The periodical that James White launched in November 1850 has for over a century been known to old-timers as "the good old Review." It is registered with the post office as The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald. [1]
Advent Review? If the "advent" is the second coming of Christ, how can a periodical review an event before it happens?
The answer in 1850 was that the advent which the Review reviewed was the great Second Advent awakening. After the spring disappointment in 1844, Josiah Litch had initiated The Advent Shield, tracing the providence of God and the fulfillment of prophecy in the advent movement up to that time. In the summer of 1847 Joseph Bates wrote Second Advent Waymarks and High Heaps, an updated history on the same theme.
Ellen had seen in her first vision that the bright light of the midnight cry was to shine all along the path to the Holy City. This is one reason why there have been so many histories about early Adventism, including the one you are reading now. This is one reason, too, for the Advent Review.
And Sabbath Herald. The new paper was to herald a crucial message from Jesus in the most holy place designed to separate men and women from sin and draw them to Himself.
Between the initial sabbath-in-the-sanctuary discoveries and the inauguration of the Review and Herald, two and a half significant and formative years elapsed, marked by more than twenty [2] weekend conferences that continued the earlier weekend gatherings of 1846. These meetings were held in selected homes in the various geographic centers of Sabbath-keeping that were developing, in kitchens, parlors, a carriage house, a "large unfinished chamber," and in several swept-out barns.
The conference held in April 1848 was particularly noteworthy. Accustomed to attendance by only a dozen or so even in Topsham, James White was deeply impressed when about fifty people arrived for the meeting at Albert Belden's home in Rocky Hill, Connecticut. Years later he evaluated that conference as "the first general meeting held by Seventh-day Adventists. In point of numbers and influence, it marked a new era in the cause." [3]
A conference might last from Friday to Sunday or from Thursday afternoon to Monday morning. One was held on a Sunday and Monday. James White, like some living "Advent Review," presented evidence that the true events preached by the Millerite movement culminated in the entrance of Christ into the most holy place. Joseph Bates, himself a living "Sabbath Herald," preached on the Sabbath in the ark of His testimony and on the need to adopt the third angel's message.
The men and women who attended these meetings had been through the preparation and disappointment of 1844. Now, several years removed from that ecstasy and agony, they asked each other whether it was true? Did the 2300 days really end in 1844? Did Jesus indeed enter the inner court of the heavenly sanctuary? Did we truly preach the first and second messages? Is it "duty" now to pass along the third?
They were experienced in the sacrifice entailed in espousing an unpopular theology. They were inexperienced in the vagaries of liberal philosophies. Their criteria were the same as Luther's at the Diet of Worms--Scripture, common sense, and conscience. When they found that the Bible spoke clearly on the claims of the seventh-day Sabbath, most of them willingly staked their lives on it.
"Many of our people," wrote Ellen White in 1904, [4] "do not realize how firmly the foundation of our faith has been laid. My husband, Elder Joseph Bates, Father Pierce, Elder [Hiram] Edson, and others who were keen, noble, and true, were among those who ... searched for the truth as for hidden treasure. I met with them, and we studied and prayed earnestly. Often we remained together until late at night, and sometimes through the entire night, praying for light and studying the Word. Again and again these brethren came together to study the Bible, in order that they might know its meaning, and be prepared to teach it with power."
Ellen White's own role was limited but valuable. "When they came to the point in their study where they said, 'We can do nothing more,' the Spirit of the Lord would come upon me," she reports, "I would be taken off in vision, and a clear explanation of the passages we had been studying would be given me, with instruction as to how we were to labor and teach effectively."
The brethren at once looked up her suggestions in their Bibles and concordances and were thrilled to find that they really did clarify the points at issue. [5] These contributions of Ellen White's seeemed particularly impressive because "the brethren knew that when not in vision," she tells us, "I could not understand these matters." The general outline was plain enough, of course. But often she could not understand the Bible texts or the earnest reasoning that the brethren used to support their various points of view.
"I was in this condition of mind," she says, "until all the principal points of our faith were made dear to our minds, in harmony with the Word of God." Evidently it was God's purpose that the brethren should understand that the truth He was calling them to hold and proclaim was rooted in the Bible itself and not--as some might be tempted to say--merely in a young woman's dreams.
