The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 5.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

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[424] found among the believers men of refined and exalted spiritualism, who in their lives and conversation remind one of Tennyson's Christian knight-errant in his yearning towards the hope set before him:

to me is given
     Such hope I may not fear;
I long to breathe the airs of heaven,
     Which sometimes meet me here.

I muse on joys that cannot cease,
     Pure spaces filled with living beams,
White lilies of eternal peace,
     Whose odors haunt my dreams.

One of the most ludicrous examples of the sensual phase of Millerism, the incongruous blending of the sublime with the ridiculous, was mentioned to me not long since. A fashionable young woman in the western part of this State became an enthusiastic believer in the doctrine. On the day which had been designated as the closing one of time she packed all her fine dresses and toilet valuables in a large trunk, with long straps attached to it, and, seating herself upon it, buckled the straps over her shoulders, patiently awaiting the crisis,—shrewdly calculating that, as she must herself go upwards, her goods and chattels would of necessity follow.

Three or four years ago, on my way eastward, I spent an hour or two at a camp-ground of the Second Advent in East Kingston. The spot was well chosen. A tall growth of pine and hemlock threw its melancholy shadow over the multitude, who were arranged upon rough seats of boards and logs. Several hundred—perhaps a thousand people–were present, and more were rapidly