Apology and Defence
William Miller’s own account, published in 1845, of how he came to expect the return of Christ about 1843, how he preached it, and how he judged the disappointment of 1844. Published about nine months after the last date passed.
The pamphlet is addressed “to all who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity” and opens by saying that the public has a right to a candid statement about his disappointment. It tells of his years as a Deist, his service in the army, his conversion in 1816, the two years of Bible study that led him to the year 1843, his reluctance to speak in public, and the spread of his lectures. It gives the two periods he had expected, the year ending 21 March 1844 and then 22 October 1844, and admits that he was mistaken in both. Its last pages reject the teachings that some drew from the second date.
It is the chief first-hand source for William Miller’s life and reasoning, and it is a retrospect: dates in it are given from memory, as he says himself of his first lecture (“as nearly as I can remember”). It prints the year of that lecture as 1833; Sylvester Bliss, in his Memoirs of William Miller (1853), p. 98, corrected it to 1831 from Miller’s letters. See the Millerites and the Great Disappointment.
Cited in
- 22 October 1844, firm date