At the meeting held at David Arnold's place near Volney, New York, in the summer of 1848, Ellen White reports [6] that "about thirty-five were present,--all the friends that could be collected in that part of the State. But of this number there were hardly two agreed. Some were holding serious errors, and each strenuously urged his own views, declaring that they were according to the Scriptures."
As they began to celebrate the Lord's Supper, one of the brethren rose to say that he believed it should be observed only once a year--at the time Jesus Himself celebrated it. Someone taught that the millennium was already in the past.
"These strange differences of opinion rolled a heavy weight upon me," Ellen White remembered years later. "I saw," she wrote, "that many errors were being presented as truth. It seemed to me that God was dishonored. Great grief pressed upon my spirit, and I fainted under the burden. Some feared that I was dying. Brethren Bates, Chamberlain, Gurney, Edson, and my husband prayed for me. The Lord heard the prayers of His servants, and I revived.
"The light of heaven," she continued, "then rested upon me, and I was soon lost to earthly things."
In her vision she was shown what was wrong about the ideas these men were presenting, and what their true position ought to be. She was "bidden to tell them that they should yield their errors, and unite upon the truths of the third angel's message." The outcome was that the meeting "closed triumphantly. Truth gained the Victory," and the movement gained several new members.
It cost something to conduct these conferences. Ellen paid the most. Convinced that God was calling her to go, she tearfully left her infant son Henry with her dear friends, the Stockbridge Howlands, visiting him now and then for several years, like Hannah, with a present.
To secure money to attend the conference at David Arnold's farm, James White earned forty dollars mowing hay with a scythe--at eighty-seven and a half cents an acre.
While going home down the Erie Canal with the Whites after the meeting in Edson's barn at Port Gibson, dear Brother Bates attempted to step onto a canal boat with the precious dollar for his fare already in his hand. When the boat failed to stop Bates lost his balance. Undaunted, our former sea captain started swimming "with his pocketbook in one hand, and a dollar bill in the other. His hat fell off, and in saving it he lost the bill, but held fast to his pocketbook." A little later he and the Whites paid a surprise visit to a new Sabbath-keeping couple, Brother and Sister William Harris, hoping that Bates could get his clothing dried out.
The final gathering in 1848 was held at the Otis Nichols home in Dorchester on November 18 and 19. In some ways it was the most significant to that time. As the believers had come into ever closer unity on the great themes they were studying, a burden had developed that someone should lead out in publishing them. Should Elder Bates, perhaps, get out another book?
In Dorchester they prayed much for guidance in publishing the message. On Sunday, Mrs. White had a vision during which she spoke aloud about the Sabbath as the seal of God (Revelation 7) rising in the east like the sun and growing warmer and brighter until the saints are made immortal. After the vision she bade Brother Bates publish what she had said. [7] Turning to her husband she added, [8] "I have a message for you. You must begin to print a little paper and send it out to the people."
A little paper. Books are good, of course, but frequently they suffer neglect. Periodicals are more persistent.
Mrs. White discussed the proposed paper: "Let it be small at first; but as the people read," she promised, "they will send you means with which to print, and it will be a success from the first."
After a pause she added, "From this small beginning it was shown to me to be like streams of light that went clear around the world." That was an impressive prophecy to present to a handful of poverty-stricken pioneers!
A testing time followed. Many of the folk who wanted the journal printed wanted someone else to pay for it. Elder White had no money to publish it himself. Totally dedicated to his ministry, he depended for income on occasional jobs between evangelistic expeditions and on small donations. When he sought support for the proposed paper, the response was surprisingly depressing.
In January 1849 Joseph Bates stepped into the gap with a new book, A Seal of the Living God; A Hundred Forty-Four Thousand of the Servants of God Being Sealed, in 1849. Catching some of the breadth of Ellen White's "streams of light around the world," he confidently predicted the proclamation of the Sabbath in France, Britain, Russia, and lands east of the Euphrates.
One year later, early in 1850, James White also came out with a book, a 48-page hymnal titled, Hymns for God's Peculiar People, That Keep the Commandments of God, and the Faith of Jesus. It, too, carried the message about the seal of God, "the message clear, ascending from the east" and prayed,
O God, the living God,
Do thou the seal apply,
And from destruction's rod,
Oh! keep us lest we die. [9]
A hymn called "Second Advent History" traced the development of the first and second angels' messages till "yet a third and solemn message, now proclaims a final doom." Another one celebrated Ellen White's earliest visions. It was written by W.H. Hyde, who was healed when Ellen prayed for him in the first months of her prophetic ministry:
We have heard from the bright, the holy land;
We have heard, and our hearts are glad.
