the Tabernacle was a fitting climax to the career of Elder White, representing as it did the freewill offerings of Adventists in many different parts of the country, and also of the people of Battle Creek themselves, including many not of that faith.

In the following year Elder White was succeeded in the presidency by George I. Butler, a member of the committee who had been for years carrying heavy responsibilities. Brother White entered his sixtieth year enjoying a fair degree of health, and as busily engaged as in any previous year in fruitful work for the Master. In company with Mrs. White he attended a camp-meeting in Charlotte, Mich., making the journey thither by carriage. On the way, owing to a sudden change in temperature, he contracted a severe cold, and though he rallied sufficiently to take an active part in the meeting, he did not recover his strength. Shortly after their return to Battle Creek, both he and Mrs. White were prostrated with malarial fever, to which Elder White succumbed on the morning of August 6, 1881, aged sixty years and two days.

The funeral was deferred to the following Sabbath, at which time almost the whole city came out to pay their respects to the man who, whatever his religious views, was regarded as one of its foremost citizens. Uriah Smith preached the funeral sermon. Mrs. White, who had not risen from her sick-bed since the death of her husband, was borne to the Tabernacle to be present at the funeral. At the close of the discourse she rose and spoke for about ten minutes, her simple, heartfelt words deeply moving the vast audience.

It was the largest funeral that Battle Creek had ever seen. But more impressive than the size of the gathering was the feeling of deep personal loss that prevailed among the employees of the Review office and the other institutions which Elder White had been so largely instrumental in building up, and in fact throughout the denomination it was as if a beloved father had been taken away, one who sustained an intimate personal relation to every believer and was deeply concerned for his welfare.

James White was essentially an organizer. He was a good example of his own saying: "Leaders and generals are not made by appointment, or by the vote of the church; but they are born." From the time when in a threadbare coat and patched trousers he attended those earliest conferences of the advent believers in the East, he made himself felt not only as a preacher of force and spirituality, but even more as a farseeing leader. He was always looking ahead. When others

were harping on little things, he was massing the large fundamental principles for which the denomination was to stand, and showing how all could unite in giving them to the world. He was of an eager, impetuous nature, and not seldom gave offense; but no man was more ready to confess his faults, and he numbered among his warmest friends men who at some time or other had felt that he had wronged them, but had also experienced the hearty, sincere way in which he could make matters right.

Aggressiveness was an outstanding quality of the man. He was constitutionally opposed to anything like standing still. When it was a time for action, nothing disgusted him more than to have his brethren advise delay, urge the careful weighing of consequences, and seemingly make a virtue of doing nothing. "Some people," he said one day, "think that all a train needs to make it go is to put on the brakes."

He was a good judge of human nature, and showed rare discernment in selecting the men who were to share the responsibility for a rapidly growing work. If he was at times impatient over blunders, he was also generous in his praise of good work. Earnestness and activity pleased him. He could forgive many mistakes if they sprang from zeal and a desire to accomplish things. He would have said with Moody, "Blundering do-somethingism is better than faultless do-nothingism." As a preacher his success lay in his earnestness and zeal for the Master, and his large grasp on the realities of the eternal world.

James White was remarkably successful in originating and fostering institutions. His activities covered a wide range, and were everywhere attended with good results. The oldest of these institutions was the Review and Herald publishing house, which was the creature of his fostering care even from its infancy. Single-handed he managed it for years, and after he had turned it over to the denomination, its continued success was largely owing to the fact that the policy he had inaugurated was carried out at practically every point. Not to mention the other large publishing house on the Pacific Coast, which he likewise started and watched over for some years, the substantial success of the Health Institute, and of the Health Reformer which advertised it throughout the country, was also to be attributed, under God, to the business sense and sagacity of James White. Battle Creek College, the first of the educational institutions of the denomination, was likewise started under his leadership.

These various institutions not only accomplished great good under his management, but they were successful financially. Elder White had the genius for making things pay for themselves. His policy was the farseeing one that commands confidence. Things seemed to grow in value as he took charge of them, and gave them opportunity to develop.

If we compare James White with John Wesley, the founder, under God, of the Methodist denomination, we shall see that the two men had much in common. There was in both the same broad vision, the same irrepressible energy, the instinct for making things go. The two men were of course far apart educationally. John Wesley was a finished scholar; James White had little beyond a common school education. But both were excellent organizers, and each at his death left behind him a denomination destined to grow rapidly and along very much the lines marked out for it during the lifetime of the founder.

Needless to say, James White's marked ability as a great religious leader has not been generally recognized outside of the denomination. Like other men of his type, he did not seek worldly recognition; he was too busy doing the Master's work. Many a personage looms large in the encyclopedias of biography, whose real accomplishments did not equal those of this comparatively unknown man of faith, prayer, and achievement.

Growth of the Publishing Work

IN the preceding chapter we have seen the development of a system of organization by means of which the printed page bearing the message of present truth was having year by year a steadily growing circulation. In the present chapter we shall consider the growth of the facilities for the manufacture of books, periodicals, and tracts, and also the inception and subsequent development of the work of circulating our subscription books, which has come to occupy so large a share of the energies of our publishing houses.

The little two-story frame building that received the printing outfit when it was moved to Battle Creek from Rochester, N. Y., in 1855, did not long suffice for the growing needs of the work. When the Review and Herald Publishing Association was organized in 1861, it proceeded at once to remove the frame building to an adjoining lot on Kalamazoo Street, and to erect in its place a two-story brick building in the form of a Greek cross, the main portion being 26 x 66 feet. Ten years later it was necessary to erect a second building of the same plan and dimensions as the first; and in 1873 a third. In 1876 the first and third buildings, standing side by side on Main Street, were united by a central structure of three stories, having a mansard roof, which gave it another story. Subsequently the roofs of the two original buildings, which now formed wings