Nathaniel Currier's lithograph of William Miller that graces the cover of this book depicts him as a self-confident prophet preparing to explain the mysteries of the book of Daniel. David Rowe, in contrast, presents Miller as a man who struggled to come to grips with his own spiritual shortcomings, needed the reassuring support of family and peers, and was characterized by uncertainty and contradiction throughout his life. That Miller's eschatological views could gain a substantial following attests to the democratic nature of religion in the first half of the nineteenth century, and Rowe portrays him as an individual shaped by the political culture, social assumptions, and spiritual landscape of his day rather than as a religious innovator who intentionally set out to create a personal following. Shattering the one-dimensional conception of Miller as some delusional crackpot who foolishly predicted a specific date for the Second Coming of Christ, this well-written, sympathetic biography effectively examines the numerous complexities of an untrained layman who studied his Bible, believed that it could be plainly understood, and discovered a message that, he hoped, would result in the conversion of souls.
Born in Massachusetts in 1782, William Miller grew up in Hampton, New York, the eldest of sixteen children. Although the seasonal rhythms of farm work shaped his daily experiences, young Bill, as his family called him, loved to read and desperately sought to better his lot in life. At age twenty-one, he married Lucy Smith and moved across the state border to Poultney, Vt. Rowe interprets Miller's relocation as a rejection of his family, a conscious decision to associate with men whose social connections could further his personal ambition. Furthermore, his religious skepticism and acceptance of deism represented a repudiation of his mother's orthodox faith and demonstrated his search for an existence based on reason and rational action. Military service during the War of 1812 provided the opportunity to exercise leadership, but instead of finding evidence of innate human goodness and mutual compassion in his earthly relationships, he encountered only “the ingratitude of man” (54). The deaths of several family members and a beloved fellow soldier during the war prompted him to reevaluate his religious assumptions, and, at the age of thirty-three, he determined that it was time for the prodigal son to return home. He built a house on the family homestead and immediately became a leader in the local Baptist church. Still trying to gain approval with God by living a virtuous life, Miller's resistance to the idea of unmerited grace as the grounds for salvation dissipated during a revival that shook the entire community, and his “unexpected conversion” in 1816 launched his personal odyssey to square human reason with revealed religion (68).
Dispensing with all biblical commentaries, Miller engaged in an intensive two-year study of scripture from Genesis to Revelation using only his raw intellect and a concordance. By interpreting the prophetic day as a solar year, the naïve exegete concluded that Christ would return to earth “on or before 1843” (75). Rowe demonstrates that Miller was far from dogmatic in reaching this conclusion, and for several years he wavered as various scriptural passages seemed to cast doubt on his prognostication. Indeed, thirteen years elapsed before Miller publicly declared his views. Feeling compelled to proclaim the message that God had revealed to him yet at the same time making excuses for his inadequacies as a public speaker, the nearly fifty-year-old layman finally yielded to “go and tell it to the world” in August 1831 (97–98). The positive reception of his theory pleased him and paved the way for newspaper publicity in 1832, a successful pamphlet in 1833, and a full-blown book in 1836 that enjoyed three other editions. Between 1835 and 1837, he preached an average of sixty-eight engagements each year in small towns throughout New York, Vermont, and even Canada, sometimes booked for an entire series of lectures on the end times. By the late 1830s, Miller's growing popularity garnered him invitations to larger cities, and in a short period of time the unassuming farmer had mastered the techniques of nineteenth-century revivalism. Success did not come without opposition, and numerous ministers publicly opposed Miller's prophetic views. His vitriolic and vindictive responses, Rowe maintains, reveal a sensitive man who craved acceptance and took each rejection personally. Although Miller had hoped to unify Christ's church, his controversial apocalyptic ideas divided his local assembly and believers of all denominations. In fact, without the assistance and vision of Joshua V. Himes, a Boston minister who considered Miller his spiritual father, the entire house of cards might have collapsed. After the period from March 21, 1843, to March 21, 1844, the predicted window for Christ's appearance, passed without incident, Himes convinced Miller to endorse October 22, 1844, the Jewish Day of Atonement, as the explicit date of Christ's return. Having missed the mark a second time, this Great Disappointment could have shattered the movement, yet Himes's skillful damage control resulted in a conference that united numerous Adventists who had been plagued by infighting. Anathematized by his Baptist church, Miller had little reason not to support this sectarian effort, and with the publication of his Apology and Defense in 1845 he acknowledged his dating miscalculations but ultimately vindicated his actions by claiming that they had “resulted in God's glory” (217).
Rowe superbly navigates through the tangled web of contradictions and self-justifications that clutter the writings of Miller and his contemporaries who sought to use his legacy to build the Seventh-day Adventist denomination in the 1850s. Although at times he might push the psychological analysis into Miller's motives and actions a bit too far for the tastes of some historians, his overall rendering of this complex man rings true. Furthermore, Rowe's ability to situate Miller in the context of his times reveals him as a plausible product of his era rather than a historical anomaly. Both scholars of American religion and inquisitive lay readers should find God's Strange Work a biographical gem.
