the glory of God in view in establishing a sanitarium in Boulder so near the one which is already located there.--Letter 198, 1906.
And to the doctor she wrote on the same day:
Dr. Place, you could not have properly considered the results upon others, or you would not have established a sanitarium where you are now located. Your management in this matter has not pleased the Lord. Your sanitarium cannot be carried on to the glory of God, situated as near as it is to the Boulder Sanitarium....
And why was our Boulder Sanitarium established? Was it not to teach health reform, and use rational methods in the treatment of disease? Dr. Place, if your institution gives indulgence to meat-eating and various other appetites, then is not its influence against the sanitarium already established, where the principles of health reform are upheld?
I have had the situation opened to me, my brother, and the results for which a sanitarium should be conducted. The Boulder Sanitarium had, in the fear of God, taken the ground that our leading sanitariums have taken--to discard meat, tea, coffee, spirituous liquor, and the drug medications. Temperance principles had been taught in parlor lectures, and in other ways. Wholesome foods were served, and genuine health reform was taught. This institution should have had the right of way. But by the location of another sanitarium so nearby, the principles of which are in some respects quite different from those of the Boulder Sanitarium, difficulties will be presented which should not exist.--Letter 196, 1906.
The matter of serving meat was one Ellen White mentioned in an appeal to the "Brethren and Sisters in the Colorado Conference," August 10, 1905:
Abstinence from flesh meat will prove a great benefit to those who abstain. The diet question is a subject of vital importance. Those who do not conduct sanitariums in the right way lose their opportunity to help the very ones who need help the most. Our sanitariums are established for a special purpose, to teach people that we do not live to eat, but that we eat to live.--Manuscript 90, 1905 (Special Testimonies, Series B 5:28, 29). [The several E. G. White documents dealing with the boulder sanitarium situation were first assembled as parts of Manuscript 90, 1905, and later printed in Special Testimonies, Series B, No. 5.]
The straight testimony of the messenger of the Lord precluded any precipitous action on the selling of the Sanitarium. Yet not all in Colorado were convinced that selling might not be a way out of the problem they faced.
Proposal of a Sanitarium at Canon City
Just then another factor was interjected--the proposition of establishing a new sanitarium in Colorado. This was to be in Canon City, 100 miles to the south of Boulder, in a rather sparsely settled area. The chief attraction was newly developed artesian wells with mineral water thought to be of curative value.
The Denver papers of August 5 carried the story. A corporation was being formed to open a general tourist sanitarium. The incorporators were Pitt W. Wade, a young Seventh-day Adventist physician; A. G. Wade, his brother; and W. W. Hills, a physician who had labored for years as a minister in the Colorado Conference.
The board of directors was announced as: Pitt W. Wade, W. W. Hills, C. J. Frederickson (the county treasurer), M. J. Evans (a banker), and the president of the Colorado Conference. Capital stock was set at $200,000, in shares of one dollar each. The objectives stated in the corporation charter were broad. First, on the list was "the founding of a general tourist sanitarium," but the category of potential interests embraced almost every type of activity from owning, controlling, and leasing of manufacturing plants, to mercantile concerns, printing establishments, and cattle raising. The promoters hoped to raise some $40,000 from Seventh-day Adventists.
The announcing of these plans did two things: it brought discouragement to those trying to make the Boulder Sanitarium a success, and it led the messenger of the Lord to enter the picture.
On August 10 she wrote to physicians and ministers in Colorado:
I have a message for the brethren who contemplate establishing a sanitarium at Canon City. The Lord forbids, at this time, any movement that would tend to draw to other enterprises the sympathy and support that are needed just now by the Boulder Sanitarium. This is a critical time for that institution.--Record of Progress and An Earnest Appeal In Behalf of the Boulder-Colorado Sanitarium, 32.
To those who would now solicit means from our people for the establishment of a sanitarium in Canon City, I am bidden to say, Stop where you are and consider the necessities that have been laid before you a [sanitarium on the school grounds in Takoma Park, a sanitarium to be built near Nashville, and assistance to the school at Huntsville]. These necessities demand attention. Do not draw means from our people to establish something that is not a positive necessity. Let not your zeal abate, but do those things that the Lord would have you do.--Ibid., 36.
