FIGGERS WON'T LIE
"Figgers won't lie," said Elder Hankins, the Millerite preacher. "I say
figgers won't lie. When a Methodis' talks about fallin' from grace he
has to argy the pint. And argyments can't be depended 'pon. And when a
Prisbyterian talks about parseverance he haint got the absolute
sartainty on his side. But figgers won't lie noways, and it's figgers
that shows this yer to be the last yer of the world, and that the final
eend of all things is approachin'. I don't ask you to listen to no
'mpressions of me own, to no reasonin' of nobody; all I ask is that you
should listen to the voice of the man in the linen-coat what spoke to
Dan'el, and then listen to the voice of the 'rithmetic, and to a sum in
simple addition, the simplest sort of addition."
All the Millerite preachers of that day were not quite so illiterate as
Elder Hankins, and it is but fair to say that the Adventists of to-day
are a very respectable denomination, doing a work which deserves more
recognition from others than it receives. And for the delusion which
expects the world to come to an end immediately, the Adventist leaders
are not responsible in the first place. From Gnosticism to Mormonism,
every religious delusion has grown from some fundamental error in the
previous religious teaching of the people. By the narrowly verbal method
of reading the Scripture, so much in vogue in the polemical discussions
of the past generation, and still so fervently adhered to by many
people, the ground was prepared for Millerism. And to-day in many
regions the soil in made fallow for the next fanaticism. It is only a
question of who shall first sow and reap. To people educated as those
who gathered in Sugar Grove school-house had been to destroy the spirit
of the Scripture by distorting the letter in proving their own sect
right, nothing could be so overwhelming as Elder Hankins's "figgers."
For he had clearly studied figgers to the neglect of the other branches
of a liberal education. His demonstration was printed on a large chart.
He began with the seventy weeks of Daniel, he added in the "time and
times and a half," and what Daniel declared that he "understood not when
he heard," was plain sailing to the enlightened and mathematical mind of
Elder Hankins. When he came to the thousand two hundred and ninety days,
he waxed more exultant than Kepler in his supreme moment, and on the
thousand three hundred and five and thirty days he did what Jonas
Harrison called "the blamedest tallest cipherin' he'd ever seed in all
his born days."
Jonas was the new hired man, who had stopped into the shoes of August at
Samuel Anderson's. He sat by August and kept up a running commentary, in
a loud whisper, on the sermon, "My feller-citizen," said Jonas,
squeezing August's arm at a climax of the elder's discourse, "My
feller-citizen, looky thar, won't you? He'll cipher the world into
nothin' in no time. He's like the feller that tried to find out the
valoo of a fat shoat when wood was two dollars a cord. 'Ef I can't do it
by substraction I'll do it by long-division,' says he. And ef this
'rithmetic preacher can't make a finishment of this sub_lu_nary speer by
addition, he'll do it by multiplyin'. They's only one answer in his
book. Gin him any sum you please, and it all comes out 1843!"
Now in all the region round about Sugar Grove school-house there was a
great dearth of sensation. The people liked the prospect of the end of
the world because it would be a spectacle, something to relieve the
fearful monotony of their lives. Funerals and weddings were commonplace,
and nothing could have been so interesting to them as the coming of the
end of the world, as described by Elder Hankins, unless it had been a
first-class circus (with two camels and a cage of monkeys attached, so
that scrupulous people might attend from a laudable desire to see the
menagerie!) A murder would have been delightful to the people of Clark
township. It would have given them something to think and talk about.
Into this still pool Elder Hankins threw the vials, the trumpets, the
thunders, the beast with ten horns, the he-goat, and all the other
apocalyptic symbols understood in an absurdly literal way. The world was
to come to an end in the following August. Here was an excitement,
something worth living for.
All the way to their homes the people disputed learnedly about the "time
and times and a half," about "the seven heads and ten horns," and the
seventh vial. The fierce polemical discussions and the bold sectarian
dogmatism of the day had taught them anything but "the modesty of true
science," and now the unsolvable problems of the centuries were taken
out of the hands of puzzled scholars and settled as summarily and
positively as the relative merits of "gourd-seed" and "flint" corn.
Samuel Anderson had always planted his corn in the "light" of the moon
and his potatoes in the "dark" of that orb, had always killed his hogs
when the moon was on the increase lest the meat should all go to gravy,
and he and his wife had carefully guarded against the carrying of a hoe
through the house, for fear "somebody might die." Now, the preaching of
the elder impressed him powerfully. His life had always been not so much
a bad one as a cowardly one, and to get into heaven by a six months'
repentance, seemed to him a good transaction. Besides he remembered that
there men were never married, and that there, at last, Abigail would no
longer have any peculiar right to torture him. Hankins could not have
ciphered him into Millerism if his wife had not driven him into it as
the easiest means of getting a divorce. No doom in the next world could
have alarmed him much, unless it had been the prospect of continuing
lord and master of Mrs. Abigail. And as for that oppressed woman, she
was simply scared. She was quite unwilling to admit the coming of the
world's end so soon. Having some ugly accounts to settle, she would fain
have postponed the payday. Mrs. Anderson might truly have been called a
woman who feared God--she had reason to.
And as for August, he would not have cared much if the world had come to
an end, if only he could have secured one glance of recognition from the
eyes of Julia. But Julia dared not look. The process of cowing her had
gone on from childhood, and now she was under a reign of terror. She did
not yet know that she could resist her mother. And then she lived in
mortal fear of her mother's heart-disease. By irritating her she might
kill her. This dread of matricide her mother held always over her. In
vain she watched for a chance. It did not come. Once, when her mother's
head was turned, she glanced at August. But he was at that moment
listening or trying to listen to one of Jonas Harrison's remarks. And
August, who did not understand the circumstances, was only able to
account for her apparent coldness on the theory suggested by Andrew's
universal unbelief in women, or by supposing that when she understood
his innocent remark about Andrew's disappointment to refer to her
mother, she had taken offense at it. And so, while the rest were
debating whether the world would come to an end or not, August had a
disconsolate feeling that the end of the world had already come. And it
did not make him feel better to have Wilhelmina whisper, "Oh! but she
_is_ pretty, that Anderson girl--a'n't she, August?"