Mrs. James White was a real mother as well as a "mother in Israel." leaving her boys in the care of a cook and a housekeeper while she traveled with her husband at the call of the lord was a constant source of concern to her and, boys being what they often are, a constant opportunity for misbehavior to James Edson and little Willie. Especially to James Edson.
Just before Edson's sixteenth birthday, his mother with many a sigh penned him a very earnest letter. "When all around me are locked in slumber," she wrote, "I am kept awake with anxiety" about your spiritual condition and "can obtain relief only in silent prayer." "In our presence you may comply with our wishes, but ... you disobey us in our absence. You have followed your own will and projects so many times, concealing all from us, going directly contrary to all our counsel, advice, and prohibitions, that we cannot depend upon you. ... Instead of being a comfort, you are a source of painful anxiety." "Thorns and briers have sprung up in my garden and choked the seed which I have tried to sow." Even worse, "a gloom which I cannot express shrouds our minds in regard to your influence upon Willie. You lead him into habits of disobedience and concealment and prevarication. ...
"Oh, Edson, it is the knowledge of these things that is wearing me out and bringing upon me discouragement" which may cause me even to leave my public labors. [1]
When Ellen White admonished parents to pray for their children with fingers planted firmly on Bible promises and voices pleading as only a parent's can, with deep humiliation, earnest importunity, and unwavering faith, she knew what she was talking about. [2]
She also knew by experience what it was to write to young people, to "the students in our schools" and to "my dear young friends" and to Paul and Delbert and Anne and Mary and to any other youth, including her own, whom the Lord might lay on her mind. As she appealed to these young people to give their hearts to Christ and get ready for His appearing and serve someone other than themselves, it must have occurred to her to ask a hundred times why so few young people showed the same interest in winning souls that she had shown when she was young.
Go back to Ellen's childhood. Tiptoe late at night with Mrs. Harmon to the door of the bedroom Ellen shared with her twin Elizabeth and listen.
"O God, Martha isn't ready yet!" a voice whispers in the room. "Please, please help me know what I can do to help her.
"Thou hast already helped me bring several of my friends to Jesus," the voice continues after a pause, "Rebecca, and Rachel, and Suzanne, and Viola and her husband, and Anna and her husband, and Lois, and Fannie, and Patience. I am so happy for each one of them. I thank Thee, I thank Thee very much. ... And I'm so glad that Jesus is coming soon. But Martha must be ready! Please, help me know how I can help her."
Mrs. Harmon knows that Ellen has waited for Elizabeth to fall asleep and has then slipped out of the covers and knelt down by the bed. She also knows that she is likely to continue pleading this way all night long, and that tomorrow night she will get permission to go to Martha's home with her older sister Sarah, and that she will not come back until Martha has given her heart to the lord, even if it takes all night. The effort is seriously undermining Ellen's health, but the girl doesn't seem to mind. In a short time, she believes, there will be new bodies for everyone; for everyone, that is, who is ready when Jesus comes. And so her intercessions for Martha and others continue.
Mrs. Harmon listens until weariness overpowers her, and she stumbles on to her own room, and bed, and knees, and sleep. [3]
Our last chapter focused on women in the advent movement. It said little about the most prominent of all Adventist women.
Ellen G. White was many things to the Seventh-day Adventist Church: author, prophet, counselor, fund raiser, and cofounder of institutions. But to understand her, one must know what sort of person she was basically. First and last Ellen White was a soul winner. She wanted to see people saved--not only as a youth, but all her life long.
Years after her marriage she and James got lost once in the woods. A settler's family gave them food and directions, and she left literature with them and shared her faith. Long after, she met the same folk again at a camp meeting, all converted Seventh-day Adventists. On another occasion, delayed five hours at a railroad station, she held an extended spiritual visit with one lady and gave a Bible study to another. Getting her watch repaired in Switzerland, she invited the young clerk in the shop to visit her home. When he came, she secured his decision to give up his job, which involved Sabbath breaking, and give his heart to the Lord.
In no way did she consider her ministry confined to the church. On the contrary, she often found the demands of the church confining, limiting her soul winning, preventing her from filling her true mission. "I have not come to this part of Australia," she said to a group of new believers down under, "to devote my time and strength to keeping you in good spirits. ... It is my mission to go to the regions beyond, to those who sit in darkness, and have no light." [4] At the 1901 General Conference she told the assembled leaders, "My heart is panting and longing for the salvation of souls." [5] But back for a minute to her youth.
Within a month after she turned seventeen, Ellen Harmon received her first vision. [6] It took the saints from the disappointment to the tree of life. She sang "Alleluia" with the angels and became more eager than ever to see people saved. She had seen heaven! She knew by observation that no worldly dress, no comfort, popularity, or financial consideration, could compare with life in the City of God.
