There Shines A Light

Chapter 5—“Bound in the Bundle of Life”

In 1849, the year of the gold rush to California, Joseph Bates, that roving ambassador of the advent, went West to seek treasure more precious than the golden wedge of Ophir. ⁴³ Up to this time the small body of Sabbath-keeping Adventists, now numbering perhaps five or six hundred, had been contained in the New England states, New York, and lower Canada. Bates pioneered into Michigan. At Jackson in that new state he found a company which had participated in the 1844 movement. Seeking out their leader, a blacksmith named Dan Palmer, he talked to him at his forge and convinced him that he had the truth. Being invited to address the company the next Sunday, he speedily converted them all to his message and gave to Jackson the distinction of being the first Sabbath-keeping Adventist church in the West. TSAL 43.1

Bates soon made two more trips into Michigan, raising up several companies of believers. In 1852 he repeated his early success at Battle Creek, the town that was to become headquarters for the young church for half a century. The message made much faster progress in the western states than in the eastern, and within two or three years Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa presented a larger constituency than all the East. TSAL 43.2

Mrs. White urged on the work in the West, stating that tenfold more could at that time be effected there than in the East with the same effort, and that special efforts should be made where the most good could be accomplished. While stressing the importance of the openings in the West then, she predicted that in the course of time the Spirit of God would prepare the way for more to be accomplished in the East. ⁴⁴ TSAL 44.1

In 1855 four Michigan men—Dan Palmer, Cyrenius Smith, J. P. Kellogg, and Henry Lyon—made up together a fund of $1,200, bought a lot, and erected the first denominationally owned printing plant, a two-story frame building. On the strength of this grant they induced James White, whose little publishing business had found a semipermanent home at Rochester, New York, to establish the headquarters in Battle Creek. TSAL 44.2

The subject of church organization began to be debated in the ranks of the Sabbathkeepers. Against the prejudice of early years was countered the necessity of some systematic method of maintaining order, handling church funds, and protecting church property. The publishing house, which came within a short time to have the largest plant in the state, printing and distributing great quantities of religious literature, was held all this time in the name of its chief promoter and manager, James White; but he insisted that its safety demanded church ownership. This called for incorporation. Thus the publishing house provided the entering wedge for church organization, helping to make the Seventh-day Adventist Church a model of efficiency. In the fall of 1860 representatives from five states met in Battle Creek to discuss the question of organization, particularly with reference to the publishing house. Two epochal actions were taken at this conference. First, a denominational name was adopted: thereafter this ecclesiastical body would be known as the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Secondly, a decision was reached to incorporate the publishing business, an act which was consummated seven months later, on May 3, 1861. TSAL 44.3

The next autumn a meeting of delegates from the churches in Michigan voted to form an executive body, the Michigan Conference, which thus became the first collective church organization among Seventh-day Adventists. During the next year and a half the demonstration was so favorable that six more such conferences were formed, east and west. In May of 1863 these conferences sent delegates to the first General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, held in Battle Creek. John Byington was elected the first president, and Uriah Smith the secretary. The constituency at that time numbered 3,500. TSAL 45.1

In all this the hand of God through the ministry of Ellen G. White was manifest. There were strong men and faithful, who wrought a great work in evangelism and organization. At their head was her husband, James White, and with him Joseph Bates, also such younger men as Andrews, Loughborough, Smith, Waggoner, Cottrell, Cornell, and Haskell; but one and all they listened to the voice of the Spirit of prophecy in times of stress and crises of policy. Their decisions and their methods were largely formed and safeguarded by the counsel of Mrs. White. TSAL 45.2

It was not under the lash of a despot that this guidance and control was exercised. The ministry of Mrs. White from first to last was personal; and it was this spirit, allied to her evident divine commission, that made her general counsels effective. Her deep understanding, her sympathetic spirit, her readiness to help in sickness, disaster, sorrow, and poverty gained for her the love and attachment of her fellow members. They were not all saints. As in every collection of mortals, there were men and women selfish, sensual, censorious, uncontrolled, and they were the objects of her ministry in correction and counsel, not always to their pleasure. There were also men ambitious of preferment, craving praise and emolument, and such at different times rose up in rebellion, and flung her counsel to the bats. Such dissident spirits, as well as outside opponents, made Mrs. White their favorite target; and so it has continued to this day. If out of negation there could be convincing proof of the salutary and remedial character of her testimony, it would be found in the attacks of these critics. TSAL 45.3

But those who knew her sweet and generous nature, her self-sacrificing life, and her strict adherence to the counsels given to her and through her, made up the great body of the church. She spoke not only to leaders and adult members, but also to youth and children. Their interests, their welfare, their training, loomed large in her vision of the constituency and the work of the church. Her arms gathered in the little ones and the older ones, the true-hearted who in simplicity and faith sought to do the will of the Father; and in the communion of saints she bound them together in God’s family. TSAL 46.1

James and Ellen White had born to them four children, all boys, only two of whom survived. Henry, the first-born, died when sixteen years of age; Herbert, the youngest, died as a babe. The two remaining, James Edson and William Clarence, lived to manhood and to noble work in the cause of God. Their parents also took into their home, trained, and educated several other children of both sexes and thus made a balanced household. Both parents loved children and dealt understandingly with them on their successive age levels. Mrs. White added to her public duties the care and education of the children, being in turn their companion, nurse, and teacher, when she was with them. Her heart yearned after them unceasingly when she was called away by affairs of the church; and her letters to them remain memorials of her solicitude and wisdom. In her life as a mother may be found the roots of that insight and wisdom which she so strikingly exhibits in her directions and counsels on education. TSAL 46.2

