Laying The Cornerstone

With the plans drawn and accepted and the bids let, the next step was to lay the cornerstone. Sunday afternoon, May 11, 1902, about 10,000 people gathered for the elaborate ceremonies, with guest speakers from the government and the clergy from the city. Sanitarium employees were seated back of the speakers’ stand, and sanitarium guests and citizens, in front. W. W. Prescott led out in the main address of the afternoon. Appropriately, the cornerstone was laid by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg himself. In his address he reminded helpers, guests, and townspeople of the principles for which the institution stood. He referred to its history—a history he had often connected with God's providential guidance through the light given to Mrs. White.WV 400.5

He likened this new institution to the Temple city Jerusalem, to which the ancient Israelites looked from all over the world. In passing, we note that an element of pantheism appeared in this address, representing a philosophy he firmly held in his heart, but the perils of which had not yet been seen by his associates.WV 400.6

Kellogg was an energetic, forceful, persuasive man, and somehow the General Conference leadership through the middle 1890s found it difficult to resist his insistence on borrowing money for capital investments for institutions and then persuading the General Conference Association to assume the obligations. Debts piled on debts—debts assumed with no systematic plan for their amortization.WV 401.1

When Elder Daniells took up his responsibilities as leader of the church after the General Conference session of 1901, he was appalled to find that the total institutional indebtedness was close to $500,000. In the context of the times, this was a huge sum. The top pay of ministers, physicians, and publishing house employees at this time was $12 to $15 a week (DF 243d).WV 401.2

In the meantime, brick was being laid on brick in Battle Creek, and the sanitarium edifice was rising—an edifice that church leaders were soon to discover would cost between two and three times the amount estimated. What is more, not all the promises for financial help made when the institution was destroyed by fire were kept. Some of the pledges by the businesspeople and citizens of Battle Creek were never honored. The expected income from the sales of The Living Temple, Dr. Kellogg's gift book, did not materialize, for church leaders found it permeated with pantheistic philosophies. There is no indication that the pledge made by the sanitarium board or the General Conference Committee that no further debt would be incurred in the rebuilding of the sanitarium was kept or even remembered.WV 401.3

On July 6 a message from Ellen White addressed to the General Conference Committee and the Medical Missionary Board included this counsel:WV 401.4

I am instructed to say that our people must not be drawn upon for means to erect an immense sanitarium in Battle Creek; the money that would be used in the erection of that one mammoth building should be used in making plants in many places. We must not draw all we can from our people for the establishment of a great sanitarium in one place, to the neglect of other places, which are unworked for the want of means (Letter 128, 1902).WV 401.5