Coles (or Cole), Larkin Baker (1804–1856)

Larkin Baker Coles (or Cole) was a physician, a Millerite lecturer, a writer, and an abolitionist.¹ His book Philosophy of Health was the most comprehensive statement on health to come out of the Millerite community and had an enduring influence on the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s conception of health reform.² He resisted the tendency to set dates during the 1840s.

Early Life

Coles was born on April 10, 1804, in Westmoreland, New Hampshire, to Josiah (1781-1866) and Sally Baker (1784-1863) Cole (their surname was also spelled Coles). While not much is known about his early life, he prepared for a pastoral ministry as a young man. The Baptist congregation in Wakefield, Massachusetts, lists a “Rev. Larkin B. Cole” as one of their early ministers.³ He became minister after Isaac Sawyer, Jr. Sawyer had earlier been William Miller’s pastor in Hampton, New York, and endorsed Miller’s views on the second advent.⁴

Contemporary records indicate that Coles graduated from Newton Theological Seminary.⁵ He also graduated with an M.D. degree from Castleton Medical College in 1826.⁶ The school was Vermont’s first medical school and was affiliated with the Congregationalist Middlebury College.⁷ On February 14, 1827, he married Sarah “Eliza” Marshall Dyer [Dyar] (1800-1858).⁸ The couple had four children including Frances (1827-1870) and Charlotte (1831-1913). The other two died in childhood.⁹

Millerite Preacher and Physician

Coles worked as both a minister and physician during the 1830s and was actively involved in the reform movements of the time, specifically temperance and abolitionism. In the early 1830s he embraced the doctrine of Christ’s personal coming and rejected the notion of a temporal millennium.¹⁰ He was ordained April 19, 1837, as the pastor of the Baptist church in Hopkinton, New Hampshire.¹¹ His participation in the New Hampshire Temperance Society meeting was noted in records,¹² and his name also appears in the abolitionist newspaper, the Vermont Telegraph.¹³ In February 1840 he left Alstead, New Hampshire, to conduct revival meetings at the Baptist church in South Reading, Massachusetts.¹⁴ By April the church extended an invitation for him to become their pastor.¹⁵ He became increasingly recognized for his activism. For example, in 1841 Amos Farnsworth, from Groton, Massachusetts, described his strident abolitionism as having “out garrisoned Garrison.”¹⁶ He also was becoming a recognized revivalist as a result of his ministry. The next year, reportedly 22 people were baptized and added to the church. Eventually, due to his “doctrinal views,” he resigned and left the congregation in January 1842.¹⁷

Between 1842 and 1843, Coles traveled extensively sharing his views and conducting revivals. From late February through March, he held revival meetings for thirty days in Bernardston, Massachusetts, which resulted in forty baptisms including his youngest daughter. After a two-week break, he held additional meetings after which he reportedly led another twenty people to begin preparing for baptism. In October 1842 he spoke for revival meetings in Kingston, New Hampshire, which resulted in nine more baptisms.¹⁸ Reportedly, the following spring, some twenty individuals from this congregation joined the Millerite cause.¹⁹ By late 1842 Coles was living in Lowell, Massachusetts, which would become his home base. By March 1843 he reported that was turned away from speaking at a church because of his Second Advent convictions.²⁰ At some point in 1843, he went to Louisiana to share his second advent views.²¹ Coles was becoming an increasingly recognized author and lecturer within the Millerite movement.

