The Truth About The White Lie

Would people in the nineteenth century have agreed with The White Lie’s judgment that Mrs. White’s literary borrowing constituted “wholesale” stealing? ⁵

Some would have, especially critics. For instance, in 1889, the Protestant pastors of Healdsburg, California, invited D. M. Canright, a recently apostatized Adventist minister, to come from Michigan and lecture against the Adventists and Ellen White. In those lectures, Canright raised the charge of plagiarism against Ellen White, and Adventist pastors William Healey and J. N. Loughborough responded, showing where Canright had overstated his case. When the debate was over, the opposing pastors published their parting shot in the local newspaper, accusing Ellen White of plagiarism. ⁶ But these pastors were hardly unbiased judges. For centuries, the charge of plagiarism has been a favorite weapon used against religious leaders—John Bunyan and John Wesley were both vigorously accused. ⁷ TAWL 2.9

In the nineteenth century, plagiarism was known and condemned, but uncredited paraphrasing was widely practiced. American humorist Mark Twain once wondered if there was “anything in any human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism!” ⁸ Edgar Allen Poe was not so relaxed on the subject. He caused a considerable uproar when he accused Longfellow of plagiarism. Ironically, modern scholars find that Poe himself plagiarized. ⁹ Literary borrowing is much more easily defined and condemned in the abstract than it is avoided in actual practice. TAWL 2.10

Even closer to Ellen White was Uriah Smith, who condemned the plagiarizing of his sister Annie’s poem, ¹⁰ while in his own writings on prophecy he made free use of the paraphrased words of George Storrs and Josiah Litch. ¹¹ In this, Smith was not hypocritical. He, like other nineteenth-century writers, simply drew the line between plagiarism and legitimate borrowing at a different point than many would today. TAWL 2.11