Ellen G. White and Her Critics

The Most Remarkable of All the Facts

That is Canright speaking in 1868! Strange that he would “play up” this feature of Mrs. White’s spiritual labors, her writing of amazingly revealing letters, if there were numerous instances where she had sent testimonies to the wrong people, had disclosed “facts” that were not facts, or had otherwise given evidence that she had only gossip sources for her letters to individuals. Yet in the years when Mrs. White was most actively writing testimonies to church members and church groups, often giving names and describing events and acts and thoughts, Canright and others who wrote in behalf of her inspiration used this very letter writing as perhaps their best proof. We repeat, it passes credulity to believe that such spokesmen for Mrs. White would have placed these revelatory testimonies so confidently in the forefront of their arguments for her if such testimonies had been shot through with errors of fact and judgment concerning individuals. EGWC 513.3

We read in vain the endless columns of the old issues of the Review and Herald for anything that suggests that these proponents of Mrs. White ever felt hesitancy in presenting the letters in proof. Nor do we find any lengthy defenses in the Review and Herald against charges that these letters were full of errors. That is even more amazing, for the columns of the church paper often contain defenses of the denomination, including Mrs. White, on various matters. Even in Extras and Supplements of the Review and Herald which were published with a particular view to meeting charges against her we find scarcely anything of defense on this point. Nor does the chief critic of Mrs. White cite other references in the church paper. EGWC 514.1

Surely through the years, with thousands upon thousands of pages from Mrs. White’s pen going out to Adventist homes throughout the land, and sometimes to homes overseas, there would have been enough instances of glaring errors—if she were only a gossip dispenser—to cause many incensed and outraged people to proceed to provide a critic here or there with a generous number of affidavits or other well-documented proofs of the falsity of her testimonies. EGWC 514.2

But where is all this material? We have found little of it, though we have searched diligently through a motley array of books, pamphlets, and leaflets against Mrs. White. And we have here examined the most impressive exhibits that Mrs. White’s most voluminous critic gathered together in his 1919 book, the principal source work of other and later critics. This paucity of exhibits is unquestionably the most remarkable of all the facts that we can offer to the reader in closing our examination of the gossip charge against Mrs. White. EGWC 514.3