Workings of the Leaven of Speculation

According to another speaker, the message of health reform was the one essential feature of the gospel to be given at this time:SHM 315.1

“We have come to a time when we have the truth presented to us—this one message, this message of healthful living. We ought to go to the world with this gospel—a gospel so visible, so tangible, that all can see it. ... The message of health reform now centers just as much in that simple statement, ‘This is my body,’ as it centers in that simple statement, ‘The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.’”—Ibid.SHM 315.2

Well would it have been if all had carefully considered the clear presentation of the true relation of God and nature as set forth in the communication from Mrs. White read to the conference a few days after the foregoing statements were presented. Doubtless there were indeed many who were helped by its instruction, and who were kept from readily accepting the new views regarding a universal divine essence pervading all nature. But the leaven of subtle speculation had been introduced, and the minds of some were permeated by it.SHM 315.3

The speakers who had been foremost in presenting these theories to the General Conference were among those in whom the people had confidence as Bible expositors. They had been giving lectures in the sanitarium in Battle Creek, and it was at the request of the superintendent of that institution that they spoke to the delegates. These near-pantheistic views were heartily accepted by him and were later made very prominent in his lectures before the patients, the sanitarium helpers, and the medical students. How fully they were endorsed by him is revealed by an analysis of talks that he gave before the following General Conference, which convened in 1901 in Battle Creek, regarding which we have already written. In introducing an illustrated stereopticon lecture, he said, “I have been asked to talk to you tonight on the question of the divine life in man.”—General Conference Bulletin, Second Quarter, 1901. (Italics mine.)SHM 315.4