In 1844, Millerites sought to convince other millennialists of Christ’s soon return. A hotly debated point among millennialists was whether the Jews would literally return to Palestine before Christ’s second coming. In keeping with his Millerite views, Coles argued that this was not needed for Christ’s return.²² After the spring disappointment, when Christ did not return on March 21, 1844, Coles viewed the date “an incidental” rather than “fundamental . . . error.”²³ This spring “disappointment” did not seem to faze him although it did incite strong reactions from opponents. Yet even the wicked scoffing, he believed, was in itself a sign of the end. If anything, it showed “that they are entirely destitute of sound argument to base their opposition.”²⁴ As others continued to set dates, Coles vacillated over the significance of a “time” message. He concluded that “a certain limited year, should never have been set.” He added that “to continue to fix the time upon any definite point in [the] future, is the consummation of folly.”²⁵ He worried that some Millerites had “imbibed very erroneous, soul-destroying notions on sanctification, and the influences of the Spirit. In some instances, no excesses have been too extravagant to be attributed to the Holy Ghost.”²⁶

Coles wrote about his “love” for the “theme” of Christ’s return. “Father Miller is an honest man before God: he will wear a crown of many stars in the day of final rewards. Let me share in his lot when the Judge shall come, rather than the destiny of those who look down upon him with scorn and contempt.”²⁷ Yet by the summer of 1844 he had begun to waver in his commitment to a precise date for Christ’s return and returned to pastoral ministry. In late summer 1844, he was the pastor of the Worthen Street Baptist Church in Lowell, Massachusetts. Yet as momentum built for the “seventh month movement,” which centered on the idea that Christ would return on the tenth day of the seventh month (October 22), he once again returned to his Second Advent beliefs, and the congregation disfellowshipped him on September 20, 1844.²⁸

After the Great Disappointment, Coles remained in Boston and was listed as a member of both the Boston Medical Association and the Massachusetts Medical Society where he was described as an orthodox physician in good and regular standing. He continued to preach and traveled up and down the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. He once went as far as Galveston, Texas. In early 1851 he gave a series of lectures in Charleston, South Carolina.²⁹ He then visited Columbia, South Carolina, to work as a physiological lecturer. While there, he was imprisoned for his abolitionist views.³⁰

Coles wrote The Philosophy of Health; or, Health Without Medicine. In this work he argued that “it is as truly a sin to violate one of these laws, as it is to violate one of the ten commandments.”³¹ He held similar ideas to those of William A. Alcott (1798-1859) who emphasized the moral obligation to preserve health. Coles furthermore argued that fresh air, exercise, a vegetarian diet, the avoidance of stimulants, reform in dress, sexual purity, and drugless medicine were the secret to health. Historian Ronald L. Numbers (1942-2023) noted that his books were so popular that his critics opined that his friends not only read but ate his books.³²

In 1853 Coles published The Beauties and Deformities of Tobacco-Using that, as one historian noted, marked a shift from “more medical” to a “moral” focus.³³ He argued tobacco was “a deadly narcotic” that stifled the brain’s reasoning and perceptive powers, impaired the hearing, vision, liver, lungs, and shortened smokers’ lives by 25 percent. The use of tobacco weakened the human system so much so that the smoker became easy prey to disease. In Ellen White’s chapter on “Health” published in Spiritual Gifts, vol. 4, Ellen White used Coles’ statement on the dangers of tobacco “sending its exciting and paralyzing influence into every nerve of the body.”³⁴

Coles died in January 1856 while visiting Louisville, Kentucky.³⁵ At the time of his death his estate was worth approximately $5,906 (the equivalent of $217,519 in 2023 dollars). He is buried in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky.³⁶

Legacy and Appropriation

Seventh-day Adventists in the 1860s frequently reprinted Coles’ “Nutriment Table” as evidence of the superiority of a vegetarian diet.³⁷ In 1864 Adventists published his work against tobacco in serial form so that “none [should] infer . . . that our people are especially addicted to this habit.”³⁸ His writings continued to be frequently excerpted in The Health Reformer. James (1821-1881) and Ellen (1827-1915) White reprinted some of his writings in their first major volume on health reform, a compilation of articles, published as Health; or, How to Live (1865).³⁹ When Ellen White put these pamphlets together, she drew content from “personal experience, from the word of God, and from the writings of able and experienced health reformers.”⁴⁰ Ellen White had a copy of the 37^th edition (1860) of Coles’ Philosophy of Health in her private library that has now been digitized and is available online.⁴¹ White later averred that she did not consult these books while she was formulating her core health reform writings.⁴² White encouraged Adventists to read the writings of Coles and other health reformers, even quoting Coles and republishing his writings. She saw her unique understanding of health reform less about the particular health reform practices and much more about a broader and holistic understanding of health and wholeness that was part of a distinctive Seventh-day Adventist worldview.⁴³

