Interview between Elder G. W. Amadon,
Elder A. C. Bourdeau, and
Dr.
John Harvey Kellogg
Interview
at Dr. J. H. Kellogg's House
Battle
Creek, Michigan
October
7th, 1907
(J.
T. Case present taking notes from 8:20 to 9:00 am,
when
Mr. Ashley arrived and continued reporting.)
G. W. Amadon: Good
morning, Doctor. It may seem rather early in the morning for a couple of old
gentlemen like us to wake you up.
J. H. Kellogg: I stopped my work soon after
1 o'clock, I got three hour's sleep, then I was awake and working.
A. C. Bourdeau: I think you have a very fine
location here. I think of you when you were a young man -- when you were a
scribe for Bro. Littlejohn. I was pleased to hear just a few words by the lady who
opened the door for us. She said, "Papa will come soon." That
indicates that you have a family here, and you have probably a large family. It is a
blessing to know that you have such a family.
A: I don't know which one of your daughters
it was. She was a young lady -- eighteen, I suppose; fine appearing --
which came to the door.
K: I think it was my daughter Bessie --
I think about twenty-four or twenty-five years old. She has two children. She
has been married eight years. I guess it is generally known that Mrs. Kellogg and I
have quite a good sized family.
B: Yes, it has been known for many years.
K: The Lord did not bless us with any
children of our own, so we gathered up little waifs whom we thought would be neglected and
would not be cared for unless we brought them into our family.
B: We have at my house Oscar Bigaeliu's
wife, who was examined by you lately. She has tuberculosis. She is very
low. We are trying to help her. He is working for the Sanitarium and has been
for some years. I induced him to, I think. I believe he is a faithful
worker. She is a Swiss worker. It is very difficult to get help at reasonable
rates to care for her. I am going to inquire about help and see what I can find.
K: There is no particular danger in caring
for these patients if proper precautions are taken. We have a lady at our house who
came a little while ago. Of course she could not come into the Sanitarium, since our
rules prohibit us from taking into the Sanitarium patients suffering from contagious
diseases. But we put her into a tent here on my grounds. We supplied her with
food from our table and took care of her in a tent. I do not think there would be
any great danger to the family if we should bring her into the family.
B: We have been very careful waiting on her,
because she has a cough.
K: This lady has a cough too, but these
patients are not dangerous if the sputum is properly taken care of. I think the
disease is more often communicated through the stomach than through the lungs. The
patient who was in this tent just before the present lady was a missionary nurse who had
just returned from China.
B: It would be difficult for a lady as aged
as my wife -- sixty-eight -- to care for this patient and do our work;
but the Lord has kept us until now, and we going to try to live as long as the Lord will
have us live.
K: I would think that this brother ought to
be able to provide someone to give proper care to his wife.
B: We are going to see what we can do.
I just introduced the matter to him yesterday. He says people are afraid to wait on
her. She has a little baby. If it could be taken care of (it is seven months
old) I think it would be better. I do not think it is proper to take care of a
little baby there at the present time. The patient is quite low. We hope to
have her up today for half an hour at a time. She has not been dressed for a week.
K: She ought to breathe fresh air all the
time.
B: We have all the ventilation possible.
[After a pause:] We came in to see you this
morning, and we are quite anxious to know just exactly where you stand. Yet we know
in a certain sense where you stand, and it is pleasing to know. I have had pleasant
interviews with others, and you have expressed to Rodney a desire to see me and to talk
with me in regard to the situation in regard to the Sanitarium and in regard to other
matters, and he said that you would be glad to see me and talk with me. I thought I
would have Bro. Amadon, who has known you for many years, come with me. We are here
together. The situation is rather peculiar at the present time. We do not know
what is coming, and yet we are anxious that the Lord will manage everything right and help
us to move right all round.
A: Yesterday, and I might say every week,
Doctor, we have a meeting of the elders, the pastor, Bro. Bourdeau when he is here,
although he is not officially one of the elders of the church, Bro. Foy, Bro. Sevy, and
myself. At our meeting yesterday we learned from Bro. Foy the particulars concerning
his separation from the Sanitarium.
We have heard something about this for some
time. In the conversation we had yesterday he mentioned that he had quite an
interview with you about his connection with the Sanitarium, and that you were not very
well pleased with him because of his attachment to the Tabernacle people. And so he
and we felt a little bit surprised, because I guess we all regarded Brother Foy as one of
the very best men that you have at the Sanitarium -- that is, to look after the
spiritual interests of young people, and older ones. But that is none of our
business, one way or the other. We were surprised -- I was, anyhow --
but it is all right, and I guess he feels so. And in the course of the conversation
he mentioned about your connection with the work, and he said you remarked that you did
not think that you would withdraw from the church, but that you would be rather pleased to
have the church drop your name. So we thought Bro. Bourdeau and I would come
together and see you, and see whether we had got that straight or not.
Nothing under this broad heaven would please us
more, Bro. Kellogg, than to have you come down to the Tabernacle and say to us and to some
of our leading brethren that you in [believe in?] what the Lord God has said, and that you
have had a wrong view of things, and you want to be in harmony with this people and
retract wherein you may have stepped aside (and who is there who does not step aside?) so
there can be union and love on the right basis, as in former times, when God used you in a
very eminent sense as his truly beloved physician. I do not believe that that
condition of things obtains just now.
I say nothing under heaven would please us more
than to have an action like that. So you see how we feel. I presume Bro.
Bourdeau would be glad to go right down and take a pan and a napkin and wash your
feet. There is nothing personal between you and me. I have worked for many
years in the Review Office, where there with me you have had our trials and toils
together, and now you have come along in another branch of the work. But we feel
that everything is not right up there on the hill, and of course we hold you very largely
responsible for the present status of things. But we have come particularly to see
about that point that Bro. Foy mentioned to us. We may have got that wrong, or he
may have expressed more than you would have liked to have him express.
K: Speaking of Bro. Bourdeau's statement
that I desired to see him, or was willing to talk with him, several statements were
repeated to me which it was said Bro. Bourdeau had made, and I said, "He is in error
in relation to these matters, and if he will come to me I shall be very glad to talk with
him at any time with reference to myself, or the Sanitarium, or my position, or the
situation and give him the facts."
Now with reference to Bro. Foy: He is, as you say,
a man whose conduct has been very circumspect, and he has been a very useful man about the
Sanitarium. During the last two years I have heard very often that he was doing
various things which were not for the good of the institution as an institution, that were
not promotive of harmony and peace; saying things in public which, when approached in
private with reference to the matter he did not seem prepared to back up at all. I
have frequently heard these things, and they have been brought before the Board. I
have always taken the position that Bro. Foy was a godly man, and a man whose influence we
wanted there, and that even if he had some misunderstanding about things, and took some
positions not in harmony with the facts, nevertheless, because of his godly life and his
correct character and good influence, we could afford to keep him. I said I thought
he was a God-fearing man and that the Lord would keep him from doing any very serious
harm.
So it went on for about two years in this
way. About a year ago last April Bro. Foy tendered his resignation, and it came
before the Board. His resignation was to take effect the first of April, and it was
accepted. And since that time it has been a matter of actual uncertainty as to what
he would do, because his resignation was there, and accepted, and he had never been
re-employed. He was taking his wages, but it was uncertain what the situation was --
whether he expected to withdraw, according to his own proposition, or not.
B: He told me about this resignation at the
time, and I advised him to continue as long as his wife was there at work. It seemed
better not to have it appear as a separation. I said, when he mentioned in my
hearing that he thought of leaving, that I thought it seemed strange that he should leave,
and then leave his wife there to work, and he be called, perhaps, to go a long distance to
find work. It seemed rather strange to me to have him do that way. In my case,
I would cling to my wife if I could.
K: I was going to say, sometime ago a
committee called upon Bro. Foy to ascertain what his mind was. The matter came up
before the Board again and I was appointed a committee to call on him. I thought
perhaps some of the things heard were not correct and I thought we should not take action
without seeing him personally. So one of our members called upon him and had a talk
with him, and told him that we were trying very hard to maintain the Sanitarium standards,
and that the Board had made no change in its attitude toward Sanitarium work of the truth;
that the institution stood for all of these principles unanimous, but desired to keep the
institution where it has always stood, and to maintain its religious atmosphere where it
had always been, and was standing, and had been standing all along, for what we have
always stood for as a Sanitarium Board. We told him we would like very much to have
his help in holding up our standards, especially the spiritual or religious work of the
institution; that he had no confidence in it or sympathy for it, and he did not feel that
he could do anything of the sort.
So I had a talk with him myself, and I asked him
to tell me why he could not help us in holding up the spiritual standards of the
institution. The immediate occasion of my interview with him was a remark that I
heard he had dropped that I thought I would see him about. He did not give me any
good reason, only he said that he had no confidence at all in the religious standing of
the Sanitarium or its work. I asked him why. Well, he said, he could not
explain very well, but the Lord had spoken, and the General Conference brethren were not
in sympathy with the Sanitarium, and he thought that was sufficient. He had
confidence in the leaders, and had read the various publications that had been printed
over Sister White's signature, and he believed all of them as being from the Lord, and
could not have any confidence in the institution.
I then asked him if, under those circumstances, he
thought it would be consistent for him to be working in connection with a work in which he
had no confidence and which he did not approve of, and which he felt it his duty to combat
and work against. I asked him if he did not think it would be the proper thing,
either to take hold and help us maintain the spiritual and moral standards of the
institution; or, if it was so bad he could not do that, if it would not be proper or
connect with some work in which he did have confidence. He said he was simply here
to earn his pay. He was working for the Sanitarium to earn his pay, just as you work
for a Roman Catholic institution or any other similar institution. He said,
"You do that." I said, "No, indeed. I would not spend my life
and energy just for pay for anything. I would not saw wood for the devil at any
price." Then he said, "You want me to leave the institution?" I
said, "No, I would not ask you to leave it. You are not discharged. A man
who has been here as long as you have, and has been as faithful as you have been, would
not be kicked out of the institution for anything."
This is the only conversation I had with him at
all. He said, "Do you want me to leave at once?" I said, "I
have not asked you to leave at all. It is a matter for you to decide. I have
only asked if you think it is consistent for you to continue connected with a work which
you feel it is your duty to oppose and antagonize; when you believe, as you say, that the
things which have been published over Sister White's name with reference to this
institution, widely circulated, are true."
He said, "I believe these things to be true;
and what God says to be true though every man a liar." I said, "Do you
mean to say that I and my associates are liars when we say things have been published
which have not been shown to us to be true and which we do not know anything about and do
not consider them as being true, but rather a misrepresentation of the truth? Do you
mean to say when we say that, that we are liars?" He said, "I mean what
you say." I said, "Well, I have nothing further to say with reference to
the matter -- with reference to your going away or staying here. This is a
matter for your own consideration. If you find it consistent to remain here in your
present state of mind, it seems to me a different state of mind what I should be in.
Anything I could not work for, support, or have confidence in, I would not care to be
spending life and energy in connection with." And so the matter was left.
He intimated to me when he went out of the room
that he should probably be leaving in about a week. He shook hands, said good-bye,
and went away. Now I do not know whether he is going to leave or not. He said
good-bye and left the room, and that is all the intimation I have that he intends to
leave.
B: So you didn't turn him off?
K: He has never been discharged, but he is
not on the payroll regularly. He has simply been paid along week after week.
He has not been discharged, and he has not been asked to go away. He was invited to
assist in holding up the moral and spiritual standards of the institution, and he said he
could not do it. I told him I thought his position was very inconsistent.
A: This is not the way it was presented to
the Board of Elders.
K: It is very difficult to repeat the
conversation just as it was, but I have given you the correct impression, I think, as
nearly as I can.
A: There is nothing very important on that
point. Only, as I said a few minutes ago, that it was a surprise to me that a man of
his moral worth (I am not saying he is not a peculiar man) and integrity should be
dismissed as I supposed, from his words. But I see from the way you state it that
there is a little difference of opinion there -- a little difference.
K: It is simply this. He tendered his
resignation. He has never withdrawn it. His resignation was accepted.
B: I told him to work faithfully, as his
wife was there, and I would rather hesitate to leave under those circumstances.
K: I don't see why it should make any
difference on that account. If he feels that the Lord had instructed him to cut
loose, he ought to cut loose. Lot was instructed to cut loose from Sodom, and he
would have gone anyhow.
A: In reference to the third point, in
regard to your connection with the church here, with the congregation, is that
right? He reported to us that you said you should not withdraw from the
church. Others have withdrawn from the church -- your brother, Gibson,
Moses Kellogg, and others. He did not intimate that you referred to those cases, but
he said you stated you would be glad if the church would just remove your name from the
list.
K: Did he tell you that?
A: Not word for word, but the thought.
B: He said that you said the same as to say
you would like it, or would be pleased or satisfied to have your name dropped.
A: He said if you were disconnected you
would not find fault, and that is one object of our early visit this morning. We
thought, Bro. Bourdeau and I, that having known you so long, and having been intimately
connected with you in the direct work, so that it was a kind of proper thing, he being a
minister and I being an elder of the church, to come and find that out.
B: So far as I am concerned, I know I have
been dealt with as well as anybody could be dealt with by the institution from the very
first.
K: I might say that this is the first
official visit I have ever had from anybody connected with the Battle Creek church.
This is the first time that the church officers have ever called upon me with reference to
my standing in the church.
I am, I think the only surviving member of the
original Battle Creek church. The church was disbanded, with the exception of
thirteen members, in 1870.
A: You refer to that?
K: I was about four years old when I came to
Battle Creek, and there was no organized church at that time -- simply a small
company. Now the church later got into trouble here, and the church was
disorganized. The members were asked to withdraw, and they did so, that they might
reorganize.
Bro. White had a little campaign against Bro.
Amadon, Bro. Smith, and others. There were thirteen persons left in the church, and
I was one of them. I think I am the oldest member and have been in good standing
longer than any other member of this church.
A: Bro. and Sister White and Willie were
among the thirteen.
K: Oh yes, I had forgotten them. Yes,
that is so. It was a funny job.
A: The tailboard of the cart was pulled out
and the contents were dumped, and you were so fortunate as to escape being dumped.
K: I considered myself unfortunate in being
left in the cart. The process left in a few old standbys to hold the fort, who were
ready to do whatever the Elder [James White] asked them to do, and they held a regular
court down there -- Andrews, Waggoner -- and I was the clerk. I
was not left in the church because I was so good, but because they wanted somebody for
clerk.
It was purely machine politics. I had to sit
there and make a record as they brought the cases up -- "Well, Sister
So-and-so, we have heard that you are not as strict in the discipline of Willie as a
mother ought to be," etc., etc. "And now, Bro. Jones, we have heard that
you are not as careful as you ought to be on the question of health reform." I
had to take this all down and write it out. There is a book full of this somewhere.
A: I guess it was burned up in the fire, and
I am glad of it.
K: I was going to remark concerning what I
said to Bro. Foy with reference to being connected with the church. Bro. Foy said,
"I do not have any confidence in your position." "Well," I said,
"Bro. Foy, what is my position? What is there about my position with which you
disagree?" "Well," he said, "I do not know, but you are not in
harmony with the Conference." I said, "I do not know why the Conference
should disagree with my belief. If they would sit down and talk with me I presume
that would find out there is no occasion for disagreement at all. I have long
invited them to come and have a talk with me, but they have never come."
"Well, but the Lord has said it," he replied.
Now there it is. I said, "I have done
all I could do that the Lord has asked me to do, that Sister White has said the Lord has
asked me to do." What I meant by that remark was this. In the first
place, at Berrien Springs, Bro. Daniells, Prescott, and others who were in a hostile
attitude towards me received a letter from Sister White in which they were instructed to
come to me, and to W. K. Kellogg, and to make no conditions. They never came.
I waited on the ground for several days until I was compelled to go home to perform
surgical operations, and I waited until the very last minute and the very last train and
then hired a conveyance to hurry me to the depot, to give them every opportunity.
They never came. They made no overtures of any sort whatever.
I then thought that possibly in the light of what
Sister White had written, it was my duty to go to them, and felt that possibly I ought to
have done so before leaving the ground. So I went to the telephone and spent about
two hours at the telephone in telephoning to the brethren -- to Brother Butler,
to Sister Druillard, and to others there begging that they would come down here and let us
sit down and talk our differences over. And I sent them the message that if they
would come, I believed we could settle all our difficulties in half an hour, that we were
ready to make every concession that could possibly be made. And they declined to
come. They had different appointments. One had an appointment here, another
there. Prof. Prescott, however, dropped off on his way through going east and came
up with Elder Evans and sat down and had a little talk with me. And in talking
matters over he made several statements which I felt were not true, which I knew were
untrue, which I proved right on the spot were untrue; and I told him how I looked at it,
and I felt that they not only untrue but that he was consciously telling what was not
true, for it was so preposterous, so absurd, that it could not be true.
A: You mean to say he knew what he was
telling -- ?
K: I mean to say he knew he was not telling
the truth. And when I put it straight to him, he was completely dumfounded. He
could not say a word. He could not raise a question. And I am willing to tell
you what that was because that concerns the very thing that I am charged with doing --
when the Living Temple was published in the first place.
B: I read every word of that Living
Temple and some parts of it several times over.
K: Well, it has been read quite a little, I
expect. Some parts of it particularly.
Now, in preparing that Living Temple I did
it in harmony with a plan prepared by Prof. Prescott and myself, in harmony with Sister
White -- to prepare an educational campaign for Seventh-day Adventists on
questions of health. And I had not given very much attention to the Biblical point
of it. But Prof. Prescott had been up here teaching a good deal from the Bible
standpoint; and some of our doctors and nurses had been in his classes considerably, so
they were assisting me in preparing the book. This book was to be the textbook of
the campaign, so I did my best to write that book as I thought in harmony with the
teaching that Prof. Prescott was giving here at the Sanitarium and in the Review.
I introduced here and there a suggestion by one of my assistants who was helping me.
She would suggest a text here and there, and tell me what Prof. Prescott had taught with
reference about it, and I incorporated a number of things in that way into the book that
seemed to be in harmony with what I believe.
So I endeavored to make this book as I thought --
such a book that Prof. Prescott and others would present the view as he held and as I
held. For I agreed with him in the main on the principles, and I did not notice
anything I did not believe, and introduced a number of texts which I supposed to be
corroborative of the views I was presenting. And certainly they were quite in
harmony with what he was publishing in the Review, although I did not go quite to
the extreme length that he did. He was teaching here -- for instance, he
took a piece of bread and held it up. "Do you believe that is the body of
Christ? This is the body of Christ." Now, Dr. Case, you heard him say
that?
Case: He said every meal should be a
sacrament; we were eating the body of Christ and drinking his blood.
K: Yes.
B: That is the way the Catholics teach, too.
K: He held that, and you can read it in the Review.
B: Does he hold to those views now?
K: He never has said he did not. He
never has said a word in the Review or in public. When I had a private talk
with him after my book was condemned -- I had a conference with him at that time
and he would not admit to me he had changed one atom, that he had changed a particle, and
I don't believe he had.
When I was writing the book, I
prepared it in this way and supposed there would be perfect harmony about it. I had
no particular interest in that doctrine at all, and never did have. I think he took
rather extreme grounds, and still I did not know but in a certain sense it might be
considered true -- in a certain sense. In a certain sense I thought it
might be true, and he had been preaching it for sometime, and I had heard no dissent from
it. Sister White, Eld. Daniells and others at that time had made no dissent from it,
and he had been preaching it right in the Tabernacle. He had preached it at that
very conference of 1901, and Sister White was here and there was no dissent from it.
The views I put into the book I gave right at the
conference, and they were published in the Bulletin; and I preached around at camp
meetings, and there had never been any dissent on the part of the leading brethren from
anything I had taught. I had presented my views on the Living Temple at a
meeting at the Sanitarium chapel. We had a meeting there on the question of healing
the sick, and I presented my views with reference to the healing of the sick, and I
presented the very views that I presented in Living Temple. Afterwards Sister
White read the report of what I said there, and she said, "That is right."
That was told me right here in the house by Sister Druillard, or Sister Maggie Hare, or
Sister McEnterfer, and I think Sister White herself told me the views I presented there
were right. I supposed she had reference to the views I presented with reference to
healing the sick, and that was so interwoven with my views with reference to the universal
presence of God and of his power working in the body that I did not see how one could be
true without the other. It was all based on that one thing.
The view I gave there was that whenever a man was
sick and gets well, it is God that heals him; there is no power to heal but divine power;
and the healing of the sick is always divine healing; that God may work quickly or he may
work slowly; that healing power is creative power; and nothing less than creative power
can heal the sick man.
Well, now those are the conditions under which the
book was gotten out. But I might state further that Prof. Prescott was one of the
committee who was to look over the book, and he went over it and gave me his written
report on it. I had his criticism; and in this written criticism of the book, he did
not condemn any of the things which he has since condemned.
Case: It was six and a half pages of
typewritten manuscript.
K: It was six and a half pages of
typewritten manuscript, and not a word said about anything in it for which the book is now
denounced -- nothing of that kind at all. I have that criticism on file,
you know.
Then, after I came home from Europe, I found I was
under condemnation; and I was condemned at that time because I did not endorse the
financial policy of the General Conference. They had adopted a financial policy that
no institution should go in debt. They had gone further and said it was wicked for a
man to go in debt, and that that text of the apostle "Owe no man anything"
referred to money. And they took that stand very strongly, made the strongest kind
of argument they could, and held me under condemnation because I could not --
would not -- endorse that financial policy.
I said to them, "You cannot stick to it a
year if you try it is impossible, and it is not right. If you can get some of the
devil's money to use for the Lord's work, if you have to borrow it, it is all right and
carry on the work. If you could borrow some money and save somebody's life, it is a
proper thing to do." And I did not take any such position as they did, and I
would not.
This whole American delegation appeared in London,
and that is where the policy was hatched -- in London over night, and it was
sprung on me the next day unexpectedly, and I told them what I thought about it --
that it was fanaticism, unsound, and they never would follow it out if they adopted
it. But they did not endorse this, and they started a campaign on that basis.
Of course, since that time they have entirely
departed from it. I saw a notice in the last report of the Washington Sanitarium of
$2500 interest, which means a $50,000 debt. They are making new debts, and through
the Review are calling upon the brethren to loan them money. And it is well
enough known by everybody that they abandoned that policy, although for a long time they
did it in a very still kind of way.
When I found the book was condemned as soon as the
book was printed, or rather as soon as it was set up ready to print, I held it in plates
for a year nearly, waiting to see what would come out of all this discussion. And
when the book was finally condemned by Prescott and others openly, I sent a copy of it as
soon as it was printed (before I put it into general wide circulation) I sent a copy to
Sister White -- two copies, one to Sarah and one to Sister White. I sent
them both to Sarah to give one to Sister White. And Sarah wrote back after that
about six weeks -- this was in the spring just after the Oakland [1903]
Conference -- she said, "I put a copy of the book on the table in Sister
White's room. For several days she did not look at it. For the last two or
three weeks she has been reading it, and she tells that she is going to read it through,
and that she finds it a very different book from what she supposed it was."
Sarah wrote me that for Sister White. Sister White did not ask her to write to me,
but she wrote it. I sent this book to Sister White and Sarah acknowledged it, said
that she had given the book to Sister White and Sister White was reading it. And
Sister White said about it that she was going to read it through and that she found it a
very different book from what she expected it to be. I had that letter from Sarah in
May or June. Sarah said, "I have read much in it and I find it a very excellent
book, and I hope it will have a large sale and do a great deal of good." So I
inferred from that that Sarah had not received any very unfavorable impression of it from
Sister White and that Sister White herself had formed a more favorable impression of the
book than she had supposed it was from what she heard. That is what Sarah
[McEnterfer] wrote me.
I waited then for Sister White to have a chance to
finish reading the book and to see what her criticism would be. So I held the book
in and did not set it in circulation until fall. And at that time, along in October
some months after I sent her the book, I sent out copies to the presidents of Union
Conferences and asked them to look the book over and see what they thought of it, and if
they wanted to use it to help us in paying the Sanitarium, paying off our debts, and
helping along other Sanitarium enterprises. And I had back several very favorable
letters.
In doing that, I was acting in harmony with the
agreement that W. C. White and the Union Conference presidents made at a special meeting
called for the purpose at the time of the Council which was held the fall before. It
was agreed there that we should get out the book, and the Union Conference presidents
would decide for themselves whether they would sell it or not. We were to publish
it, and the responsibility was put on every Union Conference president to decide for
himself. In accordance with that agreement, I sent the book around for them to look
at.
I never received one line from Sister White
condemning the book or giving me any hint against it -- never received one line
from her hinting to me that I was teaching wrong doctrines, although I had been teaching
those doctrines for fifteen years or more, never received a line from her that those
doctrines were wrong in any particular.
They had been published in the Bulletin
repeatedly, and published in at least one "Week of Prayer Reading," and I never
received a hint that any of them were wrong; and I never did until that article appeared
in the Review, although I sent the book to her for her own special opinion, and
waited six months before putting it into general circulation. Still I never got any
private reproof from her about it, or any letter at all. And about the first thing
that appeared was this article in the Review.
Now I saw that article a day or two before it was
printed in the Review. It was not sent to me, but I happened to be in
Washington, and some of the brethren there had a copy of it, and let me read it; otherwise
I should not have seen it at all before it was printed in the Review. But she
did not intend to have it printed in the Review. I know that. It was
done by a trick. I am personally knowing to all the facts about it. She never
sent it for publication in the Review: she only sent it for the private information
of those brethren. And it would not have been printed in the Review if it had
not been for a trick on the part of Prof. Prescott. They telegraphed to Sister White
that there was a great crisis, and it must be published. They sent her a telegram,
and she consented to it on that.
Now there was no great crisis at all. It was
an absolute falsehood. This paper was read before the Council in Washington. I
arose before that Council and the whole Conference, and with tears running down my face I
said, "I receive what has been said about this thing as from the Lord, and I will
withdraw the book from circulation at once." The fact that I did not understand
it all -- I could not understand it all -- but I said, "I see it is
evident that the Lord does not want the book circulated; and I shall telegraph immediately
to have the book withdrawn from circulation, packed up in boxes, and stopped."
I did that thing at once. I telegraphed for
the books to be boxed up and put in the basement of the college, and there they are now.
There they are now. But that is a very different story from what is being
circulated about the thing. I am telling you these facts because I want you to know
them.
Now I went to Prof. Prescott after this public
meeting down there, and I said to him, "Prof. Prescott, what is the trouble?
What is the difficulty?" I had a private talk with him. I said, "I
have written that book, as I supposed, in harmony with what you and I believe, and what
was generally believed, and just what I have been teaching for many many years. And
if I have made any mistakes in expression, I am willing to withdraw them."
I might say that at the council held here the fall
before, I asked the chairman to appoint a committee and let the committee revise this book
and whatever they found in it that is wrong, we would take it out. I said,
"Anything that is not in harmony with the Bible and with the teaching of the
denomination, I will take out of the book if you will point it out to me." Now
that is on record. You can find it there. I offered to do it at the very
beginning, before the book was printed and after it was printed, and I sent it to Mrs.
White for her consideration, but did not get a word of fault found with it.
After it was printed and condemned, I said,
"Very well, I will withdraw it from circulation and pack it up." I saw
Prof. Prescott, and I said, "What is the matter with the book? I thought this
book was entirely in harmony with what you have been teaching." And I said to
him, "You sent me your written criticism, and you did not point out any such things
in the book in your written criticism, and I could not help but feel that your attitude
toward the book was a part of a campaign to bring me into subjection, to hinder me in my
work at the Sanitarium; I could not help but feel that way." I said, "Now
I want you to tell me what the trouble is."
I said, "This life that is in me and in all
living things, if that is not divine life, what is it? Can there be one life for one
thing and another life for another thing?" He said, "Of course, there is
only one life; it is God's life." I said, "Of course, all life is God's
life, and it is the only life there is." "Well," he said, "it is
the method of teaching it; it is the teaching of it." I said, "Tell me how
to teach it, then. If I have not taught it right, I am willing to be
instructed." He said, "I do not know whether I could tell you how to teach
it, but I can teach it myself."
Then I said, "Prof. Prescott, you take this
book of mine and revise it. Go through it from one end to the other, and you make a
cross on the margin and underscore anything you think is wrong in this book, and I will
take it out." I said, "We need to use that book because it is a part of
our means of raising money, and we need $50,000 before the first of the year and do not
have any other means of getting it that I know of; and I want to fix this thing up as
quick as I can and get it out." Prof. Prescott said, "I do not want to be
a censor." "Well," I said, "I request you to do it. And
you do not need to make any argument about it, but simply check on the margin of the book
everything that is wrongly stated, and I will simply take it out." And he said,
"I will do it." Finally his lips quivered and he turned his face away, and
I was talking to him with the tears running down my face and appealing to him to show me
what the trouble was, where I differed from him, and from what we have been doing all the
time. He finally broke down, and his lips quivered when he said, "I will do
it." And he said, "There ought to be somebody else to look it over
also." "Whom do you suggest?" He said, "I think Elder
Haskell will be a good man." I said, "All right, I will go and see
him."
I asked, "When can you send it?"
He said, "I will mail it to you Sunday." I said, "I will get a copy
for you." He said, "No, I have a copy." I said, "Here is a
dollar bill. You send it by letter postage with special delivery, for I want to get
it as quickly as possible, and here is a dollar to pay the postage." He
declined to take the dollar bill. He said, "No, you make it all the harder for
me." So I put the dollar bill back into my pocket.
I went up to see Elder Haskell, and he agreed to
do the same thing. Now Prof. Magan remained behind in Washington, and he afterwards
told me, "Prof. Prescott won't do that. He is not going to revise that book and
send it to you." I said, "He said he would." "Well,
but," he said, "he won't; because I heard he told Elder Daniells he was going to
do it, and I heard Elder Daniells say at once, 'You ought not to do that.'" So
he said, "Elder Daniells is going after him and telling him he must not do it, and he
won't do it." I said, "Oh, but he promised me he would, and he certainly
will do it."
I waited until Sunday and it did not come; and
Monday came a postal card saying, "I did not get it finished, and was not able to get
it off." And the next day I got a letter saying that he was not going to do it
at all. He advised that the book should not be printed. The next thing I
noticed was an article in the Review.
Of course, when I got home I announced to our
friends that everything was going to be settled up, that Prof. Prescott was going to
revise the book, take out all the bad doctrines in it, and we were going to put things
straight and were going on all right, and the difficulties were over. I told them we
had accepted the testimonies that had come and surrendered the thing, and we were going
ahead to do the best we could and going on in harmony. I told them down there that I
was willing to work under the smallest conference in the world, that they might put any
doctor over me they wanted to. I made up my mind I would trust the Lord to take care
of me, and I would do anything they said.
B: You had revised the book as well, had
you?
K: I then found Prof. Prescott would not
revise it. After a few days I got a letter from Haskell saying he would send a few
suggestions. I guess he sent a few suggestions. Then I wrote to Will, told
Will White the story, and I said, "I propose to take out of the book certain pages
which contain the matter which has been objected to, and to change the name of it to The
Miracle of Life. And now I want to know what your mother thinks about
that." And I wrote her a letter and told her that I accepted what she had
written with reference to the book as a message from the Lord, and had stopped the sale of
the book.
Will wrote me back that what I suggested to him
seemed to him to be all right, and he said, "I will speak to Mother about it, and if
you do not hear anything to the contrary, go ahead." I never heard a word to
the contrary, so I went ahead. In fact, I felt so sure that if I took out everything
that was complained of that they would find no fault with it that I sent out a little
circular. I had ordered the circular sent out before, and had got the report from
it. Brother Jones said, "Of course, if you take that all out they cannot find
any fault with it." We were getting it out for Christmas, for the Christmas
trade; so this circular was sent out three or four days before I got the letter from
Will. But I got the letter from him saying to go ahead, and if his mother had any
objections he would let me know. He did not send any objections, and the thing went
out.
Now with reference to Prof. Prescott, the
situation was this: that it got out and got around that Prof. Prescott was going to revise
the book just as he said he would, and Elder Daniells came in and talked to him and told
him he must not do it. So he was in a tight fix -- so he had to say
something. Because that made it appear as though this difficulty which they had
themselves created for the purpose of bringing us into subjection to them -- that
difficulty was going to be healed up, and they would not have it healed up for
anything. The last thing in the world they wanted to have done was to have the thing
healed up because they wanted to keep this thing going until the Sanitarium was crushed,
so that they might bring the medical work into subjection to them. That is what
their whole campaign was planned for. Elder Daniells told Prof. Sutherland after the
first council meeting we had here, "We made a mistake in attacking the theology of
the book." It was evident that they thought they made a mistake in doing that
thing. Now Prof. Prescott came out with an article in the Review saying it
had been rumored the General Conference was going to revise the book, that no such thing
was going to be done, and no such thing had been contemplated. He put it in stronger
terms than that.
Now I said to Prof. Prescott, "How could you
publish such a thing as that in the Review when it was not the truth, when you
promised me you would do it?" He said, "I never agreed to revise the book;
I only agreed to make a report on it." I said "But Prof. Prescott, was it
necessary for me to offer you a dollar bill to pay the postage on a letter? You
remember I offered you a dollar bill?" "Yes." "Well, now,
was it necessary for me to offer you that dollar bill to pay the two cent postage on a
letter?" He was confounded. He could not say a word. Now, I had
that conference as a reply to my request to the brethren to come to Battle Creek. I
might say Elder Evans was present at that interview, and I afterwards said to Elder Evans,
"You saw Prof. Prescott's attitude when I asked him about the dollar bill --
he could not say a word?" He said, "Well, it was evident he was in a hard
place." And others that were there -- Dr. Read was there and I think
Brother Butler -- and they saw right away. H. G. Butler was there.
Now, I begged them to come here. But they
did not come. W. C. White stayed a day or two behind at Berrien Springs. I
wrote him and begged him to come over here so I could have a talk with him. He came
over. "Now," I said, "Will, what is the use in fomenting this thing,
this warfare, this difficulty and making things worse all the time? What is the use
in it? I don't believe these things that are charged to me. I am not a
pantheist, and I don't believe in pantheism. Now, you heard what I said at Berrien
Springs. I got up and made a public statement that if there was anything in what I
had written on this question, that I would retract it and denounce it as being
untrue. I said that what I believe is just what Sister White has written in the Review
and in her books; and if anything I had written had given a different impression from what
she had written, or was in any way different from what she had written on that subject,
was an error, I would retract and denounce it. I am not a pantheist, and you know
it. If I were a pantheist, I would be out worshipping the morning sun.
