Calls to the Camp-Meetings

From Washington Territory and from the East come urgent requests that I attend the camp-meetings. I am compelled to say, I cannot attend camp-meetings this season, either East or West. I am now engaged in important writing that I have for six years been trying to accomplish. Year after year I have broken away from this work to attend camp-meetings. In these meetings I have felt the condition of our people and have labored most earnestly in their behalf, not sparing myself. When I had gone the round of the camp-meetings, I found myself so worn and exhausted that I could not take hold of my writing with success.

The last two summers I was brought very near to the gates of death, and as I felt that it might please the Lord to let me rest in the grave, I had most painful regrets that my writings were not completed. In the providence of God my life is spared, and my health once more restored. I thank the Lord for his mercy and loving-kindness to me. I have felt ready to go east or west, if my duty were made plain; but in answer to my prayer, «Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?» the answer comes to me, «Rest in peace until the Lord bids you go.»

I have not been idle. Since the Lord raised me up at the camp-meeting in Healdsburg, I have visited Santa Rosa, Oakland, San Francisco, Petaluma, Forestville, and Ukiah, and have labored in Healdsburg, frequently speaking on the Sabbath and on Sunday evening. In four weeks I gave ten discourses, traveled two hundred miles, and wrote two hundred pages. This was too much for my strength. After laboring Sabbath and Sunday I was unable to write on Monday. I was weary in all my work. I now speak only once each week, and can accomplish considerably more writing.

My brethren who urge me to attend camp-meeting and to visit them are anxiously inquiring, When shall we have Vol. 4, Spirit of Prophecy? I can now answer them, In a few weeks my work on this book will be completed. But there are other important works that require attention as soon as this shall be finished. I am now more than fifty years old. You are not ignorant of the manner of my labors among you. I have taxed my physical and mental powers to the utmost, and I cannot flatter myself that there are yet before me many years of labor. I may fall at my post at any moment. While I have physical and mental ability, I will do the work which is most needed by our people. The Lord has provided me good assistants. I have when traveling labored at great disadvantage. I have written in the depot, on the cars, under my tent at camp-meeting, often speaking until exhausted and then rising at three o’clock in the morning and writing from six to fifteen pages before breakfast. I dare not longer pursue this course. I cannot now endure taxing labor as in earlier years.

My good brethren send their urgent calls, with promises to pay my fare and to pay me for my time; this is all I expect of them, it is all they are able to do. But they have little idea of the expense incurred by these journeys. To accomplish the amount of writing that I do, I find it necessary to employ several helpers, the best that I can obtain. I have paid their traveling expenses, to the amount of hundreds of dollars. In my absence I pay them for their time, to do what they can, but they necessarily work at great disadvantage. Traveling is expensive. I cannot take my helpers where I go, and should I do so I could not furnish them with work while I am engaged in labor in camp-meetings.

It has been most difficult to obtain the right kind of assistants as copyists and as house-keepers. Cheap and inefficient help would cause me so much perplexity that I could do but little in any capacity. In the providence of God I am now in every respect the most favorably situated that I have ever been during my pilgrimage life. I enjoy the peace of Jesus, and will do what I can. In my husband’s death I was deprived of an able helper; but the Lord is good, and I am grateful for his mercy, his care, and his tender love.

It would give me great pleasure to meet my dear brethren and sisters in camp-meeting. I feel the love of Jesus burning in my soul. I love to talk this out and to write it out. My prayers shall be, that God may bless you at your camp-meetings, and that your souls may be refreshed by his grace. If God bids me leave my writing to attend these meetings or to speak to the people in different places, I hope to hear and obey his voice. Mrs. E. G. White. Healdsburg, Cal., March 26, 1883. —