Uriah Smith's Firsthand Observation

Uriah Smith had made the rounds of the western camp meetings with James and Ellen White, closing with the gathering in Sparta, Wisconsin, on July 6. He was deeply impressed with the significance of their ministry. Reporting that convocation, he wrote:2BIO 473.6

And now we shall be pardoned for adding to these lines a note of a personal nature. It has been a pleasure as well as a privilege to us to attend these meetings in company with Brother and Sister White. In all our long association with them, it has never chanced to be our lot to thus be with them in such a series of consecutive meetings from State to State. Hence, well as we have heretofore been acquainted with their labors, in a general way, we have never been in a position to realize so fully as now, nor so fully prepared as now to testify to, the value of their labors, and the benefit of their counsel to the different conferences and the cause at large.2BIO 474.1

God has given them a testimony for the people, both without and within the church; and His providence has so ordered that they have had an experience in this work from the very beginning, nearly the whole of their public labors being identified with it, and all their interest centering in it. Hence they are prepared, as from the nature of the case no others can be, to give counsel in regard to the different enterprises, and to at least assist in devising ways and means for the further advancement of this cause.2BIO 474.2

We have been happy to see their testimony received and prized as it was entitled to be. In this the brethren have done well. They have thereby in many instances been relieved from embarrassing perplexities and discouragements. And so long as the evidence presents the same showing that it presents today, we can but believe that he is recreant to the best interests of this cause who refuses to cooperate with them, and stay up their hands, in a work to which their whole life has been and is so unselfishly devoted, and to which their whole past record, and their present labors, show them both to have been, and to be, so undeviatingly true.—Ibid.2BIO 474.3