In her sunset years, Mrs. White was often heard humming this hymn to herself. [10]
Books of different kinds were good, but God had said He needed a periodical!
In 1848 White had scythed hay at eighty-seven and a half cents an acre to earn money to attend a conference. In July 1849, after months of unproductive pleading for his paper, he decided to try it again.
"I'm going out to find a field to mow," he announced to his wife. As he stepped out into the summer morning, a great burden pressed on Ellen and she fainted. Prayer was offered, and soon she felt better. A vision came.
"What was it about?" James asked later.
"About you."
"What did you see?"
"The Lord showed me that He blessed you last year when you went out to mow, but that if you tried the same thing now, He would let you get sick. Your work is to write, write, write and walk out by faith."
That did it. James found pen and paper and, with his Bible and concordance, began to prepare articles and editorials without delay. As he looked up texts, he sometimes found it hard to understand them. Then he and Ellen knelt and asked God to explain them. Then he continued writing.
At this time Elder and Mrs. White were living temporarily in Albert Belden's new farmhouse near Rocky Hill, Connecticut. The first conference of 1848 had convened in its "large unfinished chamber" (about 20 x 30 feet) on the second floor. James and Ellen, after nearly three years of marriage, still had no furniture. Everything they owned fitted easily into a three-foot trunk.
Every spare penny went into the cause. Miss Clarissa Bonfoey of nearby Middletown, a woman with a sunny disposition whose mother had passed away, offered to bring her things and move in with them. They were delighted. Her furniture was brought over by wagon, partitions were installed on the second floor, and house-keeping began.
It was a unique arrangement, Miss Bonfoey living with the Whites, and they all in turn living with the Beldens. Similar beliefs can seal friendships closer than blood. The attachment endured, and Ellen's sister Sarah later married the Belden boy, Steven, and became the mother of Frank E. Belden, the songwriter. [11]
In the same month that the paper was born (July 1849) the White's second baby was born also. The new baby was named James Edson. The new paper they called the Present Truth.
The title came from 2 Peter 1:12. In his first editorial White wrote, "In Peter's time there was present truth, or truth applicable to that present time. The Church has ever had a present truth. The present truth now, is that which shows present duty, and the right position for us who are about to witness the time of trouble, such as never was." The "present truth" was, of course, the Sabbath.
When the material was finished, James White walked into Middletown in dead heat of July, climbed to the upstairs office of a local printer, and requested a thousand copies.
James was suffering from a bad pain in his leg. He limped the eight miles in and the eight miles back.
As the printer, Mr. Charles Hamlin Pelton, gazed first at the proposed title and then at the article headings in James White's handwritten copy, he was puzzled. "The Weekly Sabbath Instituted at Creation, and not at Sinai," he read. "Is this 'present truth'?"
But a job is a job. He shrugged and pointed to the dotted line. White signed the contract and limped off down the long flight of "stairs. But as Pelton began hand setting the tiny letters, the mystery was resolved. "The storm is coming," he read. "War, famine and pestilence are already in the field of slaughter. Now is the time, the only time to seek a shelter in the truth of the living God."
Most of the material in the first three issues, though brand-new to the printer, was solid old Seventh Day Baptist teaching. In the third and fourth issues characteristic Adventist concepts emerged: Jesus in the sanctuary, the third angel's message, the Sabbath as God's seal, and a discussion of Isaiah 58:12-14, where last-day Sabbath keepers are called "repairers of the breach" (or "break") in God's law. "The time is come," declared James White, "for the Sabbath to be proclaimed more fully."
Elder White's lameness continued as repeatedly he hiked back and forth, reading proof and making sure the material was set up and printed to his satisfaction. When the copies were finished, he borrowed Brother Belden's buggy to bring them home.
