I have been very much struck with what I have heard this afternoon, 1 and I feel that the Lord has spoken to us, and I feel it is very important that such action should be taken here at this meeting, during this Conference, that will be consistent, that will be reasonable and right in the sight of the Lord. I have been connected with this work for a long time, all my life, in fact. It is now thirty years since I devoted my life to the work of the sanitarium. I have been for thirty years in that one place. I have tried to be true to the principles of the institution, tried to stand up for what I thought was right; and it is in my heart to-day, as it always has been, to be loyal to all the truth, to all the work which is represented in this movement. I believe this movement is to be the greatest movement in behalf of the truth in all the world, and many years ago I consecrated my life to it. I have given my life to it so far, and I expect to give the balance of my life to it. I have not made any other plans. I feel that my work has been very imperfect, and has been full of mistakes, and I have not been what the Lord wanted me to be all these years; but I have tried to be true to the principles, true to the work, to what my work was intended to represent, and I have worked with all my heart and all my energy to carry forward the work the Lord has given me to do.GCB April 6, 1903, page 82.6

Our work has grown from a very small beginning to a large work. There is one thing that has encouraged me, and is the thing that has held me up under many embarrassments. Before the sanitarium was built, the old building that was burned, when we had only a small two-story building, and we had no money, Brother White took me out one day for a ride, and he said to me, “Doctor, Sister White had a remarkable dream a few days ago, two or three weeks ago, and in that dream she saw that this institution, which is now so small, would develop into a great institution, which would be known all over the world.” That seemed practically impossible. He said, “The Lord showed to her that this institution would grow until all this place would be covered with buildings, that it would extend clear down to Manchester Street, and to Champion Street and that there would be a great establishment here.” Well, now, that seemed to me beyond my conception, but as we have gone on year after year, and necessities seemed to come for enlargement, I have been to Sister White with the question, Shall we enlarge? And with her encouragement we have gone on anew and enlarged accordingly, until it became time to put up a hospital, and at the Conference held here thirteen or fourteen years ago, Sister White stood before the entire audience here and urged that this building should be erected. When it came time for our chapel to be built. I submitted this question to Sister White, and she said we should have built it years before. At the last General Conference, Sister White rose up before all of you, and urged that the sanitarium should purchase the college buildings, in addition to the buildings which we then had. Now I supposed all of this was in fulfillment of what the Lord had presented many years ago, and so, although we have been embarrassed in many ways, we have struggled on, trying to do the work which the Lord seemed to have given to us.GCB April 6, 1903, page 82.7

In the meantime we have been educating nurses and doctors, and a large number of branches have been established in different parts of the world. Our work has not been all confined to Battle Creek, but we have been doing what we thought was the Lord’s will. When the fire came, we sent for our leading brethren to come and advise us what should be done. The brethren came and looked the matter over, and found the situation as it is. [** Reference is here made to the talk given by Sister White, Monday afternoon, March 30, found on page 29 (No. 3) of the “Bulletin.”] The fire had burned part of our buildings, but had not burned all. It had burned about a third of our buildings. We had twenty buildings; two were burned. We had left $250,000 worth of property. It seemed impossible to move away. We had not enough property left to pay our debts if we moved away. Dr. Pierce sent an attorney to Battle Creek to find out whether we were going to build or not. He stayed there for several weeks. We waited. Our fire was the 18th day of February. Our corner-stone was laid the 12th day of May. We waited all that time, or a greater part of that time. We were waiting, trying to see, to learn, what the Lord wanted us to do. A committee of citizens called upon me after the fire and wanted to know if we were going to rebuild. I told them we did not know; we could not tell; we must wait until Providence made the matter clear to us. I sent out a hundred letters to different parts of the United States looking for invitations to other places, thinking this was an opportunity for us to leave. I did not get from all those hundred letters that I sent to leading places, leading people—I did not get a single answer that opened the way for leaving. We tried every way to find out if there was another place for us. These brethren came and sat down with us, and decided that it was the proper thing to rebuild in Battle Creek.GCB April 6, 1903, page 82.8

In making our plans, we made them not quite so large as before in regard to the accommodation of patients. Before the fire our buildings were large enough to accommodate about half of our patients, only about half. We have never at any time had buildings large enough to accommodate the people who came. We have not sought to bring people to Battle Creek in great numbers; in fact, we have encouraged a great many not to come. But the character of our patients was changed, so that those who came required better accommodations. In erecting our building we have made provision for 296 patients’ rooms. In our old buildings we had 341; in the buildings that were burned there were 341 rooms for patients. In our new building we have 296 rooms for patients. We understood in our plan for our new building that we were not arranging to accommodate as many patients as before. We thought the fire would divert some of our patronage to some of our branches, and it would not be necessary to provide for so many, but we thought it best to provide for a sufficient number of patients so that those who came could be accommodated well and properly.GCB April 6, 1903, page 83.1

Now if we have made a mistake in erecting this building, the mistake can be corrected. The building can be sold, the entire institution can be sold. There are parties who will be very glad to buy. I know parties who would be glad to purchase it. It is impossible to move the Battle Creek Sanitarium. The Battle Creek Sanitarium can not be moved away, because the Battle Creek Sanitarium must be at Battle Creek. But if it is best that this enterprise should be abandoned at Battle Creek, then this property can be sold. There is no difficulty about it; and if this Conference will take action to that effect, that the Battle Creek Sanitarium should be sold, that it was a mistake that it should be erected there, and it should be sold, I will guarantee that it can be sold in a very short time, and on such terms as will leave the corporation in a better state financially than it would have been after the fire if we had abandoned the enterprise as it was. I hope this Conference will not adjourn without taking definite and positive action to advise the Board at Battle Creek what ought to be done under the circumstances. If this Conference will vote that this enterprise shall be abandoned at Battle Creek, the property can be sold promptly, and the enterprise there can be off your hands.GCB April 6, 1903, page 83.2

I wish to say a word further with reference to myself. I have given all of my life to this work. I have had to carry, a greater part of the time, most of the burden of the work on my shoulders. I am a small man, and I have not a very large ability. The best ability I have is the ability to work hard, to work day and night, to work almost continuously for a good many days. I have tried to put in all the ability I have into my work. As I said, I have tried to be loyal to this work and to this cause. I have tried to inspire loyalty in my students, the nurses, and doctors that have been associated with me. If you will look about the world, you will find that in all the sanitariums we have to-day, the men and women that are standing true in these institutions are men and women who have been trained at Battle Creek. You will find the nurses, the doctors, who are standing faithful to their posts of duty in all parts of the world are not men and women who have been trained in the institutions of the world, or in the colleges of the world, but at Battle Creek, and they are standing loyal to the principles they have learned there. If you come to Battle Creek, you will find the doctors and nurses who are in the sanitarium there are loyal to all the truth; they are standing true to all the truth. There is no other inducement in our work but loyalty and love for this truth. The wages are small. The labor is hard. There is no inducement whatever to remain in this work. There is no inducement to a single doctor in one of our institutions to remain for one day connected with any of these institutions, excepting a love of the truth and loyalty to this cause and to this work. Our doctors can all make more money outside of our institutions than in them. They can go on with their work wherever there is suffering, working for humanity, and they can stand for reform, and they can do everything they are doing in connection with our institutions, elsewhere by themselves. Some have thought best to do this, and are doing it; not very many. We have labored with all our energy to bind all of our workers, our doctors, our nurses, to this work. Not a single person is received in the American Medical Missionary College unless he pledges his life to this work. Now, we have been somewhat blamed for this. A brother said to me a day or two ago. “Is it true, is it true, that you require every college student to make a contract that they will work for the Medical Missionary Board for ten years?” I said, “No, that is not true. What we ask is that the men and women who enter our Medical Missionary College shall pledge themselves to give their lives to the work for truth; not for the Medical Missionary Board, but for truth and for this cause.”GCB April 6, 1903, page 83.3

I want to say to you, my friends, that my life is dedicated to work for God, humanity, and truth, and I will work with you as long as you want me to work with you. I will work for this cause as long as I have an opportunity to work for this cause. I will stay by this movement, which I believe to be the greatest movement in the world. so long as I have an opportunity to work in connection with it. I wonder that God has given me an opportunity to work in this cause and this truth. I thank God every morning when I awake, on my knees, when I bow with the little ones around me that the Lord has sent to us to care for: I thank God that I have this truth. Oh, my friends, this truth is the greatest thing in the world to me! It is the only thing I care for, the only thing I live for; and I thank God every day, many times a day, that I found this truth, and that I know this truth. The whole purpose of my heart is to give all my life and ability and all my energy to carry this truth where it is not known, and especially to make known this great truth, with all its helpfulness, to those who are in darkness.GCB April 6, 1903, page 83.4

My friends, if we only appreciated this truth, if we only realized it, appreciated how the world needs it, we could not spend our time in personal criticism. I mourn that we spend so much time that way. I determined when I came to this Conference that I would spend no time that way. If the time ever does come that we must spend as much or more time than we have spent in that way, or a large part of our time and energies, I want to say I would rather work alone. I can not see how it is possible for us, with this dying world about us, with a sinking humanity before us,—I can not see how it is possible for us to sit idly by and spend our time on such questions. And it seems to me that we ought to be stirred with a zeal that would lead us to go out into the homes and the cities especially, and give all our lives and energies to help to lift up our fallen brothers, and to enlighten those who are dying in darkness. The Lord has given to us a light the world does not have, and I do hope that here at this Conference we may get, somehow, our plans and our hearts cemented together, so that we can go on and speak with one voice; that we can all lift together, and work together, and that all this disharmony that the devil brings up, that makes a little speck look like a mountain, so that we are suspicious of one another: when if we could sit down together, and in five minutes’ talking the thing over honestly, the whole thing will vanish.GCB April 6, 1903, page 84.1

This talk about an awful crisis, and awful dangers, I want to say to you, There is nothing in it; there is nothing in it. The truth of the matter is that all we want is confidence, confidence in the truth, confidence in God, and confidence in one another, and a sufficient love for truth that we are willing to bury some of our small things, our personalities, and our little, personal feelings, and for the sake of humanity, and for the sake of truth, come up and work for this wonderful truth and this wonderful work God has given us. My friends, I have no personal quarrel with anybody: I have no personal ambition, nor any personal scheme; I have but one purpose in my heart, and that is to help my fallen brother, and to serve God, and to work for the truth. If you think that is not true, if you think I am not sincere about that, try me, put me to the test, and see. In what I am saying, I am speaking for my colleagues, Dr. Paulson, of Chicago; Dr. Kress, in Australia; Dr. Rand, in Colorado. There are others in charge of our different institutions; there are very few of them here. They can not be here; they must be at their work; they must stand by it. They could not come here. We shall try to get as many of them together as we can at Battle Creek, and talk over what we can do to help spread this truth.GCB April 6, 1903, page 84.2

We have not any conspiracies. I want to say to you that, as far as I know, no two men have put their heads together and said, “Let us work for this, let us stand up for one another.” I have not heard of such a thing; I should feel ashamed if there were such a thing. But I know this, my friends, that a good many of us have been on our knees together, and with tears in our eyes we have plead with God to make us true to truth and enable us to stand for truth, no matter what became of us; and I pledge myself to that thing. There are difficulties and perplexities beyond description, but this I know: We have the truth, in spite of it all. We have the truth, and God is in this truth and in this movement, and I propose to stand by it, and stay with it so long as God gives me an opportunity.GCB April 6, 1903, page 84.3

“Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of good courage: be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed; for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”GCB April 6, 1903, page 84.4

GENERAL CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS. Tenth Meeting

FRIDAY MORNING MEETING