Such concerns about the origins of Ellen White’s health reform teachings were amplified in the twentieth century as some adherents claimed that Ellen White was a hundred years ahead of her time, including her health reform teachings. Such claims were refuted by scrutinizing historians who demonstrated that such teachings were advocated by Coles among other health reformers.⁴⁴ Ronald L. Numbers, after finding an annotated copy of Coles’ work owned by J. H. Kellogg, showed that Ellen White used Coles’ writings.⁴⁵ This copy contained marginal cross-references, written by Kellogg, noting portions of Ellen White’s Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene (a book Kellogg compiled from her writings) that corresponded with Coles’ work. When Kellogg became disenchanted with Adventism, he alleged that it was such dependence that contributed to his personal loss of faith in her prophetic ministry, although he clearly must have been aware of such dependence much earlier because he acknowledged it in the book’s introduction.⁴⁶ Since this discovery by Numbers, Adventist historians have noted that such debates reflected twentieth-century debates about inerrancy and the use of Ellen White’s writings against the backdrop of the wider Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy. More recent scholarship notes that Ellen White was able to sift and avoid extreme interpretations of health reform, even though she was a person of her time who had a nineteenth-century understanding of health and the body.⁴⁷ Both Numbers and Kellogg realized that White’s health writings were influenced by Coles.

White Estate officials affirmed in 1982 that Ellen White was especially fond of Coles’ The Philosophy of Health.⁴⁸ The White Estate’s critique of Numbers was quick to point out that just because Coles and other health reformers wrote about the same things should not diminish her claims to divine inspiration. They further argued that the prophetic gift was vital in guiding the fledgling denomination to value health reform and made a holistic understanding of health reform central to Adventist identity.

A careful review of Coles’ health reform teachings shows that while Ellen White admired his health reform teachings, she also demonstrated an independence of thought.⁴⁹ She especially appreciated Coles’ view that “health laws” must be obeyed, similar to the Ten Commandments, in order to achieve full health. Ellen White adopted these ideas, promoted his writings within the Adventist community, and cited Coles as a medical authority. Coles’ teachings are still significant historically for their emphasis upon (1) the theory of disease and its causes, (2) dietary reforms, and (3) protective health practices.⁵⁰ Coles’ activism demonstrates how early Millerites connected with the world around them; until the eschaton this meant fighting against slavery and living healthier lives.

Sources

Burton, Kevin M. “The Anti-Slavery War on Evangelicalism: A Critical Interrogation of Abolitionism, Evangelicalism, and Apocalypticism.” Ph.D. diss., Florida State University, 2023.

Coles, L. B. The Beauties and Deformities of Tobacco-using, or, Its Ludicrous and Its Solemn Realities. Boston: Brown, Taggard, and Chase, 1854.

Coles, L. B. “The Jews—Romans xi.” The Signs of the Times, and Expositor of Prophecy, May 17, 1843.

Coles, L. B. “Letter from L. B. Coles.” Signs of the Times, and Expositor of Prophecy, March 22, 1843.

Coles, L. B. “Letter from Bro. L. B. Coles.” The Advent Herald, and Signs of the Times Reporter, May 7, 1845.

Coles, L. B. “Letter from Brother L. B. Coles.” The Advent Herald, and Signs of the Times Reporter, July 2, 1845.

Coles, L. B. “Letter from Bro. L. B. Coles.” The Advent Herald, and Signs of the Times Reporter, July 16, 1845.

Coles, L. B. “On the 24^th of Matthew.” Signs of the Times, and Expositor of Prophecy, April 12, 1843.