"How can a man be a pantheist and do what I
am trying to do? I am trying to hold up things here in the Sanitarium just as I
always did. I have made no change. I read my Bible and I pray as I always did,
and I am working for the poor fellows down there in Chicago when I go down there to the
Life Boat Mission as I always did. If I have made an error in any expressions in
this book, the Living Temple, I am very ready to correct it. I have been
ready to correct it all the time. I only ask to have it pointed out for me.
But when somebody says, 'You say so and so' and I tell them to find it, they can't find it
so I can't take it out -- I can only take out things that are pointed out to
me. I wanted the General Conference folks and the State Conference presidents to
come here to take up this whole thing here at Battle Creek, to go into the whole thing and
settle it. And if you will have such a council here we will abide by the decision of
that council, but we ought to have a square looking into the whole business. These
brethren say there have been crooked things here. Let them come and show them
up."
He said, "What we want is a committee of
investigation." I said, "If you will have a committee of investigation
with authority to investigate everything all around and make a public investigation of it,
it is all right. But if you mean for the General Conference to appoint a committee
of their own choosing, to have a star chamber investigation and nobody know anything about
the facts except what they let them know of their statement, we do not want that kind of
investigation. They can come up to Battle Creek at any time and look into things as
they want to. We can not prevent that, but we will not have any co-operation with
any kind of investigation that is not open and above board and that everybody cannot
attend and everybody know all about. But we are ready at any time for the kind of
investigation that everybody can attend and everybody can know all about."
He finally agreed to do his best to get the
General Conference Committee to come here and sit down. Now what I proposed to do
when that conference committee came here was to say to them: "I want to know wherein
I am in error. You point it out to me and I will retract it." I wanted to
say to them: "If there is anything wrong about the Sanitarium here, point it out to
me and we will make it right."
As I stated a little while ago, and as I said to
Brother Foy, I have endeavored to do everything that the Lord through Sister White or in
any other way has pointed out for me to do. Sister White intimated after we got our
building up to the fourth story that we should not have built here in Battle Creek, and I
wrote her "What shall we do, then? Here we are up to the fourth
story." She wrote back: "Finish it up as cheap as you can and make the
expenses as little as you can." So we did. But she said "Finish
it." She did not say, "Stop where you are." She said, "Finish
it." So we finished it according to instructions.
B: You had made a start before.
K: We were up to the fourth story before we
had a hint we ought not to have built here. These statements that have been
published do not present things in a straight light at all. There is a document
dated two days after the fire [Feb., 1902], and that document dated two days after the
fire, intimating that we ought not to build, never was sent to us and none of us ever knew
it existed, never saw it, until we saw it in that published document a year ago last
Christmas [1905]. That was the first we ever heard of it, and that is the first it
ever was published.
I have a letter from Sarah McEnterfer stating that
that was never published until then and that no copy was ever sent to us. Now that
was sent abroad throughout the world, and the brethren all think that that document dated
two days after the fire was sent to us because it was published there without any
explanation at all as though we had that warning before we ever built, dated two days
after the fire, that we ought not to build. I call that fraud; I call that fraud.
B: Prof. Belden mentioned that to me in a
conversation with him.
K: Certainly. I wrote to Sarah and
said, "What does this mean, publishing a document dated two days after the fire to
prove that the Lord gave us warning not to rebuild when it was never sent to us and no one
ever saw it?"
B: You were certain it was never set to you?
K: Part of it was written in her diary [in
1902], but part of it was made up for the occasion. There is no question about it.
All that part relating to the building was interpolated for that special use in
that publication [in 1905]. You can see it is so, because it does not fit in at
all. I can prove it to the satisfaction of anybody, and I wrote to Sarah and told
Sarah there was an interpolation in that. And I said, "Now if I am wrong, it is
a wrong thing for you to leave me in darkness about it; but that is a interpolation never
written in the original document at all, but was written and put in afterwards --
not written two days after the fire at the time that document is dated." I told
her if I was mistaken, I wished she would inform me and would tell me explicitly whether
that paragraph I referred to was in the original diary, and she has never written me a
word. I wrote her again, appealed to her if I was in error to let me know. I
said, "I am compelled to believe that was an interpolation. If you remain
silent on this point, I cannot believe anything else."
B: Those points have never troubled me at
all.
K: No, I was going to say about this thing
this young lady said to me: "But whatever is written here published over Sister
White's name, I believe is from the Lord." But I said, "That thing is not
straight because it was never sent to us at all," and I felt she ought to know
it. She said she would write and find out about it. So she wrote to Sarah
McEnterfer, and Sarah wrote her back that it had never been sent to us, never had been
published; it was in the diary and was copied out at a certain time. But about the
interpolation -- I did not like to say to her anything about that.
At the General Conference at Oakland, I told the
brethren that if we had made a mistake it was not too late to correct it. "The
Sanitarium is not occupied yet; it has not been dedicated. And if we have made a
mistake, if it is to the Lord's will that the Sanitarium shall be there at Battle Creek,
let the Sanitarium be sold, and have the Sanitarium wherever the Lord wants
it." Now when I said that, I said it with the authority of the Board; they
authorized me to say it, and that relieved us of whatever fault we had, whatever
responsibility we had for the Sanitarium being here. The Sanitarium, from that time
on, they took the responsibility of it. I said, "We will do whatever you
say."
Sister White said, "No, let not the
Sanitarium be sold; let not the light of the Sanitarium go out at Battle Creek. The
Lord would not have the light of the Sanitarium go out at Battle Creek. Let all take
hold to make that enterprise a success." So from that time on we have been
trying to make a success of it.
B: The Lord has shown that we should try to
build up, that if things were not right in harmony with the mind of the Lord we should try
to build up. At the present time, as the thing is now, we cannot tear it down, so it
should be built differently.
K: No, but she has never said we should not
build anything in Battle Creek. She said, "If the Battle Creek Sanitarium had
been moved to a salubrious locality it would have been pleasing to the Lord."
She never had any testimony for us that we should have built a smaller institution or
anything of the kind. The only thing we knew was simply that "If the Battle
Creek Sanitarium had been moved to a salubrious locality it would have been pleasing to
the Lord." It was simply the removal of the institution entirely to some other
place. That is the only thing we ever had.
And what I was going to say was simply this: that
I told Brother Foy we had endeavored to do everything we had been asked to do, and we were
trying to do it still; that whatever instruction we had from the Lord we had endeavored to
follow, whether it came through Sister White or any other source. We had endeavored
to follow all the light we had. And as far as my connection with the church was
concerned, I said, "I expect to be turned out of the church, but I shall make no
protest against it." I said, "I will not on any account withdraw from the
church, and I will not ask to have my name dropped; I will do nothing of the kind, because
if I do, that will immediately be used as a pretense and published everywhere as proof
that I have withdrawn from the church -- withdrawn from the truth which I have
believed in for all these years, which I have been raised in -- that I have
repudiated it. And it will be said everywhere that I have done it when I have not
done it, and it is not the truth."
I said, "I believe just what I have believed
for the last forty years, and I am standing by everything I have stood by. I have
not changed." The Conference has changed its attitude toward me and toward me
and toward this institution for campaign purposes and for the purpose of subjugating
us. But so far as I am concerned, I have not changed. I believe the Sabbath; I
keep the Sabbath. I believe in the Lord as always did believe in Him. I
believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. I believe in the unconscious state of the mind in
death. I believe that the end of things man-made cannot be very far away --
must be near at hand. I believe the general principles of the Seventh-day Adventist
faith as it has been taught and as I was taught it.
B: About the sanctuary question, the 2300
days -- are your views about it the same as they were?
K: I believe exactly the same as I have been
teaching for the last fifteen years about the thing -- just the same. I
have made no change at all in that thing.
B: You remember it was stated
by Elder Jones at that meeting we had here that he did not believe that the sanctuary was
a limited place, a real location that is limited.
K: He never told me that and
I never told him that. I never had any conversation with him about it. I
believe the Bible; I will just simply state I believe that. Now there are a whole
lot of things that in my busy life I have not had time to study into all the details so
that I can define my belief. I do not know, I do not pretend to know. I
believe just what the Bible says.
A brother asked me the question awhile ago,
"Do you believe the Lord is coming in this generation?" "Now," I
said, "the text that says those that see these things, this generation shall not pass
until all things be fulfilled. The Bible says it. I believe the Bible, and I
believe that. If anybody should ask me to explain it, to limit it and tell exactly
what it means, I do not know whether I could. But I believe that whatever it means
is true." I said, "Do you know exactly what it means?" He said,
"No, I know what I think it means, but whether anybody else believes that or not, I
don't know."
I have heard quite a number of different
interpretations of it. I saw a new one in the Review the other day. It
is the only thing I have seen in the Review for some time. Somebody called my
attention to it -- a paragraph from Prof. Prescott putting a new definition on
that. Have you seen that? They have got a new definition. When I was a
boy "this generation" meant thirty years. When I got older, got to be
about eighteen or twenty years old, then it meant sixty years. A little later it
meant the persons who saw the sun darkened [1780], that there would still be some of them
alive when the Lord came. Time has kept going on and these people have died off, and
I told them I did not know what to believe about it exactly, but I believed it
nevertheless. I had hoped that the meaning would become clear after a while.
But Prof. Prescott has discovered a new meaning: that "this generation shall not
pass" means the generation which recognizes those signs as being signs of the coming
of the Lord, the generation which recognizes those signs as fulfilled prophecy, indicating
that the end is near. That seems kind of a reasonable proposition.
B: With me, I take the ground that I did in
the presence of Brother [James] White and Brother [J. N.] Andrews in my house, that those
that were alive and could understand the proclamation of the message in 1844 and the tenth
day of the seventh month, for instance -- at the time the third angel's message
commenced to be proclaimed -- that those that were alive and could understand,
were old enough to understand the meaning and the interpretation given in regard to the
signs, that they would not pass away until the Lord comes. That would make it so
that they would have to live when the stars would fall [1833]. They would have to be
born at any rate at that time in order to understand it.
K: I don't want you to misunderstand
me. You might get up and state what you believe to be Seventh-day Adventism, and I
might not agree with everything you said. And Brother Amadon might do the same
thing, and I might not agree with everything he said. But I don't agree at all with
this policy that is being carried on of persecution against the Sanitarium and of
condemnation without a trial and the refusal of these brethren to come to Battle Creek to
sit down with us and talk our differences over, to find out where we stand, and to hear my
disavowal of the doctrines they were representing everywhere I believed. I want the
privilege of stating in their hearing that I do not believe so and so. "You are
telling [such and such] all over the world. I do not believe it. I don't
believe it. And I never intend to believe it, and I have never taught
it." I wanted to say that to them, and I wanted them to say wherein I had
taught it and to show me my error.
I don't know anything further to say except that I
told Brother Foy that I stand where I have stood all along, that I had endeavored to do
right, and I had endeavored to work in harmony with the people I had been working with as
long as I could, that I have not changed. I have not withdrawn, and I do not intend
to withdraw. The people are withdrawing from me. And I said that if they chose
to withdraw from me they could; they could, and I should make no objections because then I
would not be responsible; that if I withdraw, then I would be responsible for the
impression that would go abroad that I had repudiated the truth, the Sabbath and
everything else I have always believed in, and have apostatized as they have declared I
have apostatized. That would be proof of it. Now if I am kicked out or turned
out, the people who do that will be responsible, and I will not be responsible. Then
they can say as long as they like and as much as they like that I have apostatized, but
they cannot make it true. But I do not propose to do any act myself which will give
any color to that falsehood.
B: I would like to say that my object in
speaking to Rodney with regard to having an interview with you was not to ring up these
little stories that were told about you or the Sanitarium. These things have never
troubled me at all. What is said and what is circulated around and that has been
circulated even down South, that Rodney and Sarah have brought up here, I have never heard
of before. My object was to have an interview with you with regard to the Sanitarium
corporation -- some points in it. I have the book, you know, of the
Association, the by-laws of the Association, and the articles.
K: I would be glad to answer any questions.
B: That is what I wanted to have an
interview about, and an interview with regard to your views of the personality of God, the
angels, and the home of the righteous -- have an interview on that.
K: Christ died for sinners. I believe
all I ever believed.
A: Just as you always have, as we believe?
K: What do you believe?
A: I don't ask that question to draw you
out, to get something out that I may repeat sometime. I simply ask the
question. Now that is a very vital thing about the atonement, as vital as the
reception of the Bible.
K: I will tell you what I believe about
that. I believe Christ died for sinners, that He is the Lamb slain from the
foundation of the world, and that there is no other salvation except through Christ.
A: I don't know --
K: These charges that have been made against
me, that Prof. Prescott has made, has charged against me, that I denied the atonement in
conversation with him, are absolutely false. I never had such conversation with him
in the world. And knowing that such stories were carried to Sister White through
others, I took particular pains in the last interview I had with her to say to her that I
believed in the Lord Jesus Christ as I always had believed in Him, that I prayed to the
Lord every day of my life and many times a day, and that I was doing my best to hold up
all the principles that I ever held up. The foundation of all this campaign against
us is not the truths that they tell, but it is the falsehoods that they tell.
B: About our views since Christ entered into
the second part of the heavenly sanctuary, and the atonement from that standpoint, and the
judgment, for instance, and the end of the "2300 days" and the "tarrying
time" in which we have been living since then, and what has been going on --
K: The prophetic argument seems perfectly
clear. I do not see anything to upset it or anything to shake my faith on it.
A: I don't know as I ought to mention it,
but I am traveling around here in the church all the while, here and there all over, and I
encounter something a man by the name of Robinson is introducing among our people that is
materially different from what we have held, what our parents held.
K: What Robinson?
A: He is a young man and I understand he is
at the Sanitarium.
K: I don't know where he is or what he is
doing. That is something I don't know anything about.
A: I didn't know, I kind of imagined,
perhaps the Sanitarium was back of that and were recognized in what he was doing.
And it is decidedly contrary, you know, to our ancient belief.
K: Do you know, that is the root of the
whole trouble -- has been one of the roots at any rate -- is people
hearing things and then imagining some more and magnifying it and multiplying it.
A: He has got a paper he carries around,
about nine or ten pages, and he leaves that or reads it. Somebody gave it to me
because they were perplexed over it.
K: This is the first I ever heard of
that. I did not know he had a paper or any special doctrines or that he was
propagating anything. He is employed in the Sanitarium, not in any such capacity,
but to work.
A: I imagined that was some of the Ballenger
nonsense, but I don't know for sure.
K: About Ballenger, I do not know what his
views of that are. I haven't any connection with him at all.
B: I presume you did not have anything to do
with that pamphlet that went out in regard to the Sabbath School lessons there?
K: Elder Jones got out that pamphlet,
ordered it sent out at his own expense and on his own responsibility.
B: Long before Elder Jones was among us we
believed as we do now, as he teaches, too.
A: About three weeks ago I had quite a
lively little tilt with Dr. Stewart, and you know he is quite a fast talker, and sometimes
when I get started up I talk faster than at other times. We had a petty lively talk,
actually, and I wanted to see a certain document he had written. I had heard part of
it read. I wanted to get hold of it. Then he went on and told me in regard to
that, how it came to be written, and he says, says he -- says I, "I expect
the Sanitarium is really back of that whole thing." Says he, "No, they are
not. I got this up on my own hook. But," says he, "it never will go
into print."
I have heard in a kind of round-about way that the
thing was going in print, and I kind of wondered in regard to it, for I think that is the
most devilish thing that has been gotten up ever. I am surprised myself that we, in
Daniel's long time of the end -- I was wondering if the Sanitarium were backing
that thing. I expect they are, because I don't believe he has got money enough to
print it, and he agreed to give me a copy of it, which was about three weeks ago.
"Now," says I, "Brother Stewart, shall I come here and get it, or how will
I get it?" "No," says he, "I will send it to you."
That is the way the thing has been left. Says he, "I am having it copied
now." He told me he had it divided up in sections, one here, another there,
another one in another place.
B: I had an interview with him on that book,
and I told him this from the start --
K: What book?
B: With regard to that manuscript he is
getting up. I read the whole thing. It took me two hours and a half to read it
carefully. I told him if he believed the Lord used Sister White to give instruction
and correction to individuals, etc., it would be better to leave her case in the hands of
the Lord and to let the Lord correct her and instruct her in regard to her own case.
I thought it was better for him to do that than to do what he was doing in regard to the
matter, and that the better way would be to spend the time he was spending in writing
those things, in praying that the Lord might direct. I gave him a few thoughts like
that. That is the way I would feel to do in that case. You remember Brother
White [James White] used to say, "Hands off, and give room for the Lord to
work."
K: He didn't always keep his own hands
off. It was your hands he wanted kept off.
A: I want to know if that [their
conversation being recorded by a stenographer] will ever be written out in longhand.
K: My stenographers are too busy. I
did not expect to have it written out. I have found that so much has been made of
things that I have said, that I have never had any interview for several years now with
any of the brethren without having a stenographer to take down everything that was said,
because we ought not to be afraid of the truth. It is only untruth we are afraid of.
We must stand by the truth.
B: I don't think we have conversed in any
way this morning to be afraid of.
K: Brother Amadon has raised a question in
his talk with Dr. Stewart; he says he believes the Sanitarium is behind that
publication. You know, that is the difficulty. There are any number of people
who profess to be good Christian people who are willing to believe all kinds of things on
suspicion. Now that is not the way the Bible directs for Christian people to
do. The Bible requires that every man should have a fair hearing.
There is a text that says, "Judge not, that
ye be not judged." Now I have never lived in any period of my life when there has
been quite so much judging going on by our people who profess to be good examples of
Christian living and standing in high positions as church elders, ministers and
others. I have never come in contact with as much judging as now. Hardly a day
passes but I have a letter saying, "Such and such a person has been telling such and
such a thing," such and such a minister perhaps, telling things that are awful lies.
The whole machinery of the denomination has been set in operation telling falsehoods
about the Battle Creek Sanitarium and myself and my colleagues, based on suspicion and
just as little foundation as you have for thinking that the Sanitarium is behind the
publication of that document.
Now I will tell you the truth about it. And
I am speaking in the presence of a stenographer here, and you can have a copy of what I
say if you want to and can go to Dr. Stewart and he will verify it. Among those
tracts that were printed by Elder Daniells and others and circulated here when they came
here a year ago last holidays, to make a determined effort to break down the Sanitarium
and our work -- I knew about it before they came. I knew when they were
planning it. I knew all about it several weeks before they came. One honest
man I know told me that Elder Daniells had said to him, "In spite of all we have done
they seem to be going on up there at Battle Creek -- in spite all we have
done." He said, "Actually they seem to be gaining ground a little, but now
we are going to join our forces, we are all going to join our hands and go up there
together. And we are going to come down on that thing with tremendous force; we are
going to smash that thing." That is what Elder Daniells said, and what he came
here for, and what he tried to do.
B: What I felt was -- to bring the
Sanitarium and all right in unison with the instructions the Lord has given.
K: We are willing to follow all the
instructions we can. If there is anything you know of we are not following that we
can follow, tell me what it is. I don't believe you will find any other place on the
footstool at the present minute where there is as much and earnest effort made to follow
the instructions we have been following all these years, as we are doing right here at the
Sanitarium. Some things are made almost impossible for us by the attitude that has
been taken toward us, but we are doing our very level best.
A: Brother Kellogg, I don't believe there is
a man on the face of the Lord's earth that has had so many letters and counsels and
instructions and admonitions and encouragements from the great God as you have. I
don't believe Elder James White had a tithe of them.
K: I have the largest collection of personal
things that anybody in the world has. And if you can show us wherein we are at the
present time going contrary to any principle that has been contained in any of those
letters -- if you can show that thing -- we will be glad to have you do
it. I have asked the General Conference to come and do it, asked them all to do
it. When Elder Daniells came to Battle Creek with his documents to read at the
Tabernacle, I invited him to come up to the Sanitarium and read them right through to our
helpers, read everything he had.
The trouble is, there are things charged upon us,
and they are not pointed out wherein we have done it. For instance, there are
charges that we are robbers. There is not an intimation as to how, when, or where we
have robbed. If they would show us, we would correct it. How can we correct
that thing when we have never robbed, when it is not pointed out to us where we have
robbed? I said, "We do not know anything about it. If we had known, we
would not have done it." They said we had spies around the country. Now I
was not aware of that, and I will simply say that all I can say to that is, "Show me
where the spies are, and I will suppress them."
There have been various things said. They
said, "You ought not to have built in Battle Creek." I said, "Very
well, we will sell it, and have the Sanitarium where the Lord wants it." They
said, "Your book is not orthodox; you should not circulate it." I said,
"Very well, we will box it up." We boxed it up. We boxed it up and
there it is. We have not sold a copy since. I said, "I will get out a
revised edition," and I have got it out, asked their advice about it, got advice
about it and followed it. Wherein are we not following their advice?
They said we should not invite boys and girls,
inexperienced young people, to come to the Sanitarium. We do not do it. I said
"We want experienced people of established character and nobody else. That is
the kind we want."
Show me wherein we are going contrary to any
instructions we have received. We were instructed to take hold and make the
Sanitarium a success, and we are doing it. And the Lord is helping us, and the thing
is succeeding beyond our most brilliant expectations. It was intimated to us that we
ought not to let down our principles or to make any compromise in order to get patronage,
and we haven't. We are trying to hold our principles up a little higher than we used
to.
A: Your statement about the Berrien Springs
meeting and Sister White is just like the letter T. Lines of light, you know run
pretty nearly parallel. But they are just about like the letter T.
K: I told you what you can do --
you can verify my statements. If you will write to Elder Daniells, to Prof.
Prescott, to Elder Butler, to W. C. White and ask them when they came to me or to W. K.
and held out to us the hand of fellowship and what thing they did in that direction --
write to them and ask them. Write to Sister White and ask her what those brethren
ever did in the way of carrying out the instruction she gave them. I have told you
that they never took one step toward following out the instruction.
Now, then, if I am wrong about it, you say that is
contrary to what Sister White has said. But now you have heard my statement. I
will give you a copy of it if you want it, and you can send that to Sister White and ask
her wherein I have misstated anything. Or to Elder Butler, Daniells, or Prescott.
A: What Sister White sent here one time --
I wanted you to see and read it yourself before it was read in the Tabernacle. I
thought certainly that must melt down everything. Sister White said there on the
occasion of that meeting that it seemed as though there would be a rending asunder of soul
and spirit, and she said the Lord Jesus Christ came down himself and would have taken you
right by the hand, and your brother Will, and would have lifted you right out into the
light and liberty, but it wasn't done. Now your statement throws --
K: I will go further and tell you something
more. I am telling you the truth before the Lord. There were a lot of brethren
there that knew it all. I am aware of what you say -- that the two stories
are not parallel. I cannot account for that. Only that there were some things
the Lord did not let Sister White know about.
I will tell you something more I don't believe she
knows anything about at all. The last morning I was there, after I had been there
several days, I sat in the house the next door to the house where W. C. White was
staying. And I saw him out on the back porch or sitting on a log somewhere with his
head in his hands. And I said, "Will looks as though he is feeling pretty
bad." And he had some reason to, because, you see, when Prof. Prescott preached
a sermon on Friday night against me and against the Living Temple, in which he did
not read a line out of Living Temple, but he read out of Spiritualist books,
heathen books, and pantheistic books, and theosophical books -- read all those
things, horrible things, making those people believe that he was reading out of my book
all the time. It was the most horrible thing; I could not stand it, and I came
pretty nearly shouting out at the time.
Somebody asked him what book he was reading from,
and he would not tell them. Then he went on and told this awful tale, these awful
heathen doctrines, and said, "This is the doctrine that is being taught among us by
this book that has been circulated." But in College View he stated before a
public audience that we had circulated 50,000 copies of that book; and it was a
falsehood. And he knew it was a falsehood when he told it -- of the Living
Temple.
Elder Evans came to my house when he got back and
said, "Prof. Prescott, W. C. White and Elder Daniells have bound themselves together
in a conspiracy to ruin you and I have letters which I think will prove it."
Elder Evans came here into this room and voluntarily said that to me after the Omaha
meeting or the Lincoln council they had held just the fall after the Berrien Springs
meeting. Now that was true, Brother Amadon.
You know Elder Haskell very well, don't you?
A: I rather think I do.
K: At that same meeting, a few days before
Elder Evans came here, two years ago last September -- a few days before that --
Elder Haskell had been out there at that meeting, and one morning I got a very urgent
telephone call from Lincoln. I went to the telephone and found Elder Haskell wanted
to talk to me. This was just after Sister White's first visit here when she came to the
Sanitarium, stayed over night, and spoke in the Tabernacle. She went out
there. After that meeting was over, Elder Haskell telephoned to me and said, "I
want to see you." So I arranged to meet him in St. Louis, and he came down to
St. Louis to meet me.
The first thing he said to me was, "Doctor,
these men, Daniells and Prescott, have come to the end of their rope. Sister White
has been out to Battle Creek, and she has seen that they have not told her the truth about
things." He said, "Sister White told me and told the people there, 'Why,
Dr. Kellogg is just the same as he always was. Dr. Kellogg is not fighting me.
Dr. Kellogg treated me just as he always did. And there at the Sanitarium they
treated me just as they always did.'" They told her we were fighting her,
condemning her, trying to oppose her -- told her I had a book written to expose
the Testimonies, to show up the weak side of things, and she believed it was
true. But she came here and found there wasn't a word of it true.
Sister White must have told you; she told several
others here, at any rate. She spoke in the Sanitarium gymnasium and I spoke
following. And she said she would not ask me to say anything more than I did
say. She told them out there they must stop this work.
They went to her and told her, "Sister White,
it cannot be stopped. It will be ruin; it will be ruin." So they insisted on
going on. But Elder Haskell said to me, "They have come to the end of their
rope, and now they are coming up to Battle Creek to try to get some new point against
you. I want to see you and put you on your guard." That is the solemn
truth Brother Amadon.
So Sister White came back and I came. They
came before I did and they got hold of something that changed her mind again --
got her to believe I was a forger. They got hold of something and took it to
her.
Do you know Martha Byington?
A: I think I do.
K: She was with her. And Mrs. L. M.
Hall, do you know her? They were with Sister White at that time, and they knew just what
was done. These men came to her with my name signed to a document; my signature was
there, and I had denied in writing that I had ever signed that document. And I never
did sign it. And yet my own signature was there. They told her that I denied
having signed that, that I had forged it. It was a $1000 note that I had
"forged," and they got things mixed up so that she thought I had forged $50,000,
and they found out at last that the bonds were fraudulent -- they found out all
about it. And although she came her on purpose to see me, sent word to me to St.
Louis to meet her, when I got here she would not talk to me at all, would not speak to me,
only to say "How do you do?" She told several people it had been
discovered at last I was a forger and had defrauded, and the bonds were fraudulent.
And she stuck to it and believes it until this day.
The truth of the matter was this. I had
signed a note in blank, "J. H. Kellogg, President," to be used for the
International Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association, to be used for them.
But in my absence Dr. Thomason, who was secretary, by mistake had filled out above my
name, "Mexican Medical and Benevolent Association, instead of "International
Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association," in renewing a note that had come
back. I was authorized to sign notes for the Mexican Association. But I was
only an agent -- I was not president. So the forgery was in that
termination, "President," you see.
Now I paid that note. The money was sent
down there to Mexico. I never had misappropriated the money. That was done and
I did not know it. I could not explain it because I did not know anything about
it. I signed it to be used for the International Association, but the note was sent
out during my absence for the Mexican Medical and Benevolent Association. So when
they wrote me about it, I told them I never signed such a note because I was agent, you
know, and this was signed as president, and I told them I was not president. I had
never signed it.
You see, I signed the first note all right, but in
my absence the note came back to be renewed, and Dr. Thomason wrote that on. Miss
Steinel who kept the books was away from home. When she got back, Judge Arthur wrote
out a full explanation and sent it down to Elder Daniells and those men, but they never
corrected it. So Sister White still labors under the impression.
At the last General Conference, Sister White made
the statement that I was a forger, and Daniells got a shorthand report of that. And
when I was in Europe last spring, I found he had been showing it all around over Europe to
prove that I was a forger, and that the Lord had said it.
You see, I cannot have any particular sympathy
with that sort of doings, so I am perfectly frank to tell you that if you endorse that
action on the part of the General Conference Committee, and if this church endorses the
campaign of the General Conference on behalf of fraud, deceit and misrepresentation, when
they get ready to drop my name from the book I shall accept it as a release that the Lord
has given me from any further responsibility in that thing. But I shall never ask
for my name to be dropped from your church book because I believe the truth that I always
have believed, and I am standing for the same things that I always have stood for, and I
don't believe in the policies that are being carried on at all.
It is a wicked and unchristian and unbiblical
method of procedure. I have never been asked to appear before the church to answer
to any charges at all. Yet I am condemned everywhere. Certainly I ought to be
turned out of the church if I have committed robberies, if I am doing those things.
But it should be pointed out wherein I have done these things, and I should be given
opportunity to make restitution. I am ready to make restitution if the things are
pointed out to me. I am ready to make restitution.
Now, then, about Dr. Stewart -- I was
ready to correct the book, ready to box it up, to suppress it, to do anything in the
interests of peace. And I did do it just as far as I could, and am doing it
still. Elder Haskell said to me, "I believe that their policy is to badger you,
to pester you, until you do something as an outbreak, and they can make a pretense against
you. Now," he said, "just be patient."
Now, I have not had any desire to do anything
else. I have had no desire to be anything else but patient. But sometimes in
the midst of worry, anxiety and hard work, it has been pretty hard to bear all these false
reports going about the country -- to see my friends alienated and being made to
believe things that were absolutely false. It has been pretty hard to bear.
But I have tried to bear it with as much Christian grace as the Lord has given me, and I
have prayed every day for the Lord to help me to learn from this experience the lessons I
ought to learn.
With reference to Dr. Stewart and those documents
Daniells circulated when he came here and undertook to crush us -- among other
things was this statement: that I had never allowed my colleagues to read the things that
had been sent to me, the Testimonies. That I had received the testimonies and
suppressed them and not allowed my colleagues to read them. Now, Brother Amadon,
before the Lord, I am obliged to tell you that although Sister White wrote that, it is not
the truth. It is not the truth, although it is over her signature. It is
absolutely untrue. My colleagues have seen everything I have ever received from her,
private letters and all, the whole business. Certainly I have never held back one
single line that she has written me, never in the world.
Dr. Paulson, you know, got up that little book, Healthful
Living, and Dr. Kress. Away back there we kept all the documents from Sister
White in a certain drawer without any lock or key. I kept all my documents in that
drawer. And when Dr. Paulson got ready to get that book out I said to him,
"Here are all the things I ever received from Sister White, and you just help
yourself." He went through them all. Dr. Kress had access to them; Dr.
Rand and my colleagues always did. When I got a letter from Sister White, I laid it
before the Board. There were a few things I did not always put in their hands --
I read them.
The only things in the world I never read to them
were things she said about me complimentary, and I did not want to read them, did not feel
I deserved the compliments, and I didn't read them. Sister White said some things
about my being the Lord's physician. You never heard me making any use of
that. I never banked on that -- never did. I never believed the Lord
made me His doctor any more than any other honest Christian man who was trying to do his
best. I don't believe the Lord is arbitrary in that way. I think any honest
Christian doctor who is trying to do something to help somebody who is in trouble and
suffering, who looks up to the Lord and asks Him to help him, He will help him, and I
don't believe the Lord ever helped me in any different way than that or that He ever
will. And I hope He will keep helping me so long as I appeal to Him for help when I
honestly come to Him, appeal to Him.
A: I hate to hear you say that --
that you don't believe there was a time when you was the Lord's physician in a sense in
which others are not.
K: I cannot believe that I ever was the
Lord's doctor in any different sense from any Christian doctor that undertakes to do his
best for suffering human beings is the Lord's doctor. I want to say to you that I
never made any use of that thing in order to bolster myself up, and you know it.
A: That's all right Doctor, that's all
right.
K: Because I never thought the Lord would
treat me any different from any other honest man or that I had an official position that
compelled the Lord to help me in any other way than He would help any other man.
A: I believe it anyhow.
B: I believe the Lord sent His angel to
guide your hand.
K: I know the Lord helps me in operations,
and I know He helps me now, for I get into awful troubles, and I appeal to the Lord to
help, and I see He does help me. And I could tell you some things that would
surprise you, but because you haven't had experience in those things -- to see
the trouble I get into and how the Lord helps me out.
A: I heard you tell that away back years ago
when I used to stop at the institution every day most.
K: I will tell you of one little case.
Three or four days ago I met a man in my office who had been backsliding, and I told him
the trouble was he had lost his hold on the Lord, was not reading his Bible, and he was
not praying. He said, "I prayed this morning." I told him I was glad
he did. I said, "You cannot follow good resolutions unless you earnestly seek
the Lord and pray; you cannot possibly get [get on?] without religion." And I
told him the truth, that I had been down on my knees three times that day earnestly
praying the Lord to help me in my difficulties, and I would not know how to get along any
other way. And the Lord helped me.
I will tell you a case. We had here a little
while ago the wife of a most important man. These men sitting here do not know
anything about this. But I am perfectly willing they should hear about it. It
was the wife of a Doctor of Divinity, Dr. Greegan, the Secretary of the American Board of
Foreign Missions, one of the most prominent missionary men in the world, one of the most
prominent Boards in the world -- the American Board. He brought his wife
here, and they had declined to operate on her in New York, and it was a very bad
case. The New York surgeons had refused to operate on her two years before.
She was getting steadily worse, and she was suffering such pain, something had to be
done. I knew it was a very serious case. Dr. Greegan knew it, too. He
and Elder Tenney had a little prayer meeting there in the patient's room the day before
the operation. They asked me to come, but I had an engagement so I really could not
come -- so I declined.
Now when I came to go up to operations, I went
down to this patient's room and got down on my knees at the foot of the bed and earnestly
asked the Lord to help us and to help me. When we got into the operating room, we
prayed again up there that the Lord would help us to do the thing right, as we always
do. We never do an operation in the world without doing it. I never had an
operating day in my life that we did not pray that the Lord would help us in operations.