She urged that their ambitions should be focused on the institution already established, until it was free from debt. Boulder Sanitarium was to receive all the help that could be given to it (Ibid.).
Delicate Issues at the Camp Meeting
Camp meeting was to be held in Colorado at Denver, August 17-27. Elder G. A. Irwin, General Conference vice-president, was still on the West Coast awaiting the arrival of his wife from Australia, where she had labored with her husband prior to his appointment as General Conference vice-president. While he waited, he spent a number of days at Elmshaven. He was to attend the Colorado meeting as a General Conference representative and was fully aware of the confused and critical situation in that State. He asked Ellen White to let him have copies of what she had written from time to time about Boulder Sanitarium. He would take with him what he could, and other documents would be mailed to him in Denver.
Ellen White was to leave August 10 for the Los Angeles camp meeting. Before leaving, she was up much of two nights writing and getting testimonies ready for Colorado. She and her staff assembled the materials, and the secretaries copied five key documents, which, after a careful final reading by Ellen White, were hastened by mail to Elder Irwin (28 WCW, p. 263).
In her communication dated August 10 she dealt again very plainly with the proposition to the Sanitarium, and with the competitive institution in Boulder. She then took up the proposal of the Canon City Sanitarium. These Elder Irwin received by mail in Denver and used effectively.
An Affirmative Response to Testimonies Carefully Presented
After the difficult Denver meeting, Elder Irwin wrote telling how he had dreaded that meeting, for "there were so many conflicting interests to harmonize." But, he reported, "the testimonies...came just at the right time."--G. A. Irwin to WCW, August 28, 1905. He first took the conference president to one side, talked with him, and read him the testimonies. Irwin reported that the president listened very attentively and respectfully to the end, and that a very deep impression was made upon him. He had favored the transfer of Boulder Sanitarium to Dr. Place, and was, as noted, also in sympathy with the enterprise in Canon City. The message struck him hard, but he accepted the counsel (Ibid.).
Elder Irwin then talked with Dr. Hills and he also acquiesced to the counsel, although it was clear that it was a heavy blow to him (Ibid.).
Dr. Wade, who could not be at the camp meeting, learned of the testimonies and telegraphed that he felt in harmony with what the Lord had said.
The messages from Ellen White were read to the conference committee and then to all the workers of the Colorado Conference. With the workers committed, Elder Irwin took the matter to the whole body of believers assembled, where a vote was taken. There was not a dissenting vote.
The victory was gained. The conference committee issued a statement, referring first to the counsel given, which "met with a hearty general response on the part of our conference workers and conference delegates" (Ibid., 49).
Then in penitent explanation the statement continued that while this instruction seemed to cut directly across plans that were believed to be right and that accorded with the best judgment of those concerned with them at the time, they felt that the only consistent position they could take was to acknowledge the mistaken judgment cheerfully and gladly, and yield their own plans to the instruction sent to them (Ibid.).
The statement of the conference committee pointed out that in the reorganization of Boulder Sanitarium it was now "more than ever before a denominational institution" (Ibid., 50). Full support of the conference constituency was solicited.
But Why Not Canon City?
But it was not easy for the leading promoters of the Canon City Sanitarium to give up their enterprise. In late September Dr. Wade visited Ellen White at Elmshaven and laid the matter before her in as favorable light as he could. Adjustments had been made in the plans that would leave the conference president and non-SDA businessmen off the board, and limit the financial support to non-church members. As he sought her support, she told him if she had further light from the Lord on the matter she would send it to him. On Thursday night, September 28, a vision was given to her providing "further light." This formed the basis of three communications. The first, a letter to Dr. Wade, was written October 2:
I have not written to you before, regarding the sanitarium enterprise with which you are connected; for I have received no light that would lead me to write anything contrary to that which was contained in the testimony read in Denver by Elder Irwin. But I am now prepared to speak positively. Last Thursday night [September 28] the matter was presented to me more fully.