But being a soul-winning prophet was to be harder than being a soul-winning teen-ager. As a prophet she would be called to a more mature work. Like the prophet John she would have the joy of visiting heaven and talking with Jesus; but like Isaiah she would also be required to "show my people their sins." Like Jeremiah she would sometimes weep at her unpopularity. Like Paul she would have to travel a great deal, often in danger and discomfort. And so it came to be. [7]
Loved and appreciated by many, she was derided by some people as a fanatic, a meddler, or a fraud. At first when God commissioned her to make a person's sin plain to him, she sometimes softened the rebuke to make it seem more agreeable. Then Jesus appeared before her in solemn earnestness. She read the loving concern in His face. She saw that if people continued to sin because she failed to correct them, they would lose their souls. [8]
The message hit home. She had prayed all night for people and then pleaded all night with them. If telling them their sins was essential to their salvation, she would do it. Of course.
Her reluctance, nonetheless, reappeared now and then, especially when she was uncertain how to persuade particularly difficult persons. To one esteemed but easily upset pastor she revised a testimony repeatedly and got it to him only on his deathbed. [9]
But usually she overcame her reluctance and passed along God's word as His faithful messenger. No sacrifice was too great--if it meant souls could be saved.
Today Ellen White is known best for her books. She was prolific. She produced more than 40,000 pages of printed material and over 50,000 pages of letters and manuscripts. She wrote on morals, family life, and theology; on the principles of education, business management, and health; on the interpretation of history and the explanation of Scripture; and on very much more besides. To find the time to do this she often went to bed early and got up while the house was quiet, at five, or three, or even one o'clock in the morning.
Well-known for her books Mrs. White deserves to be known better as a public speaker. [10]
In her youth she was often plagued by a chronic hoarseness that would leave her dramatically a few moments after she began, in faith, to address a congregation. This phenomenon reappeared often throughout her life. God could have healed her outright, but evidently He preferred to provide this proof of His nearness when she stood up to speak. Ellen White lived as healthfully as she could, then depended on God to do the rest. She would pray, "I have done all I can do, Lord, using Thine own means, and now I ask for the special blessing which Thou alone canst give to sustain me." Often she said to James when he was still alive, "If only I could have the assurance beforehand, how much good it would do me!" He replied, "God has never failed to bless you the moment you rise to speak; so whatever may be your feelings, you must put your trust in Him, hanging your helpless soul on His promises." "This I have tried to do," she said. "I have learned that we must act our part, cooperating with God. He gives strength for every duty." [11]
During most of her mature years Sister White preached with a remarkably clear and powerful voice. Long before the introduction of microphones she could be heard readily by crowds of five thousand people and more than once by fifteen or twenty thousand. [12] A patient at the Washington Sanitarium once sat on the second-floor balcony and heard her clearly as she addressed a camp-meeting audience in a tent pitched in the woods nearby.
She didn't shout. Listeners at the front thought she was talking Just to them. She didn't explain her ability as a miracle either, though she gave God the glory. Instead, she practiced scientific diaphragm support and paid thoughtful attention to articulation and tone production. It was a spiritual matter with her. Proper delivery would increase her effectiveness in communicating the third angel's message. Deep breathing would strengthen her lungs and lengthen her life of service. Correct speaking would thus help her save more souls. She taught that anyone could learn to speak effectively in public if he studied and observed the same rules she did. [13]
People who heard her commented afterward on the "respectful attention" shown by her audiences, the "rapt attention," the "breathless attention," of the "profound silence" of the "spellbound" assembly, and of the "solemn hush of the congregation as she entered the pulpit."
Her demeanor while speaking was grave and earnest but with a pleasant smile on her face. After a sermon in Europe delivered through a translator, the people, unable to speak English, shook her hand with tears of gratitude and instant affection. A reporter for the Detroit Post described one of her General Conference sermons in Michigan as a "remarkable and thrilling" experience. "Although her eloquence and persuasive powers were well-known by the audience," he wrote, "still they were unprepared for the powerful and unanswerable appeal which she made. She seemed indeed almost inspired as she implored sinners to flee from their sins. The effect of her magnetic speech and manner was most remarkable." [14]
Her public prayers were sometimes even more effective than her sermons. In Colorado in her eighties she was heard clearly at an evangelistic meeting as rain drummed an anvil chorus on the corrugated-iron roof. [15] At the close she invited everyone to kneel. Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, members of many denominations, were moved to tears almost immediately by the sweet sincerity of her petitions on their behalf. A sailor once commented about her prayer, "She brought God right in there and presented us to Him for His blessing and I must be a better man." [16]
Once in a great while she would be humorous. While she spoke in the little chapel at the Saint Helena Sanitarium in her later days, her son, W. C. White, fell asleep in his seat behind her on the platform. Noticing him, Mrs. White stopped a moment and remarked, "When Willie was a baby, I used to take him onto the platform and let him sleep in a basket beside the pulpit, and he has never gotten over the habit."