I would not dare to do it. Now when we got into that operation, I found it
one of the most terrible operations I ever had in my life -- an enormous tumor
with the intestines grown all over it. I had to tear them off. When we got it
laid open, there was a great, raw, cut surface, bleeding from a hundred points. Dr.
Case was there at the operation and he will remember how we put in hot sponges and they
did not do any good. It was a terribly trying time, and I was afraid that woman
would die right there, and I prayed again. I was afraid she would die, and it was an
awful case. And I know I hadn't wisdom to know what to do with that case.
I put the forceps on the arteries, but they would
not hold, put a ligature in and it pulled out, and the bleeding was worse than
before. It was appalling. I prayed, and the instant after I prayed, I saw that
thing shut right up like that, and those great broad surfaces there, bleeding surfaces,
closed together like that. I don't think an angel did that thing. I think the
assistant who was holding the retractor allowed the retractor to move, or it slipped --
released something so it came up. All I had to do then was to run a ligature along
the top of that line and bring those bleeding surfaces together, and that stopped it.
And that woman made a perfect recovery. That was the thing that saved her
life. If I had not paused to pray I should have done something else and would not
have been in a state of mind to have recognized the thing that needed to be done, but the
thing came together. If I had been looking off somewhere else when that happened,
instead of looking there, I would not have gotten the right thought.
I know the Lord gave me that
thought to save the woman's life. He did it for that patient's sake, not for my sake
because I was any better than anybody else. Any honest doctor who was standing there
trying to save a person's life and felt his own helplessness, who would look up to the
great Father to help him would get help. I have to believe that thing.
A: Oh, yes, I don't question that.
K: Now the fact that the Lord does help us,
notwithstanding all our mistakes and our blunders and our unworthiness -- for
there is plenty of it -- leads me to obey and struggle on here in spite of all
the difficulties we have had, trying to do just what we always have been doing. And
with all this storm raging against us, we are still trying to stand where we have stood.
I want to tell you another thing you do not know
about, a testimony I have from Sister White that she has not published and that none of
them have published, that these men have frequently cut out large chunks of things that
Sister White had written that put things in a light that was not the most favorable of
them or did not suit their campaigns that way, that they felt at liberty to cut them out
and so change the effect and the tenor of the whole thing, sending it out over Sister
White's name. I happen to know that. And I think you know it, too. But I
have got a testimony that is on record, and Sister White has got it, but they haven't
printed it, and I don't think they will. Sister White said -- it was since
these troubles began a long time after this thing started up, not so very long ago --
she said, "I saw a boat out in the storm in the sea, and waves were rolling high, and
there were men in the boat, and they pushed you overboard, and you were hanging onto the
edge of the boat with your fingers, and they were beating you off." Now that is
exactly what they have tried to do.
I propose to hang onto all the truth that I know,
and all that I have ever known, and keep right straight along the track I have been
traveling all the years, just as near as I can and let these men go on and do their wicked
work and let the whole denomination condemn me and cast me out if they want. When
they get into such a situation that they want to do that, it will be perfectly agreeable
to me to have them do it. I haven't anything more to say.
B: Another question I want to ask you in
regard to the view entertained by A. T. Jones in regard to organization.
K: I told Brother Jones a great many times
that I thought his principles would be beautiful when we get to heaven, but we have to
have some kind of organization. Brother Jones is not my product, and I am not
responsible for anything he writes or says. Soon after Brother Jones came here, I
had an action taken by our Board that in this controversy with the ministers our Board had
no part to act in it and would have nothing to do with it -- that it did not
pertain to the business of the Sanitarium, and the Board had no responsibility about it;
that we medical men and business men should have nothing at all to do with it; that
whatever controversy the ministers carried on in this religious controversy should be with
them; and they were alone responsible for it, and our Board had nothing at all to do with
it.
Now with reference to Dr. Stewart -- I
had not yet got to explain to you about that thing. Dr. Stewart and Dr. Harris came
to me and they said, "We never let anybody see." Several of the medical students
spoke to me about it, and I said to them, "It is not true." I said,
"You write to Sister White and tell her you spoke to me about it, and I told you to
write to her and tell her she was at liberty to send to you and that I had given you
permission to request her to send to you a copy of any testimony she had ever sent to me
that I have suppressed, that I have given her permission and you permission to get such
testimonies from Sister White and publish them -- that I go further than that and
say Sister White is at liberty to publish everything she ever sent to me."
I want to tell you, it would clear up the
situation tremendously if Sister White would publish everything she has ever sent to me
and everything I have ever sent to her. She is at liberty to do it. And Dr.
Stewart and Dr. Harris came to me and I told them the same thing. They said,
"Would you be willing to let us look over the things she has sent to you?"
I said "You go up there, to my librarian, Miss Hoenes, there. They are all
there in her charge. I have nothing private put away, never have had. They are
and always have been in the charge of my librarian there, and you have, as I said access
to them. I have never secreted them or locked them up at all. They are
there. You tell her you want to see them, and she will let you see them."
So they came up here and looked them over.
I suppose that letter [by Dr. Stewart] --
part of it -- is the result of going through those documents, and I have nothing
more to do with it than that. And I did it because Sister White had written that I
have suppressed things, and that is not the truth. So they came up. I was away
from home when that letter was prepared. When I got home, Dr. Stewart brought it to
me and read it to me. I said, "Dr. Stewart, that is a very smart
document. But anybody reading that would say that Sister White must be a very mean,
contemptible kind of woman. Don't you see they would?" "Well, yes, I
think they would." "Now," I said, "is she that kind of
woman? Do you think she is that kind of woman?" "Why no, of course I
don't." "Then," I said, "you want to be very careful you don't
ever print that. And if you ever let that go out of your hands at all, you should
certainly add a statement to it that you believe Mrs. White was a woman God had inspired
and led, and that these things were only flaws that you had found, but that the main
effort and tenor of her life had been wonderfully good and helpful, that she had stood for
principles that were straight and right, and that her work had been a good work, and that
you believed in that thing. But," I said, "you ought never to publish such
a thing; such a thing ought never to be circulated." And he promised me he
never would publish it, and I don't believe he ever will.
But you see this is what has got Dr. Stewart into
a peculiar state of mind about it. He sent Sister White herself a copy of it.
Sister White wrote to him a personal letter and asked him to write to her and tell her all
his objections. So he prepared it and sent it to Will. He waited some time and
got no reply, no notice of it. Now through that fact that he had sent it to Will,
Elder Daniells got hold of it; so Elder Daniells came out before the conference down there
at the dedication of the Washington Sanitarium and stated publicly there that such a
document had been prepared for publication and was going to be published and went on
stating about it, and he set a whole lot of people coming to Dr. Stewart to see it, to
know about it. And they kept coming to him, and he let them see it because Elder
Daniells had made such misrepresentations about it that he thought it was right to let
them see it. But they would not have seen it or known about it if it had not been
that Elder Daniells had it; so he had to in self-defense let them see it.
Another thing I ought to say that these men have
gone on, Daniells and other men, to such lengths in the frauds that are being practiced
and have been practiced in the deceit and the untruths. They have become so patent
that my colleagues have lost confidence in them. Some of these have not been
connected with this movement as long as I have, and they cannot understand that the truth
and men are two entirely different things; that the truth is one thing and the men and the
conduct of men is another thing.
I have written Sister White repeatedly during all
this controversy; I have written her every little while -- "Sister White,
don't be alarmed at the statements that have been made to you; don't believe the reports
that are being sent to you about my attitude towards you. You have been my friend
all my life, and I am your friend and am going to remain so no matter what your attitude
is, what you may say about me and what you do -- I am to going to take up any
campaign against you, for you have been my friend, the best friend I ever had, and I
remain there just that way and shall stand there notwithstanding." I have
maintained that attitude, and I propose to keep that attitude. I recognize the fact
that Sister White has been a messenger of truth to the world.
I do not believe in her infallibility and never
did. I told her eight years ago to her face that some of the things she has sent to
me as testimonies were not the truth, that they were not in harmony with the facts, and
she herself found it out. I have a letter from her in which she explains how she
came to send me some things. She charged me with things I never had done at all, and
I got a letter from her in which she explains that she thought I had done them --
she drew an inference that I had, and she was worried about it. I never made a
public matter of that thing. I held that thing in my private drawer, in my own
heart, for years and years and never should have made it public if these folks had not
begun a campaign against me. And I have not made it public and am not going to do
it. Just think of it -- a man who has got as much business as I have, to
pursue a feeble old lady, to try to show up that she is a fraud when she is not a fraud,
to try to show up that she is dishonorable and really an immoral woman, when I know she is
not. Anybody that knows anything about Sister White's career knows that she has been
a woman who has worked for truth and righteousness, and if you can find a flaw here and
there or some plagiarism here and there, that is a mistake and a blunder and a slip and
never ought to have been done; but now that does not invalidate the good that she has
done, and I don't feel that I want my name connected with anything that does that thing.
I was tempted down at Oakland [1903] to get up in
the General Conference there and tell them the whole truth about the whole business, but I
made up my mind I would not do it. I said, "If I do that, it will just destroy
all the foundation some people have whose faith is based on this thing. If I should
tell the weak spots they would throw away the whole thing." I can see the weak
spots and still hang onto the strong ones. I propose to do that thing and not to
throw a stumbling block in anyone's way. I got down on my knees and prayed to the
Lord to help me to hold me back from doing any such thing.
I have gotten to the point where I see that the
Lord takes care of me and my work, and we are going on in spite of all these men are
doing. So I am satisfied the Lord saves our work. It is the only thing I ask
Him to do.
B: It has never been my disposition to crush
you down or crush the Sanitarium down in anything. And I don't know as I ever
thought that our leading brethren had that in view.
K: That very thing is the ultimate purpose
of the whole thing. If you had been present in the meeting when this thing started,
you would have heard Elder Daniells on his feet say, "I am not satisfied; Dr.
Kellogg's imperious will must be broken." That was when we were trying to have
peace. That was when he first started this campaign. He started out with that
spirit, and I arose and I said very quietly, "That will be when I am
dead." They have been carrying on their campaign ever since. You can find
plenty of people who were present at that meeting and heard that speech. That was at
the very start of this whole thing.
That is what has kept it going -- that
determination to smash something, to smash somebody. And if it had not been for that
thing, we would have settled all these troubles a long time ago. But the thing has
gone so far I haven't any idea it ever will be settled.
We have simply got to stand by our guns and go on
and do our duty the best we can, working for our fellow men, trying to do right,
encouraging Christian activity in every way we have opportunity, clinging to all the truth
we know, and studying our Bibles. I have been studying my Bible a good deal more in
the last two or three years than ever before in that length of time, and the Bible is very
dear to me. I never close my eyes without reading a chapter in the Bible at night,
and we study the Bible in our home here a good deal more than we ever did before. We
are trying to promote Bible study at the Sanitarium; we are not introducing heresy there,
but simply studying the Scripture lessons to get help for Christian living, for holding up
the moral standard that must be held up. I do not see anything else but to go ahead
on that platform and the Seventh-day Adventist denomination I have been working for all my
life.
I went into the office when I was a small boy --
when I was twelve years old. Brother Amadon was there, and we were good friends, and
he always helped me, was kind to me, and I learned to love him very much, because we were
always good friends and considerate. I have been working for the upbuilding of the
interests of this denomination, and I was willing to keep on working the balance of my
life if they would let me. But they proposed to separate from our work and they did
it -- not because they wanted to get rid of the work, but simply to bring us into
hard places where we could not go.
Away back in November 1902, five years ago, Elder
Daniells demanded of me that the Sanitarium should be surrendered to the General
Conference. I said, "I don't see any way that can be done. It is a
private corporation, and I don't see any reason why it should be changed. It will go
right on as it is, always has been going. It is working for the interests of the
denomination, and it will keep right on as it always has done, and I don't see any need of
change." And he became very angry. It was at a private conference of our Board
and the General Conference Committee. He became very angry, and he said, "I am
done with this thing. I will have no more of this. This is the
end." And he arose and left the room. Spicer said, "You will find
you cannot carry on the Sanitarium without the General Conference Committee." I
said, "Whatever the Lord wants us to do we will do." He said, "You
will find you cannot get the young people." I said, "If the Lord has got a
young man somewhere He wants to come to the Sanitarium, He will see that he gets
there." So we have been going on. That was the end of our work.
Afterwards we tried to make reconciliation with
them, told them we would do anything. But they immediately began undermining work,
began undermining work. They were not square, and I sent word to Prof. Prescott --
this was after the reconciliation at the Tabernacle -- I sent word to Prof.
Prescott and to Eld. Daniells, and I said to Prof. Prescott, "Now then, before you
leave this town, we ought to sit down together and try to find a basis for harmony.
We ought to sit down like men with our official coats off, like brethren together, to try
to find some foundation for harmony." He never replied to my note even. I
asked him at Washington why he did not reply to my note. Oh, he did, sometime later,
after he left town. He said, "If at any time you wish to consult me in my
official capacity, I shall be glad to meet you." I asked him why he did not
treat me as I asked him to do, and he said, "I tried to get Elder Daniells to do it
several times, but he would not."
While we have sought earnestly for harmony for a
long time, and are willing to surrender anything and to do anything, these men have kept
before the people the idea that we were in rebellion. We were not. They are in
rebellion against us. I haven't the slightest expectation of any reconciliation.
You cannot work with men who won't work with you. We have nothing to do but to
go on and fulfill our mission. The Lord has given us our work to do, and we are
going to go right on about the business the best we can and co-operate with everybody we
can co-operate with. We do not propose to fight these brethren or Sister White or
anybody else. I won't allow myself or the Sanitarium to be engaged in any such
thing. We are not going to have any schism; we are not going to do anything of the
kind. I will have nothing at all to do with any such thing and all our folks know
it.
B: You haven't thought of re-organizing,
then?
K: We would not think of such a thing.
For pity's sake, haven't we had enough organization of this kind? When you have got
an organization that can turn itself into a threshing machine or a destructive engine, for
pity's sake why do you want to get into anything more of that kind?
When the Seventh-day Adventists put me out, I will
not go into anything else. I will simply try to live in the fear of the Lord and do
my duty. But I am not going to do anything in that direction. If this church
wants to put me out, I shan't shed any tears about it at all. But I am not going to
request to be put out. And I should like to be put on trial before I am put out; I
would like to be tried for all the charges that are brought against me. That would
be the Christian way to do it. But I haven't any expectation of any such fair
treatment as that. But when I am put out I expect to be dropped on some sort of
pretense. Whenever they get ready to do it, I shall accept that as a part of the
Lord's dealing with me and go right on with my work just the same as before.
I know there are things that are not straight in
the general management of this denomination. I know what fraud is being perpetrated
right along, and I have no sympathy with that at all. I know people go to Sister
White with some plan or scheme they want to carry through under her endorsement of it and
stand up and say, "The Lord has spoken." And I know that is fraud, that
that is taking unfair advantage of people's minds and of people's consciences, that it is
fraud, that it is not a nice thing, and I have no sympathy with that thing, and I told W.
C. White so long ago.
I am willing to tell you a little history,
something that might be information to you. When the Great Controversy came
out and the chapters of the history of the Waldenses, my attention was called to it by
somebody right away. I could not help but know about it because there was the little
book, Wiley's History of the Waldenses right there on the Review and Herald book
counter, and here was the Great Controversy coming out with extracts from it that
were scarcely disguised, some of them. There was disguise because words were
changed; it would not have been proper to use quotation marks because words were changed
in the paragraph so they were not exact quotations but at the same time were borrowed; and
your explanation that it was simply an oversight won't hold, Brother Amadon, because it
would not have been proper to put it in quotation marks when there were so many words and
phrases changed. They were not quotations; they were borrowed. They were
plagiarisms and not quotations. There is a difference between plagiarism and
quotation.
Plagiarism is when you use a thing almost word for
word, but not quite, but just enough different so it is not proper to call it a
quotation. There is not a single one of those things that could have quotation marks
about them. If you should put it in quotation marks, it would be telling an untruth
because you would be representing this thing as being word for word from the author when
it is not word for word from the author at all. So your explanation would not hold
good on that thing.
Now I saw this thing there, my attention was
called to it by somebody, and I sent for W. C. White right off, and I said, "I won't
stand for this, Will White. Now I am standing right here, standing by your mother,
by her writings, and I expect to, but if anybody comes to me with this thing I shall tell
them straight out what I think about it -- that it is an unwarrantable use of
other people's writing, that you have no right to do it and that I am ashamed of it and I
am sorry for it."
He said, "Don't you think that when Mother
sees things, runs across things that agree with what she has seen in vision, that it is
all right for her to adopt it?" I said, "No, not without giving credit for
it. It may be all right for her to quote it and make use of it. But she ought
to put quotation marks on and tell where she got it and should say this was in harmony
with what she had 'seen.'"
She had no right to incorporate it with what she
had "seen" and make it appear that she had seen it first of all. The
preface says this book has been written by special illumination, that she has gotten new
light by special inspiration. So people read things here, read those paragraphs, and
they say, "Here I saw that in Wiley's book." And I said to Will,
"That will condemn your book, detract from the book and the character of it, and it
never will do. It is wrong." I said, "I simply won't stand for it,
and I want you to know that I won't, and that this thing ought to stop."
Now, then, they went on and sold that whole
edition, at least 1500 copies of that thing that they had on hand, and they went on and
sold that thing off with that thing there. They went right on selling it.
But they changed the preface in the next edition
so as to give a little bit of a loophole to crawl out of, giving a little bit of a hint in
it, in a very mild and rather in a hidden way, that the author had also profited by
information obtained from various sources as well as from divine inspiration. That
is my recollection. I remember I saw the correction and I didn't like it. I
said, "That is only a crawl out, that is simply something put in so that the ordinary
reader won't discover it at all but will see the larger statements there of special
inspiration; so they will be fooled by that thing." Then there came out other
books. Your explanation did not help the case at all about other books. Where
is Great Controversy and other books, even Desire of Ages and How to Live?
I don't think you ever knew about How to Live
with reference to things that were borrowed from Coles.
A: I knew a large share of it was borrowed.
K: Those very things Mrs. White's name was
signed to, and some of the things -- for instance, I might recall various
ones. If you go through and compare the two you will see a great number of
comparisons. I never said a word of that to a living soul I knew of, for I had the
original book in which Sister White read and from which some of these copies were
made. I have the book in my library. I know the book, and I have other copies
of the book.
Dr. Kress was down in Detroit, and he ran across
the book eight or ten years ago -- Coles' Philosophy of Health --
and he came to me with great interest and he said, "I have discovered a book here
that reads just like How to Live. Such a wonderful thing that the Lord should
put this into two minds at different times. But the curious thing about it is that
this book was written before How to Live was written." I said, "Dr.
Kress, I know all about that. I have got the book in my library. It is Coles' Philosophy
of Health, isn't it?" "Yes." "Now, I know all about
it. His book was in my library, and Sister White had access to it when How to
Live was written, and that is the explanation of that. There is no miracle about
that. It is just simply a straightforward thing the same as any other."
You know that thing never had any bearing with me
at all -- it does not have any now -- because the truth is the truth,
and the thing I am after is the truth. It doesn't make any difference with me.
But there is a wrong on the part of the publishers, and I don't think it is right for
Sister White to do it without announcing to the public that she did do it. If it was
right for her to do it, and Will thought it was right for her to do it, then the fact
should have been stated in the preface that it had been done. And that would have
been all straight then, and nobody could have made any charge of any dishonesty.
But that thing never made any difference with
me. I have known that thing all these years, and you never heard me complain about
it. I have never made anything of it, never intend to in the world. Because
Sister White had published things that were true, she has been standing for temperance,
for purity and for the things that were good, giving the effort of her life to promote
those things earnestly and sincerely, and I know that thing, and now I don't want to
detract from any of the good she has done by picking up things I think are flaws.
I can go and pick out a lot of things, could have
done it any time in the last twenty-five or thirty years, and so could you. But what
good is there in that? I could find fault with some of the good old prophets of
olden time, but what good is there in that? We want to build up the things that are
strong and suppress the things that are weak. So I never felt any burden --
Yet they said I was going to do it, and have told her so, and that I have got a book all
ready.
Now I want to say this to you once for all, that
the Battle Creek Sanitarium has not published anything of that kind, has never prepared
anything of that sort, and I never prepared anything of that sort in opposition to Sister
White or to the Seventh-day Adventist denomination or Seventh-day Adventist doctrines, and
the Sanitarium never is going to do it; and I do not propose to do it.
A: I have been told it is coming up in
print, and somebody has seen even some of the proofs on it, and it comes pretty straight;
and I did not suppose Dr. Stewart had the backsheesh to print a document of that kind.
B: I told him I would not do it for any
money.
K: He is not going to do any such thing.
A: Why is it going into print?
K: I did not suppose it was going into print
-- never heard of it until you told me here. [Dr. Stewart's letter, later
called the Blue Book for its blue covers, was published not by Dr. Stewart or the
Sanitarium but by A. R. Henry.]
A: Thank heaven for that. There are a
whole lot of points accumulating, and you ought to put in a period and let me explain some
of these things.
K: The thing that hurt me the worst of all,
and the only thing that really has hurt me in this whole business, is the fact that men
that have known me all these years should believe these things against me. What
business have all you good Christian people to be judging? You have been judging
right along, and that is the thing that, as I said, has hurt me and has humiliated me, and
I have got down on my face and wept many a time to think that men I knew and who have
known me all my lifetime could believe such things of me. I trusted they would
not. And when I saw those men starting out on their campaign of deception and
misrepresentation against me, I said, "I will wait. They will find out
differently. I will go right on about my business, and by and by they will find out
it is not true." But they managed to keep the thing going one way or another.
B: This organization, for instance --
I didn't know but what it was a family concern, what Elder Jones has written.
K: We haven't any [church] organization
there at the Sanitarium.
B: He [Jones] is striking against our mode
of organization.
K: The Lord has denounced it, and he has
only quoted what the Lord has said about it. That is, Sister White denounced it at
the General Conference in 1901 here in Battle Creek. Sister White got up and told
them their organization was wrong, and a new plan was presented and she said that plan was
right.
I wrote a resolution myself at that particular
time. And if I am a pantheist, I was as bad then as I am now, for I stood up before
the General Conference and preached all the heresy I have, and it was put into the Bulletin
and published, and at that very same time, after I did that thing, Sister White asked that
I should be ordained as a preacher, and you will find it reported in the Bulletin.
A: Yes, I know it, whether it was reported
or not.
K: And I was just as bad then as I am now in
every particular. And that is the thing. The fact that I know a few things
about these things is the thing that enables me to stand here quietly during this storm,
because I know the Lord knows all about it, and He knows exactly what I believed then and
what I believe now. And all this campaign does not make any difference with the
fact, and the Lord knows all about it.
As I said, the thing that hurt me is the fact that
you men right here in town would believe a whole lot of this stuff without ever coming to
see me once to inquire anything about it.
B: We have come today.
K: You have been believing it. But you
haven't any right to believe such a thing without asking me, without coming to me.
And these other things, a lot of things these other people are going all over the world
telling -- When W. C. White tells stories in his official capacity before
audiences, when Daniells gets up before audiences and tells tales, and others stand
together and tell tales that are false as sin, and they know they are false --
cannot help but know it, or if they have any ground at all it is only bare suspicion --
But it goes on year after year, year after year, until by and by they get the whole
denomination to believe a whole lot of things that are absolutely false. Things get
to a pretty sorry pass after awhile, and I don't believe in that kind of business.
In 1903 at Oakland I took my stand against the
Seventh-day Adventist form of organization [the form adopted there]. I told them
they were taking a back track, going into a wrong thing. Sister White said they
should not have that kind of committee, but they went right on and did the same thing over
and made it ten times worse than it ever was before. They threw away the new
constitution, the new charter, which Sister White said in 1901 was right -- as
the Lord would have it -- they threw that away, repudiated it, went back to the
old thing they had before. Only they made it ten times worse than it was
before. How can I believe in it? The Lord condemned them.
A: If you have arrived at a good point, I
guess I will say a word in regard to what I wrote through the Battle Creek Journal.
It had no reference whatever to Great Controversy, Desire of Ages, or
any other book except Sketches from the Life of Paul. This long plain
statement you have made, and almost a charge, does not apply to that at all. I wrote
with reference to the Life of Paul, and I thought that, very certainly thought
that, what I wrote was true. I said that Sister White never writes the prefaces to
her books. I happen to know that others do write them. And I said it had been
stated formally in the preface of the book that such things had been taken from other
works, that what had been copied verbatim ought to have been in quotation marks, or set in
finer type, or in footnotes, or something of the sort, the way printers generally do.
So I think every word I said was reasonable; and I
don't believe, although I do not profess to be very much of a writer, I don't believe you
can take exception to a single clause in that column article.
K: This is the exception I take. That
[article] was to answer to the general charge of plagiarism, and it didn't answer
it. And the second thing is, it gave the impression that just as soon as the
publishers found out this "mistake" was made, they suppressed it. But they
didn't. They went on and sold the balance of the edition. And not only that,
but they went on circulating other books in which the very same thing was done.
A: I wasn't saying anything about these
other books. This was from Sketches from the Life of Paul.
K: I did not see the other article. I
only saw your explanation.
About the preface, Sister White always saw
the preface. Certainly she had no right to let the book go out to the world without
reading the preface, and she always did read the preface.
It is an error, Brother Amadon, I cannot say
anything else about it. It is an error, and Sister White herself is involved in that
error. It is not a deadly error; it doesn't condemn the good things she has done.
She has got just as good a right to make mistakes as I have.
A: I can see in that all I thought I ought
to say. And I think the public, in reading my explanation, can see I said it was an
unfortunate thing to have that book go out as it did without having a general statement in
the preface; or when things were copied verbatim, they should have been in quotation
marks, fine print, or something. But I said the publishers are more responsible for
those things than the author, because others would write the prefaces, and she never wrote
the prefaces of her books. She, of course, heard them read over; but she never read
the proof. You know, Doctor, that Sister White never in the Office sat down and read
proofs properly.
K: She looked it over, but the thing has
been a bad mix-up.
A: You know in the days of the Elder how her
writings were handled just as well as I do.
K: Of course I do.
A: And I guess I know pretty nearly as well
as you do.
K: Of course you do. You know all
about it. But it is a foolish thing for anybody to hold up these weak things, pick
out these flaws as representing Sister White's work when they do not represent it at all.
A: You are right about that. But the
thing Dr. Stewart is doing I would not do for all the gold that is being piled up on your
bench.
K: Dr. Stewart is not doing it. I will
tell you what has started up these folks to do that thing. I have not -- I
have advised them not to do it. When Dr. Stewart got that letter from Sister White,
asking him to write her what all his difficulties are, I said, "Dr. Stewart, don't
you write anything to her at all. These difficulties you have, Sister White cannot
help. And she can say nothing to them. There is no answer she can make.
If you ask her why she did this and this, bring up some difficulties, she cannot explain
them to you. You know just as much now as you will after you have written. If
you do write, you just write her and tell her you are trying to get all the good you can
from what she has written, that you thank her for the truths she has sent and the
principles of truth, and you are making the best use you can of it."
I said the same thing to Dr. Paulson, Dr. Sadler,
Dr. Stewart and others who got the letter and came to me about it. I said
"Don't make any reply at all. They will charge you with making an attack upon
her if you do. Next they will take it, spread it all over the world, and say you are
making an attack upon Sister White." I said to Dr. Stewart, "I believe
there is a scheme and that W. C. White is back of the whole thing, and there is a scheme
to get you to do something they can make use of."
A: Ain't you afraid now you are judging?
K: No, I was advising them because I told
them I thought there was a scheme in it, and they better not make any reply to that letter
at all. I urged them not to do it because I said "They will use your letter
against you, and against us, and it will be a sort of campaign power that they will make
use of, and it would not do." But in spite of it all, when I was away from home
over in Europe, he and Dr. Harris prepared that letter. They went down to Washington
and read the letter to him [A. G. Daniells] themselves. Now he said, "That is
Dr. Kellogg's mind in that." They said, "No, Dr. Kellogg doesn't know a
thing about this thing. He is in Europe, and he never knew it was going to be
done." He would not believe it. And he has gone on representing that was
a thing I have gotten up, and was going to publish it, and the Sanitarium was going to
publish it, as an attack upon Sister White. How can a fellow do a more silly and
contemptible thing than that? It nettles me that people should think I should do
such a thing as that.
How you could ever believe I wanted to get
possession of the Tabernacle down here and tell that story all about and get it published
in the papers and send it all over the world -- it is the most contemptible lie
that was ever got up in the world.
A: That is just what Sister White sent here.
K: I know it. Nevertheless, it was a
falsehood.
A: Then see here. If that is so,
Doctor, how was it that the Sanitarium planned how they would heat the Tabernacle --
they would send steam down that pipe? They had to draw oil up.
K: That is the first I ever heard of such a
scheme as that. That is the most ridiculous thing you could imagine. You could
not more get steam down to the Tabernacle in that way than you could shoot it down.
That is simply a pipe lying there in the cold ground. That is one of the wildest
things I ever heard.
I want to say to you that that talk -- no
matter where it came from, whether from Mrs. White or anybody else -- about our
doing anything to get possession of the Tabernacle, or having any hankering in that
direction, is absolutely foolish, absolutely untrue. You cannot find the slightest
confirmation of any such thing. It is false.
A: Then in that matter, it is Mrs. White
versus Dr. J. H. Kellogg.
K: It isn't any such thing.
A: I say it is.
K: It is not. It is Mrs. White versus
the facts.
A: You say it is not
so. She says it is so.
K: I challenge you to show one atom of
evidence that that is so. And another thing, how could I do it if I wanted to?
And another thing, what could I do with it if I had it? Where is there the slightest
intimation I ever wanted to do it? How could I do it if I tried to? And the
third place, what could I do with it if I had it?
A: How was it when we had a certain meeting
for the election of trustees -- down they came from the Sanitarium, a whole lot
of them, and run the whole thing over our heads?
K: I will tell you the truth about that
thing, and the Lord is witness of what I tell you. I heard there was going to be a
meeting down there, and somebody says, "Those Washington fellows are going to try to
get possession of the Tabernacle, and it is not fair. It belongs to the people of
this town and they are fooling those people, and it is wrong for them to do it. And
we ought to go down there and take a share in that thing and let them see that they can't
run things just like that."
I said to them, to everybody I could get hold of
who was interested in it, "Don't you go near the place. Don't you have anything
to do with it. The Battle Creek Church have swallowed Elder Daniells and the whole
General Conference Committee and have believed the things they have told them, and they
are entitled to have exactly what is coming to them. They are entitled to all they
are going to get. They will find out sometime how they have been fooled. But
they are entitled to have just the punishment that is coming to them. It is due them
for the way they have acted. They have swallowed them whole, judged us without ever having
come near to us, and it is perfectly right that they should have all the devastation that
the General Conference Committee means to bring upon them, and you keep away and let them
go on."
I said, "If they see any of us down there
they will say that we have got a game to carry down there, to get it." I
afterwards found out that Judge Arthur and Will Kellogg, my brother, were there. And
I took them to task for it, and I said, "For pity's sake, what did you go down there
for? Those folks will think we are after it, and we don't want a thing to do with
it."
Now, then, I know just how this thing came about.
Your preacher down there saw those people there, and he judged me just as you have
been judging me, and he said, "Now, Dr. Kellogg has been trying to get possession of
the Tabernacle," and he wrote a letter to Elder Daniells, and Elder Daniells had that
letter in Europe to prove that I was doing this thing -- because he saw those
people down there. It was purely suspicion and inference. I never dreamed of
Will's going there, never dreamed Judge Arthur would go down there. Judge Arthur was
getting all out of joint with things, and I did not suppose he had any interest in it at
all. But I never knew a thing about it.
This man wrote to Elder Daniells, and he sent word
to California, and Sister White wrote a letter to Elder Haskell, wrote a letter to Dr.
Kress, one to Daniells and to somebody down here, and Will White got those letters and
took a paragraph here, and a paragraph there and a paragraph from the other one and put
them together and made up a thing and sent them out with his own name signed to it.
It is a "testimony" from Willie. If you look that document over, you will
see her name is not signed to that at all, but Willie has made it up from letters that
Sister White had written to those personal friends. I do not know that Sister White
had at any time in her lifetime professed that every line she wrote in her letters was
directly from the Lord. And in that document, if you will read it over again, you
will see very clearly that Sister White in that document does not in a single instance say
that the Lord had shown her I was trying to do such a thing as she said I was.
Now Willie's name is signed to it and not
hers. Yet that thing is being carried all over Europe and all over the world and
read in public as a testimony from the Lord. And that is what I told you is the
gigantic fraud that is being perpetrated; and the ministry of the denomination and the
whole machinery of the denomination have set themselves to work to perpetrate impositions
and frauds upon people. If the truth were known it would bring the whole
denomination into ignominy and contempt. And it will be known. It will come
out just as sure as fate. This juggling and all this deceit and vituperation,
misrepresentation, lying and fraud -- it will all come to the surface.
And when I saw that plagiarism, I tell you,
Brother Amadon, it hurt me bad. I had seen this scheming and misuse of a wonderful
gift the Lord gave to Sister White. James White used to abuse it and you know
it. You know it. I have not forgotten when they had that campaign against your
wife and Harriet Smith and Cornelia Cornell for three or four weeks; and you know it was
as unjust and unreasonable as anything could be. I have not forgotten when you were
driven out of the Review and Herald office for several months and had to go to Marshall
and set type. I knew it, for I was intimate with the Elder and tried to hold him
back. He told me of his plans. He made me an intimate for a good many years
and for more years than any other man that ever lived, and I knew all about his plans and
his schemes. Elder White got after Uriah Smith, pursued Smith and tried to get me to
join him in schemes against Smith that I would not uphold him in. I held him off on
dozens of things he was determined to do, for he would occasionally go on the warpath, get
Sister White to back him up, bring pressure to bear.
