If the telegram that reached Elmshaven Tuesday morning, February 18, 1902, had said that the Review and Herald Publishing House had been destroyed by fire, Ellen White would not have been surprised. Five months earlier she had written to its managers a message that was read to the board:
"I have been almost afraid to open the Review, fearing to see that God has cleansed the publishing house by fire" (Letter 138, 1901; Testimonies for the Church, 8:91]).
But the message that came that rainy morning was that the two main sanitarium buildings in Battle Creek had just burned to the ground. Mrs. White reached for her pen and somewhat in agony noted:
I would at this time speak words of wisdom, but what can I say? We are afflicted with those whose life interests are bound up in this institution. Let us pray that this calamity shall work together for good to those who must feel it very deeply. We can indeed weep with those who weep (Manuscript 76, 1903).
Why was it, she was led to ask, that this institution, which had been such a great means for good, should suffer such loss? As her pen traced the words, page after page, she wrote:
I am instructed to say, Let no one attempt to give a reason for the burning of the institution that we have so highly appreciated. Let no one attempt to say why this calamity was permitted to come. Let everyone examine his own course of action. Let everyone ask himself whether he is meeting the standard that God has placed before him.... Let no one try to explain this mysterious providence. Let us thank God that there was not a great loss of life. In this we see God's merciful hand (Ibid.).
Anxiously the staff at Elmshaven waited for word presenting in detail just what had happened. This in some larger features came in the West Coast newspapers and then in more detail in letters and in the next issue of the Review and Herald.
It was a winter night, with snow quite deep on the ground. The sanitarium had been ever gaining in popularity, and its main buildings were filled to capacity. Its guest list carried names of business and government leaders. Only a skeleton staff was on duty at 4:00 Tuesday morning, February 18, 1902, when fire broke out in the basement of the main sanitarium building, just beneath the treatment rooms. The two main alarms in the building were set off as well as the nearest fire-alarm box in the city. Equipment from Battle Creek and nearby cities hurried to fight the blaze. But spreading through the ventilating and elevator shafts, the flames soon enveloped the building, making it clear that it could not be saved.
The nurses and other staff members swung into their practiced fire-evacuation plan, first taking the 50 patients who were unable to get out of their beds, then assisting women and children to safety.
Ambulatory patients made good use of fire escapes. With the special blessing of God all patients were cleared from the building. This was made certain as physicians and nurses, wet towels about their heads, felt their way through the dense smoke to recheck the rooms and corridors. As the insurance inspector looked over the situation a few days after the fire, he declared: "Nothing but divine power could have assisted those nurses and doctors to do as they did in getting the people out" (DF 45a, S. H. Lane to AGD, February 28, 1902).
But one man did lose his life. It was "old man Case," an eccentric patient in his late 80s, who, not trusting the banks, always carried his treasure with him in a satchel--"all the way from one to five thousand dollars" (Ibid.). He, his wife, and daughter were led to a place of safety, and then, unnoticed, he must have gone back into the building to retrieve his satchel with its treasure. He never came out.
The fire from the main sanitarium building soon spread across the street to the hospital, a five-story structure. Situated as the building was on a hill, water pressure was insufficient to protect it. So it burned too.
By 7:00 that Tuesday morning it was all over. The principal sanitarium structures were gone. The patients, some 400 in all, had been moved to "the several large buildings which" were "rapidly adapted to the purpose, and the cottages which were not included in the disaster" (Medical Magazine, April 1902, p. 181). Immediately the staff swung into action to provide for the continued care of the patients. The treatment schedule, modified somewhat, continued that day.
Dr. Kellogg was on the train returning from the West Coast to Battle Creek at the time of the fire. He learned of it when he arrived in Chicago on Tuesday evening. As he continued his journey to Battle Creek he called for a table and utilized the two hours in drawing plans for a new sanitarium building.
The moving of Battle Creek College to Berrien Springs four months previous to the fire had left buildings vacant that were available to the sanitarium. The two dormitories, West Hall and South Hall, were soon filled with sanitarium patients. The old Battle Creek College classroom and administration building furnished space for the business offices. East Hall, the sanitarium-owned dormitory occupied by nurses, was able to accommodate 150 of the patients. The nurses moved elsewhere. Extensive bath and treatment rooms were quickly fitted up in the basements of two of these buildings. So within a few days' time the sanitarium program was moving forward quite normally.
