The Millerites--or Second Adventists, as they now call themselves--are
the first sect that I remember. They are a people of remarkable vigor:
they have been at work for seventy years to bring this world to an end,
and although they have been wrong in their arithmetic all these years,
they rub out the slate and begin again.
And they prove everything by the Bible, as all other denominations do.
The "time" has been set at least twenty times since I can remember. I
recollect having awful palpitations in the kneepans upon one of the
eventful days, and crawling under the barn so as not to be in the
way. They used to congregate on the height of land near my father's,
"to go up," and one man climbed upon an old shed, and fell and broke
his hip; he fainted, and they thought he was dead. As soon as he had
revived a little, they asked him if he had any requests to make before
he died. He replied, "I want you to work in 'durn fool' somewhere on
my tombstone." He recovered, and lived many years, but he was cured of
Millerism.
A large share of the students of the Second Advent doctrine came into
this world, not only naked, but without any brains, nor any place
suitable to put any; and the first business they do is to wonder about
their souls and talk about being "born again." They never seem to
realize that to be well born is much more essential than to be "born
again." I never knew immortality to be secured at the second birth.
I attended one of their meetings this year, and asked one of the
sisters for their _creed_. She said, "Our creed is the whole Bible,
from the first book of Genesis to the last word of the last chapter of
Revelations."
I thought of what a boy said when the Baptist Elder came and took tea
at his home, and asked a "blessing."
The boy said: "Is that the way you ask a blessing? My father doesn't
ask it that way."
"How does he ask it?"
"Oh, he sat down to the table the other evening, and looked it all
over, and said, 'My God, what a supper!'"