Letters and Manuscripts — Volume 5 (1887-1888)

Lt 51e, 1887

Rice, Brother

Oakland, California

November 20, 1887

Previously unpublished.

Brother Rice:

I am constantly burdened in regard to the state of things at the [Rural] Health Retreat so that I cannot sleep nights. If you would carefully read over all that I have written to you while I was in Europe, you would see warnings and reproofs and encouragements sent to you both, yourself and Dr. Gibbs, that you should take heed and escape the very evils which now appear to hurt your influence and usefulness. I cannot imagine what more could have been said to you than has been written to warn you off from dangerous ground and keep your feet in the safe path of purity and righteousness. 5LtMs, Lt 51e, 1887, par. 1

There has been a want of discernment and spiritual wisdom in your course of action and your example. You have not had clear eyesight to discern the dangers that were threatening souls. Your own soul was blind, and when a blind is leading a blind, they both fall into the ditch. “That which ye sow ye shall also reap.” [Galatians 6:7.] There has been the sowing of seeds which has produced a harvest of its kind. The moral tone of the institution has become low. Your own perverted ideas of what constituted your privileges have led others to consider they had privileges as well. Your ideas have been perverted and of that character that brings displeasure of God. Men who God uses in His work are to be of good report as well as pure, lovely, honest, kind, and faithful. 5LtMs, Lt 51e, 1887, par. 2

Bro. Rice, you must elevate the standard. Warnings and cautions and counsels have been given, plain and distinct; but you have not thought these things were for your admonition and profit but that they meant someone else who had less righteousness than yourself. Had you had a submissive, teachable spirit, had you had a distrust of your own wisdom, had you been circumspect in all your course of conduct, you would have seen a plain, elevated path in which to place your feet; you would have practiced a godly life, and with precept and example you would have elevated and ennobled all who expected to see in you unswerving principle. 5LtMs, Lt 51e, 1887, par. 3

Your help was not in yourself, not in your position, but in the Lord God of heaven. I tell you, you have lessons to learn. It is not safe for you to lean to your own understanding. Be on your guard as you may, you will find yourself pursuing a given course of action more because it is pleasing than because it is right. The course you are pursuing is agreeable to you rather than that which you know is proper. Opinions are entertained and a course of action persisted in on the simple ground that the heart is not fully enlisted in the services of the Lord. Warnings and appeals directly to the point have little or no impression, and the Spirit of the Lord that has impressed your heart has been resisted while you have leaned to your own understanding, which will lead you from the path of right into the path of deception and ruin if you continue to follow it. How very hard it has been for you to see things in a just and correct light as far as yourself is concerned. All the reason is that duty lies in one direction and inclination in another. 5LtMs, Lt 51e, 1887, par. 4

So many find excuses to turn away from the reproofs of the Spirit of God and vindicate their own course with persistency and determination. Thousands repudiate the Bible because it testifies against them. You were in a critical place in the Health Retreat, and if your practice had been in accordance with your teachings, you could have set things in order there in the fear of God. Sister Klase thinks that her daughter is not guilty of the sin of adultery. But in this she is deceived. She has taken Etta’s word for this. Those who will do this grievous sin will not be slow to practice, and [they will] tell falsehoods as well. Sister Klase says she went to you and urged you to do something to prevent this too great intimacy between Etta Klase Holliday and your brother. He was placed in the dining room while Etta was in the kitchen at work. Thus the way was prepared for the enemy to work. Was not your sense of propriety confused? 5LtMs, Lt 51e, 1887, par. 5

You stated at the camp meeting at Oakland that you knew many remarks were made, but you thought you would go on right in the same course if people did talk, as no moral wrong has existed; the only wrong was the misjudging and the interpretation put upon your course of action which you claimed was not wrong. With others before you enjoying the same privileges with another man’s wife, your discernment was clouded. It could not be otherwise that things would go crooked. Had you received the cautions and appeals made to others, putting yourself on your guard, taking home the appeals made to others, putting yourself on your guard, taking home the lessons that you should learn, you would not have failed to see this matter in its true light. All these loose ideas which led to loose actions would not have been. Have not counsels and admonitions been trampled upon? Whom have you slighted and disrespected? It is not the instrument, but the Saviour. 5LtMs, Lt 51e, 1887, par. 6

We are all to be wide-awake if we would not fall into the alluring snares of Satan. There is no excuse for any such freedom of conduct. By habits of reflection we must be wise to mark the warnings and reproofs given to others and draw instruction, not only from the example of the wise, but from the folly of the wrong-doer, in the place of doing as they do. We must stand separate and distinct from everything of that character of which God has in His Word and testimonies of warning shown His displeasure. 5LtMs, Lt 51e, 1887, par. 7

God speaks to you through His servants that His voice may be heard. If God’s Word is to be received to any purpose, it is to govern the will, purify the affections, and mould and fashion the life. God wants to take possession of the heart, but if you do not acknowledge God in His admonitions, it will be rejected, and the mind will lean to its own understanding. I want you to see the danger and cruelty of suffering yourself to be led astray by the enemy. Your own course of action, your own ideas that persistently have been carried out, notwithstanding you knew that the worst interpretation was being placed upon your actions, have been bringing about the very condition of things that have been demoralizing the institution. Yet you think you can explain matters, and they are not so very wrong after all. Here is where lies your greatest danger. We have never seen one who has pursued a similar course as you have, justifying themselves as you have done, that ever came to liberty and the clearing of his soul from his sin. 5LtMs, Lt 51e, 1887, par. 8

You have given occasion for others to reproach the truth, and those who have seen your freedom with Sister Heald have thought if good Brother Rice could do this, there was no harm in their doing the same. How you could have done as you have done in the face of warnings continually setting before you the necessity of reaching a high and holy standard, I cannot understand, only that you placed all these appeals on a level with common things and accepted your own judgment as your own criterion. Perhaps you thought of all the entreaties, as you expressed concerning a letter I wrote to you, that you “would get along all right at the Health Retreat, if Sister White did not scold so much.” The all right has revealed itself to be all wrong. You have not been ignorant of the blot and stain which has rested upon the Health Retreat. 5LtMs, Lt 51e, 1887, par. 9