JAMES WHITE by James White

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 8, 1874

JAMES WHITE

By James White

NOTE. If the writer of the foregoing report had given the reasons why we did not attend the Vermont camp-meeting this note would not be given. But in justice to myself I wish to state to the readers of the REVIEW that I reluctantly left California to attend all the eastern camp-meetings. I did one week's work on the cars, from Oakland to Battle Creek, in writing and editing The Signs of the Times, No. 6, that I might be ready for the camp-meeting. When I arrived at Battle Creek, near midnight, I called on my way to my lodgings, and left an appointment to meet leading brethren early the next morning to talk up business matters. I sought every opportunity, even at times of preaching, to get such men together to prepare matters, insomuch that I heard not one discourse from the stand, excepting the sound of my own voice. I did all I possibly could, and went far beyond my strength, to forward the work so that I could attend the meetings in Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, New York, Ohio, Indiana, and North-eastern Michigan.

But in my exhausted condition, my lot has been to remain at head-quarters, to look after a hundred and one matters which have been managed poorly at our institutions in my absence. I have been especially anxious to attend the Maine camp-meeting, and visit near relatives, and the home of my youth, which is but twenty miles from the camp-ground. At the very latest date I could leave and reach the ground before the Sabbath, I was away before God, on my face upon the ground praying and weeping. I then passed through a struggle in my feelings in giving up the camp-meetings, that I shall not soon forget.

I can do something yet in the cause, if my brethren will let me fill the place the Lord would have me. But to load me with responsible offices, which require double attention just now, when I am weary from overwork at the Battle Creek camp-meeting, and then urge me to go the rounds of all the camp-meetings, is the most direct way to overwhelm me with labor, care and discouragements, and break me completely down. I see in this such a want of wisdom that I dare not trust my life, and future usefulness, to the discretion of my brethren. I must, in these matters, be allowed to follow my own judgment, illuminated, I humbly hope, by the Spirit of God.

JAMES WHITE

Battle Creek.