THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
By James White
THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.
DURING the brief period of our recent tour through the counties of Allegan, Ottawa, Kent, Montcalm, Ionia, Shiawassee, and Eaton, we have had time for reflection upon the past, the present, and the future. We have been in the field as a preacher of the gospel, nearly forty years. We have labored from the Atlantic to the Pacific, in twenty-one States and Territories besides the Canadas. Our specific work has been to meet the different forms of error, and to bring order and organization out of confusion and distraction. Our labors from State to State, in connection with Mrs. White and her work, have been exceedingly wearing. The saddening and discouraging influence of the perplexities, trials, and hardships which have been our lot, has made its mark upon body, soul, and spirit; and we have fully resolved to lay down the heavy burdens, which should have been shared by others long ago. Our whole heart has been in the work from the beginning. We have seen work to be done of the highest importance, and have been willing to work; and under the inspiration of active life, delighted with seeing enterprises pushed forward and accomplished, we have put seventy years of labor into the past281thirty-five. It is not a pleasure to write sad and humiliating things about one's self. But under the circumstances, we trust our readers will bear with us while we make the following points. 1. We have never coveted the positions of trust and responsibility which it is necessary that some one, or ones, should hold among our people as an organized body. We have never asked for any office. This statement will be read by thousands who have been permitted to enter into our plans and motives during the entire period that S. D. Adventists have been an organized body. They very well know that these words express the truth in the case. They also know that the offices we have held in the General Conference, the College, the Sanitarium, and the offices of publication, have been urged upon us in the face of the most earnest protestations and pleadings that we were weary of the labor, care, perplexities, and reproaches, which have been heaped upon us in consequence of the prominence of our positions in the several branches of the cause. And notwithstanding we have had three shocks of paralysis, and have pleaded to be released, both in public and with our friends in private, yet these responsibilities are still urged upon us. And in addition to these, we are urged to again go the rounds of the camp-meetings for 1880. 2. By sad experience we have learned that in undertaking to do two or three men's work at the very period of life when we should be retiring from the labors and cares of the battle at the front, mistakes are sometimes unavoidable; and mistakes liable to seriously injure the cause, are very possible. We have also learned that the spirit of forbearance is not always exercised toward the man who has been strong in body, soul, and spirit, to push forward the work. If he has been care-taking, and thorough in organizing and building up, of necessity meeting a diversity of undisciplined minds, stubborn, untamed, and untamable, he may expect that his work will be criticised in the most unreasonable manner; and that the world will be furnished with a liberal amount of scandal, by apostates from the faith, to be poured upon his head in measureless quantities. Our business and social relations with the outside world have ever been pleasant and gratifying. We have no enemies in that direction. There is not a man in the city of Battle Creek, where has been our headquarters since 1855, that has a word to say against our business or religious life. It is our untiring efforts to bring order out of confusion, in meeting the different forms of error and distraction with those who have professed the faith of S. D. Adventists, that has stirred the ire of reckless men and apostates. And this we could better endure if our people generally could take in the situation, and ever give their sympathy and influence for the right. We have some sense of our unfaithfulness and mistakes in the past, and with an ardent desire not to repeat them, we have fully decided to step out from under the burdens we have too long borne. Having won the confidence and respect of all whose confidence and respect is of any value, we decide to retire from these responsibilities, while in the enjoyment of the confidence of our people. We have seen public men, in the church and out of it, who have held offices of trust, positions of honor, and have quit themselves like men, make the terrible mistake of reaching for some higher position at the very time when they should be retiring from public life. Such mistakes are fearful ones. Our highest aspirations at the present time are to retire to more quiet life, and less responsible positions in the cause, and to finish our course with joy, to be ready for the coming of the Son of man in glory. 3. While being pushed to the front, and overwhelmed with perplexing cares and toils, we have appeared to poor advantage, in a very unnatural, and to some, inconsistent, light. Our executive capacity and energy has called forth the most extravagant statements in the public prints, and has carried us up to a position before the public, which it has been impossible for us to properly maintain, for want of time for study, reflection, and rest. We have been hurried on from point to point, under a perpetual excitement for more than a quarter of a century; liable at every point to make false motions, and commit serious blunders. This has been exceedingly embarrassing, and much of the time during our public life we have coveted the freedom of the slave, who had little else to care for but to avoid his master's whip. Weary of the strife of the past, and joyful in hope of the future, we leave the positions of trust and responsibility to those who have found it easier to criticise our course than to point out a better one. If we can help them by our counsel or otherwise, to bear them, we will do it cheerfully, if we can be allowed to do so without being made responsible for their management. 