192 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



commenced a historical detail of the fluctuating opinions 

 of my mind for the last seven years. But I now see that 

 a narrative so long and in which I will require to be so 

 careful of error will engross more of my time than I can 

 conveniently devote to it at present/ 



The ' historical detail ' here referred to, in so far as 

 it appears to have ever been written down, is contained 

 in an unfinished letter, dated October, 1826. It is a 

 somewhat rough though not a careless sketch, and, from 

 the expressions just quoted, a doubt may be reasonably 

 entertained whether Miller considered it, even in the part 

 which he completed, perfectly accurate. What is more to 

 be regretted, it was never finished. The dark side of his 

 spiritual history is portrayed in what he wrote, but the 

 bright side and the transition between the dark and the 

 bright continue unrevealed. The want, it is true, can, in 

 all essential respects, be supplied from other letters, or 

 from passages in his works. There is no ground for 

 doubt as to the conclusion, theoretic or practical, at which 

 he arrived. But a delineation by himself of his spiritual 

 experience at this crisis of his religious history would 

 have had a nice verisimilitude which no description by 

 another hand can attain. It is important to observe that 

 he takes the tone of one describing a process which has 

 reached its issue ; he believes himself to have ' a changed 

 heart/ and he aims at explaining to his friend how the 

 change took place. Every subsequent year of Miller's 

 life bore testimony that, on this point, he was not mis- 

 taken. Here is what remains of the ' historical detail/ 



' I know not in what words to confess that your last 

 letter, friendly and affection-breathing as it was, alarmed 

 and in some degree rendered me unhappy. You recog- 

 nize, you address me as a Christian Brother ; and when 

 I look within and see how doubtful the signs of a radical 



