Ellen G. White and Her Critics

Contents of 1847 Tract

The note is signed “James White.” In this tract, as has been elsewhere noted, are two of Mrs. White’s visions and a letter of hers to Eli Curtis, which occupy about eight pages. There is a page by Bates. The remaining fifteen pages are filled with James White’s material. He apparently believed, and rightly so, that the tract was primarily from his pen, for he signed his name at the close. When he said that “the following articles were written for the Day-Dawn” he could hardly have had in mind Mrs. White’s two visions. They had both been published shortly before—and doubtless were still available—one of them in the Day-Star and on a broadside, the other simply on a broadside. The occasion for the twenty-four-page tract, therefore, was not really to publish Mrs. White’s writings, but certain “articles” that he had written, though he might appropriately include two visions of hers, plus her letter to Curtis, and remarks by Bates. Why should James White, poverty stricken, go to the expense of bringing out an “edition” of Mrs. White’s writings when the really vital part of those writings that he did publish in the tract—the two visions—was already in print? EGWC 274.5

No book publisher would think of describing A Word to the “Little Flock” as the first edition, or any edition, of Mrs. White’s writings. But all book publishers would agree that if a book first published in 1851 is reprinted in 1882, the latter should be described as the “second edition.” Which is another way of saying that the 1851 edition should be properly described as the “first edition.” EGWC 275.1