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Foreword
Temperance was a favorite theme of Mrs. Ellen G. White, both
in her writings and in public discourse. In many of her articles
which appeared in denominational journals through the years, and
in manuscripts and letters of counsel addressed to both workers and
laity, she urged Seventh-day Adventists to practice temperance and
to promote vigorously the temperance cause. In response to earnest
requests that this wealth of material and instruction should be made
available in a single volume, this handbook has been prepared by
authorization of the Ellen G. White publications, to whom Mrs.
White committed the custody of her books and manuscripts.
These selections have been drawn from the whole range of Mrs.
White’s writings on this subject, including some now out of print,
such as the following:
Health, or How to Live (1865); Christian
Temperance and Bible Hygiene (1890); Special Testimonies (1892-
1912)
; and
Drunkenness and Crime (1907)
.
Both in the outline and in the content of subject matter, the
compilers have earnestly sought to reflect the emphasis which the
author placed on the various phases of temperance.
The effort to gather such selections as would set forth her full
contribution on this subject, and the desire to make quite complete
the various sections on the different phases of the temperance ques-
tion have naturally resulted in some repetition of thought. In the
endeavor to present the subject matter in an orderly way so as to
be of greatest service to the reader, and at the same time to avoid
undue repetition, rather brief selections have sometimes been made.
However, in omitting the context, great care has been exercised to
alter in no way the thought or the emphasis of the author. In each
case full source credit is given to the book, periodical, pamphlet, or
manuscript from which the excerpt is taken.
[6]
The readers will recognize that Ellen G. White, having died in
1915, did her writing in a period when some terminology was quite
different from that commonly employed today, and when detailed
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