20
The Publishing Ministry
I was asked to go and explain why, if the Lord was coming so soon,
the publishing work should need such a large building. I said, “You
that have ears, I want you to hear. It is because the Lord is coming that
we want a building as big as this is, and more than that, it will grow
larger as the work progresses. The Lord has a work to do in the world.
The message must go to all parts of the earth. It is because we believe
this that we have started this work. We are going to deny ourselves.”
My husband and I decided to take lower wages. Others pledged
themselves to do this also, and the money thus saved was used in start-
ing the work. Some of our brethren donated quite liberally, because
they believed what we said. In after years, when prosperity attended
the work and these brethren had grown old and become poor, we took
their cases into account and helped them all we could. My husband
was a man full of sympathy for the needy and the suffering. “Brother
B put his means into the work when it was in need of help, and now
we must help him,” he would say.—
Manuscript 100, 1899
.
“We Started in Great Poverty”—The publishing work has been
founded in sacrifice; it has been maintained by the special providence
of God. We started it in great poverty. We had scarcely enough to eat
and wear. When potatoes were scarce, and we had to pay a high price
for them, we supplied their place with turnips. Six dollars per week
was all we received for the first years of our labor. We had a large
[28]
family, but we brought out expenses within our means. We could not
purchase all that we desired; we had to bind about our wants. But we
were determined that the world should have the light of present truth;
and spirit, soul, and body were interwoven with the work. We worked
early and late, without rest, without the stimulus of wages.... And God
was with us. As prosperity attended the publishing work, the wages
were increased, as they should be.—
Selected Messages 2:191
.
Could he [a church leader] not see that the same process [of sacri-
fice] must be gone through again [in Australia] as when my husband
and I started the work in Battle Creek, when we decided to take from
the office only four dollars a week for our labor, and afterwards only
six, until the cause of God could be established in Battle Creek, and
the printing office built, and the hand press and other crude material
placed in it for the work? Did we not know what it meant to work
hard and press all our necessities into as small a compass as possible,
while we advanced step by step on a sure basis, dreading debt as we