D. M. Canright Letter to Ellen White

Otsego, Mich.
July 29, 1887.

Sister White:

Your communication is received and I will answer as you request to write you, though I see nothing to be accomplished by it. My mind is clear and decided. I have acted in the fear of God and expect to answer to Him and to no one else.

As to Lucretia's faith in the testimonies: Suppose that when she was weak and anxious to do everything possible to be right, she did confess to you. She was liable to err in judgment, specially then. That would have no influence with me. I lived with her on the most intimate terms for 12 years and think I ought to know her mind perfectly. We often freely and fully talked over the visions, your course and that of your husband. We always agreed perfectly about it, only that she was more ready to doubt then than I was and was more reluctant to yield when we did. That is the exact truth, say what you please. During the last 6 months of her life I stood in harmony with Eld. White and yourself and had laid aside all my trials on these points, was president of the Ohio Conference, and in full sympathy with the work. I can not remember that one word passed between us on these points during that time. If she changed her mind, she said nothing to me about it nor ever in any way expressed any of the fears for me which you attribute to her. About half you say she said sounds like her, the rest does not. I will now tell you one thing which I never did before: One day in the fall before she died, at our Gen. Conf. and camp meeting at B.C. or a few days before, she told you she was thinking of sending for May Matson to help her, and praised her highly. You went directly home that day and sent for May for yourself and she came right over. Cretia was exceedingly angry with you for that and said it was mean, selfish, and underhanded. When you found May was not what you wanted, you asked me to take her off your hands. Cretia refused to do it, till I persuaded her to yield. That was the interest you had for a dying woman.

I will never forget the terrible treatment she received at your hands and that of your husband in Colorado. It nearly broke her heart. It worried her all the balance of her life and served to embitter and shorten it. It was wholly undeserved as she was better than either of you all the time. Now that she is dead, she is a saint. Wish you had said some of those fine things to her while she was alive to hear them.

In your letter you say that I am dishonest in the move I have now made. Thank you. Who made you my judge? Read Matt. 7:1-5; Rom. 14:10. That is a matter about which I have a little personal knowledge. Again you say that ambition to fill a greater place among other people is what led me to leave you. If an angel from heaven would tell me that I would tell him it was a falsehood for I positively know better. These things only prove to me more and more that you only guess at what you say, thinking it must be so from your standpoint.

I have several long Letters from your own husband in his own handwriting but a few weeks before he died in which he goes back on you and your testimonies and the hard way in which you had treated me, says you fell under evil influences, etc. He confesses to me most humbly, owns up all I laid to his charge, etc. These will be interesting reading for you by and by. They show how little real confidence he had in your judgment and your work.

Sister White, let me tell you one thing which has been a stumper to me for years. You know full well that for a few years after '44 you did teach the "shut door" theory as at first held by Miller and afterwards much longer by Eld. White and others. I have all your first writings of those times in Present Truth Vol. 7, Experience and Views, also Reviews, etc. The language is too plain to be mistaken. Many persons are alive who will swear they heard you teach it. John Martin across the road from me says he knows you did for he has heard you do it more than once and that all believed it. Sr. Rhodes says the same thing. And yet you now squarely deny that you ever taught it. How you can say that and dare to go up to the judgment with it is more than I can comprehend.

Then you have never wrought one simple miracle to confirm your mission as the old prophets did. I can not find a single prophecy which you have made in all your numerous volumes covering 40 years which has ever come to pass. I will thank any one to name one if they can. The cases of Fuller, Smith, Sharp, and others shows that you know nothing of these things till others do. In my own case it is just the same, you find it out when I tell it, not before.

That foolish move about the short dress shows that we can not safely follow you as a leader. Look also at the extreme positions you took at first on the health reform and see the evil it did to our people and the hundreds who are now dead as the results. For over 40 long years you have stood at the head of this people as an inspired leader; but they have been disappointed all the way along, expecting the end constantly within a few months or at most a few years, according to your testimonies. But it has as constantly failed and you yourself have been as much disappointed as the rest, showing that you know nothing about it. How different with the prophets of old.

At the start Moses foretold their wanderings for 40 years, and Jeremiah the 70 years captivity. It seems to me it is time that thinking men called a halt in such a work. I am profoundly convinced that the whole move is an error and that it will end in disaster.

I love and honor and try by the grace of God to keep God's holy law, every commandment in it. As to the Sabbath, Paul says, Let no man judge you about that. Col. 2:16. That is plain enough for me. My mind is perfectly clear and at rest on that point.

In my heart I am sorry for you; for I am willing to accord to you what you deny me, an honest purpose to do the will of God. But I have lived to see that the most sincere people can be greatly deceived as I certainly think you are. So we may as well leave it right there and each go our way and let the judgment decide who is right. You have compelled me to speak plainly but, I trust, charitably.

Yours truly,

(Signed) D. M. Canright

P.S. The case of Eld. Oviatt is another to the point. Why did not the Lord reveal this to you before he gave up the work? He has been in doubt of the visions, Sabbath, etc., for months and halting to know what to do till now he has come with me. "And still there is more to follow." Name some of them before they tell it themselves.