Morning worship was over in the Guilford family, but the boys and girls lingered to hear the outcome of a very interesting question.

"Sylvia," said Mr. Guilford, "couldn't we get William to come over, since the minister is away, and talk to us and the neighbors tomorrow about the coming of the Lord?"

"Oh," said his wife, who was William Miller's sister, "I'm afraid William wouldn't do it. You know he says he is no preacher. Of course he has talked to us and his neighbors about the prophecies, but he wouldn't speak in public."

"Well," returned Mr. Guilford, "he needn't preach. We'll gather the neighbors in here, and he can come and sit and talk with us. He can just talk to the neighbors, and that's enough. Why," and Mr. Guilford sat up in his armchair very vigorously, "if he believes that the Lord is coming about 1844, he has to tell it. The world must know."

"The prophecies are right, aren't they, Silas?" demanded Mrs. Guilford.

"The prophecies are right," he answered, "and William's figures seem all right. That's why I want him to come and talk to us so we can all get it straightened out."

"You might send Irving over to see," she said. And at that, Irving, a tall sixteen-year-old boy, straightened up from the doorpost he had been leaning against, and stretched his hand up toward his cap-peg.

"Irving," said his father, "saddle the brown mare and ride over to Uncle William's. Tell him the Baptist minister is away, and we want him to come over for tomorrow and talk to us and the neighbors about the coming of the Lord."

"Hadn't I better cut across the lake, pa, at Brennan's Landing? I can get a boat there," said the boy.

"All right," said his father; "quickest way to get to Low Hampton."

"Breakfast is all ready," said Patience, the oldest girl, looking in from the lean-to kitchen.

"Can't wait for breakfast," answered Irving, as he bolted through the door.

And that is how, galloping, galloping along the lakeshore, puffing, pulling at the oars with all the muscles of arms and legs and back, and cutting across country on foot the other side of the lake, he came to William Miller's with the message of the work he must do just as Miller thought he had rolled off its burden.

"Father wants you to come over to our place tomorrow and talk to us on the coming of Christ," said the boy. "The minister is away, and we'll have all the neighbors come to our house, so you can have the whole church there."

Miller looked at the boy without speaking. He was thunderstruck. The Lord had taken him up on his promise. Without answering a word, he strode past the boy and out of the house. He walked down toward his grove, all the way the words sounding in his ears, "Go and tell it! Go and tell it!" When he reached the grove, he fell on his knees and prayed that the Lord would release him from his promise. But all the answer he received was, "Go and tell it to the world." He could not get away from it. He had promised that if he was called to speak in public, he would; and now, not half an hour afterward, he had the call.

"I will," he said at last in tears; and rising, he went back to the house, where Irving Guilford still waited. "I'll go with you," said William Miller to his nephew; and after dinner they started off, Miller's Bible and psalmbook under his arm.

The next day, Sunday, all the neighbors who belonged to the Baptist church came flocking to the Guilford house, for all the little Guilfords had been sent around the neighborhood, telling the people to come and hear William Miller talk about the coming of the Lord.

They crowded full the big room of the log house, sitting on quilt-covered boards stretched from chair to stool and from stool to wood-block. The children came with their fathers and mothers, the older ones crowding close to their parents, and the little ones sitting on mother's lap or standing at father's knee. So they waited, breathless, on that October morning for the talk that was to begin the giving of the Second Advent message in America.

William Miller sat in the big armchair, his sturdy body, now a little bent at the shoulders, amply filling it, his earnest eyes lighting up his square-chiseled face, as the points of his theme passed through his mind.

They sang a hymn, and prayer was offered. And then William Miller, still sitting in the big armchair, read to the neighbors the message from Daniel. He showed them how the empires of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Grecia, and Rome had come and gone, as the prophecy showed under the symbols of the lion, the bear, the leopard, and the terrible beast with iron teeth; how the papal power, "the little horn," had oppressed and killed the saints of God for 1260 years; and how, 2300 years from the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem, the sanctuary should be cleansed, which, as he said, and as they all believed, meant the cleansing of the earth by fire.

Then he showed them how that commandment went forth in 457 B. C., and he had them figure it themselves, and they saw it come out in 1843 or 1844.

There was a little boy at that meeting who lived for half a century after, and he told me much of all this. He remembered, oh, so distinctly, Uncle William Miller sitting there in the big armchair, talking about the coming of the Lord. And he remembered how, though Uncle William Miller was not preaching, but only telling very simply what the Bible told, there came into the meeting a power more than they had felt with any preacher before, and how the tears came to the eyes of strong men, and gentle women wept, and the children, whose ears and hearts had been open, understood the truth very well too, and they believed truly that Jesus was very soon coming.

After the meeting, some crowded around William Miller, asking him more about the beasts that meant kingdoms, and the days that meant years, and the sanctuary that was to be cleansed. Others went silently away, thinking, thinking very deeply. But they all, before they left, made Miller promise to stay and tell them more. You see he knew now that the Lord had set him to do this work, and he could not stop with just one talk. So for several days he stayed with his sister's family, and every day and every evening the people came, and he talked with them, and they believed. Many who had been worldly were converted again, many who had been thought good and great confessed their sins and sought to get ready to meet Jesus, and children were brought to their Saviour.

The children used to hold little prayer meetings all alone by themselves, besides meeting with the older ones. Out into the groves they would go, not for a picnic, but to pray together that God would make their hearts clean, make them kind and loving and helpful to father and mother and brothers and sisters and playmates. A great work was done there in Dresden, for nearly every one of the church members, and many others, accepted Jesus as their Saviour, and began to prepare for His coming.