Harriet Smith [wife of Uriah Smith] met me on the
street the other day, and I was speaking to her about that three weeks' siege down there
when they shook you all over the bottomless pit. I went to those meetings. I
was a small boy, but I said to Harriet that "I had a good deal of respect for you
because you would not confess what you had not done." She said, "But we
did confess." I said, "I did not know that." But I said,
"What made you do it?" She said, "They kept at us until they got us
so nearly crazy we did not know what we were doing, and there was no way we could stop it
but confess. But afterwards, Brother White came around, got them all together, and
acknowledged that he had been after us, pursuing us." And she said "I would not
go. I stayed away. I would not go to the meeting; and by and by he came to me
where I was and in the room where I was, and he came and put his hand on my shoulder and
said, 'Harriet, I tried to crush you. I did my best to crush you. Will you
forgive me?'"
Now you know that is where Elder White was a
bigger man than those other fellows. He would get on a tear, on a campaign, and when
he had carried the thing far enough, he had sense enough to turn around. But Will
White is not big enough to turn about. W. C. White knows just as well as I know that
he has been doing a wrong thing, is on a wrong track, and that he is not straight.
And if he could get back again where he was five years ago, he would be tickled to
death today. But, you see, Prescott and Daniells have forced him over, have gotten
him into a position where he went so far he cannot retreat from it. And that is
where they are.
A: I don't hardly think it is wise to call
up the dead, to turn Elder White over in his casket and Brother Smith and others that have
passed away. Of course we know how things were away back there, and there were
things that were not just as they ought to have been. But there is an old poem that
says, "Let it pass, let it pass," and I believe that is better than to bring it
up.
K: I want to tell you that is my position
now. I saw it pass, and it passed. So I am trying to hold my breath in this
thing until this passes. I am trying to stand still and hang on, and by and by it
will be passed, and you will find some things remain.
When I saw this thing coming to the Sanitarium and
to me, I said, "I am full of faults and have made any number of mistakes. The
things these people charge me with I have not done, but I have done other things, and I
will simply stand here and do my best with the Lord's help. And whatever I have
built or is built upon wrong principles will have to come down. And I am willing to
see it come down. But whatever the Lord has built they cannot tear down. And I
am perfectly willing they should hammer away as long as they want to. I am
here. I cannot get away. If I should undertake to destroy this thing and go
off, you would not have me do it for anything."
A: Say, Doctor, I want to tell you --
you have been charging up things against Will. Now Will don't have that wicked
feeling against you. I wrote to Will, awhile after you got back from Europe.
Will Palmer said, says he, "I met Will Kellogg, and Will Kellogg told me that when
the Doctor rode out of his gate and went to Europe he was practically free from debt, that
he had been deeply involved but in different ways -- his bonuses on this, that
and the other -- he had come out." And I was writing to Will, and I,
says I, "I want tell you a good thing, that is that Dr. Kellogg, as I understand it,
and I guess it comes straight, is not in debt." And he wrote back to me and
says he, "I am very thankful to hear that of Dr. Kellogg."
Come down to my house and I will show it to you in
a letter if you would like to see it. So that shows that Will White don't have a
very mean feeling about you.
K: I told you a little while ago he would be
glad to get on the old basis. He keeps up a campaign against me when he knows he has
not got any foundation for it. He is the foundation of the whole business.
Mrs. White stood up there at Berrien Springs --
A: I think the devil is No. 1 --
K: He is No. 1, and W. C. White is No. 2.
A: That is a pretty strong charge.
K: It is no stronger than the charge you are
making against me that I am hypnotizing people and hypnotized by Satan.
A: Doctor, the Testimonies say so.
K: How do I know what is truth? The
Lord has to come to impress the truth on your heart, and when the thing is true it has the
power to vindicate itself and to impress itself.
I had a talk with W. C. White at Berrien Springs
the day I was coming away, the morning of that day. I saw him sitting out there and
I said to myself, "Now, then, what on earth is the use of this thing?"
Prof. Prescott had given an address against me and against the book in which he had read
out of a lot of wicked books on Friday night. Now Will White had in his pocket at
that very moment when Prof. Prescott was giving that address, a testimony from his mother
to Prof. Prescott not to do it, and he had had it all day long. He had it there
Friday morning, and he carried it around all day and knew that the attack was going to be
made upon me that night, and he never delivered it to Prof. Prescott at all.
A: Then he didn't do right.
K: That is what I am telling you. He
is a schemer, and he wanted that attack to be made on me; and the brethren on the ground
knew that, Sutherland and others, and they had seen that letter that Sister White had
given to W. C. White -- had got a copy of it from Maggie and others. And
now Sister White had told Prof. Prescott not to give that address and not to say a word
against me; but instead of that, Will White kept that in his pocket, and Prof. Prescott
came out that night with a most diabolical tirade against me, charging me with all sorts
of diabolical things, reading from other books and then saying, "That is the doctrine
Dr. Kellogg is teaching."
Now, then, Prof. Prescott has gotten into a very
humiliating position. Elder Jones sat there taking notes of the things which he
charged me with. He put them down one after another, and the next Sunday morning
Elder Jones stood up at six o'clock in the morning in the same room and he read out of the
Review from Prof. Prescott's own pen every one of those things he had charged me
with and not one of which could he produce from the Living Temple. Now that
is the situation he was in. He "took to the woods." A number of
people here in town know that to be the truth of it. Elder Jones started at six
o'clock in the morning, and that meeting did not close until one o'clock. They
stayed away from breakfast. And when Elder Jones got through reading from the Review
the things that Prof. Prescott had written, and it was found that he himself had done the
things he had charged me with, and that I had not done these things -- when he
proved them all upon Prof. Prescott, Will White sat with his head getting lower and lower
and lower. Elder Daniells said, "Well, I am dumfounded. I don't know what
to say."
Now in that same meeting I got up and said to them
there that I did not intend to write in Living Temple anything that was not in
harmony with what Sister White had written and with what the Review was publishing
and what was accepted by the denomination. I said, "Now, I am ready to
repudiate this moment, and I do retract, anything that is not in harmony with what Sister
White herself has written in a recent article in the Review. That is what I
believe. If there is anything in my book that is not in harmony with that, I retract
it and denounce it."
How could they ask anything more of me?
Sister White had instructed those people to come to me and offer me the right hand of
fellowship, and they did not. I stayed there until the last day I could stay.
I had to hurry home to do operations. That morning I saw W. C. White there. I
knew Will was doing those tricky things.
I will tell you another thing Will did.
Sister White wrote that they should come here and offer me the right hand of
fellowship. A few copies were made, but none was given to me. One copy got out
on the sly. Maggie made an extra copy and gave it to Brother Sadler. Sister
White told her to do it. The other copies that were made, after they went out, he
[WCW] went around -- he knew that would be a thing against them, could be made
use of -- so he went around and wrote in his own handwriting on the top of every
one of them, "Not to be published. To be kept private," to the people
there on the ground. Now there was one copy that did not have that written on it,
you know, and that was the copy that was read down there in public. That was the
copy that was read on the ground. And Will was shocked when he heard that read, and
he came bustling around. "Where did that come from? It was written on
there that it should not be made public." And when they got it down, it was
seen that there was nothing of that sort on the document. Where did it come
from? He never found out where it did come from. That is the way Will White
has been manipulating things right along, making things different from what they were.
His mother gave a testimony and he held it
up. Down at Washington they did the same thing. They had a testimony that they
ought to send $5000 down to Elder Haskell. She gave it to Will. Will said it
would not do. She had a vision in the night and told Brother Haskell he would carry
$5000 back with him; so he expected to have the money. And she wrote out the letter
and sent to Elder Daniells. And Will White held that up, did not let Elder Daniells
have it. And I received a letter, a copy of a letter, in which she wrote that to
Elder Evans and instructed them that they must go ahead and carry it out, and it explained
the whole thing.
That shows Will's manipulation right straight
along. That is what I mean by saying he is the tool the devil is using, to make
trouble.
I wrote to him twelve years ago when he was in
Australia, "I see your finger between the lines, and I warn you to keep your hands
off from this thing. Let your mother act free." There would have been no
trouble if she had not been brought into all these details of business and everything
else. If they would let her alone to deal with the great principles of truth,
righteousness, temperance and reform, it would have been a wonderful thing. But they
have got her tangled up with all the little personal affairs of business and a lot of
other things that the Lord has not given her any information about or any light and have
made her to do business with the sale of books or to settle church quarrels and such
things. And the Lord has never authorized any such use at all of the wonderful gifts
He gave her.
B: Brother White thinks he is taking the
place of his father.
K: His father used to make a lot of trouble
in the same way.
B: I understand that the Lord has shown her
years ago that Brother White [WCW] should be an adviser in making use of the testimonies.
K: I don't know anything about that at
all. But I know I got hold of W. C. White -- I saw him sitting out on the
porch -- and I called out to him and said, "Come here, Will. You and I
were boys together, we were friends, and we changed. I believe just what I did
then. I have not changed at all. I am just what I have been all the time, and
what is the use in having this unseemly quarrel?" He said, "Oh, Brother
Kellogg, you can do more than anybody else to settle all this unpleasant time we are
having." I said "What do you mean? Do you mean I should confess I am
a pantheist? I suspect if that is what you mean you can depend upon it I will not --
before I ever do it -- for it is a lie and you know it. It is not the
truth, and you know it is not the truth." "Well, but Doctor, you have been
saying things that weaken faith in the Testimonies." I said, "I am not
responsible for faith being weakened in the Testimonies. You have been sending me
things you ought to have had sense enough to know were not true and could not be true, and
that is what has made trouble."
I said, "There is the matter of those
buildings in Chicago. Your mother wrote me, 'You have erected buildings in Chicago
to harbor the unworthy poor; you have taken money from the Sanitarium to erect buildings
to harbor the unworthy poor.' And I wrote back to Sister White, 'We have erected no
buildings, taken no money; you have been misinformed.' And I got back a letter
charging me again with it the second time, denouncing me harder than ever for having put
up those buildings, misappropriating the Lord's money and with having robbed the treasury
of the Lord, defrauded the Lord's people; and I should have sent the money to Australia
that I used for putting up those buildings." I said to Will, "You ought
never to have sent me such a letter as that. And when I denied it -- told
your mother she had been misinformed -- she ought to have believed me instead of
repeating the charge. And not only that, but sending it all over the world.
Now, then. When people come to me and ask me where those buildings are, I am bound
to tell them there are no buildings there. I am not going to lie about this
thing. I am standing by your mother and the testimonies, but I am not standing by
anything that is not true." He said, "But mother has explained that."
After several years I told her it was not true,
when she came to this country, I spoke to her about it. And she said she had never
done it, she had never seen that I had taken money from the Sanitarium for any such
purpose and had no recollection of ever having written me any such thing. Not until
after denouncing me in Washington there about the book did I receive anything from
her. Sometime after that I got a letter from her saying, "I saw a building in
Chicago. I thought it had been erected. I afterwards found out it had not been
erected. Dr. Kellogg was very much surprised because I wrote him as though it had
been erected when it had not been erected," and that she did not condemn me for
erecting the building. So I was tried about her. She had charged me with
embezzling money, with robbery, and defrauding the people; and that is what troubled me --
not because she condemned me for erecting the building.
Then she wrote, "My warning reached them
just in time to prevent them from erecting a building which they had planned."
I never planned any building there at all. Never intended to erect a building.
A: That has all been explained.
K: It has not been explained at all. I
am telling you this so I believe in my soul that you know the facts. Then I am not
responsible for what you do in any way at all.
Will White said, "Mother has explained
it." I said, "But the explanation is worse than it was before.
Because her explanation admits that she charged me with fraud and robbery on a mere
supposition. She thought the building had been erected, condemned me for
erecting it and for taking money to do it with, charged me with robbery and fraud,
circulated it all over the world to South Africa and England, as I can prove."
On a mere supposition, Brother Amadon, what right
had she when she saw a building there to suppose that I did it and charge me openly that I
had done it and to send me such a testimony? The Lord never gave her any such
liberty as that. It was a mistake to do that, and her explanation that she
"thought" it makes it worse, because it shows she charges people and sends
people testimonies on suspicion and without a "thus saith the Lord" to back it
up.
She had no "thus saith the Lord" at all
in charging me with having taken money or defrauded or robbed, using money for wrong
purposes. I said to Will, "The explanation was worse than the original because
she admits she never saw I had robbed or defrauded or erected it, even, or took the money
from the Sanitarium; yet she said that she did and also says the building was planned and
the testimony came just in time to prevent it, which is not the truth at all. We
never planned any building to harbor the unworthy poor. The only plan we had was a
building for medical students, a medical college, and I brought it up in 1901 at the
Conference here and she endorsed it and helped me make an appeal to the people to raise
$100,000 for that very purpose. And it is on the record, and the Bulletin
will show it. So it is plain enough that the Lord had nothing to do with it at all.
Will said, "Now, Doctor, I will tell you all
about that building in Chicago. You know mother was writing things in the night that
came to her. In the morning she would write it out. And I said, 'Now, Mother,
I don't think the Doctor is doing such great things in Chicago as you think he
is.'" I said, "How on earth, then, did you suppose I was to believe it if
you did not believe it yourself?" He said, "Well, I will tell you.
It went on, and by and by the stenographers copied it out, got it all ready. And I
looked it over and I thought it would not do any harm to let it go because I supposed, of
course, you would understand that it was figurative ambition, all figurative. Well,
now," he said, "I will tell you. After awhile, after mother had been
writing, she brought me one day a paper which told about what great things you were doing
there in Chicago and putting up great buildings, using great sums of money, etc.; so I
thought perhaps there might be some truth about the whole business."
I know it is the truth because my brother Merritt
told me Mrs. White came to him with a paper. He said, "Doctor, there is a thing
I think I ought to tell you, but I hardly dare to do it; but," he said, "years
ago, down in Australia, Mrs. White came to me one day with a newspaper giving an account
of large buildings you were putting up in Chicago, and the money you were spending there,
and so on. And Mrs. White said to me, 'Now, Merritt, I don't want you to write Dr.
John anything about this because I am going to write him myself, and I want to write him
first.'" Merritt told me about having seen the article before she sent me her
testimony. Will White told me she read the article to him before he was
willing to believe the testimony or to let it come to me; and he let it come on the
strength of that.
After Sister White wrote me what I stated --
that I was taking money from the Sanitarium to erect buildings to harbor the unworthy poor
in Chicago, that I should send that money to Australia -- I wrote her back,
"You are mistaken, Sister White, you have been misinformed." She wrote me
back as soon as the letter could come, about three months after the first letter, saying,
"I have not been misinformed" -- it amounted to that -- and
went on and copied from a paper and said, "Two or three days ago I saw an article, my
attention was called to a paper giving an article, telling about the work you are doing in
Chicago." And she copied from that paper and gave me a reference. It was
the New York Christian Advocate, and it was an article written some four years
before.
Now, then, I saw at once where she got her
information. I knew the Lord had not shown her that thing because I was not doing
it. The way things were fixed at that time, I could not have done it if I had wanted
to. Our charter would have been forfeited, and the whole thing would have been lost,
and our attorney here was cautioning me repeatedly every little while with the greatest
care: "Be careful not to expend any of the money of the institution here outside of
the state," because Harmon Lindsay and others were watching us and had lawyers
watching us so that they might use that as a means of breaking our charter. And
besides that there was a party in Chicago that had a bogus suit for blackmail against the
institution on the ground of malpractice; it was absolutely groundless, but they were
trying to break our charter also for the same reason. So I was watching the thing
with great care and I would have cut my arm off before I would have taken money from the
Sanitarium to put up a building there [in Chicago]. So when that testimony came
saying, "You have taken money from the Sanitarium to erect buildings to harbor the
unworthy poor in Chicago," I knew the Lord had never shown Sister White any such
thing as that.
I wrote her and told her she had been
misinformed. Then she sent me a letter saying, "Two or three days ago there was
placed in my hands an article saying so and so" -- that went on to tell
about the buildings we were putting up, and I was spending thousands of dollars every
month for that work in Chicago. I had never seen the article, and I never knew
anything of it, did not know it was being written, and I had nothing at all to do with
it. And it was also signed by Mr. Sherin as chairman; but in this same article --
or in the same letter, she rebuked me for having these outside irresponsible parties
taking a prominent part in our work, having an active part in it, and I could not
understand what it meant. But those men had gotten up a scheme, and this man Sherin
thought he was going to get me to do it; but when he told about it, I said, "No, no,
we won't do it," and he wrote it out as though it had been done before he saw me; so
of course he never showed me the article, and there was not a word of truth in it.
But here was the thing in it, Brother
Amadon. That article she had in her hands before she ever wrote the first testimony,
for W. C. White told me so, and M. G. Kellogg told me so. She read it to them.
Yet, in that second letter to me, after I had told her she had been misinformed,
she brings that [article] in as proof that she had not been misinformed and quotes the
article and goes on further to say that she saw it two or three days ago, so as to
lead me to think she did not have it when she wrote the first testimony to me.
As soon as I got that second letter, I said to Dr.
Paulson right away, "We know know where she got the information. She did not
get it from the Lord, that is sure." So we went to New York and got a copy of
the paper with the article in it, and we got the whole thing. Then I saw at once what the
situation was. There is the whole truth of the whole business, the exact thing.
Yet they are going around now -- Will
White knows this today; in this talk with him he told me all I am telling you --
yet they are telling that that [testimony] came "providentially" just in time to
keep us from putting the building up. I never had anything to do with any building
at all, and it never was contemplated for one minute to take money from the Sanitarium and
put buildings up there. I have got the documents in proof of that, and Sister
White's admission that she was mistaken in charging me with having put that building
up. Yet the testimony charges me with the whole thing.
I know from that, that everything that Sister
White writes me cannot be taken exactly as verbal inspiration, that we have got simply to
take the truth of it. A lot of the things she writes have got to be accepted and
taken, and what you cannot act upon in the fear of the Lord, ask the Lord to show you what
your duty is, and do the very best you can to be square and straight with yourself and
with every principle of light and truth you see.
A: That is if the thing harmonizes with your
idea of things, accept it; and if not, let it go.
K: Why do you say that?
A: Because the one to whom the document
comes is the judge.
K: Then what would you have me to do with
such a thing? I am accused of having taken money from the Sanitarium to erect
buildings in Chicago to harbor the unworthy poor. "You have robbed the treasury
of the Lord; you have defrauded the Lord's people; you have used money for this purpose
which ought to have been sent to Australia; you have done this to gratify your personal
ambition and your desire for fame in the eyes of the world." That is what she
says. W. C. White told me he did not believe it himself until after his mother
showed him that article in the paper and that he sent it along because he thought it would
not do any harm to let it come. And Mrs. White since has confessed to me, and it is
published, and you can see it -- only a little of it has been published --
Brother Jones published part of it in his tracts. Mrs. White said, "I thought
it had been erected. Dr. Kellogg was tried because I wrote him as though it had been
erected when it had not been erected." Isn't there a difference between a
building put up with stolen money, and no building at all and no money stolen? Isn't
there any difference?
B: As I read it in the manuscript, Dr.
Stewart --
K: Dr. Stewart hasn't got it there.
B: In the manuscript I have at our home, I
saw it spoke of one building being put up in Chicago. Then it brought in a testimony
with regard to a lot of buildings you were putting up, not saying in Chicago but
elsewhere, anywhere, and using money --
K: That had reference to sanitariums.
The first testimony I got did not say Chicago. It said, "You have taken money
to erect buildings to harbor the unworthy poor," but did not say where they
were. But the next testimony that came afterwards.
I will tell you. I said to Dr. Paulson,
"This shows where Sister White got her information" -- the second
letter, quoting the newspaper article. "Now," I said, "Dr. Paulson, I
am going to set a trap. It is an honest trap, a perfectly straight trap, but I am
going to set a trap for Sister White." I said, " I feel hurt. She
has not treated me right. I have written her, told her the truth about this thing
once, that she had been misinformed, that we had not put buildings up, and now she comes
at me again charging me worse than ever and bringing this newspaper as proof that I have
lied to her and that I have put the buildings up and charging me with having robbed the
Lord's people and defrauded the Lord's people and defrauded the Lord's cause."
I said, "Now, then, I am going to keep
still. I am not going to say another word about it, not going to say a word or tell
her once I have not done it. That is enough, and I am going to keep still. And
you will see that testimony after testimony comes right along. That will show you
that what she is writing to us in this thing the Lord is not inspiring in her mind,
because the Lord knows how it is." And every little while for months I got
letters from her -- every mail I got for months brought letters --
hammering me good and hard about those buildings in Chicago, that I was putting them up
for my fame, to satisfy my own ambition, for building a monument to myself, and that was
the top stone of it. The documents are here; you can have them. They came
along month after month, just as I said they would. And I never dreamed of doing
it. Just because I kept still, she thought she had proved the thing on me.
I said, "She would naturally infer I
'acknowledged the corn,' so she would keep right on hammering on the same string, and we
will get some more of it." Sure enough, she went right straight along, just as
I thought she would. You can say it was a trap. But it was a perfectly right
thing to do, because the Lord was dealing with her in that thing.
A: Doctor, neither Brother Bourdeau nor I
want to see people believe in the absolute infallibility of Sister White. We don't
believe in any such nonsense.
B: She did not say that what she saw was of
the Lord. Bro. White said, "My wife's judgment is just like any other person's
when she is not in vision or when she does not write and say that what she has seen is of
the Lord."
K: Let me ask you two questions, then.
If what you say is correct and true, what right have these men to take these documents
that have been written and the things that have been written with reference to us here at
the Sanitarium without looking for any confirmative evidence and when the facts were right
square against it and scatter that all over the world? And when anybody says,
"Well, but how do you know that is so?" say, "The Lord has spoken."
That is what I am telling you, Brother
Amadon. It is the fraud in this thing, the terrible fraud, that is going to be
brought to judgment and is being brought to judgment now. And you will find that it
is coming right straight to the book; that the Seventh-day Adventist preachers, the
ministers and you yourself and other people have used these "testimonies" in
such a way as to make the common people believe that every word was an inspired
word.
What you have just said just now you would hardly
like to have appear in print over your name in the Review and Herald paper.
A: I don't know about that because I don't
apply that to the Testimonies of the church. I say, no, bless your dear soul.
K: But we were talking about the testimonies
now.
B: Then, in a private letter.
K: Then I will ask you about the second
question. Why did you say a little while ago, "That has been
explained"? Why doesn't he say simply, "That was a private letter and that
was an error"?
That is what I said to W. C. White at the
time. W. C. White said, "You talk in such a way as to destroy faith in the
Testimonies." Then he went on to explain about this building in Chicago.
Now I said to W. C. White, "I am never going to admit that was from the Lord because
it was not, and you know it was not; and you didn't believe it until after you saw the
newspaper article. And then you let it come along because you thought it would do no
harm. So do not try to make me say it was from the Lord when it was not."
I said, "I am perfectly willing to admit your mother can make mistakes and that it
would not interfere with my respect for her or her work. But I am not going to say a
mistake is a prophecy. I am not going to say an error is the truth in order to hold
this thing up, for it is not the way to hold it up. The proper way to hold it up is
to let the truth stand on its merits. Whatever is truth will stand."
A: Doctor, don't you think really the Lord
has made a mistake right here? You know Sister White has to have somebody to help
her in her work. She needs assistance. It has been revealed to her that Will
would be help. Now hasn't the Lord really made a mistake in that, and hadn't He
ought to have chosen somebody else and not W. C. White? And really isn't the error
with the Lord?
K: Why do you ask me that question?
What have I said that leads you to ask me such an absurd thing as that?
A: You say Will is
responsible largely for this condition of things; and you bring up this, that he
manipulates these testimonies in a way to suit himself. I say, now hasn't the Lord
made a mistake about that?
K: He is just as straight as Daniells,
Prescott, and a lot of those other fellows that are going out and holding up things that
are not the infallible word from the Lord and making people believe it is.
A: Hadn't the Lord ought to have chosen Dr.
J. H. Kellogg to do that, and the thing would have been all right? But instead of
that He has chosen W. C. White, and Will manipulates them in a way to suit himself as he
likes.
K: Why do you ask me such an insulting
question as that? I have not said a word about Will for some time. I have only
been telling you the truth and things he told me, and I think he told me the truth.
If Will is condemned, it is the facts that condemn him.
A: I don't think Will would knowingly
deceive, cover up, hide, do a wrong thing.
K: He has got so used to it.
A: Doctor, that is judging him --
that he has got used to it.
K: That has been the method of procedure
right straight along, from his father down, and I know it and can give any amount of proof
of it. And if you or the General Conference Committee should give me a challenge for
the proof, and you want the proof furnished, I will meet your challenge. When you
want to dispute my word about this thing, and the General Conference Committee wants to
come up and challenge me to do this thing, I will do it, sir, and the world will hear
it. But you will not get it unless you challenge me. But when you do challenge
me you will get it sure. That is the only condition on which you ever will get
it. If you want the public to know all the facts about this thing, you have it by
asking for it. But I am not going to come out voluntarily and attack a lot of people
that are being fooled and being bamboozled.
If the Lord permits that thing to go on, it can go
on. I am not going to interfere with that thing. But it is a miserable,
contemptible game that is being played. I can take no other attitude about it, and
no other position with reference to it except to denounce the things that I know are
untrue and to say a thing that is not the truth is a lie. I can do no other thing.
A: It seems to me that is a pretty hard
thing to say, that we are being fooled, bamboozled, by believing these things are
testimonies and so on when they are not.
K: I have not said that. But you
yourself have said that a letter from Mrs. White is not necessarily from the Lord.
These men have gotten up some documents that you yourself have referred to as having come
from the Lord with reference to my attitude toward the Tabernacle. That was just the
kind of letter -- gotten up by Will from private letters written by Mrs. White,
gotten up by W. C. White -- that you have by your own word here referred to as a
statement from the Lord.
A: That is not wholly correct, not
absolutely. When we were at the Berrien Springs meeting in the spring of 1906, the
message came from the Lord, and Will White was not there, and I don't suppose he knew
anything about it -- perhaps he did not -- stating to look out for the
Tabernacle, to look out for the Tabernacle. Now that was signed by Mrs. E. G.
White. Daniells had that and read that. That was at the Berrien Springs
meeting the first of May, 1906. Will didn't have anything to do with that.
What you refer to is a letter he wrote to Daniells, and it came about this way --
you know it, I guess. You have had it and read it all over.
K: There was nothing in that testimony that
said I was trying to get the Tabernacle. That is not the thing. I was trying
to get possession of the Tabernacle by adroit scheming, and she feared that in spite of
all I would get it.
A: That is the one signed by W. C. White,
and I guess there are four or five quotations from her writings relating to this
Tabernacle property.
K: Certainly, and you say it is just between
me and Sister White.
A: Yes, I say so. Isn't it so?
K: Charging me that the Lord had said that
thing, and I am denying it. You refer to that as a testimony. I present that
as one of the evidences of the fraud that is being perpetrated. They will give
Sister White misinformation, just as she got misinformation from the newspaper and others
who have written her. Then she writes letters, sent out and used as a word from the
Lord when the Lord has not said a word about it, when the Lord has had nothing at all to
do with it. And you yourself have been doing it right here today.
A: If his mother tells him, "You go to
my old correspondence, and you copy out certain things where I have spoken with reference
to the Tabernacle" -- I cannot see how that is perverting or misusing the
testimonies.
K: Those were private letters to private
persons, every one of them, and in not a single instance did she say, "The Lord has
shown me this." These were all from personal private correspondence with
individuals.
B: We have had considerable to contend with
in regard to the Tabernacle of late.
K: I am not speaking about that. I
have nothing to do with that.
B: That one that has started the thing
against us, he referred to the Sanitarium as our trying to shut out the Sanitarium and so
on in our by-law, and I don't see a thing in the by-law that does it.
K: Well, you have spoken of Mr.
Belden. I just wanted to repeat what I have said before, that you yourselves here
this very afternoon have used this private correspondence of Sister White, that you admit
may be from the Lord or may not be from the Lord.
A: I say she is not absolutely
infallible. I don't mean by that, Doctor, as applying to the testimonies. But
I say, suppose in her private life as a woman that she writes as she used to, to her
children -- you know I don't regard that as the inspiration of God. That is
what I mean.
K: Yet, right here today you have been using
against me as a testimony a document signed by W. C. White, which is simply compiled from
her personal letters and in which there is not a single word saying, "The Lord has
shown me this," or "The Lord has shown me this." That was read in the
Tabernacle as proof that I was doing it, and that thing has been sent all over the world
by the Conference machinery as proof that the Lord has condemned me for doing it, that I
was playing dirty tricks in trying to get possession of the Tabernacle.
A: I know it.
K: I found it in Europe when I was
there. I was there last spring, and it was there then. That thing came several
weeks before I went to Europe, and it was sent out there, and it was gotten up for that
purpose. It was a circular letter that Will White compiled, and it has been sent all
over as a proof that I was doing it.
Now, then, I want to say that thing is a libel,
that it is a lie right straight through, that I have never wanted a thing to do with the
Tabernacle, that I have said to everybody concerned with me at the Sanitarium "Let it
alone, keep aloof from it." If you will call upon F. Belden, put him on the
witness stand, he will tell you that I have appealed to him by the hour and with tears in
my eyes to let the thing alone, and he finally was notified that if he did not let it
alone he would be discharged from the employ of the Modern Medicine Publishing
Company. And he has been discharged, and he is in no way connected with the Modern
Medicine Company. I told him, and I sent a letter to my brother WKK.
A: I heard that and didn't believe it.
I heard you gave him a regular lambasting, and I thought, "That is a story that is
going around," and I did not believe a word of it.
K: You will find out sometime or other that
there are some people around the Sanitarium that have respect for their word and for their
standing and character.
And these fellows that are going around the world
apparently to damage and cast smut upon us are doing a dirty business that Christian
people have no business to do even if they were working upon facts. But they are
going upon presumptions, upon snap judgments, and upon suspicion just as you yourself have
been doing. I have been held up to the people of this town in the newspapers here as
trying to get possession of the Tabernacle. I could bring a suit for libel against
every one of those people, against Elder Daniells, Prof. Prescott and the Review &
Herald, and more than a hundred people in this town.
I won't belittle myself by noticing the bark of a
dog as I go down the street, and I won't notice in any other way the horrible things these
people are saying. They have succeeded in keeping the denominational people away
from the Sanitarium. Whom have they hurt? We have got the Sanitarium full of
patients and our classes full of young people of the Baptists and Methodists and
Presbyterians and others who are willing to work on the same conditions the others worked
on, just for the principles they are getting. And they are going out into the world
as missionaries with the principles that the Lord has given to this people but which they
have despised. It is a hard job I have had in trying to hold up the principles of
health reform and principles of physical righteousness in this town.
A: I believe that, Doctor.
K: I have stood true as steel with the
Lord's help to those principles, and I have held them up before the people, gone from camp
meeting to camp meeting, gone this whole denomination over and never a cent did I receive
even for my traveling expenses, even when I was in debt and borrowing money. And I
never had one cent -- the General Conference calling me here and there, states
calling me here and there, and never paid one penny of even my traveling expenses, hotel
expenses or anything else.
Many a time have I got on a camp-ground early in
the morning and just worked all day when we had no doctors here as we have today, so I had
to hurry back -- work all day long until night time, taking the stand when I got
a chance, working in the tents for sick people to try to show them how to correct their
habits with that provision stand on the ground selling sausage, halibut, herring, and the
most abominable things, everything but pork and coffee and tea in the provision tent --
doing the best I could to hold up the principles when they were scoffing and making fun of
it -- and the ministers even, from the top down to the smallest man, ridiculing
me -- working all day without a morsel of food, without anybody offering me a
morsel of food. Then I got aboard the train at night and thanked the Lord for the
opportunity of helping sick people, giving them a little light. And I have not
changed.
A: Doctor, we believe that is all written
down in God's book of remembrance to your credit.
K: I don't deserve any credit for it.
I don't want any credit for it. I could not do anything else. I could not do
anything else.
Now, then, I am doing the same thing now as far as
I can. I am going on doing just the same as I did. I have not changed. I
would do that same thing among the Adventist people now if they were not building up
barriers against me, turning the hearts of the people away, making them believe I am a
pantheist when I am not, making them think I am a seducer of women when I am not.
A: We don't believe that contemptible wicked
stuff, Doctor.
K: I will tell you why I bring it up.
When we appointed a committee of fifteen to investigate the institution here --
the General Conference appointed a committee -- they had charged me with frauds
and various things in the General Conference of 1903 at Oakland. I publicly stood up
before the General Conference, and I said, "We are willing to be investigated.
We are willing to be investigated, but we will not have a star-chamber
investigation. We must have a public investigation." That committee never
appeared. The man who was appointed chairman of the committee in a little while gave
up the truth, was convicted of all kinds of irregularities, and the committee never
appeared.
Elder Daniells -- when I was down in
Washington, when they charged me with being a pantheist and denounced my book --
Elder Daniells stood up there, and he said, "Dr. Kellogg will not allow the
Sanitarium to be investigated." [I said,] "You appointed a committee
yourself. When did your committee appear?" They have never appeared.
I want to say to you -- and I said it
right there before the whole General Conference -- "We are ready to be
investigated any time publicly, but we will have no private investigation. We will
have a public investigation where everybody can be present and know not simply the
conclusions of the committee, but the facts upon which their conclusions are
based." I said, "Appoint another committee and come on and make all the
investigations you want to."
After the Berrien Springs meeting, I got W. C.
White to come down here by very hard work. I labored with him for hours by telephone
to get him to come here after the Berrien Springs meeting, met him with our entire Board,
talked with him until three o'clock in the morning to persuade him to bring the whole
General Conference Committee here, to bring all the preachers here, get as many people as
he could or as he wanted here. But he said he would not have a great audience like
that and have people getting up here and making speeches. I said, "Bring the
General Conference Committee here, then, and see how much of this is true. We are
ready to admit all that is true. We are ready to face all that is true. We are
willing to correct anything that is wrong. Bring the General Conference Committee
here and show us this thing." He promised me he would do it.
I will tell you a little information that will
help you to see the real situation in a minute. Dr. Morse was the secretary at that
meeting. He took the minutes of that meeting. I asked W. C. White to have all
the preachers come here to Battle Creek and show us our faults, and we would admit
everything that was wrong and straighten up and go on. I said, "Your mother has
said we ought to have harmony, and we are ready for it, but we must have it on a sound
basis, on a basis of truth and sincerity, and we cannot have it on any other basis.
I cannot confess I have done what I have not done, but come here and let us go into the
whole thing."
