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."
"Oh, he sat down to the table the other evening, and looked it all over, and said, 'My God, what a supper!'"
I was tempted to ask the Millerite sister what she thought of the discrepancy between the first and the second chapter of Genesis. In the first chapter Man and Woman were a simultaneous creation. In the second chapter, Woman was an afterthought. But I had the deep sagacity to hold my tongue, and leave her and her _creed_ in peace.