Untitled article by William Clarence White

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 2, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 47.

FROM CHICAGO TO PASADENA.

By William Clarence White

ON Thursday evening, August 12, I took leave of my friends in Chicago, and started on my long homeward journey to Australia. The few days spent in Chicago during this and a previous visit had been busily and profitably spent in studying the various phases of work carried on there by the Medical Missionary Association, and in looking up school furniture and bakery machinery in the interests of Australia. I received much assistance in business matters from Brother H. W. Kellogg, of the Review and Herald Publishing Association.

Reaching Kansas City Friday, I spent Sabbath and Sunday there, speaking twice to the church, and on Sunday enjoying profitable seasons of counsel with Brother Nordyke, of the book depository, and Elder Hyatt, president of the Kansas Conference. In the various parts of Kansas City and adjacent towns, there are several congregations of our people. Some are getting a good experience in Christian help work, and we trust that they will unite their energies for the building up and prosecution of a well-organized, systematic, and efficient work.

Would it not be an excellent investment of means for our brethren of the Missouri and Kansas Conferences to raise a fund sufficient to furnish a home for nurses, and to equip one or two good bath-houses, and then ask the Medical Missionary Board to send a corps of trained laborers? These could do a good work, which would be largely self-supporting. Would it not be a wise and legitimate use of conference funds, to pay the salaries of one or two of these workers, who would give their best energies to work among the poor, and to the training of our people in the city, and in adjacent churches, to engage efficiently in the same work? Such a work, I am sure, would be a great blessing.

Leaving Kansas City Sunday evening, I stopped off two days to visit Denver and Boulder, Colorado, and arrived in southern California in time to spend Sabbath, Sunday, and Monday at the Pasadena camp-meeting. It was a great pleasure here to meet many old friends, and to observe the large accessions to the cause in this locality.

There were nearly five hundred in attendance at this meeting, and, as I saw them flocking to the big tent at the hour of service, I was reminded of the first general meeting which I attended in Los Angeles, during which the ministers slept in the gallery of the little old meeting house, and made their breakfasts of bread and milk and fruit, sitting around the big stove in the chilly mornings. This they preferred that they might have the night to rest and the morning to study, rather than ride several miles to the homes of our hospitable brethren who lived in the country.

Southern California is unique in many of its characteristics. Naturally a most healthy country, it is filling up with invalids, who come to enjoy its salubrious climate. Naturally a country of limited resources, a land where drought and barrenness prevail, it grows fertile and beautiful under irrigation and cultivation, and its wealth is greatly enhanced by the wealthy business men and invalids, who find in it an agreeable and healthful climate.

Many of the sick who go to southern California have exhausted the skill and ingenuity of dosing doctors, and come to receive the benefits of nature's remedial agencies. Still they require the medical supervision of physicians. What a promising field this is for physicians who believe that nature will heal, without the free use of drugs, if we withdraw the hindrances, and give her an opportunity!

On Monday afternoon I endeavored to draw the attention of our people to the advantages of medical missionary work, and to some of the unparalleled opportunities that lie within the reach of the people of California, to build up this work in her principal cities.

W. C. WHITE.

En route to Australia.