She told Dr. Wade that he was in need of "treatment from the Great Physician of soul and body." "You need a new spiritual life," she urged, and then added:
Were a sanitarium established by you, circumstances would arise that would injure the experience of others who might be connected with the institution. The matter has been made plain to me, and I am authorized to say that the men who are united in the matter of erecting and controlling a sanitarium in Canon City are not qualified to do the best kind of work. Should they carry out their plans there would be disappointment and continual friction.--Letter 285, 1905.
This was followed by a personal appeal for the cultivation of the heavenly graces.
The same day she wrote an eight-page testimony addressed to "The Promoters of the Canon City Sanitarium." It opened with words right to the point:
Last Thursday night, September 28, light was given me that the testimonies written out and sent to Elder Irwin to be read at the camp meeting in Denver were being made of no effect by some who are not pleased with the instruction that the Lord has given in regard to the undertaking of private sanitarium enterprises in Colorado.
I saw that in the company formed for the management of the Canon City Sanitarium enterprise, it is not alone the unbelieving elements that are objectionable. Some of those connected with this movement, who profess to believe the truth, are not qualified to carry out their ambitious purposes. It is in mercy that the Lord, who knows the end from the beginning, sends His warning to these brethren, not for their discouragement, but that they may be kept from making mistakes which would lead them away from Him.
Then she added words of gentle reproof to those who persisted in endeavoring to find a way to carry out their own plans in spite of counsel that they should not do so. She declared, stating a hermeneutic principle:
In the testimonies sent to the Denver meeting, the Spirit of God dictated a message that should prevent the carrying out of plans which would result in disappointment....God does not at one time send a message of warning, and later another message, encouraging a movement against which He had previously given warning. His messages do not contradict one another.--Letter 287, 1905.
Linking Up With Unbelievers
One week later she wrote to Doctors Wade and Hills:
The Lord has repeatedly instructed me to say to His people that they are not to bind up with the world in business partnerships of any kind, and especially in so important a matter as the establishment of a sanitarium. Believers and unbelievers, serving two masters, cannot properly be linked together in the Lord's work. "Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" God forbids His people to unite with unbelievers in the building up of His institutions.
She laid out clearly the involvements:
One of the dangers to be met if we should link up with unbelievers is that we cannot depend upon the opinions and judgment, regarding the sacred interests of the Lord's work, of men who, with the Bible open before them, are living in open transgression of the law of God. We cannot depend upon them, because the enemy of Christ influences their minds.
They may be ever so favorable to our work now, but in the future there will come times of crisis, and then our people will be brought into a position of extreme trial, if they are bound up in any way with the worldlings. Our people may think that they can guard against these difficulties that would naturally arise in their union with worldlings, but in this they will be disappointed.
In connection with any combination with outside parties, there will be disappointment. It behooves us to move very guardedly, for thereby we shall save ourselves much burden and trouble, for the light given me is that to link up with them and to lean upon them is folly and disappointment.
"Wait," she counseled. "Wait until the Lord shall manifest Himself in a more distinct and striking manner than He has done."
She reminded the two physicians:
Our health institutions are of value in the Lord's estimation only when He is allowed to preside in their management. If His plans and devisings are regarded as inferior to plans of men, He looks upon these institutions as of no more value than the institutions established and conducted by worldlings.--Letter 283, 1905.
The Canon City enterprise was reluctantly abandoned. Boulder Sanitarium survived.
To place in permanent form before church members throughout Colorado the history and the testimonies concerning the Sanitarium matters, a pamphlet of eighty pages was published at Pacific Press in the late fall of 1905. It carried the title "Record of Progress and an Earnest Appeal in Behalf of the Boulder, Colorado, Sanitarium." The pamphlet was designated as Special Testimonies, Series B, No. 5. This made it a part of a growing series of special testimonies, issued to meet special or local situations. The next year, after some developments in the situation in Colorado, a second printing was made with added material bringing the presentation up-to-date.