The first tangible “help” for Britain had come from Switzerland. According to Historical Sketches*Historical Sketches of the Foreign Missions of the Seventh-day Adventists was printed in Basel, Switzerland, in 1886. The volume records the earliest SDA mission activities in Europe and Australia. Included in a section of practical addresses delivered by Ellen White at the Third European Council in Basel with an account of her travel experience during the last five months of 1885.: EGWE 36.1
“The first Seventh-day Adventist missionary to visit England was Bro. William Ings, who reached Southampton from Basel, Switzerland, on May 23, 1878. EGWE 36.2
“Bro. Ings remained at first two weeks, when he returned again to the Continent. He reported much interest, and people hungering for the truth. He soon returned to England, and resumed work in the land of his birth. At the end of sixteen weeks he reports ten keeping the Sabbath.... He and his wife remained in England until the beginning of the year 1882. Much of his time was spent in ship work, and thousands of pages of publications on present truth in various languages were sent by him to all parts of the world.... But Bro. Ings’ labors were not confined to ship work. In Southampton and surrounding towns and villages he presented the truth faithfully as opportunity offered, going from house to house, obtaining subscriptions for periodicals, talking and praying with the people.”—Page 81. EGWE 36.3
The same year that Ings began his work in England the General Conference sent J. N. Loughborough across the Atlantic. He arrived seven months after Ings came to the country. Loughborough plunged into evangelistic work in Southampton and its suburbs within a week after his arrival. He preached in a newly purchased tent sixty feet in diameter. Six hundred attended the first service. Meetings ran from May 18 to August 17, and thirty persons signed “The Covenant” to keep God's holy commandments and to wait for the Lord from heaven.†The commandments of God, including the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, had been held in reverence by some in Great Britain from as far back as Columba's day in the sixth century. And a thousand years later, in the sixteenth century, martyrs had died in England for observing the true Sabbath. (See Historical Sketches, pp. 79, 80).
And concerning the Second Advent doctrine “according to Mourant Brock ... 700 clergymen of the Church of England were raising the cry, the Lord is at hand” while Miller was preaching the Advent message in America in the early 1840's (Ibid.). But in the late 1870's the doctrine of the Sabbath and the Second Advent were not commonly known either in England or on the Continent. EGWE 36.4
No baptism was conducted until February 8, 1880, when Loughborough immersed six persons—he did not believe in rushing his candidates into the church! By July 2, 1881, twenty-nine had taken their baptismal vows. Credit was partially due to the excellent Bible work done by Maud Sisley, who had returned to her homeland from America. EGWE 36.5
Pioneer S. N. Haskell also visited Britain and labored on the Continent in 1882. He encouraged the workers and urged the beginning of a publishing enterprise in England. Other ministers followed with brief visits. J. H. Durland and M. C. Wilcox, however, were missionaries in Britain attached to the work there. EGWE 37.1