Do you have a favorite Christian author? Growing up I enjoyed the novels of C.S. Lewis and in high school a friend introduced me to his masterpiece Mere Christianity. But it wasn’t until college that I discovered the books of my favorite author, the 19th century Christian leader Ellen White. Consistently, I’ve found her writings (such as Steps to Christ and The Desire of Ages) to be gifted with exceptional clarity and insight.
Wanting to better understand what makes them so powerful, I recently did an analysis of all of White’s books, articles, manuscripts, and other released writings. What I found amazed me. It is presented in the graphic below where the font size of each word corresponding to how often she employed it throughout her lifetime (that is, a word has twice the font size if she used it twice as often).
Far above anything else, she exalted Christ. Yes, she wrote about many important Biblical themes such as obedience and health, but she always kept these things in the shadow of Christ. In her own words,
“There is one great central truth to be kept ever before the mind in the searching of the Scriptures—Christ and Him crucified. Every other truth is invested with influence and power corresponding to its relation to this theme.” (Manuscript 31, 1890)
Raw data (word count): Christ (83,441), Jesus (41,563), Love (33,924), Faith (30,587), Character (22,799), Law (15,393), Grace (14,948), Prayer (12,372), Health (11,533), Service (11,196), Salvation (11,143), Bible (10,304), Hope (9,822), Gospel (9,528), Judgment (8,298), Sabbath (7,265), Obedience (6,626), Commandments (6,303), Dress (2,476), Diet (2,375).