4. We had decided to attend none of the camp-meetings for 1880, out of the State of Michigan, when Mrs. W. went to the Pacific coast. Our plan was to spend the summer in the Rocky Mountains, and give ourself to the work of writing; and it was not until Mrs. W. had decided to attend the Iowa camp-meeting, that we consented to join her there; and now that she is undecided whether to attend the camp-meetings in Oregon, or to return, we feel released from our promise to attend the camp-meeting at Des Moines, Iowa. 5. Among our mistakes in the past, is overwork. We feel it sensibly at the present time; and without a change, we have no hope of usefulness in the future. We have been very much gratified, on our recent tour, in finding that we had not lost the confidence of our brethren, nor power to instruct, interest, and move them. Their forbearance has been very great, and their condition of destitution for the want of men of experience to break to them the bread of life, is beyond description. We enjoy perfect freedom of thought and spirit while standing before the people. 6. In our anxiety to build up our institutions, and to set an example of liberality to the brethren, we have made mistakes, in giving more than we were able to give. What we have given to our several institutions, and what we have lost in the fall of property, in consequence of our efforts in helping the cause, during the past eight years, amounts to twenty thousand dollars. This leaves us in a condition at the present time where it is necessary for us to change our course in point of giving, until the brethren shall purchase a portion of the three thousand dollar stock we hold in the College, and the five thousand and five hundred dollars of stock in the Sanitarium. We took this stock with the understanding that others would take a large portion of it off our hands, when men of means, and heart to give, should join the ranks of S. D. Adventists; and we hope not to be disappointed in this matter. 7. We have not thought it necessary to correct the false statements which have passed into print, relative to our wealth. What we have been permitted to hold and to handle of the Lord's money, we have obtained in an honorable manner, and our principal regret in this matter is, that the exaggerated reports are utterly false. We wish here to state a few facts. a. Our salary for our entire labors in the interests of the College, the Sanitarium, the publishing work, the General Conference, and as traveling preacher from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and pastor of the Battle Creek church, has never exceeded twelve dollars a week, or six hundred and twenty-four dollars a year. b. That foresight and careful management under which our institutions prospered in their earlier history, has been applied to our personal business, when not overwhelmed with the general interests of the cause, with the same success, as the following particulars will show. Our first home in Battle Creek cost seven hundred dollars. In consequence of rise of real estate in this city we sold it for sixteen hundred dollars. Just before the war, we purchased again for two thousand five hundred dollars, and at the close of the war when prices were the highest, sold the same property for five thousand dollars. Purchased again for four thousand dollars, and soon sold for six thousand. Purchased again for three thousand five hundred dollars, and sold for four thousand two hundred dollars. At the commencement of the war when stationery was the very lowest, we purchased fifteen hundred dollars' worth of writing-paper and envelopes, which sold near the close of the war for four thousand dollars. It has ever been our uniform custom in the days of our prosperity to take all matters of secular business to the Lord in earnest prayer. His prospering hand has been with us, even in our secular matters, and his name shall have the glory that we have not been left to want in our efforts to help the cause, and have not been crippled with the galling sense of dependence on those who cared only for their own temporal interests. c. In times of great feebleness and affliction, we have accepted presents from our brethren to the amount of a few hundred dollars, but the entire sum for a quarter of a century past would not be a tithe of what we have given to our brethren in the ministry, and to the poor generally. And besides this, and the twenty thousand dollars before mentioned, we have paid our tithes to the amount of one thousand dollars, which has gone into the general treasury for the support of the ministry, from which treasury we have not been benefited above our salary of six hundred and twenty-four dollars a year, not a single dime. d. We do not use time and space in giving these facts from personal feelings. The false statements in reference to our financial matters are made by those who are unfriendly to us, to injure the precious cause to which we have given the very best of life. It is in defense of the cause and work of God, in which we have taken a leading part, that we make these statements of facts. Our business career has been laid open to public investigation time and again, and there are thousands who understand perfectly, even to the details, that these statements are correct. J. W.