Sister White told these men, Elder Amadon, and you
know it, to make no conditions. They did not even come to us and offer peace with
any kind of conditions. She told them to make none, and they never came near us.
When Prof. Prescott came, when I saw he denied the
truth and was not in a state of mind to do anything, I telephoned to W. C. White and
begged him to have Daniells, Evans, Prescott, Butler, Haskell -- the leading men --
come over right after the Berrien Springs meeting. They would not do it. They
hadn't time; they all had to get away. I got W. C. White here and begged him to have
all the preachers come. "No." Then I said, "Have the presidents
of the conferences come and the General Conference." "No, that would make
too big an audience." Then I said, "Have the General Conference Committee
come"; and about three o'clock in the morning he agreed to try, that he would do all
he could to do it.
Dr. Morse, after several days elapsed, wrote a
copy of the resolutions that was passed in the Board [meeting], inviting the General
Conference to come here and to have this conference and see if we could not settle up all
our difficulties, because Sister White had a testimony that the Lord showed we ought to do
it. I wanted to go straight along in trying to accomplish that thing, so I said,
"Let the committee come." Dr. Morse wrote out the copy of the resolution,
and he made a mistake. The resolution as passed by our Board was that the General
Conference Committee should be invited to come, but Dr. Morse in writing that resolution
had made it read: "The General Conference Committee and the presidents of the
conferences and all the leading ministers." Now Will White had never agreed to
that. Dr. Morse wrote the letter, and I never knew it until afterwards. He
wrote the letter to W. C. White and enclosed a copy of the resolution. And W. C.
White never replied, but instead came a testimony from Sister White commanding the General
Conference Committee and these leading brethren, saying there had been a call for such and
such a meeting here and commanding the brethren not to come, that the Lord didn't want any
such thing held in Battle Creek, that the Medical Missionary Board, whenever there had
been any such council held, had always come out ahead and bragged that they came out
ahead. She sent that testimony, and that is the answer we got.
This testimony said we had called for a large
meeting there at Battle Creek. Now, then, you see that whole thing was based on Dr.
Morse's blunder in that thing. We never had a hint that he had made a blunder in
writing to W. C. White about it, but Sister White had taken that letter as the basis of
that testimony. And the Lord never told her we had called for such a meeting because
we hadn't. It was Dr. Morse's blunder.
That thing told me right away that the Lord had
never instructed her to not permit such a great gathering, for we had never asked for such
a great gathering. It was purely a clerical error -- Dr. Morse's
blunder.
That General Conference Committee would not
come. I happen to know why. After the Berrien Springs meeting Mrs. Druillard
was at Nashville, and I got messages from her and from Sarah every little while of what
was going on when Sister White was at Nashville. You know Mrs. Druillard to be a
sober woman. She is not a trifling woman, is she? Do you believe she is a
woman that would lie?
A: No, I don't believe she is.
K: Mrs. Druillard sent me a message and
said, "For pity sakes, be careful what you say." She told me that
"Sister White is getting letters almost every day from Elder Daniells and others
telling the awful things you are saying, that you are telling what a great victory you had
over at Berrien Springs, how you came out ahead, and all that sort of thing. And now
you are going to have them come to Battle Creek and bragging all about it. And she
is getting letters from Elder Daniells every day telling what you are saying."
It was all a lie, every bit of it. But somebody picked up the gossip going about and
sent that down, and it wasn't a word of it true. But here comes this testimony from
Sister White, warning them not to come because I wanted to get them up here simply to have
a victory over them and to crow over them just as I was crowing over them with reference
to Berrien Springs. Now the Lord did not have anything to do with that, because it
was based on untruths. The first of it was based on error, and the second on
untruths that were being poured into her ears continually.
I know just exactly how Elder Haskell and Elder
Butler believe the Testimonies. I know just how. I know just how Elder
Daniells believes the Testimonies. I am going to tell you a little information now I
am sure you won't use. If you were gossiping people I would not tell it to you, but
you don't gossip, and I don't gossip, and I don't want this used to the detriment of
anybody. Hiley Butler was over in England with my sister, his wife. He had
been sent over there by the Sanitarium Food Company, or by me rather, to start a food
company to earn money to help educate the people and to lay a foundation for sanitarium
work, you see. The enterprise was so poor they could not help him over, so I helped
him. I paid his salary -- $15 a week for a year to help start that thing,
and we had worked up quite a large business there. And we turned that business over
to them, and we let them have goods at actual cost or less than cost and advanced
thousands of dollars to help them get started.
Then I paid for starting their health
journal. I paid the salary of the editor for a year for that journal in order to
keep the thing going because Prescott was over there, and he and others discouraged it and
would not give it any encouragement. So I telegraphed it at the last minute and
started the Good Health they publish over there, and I paid the salary of the
editor for a year; and we paid Mr. Butler's salary, fifteen dollars a week, for a year to
act as foreman of the factory and start it. I was doing it to help the work on, to
help start it.
When I went over there five years ago, Hiley came
to me saying, "I have got a testimony from Sister White saying I must return
immediately and take care of my father. My father has fallen in love with a girl
down there and he wants to marry her." Now some of this was going on when you
were down there, and you must have known something about some of that. Now Hiley
showed me the letter.
B: They are not married, are they?
K: No, they won't be. There was that
letter from Sister White saying, "It is your duty to go home and make a home for your
father." She said, "Hiley, your father lived with an invalid wife for
fifteen years, and now the Lord is willing he should have a young woman for a
wife." When Hiley read that to me his face flushed, his eyes flashed, and he
hissed through his teeth -- "A young woman for a wife! Don't I know
what that means!" "Now," I said, "Hiley, this thing has come
from Sister White," and there was a letter from his father telling that this
testimony had come from Sister White. And here was a letter from his father, and
this letter said, "Now, Hiley, I have not said a word to Sister White about this
matter." The old man thought Hiley would not be fooled. He knew that W.
O. Palmer had been over there and told her all about it, and he knew it, and I knew
it. But here was a testimony "from the Lord" and in the name of the Lord,
commanding him to go over to Nashville and make a home for his father with his young wife.
She said in that testimony she had seen it was in
the Lord's order, that it was as the Lord would have it, that he should marry that woman,
and Hiley should go and make a home for him. Hiley read that to me. I said,
"Hiley, I don't take a bit of stock in it. I know all about this thing, more
than you do, but you have got to go. Your father has got a claim on that you no one
else has, and when he calls you, it is your duty to your father to go. If he goes
ahead and marries that young woman, he will have more trouble than he ever had in his life
before." It was smashing all my plans for England. I paid his salary for
a whole year, and made a tremendous effort to help that thing. It was putting my
sister in a place she felt was just like death, and they did not know what on earth to do.
But we prayed about the thing, and I said to them, "You have got to go; there
isn't any other way."
And now Elder Daniells was over there at the same
time. Elder Daniells was over there and had heard what he was doing with the
publishing down there. And he knew his father was trying to get Hiley, and he knew
that would strengthen his hands, and he was full of venom and fight as he could be and
said, "I will never help them to raise a dollar." He said they should have
nothing there but a depository, had no business to have a publishing house there [in
Nashville]. You know something about that; you were there and know something of the
trials they went through. So when Hiley went to him with that testimony from Sister
White and read it to him, showed him two or three letters from Sister White, Elder
Daniells said, "Don't you go a step." Hiley wanted to get that thing down
in black and white so he sat down and wrote to Elder Daniells about it. And he has
got the letter and will show it to you now, and he has got Elder Daniells' reply in which
he said, "If there are those who would advise you to return to America, let them take
the responsibility on their own heads. I don't. I advise you to remain in
England."
Hiley can show you that letter any time you want
to see it. Yet that man Daniells goes around trying to make out that he believes the
Lord is speaking in every word and every line, with the most solemn sanctimonious air, and
that I am tearing down the Testimonies.
Now I want you to see how the thing came out.
A: Do you think that I believe the Sister
White was ever shown that Elder Butler ought to marry a certain young woman for a wife?
K: I tell you what I can show you.
Hiley Butler can show you a testimony from her in the name of the Lord that he should go
home and make a home for him and that the Lord was willing -- said it in so many
words -- the Lord was willing after he had been taking care of an invalid wife
for fifteen years that he should have a young woman for a wife. If you want to, you
can see that testimony in the name of the Lord. Hiley Butler has got it. And
he came over here to this country, and when he got to Montreal -- Elder Butler
had promised him some money, but Daniells had got here in the meantime and put him into
such trouble down there, accusing Ed [Edson White] of having lost so much money, got Ed
into such shape that Butler had lost heart in the thing, and the girl had gone back on
him. So he saw he was not going to make his game work, and he telegraphed Hiley in
Montreal instead of sending him money, that he could not send him any money. And
Hiley telegraphed to me, and I telegraphed the money up to Montreal and brought him
here. And here he found a letter from his father saying the work was closing down
there and for him to work here if he could.
We needed him very much. The Lord has
prospered his work wonderfully. But I never should have thought of bringing him back
from that needy field where we let him go at a sacrifice -- never should have
dreamed of bringing him back. And I knew then as well as I know now that the Lord
had never shown Sister White any such stuff as that. But he came back obeying the
great principle "Children, honor your father and mother," and that is the
princciple on which I advised him to come back, to go to Nashville, and that is the
principle he came on.
I can tell you a little more about that thing.
By and by, Brother Keck who, of course, knew all about that thing, was advising
this young woman not to marry him. This is the thing that broke up the affair.
Now she was an unbeliever, and Butler talked with her, and she made a profession of
religion under Butler's talking and labors, and that gave him an influence over her so
that she was ready to encourage him in a way that she would not otherwise. But she
has turned him down good and cold lately. He has tried to hang onto that thing ever
since.
He went up to Atlanta to hold tent meetings and
kept sending her long letters every day, trying to get her, until within a few weeks of
the present time, and he finally got a turn-down.
A: Do you really believe that?
K: I know it. He has pursued her, and
she has returned his letters to him un-opened.
A: She exchanged letters three years ago.
K: He started the meetings in Atlanta on
purpose to have an excuse. He tried his best to get her to see him, but she would
not, and she finally turned him down flat and told a friend of hers if she got any more
from him she would turn him down with a blast. And that closed the meetings in
Atlanta. He left.
A: I never knew that.
K: That is what closed the meetings in
Atlanta.
I know quote a number of other things, too, that
have been going on.
A: There is a text in the Book of Job --
K: I want to tell you another thing about
the Testimonies. Keck received a letter from Sister White that was a scorcher, and
he showed it to me, and he told her just what he thought of the whole business, and what
he knew. And he got back a letter from her, and he has got it now, and I have seen
it. And that letter said, "Brother Keck, you know more about that matter than I
do; I leave it to you entirely. I shall have nothing more to do with it."
That is the way that thing ends up.
After Hiley Butler had been instructed to come
over here and told it was his duty to come and it was the Lord's order that Brother Butler
should marry that woman, and Brother Keck had a scorching testimony saying he should not
discourage that matter because the Lord would have it done, then getting a letter saying,
"You know more about this than I do. I shall have nothing more to do with
it."
Now Brother Amadon, there is not a man living that
knows this thing down to the core as I do, and notwithstanding that I am not the man that
is standing up to denounce anything or anybody. You have no publication from me.
Haven't I had some provocation to retort a few things? That man Butler is
going around working against me all the time now. I have got his letters of the last
three years, letters from him with reference to the General Conference and with reference
to Mrs. White, letters from him and Brother Haskell, and if I should publish those letters
it would blast both of them absolutely. I am not going to be mean enough to do that
thing. The poor men are helping to carry on a scheme of deception that has operated
upon the Seventh-day Adventist people, and the people of the world, a scheme of deception
connected with this beautiful and wonderful truth the Lord has given to this people --
such a body of truth as no people in the world ever had. You have been connected up
with it for the last forty years; you know something of it -- a scheme or a
manipulation and a deception and a certain amount of fraud that the Lord certainly cannot
approve nor bless. And in these latter years these men have got hold of Daniells and
Prescott, and they are working the thing harder than they ever did before.
This man Evans came into this room voluntarily and
told me that Daniells and Prescott and White had organized a conspiracy and combined
together to ruin me and would do it if they could. And he said, "I believe I
have letters to prove it." In three weeks he was down there, had joined hands
with them and was working at it. I have come pretty nearly telling them of that on
two or three public occasions when I have had to meet them and when the fellow was sitting
there doing knavish things, when he was sitting there trying to work through schemes that
were false and evil, and he knew it -- I have come pretty near telling it to them
right to his face. The Lord knows it, and he has got that thing to meet in the
judgment. I found out afterwards what it was. He was out with these men.
I said to Judge Arthur, "Do you believe that
is really true?" "Why, certainly. He told me the same thing just the
other day." And he said he never such a vindictive spirit in his life on the
part of any man as Daniells, Prescott and W. C. White had toward Dr. Kellogg. That
is just what he told me at that time. I found he was having a quarrel with
them. They wanted him to go to Washington and they were not offering him the
position he wanted. So he went off on the sulks, went up to his home on the farm
and they came to terms. He was here for me to make a bid for him to work at the
Sanitarium. But I did not bite onto his bait. I never do. It was hinted
to me by several of his friends that if he were offered a position at the Sanitarium as
general manager he would be very glad to come. I never would offer him such a thing
in the world, for I know the man. The man had been untrue right straight
along. He told me himself that Daniells did not have full confidence in him.
Now why? He had been crooked in a good many things.
I will tell you what I. H. Evans said to me one
time. You know when Evans and Daniells went down there and went over the books in
the office and then went over to Sister White and got a counterblast against Ed. You
remember the meeting under the tree. I have got a verbatim report of that meeting
under the tree, and that fact that I have that report is what brought on that
counter-blast a year ago last Christmas. They found out I had it, and it made a
rustle in the camp. I have got a document, a report of that meeting, that shows how
testimonies are manufactured. It shows the whole thing right in operation, a
testimony being made. And it has got Sister White's name signed to it when the thing
was manufactured on the spot, and it has got the internal evidence in it. Sister
White suppressed the thing, and you know it.
That is the time they started their campaign
against me, for I was there along with Ed but didn't know it until afterwards.
Daniells sat there, and there are reports of things, statements made to Sister White just
as false as sin, Brother Amadon. And she came out and took a position, told these
men what to do.
When they came up here and denounced the book Living
Temple, it was only so that they might get rid of making up the $200,000. Sister
White told them not to when they told her the tales they told her, and they wanted to know
how in the world they could get out of it. And the only way in the world was to
denounce the book, and afterwards Daniells told Sutherland they made a mistake denouncing
the theology of the book.
Elder Daniells turned over a new leaf, came up to
my house to make peace with us, made up his mind he had made a mistake. And he came
up here and went right to work with us, and Prof. Prescott would not let him. He
came up and at his own proposition we were to write two articles together and make an
appeal for England. I made a pledge to help him, and he set out. And he went
over there and wanted to do it, and Prof. Prescott [then editor of the Review] put
his foot on it and suppressed the thing in Daniells' absence and would not allow the
article to be published.
When Daniells came back, he went on to California,
and Evans told me what they were going to do. He said, "Daniells is going over
there to have it out with Will." He said, "Wherever he goes he finds Will
has got some testimonies ahead of him. Will will scrape up a lot of his mother's old
testimonies and work it in so that when Daniells gets there the pace is already set for
him, and he has to follow that, and he is tired of it, and he is going over there to have
it out with Will." He said, "Ed is losing $2000 a month, and he has got
the books and is going over there, and he is going to have that thing stopped. That
publishing house down there [in Nashville] ought not to be anything but a depository.
The Review and Herald office has got machinery enough here to print all the books
for the entire denomination." He said, "I told him to get it down in black
and white and have a stenographer there and have it signed so they could not go back on
it."
So you see that whole thing was plotted and
planned before they ever went there. And they got her out under the tree, had the
stenographer get it down just as they wanted it. And there she was denouncing Ed,
and Will putting words into her mouth -- "Now, Mother, you know how you have
felt in relation to Ed; you know the Lord has shown you" -- and so on, and
she would say, "Yes," and that all went in.
Then she said, "Now I don't
want it known that I had anything to do with this. You just deal with Ed just as you
think you ought to, but don't let it be known that I had anything at all to do with
it." And you know, that is put right into the document. And they had it signed
in her own handwriting. Now there it was, condemning me in the same way that they
did Ed.
She went back on the Ed business because she knew
just how she had been caught in a trap. And Sarah McEnterfer told me she cried for
three days, and it nearly put her in her coffin. Daniells laid that trap. She
told me this thing while they were there doing it. Afterwards I got hold of the
document itself.
Evans said, "This thing ought to be stopped,
anyhow -- these testimonies here." He said, "If there were just enough
of us to stand together on it, I believe we could stop that thing." He said,
"Will White doesn't believe those testimonies." He said, "Now I will
just tell you how I know."
He said, "You know A. R. Henry was suing us
for libel here, and you remember about that Mr. Hulbert was our attorney. And I was
down to Mr. Hulbert's office one day, and he said, 'Look here, where did Mrs. White get
that information about Mr. A. R. Henry?'" Henry [had] charged that the things
written about him [in the testimony] were not true.
Now I want to tell you a little word about that
thing. I know how that Henry testimony was manufactured. A. O. Tait in the
office came to me, and he said, "We are going to do the old man up." He
said, "I am writing letters to Sister White, and I am getting letters from her, and I
am writing her, and we are going to do the old man up. And we are going to get him
out of that, and we won't have that man there." Pretty soon A. O. Tait came to
me, and he said he had got a letter from Sister White, ousting the old man. He had
been wiring and writing her the information, and he told me he was going to do it in
addition.
Mr. Hulbert asked Mr. I. H. Evans, "Evans,
how does Mrs. White get this information?" Evans said, "Why, I said to
him, 'I am not much acquainted with Mrs. White. I never met her but once. But
my understanding is that she is a prophet and that the Lord gives her this information in
visions in the night; she has visions as the old prophets did.'" Evans said Mr.
Hulbert said, "Oh, fudge, you don't want me to believe such nonsense as
that." He said, "That is what I was always led to believe." And
he said, "W. C. White, her son, is in town, and I think you better ask him about
it."
You see, Will's idea was that he was going to save
his mother from the charge of libel by showing where she got the information and get it
back onto me and A. O. Tait and the other folks. I hadn't written her any
information about Henry at all because I was kind of sorry for the old man, and my
sympathies were rather with him. That would not relieve her at all, but Will did not
know the law. He was such a saphead on things of that kind he didn't know any better
than to think that would relieve her by putting it off on these men. So he said,
"My mother is in constant correspondence, and she received the information from
various ones."
So Hulbert wrote a letter to Will White, asking
him that same question, and he handed it to Evans and Evans looked it over, then put it in
an envelope and sealed it up and delivered it to W. C. White. He was in his office
when he delivered it, and W. C. White took it upstairs with him and came down pretty
soon. And Evans said, "W. C. White handed me the letter and I looked it over,
and this letter read, 'My mother is in constant correspondence with the leading members
of the denomination, with O. A. Olsen, Dr. J. H. Kellogg, A. O. Tait, W. O. Palmer and
various other persons; and she has received her information from them.'"
Evans said, "I drew my pencil right across
the letter clear down to the bottom and left nothing but the signature, 'Yours truly, W.
C. White.' Will said, 'What did you do that for?' I said to him, 'You are
giving away the whole case.' "Well,' Will said, 'what else should I
say?'" He said, "You should say, 'My mother is a prophet of the
Lord. The Lord comes to her in the visions of the night and has revealed to her
these things with reference to A. H. Henry." Evans said to me, "What do
you think Will replied? Will White said, 'I cannot lie!'
Now there was that testimony over which so much
fuss was made by A. R. Henry, and there were the actual facts about it that Will White
himself testified that the things in that testimony were written to his mother by A. O.
Tait and by other persons and that A. R. Henry was condemned unmercifully for what was not
true. And that enormous hullabaloo was made about it, that he was resisting the
Lord. That is according to W. C. White's own testimony.
Now, I am going to tell you some more about that
thing.
B: Willie told me something about it.
K: I knew it all the time, you see.
B: He told me that what Sister White saw was
not with regard to his robbing the institution or anything of the kind but with regard to
withholding means from the Lord.
K: There were a whole lot of things in it
that were not true at all but just gossip these people had sent. Henry knew it, and
Brother Olsen knew it. The thing came in bad shape on Henry because when these men
wrote to her, she sent her testimony back to them, sent copies to Tait and Palmer and sent
a copy to O. A. Olsen. And Olsen was to take it and read it to Henry and not to give
it to him but to read it to him. And Olsen saw what he had got to meet, you know,
for he knew Henry would know right away just where that thing came from because it
concerned things that he had had trouble with with A. O. Tait and others, and there were
personal things in it, and he knew Henry would trace it right back to the people it came
from.
Olsen did not dare to meet him with it, and he
carried it in his pocket for three weeks. In the meantime Tait and Palmer let it out
to the boys around the office. So after while it got around to A. R. Henry through
the boys, and then the fat was in the fire.
Now as I said, a few of those men with I. H. Evans
some weeks afterwards had a meeting of the Mission Board down there, and I was attending
the meeting of the Mission Board. Prescott was there, Spicer was there, I. H. Evans
was there, and I think Dr. Rand or Dr. Read was there. Some member of our Board was
there and I told this story in the presence of all those people without mentioning any
names. The question was up of how the Testimonies should be used. And Evans
sat there laughing. Prescott raised a question whether that story could be proved.
Evans said, "It is all true. I am the man. I told the
Doctor." And he testified right there voluntarily to the truth of what I have
just told you, in the presence of all those men. They would have to swear to it if
they were put on the witness stand.
So I knew how Evans stands. And I know how
Daniells stands. When Daniells was a member of the Medical Missionary Board, just a
little while before our fire, in the winter before our fire here in 1902, we had a Board
meeting. I had a testimony from Sister White with reference to a certain matter that
had been under controversy with me for a number of years. She said that about eight
or nine years ago she sent a testimony that I was to do certain things -- that I
could not do. She told me that I had robbed, that I had done certain things.
Well, it was about the College View Bakery. When they started the college out there,
they wanted permission to manufacture the health foods, wanted us to give them a bakery,
wanted to sell to everybody west of the Mississippi River, and we said, "If you are
going into a large business, you must agree that if we start a sanitarium there a little
later the business must be turned over to the sanitarium, because they will need it to
help build up the sanitarium. You must agree that the sanitarium shall have
it." And it was agreed to. And later when the sanitarium was started, I
asked them to turn the bakery over.
The General Conference Committee owned the whole
thing then, or the General Conference Association, and I wrote them a letter about it.
And they appointed a committee which looked into the matter and made their report
that the thing should be turned over according to the agreement. The members of this
committee were John H. Harrison, he was one, Prescott was one of the men, and they looked
into the facts of the case from the beginning and said it should be turned over. And
by and by -- One man, Jo Sutherland, was the treasurer of the college, and the
Sanitarium and the bakery. The bakery was named the Nebraska Sanitarium Bakery, and
bore a picture of the Sanitarium on every package, and the sign was over the door.
Now Brother Jo Sutherland was treasurer for all these things, you see. Uncle
Jo. And he was to turn over the money at the end of the year. Kauble went out
there and took charge, and when Kauble took charge he said, "Here, the college is
running that thing. That is the college building, and that belongs to us. We
are not going to turn that over." They had three thousand dollars on hand, and
they would not turn a cent of it over.
Then it was brought up with the Conference.
I labored with the committee, and the committee laughed at me and said they would not do a
thing. And I told them I should bring it before the General Conference, and I
did. And when I brought it before the General Conference, I did not say much.
I only opened their record, and they saw the resolution. No, I didn't know they had
a record. I did not use the record first, but at the beginning of the meeting I set
the secretary to work to see if he could find the record.
John Morrison made a speech in behalf of the
college, saying they ought to own the bakery. And Santee came in and read a
testimony over Sister White's signature saying the food business should be used to support
the colleges. The thing was so utterly absurd I did not pay any attention to it, but
I sat there while he read that testimony. I sat on the front seat, and Santee sat on
the back seat, and when he arose he said, "Before I begin my remarks I wish to ask
Dr. Kellogg this question: Dr. Kellogg, do you believe the Testimonies?" I
didn't say a word. I simply sat there and kept still. I said nothing at all,
simply sat there. He waited a long time, and everybody shuffled their feet, cleared
their throats out a great deal, and he waited as much as ten minutes, and it got to be
very painful. Finally he said, "Mr. Chairman, I wish to know whether Dr.
Kellogg is going to answer my question." He said, "Do you have anything to
say?" I said, "I have nothing to say except that the question is
irrelevant." The chairman said, "I think so, too." So he went
on and read the testimony from Sister White in which she said that the profits of the food
business should be used for supporting the colleges.
Now I knew the Lord never showed her that.
And the rest of them knew it. And I knew they had gotten a letter -- She
did not say the Lord had shown her that, but they simply read that letter over her name
and tried to work it on me as a statement from the Lord that the profits of the food
businesses should be used for the support of the colleges. I knew better, and I was
not going to bow my head to such stuff as that, and there didn't anybody there pay any
attention to it. And not a single member of the General Conference Association, not
a soul of them, paid an atom of attention to that thing.
Then John Morrison spoke an hour trying to prove
that the food business belonged to the college and that they should have it. And he
swung his arms, frothed at the mouth, and went on until everybody was sick of it. He
said, "If you do this thing, if you take that bakery from the college, it will ruin
it." And so he went on at a great rate. When he got through talking, I
made a very short speech. I stated simply what I have stated to you about the
agreement at the beginning, and I said, "The secretary has been looking the matter
over, and I have asked the men to do as they agreed to do, and I understand the secretary
is able to read a report of the meeting." And he read the report of that
meeting.
They had received my letter, read my letter, and
there it was. Then they appointed a committee consisting of John Morrison, Prof.
Prescott, and A. R. Henry, and this committee brought in their report and John Morrison,
the chairman of the meeting, reported that the bakery should be turned over to the
Sanitarium according to the agreement. And here was the man here not on his feet
making a speech on the other side of it, you know. There was his own evidence.
It knocked him flat, you know. I didn't have to say anything more. The meeting
voted unanimously to turn it over and do as they agreed. And he and Westphal and
Santee were the only persons in the room that did not vote in favor of doing it.
Now Santee went out West, and he began to tell
around everywhere out there that I hypnotized the General Conference -- that is
where my hypnotic influence began -- and that I had intimidated them, and that
they were so afraid to do anything against my wishes, that they were just forced. I
had forced them to do this unrighteous thing -- that I had robbed the
college. And he was reporting it around in the loudest kind of way, and they were
talking about having a split out there, about taking a stand against the General
Conference. And they were just ready to go right into rebellion over it.
Well, I met Haskell, and Haskell was there, a
patient stopping there. He had been sick and was having a little treatment, so John
Morrison and the rest of them had a chance to talk with him. And I saw him and had a
talk with him, and he said "Of course, you are right about that. They ought to
do what they agreed. The Sanitarium Food Business belongs to the Sanitarium, is a
part of it. Of course, it is. And they ought to have it. That is
right."
I said, "Now, Elder Haskell, I want to tell
you something. I am not a prophet, but I am going to prophesy. Santee will
write to Sister White, and he will tell her just what he is telling over the
country. Pretty soon I will get a testimony condemning me for my attitude and
demanding that I shall turn that bakery back to the college." "Oh,"
he said, "you will never get any such thing as that." I said, "It
will come as sure as fate, for nearly every testimony I have had in the last four or five
years has come in just that way." "Oh, you are mistaken; the Lord could
not tell such a thing as that."
In less than three months' time the testimony
came, saying, "You have robbed the College View college. You have disgraced
yourself by that thing, by your attitude in that thing. The General Conference should have
been ashamed to allow you to intimidate them. One was present and heard your
threatening words." And I was commanded to turn that thing back quick, and the
General Conference was commanded to rescind their action quick. And I want to tell
you they have never done it to this minute.
B: Never tried to?
K: No, sir. And I didn't either.
I wrote Sister White back and said, "Sister White, you have been misinformed about
this thing."
But I was going to tell you -- I sent
that testimony to Haskell immediately, and I said, "Now, Haskell, it has come.
Here it is. I enclose it." I got a letter back from him.
"Well, I am surprised. I thought you were certainly right about that College
View matter." And he thinks so yet.
The thing went further than that. She sent a
letter to Elder Haskell and one to Elder Irwin, sent a letter to them enclosing the
testimony to them and sent me a copy here. And in that letter to them she said,
"Elder Haskell and Brother Irwin, I say to you, take a firm stand against Dr. Kellogg
in this matter." I said to Elder Haskell, "I suppose of course you will
take a firm stand against me now." He said, "I shall do no such
thing." [Yet] he was commanded to do it by "the Lord"!
That testimony was written with all the solemnity
of any testimony you ever saw. "One was present and heard your
threatening words." Now who was that one? I had Mr. Eldred there, our
reporter who was taking down every word that was spoken. I saw Eldred directly
afterwards and said, "Have you got this letter, testimony, from Sister
White?" "Yes." I said, "What were the threatening words I
said down there?" He said, "I didn't hear you say any threatening
words."
I said to Elder Irwin, "Were you intimidated
by anything I said?" He said, "No. The thing that led them to take
their action was that resolution on the books. That is what led me to act as I
did."
Now I sent a copy of that to every one of the
persons present at that meeting, a copy of that testimony to me, and I did it to open
their eyes. There was a testimony, with all the solemnity of anything that was ever
written in the world, and it said, "One was present and heard your threatening
words," and the One was capitalized with O. It said that the General
Conference was commanded to reverse its action. I sent a copy of that to every
person present at that meeting, and I said, "I did not intend to say anything
threatening at all, but if you understood anything I said to be a threat or intimidation,
I wish to withdraw it, and I want you to revise your action and act as you would have done
if I had not threatened or said any such thing."
I confess it was all farce on my part because I
knew I had not said any threatening words, and it was a decoy letter; it was to get from
them an expression of views. And I sent that letter to them and sent the testimony
to them so that they might have a chance to see what kind of testimonies I was getting,
for every one of them knew I had not said a threatening word or hinted a threat. I
simply sat still, and Morrison was the man that threatened me. And I did not
threaten anything at all. I didn't have to. All I had to do was to present the
facts, and that settled it, and they all voted for what I asked. They stand by it
today, and the College View bakery is owned by the Sanitarium there today. They have
it yet, and the college has not got it. The thing stands just as it was done then.
I got letters back from Cottrell and from other
men saying, "I didn't hear you say any threatening words." "I was not
intimidated." But Robert Kilgore, who took the real orthodox position --
Robert wrote a letter and said, "I didn't know I was intimidated, I didn't hear any
threatening word, but if the Lord says I was intimidated, I shall immediately confess that
I was a coward."
Now you see the point: "If the Lord said
it." The only question is, when does the Lord speak? But if Robert
Kilgore or anybody else is going to say every time they get a letter signed by Mrs. E. G.
White that the Lord has spoken, then I want to say there are a whole lot of things to be
explained.
Now, then, I waited to see what those men would do
about it. Those men ought immediately to have called a meeting of the General
Conference Association, and they should have rescinded that action and should have made
that thing straight as the Lord commanded them because there was a solid testimony
ordering them to do it. But they never did do it. And they did not dare to do
it, for Irwin knew that the minute he called that conference together and read that
testimony, and undertook to consider it, he knew the fat would be in the fire right
away. For every man there would have had to say there was nothing in it, that the
foundation was bogus. They would have to face the minutes of the meeting. They
would have to face that report. Irwin knows that.
When I got the letter from Sister White, I wrote
her quietly without giving her any explanation at all, that I would leave her with the
Lord, let the Lord deal with her, for there she was talking in the name of the Lord to
me. I said, "You profess to have information direct from the Lord."
So I simply left her with the Lord. I simply wrote back, "You have been
misinformed." I got another letter back from her, and I want to tell you it was
the most stinging letter that I ever had from her in my life.
I am glad to tell you the last letter I ever got
from Sister White was just a sweet, nice, old-fashioned, motherly letter -- just
the same as she always used to write me. And she wrote me that letter after her
visit here, and after the last time I saw her. She wrote me that letter from San
Diego -- just a nice, quiet, newsy letter without saying a word of
condemnation. But that letter that came from her said, "You do that thing
quick. Turn that bakery back that you have robbed. I hope it will not be
necessary to reveal things which I might reveal concerning you."
Now, sir, that made me mad -- I am
perfectly frank to tell you it made me mad to the soles of my shoes. Because it was
a proposition to bargain with me. "If you do what I tell you to, I will protect
you and won't let people know. If you don't, then I am going to expose
you." I saw that she had made copies of it. She landed in California
about two weeks after that. She started soon after she wrote that letter.
Elder Irwin came up to see me. He said,
"I am going to meet Sister White. What word shall I take her from
you?" On the porch there I said to him, "Did you get a copy of a letter to
me the other day in which she threatened to reveal things about me?" He said,
"Yes." I said, "You tell Sister White to go right straight
ahead. She is at liberty to reveal about me everything the Lord has shown her.
But if she attacks my character, she will have to prove what she says." He went
over there and told her.
Now this that I am telling you now ought to make
some impression upon your minds. What was the next message I got from Sister
White? It was a telegram: "Come over here. We want to consult with you
about the Australian sanitarium." I went over. I didn't feel very much
like going. I didn't intend to go. But I went over, and I went up to the
Sanitarium. I didn't feel much like meeting Sister White. I felt that she had
mistreated me and insulted me by denying that I told her the truth, by trying to lay me in
a lie and accusing me of things I had never done. And then in order to compel me to
assent to do the thing she demanded of me, to threaten to expose me.
B: If I were in your place, instead of
allowing anger to come or hard feeling I would have gone and kneeled right down upon my
knees before the Lord and placed it before Him.
K: I did. I did. I didn't have
any very great trouble about it, but I said it made me mad, and it did. But I didn't
remain mad. I cannot remain mad over night. I never did in my life. It
is hard for me to keep mad for five minutes. But that angered me because I felt it
was a contemptible thing, for after I had trusted her all my lifetime, treated her like a
mother, had been absolutely honest and sincere to the last line I ever wrote her, to have
her going back on me that way just because Santee had written her a lot of lies; to have
her take that stand against me and tell Irwin and Haskell to take a firm stand against me --
I saw things were off the track. It made me angry. I did not feel that she had
treated me right, so I didn't feel like being very obsequious, and I went up to the
Sanitarium, and after while she came up there. She came across the dining room with
her face covered with smiles, holding out both hands, took both my hands and said,
"Dr. Kellogg, how do you do? We have been very anxious to consult you about the
Sanitarium in New South Wales."