Coles, Larkin B. The Philosophy of Health; or, Health Without Medicine: A Treatise on the Laws of the Human System. Boston: William D. Ticknor & Company, 1848.

Coles, Larkin B. “Proof from Opposers.” Signs of the Times, and Expositor of Prophecy, April 12, 1843.

Coles, L. B. “The Second Advent.” The Christian Reflector, May 16, 1844.

Coles, Larkin B. Tobacco-Using, Its Physical, Intellectual, and Moral Bearings; an Appeal to Young Men. [Fitchburg, MA]: [Anti-Tobacco Tract Depository], ca. 1850s.

Coles, L. B. “’Who Are Israelites!’” The Advent Herald, and Morning Watch, August 20, 1845.

Coon, Roger W. “Reexamining the Adventist Health Message—2: Were Ellen White’s Health Writings Unique? Does a Prophet Have to Say it First?” ARH, April 8, 1993.

Damsteegt, P. Gerard. “Health Reform and the Bible in Early Sabbatarian Adventism.” Adventist Heritage 5, no. 2 (Winter 1978): 13-21.

Graybill, Ron. “The ‘I Saw” Parallels in Ellen White’s Writings.” ARH, July 29, 1982.

Knight, George R. William Miller and the Rise of Adventism. Boise, ID: Pacific Press, 2010.

McMahon Don S. and Leonard Brand. The Prophet and Her Critics: A Striking New Analysis Refutes the Charges that Ellen G. White “Borrowed” the Health Message. Nampa, ID: Pacific Press, 2005.

Morgan, Kevin L. “Ellen White’s Adaptation of John C. Gunn’s Statement about the Effects of Tobacco.” Unpublished paper, n.d., https://www.academia.edu/36081223/Ellen_Whites_Adaptation_of_John_C_Gunns_Statement_about_the_Effects_of_Tobacco.

Numbers, Ronald L. Prophetess of Health: A Study of Ellen G. White, 3^rd ed. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2008.

Poirier, Tim. “Ellen G. White and Sources: The Plagiarism Debate – 125 Years Later.” Unpublished paper, 2012. https://whiteestate.org/about/issues/egw-sources/.

“South Carolina Pirates,” The Liberator, February 21, 1851.

Wheeler, Gerald. James White: Innovatory and Overcomer. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2003.

Notes

1. I am grateful for constructive comments from peer reviewers. I am additionally grateful to Kevin M. Burton for pointing me to several additional abolitionist sources, that have enriched this article.↩

2. Darrel W. Amundsen and Ronald L. Numbers, Caring and Curing: Health and Medicine in the Western Religious Traditions (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 449.↩

3. “Organized in 1804: Baptists of Wakefield Observe Centennial. Interesting Exercises in First Church Mark Anniversary,” The Boston Globe, February 1, 1904, 5.↩

4. For background on Isaac Sawyer, Jr., see Kevin M. Burton, “The Anti-Slavery War on Evangelicalism: A Critical Interrogation of Abolitionism, Evangelicalism, and Apocalypticism,” (Ph.D. diss., Florida State University, 2023), 132-135.↩

5. Frederick Clayton Waite, The First Medical College in Vermont: Castleton, 1818-1862 (Montpelier, VT: Vermont Historical Society, 1949), 204. No extant records survive to support this claim.↩

6. Castelton Medical College was founded in 1818 and became the first private degree-granting medical school in the United States. See list of graduates, “Middlebury College,” Vermont Statesman, August 30, 1826, 2; 26. Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Middlebury College, for the Academic Year, 1846-7: With the Course of Studies, Etc. (Troy, NY: J. C. Kneeland & Co., 1846), 26. The catalogue lists him as graduating in 1826 as well.↩

7. Castelton Medical College was the first medical school in Vermont and became affiliated with Middlebury College in 1820. See Frederick Clayton Waite, The First Medical College in Vermont, Castleton 1818-1862 (Montpelier, VT: Vermont Historical Society, 1949), 139.↩

