The Story of our Health Message

Plans for a Health and Temperance Society

Barnum’s great menagerie and circus visited the city on the twenty-eighth of June, and the leaders of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union provided an immense temperance restaurant to accommodate the crowds who came from the neighboring country, hoping thus to keep many of them from visiting the saloons, where they would be tempted to drink. The large tent, owned by the Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and capable of seating five thousand people, was offered for this occasion. Among the heavily laden tables was one set in the center of the pavilion, which was bountifully supplied by the sanitarium with wholesome fruits, grains, and vegetables, and this table formed the chief attraction and was largely patronized. SHM 229.2

In the evening, by invitation of the committee on arrangements, including the mayor of the city and the cashier of the principal bank, Mrs. White spoke on the subject of Christian temperance. “God helped me that evening,” she says, “and although I spoke ninety minutes, the crowd of fully five thousand persons listened in almost breathless silence.”—Ibid., 275. SHM 230.1

The activity of Mrs. White and of the editors of the Good Health¹ in the temperance cause, in its broadest sense, was commendable. But much more than this was needed. The time had come for a great forward movement that would enlist the rank and file of Seventh-day Adventists, and this was now to be launched. In the latter part of December, 1878, as a fitting conclusion to a day especially set apart for fasting and prayer, a meeting was held in the publishing house chapel in Battle Creek, Michigan, “to consider the propriety of organizing a national health and temperance society.” The Review and Herald, January 9, 1879. SHM 230.2