So we consulted about it for two days. Not a
lisp of a word or anything at all. Everything I suggested was accepted right
away. They were ready to send telegrams to get the building done and a whole lot of
things. I was just about the leave, but I didn't feel it was right to go that
way. Sister White had put me in a lie, in an unpleasant situation, had threatened
me, and here I was going along as though everything was all right when it wasn't all
right. And I didn't want her to think that merely consulting me a little in that way
and giving me a little attention made things right, because it didn't. It didn't
make a thing true that was not true and did not flatter me at all, and I did not want her
to think that it did nor that that kind of cajoling did me any good at all. So I
quietly met her the day before I went away.
I said, "Sister White, before I leave I ought
to say something to you. Some of the things that have been written by you while you
have been away were not true, and I am sure from some of the things you have written me
you have been misinformed." "I have not been misinformed!"
"Oh, but you have written me, Sister White, that I have erected buildings in Chicago
to harbor the unworthy poor. I ask you to show me those buildings -- that I
have taken money from the Sanitarium." "I have never seen that you took
any money from the Sanitarium for any such purpose." "But you have written
me that I did." "I have no recollection of ever having written you any
such thing." "If you look up your correspondence, you will find
it." "I will look it up and write you." Never a line did she
write me for three years. But I left her there and then, just like that. I
came home.
Six weeks after, the General Conference was held
here [1901] in Battle Creek. I thought from indications that there was going to be
war at that time, that they were going to make an attack upon me because I saw W. C. White
had been scheming for some time to get rid of the Medical Missionary Board. He
wanted to get rid of that Board and that Association, and I had headed off several
schemes. And Irwin had made up his mind Dr. Kellogg's influence was too great and he
ought to be cut off. I knew he was making an attack, and I thought that meeting
would be the end of us. And letters were coming from Sister White that persuaded me
she was against me and that they had gotten her here.
I felt awfully bad. I spent half my nights
up here in bed crying and wetting my pillow because I thought it was going to come, and I
could not complete my dream which was to make the whole Seventh-day Adventist people a
denomination of medical missionaries working in their homes, helping their neighbors --
and to make it the great Good Samaritan organization of the world. And that is what
I wanted then, too.
I saw this thing coming. Here were my
[adopted] children. My ambition was that my children should all be missionaries
right in this work, and I had made my will putting every dollar I had in the world right
into this cause and had made my will to do it. And my wife had consented to have a
small stipend, $100 a month, to take care of her and the children dependent upon her --
and that every dollar of my income should go into this cause, every bit of it. I had
made it that way. I had gone on supporting this medical missionary work until I was
one hundred thousand dollars in debt. I had put the money into this cause.
And I worked without salary for years, traveled
all over in the interests of this medical missionary work wherever I went without their
even paying my expenses. And I paid my stenographer's expenses as well as my own and
never a conference or the General Conference ever offered to pay a cent on my
expenses. I would go over to different conference sanitariums to do operations, and
I would earn a thousand dollars, perhaps, stay there a day or two, pay my expenses there,
pay them for my board while I was there and pay for my stenographer's board, and work all
day and all night, and pay for my board the same as though I was a stranger there.
That is the way I worked, and I got in debt.
When I saw the whole thing was going to fall dead, I sat down on the sofa upstairs, Mrs.
Kellogg and I, and we wept together by the hour because we saw that thing was coming, and
the plans for our children to go right along in the work would not be realized. It
looked as though the thing would certainly smash.
I was so certain that thing was coming that I
moved out of my house before the General Conference came. I went into a little
cottage across the road and sent Mrs. Kellogg down to her friends in Alfred Center.
She had an excuse for going. Her father and mother had died, and they had a little
estate to settle down there, and I had her take a number of the children with her and put
them in school there. And I went into a cottage with the rest of them to wait to see
what the Lord was going to do with us. I expected nothing else at all but that they
would take their stand against us.
I must tell you that away back, nine years ago, at
the time of the South Lancaster meeting there came a testimony condemning me for things I
had not done. I sent her my resignation, told her the things she had written me were
not true. I could not receive them as from the Lord for they were not true, and I
said, "Here is my resignation of everything connected with the Seventh-day Adventist
denomination." And she has got it yet, and they have had it all the time.
And now I expected nothing else but, as I said, that that 1901 conference would be the end
of us. So I moved out of my house.
I went to see Sister White, told her to her face
that the things she had written me were not true, and I came home and did not expect
anything else but to be denounced further. She met Dr. Sanderson and she said,
"Dr. Sanderson, the whole denomination is looking to see who comes out ahead, Dr.
Kellogg or I, and I will never give up as long as I live." I was in
suspense. I thought to myself, I will ask the Lord for a sign as to whether it is
going to be war or peace, and I will find out. So I said, "I will send Sister
White an invitation to come to my house. If she accepts that, it will be a sign from
the Lord of peace and that these men are not going to crush us this time."
So I prayed over the matter very earnestly, and I
set that thing. I asked the Lord for a sign, and I made that sign so after my last
parting with her when I told he what she had written me was not the truth. That was
the last word I said to her, and I came home. I wrote to Sister White, and I got a
letter from her saying she would accept my invitation to come to my house, so I had the
rooms prepared for her.
Irwin heard of it. You know Joe Collie?
He was at the College then. Sutherland said, "Joe Collie was at the
telephone awhile ago, and Elder Irwin was there at the same time, and he was telephoning
somebody, and he said, 'The game is up. Sister White is going to Dr. Kellogg's
house.'" Of course that was amusing. They were in awful terror about
it. But Irwin had an appointment down in Illinois, a special meeting he had called,
a district meeting down there that they had gotten up at great inconvenience, and he was
due there. But when he found this out, he got aboard the cars and went straight to
California to see Sister White. Sister Druillard was there with Sister White at this
time, and Sister Druillard said to me that Sister White got a telegram from Irwin saying,
"I am coming." And she said, "What is he coming over here for?"
Of course Irwin's fate was settled, but he didn't
know it. They brought Daniells over here to be president of the General
Conference. It was all arranged over at Australia. I know the man who was
present when they had the talk. Daniells denies it, but he doesn't tell the truth
about it.
Irwin, when he found out about it, began to
scrabble every way he could to keep in, and he wrote Sister White a letter and asked her
if there was any reason why he should not be president, and she told him she did not know
any reason. So he got the men all together, read the letter to them to start his
presidential boom. There they were, "cooking his goose for him" as the
boys say, all the time, and made him travel all over the country to introduce Daniells to
all the conferences when he was simply attending his own funeral.
Well, he thought he was going to win by his attack
on me. So he went over there to see Sister White, and he read her a letter I had
written him; and in that letter, by putting peculiar emphasis upon certain words, he gave
Sister White the very opposite impression from what I had intended it to mean. Mrs.
Druillard was present and she heard it. So he labored with Sister White and got her
to change her mind about coming to my house. He [W. C.] kept saying to his mother,
"What will the ministers think? What will the ministers think?" I
know this from people who were in the house. Finally she decided not to come.
In the meantime I began to hear rumors about it,
heard that a house had been hired down the street here. Cindy Hall got her a house
down the street. I waited to see what was going on. And by and by, just a few
days before the conference, I saw she had a house all ready for her down there, and I
wrote her a letter. I said, "Sister White, will you accept an invitation to
come to my house? I notice another house is being arranged for you so I conclude you have
decided not to come to my house, and I am writing you simply to tell you it will make no
difference in my attitude towards you. I am your friend, and I shall remain your
friend just the same. And I shall take no stand against you at all if you think best
not to come because you think it will hurt your influence with those who are my
enemies. If you think best not to do it on that account, my attitude will remain
just the same. It will make no difference to me. Do what you think is right
and proper to do."
That next day after I mailed that letter I got a
letter from her, and that letter had three letters in it. This represents a phase of
this whole work that shows you that there is scheming and that Sister White herself enters
into it, and what she writes is not always quite straight and square. I knew that
from previous experience; but it is a personal fault and habit, and this shows you the
fact.
There were three letters and three different
dates. The one with the oldest date said, "I do not know; it may be possible
that I will not be able to come to your house as I had agreed to do as it is quite a
distance from the Tabernacle, and I am not very strong, and I will need a place nearer to
the Tabernacle." Of course I knew all about it. She did not know that I
knew, but I knew the game that was going on all the while. That was not the truth.
The next letter stated, "I have decided my
company is so large, so many persons are coming along with me, that it would not be right
for me to impose so much upon your generosity, and we will have to have a house of our own
where we will have it perfectly quiet and be all by ourselves, so I have given instruction
to have another house prepared for me." The instruction had been already given,
and the house was already prepared all the time, and I knew it, all the while before that
letter was written. That was just simply to prepare my mind, you know. The
third letter stated, "Last Friday night when we were having family prayers, a light
filled the room and an odor of violets; and a voice spoke to me and said, 'Go to Dr.
Kellogg's house,' and so I am coming."
When she got here, I did not feel free to go to
see her for fear people would think I was trying to influence her; so I did not go to see
her at all. She was here in my house. I lived across the road. I came up
and met her on the porch, shook hands with her, and passed on. I put her in
possession of this house right here. I waited.
After two or three days she sent for me. She
wanted to see me after a day or two. She said, "When I decided to come here,
they said" -- she didn't tell me who "they" were, but I knew who
it was -- "they said, 'Mother, you ought not to go to Dr. Kellogg's house
because of what the people will say.'"
Now I went to Sister White. The question of
reorganization was up. I said to Sister White I thought it was wrong to have a
Conference Committee constituted as they were made up of preachers trying to run all the
business and everything else, and I thought we ought to have a representative committee in
which all the different organizations should be represented; and the conference committee
might go on as it was, the old General Conference Committee, look after the religious
affairs of the association made up of the elder men and godly men to look after the
religious affairs; then have a sort of working committee, a central committee that will be
made up of representatives of all the institutions and business affairs and let them have
charge of that but not let them have executive power, but an advisory power, so they could
get together and have council but not to have executive power. She said, "That
is right."
This was the day before the conference met.
I called the Conference Committee together, told them I wanted to meet them, had our Board
in to meet them. And I arose and told them I wanted them to understand that the
medical men and the Medical Missionary Board could not enter into this conference with
them with confidence in what they were going to do, that under the present state of things
we could not have confidence and we could not be felt bound by their decisions because
there was a company of five or seven preachers, and there was nobody on that Board who
knew anything about medical work or who knew anything about Bible work, or about
educational work. Yet there they were professing to be ruling over the entire
denomination in all branches of the work, and it was not a proper thing. And I
demanded we should have a reorganization and suggested the plan I had already spoken to
Sister White about. They rose in great wrath. Irwin declared against it;
Loughborough said the present organization had the endorsement of the Lord; and they all
took a strong stand against it. But W. C. White and Daniells did not. They
remained on the fence.
Will suggested that "Mother should be
consulted." A committee was appointed to see Sister White, and they came up
early next morning to see her. As we passed out of the room I said to Prof.
Prescott, "I haven't any apprehension as to what the report of that committee will be
because Sister White has already told me this plan is right, for I had a few minutes' talk
with her."
I received not so very long ago a letter saying,
"You have reported that you told me the things that I stated at the Tabernacle, that
that was not from the Lord; but you yourself had given me that information and told me
those things and that I am simply saying what you told me to say." She said,
"You know that was not the truth. You know you and I had no conversations
before that meeting." Well, now, I wrote back to Sister White and told her she
had been misinformed, that I had never said anything of the sort -- told her
exactly what I did say.
Now, I might say that just as Sister White was
starting down to the meeting, one of those meetings, I stood on my porch and I began
saying one word to her with reference to matters, and she said, "Wouldn't it be
better if we should not be seen talking together?" So I refrained from saying
anything.
Now, then, we had that meeting in 1901. I
have told you the facts. Just a very short time before that meeting I told Sister
White what she had written me was not the truth, and I never have taken it back. I
told her when she wrote me and stated "One was present and heard your threatening
words" -- I wrote her and told her it was not the truth, for I said no
threatening words and she sent that to me and said a divine person was present and heard
my threatening words and had communicated these words to her, and she sent that to me as a
testimony.
I saw J. H. Morrison afterwards, and I said to
him, "What about those threatening words I said at that meeting?" I said
to him, "It seems to me you are the man that said the threatening words, not
me." He said, "Now, Doctor, you have such a way of presenting things that
when you get through talking, when you have presented your case, a man feels as though if
he differs from you he must be a fool." I said, "There are no threatening
words about that, are there?" I said, "The thing that led those men to act
was because they had their own record and could not go back on it, and the thing was right
anyhow and had to be done." And another evidence that the thing is right is
that after nine years it still stands today. It has never been changed, and they
would not dare to try to change it because the minute they do they have got to face that
record and to face the facts, and they cannot wipe them out.
And you are exactly where I stand. I have
not been holding these facts in the dark. What I know and what you know now, Sister
White herself has known for nine years. My letters will show it. I can show
you the letters in which I have written to her and a copy of my letter to her in which I
offered my resignation of the whole thing because she was believing things that were not
true and giving me no chance for a hearing. And I told her I was ready to quit, get
rid of the thing, and that is all there was about it.
Now, then, I will tell you why I have not made any
noise about these things. Most of these things I have never mentioned before, and
you knew nothing about them.
B: Don't you mention these things to the
doctors?
K: I don't have any occasion to. I
don't talk these things to people. I don't want people to know them. My wife
doesn't know what I have been telling you. My own wife doesn't know, and the members
of my family, my children, don't know what I have been telling you. The helpers at
the Sanitarium never heard these things I have been telling you. Haskell, Butler and
Irwin were knowing to most of the facts. The members of the Medical Missionary
Association knew a little of it.
B: They do not say anything about it.
K: They never hesitated to
tell me. One day just before our fire here in February 1902, Elder Daniells was
present at a Board meeting. After 1901 that question of the College View bakery kept
coming up because N. P. Nelson down there in Nebraska was a very tenacious fellow, and
Will White had promised him I should be made to put that bakery back. And they sent
him copies of the testimonies they sent to me, commanding me to put that bakery back, and
I hadn't done it, and there it was, an open defiance of the testimony. And they kept
hounding Will to see to it that I turned the bakery back. I could not do it if I had
wanted to; it was a legal transfer done in a legal way by the Board, and I could not do it
if I wanted to. So it bothered Will.
After 1901 they kept after Will about it, Nelson
did and Morrison -- "Because," they said, "Dr. Kellogg is in
defiance against the Testimonies." So Sister White wrote me a modified letter,
and in this letter she said, "Don't you ever allow yourself to do again what you did
in relation to the Nebraska Sanitarium bakery, the College View bakery; and don't you ever
allow yourself to do such a thing again."
That was a sort of permission to let it go this
time, but I must not ever do it again. And I went over to California about the time
I got that letter. I went over there and I saw Sister White -- no, before I
went over there I brought it before the Medical Missionary Board. They were the
parties who did it, not me, and the General Conference Association, and Elder Prescott was
present and Elder Daniells was present. I read this letter from Sister White.
I said, "Now, what shall we do about this?" Prof. Prescott immediately got
up and he walked up and down the room. You see, he had been a member of the original
committee, and he knew all about it. And I thought it was very fortunate to have him
there. He shook his head. His jaw dropped, and he shook his head. Elder
Daniells stood up in the corner of the room, and he said, "Well, you will have to do
with that just the same as I have done with a great many other things like that. I
have had a great many things like that that I could not understand, and I laid them away
on the shelf." So we all agreed that we would lay that away on the shelf.
But I went over to California a short time
afterwards by the advice of the President of the General Conference. I went over to
California, and I called on Sister White, and I said to Will, "Now, then, I am going
to talk to your mother about that College View bakery business." I said, "She
has got to know the facts about it." So I sat down and told her the whole
story. And Will was there and heard it all. We went away. It was in the
evening. I said "Will, I am sorry I had to talk to your mother about this
thing; it doesn't trouble me any, but I know it is right, and I cannot do any different
than what I have done." And I told Sister White all about it. I told her,
"If I ever had that thing to do again, I should do exactly as I did do, for I could
not do any different." And I talked to her straight about it. I said to
Will, "I am sorry I talked to your mother. I am afraid it will keep her awake,
that it will disturb her." "Oh, no," he said, "it is all
right. I am very glad you talked with her." He said, "I have noticed
that in cases of this sort generally a good talk of this kind generally did good, and that
after having such a talk it was generally dropped. And I don't think you will ever
hear any more from it." And I never did. And there never has been
anything done about it. It was dropped right there. Now didn't the Lord know
about it all the while? Now, you see, that is the situation of the thing.
Here is where the great mistake was made.
Daniells and these other men are just now bringing up this testimony question and trying
to bring it up to a point where James White never held it in the world. They are
trying to bring it up to make it an infallible guide and to make people think that all
they are doing they are doing in harmony with the infallible guide, the Spirit of Prophecy
-- that they are in touch with Sister White and get orders for everything they
do. And they are infallible because they have got an infallible guide.
They are adopting that thing. They are
endeavoring to put it into their tests of faith -- "Do you believe in the
Testimonies?" They actually put it into their book as one of the questions to
be asked in test of faith, in discipline. I think you have been putting it into your
discipline down here; I understand you have. I understand they are forcing that
thing, and I want to tell you it is the rock on which this thing is going to split.
The thing has been elevated to a pinnacle where it
doesn't belong. The Lord put this gift into the church, gave Sister White remarkable
insight into spiritual truth, into the question of ethics for the good of this people, and
not to be used as a club for beating people's brains out, not to be used as a means of
boycotting an institution or to hinder a thing that is good in itself.
This institution here, the Sanitarium at Battle
Creek, if it were a Catholic institution and was doing good, or a Presbyterian
institution, or anything else, they would say it was doing good. And in this
institution, if there were not a single Seventh-day Adventist in it, and they had a young
man somewhere who should say to the president of the General Conference, "What would
you say of my going up to Battle Creek to get a knowledge of the principles there?"
he would say, "By all means go." It would not make any difference whether
the men in charge were spiritualists or atheists or anything else. They are advising
these very young men now to go to medical schools that are perfectly rotten with
iniquity. All these young men whom they got to go thought the attack on our college
was going to ruin the college, and they went away on that account. You ought to see
the letters they have written back about the iniquity and the rottenness they find in
those medical schools.
Here we are trying to maintain the only Christian
medical school in the world, the only one the world has ever seen, trying to maintain it
at a sacrifice. The men that do the work there do it without any compensation for
it. After they have done a good day's work, they will study nights, evenings and
mornings -- all their spare time -- to help these young men and women to
become medical missionaries of truth.
The first Medical Missionary school ever started
was the starting of the Medical Missionary Training School for Nurses. We carried
those enterprises along as beneficent enterprises, and these people have set their heads
to destroy them. Now the things they are accomplishing and the only things they are
accomplishing are simply to deprive the Seventh-day people from the help and benefit they
might have from the Battle Creek Sanitarium. The Lord has helped us to hold it up,
while I had a $100,000 debt that I incurred in carrying on the medical missionary work
myself personally, the Sanitarium had a half million dollars' indebtedness. Their
debt was $700,000, but it is diminishing and diminishing rapidly.
I have myself earned $100,000. I have got my
debts paid in these three years, and the Lord has helped me and prospered me so that I
have been able to make a gift of $200,000 worth of property to a board to be used in
paying off the Sanitarium debt. And I have also stipulated that they can use that to
support the Haskell Home, to support the Medical College, and it will afford a income of
$25,000 or $30,000 a year or more, and, if the board thinks best, to pay off all those old
Medical Missionary Board debts that belong to the denomination and not to me, for the work
was done for their benefit, and they have got the good of all the work we did.
They have taken possession of all these
sanitariums and left me to pay the expenses of it after I have paid all the other
expenses, the running current expenses, and incurred a debt of $100,000. Now, then,
they have left all those other debts. Thirteen years they carried on that work, and
they have got $65,000 debts to pay which would amount to $5,000 a year for all the work
done by the Medical Missionary Association. It cost me personally more than that,
and I paid it. And they said nothing about it and trusted the Lord to give it back
to me.
He has given it back to me and $200,000 besides
that I have put into that board, and I am paying off those Medical Missionary Board debts
all the time while they are hounding me all over the world as a thief and a robber.
I am paying off those debts. I sent $200 to an old woman the other day down in
Iowa. When anybody says, "I am needy or in distress," because of that I
have sent them the money when they have come to me. They send to them for the money,
and they say, "No, no, Dr. Kellogg has stolen it," and so go on with their tales
that are lies and they know it.
Now I do not see how those men believe the
Testimonies. They claim that the Lord directed them to put the sanitarium in
Washington and asked the people to give to this Washington Sanitarium because the Lord was
specially directing this. "The Lord has left the Sanitarium at Battle Creek;
this [in Washington] is the Lord's institution." Sister White wrote them a
letter and told them the institution should not cost over $25,000 or $30,000, that it
should be small and should be a wooden building, a simple structure, and should be an
example of simplicity in every way. What did they do? She told them that no
brick or stone should go into that building. They got together and had a little
council. They said, "We cannot use brick; we cannot use stone. We have
got to have something better than a wooden building. We will use cement --
make cement blocks and have artificial stone!"
So they decided on that -- and went ahead
and put up a building that has cost them $115,000. They have got a debt of $50,000
on it, and it will only accommodate thirty-five or forty patients. Here is a
building [the Battle Creek Sanitarium] that cost five times as much as that and
accommodates twenty times as many people. This one is full, crowded with
people who are getting well faster than they ever did before; and down there they have two
or three people in the house. Now, if I can get any indication at all, it is this
thing: that the Lord started a work here forty years ago in Battle Creek, and He wants us
to stand by it. And I propose to standby it. And if the thing has got to fall,
if it has got to go down in a great catastrophe, I am willing to do with it, and I would
rather stand there by that and go down with it than to run off and neglect it. I
would rather stand there and go down with it than to run away and leave all those sick
folks there and stop these sick folks from coming here and say to them, "No, we
cannot take you in; the Lord says that we are bad; the Lord says this institution is
cursed."
Suppose we should all go off -- what
would the consequences be? Somebody has got to stand by it. I have been trying
to stand by what I know was straight and square. I have endeavored to make every
concession I know how to make. I have endeavored to follow all the instruction that
has come from Sister White. To the best of my ability I have done it. If I
have to done it, let them put their fingers on the facts and tell me wherein I have not
done it.
Sister White asks me to surrender to the Lord
Jesus Christ. I wrote her back that I did, and if I had not done it already I did do
it now, and I would, and I would try to do it every day of my life. She never asked
me to surrender to Elder Daniells or to the General Conference Committee, and what they
asked me to do I could not do, I cannot do, and I never will do. They asked me to
turn the Battle Creek Sanitarium over, and I have no power to do that thing, and I have no
desire to do it.
A: Doctor, what do you think is the
fulfillment of this text of Scripture in the experience of this denomination: "Thy
watchmen shall see eye to eye when the Lord brings again Zion"?
This is the most awful record ever I heard of.
K: Well, sir, we are seeing eye to eye, and
we are going on about our business and we see eye to eye. We are standing by the
principles the Lord has given us there, and you cannot put your finger on any evidence of
decadence of those principles. We are standing there all the while, while Elder
Daniells is going about the country eating beefsteak and drinking his tea. I don't
believe you men yourselves are so circumspect about these principles. I don't
believe you believe the Testimonies yourselves. I know Daniells, Evans and those men
don't pretend to when it comes down to diet. I have had no evidence that the leading
men of this denomination have or ever have had the faith in the teaching that Sister White
has given in relation to the health principles, that they have had the faith that I have
had.
I think if you look back over the course right
straight through over the whole thing you will see that I and my colleagues have followed
more closely in the instruction which we have had from the Testimonies right straight
through the whole thing, that we have adhered more closely to what Sister White has
taught, what she has presented as from the Lord, than any other class of people in this
denomination. When the ministers and General Conference folks used to come here,
they used to go up to the Sanitarium and sit down, and every last man of them ate their
beefsteak. I remember when the health reform first came out, Brother Amadon was a
very strong straight health reformer; and he began to backslide, and I guess all the
prominent people did. But I did not. I stood by the thing and not because the
Testimonies said it but because I knew it was true. I believed it was true, and at
the present time we see that truth winning out wonderfully all over the world. The
vegetarian principle is coming to the front.
A: Doctor, I believe on some points of
health reform I am more of a health reformer than you are.
K: You probably get your sleep regularly.
A: I don't refer to any such thing as
that. No, sir. Ever since you returned from Europe and went to Van Horn's and
told them what you had learned from somewhere about the treatment of epilepsy and what you
thought would be good for their son, I said, "I wonder if that won't be a good thing
for me," and since that time I have not put a particle of salt on my food.
K: Do you think I eat salt? I stopped
eating salt thirty-five years ago. Do you suppose I would be so foolish as to eat
salt when I know the harm it does?
A: Don't cut and slash at me on that point
when I do a thing like that. See here, Doctor, for thirty years I have not taken a
piece of butter on my butter dish and spread it on my bread. I don't believe you can
say that.
K: I don't use the ordinary butter. If
I use butter it is sterilized butter, for the trouble with the butter is in the germs that
are in it. The Testimonies never said you should not eat salt.
Here is something from Sister White. This is
a little thing called The Bulletin which has just started down there in
Washington. I see the earmarks of Dr. Kress in it. Here is a statement from
Sister White: "At this stage of the earth's history meat eating is dishonoring to
God." The president of the General Conference when he went over there to Europe
five years ago and that whole lot of Seventh-day Adventist ministers who went over with
him, they went from conference to conference around the country in Europe eating meat
right along. "Those who believe present truth should refuse to eat flesh
meat."
A: That is good.
K: Do you know where it is? "The
light which God has given upon health reform cannot be trifled with without injury to
those who attempt it, and no man can hope to succeed in the work of God while by precept
and example he acts in opposition to the light which God has sent."
A: I would like to use to quite an extent
these health foods you make, but you charge such a tremendous price for them we cannot do
it -- people with small incomes like Brother Bourdeau.
K: I don't eat any health foods at
all. We eat scarcely any at our house. I live upon bread, potatoes and
fruits. I do not eat health foods. I do not have to. I don't believe
there is any health food on our bill of fare today. We rarely ever have any.
We have got bread, potatoes and fruit.
When I traveled abroad I was gone three months,
and I lived on plain food all the time I was gone. I had a few things along with me
that I could use for lunch when I had time to eat.
A: I thought these health foods were to
benefit people?
K: They are, but they are only to help
people who don't know how to live, themselves. People who know how to prepare foods
don't have to have health foods. The Lord didn't make a bakery or health food
factory in the Garden of Eden. If you cannot carry out the health reform without a
food factory, the thing is moonshine.
B: When I have had my stomach sour, had
indigestion, I have allowed myself to eat a little piece of meat about as big as my thumb
to stimulate the stomach. Then there would be a long time after that I would not
have any trouble again. The stomach had gotten lazy and wanted something to
stimulate it a little. I don't consider that meat is anything easily digested.
K: "Those who believe the principles of
truth should refuse to eat flesh meat." I would not eat a piece of meat that
big any quicker than I could swallow a toad. "Many who are now only half
converted on the question of meat-eating will go from God's people to walk no more with
them. There are those who have stood directly in the way of the advancement of the
health reform. They have held the people back by their indifference or deprecatory
remarks and their supposed pleasantries and jokes."
I had to stand against that thing for twenty-five
years all the time, and you know it. I had to be held up there as a fanatic and a
crank. I tried to hold these principles up; and I believe there are more health
reformers outside the Seventh-day Adventist denomination that have become such from my
work than there are in the whole denomination. A woman over in Oakland when showed
the article in the Review against the Living Temple and my work said,
"That is good; now I can eat all the beefsteak I want."
A: Oh, that is nonsense, nonsense.
K: Of course it is ridiculous. This
light was given thirty years ago, and the Seventh-day Adventist denomination are not
heeding it. I think there are probably not a dozen families, Seventh-day Adventists,
in this town that do not eat beefsteak, chicken most right straight along, and all taking
tea and coffee right straight along, and all in good standing in the church. Nobody
is making any inquiry as to whether these people obey the Testimonies. The
whole question is, "Do you believe the Testimonies?" It is not a
question whether they are living up to them or not.
A: To believe is to live them out.
K: No, sir. You profess to believe
it. You do not live up to it; you don't live it out. That is what I am saying
to you.
Now here is a fact, that for many many years I
have not heard a Seventh-day Adventist minister preach a sermon on health reform or rein
the people up on these principles for many years.
A: Within a fortnight I have heard our
minister here say there must be something said here on health reform, within a fortnight.
K: That shows that what I am saying is
true. They have been saying it. But here it is -- straining at a gnat
and swallowing a camel. There is not a bit of sense in it. Here is all this
attack upon the Sanitarium. What is it about? "Oh, the influence of the
Sanitarium!" Now I have been telling you quite a good deal about myself, my
difficulties and where I stood, and I told Sister White frankly so nine years ago.
And although I told her so, told her what she had written me was not the truth and proved
it to her she came here and suggested that I be ordained, and it was after I told her that
that she says the Lord told her to come to my house. My position towards the
Testimonies today is exactly what it was then. My position toward Sister White today
is exactly what it was then. In my attitude toward the Bible, toward Bible truth,
and with reference to the principles which were denounced in Living Temple, I am
exactly the same as I was then. I try to do my work a little better; I pray a little
more.
Now, then, here are these statements that have
been made. Sister White, for instance, in one of those attacks said the Lord did not
want His people, the children of Seventh-day Adventists, to spend their lives taking care
of rich tourists at the Battle Creek Sanitarium. The Lord never instructed her to
write that because it is not the truth. The Sanitarium is filled up with sick folks,
not with rich tourists. We have nothing at all to bring rich tourists there.
Brother Keck was a member of the investigating
committee which was appointed to come here to the Sanitarium. I invited them to come
and investigate us, and they didn't come. Then Elder Daniells and others were
telling all over the world that I would not permit them to make an investigation, and it
was simply falsehood. I invited investigation and you heard me openly do it; and
before the General Conference Committee I invited them to come, and I only stipulated it
must be an open and above-board investigation. They have not come, and at the
present minute they are telling everywhere that I would not permit the General Conference
to make an investigation. I invited them to come here for a real sitting down
together, for a council, and Sister White commanded them not to come. That is what
headed it off. I know Daniells and Will worked that thing up because the basis of
that thing, as I explained a little while ago, was not sound, was not the truth.
Brother Keck was invited among others to come up
and be a member of that committee of fifteen, and he started. He told me he would
come, but he didn't tell me how he was coming. He came around by way of Washington
without letting me know anything about it. He was here four weeks. The day
before he left he came to the office and said, "Well, Doctor, I can give you a clean
bill of health." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "I
will tell you. When I got to Washington I sat down and had a half day's visit with
Mrs. Prescott, and she told me a lot of things." Then he went on to tell me the tales
told him, and one of the tales told him by Mrs. Prescott was that the Sanitarium was a
brothel and I was inviting young ladies there to seduce them. Mrs. Prescott told him
that. That one evening -- to show you filthy it was vile they are --
you said you didn't believe they were telling such things, and I want to tell you the
proof of it. She told him, to illustrate how rotten it was, that one day a party was
passing down quite late at night, passing by the Sanitarium and encountered a woman coming
across the lawn opposite the peanut stand. There he met a person coming down the
walk and she pulled her dress up, pulled down her stocking, and pulled out a roll of bills
and said, "See how much I have earned tonight up there." Other horrible
tales were told.
Brother Keck waited over and had a meeting with
Daniells, Prescott, Spicer, Colcord and Evans, and I think four or five of them were in
the meeting, and he told them. For four hours they labored with him to keep him from
coming here, for four hours they told him infamous tales, and he brought up these tales
that had been told him by Mrs. Prescott. They were very sorry, so sorry, that these
awful things were true. It was so sad that they were compelled to believe
them. And they thought they were going to scare him out of coming here --
that would hypnotize him, and it was not safe to come.
He came on and he spent four weeks running down
everything. They told him the names of people who they said would confirm what they
said. He went to see those people, and they turned the whole thing down, and they
took their stand for us instead of against us. He went back there and told them it
was to true, that he had investigated everything that Mrs. Prescott had said. Mrs.
Prescott replied, "I am very sorry to know it is not true" -- and then
went straight over to Europe and went to telling the same tales all over Europe. One
of our nurses has a sister over there who has written her that she is so sorry to hear
these awful stories about the Battle Creek Sanitarium that Mrs. Prescott told her.
Now they have begun to get scared. I said to
Brother Keck, "You tell these men down there I won't stand that thing any longer,
that if they don't stop that miserable nasty dirty talk I will make them answer for
it." Well, when some of our doctors were down there at the dedication of the
[Washington] Sanitarium Elder Daniells spoke publicly about these reports that have been
told. "Now," he said, "I know Dr. Kellogg has got papers all ready
made out to serve on me to sue me for libel, but I can take care to keep just within the
line." He said that in the presence of fifty or seventy-five people, and four
or five of our doctors heard it. "I take care to keep just within the line; we
know what we are about."
They said Brother Keck had told certain tales, and
that they had told him certain tales. They said it was not true and that he had
taken it back, that he had retracted it. I wrote that to Brother Keck right away and
told him that if he had taken that back and it was true they did not tell him those
stories, I would like to know it. He wrote me back that he had not taken back a
thing. It was absolutely untrue. What Elder Daniells had said was not the
truth, and he wrote me a letter and told me so. And he sent me a copy of Elder
Daniells' letter in which he crawfished and dodged the point, and it was not a
straightforward letter at all.
Then Daniells sits down and writes to the
president of the Florida conference -- you know Keck was president of the
conference -- but they had a long meeting and turned him down and won't ever
allow him to be on the conference committee because he came here. Turned him right
off and gave that as the reason why. Because he came up to Battle Creek they turned
him out. They proposed then to take his credentials away from him. Daniells
wrote to the conference committee to take his credentials away from him because he had
repeated what Daniells had told him with reference to those vile stories.
