Messenger of the Lord

Generosity

Ellen White was frugal because she wanted to contribute as much as she could to hard-pressed people as well as to the growing needs of the young Seventh-day Adventist Church. ¹⁰ MOL 81.8

“Sharing” seems to have been her middle name. Her sharing of her home with co-workers and traveling ministers, many times not knowing how many would appear at meal time, reveals a prevailing generous spirit. After inspiring and challenging others to build churches, publishing houses, health facilities, and schools, she would lead the way with substantial donations, often loans from others that she managed to repay—with interest. In 1888 at an Oakland, California, gathering, she may have raised astonished eyebrows when she noted that she and her husband, out of frugal savings and wise investments, had contributed $30,000 “in the cause of God.” ¹¹ MOL 81.9

In a sermon delivered at the 1891 General Conference session, after James had been dead for ten years, she wrote: “For years we received no wages, except barely enough to furnish us with the plainest food and clothing. We were glad to wear second-hand clothes, and sometimes we had hardly food enough to sustain our strength. Everything else was put into the work.” ¹² MOL 81.10

Her unselfishness with her time and scant resources became a model for all. John O. Corliss (1845-1923), who lived in the White home for several years prior to his baptism in 1868, ¹³ wrote of his close connection with Mrs. White through the years: “She was most careful to carry out in her own course the things she taught to others. For instance, she frequently dwelt in her public talks upon the duty of caring for widows and orphans, citing her hearers to Isaiah 58:7-10, and she exemplified her exhortations by taking the needy to her own home for shelter, food, and raiment. I well remember her having at one time, as members of her family, a boy and a girl and a widow and her two daughters. I have, moreover, known her to distribute to poor people hundreds of dollars’ worth of new clothes, which she bought for that purpose.” ¹⁴ MOL 82.1

One cannot review the history of the Adventist Church in Australia without noting that Ellen White was generous, to a fault. In 1892 Australia was sinking into an economic depression. Adventist believers were fewer than 1,000. Yet Mrs. White’s constant motto was “Advance,” which, at first, meant a school near Melbourne. Funds were nonexistent, but she decided to use $1,000 from the royalty of foreign books sold in America, funds that were already committed elsewhere. ¹⁵ MOL 82.2

While funds were being raised in Parramatta for the first church building owned by Seventh-day Adventists in continental Australia, a gift of $45 from California was sent to Ellen White. Her friends wanted her to have a comfortable chair during her painful illness. But she promptly put it into the Parramatta building fund, explaining to her thoughtful friends that she wished them to feel that they too had something invested in Australia. ¹⁶ MOL 82.3

Ellen White remained at the center of the Adventist world in Australia, not only for encouragement but also for raising funds. A letter to Dr. J. H. Kellogg in 1896 provides a glimpse of the ongoing, year by year, struggle in Australia: “I have to stand as a bank to uphold, borrow, and advance money. I turn and twist every way to do the work. Others will take hold and do something when they see that I have faith to lead out and donate. Here are all our workers that must be paid. I am heavily in debt in this country to those in other countries. Eighteen hundred dollars from one person; this money has been used up. Five hundred dollars from one in Africa, which is a loan and has been applied in different ways that demanded means to forward the work. I moved by faith.” ¹⁷ MOL 82.4

In 1899 G. A. Irwin, General Conference president, invited Mrs. White to return to America and attend the next session of the General Conference at South Lancaster, Massachusetts. She replied: “I was 71 years old the twenty-sixth of November. But this is not the reason I plead for not attending your conference.... We have advanced slowly, planting the standard of truth in every place possible. But the dearth of means has been a serious hindrance.... We dare not show one particle of unbelief. We advance just as far as we can see, and then go far ahead of sight, moving by faith.... MOL 82.5

“We strip ourselves of everything we can possibly spare in the line of money, for the openings are so many and the necessities so great. We have hired [borrowed] money until I have been compelled to say, I cannot donate more. My workers are the best, most faithful and devoted girls I ever expect to find. In order to advance the work I have donated the wages that should have been paid them. When the last call was made, my name was not on the list for the first time.... There is nothing for me to do but to remain here until the work is placed on a solid foundation.” ¹⁸ MOL 82.6

As the last decade of the nineteenth century closed, the denomination was heavily in debt largely because of ignoring the counsel of Ellen White. Although she made her position very clear to church leaders as to the reasons for avoiding the huge debts, she did not criticize and complain. Instead, she had a plan. She proposed to give her royalties on Christ’s Object Lessons (a book soon to be published in 1900) to help clear the debts on denominational schools. With the cooperation of church members throughout North America, that gift yielded more than $300,000. MOL 83.1

When church funds were low in 1906, she donated royalties from her book The Ministry of Healing (sold in the eastern United States) for construction of the Washington Sanitarium (now Washington Adventist Hospital) in Takoma Park, Maryland. ¹⁹ All of the royalties from Ministry of Healing went to relieve the indebtedness of the church’s medical institutions. MOL 83.2

From 1914 to 1918 L. H. Christian was president of the Lake Union Conference, comprising Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. He was impressed by the many older Adventists in these states who treasured their memories of James and Ellen White. They reported how kind and helpful the Whites were to the poor at a time when early settlers often lacked food and shelter. The men liked to recall the compelling leadership of James and how he would say to his wife, “Ellen, talk is cheap; but the thing that counts is what you and I can give. It is good to sympathize with these folk, but the result of our sympathy is determined by how deep we dig into our pocketbooks.” MOL 83.3

In his book, The Fruitage of Spiritual Gifts, Christian reported: “What she writes in such books as Ministry of Healing and many of the Testimonies concerning our duty to the needy and sick was exemplified most beautifully in her own life. This chapter would become much too long if I should recount all the things that these old acquaintances said of Sister White. I never heard one of them find fault with her in any way.” ²⁰ MOL 83.4