Mrs. White's fun about her son was "family" humor, and this reminds us that because of her public labor her career as a homemaker (with which this chapter began) is often overlooked. Her books Child Guidance, The Adventist Home, and Messages to Young People grew out of her experience as well as out of her visions. She told parents not to shout at their children or spank them in anger but to calm down for a few hours and then take them aside for prayer (and a spanking if necessary). Before she gave this counsel she practiced it first. [17]
She believed that a mother cooking healthful meals in the kitchen serves God just as surely as a minister preaching sermons in the pulpit, [18] and she often wished that she herself could stay at home to serve the Lord instead of being required to travel and preach so much.
When her first baby came, she thought that surely now she could stay at home for a while. She and James had met during an evangelistic tour, and they had traveled almost constantly ever since. But God said He needed her to witness to the struggling, scattered Adventists. Sadly she handed little Henry to the Stockbridge Howlands, returning to see him with a present once a year like Hannah. She made it a rule never to complain about anything unkind people did to her; but when as a young mother she heard that people were saying she was lucky because she didn't have to stay home and change diapers, she did not quite manage to keep from complaining. [19]
Because of her prominence, it is also often overlooked that she was married to an outstanding person. [20]
If Ellen White furnished her husband with the inspiration to start a paper and found the first Seventh-day? Adventist publishing house, it was Elder White who did most of the work, gathering and organizing the materials and staff. His first press grew into the Review and Herald Publishing Association, which today grosses some $20,000,000 a year. James White also founded the Pacific Press, a corporation today equally as large. He energetically supported and guided the Western Health Reform Institute, which grew into the great Battle Creek Sanitarium. He helped to launch Battle Creek College and was its first president. [21]
James White was a forceful writer, an effective speaker, and a warm friend. He was also an excellent manager. During one year (1869) when he was too ill to manage the Review, the publishing house lost $3,000. The first year he took it back (1870) it gained $7,000. [22] Sometimes overwork and an overeagerness to see the work finished made him irritable. Illness brought repentance. A testimony came accepting his contrition. It began with the words, "I was shown in vision, December 25, 1865, the case of the servant of the Lord, my husband, Eld. James White." [23]
The servant of the Lord, Elder James White, had become Ellen's husband on August 30,1846. He had noticed her some years before this when the ministers in Portland, Maine, had asked her to witness to their congregations during the good Millerite days. She didn't notice him until they met at Orrington, Maine, shortly after the Lord told her to travel and tell her visions. They shared many experiences visiting the disappointed Adventists but had no thought of getting married, because they supposed the Lord would come too soon. In due Course Evangelist White made a personal call for decision, applying quite a bit of pressure. And "so we were married," commented Mrs. White many years later, adding affectionately, "I feel that he is the best man that ever trod shoe leather." [24]
Many people thought well of him. "He is the poor man's friend as many can testify with grateful hearts," wrote B. F. Snook in 1863. He made a point of paying people who worked for him more than their wages, while working himself at less than his wages. He often returned money with interest that had been lent to the Review without interest. Once he personally lent money at no interest to a poor minister even though he was paying 10 percent. Frequently he refused donations if he saw that the donor was really hard Up. [25]
In order to be so generous, and also, at first, in order to pay the cook and housekeeper whose services made it possible for Ellen to write, counsel, and travel, he worked extra weary hours buying and selling stationery, books, and other things; but there never seemed to be enough for his philanthropy. On one of their last walks together Elder and Mrs. White discussed the case of a black washerwoman whose home they passed. "Wife," said Elder White, "we must look after this poor woman. Let us not, amid our busy care, forget the poor souls who have so hard a struggle to live. ... If I had means at my command, I would build suitable houses ... to rent to these poor people. We will see what can be done to make their lot more comfortable." [26]
James and Ellen had four children, all boys. Henry came back into their family when he was five, "a well-trained, praying boy." The Howlands had matched their trust. [27] The boys suffered the usual sicknesses common to children in those days of medical ignorance. Their mother learned a lot about home remedies and the value of pure water and fresh air. She also learned what it means to pray for a child hovering near death, and to know the comfort that comes from having a companion with equal faith. Many times their children were healed in answer to prayer; nevertheless, two of them died young--nothing uncommon in those days. John Herbert, the fourth child, died when he was three months old. Henry lived to only sixteen. He was a cheerful boy with a nice singing voice, and they missed him terribly.
