HOME AGAIN by James White

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 24, 1877

HOME AGAIN.

By James White

BATTLE CREEK has never seemed more like home, so far as a pilgrim and stranger can have a home in this world, than at the present time. We were six days from Oakland, Cal., to Battle Creek, Mich., where we arrived on the 17th. The 19th, we spoke to a large congregation. The gallery and all the seats below were crowded. In this packed condition, the congregation gave earnest attention Sabbath morning, while the heat was such as to wilt the leaves of the clover in the yard. We had our usual freedom of spirit and thought at this old post of battle. There were present at the Sabbath-school in the morning two hundred and sixty-one persons.

This is becoming a point of great interest to our cause. The students at the College, the patients at the Health Institute, those connected with our printing house, with a large membership, make up a congregation that gives great importance to the Sabbath service. There were not less than five hundred grown persons present last Sabbath. A fourth house of worship must soon be erected, capable of comfortably seating not less than 1000 persons. The growth of the cause and work at this point is indicated in some respects by the sizes of the several houses built for our congregation. The first was 20x28 feet; the second, 28x44; the third, 40x66. The fourth is needed more than the second and third at the time when they were built.

From the time, about twenty months since, when Eld. Smith, Prof. Brownsberger, Dr. Kellogg, Mrs. W., and the writer, solemnly vowed to God in a covenant with each other, upon our knees in a grove near this city, to be true to God who had planted our institutions here, and to each other in laboring to establish discipline and order, and to resist the wrong, the moral heavens have been clearing and brightening. Having no other means than a pocket knife to mark the spot of our sacred covenant, we cut five notches in an oak sapling. By the grace of God we design to hold this fort, and give no place to the devil. God is greatly blessing this people with unity and the spirit of perpetual revival.

There is not a shade of discouragement over our beloved Battle Creek College. The attendance is large at the spring term, compared with older schools. We shall be disappointed if there are not as many as three hundred at the fall and winter terms. The Health Institute, under the charge of J. H. Kellogg, M. D., and his congenial associates, is prospering gloriously. When we have been urged to build during the past three or four years, we have objected on the ground that our buildings and facilities were equal to our doctors. Now that we have men of ability, refinement, and sterling sense, educated at the best medical schools on the continent, we are ready to build. Not less than $25,000 will be laid out in building the present summer.

Among the great changes that have taken place at the Institute is a change in the moral worth and numbers of patients. Twice as many have been treated the past winter as during previous winters, and these have been men and women of mind and position, many of whom have crowded our place of worship, and have heard with deep interest for the first time the reasons of our faith. Ample provisions will be made to treat not less than one hundred and fifty patients.

Five years since, we became satisfied that our Health Institute could not rise to eminence and the full measure of usefulness without thoroughly educated physicians to stand at the head of it. We laid our plans to gain this point, and without assistance or sympathy from any one we have pressed this matter forward. Dr. J. H. Kellogg has been as true as steel. Drs. Fairfield and Sprague, who are studying under him, will graduate at the highest medical school on the continent in the spring of 1878. It is a disgrace to Seventh-day Adventists to do a second-class job in anything.

THE HEALTH REFORMER is the ablest and most practical health journal printed. Its influence has called many discerning people to Battle Creek for treatment at our Health Institute, to be disappointed with buildings, facilities, managers, and physicians. They have said, “Your publishing buildings and your College are first-class; but your health department is third rate.” And after staying a few days, many first-class patients have left. A large proportion of the patients have been “dead heads,” or on reduced pay. And so the Institute has continued a feeble existence. But the time has come to bring up this branch of our work equal to others, so that all our institutions here shall be number one. This is our working time. And those who have respect to the reward will seek to do in a manner to merit the “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

We are invited to attend the camp-meetings; but we dare not risk the strain. Should we go on to our camp-meeting grounds, and visit, and take an easy and indolent course, like many of our young preachers, we should do the meetings more harm than good. And we dare not risk another round like that of last year. Our people could have made it easier for us. Most of them cannot see the difference between attending camp-meeting one week and doing nothing only to hear, and attending fifteen in succession, with an intermission of three weeks, to labor within an inch of our lives at every meeting. The scene is novel to them, and full of interest during the one week, and they feel no need of change from camp-meeting life during that short week. They know nothing of the agony we have felt from the strain of perpetual care of camp-meeting life from sixteen to twenty hours each day. Hence we could not make them see that a comfortable ride each day away from the tent we live on the camp was anything but a needless, if not sinful, indulgence.