When William Miller reached home again after his visit, he found a letter waiting for him from a minister in Poultney, Vermont, where he used to live, asking him to come to that place and speak on the coming of Christ. He went, and there again many were brought to Jesus. And from this time on, William Miller could not rest, for from everywhere people were calling for him to speak to them. Of course there were people to make fun of him and what he taught, men who would call him hard names and tell lies about him, ministers who did not really love Jesus and who did not want Him to come, who tried to prove William Miller wrong. But still the work grew, and thousands were converted. Many men who had been infidels, or deists like Miller himself, were led to believe the Bible true, for they saw its prophecies had been fulfilled, and hundreds of them confessed their belief in the Bible and in Jesus, and began to look for His appearing.

For several years William Miller, though he awakened great interest in New York, New England, and Canada, and though he saw many people converted and added to the different churches, yet had to work alone. But in 1839, he preached in the city of Boston, Massachusetts, at the church of a young minister by the name of Joshua V. Himes. This young man believed what Mr. Miller taught about the coming of the Lord, and he wanted the message to go much farther and faster.

"Do you really believe," he asked Miller after the sermon, "do you really believe what you preach about the coming of the Lord?"

"Of course I do," answered William Miller, "or I would not preach it."

"Well, then," said Himes, "what are you doing to give it to the world? The big cities ought to hear it."

"I am doing what I can."

"Well," said Himes, " the whole thing is kept in a corner yet. After all you have done, very few know of it. If Christ is to come in a few years, no time should be lost in telling the world."

"I know it, I know it, Brother Himes," said Mr. Miller, "but what can an old farmer do?" and he spread his hands in a gesture of despair. "I have been looking for someone to take hold of the message and help give it; but though the ministers seem glad to have me come and preach and add people to their churches, no one has ever offered to help give the message."

"Well," said Himes, "will you go with me where doors are open?"

"I am willing to go anywhere and work my hardest to the end," he answered.

And from that time on, Joshua Himes began traveling with Father Miller,—as he was now called, because of his kind and fatherly ways and because he was old. The work moved much faster, and many more men came in to give the message. There were Charles Fitch, who planned and made the first prophetic charts, such as I am sure you have all seen; and Josiah Litch, and Henry Dana Ward, and Elon Galusha, and George Storrs, a popular evangelist in New York City, and Joseph Bates, who had been a sea captain, and now was to be a greater captain in the army of the Lord; and there came at last to be hundreds of preachers.

Himes proposed to start a paper to tell the message. But he was as poor as the rest were. Father Miller had been having pamphlets published to give away, and had been paying all his own traveling expenses, and what little money he had was eaten up almost faster than he got it. They wanted the paper, but how could they get money to print it? But as Himes told the people about how anxious he was to start the paper, one day an old man, a sea captain from the state of Maine, stepped up and handed him a silver dollar. "Here's a dollar for the paper, Brother Himes," said he. That one dollar was the first in a fund with which Himes started a paper called, The Signs of the Times, and very soon this paper was going everywhere, telling the message.

In those days they started camp meetings. Camp meetings were new then. The Methodists seem to have started them first, a few years before, in the West, where people had to come to a camp meeting to hear a preacher at all. They would come from a hundred miles around, to stay for two or three days to hear the minister preach. They camped out in the woods, in booths or wigwams made of poles and branches, and the meetings were held outdoors. Then, when they began to have them in the East, in New England and New York and other places, some people took tents with them, in which several families lived, separated by curtains, while others camped outdoors. And the meetings were held outdoors still, around a rough platform built for the ministers.

And this was the kind of camp meeting the believers in Jesus' coming began to have all through the land. Sometimes as many as ten thousand people would be gathered together, all quiet and orderly; for they came to hear the terrible and wonderful and glad tidings of the coming of Jesus. The new advent hymns that were beginning to be sung added great power to the preaching. Do you know any of those hymns? You can find some of them in the "Church Hymnal," from No. 659 to No. 670. One of the most beautiful ones is No. 338, written by Charles Fitch. It begins:

"One precious boon, 0 Lord, I seek,

While tossed upon life's billowy sea:

To hear a voice within me speak,

'Thy Saviour is well pleased with thee.'

Those that the people sang more often, perhaps, making the air ring with the deep chorus, were like this one:

"Hear the glorious proclamation,

The glad tidings of salvation,

Hear the glorious proclamation

Of the Saviour near.

" While the heavenly choir of angels,

While the heavenly choir of angels,

While the heavenly choir of angels

Shall be chanting through the sky."

From east and west, north and south, people were sending in letters asking for preachers to come and tell them of the message. Miller and Himes visited Philadelphia, and Washington, the capital of the country, and hundreds of other towns. And the other ministers, many of whose names we do not now know, were at work in almost every town in the Northern states. People in the South were calling for them, in Charleston, S. C., in Savannah, Ga., and Mobile, Ala., and many other places. William Miller could not go on to these places, because he had promised to go to so many others, but some ministers did go into the South. A little later we shall have the story of how two carried the message to both slaves and white people.

At this time, too, the believers in America began to hear how the message was going all over the world. They heard of Joseph Wolff in Asia, of Edward Irving in England, and of the messengers in many other places. A missionary returning from the Holy Land told them they were hearing the message there, and sea captains told of being asked about it at every port where they stopped, and of finding books and papers. It was found before long that the message was indeed going to every part of the earth.