behind the hills, the clouds were already breaking, and the white face
of the moon was peering through the ragged rifts.

CHAPTER VIII.

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