We never go on to a camp-ground, to visit, or to talk of feebleness, weariness, and pains. We put all the courage, good cheer, and faith into our labors possible. Hence when the meeting closes, we are like wilted leaves. Then comes the struggle of taking down tent, packing trunks, while crowded by careless visitors to take a hasty good-bye, or to attend to business they have neglected until the last moment. This is always the trying point at every camp-meeting season. We have been carried off the grounds several times fainting because of her hard labor, and the indiscretion of friends at the breaking up.

We stated at each camp-meeting last season that we were taking our last full round at meetings. We made a strong and successful effort in camp-meeting reports for the secular papers. We did this at the risk, and, we have feared, even the expense, of life. This added greatly to our care and labors, as we had to educate each meeting, and this trial came each week. Our able reporter threw her whole soul into the work, and often suffered from wet and cold for want of a suitable stove, which could have been provided at trifling expense. She has been failing in health since the season closed, and is at the present time past labor.

It is painful to us to pen these sad lines. But we dare not withhold the facts in the case, lest we be censured for not making arrangements for attending and reporting meetings as last year. We have gone our utmost distance in that direction. We have set our people a good example in thorough preparations for, and in the manner of conducting, our camp-meetings. We have shown them how reporting can be done in the secular papers. Vigilance, study of men and things, and firmness when necessary, controlled all the reporters, inasmuch that only a few lines in two or three instances appeared in the secular prints that were not dictated by our able reporter. We may recover from the labors of our last camp-meeting season. Our reporter was not able to travel from Oakland with us. May God give her to us again to help us in our work. We are at present as free from the burden of the camp-meetings as if we were in Heaven.

We now design to spend July and August in Colorado. This will give us time, free from business cares, to study the wants of the cause, perfect as far as possible the system of Tract and Missionary labor, and finish several works nearly ready for the press. Eld. Haskell says that the T. and M. workers should circulate 25,000 copies of a pioneer sheet in 1878. That is right. And we are glad to see some of our strong western States taking hold of this work. This is right also. They are simply taking hold in good time for next year. Those who move so very slowly, after long deliberation, are none too fast for next year. But when shall the pioneer sheet be issued? The South is opening wonderfully, and is quite as good a resort in winter for those whom wear and years have unfitted to endure the cold of Northern winters as is the Pacific Coast. Expenses of travel are also very much less.

And to business men it looks like a crazy policy to ship twenty tons of paper from the East to Oakland, at an expense of six hundred dollars, to be printed there at a cost of twenty per cent more than printing costs this side the Rocky Mountains, to be brought back by the United States Mail, and received from five to eight days from the press. The pioneer sheet for 1878, to be circulated this side the Rocky Mountains, will not be printed in Oakland, Cal. We are happy to report that the Pacific Press can be fully sustained by patrons in the Pacific Coast States and Territories. With $10,000 from the Eastern fund, raised to fully equip that Office, it is supplied with presses, types, etc., sufficient to do all denominational work, and take the lead in book and job work at Oakland, a city of 30,000 inhabitants. This leaves in the treasury of the Eastern fund $4,000, one half the amount needed to purchase press, types, etc., for an Eastern Office. Where and when it shall be located will be decided in the near future. For circulation in the South, it might be well to locate as far down as Virginia. This would also be comparatively near the several State, Tract and Missionary fields. It might not be best to build or purchase. In that case, three or four thousand more would be sufficient to set the Atlantic Press running in glorious good order.

J. W.