8. See “Married,” Vermont Statesman, February 21, 1827, 3. She died April 22, 1858, at the age 58. See Nathan Crosby, Annual Obituary Notices of Eminent Persons Who Have Died in the United States for 1858 (Boston: John P. Jewett and Company, 1859), 67.↩

9. Harrison Gray Dyar, A Preliminary Genealogy of the Dyar Family (Washington, D.C.: Gibson Bros., 1903), 17; see also notice of death of Harrison Dyar Cole under “Deaths,” Vermont Chronicle, September 23, 1840, 3.↩

10. L. B. Coles, “The Second Advent,” The Christian Reflector, May 16, 1844, 1.↩

11. Christian Watchman, May 5, 1837, 71.↩

12. “N. H. Temperance Society,” Baptist Register, June 14, 1838, 94.↩

13. “Ordination,” Vermont Telegraph, July 24, 1839, 2.↩

14. See announcement in The Christian Watchman, May 15, 1840, 79.↩

15. “Revival of Religion in So. Reading,” Christian Watchman, July 10, 1840, 110.↩

16. Letter from Amos Farnsworth to Anne Warren Weston, November 22, 1841, Digital Common Web Archive. https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/cv43qh069↩

17. N. R. Everts, History of the First Baptist Church in Wakefield, Mass., 1800-1900 (Malden: Geo. E. Dunbar, 1901), 34-35.↩

18. L. B. Coles, “The Revival in Kingston,” Christian Reflector, November 2, 1842, 2.↩

19. N. R. Everts, History of the First Baptist Church in Wakefield, Mass., 1800-1900 (Malden: Geo. E. Dunbar, 1901),34-35.↩

20. L. B. Coles, “Letter from L. B. Coles,” The Signs of the Times, and Expositor of Prophecy, March 22, 1843, 22-23.↩

21. See account by L. B. Coles referenced in “Letter from a Brother at the South West,” The Midnight Cry! July 20, 1843, 174.↩

22. L. B. Coles, “The Jews—Romans xi,” The Signs of the Times, and Expositor of Prophecy, May 17, 1843, 86-87.↩

23. Christian Reflector, May 16, 1844, 77. Quoted in George R. Knight, William Miller and the Rise of Adventism (Boise, ID: Pacific Press, 2010), 137.↩

24. L. B. Coles, “Proof from Opposers,” Signs of the Times, and Expositor of Prophecy, April 12, 1843, 42. He adds in the article: “I cannot but regard their unparalleled scoffing of the ungodly, as among the most striking fulfillments of prophecy concerning the last days. The unsanctified ingenuity of men and devils is tasked in this matter to the very uttermost. No doctrine that has ever excited the public mind, either on religious or secular matters, has ever probably, till now, drawn from its enemies such unrestrained, vulgar, blasphemous representations. . . . we are strengthened in our faith by their conduct.”↩

25. Christian Reflector, May 16, 1844, 77.↩

26. Ibid.↩

27. L. B. Coles, “The Second Advent,” The Christian Reflector, May 16, 1844, 1.↩

28. See notices in The Christian Reflector, October 31, 1844, 175; November 21, 1844, 187.↩

29. See announcement of lecture in The Charleston Mercury, January 11, 1851, 2.↩

30. Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children in Four Volumes, vol. III—1841-1860 (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1894), 326, fn. 1. For details, see “South Carolina Pirates,” The Liberator, February 21, 1851, 31.↩

31. L. B. Coles, Philosophy of Health: Natural Principles of Health and Cure; or, Health and Cure Without Drugs. Also, the Moral Bearings of Erroneous Appetites, 41^st ed. Rev. and enl. (Boston: Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1855), 8. For contextual considerations, see Zane Yi, “Adventist Anthropology: Conditionalism, Physicalism, and Perfection,” in The Oxford Handbook of Seventh-day Adventism, eds. Michael W. Campbell, Christie Chow, Denis Kaiser, and Nicholas Miller (New York: Oxford, 2024), 217-228.↩