W. C. White refused to believe the first report of the disaster. But the second report bore evidence of authenticity, and in a letter he explained his feelings: "I wish to join with all our people in mourning at this great loss to us as a people, and to the world" (18 WCW, p. 425).
The citizens of Battle Creek asked for the privilege of holding a mass meeting in the tabernacle on the evening of Wednesday, February 19. It was led by the clergy of the city. The tabernacle was packed; eulogies were spoken, and pledges given of moral and financial support.
As Ellen White pondered the first sketchy news of the fire, while the embers were still warm in Battle Creek, she wrote:
Our heavenly Father does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men. He has His purpose in the whirlwind and the storm, in the fire and in the flood. The Lord permits calamities to come to His people to save them from greater dangers (Manuscript 76, 1903).
Plans To Rebuild
Plans were quickly drawn for a new sanitarium, "a temple of truth." Building concerns were consulted. Bids were called for. A special meeting of the General Conference Committee was called, and approval was given to the general plan for rebuilding the Battle Creek Sanitarium. One special point was the prospect of financial relief in Dr. Kellogg's proposal of writing a book to help raise money. The General Conference Committee considered it a "grand proposition." The doctor proposed providing 400,000 copies as a gift.
On March 25 A. G. Daniells reported this and other developments in a letter to W. C. White. Between $80,000 and $90,000 had been subscribed in the city of Battle Creek toward a new sanitarium; this, along with the insurance money, amounting to $154,000, would provide a "fair sum with which to erect a new building."
We have accepted plans submitted by an Ohio architect. They are plain but dignified. We propose to erect an absolutely fireproof building, and to pay the cash for everything. We suppose that when it is finished, furnished, and fully equipped for business, the cost will be between $250,000 and $300,000. But the board is determined that no debt shall be incurred by the erection of this building (DF 45a, AGD to WCW, March 25, 1902).
Even the assurance of a modest building and of a debt-free building program did not put Ellen White's mind at ease. On the last night of April a vision was given to her concerning the rebuilding of the sanitarium, and she wrote in a letter addressed to Dr. Kellogg:
I have been given a message for you. You have had many cautions and warnings, which I sincerely hope and pray you will consider. Last night I was instructed to tell you that the great display you are making in Battle Creek is not after God's order. You are planning to build in Battle Creek a larger sanitarium than should be erected there. There are other parts of the Lord's vineyard in which buildings are greatly needed (Letter 125, 1902).
"It is not wise to erect mammoth institutions," she wrote in a letter to Dr. Percy Magan, now at Berrien Springs."I have been shown that it is not by the largeness of an institution that the greatest work for souls is to be accomplished" (Letter 71, 1902).
In the months that followed she wrote much more along these lines to those who were carrying responsibilities in Battle Creek, both in the sanitarium and in the General Conference.
Laying The Cornerstone
With the plans drawn and accepted and the bids let, the next step was to lay the cornerstone. Sunday afternoon, May 11, 1902, about 10,000 people gathered for the elaborate ceremonies, with guest speakers from the government and the clergy from the city. Sanitarium employees were seated back of the speakers' stand, and sanitarium guests and citizens, in front. W. W. Prescott led out in the main address of the afternoon. Appropriately, the cornerstone was laid by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg himself. In his address he reminded helpers, guests, and townspeople of the principles for which the institution stood. He referred to its history--a history he had often connected with God's providential guidance through the light given to Mrs. White.
He likened this new institution to the Temple city Jerusalem, to which the ancient Israelites looked from all over the world. In passing, we note that an element of pantheism appeared in this address, representing a philosophy he firmly held in his heart, but the perils of which had not yet been seen by his associates.
Kellogg was an energetic, forceful, persuasive man, and somehow the General Conference leadership through the middle 1890s found it difficult to resist his insistence on borrowing money for capital investments for institutions and then persuading the General Conference Association to assume the obligations. Debts piled on debts--debts assumed with no systematic plan for their amortization.
When Elder Daniells took up his responsibilities as leader of the church after the General Conference session of 1901, he was appalled to find that the total institutional indebtedness was close to $500,000. In the context of the times, this was a huge sum. The top pay of ministers, physicians, and publishing house employees at this time was $12 to $15 a week (DF 243d).