Through those early years of the church’s history, while its membership was small, she proved the genuineness and value of her commission by meticulous attention to the building of character in individual members; for if the new church was to fulfill its destiny, it must in the beginning lay a foundation of strict probity, sincere obedience to God, and consecrated talent. This objective Mrs. White retained through all her life, and the wise counsels of her later writings were the full fruition of her early personal work for souls. TSAL 47.1

Not only the internal health of the church, but also its external contacts, relations, and responsibilities occupied her thought and attention. Before the organization of the church had been completed, there broke out in the political world that sanguinary struggle, the Civil War, or the War Between the States. From 1861 to 1865 this conflict, based primarily if sometimes obscurely upon the dispute over the inherent right of freedom, and drawing tremendously upon the resources of the divided nation, raged unabated. TSAL 47.2

The newly formed church of Seventh-day Adventists, being noncombatant in principle, and complicating this distinction (shared by the Quakers, the Mennonites, and lesser bodies) with their conscientious and strict observance of the seventh-day Sabbath, was placed in difficult circumstances. The wise guidance of James White, recognized leader and editor of the church paper, was supported and informed by the counsel of his wife, whose testimonies now strengthened the faithful, now counseled the rash, again warned against false positions, and ever upheld the principles of judgment and justice. By judicious representations to the Army authorities at Washington, the little church was given the status of noncombatancy, with loyal and unstinted service in medical or other relief roles, which has been its position and privilege ever since. TSAL 48.1

When the war closed, James White was much worn by the burdens and responsibilities he had borne. Elected president of the General Conference in May, 1865, he turned with vigor to prosecution of the evangelistic work, which had practically ceased under the pressure of public excitement and national interests. The added strain proved too much for him; in August he had a stroke of paralysis which incapacitated him physically and mentally. Home treatments proving ineffective, his wife took him to the Dansville Sanitarium in New York, which employed hydrotherapy and diet in the healing art. Even here he did not improve; and Mrs. White, disapproving of some of their theories and methods, particularly their prescription of absolute inactivity of mind and body in his case, after three months removed with him, and they returned to their home in Battle Creek. TSAL 48.2

Here opens a chapter of more than wifely devotion, a story of such insight, such perception of therapeutic values, such determined will, such expenditure of physical, mental, and spiritual strength for the recovery of her husband’s powers, while carrying the heaviest burdens of the church, as has perhaps no parallel. Friends, the most time-honored and solicitous, the leaders in the church, and the parents of her husband themselves, begged her to leave him, an invalid, in the hands of others, while she gave attention to her public mission and her children. She would not do it. She abated little of her mission, she gave attention to her home and her children, she continued to write and to testify; but she declared that God had set her husband as the leader of the church, and she would not abandon him. “As long as life is spared to us both,” she declared, “I shall put forth every effort in my power to save him. That masterly mind must not be left to ruin. God will care for me and my children, and He will raise up my husband, and you will yet see us standing side by side in the sacred desk, speaking the words of truth unto eternal life.” Her faith and works were to be honored by fourteen more years of association with her husband in labors which bore fruit in some of the most important and far-reaching of the church’s enterprises. TSAL 49.1

The burdens that woman bore that year will never be known until the books of heaven are opened. She was nurse to her husband, watching his diet, giving him treatments, taking him out to ride and to walk, leading him into exercise and ministry, cheering and upholding him while many sorrows weighed upon her. Her children she had had to leave in other hands. The sympathies of friends had been, in large part, alienated by her disregard of their advice about her husband. She heard criticism and unfounded charges from Battle Creek, which she had to keep to herself. TSAL 49.2

The people about them in mid-state (then called Northern) Michigan were eager to hear her; and she spoke to large gatherings in many towns and communities on temperance and health and Christian living. In these expeditions she took her husband with her, and sometimes he briefly addressed the people. Besides all this she had many testimonies, received in vision, to write out for men who were not always willing to accept them. She was advocating new and testing truths, in health and in evangelism. On her rested heavy responsibilities, and her pen was busy in every hour she could spare from the care of her husband—and this without the support of many who had hitherto upheld her hands. It was an ordeal comparable to that of the leaders of Israel of old and that of the apostles of Christ in their ministry. TSAL 50.1

For over a year she and her husband thus labored together in the cause, he making a strong effort to use his enfeebled powers in preaching and counseling. As the winter of 1867 wore on, Mrs. White determined that a return to the land was necessary. She persuaded her husband. They put their home in Battle Creek up for sale, and bought a small farm near Greenville, Michigan. It had no buildings, but they contracted for a small house to be erected before they should move. In May they drove up from Battle Creek and took possession. Here she endeavored to interest him in the improvement of their place, in gardening and in the cultivation of small fruits. With her own hands she planted, hoed, and pruned, and he evinced increasing interest and helped her. They took their sons to the farm with them. The elder, Edson, eighteen, was an apprentice in printing and was only occasionally with them. Willie, twelve, was their constant helper. TSAL 50.2

When haying time came, their grass was cut with a mower, and James White decided to ask the help of his neighbors in getting in the hay. But his wife, intent on healing as the main object of this husbandry, visited them with a conspiracy to which they reluctantly consented; so when he went for them, they all said they were too busy to help him. He was greatly disappointed, but his wife said, “Let us get it in ourselves. Willie and I will rake the hay and pitch it on the wagon, while you load it and drive the team.” TSAL 51.1

Greatest of all her pleasure, however, was the improvement in her husband’s spirit and strength. His natural love of physical activity was aroused, and soon his wife’s concern was turned to see that he should not overdo. They kept their farm for four years, when their increasing public labors, with James White’s returning health, led them to sell it and return to Battle Creek. TSAL 51.2

Thus in private life as well as in public, in physical ministry as well as in spiritual, did Ellen White labor successfully in the work of binding other lives and her own in the bundle of God’s life. TSAL 51.3