32. As cited by Ronald L. Numbers, Prophetess of Health: A Study of Ellen G. White, 3^rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2008), 108.↩

33. Richard Kluger, Ashes to Ashes: America’s Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), 16.↩

34. Larkin B. Coles, Philosophy of Health: Natural Principles of Health and Cure (Boston: Tricknor, Reed, & Fields, 1848), 22. For an analysis of these statements, see Kevin L. Morgan, “Ellen White’s Adaption of John C. Gunn’s Statement about the Effects of Tobacco” (unpublished paper, n.d.). See also Tim Poirier, “Ellen G. White and Sources: The Plagiarism Debate – 125 Years Later” (unpublished paper, 2012), 21, https://whiteestate.org/about/issues/egw-sources/↩

35. A newspaper listed two boxes of books that would be sold after thirty days to pay for charges if not claimed for “Doct. L. B. Coles,” in St. Louis, Missouri. See “Note to Consignee,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, May 13, 1856, 2. His “Dwelling House” in Boston was also advertised “To Let” further indicating his death. See Boston Evening Transcript, April 2, 1856, 4.↩

36. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/155238783/coles.↩

37. Cf. “Nutriment Table,” ARH, November 14, 1865, 192; G. W. A[madon], “Nutriment Table,” The Health Reformer, October 1867, 56-57.↩

38. See editorial note ARH, October 4, 1874, 152. As part of the series, “Tobacco-Using,” ARH, October 4, 1874, 146-147.↩

39. See excerpts that appear as: “Particular Directions to Parents and Guardians,” and “Cure Without Drugs,” in Health, or, How to Live (Battle Creek, MI: Steam Press of the Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1865), 3:17-27; “The Respiratory System,” Health, or, How to Live (Battle Creek, MI: Steam Press of the Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1865), 4:8-11.↩

40. Floyd Greenleaf and Jerry Moon, “Builder,” in Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet, eds. Terrie Dopp Aamodt, Gary Land, and Ronald L. Numbers (New York: Oxford, 2014), 130.↩

41. See digitized copy in the Adventist Digital Library at https://adventistdigitallibrary.org/adl-426581/philosophy-health-natural-principles-health-and-cure?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=88d72032a5e18e1341c5&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=2&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=11.↩

42. She stated:  "I did not read any works upon health until I had written Spiritual Gifts, volumes 3 and 4, Appeal to Mothers, and had sketched out most of my six articles in the six numbers of How to Live.” Ellen G. White, “Questions and Answers,” ARH, October 8, 1867, 260.↩

43. For a response, see Robert W. Olson, “Ellen White’s Denials,” Ministry, February 1991, https://www.ministrymagazine.org/archive/1991/02/ellen-whites-denials##note4.↩

44. For an example of the claims of critics of Ellen White, see “Health Plagiarisms: Evidence Ellen White Copied from L.B. Coles and Others,” NonSDA.org, accessed September 7, 2023, https://www.nonsda.org/egw/health2.shtml.↩

45. The copy contains the label: “Private Library of J. H. Kellogg, M.D.”↩

46. R. W. Schwarz, ed., “J. H. Kellogg Interview with the Brethren, October 7, 1907,” Spectrum 20, no. 3 (April 1990): 46-62; idem., “Kellogg Snaps, Crackles, and Pops; His Last Interview as an Adventist—Part 2,” Spectrum 20, no. 4 (June 1990): 37-61.↩

47. Don S. McMahon, Acquired or Inspired? Exploring the Origins of the Adventist Lifestyle, rev. ed. (Victoria, Australia: Signs Publishing Company, 2005).↩

48. Cf. Ron Graybill, “The ‘I Saw” Parallels in Ellen White’s Writings,” ARH, July 29, 1982, 4-6.↩

49. For an overview see Denis Fortin, “Plagiarism,” in The Ellen G. White Encyclopedia, 2^nd ed (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2013), 1028-1035.↩

50. Ruth Clifford Engs, Clean Living Movements: American Cycles of Health Reform (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2000), 31-32.↩