A Lover of Animals

Sister White was a lover of animals. She respected them as creatures that God had created and she took good care of her animals, although not all of those around her did so. One day she came out into the yard and found her hired hand lashing her horse with a whip. She employed him to help manage her business affairs and to take care of her livestock at Sunnyside in Cooranbong, Australia. It was not the first time she had seen the man mistreating an animal. She knew that he had done it many times before. Whenever he worked with animals or young people, he tended to be unkind and severe. Probably he excused his actions with the idea common many years ago that children and animals were not human and had no rights.

Seeing Sister White standing a few feet away, he stopped, stunned that he should ever be caught. His arm was still poised in midair, ready to slash the whip across the horse’s back. Slowly lowering the whip, he tried to hide it behind his back, and then nervously fidgeted with it. Kindly, but indignantly, she quietly began to lecture him. If he had the tenderness and love of Christ he claimed to worship, would he treat an animal the way he had just done? Animals, she continued, have a dignity of their own. God uses such creatures as the horse, the cow, and the dog as His agents to do well in the world. Each living creature has its purpose. God would judge anyone who mistreated them. The angel who stood before Balaam, who had unjustly abused his donkey, now stood before the hired man, she said, watching and recording his cruelty.

Sister White’s words pierced to the man’s conscience. God had revealed his true character to her. One night while travelling on the island of Tasmania, she had seen the man in vision. In her dream the employe travelled with a group of people having several teams of horses and wagons. Annoyed because several wagons passed him in a cloud of dust, he lashed his horses and shouted and screamed at them. But the tired animals could go no faster. Whipping them did not help. All the man did was to frighten them.

A tall, dignified man suddenly appeared in front of the horses. They reared up to avoid running him down. Grabbing the bridles, the stranger stopped the horses and began to stroke them to calm them. Turning to the driver, he demanded, “What is your name?” Sister White’s hired hand answered, the tall man wrote it down in a book. Glancing up from the book, the stranger – actually an angel, Sister White knew – inquired, “Do you remember Balaam?” Understanding the reference to the Old Testament prophet, the wagon driver nodded. The angel repeated the warning that had come to Balaam, then added, “A merciful man is merciful to his beast.” This ended the vision.

Thus Sister White knew what to say to her employee when she caught him abusing her horse. He could make no excuses. God had shown her his cruelty, and she wanted to be sure he never mistreated anything again.

But not always did she have a chance to do something about the cruelty to animals she saw about her.
In 1896 she often journeyed from Granville to nearby Sydney. The route went past a large stockyard containing thousands of sheep and cattle waiting for slaughter. One day as she and some friends drove along the road, they came upon a herd of cattle milling across it. An enormous ox, noticing the approaching carriage, loomed suddenly and defiantly in the middle of the dust cloud, ready to charge the vehicle.

A cowboy galloped to the front of the herd and reined his horse to a stop beside the ox. Tossing its long horns wildly about, the creature flashed anger, bewilderment, and fear from its eyes. “Keep to the right,” the Australian cowboy yelled to Sister White; “Drive past as quickly as possible. He may not charge then.” Cautiously her driver edged the horse and carriage along the side of the road and passed the bellowing cattle. The huge ox stood watching them, making no move. Sister White believed that an angel had held the animal back, preventing it from harming them. The driver clucked to the horse, snapping the reins, and the animal broke into a trot.

Seeing the ox grieved Sister White. She saw in the event more than just God’s protection
from an angry beast. She knew that heat and thirst had enraged it. His nature revolted against the men’s cruelty, and he would not allow anyone to control him. He felt an intense, unreasoning hatred toward all men.

Sister White knew that animals did not naturally
hate mankind. They could have great love for human beings. “The intelligence displayed by many . . . animals approaches so closely to human intelligence that it is a mystery,” she wrote. “The animals see and hear and love and fear and suffer. They use their organs far more faithfully than many human beings use theirs. They manifest sympathy and tenderness towards their companions in suffering. Many animals show affection for those who have charge of them, far superior to the affection shown by some of the human race. They form attachments for man which are not broken without great suffering to them.” Ministry of Healing, pp. 325,316.

But no animal could learn to love the men herding them to the slaughterhouse.
The cowboys cared little for the sheep and cattle except for the money they would get when they sold the animals to the slaughterhouse.

Many of the creatures became injured, yet the men paid no attention to the wounds. Sister White saw a steer whose horns had broken off close to the skull. Blood flowed down its head. Other cattle hobbled along, lame. On a different trip to Sydney she counted eight sheep dead on the road, overcome by the exhaustion of the journey, the terrible heat, and the cruelty of the cowboys. Once she passed men picking up heavy sheep unable to travel any farther and bouncing them into the wagons, the sheep landing on their backs. When some died from the treatment, the drivers tossed the bodies out along the side of the road. At the slaughterhouse the animals remained in open corrals until fattened for the butchering. Then the butchers knocked them unconscious, slit their throats, and bled them to death. Working
in a slaughterhouse soon made men indifferent to suffering.

Seeing in such cruelty ample reason for not eating meat, Sister White wrote, “What man with a human heart, who has ever cared for domestic animals, could look into their eyes, so full of confidence and affection, and willingly give them over to the butcher’s knife? How could he devour their flesh as a sweet morsel?” Ibid., p. 316

“Think of the cruelty to animals that meat-eating involves, and its effect on those who inflict [death to the animal] and those who behold it. How it destroys the tenderness with which we should regard these creatures of God.” Ibid., p. 215.

Besides the cruelty to animals, God also showed Sister White many dangers to one’s health that come from eating flesh.
Not only did she urge others to be kind to animals, but also she was kind to them herself. Climbing aboard a wagon, she and two nurse-companions – Emily Campbell and May Walling – drove out to a nearby orchard to pick oranges. Stopping beside the orchard, the three women picked up baskets from the back of the wagon and walked among the trees to gather fruit. The return journey was even slower than the trip to the orchard. The fat old mare would not hurry. She plodded along, each step stirring up little puffs of dust, the wagon creaking behind her. But Sister White did not push or hurry the horse.

While wanting to get home quickly, she reconciled herself to the fact that she would have to wait awhile. “We then drove home as fast as this elephant of a horse would walk, for trot she would not,” she commented later with a note of humour. The horse pulled the wagon as best she could and that satisfied her.

We too should have similar care for the creatures that God has created.