Ellen G. White and Her Critics

Not Medical Testimony but Emotions Determine Diagnosis

Here is our critic in a moment of high contrition and confession, in 1884, describing himself in essentially the same condemnatory language that he a little later employs to describe Mrs. White. He reveals that his opposition to her teachings resulted, not from a profound study of medical cases, nor from the pressure of irresistible evidence that she was a fraud, a deceiver, or a hoax, but from a mood of resentment at what she wrote to him in counsel, guidance, and rebuke. EGWC 82.5

Less than three years later Canright left the Adventist ministry for the last time, permanently severed relationships with the church, and began to collect testimony from doctors to prove that she was the exact opposite of the kind of person he had so recently and repeatedly declared her to be. And the farther he removed from her in years and distance, the more dogmatic he became in his diagnosis that her visions were nothing more than the display of a disordered mind. Further comment on his mental-malady charge seems superfluous! EGWC 83.1