To the Friends in California by Dudley Marvin Canright

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Nov 16, 1876

To the Friends in California.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

DEAR BRETHREN AND SISTERS: Having labored among you and having become acquainted with most of you, I still feel a deep interest in your prosperity and in the success of the precious cause of the third angel's message on the Pacific Coast. I have not written as much for the SIGNS as I wished and designed to, but it is not for lack of interest in the work there. I have deeply regretted to learn that some have fallen into trials which they have allowed to lead them away from this work and people. No doubt they think they have cause for doing so and that they will now fare better. But we who have been longer in this work know that they are being deceived in this; and that they will either live to regret this step or give up the message entirely. I have been with the Seventh-day Adventists for eighteen years and have traveled and labored in every State where we have churches except in Oregon.

I have also been well acquainted with the work at Battle Creek during this time. So I have had a good opportunity to observe the working of the cause in all its branches. From Maine to California I know the parties, the churches, and the individuals who have from time to time, drawn off from the body on various pretexts. Most of these persons I know to have been unconsecrated, self-confident fault-finders. Several times quite formidable parties of these have drawn off and flourished for a short period. But, without an exception, the providence of God has blasted and scattered them till scarcely a fragment of them can be found. I have seen six different papers started by these parties in opposition to the body of our people. Five of them are dead and buried and the last one is just struggling for an existence. All the leading ministers who have engaged in these split offs have gone to ruin, having gone to the Spiritualists, the Universalists, or become entirely silent. Every few years they have to get a new set of hands as the old ones are all scattered, and each succeeding crop is weaker and smaller than the former.

Then those who, through opposition to us, manage for a while to work together, still are not at all united among themselves upon doctrine, discipline, or plan of labor. Each one has a theory of his own, each one a different doctrine, and each one glories in teaching and urging his own opinion. They have no head, no leader, no recognized authority among them. How can such a body maintain any church discipline or secure order and co-operation in work? They never have and never can do it. Hence they are as weak as a rope of sand and liable to go to pieces any day, as they have done time after time.

Furthermore, these persons have no definite message for the people, nothing around which to rally. They cannot accept the three messages without accepting our work for the last thirty years, and to do this of course would be death to them. Rejecting the third message, they must with it throw away the two-horned beast as fulfilled in our time. With the messages must go the sanctuary, the 2300 days, the work of father Miller, etc., etc., without end.

This leaves them with no definite position, ready to adopt such vagaries as the Age to Come, Non-Resurrection of the Wicked, no devil, the resurrection in the past, etc.

Who can believe that such a confused babel as that with such a history can be the special work of God, the last warning to a doomed world! Nonsense and insanity. Dear brethren and sisters, I know that the great mass of our people who have not seen the effects of these rebellions as we have, do not have any proper appreciation of the order, the unity, the strength, and the harmony of the work among us. There is nothing like it in the world. Our track is a straight one. We have not been led this way, and that way, and then another, into one error, and then out of that into a worse one, crossing our own track every year or two. No, thank God, that has been no part of our history. We have gone straight forward with the same definite aim from the first.

To whom, under God, are we indebted for all this? I believe, yes, I know, to the very ones with whom the most fault has been found, the very ones whom God raised up in the beginning to start the work, whom he has sustained and led all the way. In the past I, like many others, have had trials with Bro. White and found fault with Sr. White. But I have come to see things in quite a different light. I believe I am effectually, thoroughly, and forever cured of that. The trouble is not on that side of the house.

Dear brethren, be very cautious how you leave the old ship for some new craft that may come along. All such have capsized so far, and these new ones are of the same material with no more able hands to manage them. Do not let little trials and some apparent difficulty separate you from the work. Hold on, do the best you can, and wait for the Lord to make these things all plain. Hoping that God may bless you, I remain,

Your brother in the message,

D. M. CANRIGHT.

Denver, Mo., Nov. 5, 1876.