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Testimonies for the Church Volume 4
been followed with increasing enthusiasm. Within a decade there was
scarcely a state conference that did not have its annual summer meet-
ing. Sites were well selected, and good publicity was given. It was in
connection with these large camp meetings that a concerted effort at
reporting the work of Seventh-day Adventists in the newspapers was
begun. Great pains were taken to make the camp representative, to
provide good food, and to present a telling message. The meetings of
five, six, or seven days’ duration, which on week days were attended
by a few hundred Adventists, would over week ends attract several
thousand interested non-Adventist listeners. The peak of such interest
was in 1876, when, in Groveland, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston,
twenty thousand people crowded onto the camp ground on Sunday,
August 27. Mrs. White addressed fifteen thousand attentive listeners
on that afternoon
.
Temperance work also came prominently to the front in the times
of volume 4. Seventh-day Adventists, with Mrs. White as one of their
leading speakers, were prominently in the front, often in association
with established temperance organizations. The practical way in which
they labored to stem the tide of intemperance is told by Mrs. White in
her chapter, “Experience and Labors,” Found in the heart of this book
.
At the denomination’s headquarters in Battle Creek there was great
activity during these years of the late seventies. The new tabernacle
succeeded the outgrown house of worship. This new church, built to
accommodate General Conference sessions, was known as the Dime
Tabernacle, because each church member throughout the land was
asked to contribute at least ten cents for its construction. It was erected
between the Review and Herald office and the sanitarium, facing
a beautiful park. New, greatly enlarged sanitarium buildings were
erected and put into use. At about this same time the medical work
[7]
became more soundly established as physicians trained especially for
this line of service returned from the best medical schools of the land
to lead out in this important work in Battle Creek. The denominational
health journal, Good Health, was enjoying the “largest circulation
of any health journal in America.” The review and herald office had
become the “largest and best equipped printing office in the state”
of Michigan. The work of the newly opened Battle Creek College
made steady progress, and by the year 1881 there was an enrollment
of nearly five hundred students
.