5. “Experience and Views” Out of Print

The book Experience and Views, published in 1851, and the Supplement, published in 1854, went out of print in a relatively few years. Immediately the cry was again raised, “Suppression.” The mere fact that they were out of print is supposed to be all the proof required to support the charge. According to the critics of the time the book was “suppressed” because we “had become ashamed of it,” and “dare not publish it.” ^{*The charge evidently was first given general circulation in a tract published by two ex-Adventists, Snook and Brinkerhoof, in 1866; and then repeated by an H. E. Carver, in an 1870 tract. We have not been able to find copies of these tracts, and must rely for our statements on a discussion of their arguments that is found in the Review and Herald. See Supplement, August 14, 1883. This Supplement was published to answer certain charges regarding Mrs. White, particularly the charge of suppression.} And of course the occasion for our being “ashamed” would be primarily because of shut-door doctrine in it. That is the prime reason offered for our “suppressing” any of our early literature.EGWC 270.3

Obviously, charges 4 and 5 are contradictory. It is because we are listing the whole long record of “suppression” charges through the years that their contradictory quality appears. While later critics generally focus on 1851, when Experience and Views was published, as the date when suppression took place, earlier critics argued that this 1851 work had so far failed to suppress abandoned views that it was finally allowed to go out of circulation!EGWC 270.4