Willie seemed to be a right-minded boy from the start. After Elder White died of malaria and overwork in 1881 at the age of sixty, Ellen White invited Willie to be her constant companion. God showed her in vision that He had prepared him for this work with "the spirit of wisdom and a sound mind." [28] Like his father, he became an accomplished administrator.
It was Edson, the lad who was born when the Present Truth was begun, who was for years his parents' heartache. Even the letter his mother wrote him just before his sixteenth birthday didn't seem to change him much. Perhaps he even grew worse. When the Battle Creek believers were constrained by conscience in 1870 to apologize publicly for failing to support Elder and Mrs. White as they should, Edson submitted an apology of his own. It is sad that he had to, but it showed his heart was heading right.
It was hard for Edson to settle down. He tried his hand at printing and founded his own publishing firm much as his father had, though he used it for his own private business. He issued several hymnbooks in association with Frank Belden, his cousin. He tried his hand at commercial photography in its experimental days. And for a period he worked on a river steamboat. Though always an Adventist, he found it difficult to dedicate himself entirely to the Lord.
Then all at once, shortly after his mother left for Australia, Edson found himself and his Lord in a new way. [29]
He came across neglected testimonies Mrs. White had written calling for someone to evangelize the black people of the American South. These testimonies said that the blacks should be taught to read so that they could understand the Bible for themselves, and that above all they should be treated as true children of God.
The experience Edson had gained in his various lines of work was now concentrated on a great cause. He designed a river steamer, outfitting it (ultimately) with a printing press, a photographic darkroom, a chapel, and living quarters for himself and his helpers. Then he set off down the Mississippi. To finance his venture he promoted the sale of his Gospel Primer, an elementary-reading textbook based on the Bible, which was printed for him in Battle Creek. He prepared slides to help hold the attention of illiterate audiences, and on his own little press on board he printed tracts.
Soon he was teaching blacks how to read and how to understand the Bible. In five years he started fifty churches!
His success, unfortunately, was not universally admired. One angry white man was prevented from beating one of Edson's assistants to death only when a more friendly white man drew a gun and protected him. By 1900 racism was so rampant that in many places whites could no longer work safely for blacks. Providentially--largely through Edson White--God had raised up black Adventists to bring the third angel's message to their own race.
Edson's shipboard press was transferred to a chicken house and later developed into the Southern Publishing Association, the third printing house established by the White family in America. His Gospel Primer sold over a million copies. It is said to have been the first book of its kind in the United States, a unique Adventist contribution to the advancement of black Americans.
As we have seen, Mrs. White's earlier years were spent traveling with her husband around the Northeastern states. In 1853 they visited as far west as Michigan and in 1855 moved to Battle Creek. Their travels stretched farther into the Middle West, and then into the Far West. In 1872 they made their first trip to California, where in 1874 and 1875 they started Signs of the Times and the Pacific Press.
James White died in 1881. Four years later Ellen White sailed to Europe as a missionary for two years (August 1885-August 1887), accompanied by her son, W. C. White. In 1891 she embarked for Australia, serving as a pioneer missionary there for nine years. When she returned in 1900, she settled near the Saint Helena Sanitarium, where she purchased a country home,"Elmshaven." It was large enough to house her secretaries and to entertain the constant stream of people seeking counsel.
During her late seventies and eighties she helped found Paradise Valley Sanitarium, the College of Medical Evangelists at Loma Linda (now the Schools of Nursing and Medicine at Loma Linda University), and Pacific Union College, a few miles up the hill from her home.
At "Elmshaven" she completed the "Conflict of the Ages" series and wrote numerous articles and letters besides preparing seven other books. From there in 1909 she traveled by train to Washington, D.C., to attend a General Conference session for the last time, addressing the delegates with her usual clear voice. On the same trip she also returned to Portland, Maine, her girlhood home, where she had waited for Jesus to come on October 22, 1844, and had received her first vision a few weeks later.
As an elderly lady she continued to work hard on her books and correspondence. But in her hours of leisure she liked to tell stories to children while they combed her hair, to sing happy hymns to herself about the second coming, and to visit her neighbors for Christ. Families in Napa Valley long remembered "the little old woman with white hair, who always spoke so lovingly of Jesus." [30] She was still seeking souls.
She passed away, triumphant in faith, on a sunny Friday afternoon, July 16, 1915. Her last words to her son were, "I know in whom I have believed." [31] She had seen Sabbath-keeping Adventists grow from a handful to 137,000. The New York Independent honored her: "She lived the life and did the work of a worthy prophetess."
Her final public appearance had been at a chapel service at Pacific Union College. Frail and feeble, she was physically assisted by two ministers in reaching the pulpit. Her message that day was a challenge to Adventist youth to arise and finish the work of winning souls, so that Jesus could come again soon.
Notes: