Not Like Ordinary Writings

How can one explain it? The only explanation is that the Lord, who called the instrument to the service, in a special way qualified His servant to deliver the messages of instruction. The critics may depreciate the human agent, but the more that is done, the more highly they exalt the fruitage of the gift. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” The fruit of the gift in that tall monument of printed books is one of the evidences of the genuineness of the gift that leaves the opposer baffled; for no one can explain how a person with little educational training could, without special aid, write on these educational principles in such a way.SPIAM 39.1

Some years ago, in Australia, a worker connected with our publishing house there told me how a leading minister of the country met him.SPIAM 39.2

“Look here, Mr. Anderson,” the minister said, “I know that Mrs. White never wrote these books you are selling under her name.”SPIAM 39.3

“But who do you think did write them?” our worker asked.SPIAM 39.4

“Some of you men in the publishing house wrote them,” was the answer.SPIAM 39.5

“Why, bless you,” our representative said, “we haven’t a man in the denomination who could write a book like one of these.”SPIAM 39.6

That is true. We have had men who have written good books, useful books, from the days of the pioneers on. But no man among us ever wrote so much as a chapter approaching these writings. There is a different quality, a different touch here.SPIAM 39.7

In England, President W. E. Read, of the Northern European Division, said: “We have heard again and again of ministers in the popular churches who have read from Mrs. White’s writings in the pulpit. One minister said he could always tell her writings in our papers, even without seeing the signature. There was a ‘different touch,’ he said.”SPIAM 39.8

In one of the fields of the British West Indies, not long ago, a local worker told me an incident: “The dean of the cathedral,” he said, “warned that Mrs. White was a ‘false prophet.’ But later he preached at a special service in the cathedral, and read nearly all of one chapter from the book, ‘Acts of the Apostles.’”SPIAM 40.1