They were placed in a pile on the floor. Believers were called in from nearby farms. With tears of earnestness they knelt around the papers and asked God to bless them. Then they folded them, cut their edges, and addressed them to everyone they thought might read them. James stuffed a few at a time into his carpet bag and carried them back to Middletown for mailing. Almost immediately letters and contributions came in encouraging him to carry on. After publishing four issues from Middletown, the Whites left the Albert Beldens', spent a few happy days with their three-year-old son Henry at the Stockbridge Howlands' in Topsham, Maine; then, borrowing furniture from local brethren, they settled for a while in Oswego, New York. Miss Bonfoey came along to baby-sit little Edson while Ellen White went traveling with her husband. With all the moving around the Present Truth lapsed a couple of months. When White secured a new printer and putout the December issue, he found that enthusiasm for the paper was nearly dead. Even Bates, indeed, was opposed [12] (temporarily, it turned out), probably reasoning that publication deadlines anchored an editor too much to a desk.
So meager were the offerings for a while that White was compelled to announce, "At the present time I am destitute of means, and am some in debt." [13] Ellen White added from a vision, "As I viewed the poor souls dying for want of the present truth, and some who profess to believe the truth letting them die, by withholding the necessary means to carry forward the word of God, the sight was too painful, and I begged the angel to remove it from me." [14]
Now the money came in. Apathy was replaced with ardor--and James White soon found himself editing two papers!
To the Present Truth he added the Advent Review. Then in November 1850 after the Whites had moved to Centerport, New York, and then to Paris, Maine, the first number of the first volume appeared of the Second Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, [15] a continuation of both papers united in one. In addition to articles about the Sabbath and the sanctuary, it published other items, of course, on a variety of biblical themes; also letters from Sabbath keepers, and notices on the whereabouts and activities of their few, ever-traveling ministers.
Subscriptions, free at first, were set after a while at $1.00 a year to those who could pay, though still free to those who could not. Almost every Adventist home received it, and most paid for it. It became a link of love binding the movement together and leading it forward.
Today the "good old Review," much improved and enlarged, still helps to keep the Seventh-day Adventist Church united and moving ahead while remembering the past. In recent years, indeed, the large growth in membership outside North America has led to the launching of special editions adapted to readers in other places, such as in Europe and South America.
After starting the new paper the Whites continued to travel too much, work too hard, and get paid too little. There was a great message to be carried and few messengers carried it. In 1851 James White became so discouraged from overwork that he set out one day to give the printer a note to be inserted in the next Review, that this was to be the last issue. But Ellen fainted again as he left the house, and he turned back to help her. They prayed, their faith revived, and the paper lived. [16]
While residing in Saratoga Springs, Elder White decided that they ought to stop hiring commercial shops to do their printing and should set up their own printing office instead. Too bad, he thought, that a periodical devoted to proclaiming the Sabbath should be printed on the Sabbath, as occasionally was the case. He felt, too, that believers would do the work with greater fidelity than unbelievers, and he hoped in addition to save some money for the cause.
To buy the necessary equipment, he would first have to find the money. An appeal went out, the funds came in, and White acquired a Washington handpress, much like the press that Gutenberg used in the fifteenth century.
Meanwhile another move had brought the Whites and the Review to Rochester. A rambling old house was rented (at $175.00 a year). It was large enough to accommodate the press, the type, the paper stock, the Whites, their young sons, and about a dozen dedicated volunteers. These received little more than their room and board, with the board often consisting of nothing more than mush or beans, meal after meal.
Notable among those who joined the staff in those early days were Annie Smith and a little later her brother Uriah.
Annie helped wherever she was needed, especially as copy editor and proofreader and sometimes even as a relief editor when Elder White was away. She had a talent for verse, and ten of her hymns are to be found in The Church Hymnal. "I Saw One Weary, Sad, and Worn" is only the best known of her many poems which adorned the front page of the Review. Most of these interpreted the movement in lyrical lines such as these:
We are going, we are going, now a lonely Pilgrim Band,
To a brighter world of glory--to a fair and happy land.
Her untimely death from consumption at age twenty-seven was deeply mourned.
Uriah Smith was also a poet, with a taste for more classical patterns but equally useful to the Advent Review:
The hour came on,
And with it came, as on the whirlwind borne,
"Behold the Bridegroom cometh, go ye out
To meet him!"
Uriah was twenty when he gave up his plans for a Harvard education and moved into the big house in Rochester. At the age of twenty-three, in 1855, he was made editor. With but few interruptions, he served the Review for fifty years, most of the time as editor-in-chief, but also for many years as bookkeeper, office manager, or proofreader.
Smith was skillful with tools as well as with pens. For a long time he was the only engraver at the press responsible for wood-cut illustrations. He made his own desks, two of which are preserved. [17] He secured a patent for an artificial leg--he had lost a leg in his teens--that enabled him to kneel when he prayed. Later he secured a patent for an improved school desk.