In the meantime, brick was being laid on brick in Battle Creek, and the sanitarium edifice was rising--an edifice that church leaders were soon to discover would cost between two and three times the amount estimated. What is more, not all the promises for financial help made when the institution was destroyed by fire were kept. Some of the pledges by the businesspeople and citizens of Battle Creek were never honored. The expected income from the sales of The Living Temple, Dr. Kellogg's gift book, did not materialize, for church leaders found it permeated with pantheistic philosophies. There is no indication that the pledge made by the sanitarium board or the General Conference Committee that no further debt would be incurred in the rebuilding of the sanitarium was kept or even remembered.
On July 6 a message from Ellen White addressed to the General Conference Committee and the Medical Missionary Board included this counsel:
I am instructed to say that our people must not be drawn upon for means to erect an immense sanitarium in Battle Creek; the money that would be used in the erection of that one mammoth building should be used in making plants in many places. We must not draw all we can from our people for the establishment of a great sanitarium in one place, to the neglect of other places, which are unworked for the want of means (Letter 128, 1902).
The Sanitarium Undenominational?
Another deep concern on the part of Ellen White was regarding the position that Dr. Kellogg was taking and advocating, that the Battle Creek Sanitarium was undenominational. This was being heard more and more frequently. Its seeds went back for almost 10 years when Kellogg began to envision the medical work being done by Seventh-day Adventists as a great Christian benevolent work, not particularly denominational in its character. In 1893 the Seventh-day Adventist Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association had been formed to succeed the earlier Health and Temperance Association. But in 1896 the name had been changed, dropping out the words "Seventh-day Adventist" and adding the word "International" (The Story of Our Health Message, 249).
Writing in 1898, Dr. Kellogg declared of this organization that it was developed to "carry forward medical and philanthropic work independent of any sectarian or denominational control, in home and foreign lands" (The Medical Missionary, January, 1898; quoted in The Story of Our Health Message, 249; italics supplied).
The following year at a convention of the association it was declared that the delegates were "here as Christians, and not as Seventh-day Adventists." Nor were they present "for the purpose of presenting anything that is peculiarly Seventh-day Adventist in doctrine."
The growing number of undenominational declarations on the part of Dr. Kellogg and his close associates provided sound basis for alarm, and of this Ellen White spoke in midsummer, 1902:
It has been stated that the Battle Creek Sanitarium is not denominational. But if ever an institution was established to be denominational in every sense of the word, this sanitarium was.
Why are sanitariums established if it is not that they may be the right hand of the gospel in calling the attention of men and women to the truth that we are living amid the perils of the last days? And yet, in one sense, it is true that the Battle Creek Sanitarium is undenominational, in that it receives as patients people of all classes and all denominations (Letter 128, 1902 [The Story of Our Health Message, 253]).
And she pointed out:
We are not to take pains to declare that the Battle Creek Sanitarium is not a Seventh-day Adventist institution; for this it certainly is. As a Seventh-day Adventist institution it was established to represent the various features of gospel missionary work, thus to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord (Ibid.)
Dedication Of The New Building
The institution was dedicated in a three-day service running from Sabbath morning, May 30, to Monday night, June 1, with meetings held in the tabernacle and on the grounds of the sanitarium. The Sabbath morning service was one of dedication on the part of the workers to this important phase of the Lord's work (The Review and Herald, June 9, 1903).
In this dedication Ellen White could heartily agree. The Battle Creek Sanitarium was the Lord's institution. Even though some phases of counsel concerning its work had been brushed aside, it was still the Lord's institution. A few weeks before the dedication service, Mrs. White, speaking at the General Conference session of 1903, made this statement:
Let me say that God does not design that the sanitarium that has been erected in Battle Creek shall be in vain. He wants His people to understand this. Now that the building has been put up, He wants this institution to be placed on vantage ground.... We are now to make another effort to place our institution on solid ground. Let no one say, because there is a debt on the sanitarium in Battle Creek, "We will have nothing more to do in helping to build up that institution." The people of God must build that institution up, in the name of the Lord. It is to be placed where its work can be carried on intelligently (The General Conference Bulletin, 1903, 58; see also p. 67).
She urged that one man was not to stand alone at the head of the institution. It was God's will that His servants should stand united in carrying forward the work in a balanced way.
Just how the sanitarium could be placed on vantage ground she declared she did not know nor could she tell the congregation."But," she said, "I know that just as soon as the Holy Spirit shall come upon hearts, there will be unity in voice and understanding; and wisdom will be given us" (Ibid.).
She arranged for a complete set of her books to be furnished to the sanitarium as her gift (Letter 96, 1903). These were for the patients' library and were to be in the "best binding."