Both of you know Irving Keck. He went here,
saw the conference committee, told them the stories, showed them the letters from me and
from Daniells, and they wrote Daniells that he better call that thing off, better not
pursue Brother Keck any further. And they did not take his credentials away.
So Daniells writes to Brother Keck, "We are not going to make war on you; we will
drop our differences."
Keck has told him to his face that he lied.
And they did lie. Daniells has got those men together, and they prepared a paper and
signed it to the effect that matters of my morality at the Sanitarium were not even
mentioned in the conversation they had. And he signed that paper and got the other
members who were there to sign that paper to protect themselves from libel.
You can see, Brother Amadon, how much room there
is for confidence when things are going on at that rate. Elder Daniells got the
medical students together here when he was here and told them the most monstrous
tales. He told them that when I went to Europe that I knew I was going to get
admonished that we ought not to build in Battle Creek. I knew I would get a
testimony to that effect, so I told my secretary not to send me any mail. I heard
the story in two ways. One was that the instructions I gave were not to send me
anything at all, and the other was that the instructions I gave were not to send me
anything from Sister White. So the letters came, and the warning came.
You see they had to get up some scheme to answer
the question: Why didn't the warning come before? Why did they wait until they got
up to the fourth story? Here was the testimony, you see. They published it --
that testimony I told you about, that purported to have been written in the diary and
dated two days after the fire. "Why didn't they get that? Why did they go
on and build up to the fourth story before the information ever came away along into the
month of August?"
No, they had to invent that story that that
[testimony] was sent to me, and I went to Europe and left instruction behind that they
must not forward any mail to me on purpose so that I would not get the information.
Daniells has told that not only here at Battle Creek but in various places. I have
got heaps of letters from people all over the world of tales that Daniells, Prescott,
Spicer and others have told them, and other leading people. Underwood got up there
in the South Dakota camp meeting -- one of the good substantial people of Iowa,
Brother Frederickson, was there and heard him, and he said, "Dr. Kellogg and his
colleagues have done things that make them liable to the state's prison, and they ought to
go there too," and shouted it out to the whole audience. That is the way these
ministers are going on.
Now, Brother Amadon, these men have turned things
upside down, and they have converted a work that was a beautiful work and had a chance to
be the most blessed thing on earth, have converted it into a threshing machine and have
brought about by their strenuous campaign general confusion and general distrust and
general loss of confidence. They are cultivating loss of confidence in themselves
when they don't know it because people gradually find out the untruth of what they have
said, and then they lose confidence in them and not only lose confidence in them but in
their policies.
Brother Foy said to me when he came up to my
office to talk, he said, "I don't take any stock at all in your religious
principles." He said, "The Testimonies have said what they
are." I said, "What do you mean by the Testimonies?" "I
mean everything that is published over Sister White's name." I said, "Some
things have been published over her name that are certainly not straight," and I told
him about that testimony dated two days after the fire [1902] that never appeared here
until a year ago last December [1905] which was published as evidence that we were warned
before the building was put up. It was put in without a word of explanation.
A more diabolical scheme Brother Amadon, was never
done than that thing, a downright fraud was never committed than to publish that testimony
three years after the fire, dated two days after the fire, to prove to the people that we
were warned not to put the building up here. It was a dastardly outrage against
everything to do such a thing as that.
I have written to headquarters and written to
Sister White to complain of that thing of their doing such a thing as that, but not a word
has ever been said in explanation of it. And they cannot say a word because it was
an open lie. They cannot confess it because that would destroy their influence.
Now if you will read that testimony right straight
through, you will see it was all favorable. Dr. Paulson was in Sister White's
office, in her room at her house, visiting her that very day when that was written --
and it is a marvelous thing how the Lord has checked this thing right along --
Dr. Paulson was there and he wrote me a letter. He said, "I have just been
having a talk with Sister White. She says she has got to write an article for the Review
because people will say that [the fire] was judgment on the Sanitarium, and she says that
ought not to be and she must write an article to counteract that thing. And she
wrote that article in her diary."
This article dated February 20, 1902, said the
very thing that Dr. Paulson says. It was an appeal for sympathy for the Sanitarium
right straight through -- with the exception of one paragraph, and that one
paragraph on one page says something like this: "How many people, how many hundreds
of people have been helped to the light and the truth through the medium of the
Sanitarium? Hundreds of people, thousands have been enlightened and blessed, brought to
the light of the truth by the agency of the Sanitarium." Two pages of
that. And then there is a paragraph which comes in that is in an entirely different
spirit. It is ambiguous so you can turn it a little one way or the other. It
says: "What return has there been for the thousands of dollars spent in the Battle
Creek Sanitarium?" And goes on in that very strain. "If the question
is raised, Why should not the Sanitarium be built in Battle Creek at large expense? we may
ask: What return has there been for the thousands of dollars which have been expended
there?"
It is out of joint with the whole tenor of the
article, like a discordant note sounding out above every other thing. You can read
the article through and cannot help but feel that that paragraph does not belong
there. That is the only thing that refers in any unfriendly way at all, but they
brought it in in order to have something to hitch onto to prove that we were warned not to
build when we never saw this until three years afterwards. So I wrote to Sarah and
said, "That paragraph is added there, and I ask you to write me if I am mistaken
about it. Was that paragraph written in the original diary where Sister White said
she had written the article?" I have never heard a word. I have written
her twice and had others write her telling her the discrepancy of the thing, and you can
not get a word out of them. I asked them to produce the diary with reference to that
thing, but I know they cannot find it there. You see, it is impossible because it is
the very opposite of all the rest of the article. It is like a black spot standing
on a white wall.
These men have brought confusion, disorder,
commotion, and discord, and not only that but destruction is in the train of that thing.
If there is anything in the world that has lost its mission, it is these
Seventh-day Adventist men. I want you to know just where I stand exactly. I am
standing for everything I believe is true, trying to stand honestly and honorably and
trying to do everything any honorable man can do. And if my colleagues stand with me
here at the Sanitarium, it is not because I am faultless or because they are under any
obligations to me; it is because they know I have been trying to do the straight things by
this thing. A few of the leading ones know the things I have told you.
I have not a particle of hope that the Seventh-day
Adventist denomination is going to reap anything but wreckage. I believe the truth,
and I know the truth will triumph. And Sister White said to the Seventh-day
Adventist denomination more than forty years ago that if this church did not heed this
light that was given to them and hold it up to the world and perform their mission,
another people would be raised up that would do it. You know that is true, Brother
Amadon. You have heard her say that in the Tabernacle. This denomination has
been losing its mission; it has never improved the opportunity offered it in these great
health principles.
Now the principles are being vindicated and the
Seventh-day Adventist denomination don't get the credit. The Battle Creek Sanitarium
gets the credit. The whole denomination ought to have it. And I get credit the
whole denomination ought to have had and which it would have had if it had stood by it and
been true to it, but they repudiated it. They said, as the children of Israel did,
"Oh, for the flesh pots of Egypt," and they went back. And now while these
principles are coming forward and the most wonderful scientific evidence is coming forward
in support of the whole thing and hundreds of thousands of people are giving up
flesh-eating and the college football teams even are becoming vegetarians in order to
become strong and well, and it has proved out, tested out to show the wonderful
improvement in endurance that comes from the non-flesh dietary. Even if a person
eats a small amount of flesh it undermines his endurance, and the wonderful facts brought
out by scientific investigations made at Yale and Harvard and Chicago Universities --
and these scientific men are coming here every day, and some of them are here now to
investigate this institution to see why it is and to test endurance.
They come here and put our doctors and nurses and
bath men through tests of endurance such as holding out the arms, for instance, and they
find our men are able to do -- for instance, here is one man who stood up here
this way and went down on his heels that way, simply a boy, one of our medical students
who never was an athlete -- and they found he did it five thousand times.
He went up and down just like that at the rate of forty and fifty a minute for the most
part of the time and the last part of the time was at the rate of 32 and 34 a minute, an
average of more than 35 movements a minute for two hours and forty minutes --
5002 times.
Down there at the Yale University the biggest
athletes they have, men who have won national honors in competitions, men who had world's
records, men that did that thing the best they could do, and those men did this. The
very best they could do was 1200 times. And here is a man that did four times that
number of times without any training at all. Here are our doctors holding out their
arms, Dr. Byington and others, sedentary men who had two or three times the endurance of
their own trained athletes that were trained on meat. Now those men were
tremendously stronger than our men but without the endurance. They crush them with a
blow, but they could not keep on doing it. They had not the endurance.
I believe if I had been a meat eater this attack I
have had to go through, the tearing up of things that were dearest to me, having the
anathemas of heaven thrust at me when I knew they were manufactured darts, and I knew
where they were made and where the workshop was and who made them and all about it.
I want to tell you, Brother Amadon, I have never been in rebellion against God, for the
Almighty is too much for me. I haven't any desire to undertake competition with
Heaven. I believe in God and I believe in God's divine rulership, and I know I
cannot compete with Him, cannot defy Him, cannot do anything against Him.
But when people come at me with lies and with
frauds and with misrepresentations, I don't propose to recognize that thing except in the
way that I recognize a thunderstorm or a cyclone or something else. It is God's
dealing with me, but it is not God's voice that I hear talking to me behind my back, and
it is not God's dealing with me stabbing me in the back. God is frank, square, and
straight, and if this church wanted to deal with me in a straightforward way, they would
have called me to account for some of these crimes I have been accused of. They
would had a church trial, and they would have convicted me with the evidence. Now
the evidence of the truth of things of the kind we have been dealing with here in our
matter is the facts. God's voice agrees with the truth. A thing is not true
simply because something has been said under some circumstances somewhere. The thing
that is true is true. If it is not true, it is not true.
I don't see anything ahead of the Seventh-day
Adventist denomination but complete wreckage. The men that have gotten hold of the
crank are wreckers. They are men that are not level-headed. They have gone
ahead in the most stupendously foolish thing. They took one step, then another, and
another, and another and kept the thing going, adding one falsehood to another until they
have gotten to where they take any measures that are necessary to destroy us and to injure
us in our works.
Brother Keck told me that in his interviews with
those men in Washington -- he said, "I found the positive evidence that
those men were willing to push anything no matter what it was even if they knew it was not
true, if they thought it would damage you and the Sanitarium." He saw the
evidence of that thing.
I don't expect what I have said here today has the
slightest influence with you and in your minds. You make up your minds from your own
experience, and I have not talked with you for the purpose of influencing you or because I
thought you were weaklings or you could be influenced. But you have had your own
experience in this thing, and you have been in it as long as I have or longer, and you
know the Lord has been moving in this movement and dealing with these people. And
the truth we have been standing for is the Lord's truth, and I know it, and I propose to
keep right on standing for it. And I expect you will find me carrying out the
principles Sister White has been outlining in the Testimonies. I expect you will
find me standing up for those principles, standing by them and doing the best I can to
maintain them and practice them when a whole lot of these people that are clamoring about
the Testimonies and against me have abandoned the whole thing and gone to the world and
the devil. You watch and you will see.
By the Lord's help I propose to stand square and
to stand true to all the things I knew are right and true, and when this Battle Creek
church gets ready to turn me out, it is all right to do it. I don't ask them to do
it, don't want them to do it, and don't want anybody to think I have gone back on what I
know is true. And that is why I have never made any such request and shall not make
any such request. It will be represented so to the world when it is not the
true. The truth is, I stand just where I have stood all the time, and I have not
changed and do not intend to change.
At the Sanitarium we never have had any plan for
any offshoot or side issue or organization of any kind. I have nothing to do with
such a thing. If the Seventh-day Adventist organization is not good enough for me
there isn't any other that is. If the Seventh-day Adventist organization cannot
tolerate me, no other one could. I propose to go on, to stand alone for the Lord, to
stand for the truth alone when I have to. I am perfectly willing to accept the issue
when it comes, but I will not invite it, and I regret it. Here are my little boys
coming on. My little boy Robert, a bright little fellow, got into a fault the other
day, and I took him up into my room and talked with him and prayed with him. And as
I got up from my knees I said, "What am I going to do with this boy? What
church can I introduce him to?" You see, I am in a hard fix. There is
nothing else for me to do but to go on and do the best I can. I am not in rebellion
and I am not fighting anybody. If I were fighting, I would be using the things I am
telling you about. I would be scattering them broadcast all over the United States,
and if I should publish what I have just been reciting to you this afternoon, and ten
times as much more that I could present, if I should publish that thing over my signature,
and those of other people who are conscious of the thing, and publish the actual documents
to go along with it, it would bring everybody connected with the thing into discredit, for
there are a good many thousands of people who would believe it. These things won't
be published unless they are compelled to be published. If Mrs. White will send me a
challenge to publish this thing, I will do it. If the General Conference will send
me a challenge to publish this thing, I will do it in reply to their challenge. I
won't do it any other way. I shall do my utmost to prevent such a thing from being
published. My own reputation is in it. Haven't I been in this thing for forty
years? Won't people say to me if I publish this, "You have known this for
twenty-five years, why didn't you publish it before?"
B: When things are published
there in black and white, then anybody can read it and everybody can read it. But
when things are talked, you know they are forgotten.
K: This thing I am telling you I know, and
if this was all I did know I would have been out of this thing a long time ago. And
I know a whole lot of things besides. I said to Dr. Stewart, "That is only a
little bit. And you have only just been picking out flaws here and there. But
there is the other side you haven't said anything about. And you have no right to
send out a document of the sort which presents only the faults you have been able to pick
out and says nothing about the greater side which is far more worthy of attention."
I want to tell you I have never spent fifteen
minutes in looking over my documents to see if I could find something of this sort.
I have taken pains not to do it. I have said, "I cannot allow myself to do such
a thing."
I will tell you further, Brother Amadon, away back
when I was a boy of twenty-one in the Review and Herald office there, I saw things: saw
what the Elder was doing -- his manufacturing, his scheming, his manipulating
against you and Brother Smith. I know of Elder White's opening private letters in
order to get information of what was going on. Warren Bacheller does not know to
this day, but it is a matter of fact that one day when Uriah Smith was up at Grand Rapids
he [James White] saw a letter from him, and he said, "This is from Warren Bacheller;
I know his handwriting." He softened that envelope, opened it up, read it,
didn't find a word in it of what he thought was there, sealed it up and sent it on in the
mail. I know the man that saw him do it. Warren didn't know anything about
it. I have never told him. But Dr. M. G. Kellogg was present when he did it
and saw him doing the thing, and he is an honest man.
Now I saw scheming going on. Elder White
talked to me about what he wanted to do to Uriah Smith, and I pleaded with him for
Uriah. We once had a conference committee of our own, and he and Brownsberger and I
were the whole conference committee. You remember that time?
A: Yes.
K: I stood stiffly against that thing.
I refused to send my resignation in.
Some men are alive today that have got that very
weakness.
W. C. White has got all the weakness of his father without the greatness, and that is just
where the trouble is in this game. Elder White, when he got to going on a wrong
track and found he could not do a thing, turned square about, acknowledged it and said,
"I have made a mistake." . . . He did and he didn't. He believed
them just as other folks did.
He was a peculiar man. He came to me one day
and said, "Dr. Kellogg" -- he was telling me of his trials; he and
Sister White were having a quarrel -- he said, "Brother Kellogg, it is
wonderful. My wife sometimes has the most remarkable experiences. The Lord
comes near to her, and she has the most remarkable experiences; and then again the very
devil comes in and takes possession of her."
Sister White herself, I want to tell you, has gone
through a very peculiar experience, and I think she was very much depressed. She had
had troubles. She and the Elder had had a quarrel. He had gone off and left
her, and for two weeks he would not go out to the old brick house by the millpond to sleep
with her. He would not stay in the house with her. She said, "Dr.
Kellogg, I sometimes doubt my own experience."
All the while the Elder was an erratic man, had
had several strokes of apoplexy, and of course his conditions were abnormal. But
Sister White backed him up for a long time. He fought me for three years, went all
around the country calling me a thief and a liar, and Sister White backed him up for a
long time but after while took my side.
Sister White came here to Battle Creek, saw these
men had misrepresented her and saw, as she told Elder Haskell, "Dr. Kellogg is the
same man as he always was." She talked to the patients, and she went all about
the sanitarium, and she blessed the whole place. She was here for forty-eight hours,
and not one word of censure did she say against the institution, either here or at the
Tabernacle, and not one word of censure did she say.
She saw that she had been deceived, and she told
the audience there she knew that there had been this exaggeration, that it had been
perpetrated upon the people, and they had been misled. And she said, "They call
me a prophet; I am not a prophet. Prophets predict; I do not predict."
Now I believe Sister White told the exact truth about that thing. I think they have
mistaken the gift the Lord gave her and have exaggerated the thing and tried to make out
of it a club with which to beat people into line.
You have suffered from it; and your brother,
Brother Bourdeau, suffered from it. He told me of his experiences over there in
Europe, and I know something about it. I have had it. I have had less trouble
with it than a great many others have had. I took a frank stand right back thirty
years ago, took a square stand. They knew just where I stood, that they could not
work any dodge on me, that the thing had got to be straight.
The Elder had a dealing with the Sanitarium by
which he got possession of five thousand dollars that did not belong to him at all.
He made a contract with the Sanitarium to publish the Health Reformer for half the
profits. At the end of three years he had a profit of five thousand dollars, and
they asked him to let them have four thousand dollars of it to put up the new building
with. They asked him to take one thousand dollars and let them have four, and he
said he would take the whole thing or none. He said if they did not let him keep the
whole thing he would throw up the sponge, withdraw his influence from the
Sanitarium. And I helped the Elder work it through.
I was doing the editing. It was paid for out
of the profits, and there was five thousand dollars left. I labored with Harmon
Lindsay, Ben Auten, and Ire Abbey to get them to assent to the Elder's proposition.
I said, "That money will come back," and I felt under obligations to see that it
did come back. The Elder went on, kept the money for several years more and made
thousands of dollars. When the Elder died, I figured it up and found that through
myself, the Health Reformer, and my brother Merritt, he had made out of the health
department twenty thousand dollars, a sum equal to twenty thousand dollars.
And the Elder got sick about the time we started
the new building. He had promised to raise the money for it, but he got sick just as
we started and there we were with the foundation laid, the frame going up, and he hadn't
raised any money at all. And he had a stroke of apoplexy, went down to South
Lancaster, stopped with Elder Haskell and while there he sent me an order for five
thousand dollars on the Review and Herald. He told me before he went down there that
he intended to pay that money back, that he had always intended to pay it back, that he
had told the members of the Board so, told Drusilla Lamson so, told Mrs. Hall and
others. They all knew it that he intended to pay that money back. So when it
came, I understood that was the refunding as he agreed to do.
But he got well, came around and demanded it
back. But I headed the thing off, held it off for some time, but finally he came to
the point where he demanded it, made a straight issue of it, and I made a straight issue
of it. I told him it belonged to the Sanitarium, that he knew all about it and I
knew all about it, and I couldn't it. Then he went right at it to down me.
When it came up to the election, I told the nominating committee they could heave him off
or leave me off. I would not serve on that Board with him. He had been using
his influence against the institution, told the people all over the country the
institution was going into bankruptcy, and so on, and advising them to withdraw their
money. And I would not be responsible if he was on the Board, so they left him off.
He demanded that an arbitrating committee be
appointed, and it was. And we left the thing in their hands. That committee
came to see me and our Board and said, "We have talked with Sister White, and she
says she has seen that you should pay that money back to the Elder." I said she
never saw it. "Oh," said Elder Butler, "oh, do you mean to say that
you know better than Sister White does what she has seen?" I said, "I can
prove to you she never saw it, that the Lord never showed her any such thing."
"Well, you have a big task, it seems to me, for a little doctor."
"Very well," I said, "I will do it to your satisfaction; you will have to
admit it."
I proved it to him in less than five minutes that
the Lord never showed her any such thing. I did it this way. When he made that
bargain that should have half the profits for editing the paper it was a part of the
bargain that he and his wife should have their board at the Sanitarium. He and his
wife should have their board and half the profits, and the Sanitarium should have the
other half. So, of course, the Sanitarium paid his board and his wife's board out of
their half of the profits, and he would pay the expense of conducting the journal out of
his half of the profits.
He boarded there with his wife, and when they left
town he put me in to take his place, and I boarded there for two years on his credit at
the Sanitarium. Now, then, the Lord knows what that board is worth, and the Lord is
a good bookkeeper. And the Lord never would have said the Sanitarium should pay back
the whole five thousand dollars; the Lord would have deducted the board bill at
least. They all saw it, you know, so there wasn't any way to get out of it.
But there it was: she had said the Lord had said we should pay that back, and Sister White
had said we should pay it back. They hedged a little bit on it themselves, but
because Sister White said she had seen it, that the Lord has shown her we should pay the
money back, they thought they should pay the money back. But I took my stand against
it.
However, the next morning after that meeting I
went to the bank, got the check and paid that money back to the Elder, when I knew we
ought not to do it. Why? Because these men had got Sister White to take her
stand with Brother White that the money had got to go back. "The Lord had said
it." I could not stand up against that. But I took my stand before them
so they knew how I felt about it.
The Elder took the money, paid it into the Review
and Herald to settle up the old scores down there when he had had more of the profits than
he ought to have had on his books. Then he got a special supplement of the Review,
and in that he told how he had paid the five thousand dollars into the Review and Herald
office. Isn't that so? You know that it is so, don't you?
So I knew perfectly where the money went. I
turned that money over to help him. Then there was a little note in the supplement
to the Review in which he admitted he had had more of the profits than he ought to
have had out of the Review and Herald office, and he had made it right by paying in five
thousand dollars. And that five thousand dollars he had stolen from us to pay off a
five thousand dollar debt -- to pay back five thousand dollars he had stolen from
the Review and Herald -- to make the thing square.
Now I waited. It was an awfully hard
thing. I went to the bank and got the money on my own account, borrowed the money at
the bank, got the money on my own account. The money was in the bank on deposit, and
I trusted the Lord to help me to get it back some way. I did that to take that out
of the hands of that committee because the Elder claimed the Good Health also, and
I claimed the Good Health for the Sanitarium. And I felt if I did that thing
then the committee would have courage enough to say that the Good Health belonged
to us. I saw they were going in for the compromises, and I knew we must pay the five
thousand dollars and keep the Good Health.
When the committee met, they decided there was
nothing to do with the five thousand dollars, and the Good Health belonged to the
Sanitarium. So I waited to see what next to do, waited for awhile, and in the
meantime the Elder died [August, 1881]. He would not have done such crazy things if
he had been sound.
It came pretty nearly time for the next General
Conference to come, and I got W. C. White --
I never talked this over with you before, did I?
Never had any talk with you about this before?
A: No.
B: No.
K: I got W. C. White, S. N. Haskell, H. W.
Kellogg -- they were here getting ready for the General Conference. I told
them I wanted that five thousand dollars back, that it was gotten away by wrong doing, and
I was going to have it back. H. W. shook his fist in my face and said, "You
will never get a dollar of it." I said, "I will have every cent of
it." I said to W. C. White, "If this money is not paid back to me before
the next General Conference comes, I shall stand up in that General Conference and I shall
tell the entire story from beginning to end." I said, "It will be a hard
thing to do, now that your father is dead and gone, but I will do it before I will let the
Sanitarium suffer the loss of that five thousand dollars which belongs to it and which we
need." We were in great debt and having a hard time.
They had a business session at the Review and
Herald office. You were down there and must have been present at it. And I
happened to be down there that day about ten o'clock in the counting room, and H. W.
walked in and said, "Here is a check for you." He passed it to me, a check
for five thousand dollars. He says, "I want you to understand I don't do this
of my own free will but because I am instructed to do it by the Board." And I
suppose you are one of the men that instructed him to do it.
A: I don't think I was on the Board then.
K: Perhaps you were not. But you knew
about it.
A: Oh yes, I knew about that.
K: I took that five thousand dollars, stood
against crookedness and won, and that squared the thing up. Now this is the point: I
took my stand square against Elder White and Sister White and the Testimonies in that
thing, and against the whole General Conference Committee, and they gave me the five
thousand dollars because they did not dare face the truth.
Now, then, Sister White knew from that time on
that it wasn't any use sending me testimonies that were not square, that I would not
submit to a testimony or anything else that was not square in harmony with the truth and
that I would not go cringing down on my knees and say, "The Lord says I was
intimidated," and so confess I was a coward. I would not do any such thing and
I never did do it. Sister White many times wrote me letters in which she said so and
so, and I wrote her that was not the way of it; it was so and so. And it was
straightened up; every time.
When I sent Sister White my first letter and told
her I did not accept what she had written me, and it was not the truth -- I have
got the letter on file; the concluding words of that letter are, "In sorrow because I
have caused you sorrow, Ellen G. White." If Sister White wants to see that
letter sometime she can challenge me and I will publish it. She apologized for that
letter that she wrote to me, and that was the letter that started this whole
business. That was the letter in which I sent her my resignation, told her she had
not told the truth. I could not receive her testimony. I knew she would
denounce me; there was nothing else she could do. She wrote me and took it all back
and signed her letter, "In sorrow because I have caused you sorrow," and begged
me to come to Australia, but I could not leave my work and run over there to settle up
such a trifling thing as that.
I felt the Lord had given me a mission, given me
my work to do, and I would stand by it. These men told a lot of lies to her, and she
fell into their trap, and I have not got to go over there to settle that thing. I
just simply made up my mind to meet the issue right square then. I told her it was
not the truth. I could not accept it and I didn't. Sister White came here to
that meeting in 1901 with that letter in her possession and asked that I should be
ordained for the ministry. I never took it back. It is useless for them to try
to make it appear that I have taken a new stand, a new departure. If it were
worthwhile I could come out and show up the wickedness of this whole scheme, but I tell
you it is of less consequence to me than it once was.
I wrote to W. C. White sometime quite early in the
controversy, and I said to him, "It is far more important to me to be right and have
integrity, it is of far greater importance to me, than what the public and the Seventh-day
Adventists think about me. I propose to be square and to be right. I propose
go stand square, and I will trust the Lord to see me through." He wrote me back
and he said, "I think you will find out it makes a good deal of difference to you
what Seventh-day Adventists think of you," and he proceeded to make me find out.
Now they have gone far enough to make me see that
I cannot trust those men. I cannot trust him; he has convicted himself. His
mother has admitted that she sent testimonies to me that were based on pure suspicion,
pure supposition, and had no foundation in fact at all, by her own admission. And
she has apologized to me for things which she wrote me that were not right, and she had
asked to have me ordained as a minister when I told her to her face a short time before
that what she had written me was not the truth.
It was three years after that before I ever got
any explanation, and the explanation was she thought it was true, thought it was true but
afterwards found out it was not true. That is how the thing stands.
I am thoroughly persuaded, as I said before, that
this Seventh-day Adventist ship is going to pieces. The truth won't go to pieces;
the truth is going right straight on. Those men are spending their money, a large
part of it, in putting up expensive buildings in Washington to catch the eye of the
world's great men.
B: It is not quite as expensive as ours
here.
K: It is a heap more expensive. It is
$115,000 to accommodate thirty-five people while the Battle Creek Sanitarium accommodates
twenty times as many people at only five times the cost. It is four times as
expensive [per paying customer] as this building is.
Mahogany furniture, stuffed furniture --
you cannot find such a thing in the Sanitarium -- decorated tessellated
pavements, tile floor beautiful tile walls. I was down there in one of their
dormitories, and we have not got a place in the Sanitarium here that is as elegant as the
kitchen of the boys' dormitory. That kitchen is made up of beautiful inch tile, and
the walls are white enamel tiles; and it is just like a palace, the kitchen of the boys'
dormitory. In putting up the Sanitarium, we made the whole thing out of mud as we
pulled it down from the hill up there. The whole thing is mud, made of the cheapest
material than can possibly be gotten, but it is clean and sanitary. When Sister
White looked upon it she said, "It is just as the Lord would have it."
In putting up that building down there they have
played tricks upon her. She told them not to make it cost more than $25,000 or
$30,000, but they have expended $115,000. They promised the people they would not
expend money on it as they had before, but they have expended $200,000 there, and they
will be calling for more after while. And that building -- instead of being
a plain simple building they have made a building with colossal columns all around with
porches on all sides of it. I would not put up such a building if I had the
money. I would put it into something else.
They have denounced us, said we were cursed, and I
have been waiting to see if we were cursed. I thought that so far as I am concerned
I am faulty enough, and the thing that hurt me worst when this thing first came was that
my opportunity for doing good and the things I loved to do was lost, that the Lord would
not have permitted this thing to come if I had not been faulty, if I had improved my
opportunities. The thing that made me weep harder that anything else, I am perfectly
frank to tell you, is because I could look back through the years and see so many lost
opportunities I had not improved to the best advantage. I did not feel that the Lord
was doing anything wrong with me, and I simply waited to see.
If we were cursed we would find it out. They
said the thunderbolts of Heaven would destroy us, and if it is so it will be so. But
I am determined to do my best to keep my soul straight with Heaven, to do my work honestly
and squarely, to be kind to my fellow men, to obey the Golden Rule, to live out the Good
Samaritan life just as far as I can. And if I fail, and the thing goes to smash, I
am willing to go with it. I am willing to fall right there.
But so far I must confess it has not looked very
much as though the time had come for our work to be closed up. It does not look that
way. Our work has been growing. We have more work every year.
Certainly our success in the treating of our sick people by principles, by holding right
up to the principles we have been standing by all the years, is better than ever
before. We are all better established in our principles than we ever were.
There is harmony and unity among our doctors; they are more capable than they were.
The Lord certainly blesses our work, and our men are earnest. They see we have got
to stand alone, that we have got a foundation of our own, and our doctors are prominent
men in religious things, in Bible study. They have not taught any heresies that I
have seen, and we are going on with our work; we are paying off our debt. The Lord
has helped us to develop resources far beyond our expectations. Our Corn Flake
company, with just simply nothing but a little handful of corn flakes over on the shelf
two years ago -- today that company is worth a million dollars, and I have very
little interest in it. I had the principal interest, but I turned it over to the
Medical Missionary Board with instruction to use it for helping the Sanitarium out of debt
and helping the Haskell Home and carrying on the things I have been trying to do and for
paying off those Medical Missionary Board debts if the Conference refused to do it --
just as far as the Board thought they ought to do it.
I did that year ago, appointed that board and put
that money entirely out of my hands. The General Conference has been going around
ever since that time, going about telling how I stole that money, disregarding the cry of
the poor, that we had defrauded them and all that sort of thing, when I have made
provision to pay every dollar of it. I saw letters from Evans and others saying
that.
I know Elder J. N. Loughborough. You know
him, don't you?
A: I think I used to know him.
K: If you write him and tell him your have
permission, he will send you a letter from me in which I laid that thing before him.
He had five hundred dollars here, and when I understood the facts about it, I wrote him at
once and told him that I would see that every dollar of it was paid, that I had made
provision for it already, explained to him just what I have been telling you. He
didn't come to me. If he had come to me, I would have told him. But he talked
it all around town, never came to me, and I didn't know about it until just the other day,
since I wrote him. As soon as he wrote me, I wrote and told him the thing was going
all straight and I would see that every dollar of it was paid, that nobody that ever
trusted me would be sorry for it. And he wrote me and told me about it. He had
got the letter. He has written me since, and he kind of hinted in his letter that he
had had considerable feeling and said some things once. But I didn't know what it
was until a man told me the other day that he talked very badly about me when he was
here. He said I told him it would be certainly safe and he could get his money and
all of it any time. When he wrote and told me about it I said, "You can be sure
you will get your money." If this Board into whose hands I put the money would
not pay it, I would pay it myself.
I heard of a poor woman in Iowa a short time ago
who had loaned money to the Medical Missionary Board and said she sent the money to
me. But she never did; I never handled the money. I was not the treasurer or
the bookkeeper, so I had nothing to do with the funds. I paid all my own expenses,
had no salary, so I had no occasion for any money. Everything I did I paid for, so I
didn't have anything to do with the funds at all.
When I got through with that thing, resigned as
president of the Medical Missionary Board, I was in debt $100,000. It is all paid,
every dollar of it, and I am out of debt. The little factory over there making
health foods -- I did not own a dollar of it. I rented it. Now I own
it, own the whole thing, and the Corn Flake Company has just declared a dividend the other
day of 300%.
B: You are connected with your brother W.
K., I presume, in the food factory here?
K: I have been the proprietor of the thing;
he has been my manager and had a certain income for his services. Now the corn flake
factory -- I incorporated that, turned over the stock, and I have only got just a
little stock in it. My stock that is the great bulk of it I turned over to a new
board, the American Medical Missionary Board, so that it might have that with which to
meet those obligations.
B: I have brought you some hundred hands in
your factory.
K: I don't know anything about the
factories, have nothing to do with them. I don't pay any attention to them; I have
got enough other things. They simply go ahead and do what they can.
It looked as though I was hopelessly bankrupt, and
to tell the truth that is why those men made such a scampering to get away from us --
because they saw we had such a great debt they thought we could never get out of it in the
world, and they now see the thing is working its way out, and they are mad with
jealousy. A man that knows W. C. White intimately told me that he knew positively
that W. C. White was distressed beyond measure because he saw what had come about as a
result of his attack.
Now I want to say a word with reference to Frank
Belden. I found he was going into this church business down here, and I sent for
him, begged him to have nothing to do with it. I told him just as I told all the
rest, but he went into it anyway in spite of me. When I was in Europe -- I
had a talk with W. K. before I went to Europe, and we both took the same stand about it
and advised him to have nothing at all to do with it. When I was in Europe I learned
from W. K. -- he wrote me -- that they had had a settlement and he had
found that Belden had spent several days, a good part of a week, in fighting the church
down there. And he took that out of his time, would not pay him one cent for that
time he was spending with the church down there.
And more than that, he was notified, and I sent
him a letter myself and sent W. K. a letter that he must drop that business or tender his
resignation, that if he did to drop it by a certain time he must simply tender his
resignation and get out of it. He didn't tender his resignation, but he was notified
to go. He was simply discharged. That is all there is about that thing.
He simply went crazy over that thing -- couldn't do anything else.
