Ellen G. White: The Early Years: 1827-1862 (vol. 1)

The Healing of Frances Howland and William Hyde

Ellen was hardly back in Portland when she left again to travel north thirty miles to Topsham and the Howland home. Here “quite a number ... were assembled.” During this visit, Frances Howland, suffering from rheumatic fever, was healed in response to the prayer of faith, as recorded in Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 74 and 75, followed shortly by the miraculous healing of William Hyde from dysentery (Ibid., 75, 76). 1BIO 82.4

On this trip Ellen was again confronted with fanaticism, the result of the teaching of the spiritualizers, who claimed that as they were sanctified, they might have a spiritual wife (DF 733). They averred that if they loved one another as Christians, they were perfectly safe. Some took the matter a step further and taught that since they were perfectly sanctified, they could do whatever they wanted to without sinning. A few attended meetings in the nude, and a few exchanged wives. They thought it right to show their love for one another and that what they did was perfectly innocent. 1BIO 82.5

When Ellen returned to her home, she was distressed to find that a number of those involved in fanaticism had come from eastern Maine and were influencing the company of believers in Portland. Of this she wrote: 1BIO 82.6

We trembled for the church that was to be subjected to this spirit of fanaticism. My heart ached for God's people. Must they be deceived and led away by this false enthusiasm? I faithfully pronounced the warnings given me of the Lord; but they seemed to have little effect except to make these persons of extreme views jealous of me.—Life Sketches of James White and Ellen G. White (1880), 201. 1BIO 83.1

She found that those she had trusted in January could not be trusted in April, among them Joseph Turner, who unfortunately had joined the spiritualizers. 1BIO 83.2