SEVENTH DAY ADVENTIST HISTORY; (ADVENTIST HERITAGE) Credits to Adventist University of the Philippines Theology Students Reports, From the Class of Pastor Cadao From August - December 2018. - Report 1 (R1) - Report 23 (R23)

1. Humour, Common Sense,
and a Practical Counsellor.

2. “Let us pursue the things that make
for peace and the things by
which one may edify another”
(Romans 14:19).

3. Ellen White has been stereotyped by the
uninformed as a grim,
severe kill-joy. Far from the truth! L. H. Christian
reported the memories of his wife’s mother who
lived in the White home while
she was Ellen White’s secretary. She remembered
especially “the sunny spirit of the home” and Ellen
White’s “kindly humour and good
sense.”

4. Often Mrs White’s writings reveal a touch of
humour. In 1882 she had just moved from
Oakland to Healdsburg. At 55 she enjoyed
buying grain and hay, a cow with its calf, and
horses for farm work and transportation. One of
her horses she named Dolly—a horse that
seemed allergic to work. Ellen White wrote,
“She stares at the mountains and hills as if she
was a tourist viewing the scenery.

5. Humour
Ellen White’s oldest brother, John, apparently
was a poor correspondent.
In a January 21, 1873, letter to him, Ellen gently
chided him with humour: “Dear Brother John: I
have written you several letters but have not
heard one word from you. We concluded you
must be dead, but then again we thought if this
was the case, your children would write us.”

6. Humour
She showed her humour as well as her practical bent when she
wrote about the careless dress of certain women: “Their
clothing often looks as if it flew and lit upon their persons.” 8 Or,
“Sisters when about their work should not put on clothing which
would make them look like images to frighten the crows from
the corn.”

7. Humor
Mrs. White knew how to handle potentially embarrassing public
moments. Son Willie frequently assisted his mother in her
speaking tours. During a Sabbath sermon in St. Helena, California,
Willie sat on the platform while his mother spoke. Noticing a ripple
of suppressed laughter in the audience, Mrs. White turned to find
him taking a nap. She apologized with a touch of humour: “When
Willie was a baby, I used to take him into the pulpit and let him
sleep in a basket beneath the pulpit, and he has never gotten over
the habit.”

8. Humor
In her late years at Elmshaven, Ellen White was given cold-mitten
friction treatments. That meant standing in a tub while someone
applied cold water and then rubbed her with mittens to increase
circulation. Twice a week she was given a salt rub (“salt glow”).
One day, sensing a difference in the liquid, she wet her finger
and tasted it. The worker had used sugar by mistake! With good
humour, Ellen White observed: “Just trying to sweeten me up, huh?”

9. Common-Sense Interpreter of Truth
One of the soundest principles for
getting a picture of Ellen White (as
well as the intent of her writings) is to
study the time, place, and
circumstances that governed what
she wrote.

10. Along with key words that best describe the real Ellen White, we
must include “common sense.” The principles she disclosed were
clear, timely, and timeless. But applying them required sanctified
common sense.
Ellen White understood well the ellipse of truth. She knew
that theology without common sense and a corresponding life
style could create prejudice against the gospel. Throughout her
writings she emphasized that word and deed, doctrine and life,
should never be separated.

11. Common sense is not to negate Bible counsel;
sanctified common sense applies immutable truths to
the human situation, taking all circumstances into
account. Common sense does not lower God’s
instructions regarding human thought and behaviour;
it lifts people up to them, within the capabilities and
possibilities of time, place, and circumstance.
Principles are timeless; applying them requires
common sense. On one occasion when asked about
certain Sabbath school practices, Ellen White
answered: “Exactly; it is not the place for it. That is to
be done; but it has its time and place.”

12. “We are to be guided by true theology and common
sense. Our souls are to be surrounded by the
atmosphere of heaven. Men and women are to watch
themselves; they are to be constantly on guard,
allowing no word or act that would cause their good
to be evil spoken of. He who professes to be a follower
of Christ is to watch himself, keeping himself pure and
undefiled in thought, word, and deed. His influence
upon others is to be uplifting. His life is to reflect the
bright beams of the Sun of Righteousness.”
Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students, 257.

14. Chapter 10
The American Pioneer
and the Victorian
Woman

15. “She lifted herself from a
sickbed and took her first,
feeble, tentative
steps toward becoming
both a Victorian woman
and an Adventist
prophet.”

16. Of all the female leaders of social or
religious groups in the nineteenth
century, Ellen White was virtually
unique. She combined the rugged
characteristics of the American pioneer
with the virtues of the typical Victorian
woman.

17. At Ease With Horses
Here was a once-frail, five-foot-two woman who
could harness and ride horses as well as most
men. Further, based on her own experience, she
strongly urged that boys should learn, either at
home or in school, how “to make a bed and put a
room in order, to wash dishes, to prepare a meal,
to wash and repair his own clothing.” Girls should
“learn to harness and drive a horse, and to use
the saw and hammer, as well as the rake and
hoe.”