I talked with him here an hour at a time, told him
how foolish it was. What could we do with it if we had it? What are you going
to do with it? It is no use. They will find some way to carry out their
plans. "It is ridiculous what the Conference demands; it is not
straight." But I said to him, "It is plain enough their purpose is
destruction. And they are going to drive away from Battle Creek all that are not
loyal to them, or rather drive away those that are loyal to them, saying, 'Everything is
going to be destroyed, and you must go away.' Then by and by the only people left
here would be the people not in sympathy with them, and then they would have the
Tabernacle. So the only thing to do was to get the property into their hands so that
when the time comes that the majority of people here are not in sympathy with them they
will simply disavow the whole thing, turn them all out, sell the church for a livery
stable or something else so they will come out of it with a sum of money in their
pockets."
I said, "That is their game, of course, but
these people ought to be treated in that way. They have trusted these men, believed
them, gone back on us without any inquiry, have judged us without giving us a trial, and
it is good enough for them to have just exactly that kind of treatment. It is coming
to them and let them get it."
That is what I said to Belden and what I said to
everybody that had anything to do with it, that I hadn't any sympathy with the Conference,
and I think the church has gone so straightforward against right and reason that it is
perfectly right they should be taken with the consequences of their own folly, and they
will.
Now, I do not know whether I have anything more to
say.
A: I have been thinking while you have been
talking here, Doctor, speaking about various things. I have thought of this text of
Scripture, "How can two walk together except they be agreed?"; and I have been
thinking how in truth, or what good there is in this connection, of your being a member of
the church and feeling as you do towards the people, against the General Conference and
Sister White, and Will White.
K: I haven't any feeling against them at
all. I haven't intimated to you that I wanted to do them any harm, have I? I
have no feeling against them. They will suffer the consequences of their wrong
doing. Why should I have any feeling against them?
I have simply mentioned to you the facts, and they
have been making charges against me. All the Battle Creek church has to do, if they
have any confidence in their course of action -- let them put me on trial and
demonstrate these things are true. That will be enough to turn me out of
church. I am accused by the General Conference men of infamy, of immorality. I
am accused of robbery; I am accused of sending spies about; I am accused of being
hypnotized by Lucifer. I have been openly accused before the whole town of infamous
things here, of being connected with the devil. Those things have been held right up
in public. Now, then, let them put me on trial and prove some of those things to be
true. I am not asking any complaint against the General Conference Committee; I am
simply telling you of the facts as they are.
So far as I am concerned I have been through this
thing before. Elder White was running amuck against me for three years, and Sister
White was with him most of the time. Then she and the Elder had a quarrel, and she
began to come on the other side of the thing.
There was a testimony at that time that you must
have in your possession. When the Sanitarium was built, when the first building was
put up -- you remember the time -- a little testimony was put out.
The Elder says himself that he didn't do things quite straight in those days. O. B.
Jones was superintendent. When it was gotten done, it had cost a great deal more
than we expected it would cost, than we expected it was going to cost. When we were
digging the ground, putting in foundations for the building, we came across some stone --
A: You know we had a regular hocus pocus, a
foundation one time; then that had to be all taken out. Brother Loughborough and J.
M. Aldrich encouraged it.
K: It was an infamous thing, a crime,
tearing that thing down. It was torn down for no other reason than because James
White was not consulted. They were putting on the second story. When we were
digging the foundation for that new building, we found some of the old foundation stones
of that first building, and the Elder said, "I declare! Here is a part of that
old foundation. I thought we got every one of those stones out of here."
He said, "I will tell you, Doctor, if I had known how much power and strength there
was in this thing, I never would never have torn that thing down."
Now the Elder came in and tore it down, for he
didn't have a thing to do with founding the Sanitarium. He tore that thing
down. They had to raise about eleven thousand dollars, if I remember right, and that
was all thrown away in tearing that building down. Threw it all away. Elder
did it to simply wreck that thing. He didn't want to do it, and he afterwards
confessed it when we put up that other building. They might have gone on and raised
the money and finished the building up. It would not have cost so very much
more. We had the foundation laid, and the building up to the first story.
When we got the next building done it cost a great
deal more than we expected, and the Elder thought we were going bankrupt sure. We
were in debt fifteen thousand dollars, and the Elder felt pretty blue. A testimony
came out saying that building was too big and we had been patterning after the world and
our furniture was too expensive and all that sort of thing. And there was a footnote
in it. Do you remember that little footnote in it which Elder White put onto the
testimony, explaining that the cost was due to changes for which Dr. J. H. Kellogg was
responsible? Do you remember that also?
B: I think I do.
K: You remember that, Brother Amadon?
A: I don't just recollect that now, but I
know there were some funny things going those days.
K: You told me once that you had a copy in
your house of that testimony that condemned the building, condemned the furnishings,
condemned me as being responsible for it. And James White slipped out of it so as to
get it all onto my shoulders.
A: I know something about how the Elder used
to do things.
K: Don't you remember that testimony?
A: Perhaps I don't just recall particulars.
K: You are hedging. I want to know
whether you have got a copy of that testimony or not. Does the truth need to
hide?
A: Oh, no, no, no!
K: It was not true at all and never was true
about my being responsible for the great cost. I had made a few changes, but the
changes saved expense.
I was not responsible at all, but then the
testimony said I was responsible. James White put that note in, you see, so as to
turn the thing on me -- attached it to the testimony, and it went out with the
testimony as a part of it.
I mention that simply as an illustration of the
old manipulations.
B: You were younger and you could bear it.
K: I could bear it now better than I could
then. This is not a new experience to me. I have had practice in it and
training in it.
I want to tell you that twelve years ago I had a
clear apprehension that just this thing would come that is here, and it has been a worry
to me, a worry to me all along the years, for I knew that sooner or later these fraudulent
practices in relation to the inner life of this thing would come to the public, and they
will come. The Lord helping me, they won't come by me -- because my feeling
has been that the Lord was dealing with Sister White; and the thing was to be left with
the Lord, to let the Lord deal with her. It is not my duty to correct her. I
have got faults enough of my own, and she has a right to make mistakes. That does
not change my attitude.
A: That is why I feel so about that poor
deluded Dr. Stewart -- a man comparatively in his youth, attacking that aged woman.
K: Well, sir, but he is not to be blamed for
it. His experience is responsible for his doing such things. He went to Elder
Daniells in confidence and read to him the reply which Mrs. White had invited him to
make. She asked him to present his difficulties, and he wrote them out as she
requested. You cannot blame him for that. I said to him, "Of course you
are justified in writing a reply to Mrs. White. But some of your arguments are
sophistical. You do not state your difficulties, but you rub it in. And you
hold the thing up and make it picturesque because you have found out some faults. I
have frankly told you what I thought of it. It is not best to do that way with
reference to anything, but in this particular case it puts Sister White in an entirely
wrong light; because here are all the good books she has written, and the good things she
has done, and her whole life has been devoted to good works; and you have no right to make
those faults conspicuous, to make it appear that that represents the woman, because it
does not."
That is the reason why I have not had anything to
do with that kind of business. Brother Amadon, have I been that kind of a man all my
lifetime, hunting up people, pursuing people, picking out faults, holding them up, making
them conspicuous?
A: See here. I pray the Lord God to
help me forget a great many things. I want to forget them and don't want to keep
them present and keep turning them over in my mind. It is not healthy for me.
If you can do it, I can't.
K: We don't have occasion for it. We
don't talk about these things. I don't talk it over. If you go to our
colleagues here, they don't know anything about these things. Dr. Stewart don't know
half or a quarter of the things I have told you. There doesn't anybody of my
colleagues here know but very few of the things I have been telling you here. My
wife don't know anything at all about it. I have never talked it over to her.
B: The manuscript I read [Stewart's letter]
came from the hands of another, and he said it was only just a small portion of what was
going to come out. Then they added ten pages to that letter.
K: That is the first I have ever heard a
word of it. I don't know anything about it at all.
A: Now it is put in type, and a certain
person told me he had seen the proof.
B: And that whenever she died, a great deal
more would come out.
K: But why is it it has been coming out? It
is because the Testimonies have been used with such vengeance upon people; because people
have been thrashed with them; because the Testimonies have been used in an unjust way;
because there has been manipulation, scheming; that people have got condemned for
it. And I cannot restrain Dr. Stewart. I have told Dr. Stewart just what I
have told you here of my position, and I have written Sister White again and again, and
she has been writing some most vicious things.
When things were going on down here at the
Tabernacle, Brother Amadon, and those miserable things were being written in the papers, I
knew she would see some of those things. And I wrote her and told her that whatever
appeared in the paper she must know I had nothing to do with it, that I refused to see
reporters or to have anything to do with them. I sent her word because I did not
want her to think I was so mean, contemptible, unmanly and would do such things as
that. The Business Men's Association sent a committee to see me, to tell me they
would have Elder Daniells arrested if I would permit them to do it.
A: We were there before the business
committee.
K: But I want you to know they could have
done it and would have done it if I would back them up. But I told them I would not
back them up one atom in doing a thing. The thing Elder Daniells was doing is
recognized by the law as conspiracy, and imprisonment is the punishment for
conspiracy. I have just as good legal advice as I wanted to have that those men are
carrying on this minute a conspiracy; and I could make it warm for them if I chose to, any
minute I chose. You can not get up, get a whole lot of people organized together to
run down an institution or a man or a community. Institutions, characters, and
businesses are respected and protected from invasion by the government.
The attitude they have take towards
us and their campaign has cost us more than $100,000. It has added a good deal to
our burdens, but the Lord has helped us so much we have been able to carry it
nevertheless, and there is a brighter future before us today than ever before in our
history. We are going right on doing the best we can, and if we cannot do it
co-operating with the Seventh-day Adventist people, we will co-operate with all the
Christian people we can everywhere. Next month there is going to be a meeting here
in Battle Creek of the National Purity Federation.
A: They want the Tabernacle and they are
going to have it. We will do all we can to accommodate, Doctor. If we don't
get our connections all ready, we will go to one of these factories, get a traction engine
to furnish steam to warm that building.
K: I told Dr. Geisel I didn't have any doubt
the church people would open the Tabernacle for that thing because I didn't see how they
could help it. Why are they coming here? It is because the Battle Creek
Sanitarium is here. It is the Sanitarium here, and the books I have written, that
have brought these people here and showed them the sympathy this institution has with
purity and that thing. Dr. Kress is coming from Washington to be here to read a
paper. He is coming here to attend that meeting. I presume he will be the
guest of the Sanitarium.
A: We let them have that building.
That shows our sympathies and interest in a work of that kind.
K: Now, then, there it is. They have
interest and confidence in the Sanitarium, and you have confidence in them; and it is part
of the work of the Sanitarium to promote that thing. We make them guests here of the
institution. We are doing that; we are trying to carry on a good work.
The General Conference are fighting us, and they
are trying to do all they can to hinder us, to destroy us. They have no ground for
destroying people's confidence in the morality of the place. They are trying to make
it appear that it is vile place and not a safe place for young people to be.
A: I don't believe that.
B: Oh, no, I never heard that.
K: If the General Conference Committee will
challenge me -- I make that statement about that -- if they will
challenge us to prove it and will call me up in court, I will do it. I will prove
that. I can prove that they do say that thing, that they are doing it. Is
Irving Keck a liar? Their own ministers are the men I can bring forward as evidence
against them.
When W. A. Spicer was in South America, he just
went around there telling people tales that are false, and they scattered them about the
country, and I know it. Now see here, this is the thing I have to meet.
A: Do you bank on everything McCarthy says?
K: No, no. He is a kind of fire
brand. And I begged of him to keep still, to stop talking and stop writing and stop
sending his letters to the General Conference. It is ridiculous, you know, the whole
thing. He is a kind of thorn in their flesh, but I am not to blame for it. He
came here and wanted to enter the Medical College to make himself more useful as a
missionary, and we have given him a chance to work his way. But I know McCarthy as
well as you do. I would not trust him as a spiritual leader. I think he
intends to tell the truth, but he talks too fast and so loud; he talks more than he ought
to.
I want to tell you one thing to show you what I
have to stand, what I have to meet. Elder Evans came to me and said, "Prof.
Prescott made a statement in public about you that was false." I said,
"What was it?" He said, "He stood up before the whole church there
and stated that you had sold 50,000 copies of Living Temple. When he came
down from the pulpit I saw him and I said, 'Prof. Prescott, you know yourself there were
only 5,000 copies printed.' 'But,' he says, 'I have got a letter that says 50,000
copies.' I said, 'Oh, but you know that that is a stenographic error.' 'But I
am not responsible for that."
Now that is the kind of man we have got to deal
with, Brother Amadon, by the confession of their own man.
Prof. Prescott wrote an article in the Review
that was an absolute falsehood. Some of my children brought it to me and said,
"Why, Papa, Prof. Prescott says so and so, and it seems to me it is the very opposite
of the truth." When in Washington after I was denounced by that article by
Sister White, I had a talk with Prof. Prescott that I told you about.
A: And you say she didn't intend that
article for publication?
K: No, no. They telegraphed her,
"Great crisis; it must be published" -- after I stated that I would
accept the testimony and would stop the sale of the book. A friend was in the house
when the telegram came, and he told me about it. They forced the thing upon
her.
A man who has been always rather against us --
they said in a General Conference Committee meeting, and this was told me by a man that
was there at the time of the meeting -- they said, "Prof. Prescott, that
thing ought to be published." He said, "You trust me: I will see that it
is published." So he immediately sent this telegram to Sister White:
"Great crisis; must be published." And she reluctantly consented to let it
go.
Now I am not sure whether that went before
publication or afterwards, but my own impression is that after it was published they sent
it as an excuse for publishing it so that she did not have any chance to say anything to
the contrary. But I can be in error about that, so I do not make a positive
statement with reference to that thing. I said to Prescott, "Prof. Prescott,
there was that article you put in the Review; it was not true at all. Even my
children saw it wasn't true and brought it to me."
Then there was an article I had written about the
schools and an article that Sister White had written about the schools, and they agreed
exactly. And he knew it, and he was in a bad fix and did not know what to do.
So he wrote an editorial and said, "Any reader will easily discover the entire
disagreement there is between the article of J. H. Kellogg and that of Mrs. E. G.
White" -- simply a political trick to tell them there was disagreement when
there wasn't any at all. I said, "I am surprised to see your article.
Tell me where there is any disagreement between my article and Sister White's? My
own little children saw that was not straight. How could you do that thing, Prof.
Prescott? How could you do that thing?" He said, "You know, Doctor,
we have been in a state of war. We do things differently in a state of war from what
we do in a state of peace."
They went to Sister White, made her believe I was
a forger because my name had accidentally gotten onto a note where it ought not to have
been because I had filled out a blank note, signed a blank note, to be used for the
Medical Missionary Board, and they filled it out for the Mexican Board. I had Judge
Arthur send them a full explanation about it. They never went to Sister White with
it. After the conference was over she stood up there before them and berated me,
told them I was a forger and went on at a great rate. Elder Daniells took a
shorthand report of that thing, and he took it all over to Europe. And when I was
over to Europe I found men he had shown that to and read it to, to prove I was a dishonest
man and a knave, for "the Lord has said it." 'Well, do you believe the
Lord actually said that?" "Well, this is a shorthand report. Of
course this has not been revised. But this is the way it came."
I want to tell you that is a diabolical fraud.
To get a dear old lady like Sister White, to get her to make that statement in
public, then take it down in shorthand -- take that shorthand report all around
the world and say, "The Lord has spoken." You know as well as I do that
that is dastardly, that that is contemptible knavery, and that there is not any word bad
enough to characterize that kind of deception -- to carry it all over the world
to deceive people and make them believe things that are false.
They wrote to Mrs. White herself, and she told a
falsehood about me because she has been misinformed, deceived about it. My brother
Merritt went up there and had a talk with her awhile ago, and she said to Merritt,
"Dr. Kellogg can not tell the truth. He is naturally a liar. He always
has been." He said, "Why, Sister White, how can you say that of him?
What has he said that was not the truth?" She said, "He said that
he would stop selling the Living Temple and he did not stop. He has gone
right on and sold 10,000 copies more." And she has told that around. They
have told her so, made her believe it. I don't hold the old lady responsible for it.
B: How many copies have you sold?
K: We printed 5,000 copies of it. When
this thing came up we found there were 3,000 copies left. There had been only 2,000
copies sent out and some of them came back. We took them, cut out of those books
certain pages, pasted other pages in, and I wrote W. C. White about what we were going to
do, to send out a few copies. And he agreed that if we did to hear something from
his mother to the contrary, to let them go. So we cut out a few of the objectionable
pages, pasted other matter in place of them and let some of them go, you see. They
have not been sold since. Now, then, over in England the tract society had about 500
copies, and they went right on selling them. They sold off the balance of them just
a little while ago.
I know Sister White made that statement about me,
and it is not the truth. She said I am a liar because I sold 10,000 copies of Living
Temple when I said I would stop. Now I am not a liar. Prof. Prescott stood
up before an audience and I could bring scores of people to testify to it that he said I
had sold 50,000 copies of that book.
A: I cannot believe that, Doctor, that
Prescott will get up before the people -- now see here, if there were a thousand
persons present, that virtually amounts to a thousand lies, because it conveys that
thought to each one. And it means as though --
K: Then it was ten thousand lies, for I do
not doubt that every one of them told as many as ten people of it, and he told the ten
thousand lies then. He said it.
Now, I will tell you the facts. You see, he
was one of the directors of the printing office that printed the book, and he knew it was
a 5,000 edition. I was talking with him in his office after the thing was denounced,
and I have stated to him, "We have only sent out a few hundred copies --
about 3,000 copies, I think." When I got home I wrote to him, "On inquiry
I found there had not been so many sent out as I thought" -- that instead of
sending out 3,000 we had only sent out 2,000. We had still 3,000 copies on hand of
the 5,000 edition we had printed. I wrote him that just a short time after I got
home, you see.
On looking up the letter after Elder Evans told me
of it I found out the stenographer had got on an extra cypher so the letter said, "We
have still on hand 3,000 copies of the 50,000 copies that were printed."
So you see I referred to the first edition, the only edition that was printed. By
mistake my stenographer made it 50,000 instead of 5,000. In order to believe we had
sold that many, Brother Amadon, he had to imagine that between the time I was there in
Washington and the time I wrote that letter, which was about six weeks, that in that time
we had actually printed, published, bound and sold 45,000 copies more of the old
edition. I wrote him and stated, "We have got 3,000 left of the 5,000 edition
which was printed." But the stenographer put a cypher on my mistake and that
made it 50,000.
Then he went off, got up and made a public
statement in a public meeting that there had been 50,000 copies of this awful book
circulated, and when Evans called his attention to it and said, "Prof. Prescott, you
know there were only 5,000 copies printed," he said, "I have got a letter that
says 50,000." "But," Evans said, "you know better, Prof.
Prescott; you know that is a stenographic error." He said in reply, "I am
not responsible for that."
While he knew it was not true, he thought that
letter would protect him from being shown to be a willful liar. The Lord knows it
was a willful falsehood. He was trying to make his case as good as he could just as
when he read a lot of spiritualistic stuff and pantheistic stuff and said, "This very
stuff has been circulated in this book."
A: What does Paul's text say?
"Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all
things."
K: Brother Amadon, would it be a good thing
for the General Conference Committee to act on that principle for a little while?
All the brethren say, "Be patient, Doctor, be patient; bear all things."
And I am bearing all things. I have been bearing all the things you have been
hearing this afternoon, and I am bearing it. But how much are those preachers
bearing it? How much are any of them bearing? They are simply hatching up
cases, making a man of straw and a monster out of straw, carrying it all over the world
exhibiting it.
A: You know the Psalmist says, "They
search out iniquities; they make diligent search."
K: It is not iniquities they search for; it
is myths and fables. They manufacture goblins out of whole cloth, stories about W.
K. and me, stories about a brothel --
A: I can't believe they circulate any such
miserable stuff that.
K: You can say what you like about it.
It comes to me from all over the country about having a house of ill fame downtown, that
we supported it.
Did you know Brother Hall, the minister who went
to Jamaica, to the West Indies? He had a daughter that came here as a nurse.
They said over there [California] a certain prominent man, a very prominent man, when he
found they were coming to Battle Creek, said, "Oh, you must not go there; you mustn't
go there." "Why?" "Well, why, that is an immoral
place. They are immoral, from Dr. Kellogg down" -- and said that the
doctors here and all the rest of them were seducing nurses, and it was a regular brothel,
the whole institution.
"Well," she said, "I know better;
it is not true." "Well, but I know it is true. The Lord has said it.
The testimony has said it. Now what are you going to say to that?"
They said they did not believe it anyhow. That was one of the leading men in
California. And those are ready to get up on the witness stand and swear to it, and
I can give them all the testimony they want that these prominent people are going about
circulating lies. Mrs. White herself has accused me of forgery, and accused me of
lying.
A: We are speaking of fornication and
adultery now.
K: That is what this man was talking about,
too. They went up to St. Helena, called on Sister White to see what she would say
about it, and called on W. C. White and told him what this man had said.
"Well," he said, "it is not true."
But what is he telling that thing for? What
are these leading men saying such things for, and saying the Testimonies back it up?
Because there have been put into those testimonies sentiments and insinuations that
are just enough to give the people foundations for manufacturing such tales and thinking
the Testimonies are backing them up. Then when you come up to make them face it,
"Oh, no, we didn't mean any such thing as that at all."
I want to tell you that when Mrs. White wrote in
her article that that book Living Temple taught free love doctrines, she wrote
something that was libelous and is not true. There are no such doctrines in Living
Temple. You have read the book through. Did you find any such there?
B: I didn't think I did at the time.
K: You cannot find it. It is not
there. I do not believe in free love doctrines, and I never have been standing on
that side of the fence. I am trying to stand up for straightforwardness and purity,
and I try to do my part in holding up correct standards in the world. These people
have come out to try to smut us in every way they can.
B: That is one of the points I wanted to
speak to you about sometime -- that is, what is contained in that book.
K: I will tell you about that. It will
take but just a minute to say all I have to say about it, and that is this thing. I
believe in the omnipresence of God. How God is omnipresent, I don't know. Do
you believe in the omnipresence of God?
B: I do -- omnipresence,
omnipotence, and omniscience.
A: Present as a Holy Spirit.
K: That is all I believe.
B: I believe we are in the likeness of God
with regard to intellect as well as to body. But at the same time that the knowledge
that He has is unlimited, but with us it is limited. And power He has is unlimited,
but with us it is limited.
K: Certainly, certainly. Now I hear
the brethren say when they are in a meeting, "I feel that the Lord is
here." I go into the laboratory, look into a microscope, see cells under my
eyes, see cells working there, and I say "God is here working." I cannot
see how God's Spirit is separate from His presence. Now you see I don't mean the
Lord Himself is here; I mean His Spirit is here. It is all right as far as I am
concerned. All I wanted to explain in Living Temple was that this work that
is going on in the man here is not going on by itself like a clock wound up, but it is the
power of God and the Spirit God that is carrying it on.
Now, I thought I had cut out entirely the
theological side of questions of the trinity and all that sort of things. I didn't
mean to put it in at all, and I took pains to state in the preface that I did not. I
never dreamed of such a thing as any theological question being brought into it. I
only wanted to show that the heart does not beat of its own motion but that it is the
power of God that keeps it going.
Now, Sister White wrote an article and said,
"It is wrong to say that God Himself is in the tree." Now, I didn't intend
to say that. I didn't intend to say that -- that God Himself, the Almighty,
separate and distinct from His power, from His Spirit as a separate entity --
that He was in the tree. I didn't mean to say that. I meant simply that
the Spirit, the power, the intelligence of the Almighty, is being manifested in all these
living things that are going on about us.
A: Yes, in all vegetable life, in all animal
life.
B: In everything.
K: Certainly. I never dreamed of such
an interpretation being put upon it as they have. When I found such an
interpretation was being put on it, I said, "I will change it, do anything to correct
that." And you know, they would not let me change it.
B: One thing you left out -- about
God's having form, shape, parts.
K: I must say I don't know what God's shape
is.
B: We can tell to a certain extent, but at
the same time we are so inferior we cannot tell what we see.
K: I simply say I do not undertake to define
that part. I am willing to take it just as the Bible leaves it, and that is the way
I always have been willing to take it.
A: That is all right.
K: "And if you will show me," I
said to Prof. Prescott, "if you will show me how to correct this I will fix it right
away." But they would not let me do it. If they did the game was up right away,
you see. The whole game was up -- this campaign that was going on. If
they will show me how to fix that book so it can't possibly convey any such erroneous
impression as they say they got from it -- just show me how to fix it up --
and I will be tickled to death to do it. I didn't want to be teaching anything that
would lead anybody astray. So there it is; the books are there in the basement.
I have asked the General Conference to fix it; I
have asked Haskell to fix it; I have asked Prescott to do it, told them to cross out
everything they thought conveyed a wrong idea according to their notions, and I would take
it out. Prof. Prescott said it was so interwoven all through from cover to cover
that it could not be extracted. That was so preposterous. I knew it was not
the truth, and I knew he did not think it was the truth, because the greater part of the
book is about what to eat, what to drink, about what to wear and how to exercise, and a
whole lot of other things where this question could not possibly come in at all.
When he stated that, I saw at once that there was
no sincerity in the thing, and I said, "This thing has come. I have got to take
it, and I am perfectly willing to bear it." It has caused me a whole lot of
heartaches, worry and anxiety lest I should not take the right stand, and I did not want
to do anything that would aggravate or accentuate this mischief.
I told Prof. Prescott I would go home and submit
to anything, and they put me under the supervision of the West Michigan Conference, and I
submitted to it. They put the Sanitarium under the supervision of the West Michigan
Conference and appointed your daughter, Brother Bourdeau, as superintendent of the health
and temperance work of Western Michigan, and when it came to the end of the year I was
required to send my report of the Battle Creek Sanitarium to your daughter who was the
official head of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, was head over us. And I sent in my
report, and she presented it in the West Michigan Conference, and it was published.
What more could they ask of me? I considered
it a very pusillanimous arrangement, I perfectly willing to say, but I submitted to it so
they could have no excuse for saying I was in rebellion. I expect sooner or later
they will find some excuse for turning me out of church, and they will have the
responsibility of doing it. It is a thing I have for years been taking cognizance
of. But I am not worrying about it. They can do it whenever they get
ready.
I don't want to be withdrawn from the church,
because I don't want it to appear before the world that I have repudiated the truth I have
been standing for for the last fifty years. And if I ought not to have been turned
out ten years ago, I should not be turned out now because I have made no change at all in
ten years. I believe exactly as I did when Sister White said I ought to be ordained
for the ministry.
But when they get ready to turn me out I shall not
make any protest or any lawsuit about it or anything. I shall just simply accept the
thing when it comes along. But I am not going to withdraw from the church or make
any request to be put out, because that will put me in an attitude in which I do not wish
to stand. I stand for the truth, and I have not changed, and I do not want anyone to
have any excuse for saying I have. I want the people who keep on telling the lies to
be responsible for the lies.
B: I wish it were a good deal different with
regard to the situation.
K: These men have made it. W. C. White
is first responsible. Prof. Prescott is next responsible. Daniells comes
in. And Evans is ready to do any kind of dirty work they want him to do.
B: With me it has been only on two points:
the point you have mentioned in your book, and the point of the Sanitarium by-laws.
K: Now what about the by-laws?
B: I don't know as we ought to spend the
time. I find it is stated three times that the work of the Sanitarium, of the
Association, is not to be denominational or sectarian.
K: Yes, that is right.
B: Then I find it stated, too, that the
persons that come into the Sanitarium as members, that they are to come in as believers in
God, believers in the Bible as being the word of God, and Christianity, principles of
Christianity -- and then not having anything to do with sect or
denomination. That is, it matters not whether they belong to sect or
denomination. If they will believe in God --
K: The fundamental principles of
Christianity.
B: -- they can become
members. With that idea it is a great question in my mind, with that idea --
our Seventh-day Adventists as a denomination which started that institution are not
mentioned at all in the incorporation or by-laws, not mentioned at all. No reference
is made to them at all whatever. Then how can they be known to be the persons or the
company or the people that control the Sanitarium?
K: They are not the people who control it,
and they never were.
B: Well, members can be understood to be
members in good standing in the Seventh-day Adventist church. That could have been
put in.
K: But it never was in. It was not in
the original articles that were gotten up for the incorporation. There was not a
word mentioned there of Seventh-day Adventists.
B: You see, it is different from any
institution of the kind established by other denominations.
K: But the denomination did not establish
this institution. It was a private corporation. A dozen people came together,
put money in, some more put money in, and it was owned by them. They were all
Seventh-day Adventists, but they didn't put that into the articles of incorporation.
They made it themselves and not one mention was made of Seventh-day Adventists or any
other denomination at all in the original articles of incorporation.
You can see them on file yourself. You might
go through all the original papers of the Sanitarium and you would not know there was a
Seventh-day Adventist denomination on the face of the earth. It was not mentioned at
all, never was. But it was distinctly understood and stated to me when I took charge
of that institution that that work was undenominational. It was never mentioned in
the original articles, so when we formed the new articles, we copied these after the old
articles. We copied it very largely after the old articles. It never mentioned
Seventh-day Adventists or any sect at all, but in order to make sure that there should be
no question about it, we put it into these articles, the things that had been understood
before, the things that James White published in his life, that this institution is
undenominational and non-sectarian. That is what it says in this article, that the
money must be used for undenominational purposes, and it does not say the institution is
undenominational. It does not exactly say that in so many words; it says the work is
undenominational and non-sectarian and the money should be expended for such purposes.
It does not say anything about whether the institution is sectarian or what it
is. There is nothing said about that. You cannot find it there in the
articles.
Its objects and purposes were non-sectarian.
That makes it non-sectarian. But the old institution was not owned by the
church, was never controlled by the church, never had any orders from the General
Conference Committee, the state committee, the church committee -- never obeyed
any orders from any of those bodies. It was a self-controlled institution. Men
put up the money. The church never appropriated money to it, and the tithe was not
appropriated to it. It was done by individuals just like a farm or a store or any
other thing, but working all the while with the denomination, for the
denomination, so gradually had come to be looked upon as a denominational
institution. But there was no ground for claiming church control. But this
institution is owned at the present time by 675 Seventh-day Adventists; 125 of them are
preachers. I think you are one of them. These people can come up here and vote
to take possession of this institution, to turn me out of it any time they want to do it,
for I was just elected to office a short time ago for two years more. But they can
come up next year and put in five preachers, anybody they want to put in. And at the
end of another year they can put in five more. Then they can have the opportunity
for the control of the thing and do what they like with it.
Down at Berrien Springs, after Prof. Prescott
denounced me in such an unrighteous way, I told them they could have my resignation
anytime they wanted to. If they want not come in and do it, why don't they come and
do it? Why don't they vote us out and take possession of it?
B: The printing office was the Seventh-day
Adventist Publishing Association.
K: Nobody ever asked to have it put in in
this institution.
B: Don't you think it would have been fully
as well?
K: No, I don't. If they had put it in
that way, I would have quit right then. I don't believe in doctors putting
themselves in that kind of a corner. I think it is a doctor's duty to be free to
work untrammeled. This is a medical institution, and I don't believe that a medical
institution has any right to be carried on with an ulterior denominational movement behind
it.
B: Were all those received the other day
Seventh-day Adventists?
K: I don't know whether one of them was or
not. You can find out by asking Mrs. Foy or Mr. Wentworth or Mr. Judd. I think
it probable they were all Seventh-day Adventists. I didn't raise the question.
I don't think anybody raised the question.
B: Don't you think it would have been a
proper thing to put into that articles of incorporation that anybody could have been a
member of this Association who was a Seventh-day Adventist?
K: And then go to the state of Michigan and
ask them to exempt this institution from taxes?
This institution was established for certain
purposes. I have a testimony from Sister White in which she says, "Your work is
an undenominational work." Then if we got our support from inside, why should
we ask the outside to support a denominational concern? Isn't the denomination
willing to support its own institutions? Are they willing to carry on a
denominational institution and then ask the outside public to support it for them?
Do they want a thing for the cultivation of their own cause, then expect somebody else to
pay for it?
Sister White said, "Your work is not a
denominational work; therefore, you ought not to ask our people for funds but should get
it from the outside." This institution has not asked the Seventh-day Adventist
people for funds. We have earned our way. We are paying our own way.
With my own hands in surgical operations and with the profits on the foods and my own
machines that I have invented the thing has been paid for again and again. We have
turned back to the Seventh-day Adventist people $700,000 in charity and in educational
expenses for the $35,000 which they originally put in. We paid them back all they
ever put in, and they still own it.
B: With regard to membership, I am a member
and my membership cannot be transferred to anyone else. And if I die, my membership
dies with me.
K: Yes, sir.
B: Is it so for all?
K: Everybody.
B: With yourself as well as anybody?
K: Yes, sir. I have got one vote, only
one.
I got a letter from a brother awhile ago, and he
said, "The leading brethren in the Conference have stated that you own the
Sanitarium, and we want to know the facts if you have gotten possession of it."
Brother White who used to be here in town, came here, and he said to me in my
office, "Doctor, I have a good deal of sympathy with you. But I think you have
made some very serious mistakes." I said, "Be perfectly frank to tell me
about them." "Well," he said, "don't you think it was a mistake
when you allowed the deed of this institution to be put in your name?" I said,
"How did you get that idea?" "The leading brethren told me so."
B: That it was put in your name?
K: Yes sir. I said, "I am not
going to answer that question. You go to the register of deeds and find out in whose
name it is. Do you suppose the Sanitarium could issue bonds on an institution when I
had the deed?"
I am not exaggerating when I say a thousand lies
have been circulated and are being circulated actively about me and about the Sanitarium
by members of this denomination and by the preachers of the denomination. They are
nearly all in it. They read statements sent out by the General Conference that are
false as sin, and they go ahead with it in the name of the Lord.
Now, then, I am willing this should go on if they
can get profit in that, and can find the Lord blesses them in that, and can get spiritual
edification and growth in that. They can go on as long as they want to, and I will
go right on about my business. And if you brethren are in sympathy with that kind of
work and that movement, and you wish to encourage it, aid it, abet it, you can do
so. I shall attend to my work, my business. It is the preachers of the
denomination, and the members of the denomination, the leaders of the denomination who
have neglected the principles I have been standing for. And we could not help but
see that when these men were neglecting these principles we were working for, and
neglecting our work, gradually there would grow up a chasm.
B: I thank you for having spent so much time
with us.
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