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
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