OUR MISSIONS by James White

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, February 5, 1880

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 6

OUR MISSIONS.

By James White

Our missions are increasing. The fields of our operations are extending. Men qualified to successfully prosecute the work, are very few, and our means to sustain these missions are limited. The General Conference and our institutions generally are in debt.

The liberality of our people exceeds that of any other. They have raised large amounts for the several branches of our good cause, and there is danger of discouragement on their part, and a reaction in the matter of free-will offerings, unless great care is taken in the expenditure of means.

We invite the reader to take a view of the humble manner in which our cause commenced, and the policy pursued in its earlier history. “Call to mind the former days,” is the injunction of the apostle. For this object were the memorials of the Bible instituted, that the people of the Lord might look back to his providential dealings with them, that they might not in their hearts wander away from him, and forget their gracious God.

If it had been best, the Lord being judge, he would have selected men of learning, wealth and popularity to commence this work. Elder Joseph Bates, who had followed the sea for twenty-one years, sat down to write the first book upon the Sabbath, circulated at the very commencement of our cause, with only a York shilling at his command. The writer left the humble calling of chopping cord-wood to attend our first Conference in the State of Connecticut in the year 1848. In that State he earned money in the hay field to bear the expenses of Mrs. W. and himself to our second Conference held in Western New York. Trained in the school of rigid economy, we learned the value of money.

In our early labors we have suffered hunger for want of proper food, and cold for want of proper clothing. We deprived ourselves of even the necessaries of life to save money for the cause of God, while at the same time we were wearing ourselves fearfully in order to accomplish the great amount of work that seemed necessary to be done in writing, editing, traveling and preaching from State to State.

It is possible that God had a design in choosing us in our poverty and humility, to not only have a care for the temporal interests of the cause as well as the spiritual, but to make us an example of industry and economy for others. And right here we would remark that sound growth in every branch of the work has been slow. And if at any time during our brief history, any branch of the work has been started on a large scale, without due caution, we have been sure to be disappointed in the results.

The publishing work increased gradually and safely all the way from Paris, Me., Saratoga and Rochester, N. Y., to Battle Creek where the Publishing Association has grown to be a powerful institution. Had we commenced at Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, or any other large city where our expenses would have been greater, and where the cause would have been sustained at great expense, our work would have been crippled in its infancy, and we would have lost very much which we have gained by establishing ourselves in the little city of Battle Creek. And we cannot withhold an expression of our fears that Elders Andrews and Matteson have not taken the wisest course in settling in Bâle, Switzerland, and Christiana, Norway.

And when we have thanked God for accessions to our ranks of humble, small preachers, God has ever made them larger by natural growth in the work, and they have been of great service to the cause. But when in our weakness we have rejoiced at the accession of men of learning and talent, we have been almost sure to be pained to see them dwindle in influence and power, many of them to uselessness after they have drawn largely from our treasuries. This failure on the part of these men may be partly due to the fact that we have injudiciously given them great prominence in our prints.

We do not say that all those who enter upon the work should labor just as hard as we labored, and suffer all the privations we suffered. And yet the conviction presses itself upon the mind that God had a vastly greater purpose than to secure a large amount of work at little cost from the feeble hands of the pioneers in the cause. Was it not his great design to set an example of industry, economy and humility to those who should unite themselves to the cause at a later date, when means should be plenty, and the temptation to ease-loving and popularity might threaten the overthrow of those who enter the vineyard at the eleventh hour?

J. W.