18. Familiar With Hardships
Ellen White is most often remembered as a
powerful speaker and a prolific writer, but her
contemporaries knew her also as a competent
homemaker and cheerful mother. All this was
not easy in a day without electricity or running
water. Not easy, either, when neither

19. A Typical Day
One gets some insight into Ellen White’s daily life by
reading her diaries and letters. In an 1873 letter to
Elder and Mrs. D. M. Canright, she wrote, in part: “I
have felt for some time that I ought to write you, but
have not found the time. I have arisen at half past five
o’clock in the morning, helped Lucinda wash dishes,
have written until dark, then done necessary sewing,
sitting up until near midnight; yet we have not gotten
sick. I have done the washings
for the family after my day’s writing was done. I have
frequently been so weary as to stagger like an
intoxicated person, but, praise the Lord, I have been
sustained.”

20. Keen Purchaser
At one point in her busy European
schedule, Ellen White needed
relief from her unrelenting writing
and speaking appointments. For
diversion, she and Sara McEnterfer,
her traveling companion, sewed for
themselves and for others. Some
women, noticing that she bought
with thrift and taste, often wanted
her to help with their shopping.

21. But with everything, even sewing,
she cautioned balance and
urged maintaining right priorities.
Speaking of mothers, she wrote:
“Let her keep cheerful and buoyant.
Instead of spending every moment
in endless sewing, make the evening
a pleasant social season,
a family reunion, after the day’s
duties.”

22. Enthusiastic Gardener
Ellen White was an avid gardener, not only to
satisfy household needs for vegetables and fruit, but
also to beautify the home with fresh flowers. Springtime
in Battle Creek (1859) stirred the gardening blood of this
busy, 31-year-old mother of three. On a cold, windy
March 24, her diary reads: “Arose early. Assisted my
husband and Brother Richard [Godsmark] in taking up a
currant bush to plant in our garden.” The weather was
warmer on March 30 and she “set out the raspberries.
Went to Manchesters’ for strawberry plants. Got some
currant bushes.... Sent off three letters.”

23. Intrepid Traveler
Ellen White’s pioneer spirit was probably best
manifested in her remarkable travel itinerary. By
1885 she had crossed the United States from
California to Michigan about twenty-four times by
train, only sixteen years after the transcontinental
connection had been made at Promintory, Utah!
Obviously, these trips were nothing like what
people today can even remember, nothing
resembling the “romance” that people attached to
rail travel in the first half of the twentieth century.

24. Wooden passenger cars, hazardous in accidents,
were the order of the day, not being replaced by
all-steel cars until 1907. “Seats were straight
backed and thinly cushioned, if at all. A coal stove
furnished the only heat; candles and oil lamps
provided the light. Open platform vestibules
offered little protection from the weather when
walking from one car to another.” 16 The engineer
“could be identified by his aroma of bourbon as
readily as a drummer by his sample case.”

25. The first forty years of rail travel to the West were the
“heyday of the miner, the cowboy, the train robber, and
the bad man, any and all of whom you might find riding
the plush or the wooden slats of the steam cars.” The
country going west “was bare and harsh, buffeted by cruel
winters, baked by torrid summers. Rain, when it came, was
a destructive torrent. Droughts occurred at regular
intervals.... In 1874, with most railroad construction halted
by the financial panic of 1873, the grasshoppers struck,
eating every growing thing from the Canadian border to
northern Texas. A Union Pacific train at
Kearney [Nebraska] was stalled in a three-foot drift of
‘hoppers.’”

26. Ellen White’s experience trying to get to a camp
meeting appointment in Williamsport, Pennsylvania,
early in June, 1889, well illustrates her persevering,
pioneering spirit. This was the year of the heavy rain
and the Johnstown Flood. Many roads and bridges
were washed away enroute. The train moved slowly
from Battle Creek. When they reached Elmira, New
York, they were advised to return home. But Mrs.
White (now 61) and Sara McEnterfer forged ahead.
When the train could go no further, these two women
hired a carriage. When the carriage was forced to
stop, the women
walked—
completing the last 40 miles in four days

27. Ellen White displayed the characteristics of the
Victorian lady.
Researcher Kathleen Joyce noted a widely quoted
passage by Barbara Welter who listed four virtues by
which the Victorian woman was judged: “... piety,
purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Put them all
together and they spell mother, daughter, sister,
wife—woman. Without them, no matter whether
there was fame, achievement, or wealth, all was
ashes. With them she was promised happiness and
power.”

28. Ellen White was distinctively different from the typical
Victorian woman. She did not use her frailty for
personal advantage or special attention, but rose
above it to the astonishment of her contemporaries.
Though respectful of James, she was not typical of
Victorian submission to one’s husband, nor did she
cater to social expectations (merely to gain male
approval) or to Victorian domesticity (to enhance
standing among other women). In fulfilling her
prophetic role, these Victorian “virtues” took on new
meaning. Physical frailty became a challenge to
conquer weaknesses

29. by the grace of God, an achievement that gave her increasing
strength and endurance as she grew older. Although
submission to her husband and meeting her family’s
needs were important, Ellen White’s prophetic responsibilities
were paramount in her life. She showed everyone that
religious responsibilities do not minimize home
responsibilities. Life, for her, was not compartmentalized, as
either prophet or homemaker. She saw life as a whole—to
fulfil her religious responsibilities she would not diminish her
responsibilities as a wife, mother, and neighbour.