For many years Uriah Smith filled the position of General Conference secretary. Between nine and twelve o'clock at night he also found time to write books. His most famous is Thoughts on Daniel and the Revelation, which remained the standard Adventist interpretation of the two great prophetic books until decades after his death. Handsome, courteous, and committed, he was one of the best-known Adventist leaders during his lifetime. He died from a stroke suffered while walking to work on a Friday in March 1903 at the age of seventy-one.
But back to the early days! In 1855 the believers in Michigan invited the Whites to move from Rochester to Battle Creek and offered to build a little factory for them. The offer was gladly accepted, and a small two-story wooden structure was quickly erected.
During the decades that followed, steam-powered equipment replaced the little handpress. Increasingly spacious buildings replaced the tiny first one, until the Seventh-day Adventist Steam Press in Battle Creek became the largest and best-equipped printing establishment in the entire state of Michigan.
But Adventists have never forgotten that their first headquarters was the home that housed the press in Rochester, and that their first institution was a printing company. It was in order to incorporate this company as a legal publishing association that the leaders sat down in 1860 and selected the denomination's name. And as long as the General Conference offices were located in Battle Creek (from 1863 to 1903), they occupied rooms in the Review and Herald plant.
All of this is symbolic. The Seventh-day Adventist Church was called into existence on account of a special last-day message. Its mission is to live that message and to let others know about it (through books and papers and in other ways) so that they can live it too.
Notes:
- This chapter is based primarily on Ellen G. White, Life Sketches, pp. 110-128; James White, Life Incidents, pp. 264-296; contemporary correspondence by James and Ellen White; and Spalding, Footprints of the Pioneers (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1947), pp. 99-103
- Seven conferences of various size and significance are known from contemporary sources to have been held in 1848; at Rocky Hill and Bristol, Connecticut; Oswego and Port Gibson, New York; Rocky Hill (again); Topsham, Maine; and Dorchester, Massachusetts. Several of these 1848 meetings have become known familiarly among Seventh-day Adventists as "Sabbath Conferences," a term apparently coined by Arthur L. White, who, in his Messenger to the Remnant (Washington, D.C.: Board of Trustees, Ellen G. White Publications, 1954), p. 38, lists five "Sabbath conferences," omitting the gatherings at Bristol and Dorchester. The SDA Encyclopedia, art. "Sabbath Conferences," adds Dorchester to make six--and goes on to say that sixteen similar meetings were held in 1849 and 1850. Bates is known to have attended a "conference" in Middletown, Connecticut" in 1847
- James White, Life Incidents, p. 271, where he puts the number in attendance at "less than thirty." In Ellen G. White, Spiritual Gifts, vol. 2, p. 93, a contemporary letter of his is quoted which gives the number "about fifty"
- Ellen G. White, Selected Messages, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1958), bk. 1, pp. 206, 207
- Joseph Bates, A Seal of the Living God. A Hundred Forty-Four Thousand, of the Servants of God Being Sealed, in 1849 (New Bedford, [Mass.]: Press of Benjamin Lindsey, 1849), p. 31
- Ellen G. White, Life Sketches, pp. 110, 111
- Ibid., p. 116, footnote
- Ibid., pp. 124, 126
- This hymnal bears the date 1849 but did not appear until early 1850. Apparently the type for the first signature(s) was set in 1849 but not for the last one till later. Present Truth, December 1849, p. 47; March 1850 (no. 7), p. 56; March 1850 (no.8), p. 64; cf. Ellen G. White, Letter 4, 1850
- Ellen G. White, Testimonies, vol. 1, p. 70; Arthur L. White, Messenger, p. 127
- Frank E. Belden wrote a large number of hymns and gospel songs, twenty-two of which may be found in the The Church Hymnal. His Christ in Song was loved and widely used for many years
- James White, Oswego, New York, to Bro. Hastings, January 10, 1850. Arthur L. White, Messenger, p. 49
- Present Truth, December 1849, p. 47
- Present Truth, April 1850, p. 71
- Changed in the second volume, August 5, 1851, to the Advent Review and Sabbath Herald
- Ellen G. White, Life Sketches, p. 140
- One is housed at the Review and Herald Publishing Association in Washington, D.C., and the other in the James White Library, Andrews University.