_MILLERISM._


Toward the close of the last century there was born in New
England one William Miller, whose life, until he was past fifty,
was the life of the average American of his time. He drank, we
suppose, his share of New England rum, when a young man; married
a comely Yankee girl, and reared a family of chubby-cheeked
children; went about his business, whatever it was, on week
days, and when Sunday came, went to meeting with commendable
regularity. He certainly read the Old Testament, especially the
Book of Daniel, and of the New Testament at least the Book of
Revelation. Like many a wiser man before him, he was troubled at
what he read, filled as it was with mystical numbers and strange
beasts, and he sought to understand it, and to apply it to the
days in which he lived. He made the discovery that the world
was to be destroyed in 1843, and went to and fro in the land
preaching that comfortable doctrine. He had many followers--as
many as fifty thousand, it is said, who thought they were
prepared for the end of all things; some going so far as to lay
in a large stock of ascension robes. Though no writer himself, he
was the cause of a great deal of writing on the part of others,
who flooded the land with a special and curious literature--the
literature of Millerism. It is not of that, however, that we
would speak now.

But before this Miller arose--we proceed to say, if only to show