mooney] ADVENTISTS 945 



Adventists, who are said at one time to have numbered over fifty thou 

 sand. Carried away by blind enthusiasm they made their preparations 

 lor tlic end hi' all things, which they confidently expected in the summer 

 of 1843. As the time drew near the believers made all preparations 

 for their final departure from the world, many of them selling their 

 property, and arraying themselves in white "ascension robes," which 

 were actually put on sale by the storekeepers for the occasion. But 

 the day and the year went by without the fulfillment of the prophecy. 

 Miller claimed to have discovered an error in his calculations and fixed 

 one or two other dates later on, but as these also proved false, bis 

 .followers lost faith and the delusion died out. The Adventists still 

 number fifteen or twenty thousand, the largest body being in southern 

 Michigan, but although they hold the doctrine of the near advent of 

 the final end, and endeavor to be at all times ready, they no longer 

 undertake to fix the date. 



It may be noted here that the idea of a millennium, when the Mes- 

 siah shall come in person upon the earth and reign with the just for a 

 thousand years, was so firmly held by many of the early Christians 

 that it may almost be said to have formed a part of the doctrinal tradi 

 tion of the church. The belief was an inheritance from the Jews, many 

 of whose sacred writers taught that time was to endure through seven 

 great "years" of a thousand years each, the seventh and hist being the 

 Sabbatical year or millennium, when their Messiah would appear and 

 make their kingdom the mistress of the world. For this materialistic 

 view of the millennium the Christian fathers substituted a belief in the 

 spiritual triumph of religion, when the armies of antichrist would be 

 annihilated, but the expectation of the return of Christ to rule in 

 person over his church before the last days was an essential part of the 

 doctrine, founded on numerous prophecies of both the Old and the New 

 Testament. 



OTHER PARALLELS 

 BEEKMANITES 



It would require a volume to treat of the various religious abnor- 

 malisms, based on hypnotism, trances, and the messiah idea, which 

 have sprung up and nourished in different parts of our own country 

 even within the last twenty years. Naturally these delusions thrived 

 best among the ignorant classes, but there were some notable excep- 

 tions, particularly in the case of the Beekmanites or ''Church of the 

 Bedeemed." About 1875 Mrs Dora Beekman, the wife of a Congrega- 

 tional minister in Boekford, Illinois, began preaching that she was the 

 immortal reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Absurd as this claim may 

 appear, she found those who believed her. and as her converts increased 

 in numbers they established their headquarters, which they called 

 "heaven," near Boekford, built a church, and went zealously to work 

 to gather proselytes. Beekman refused to believe the new doctrine, 



