every religious delusion has grown from some fundamental error in the
previous religious teaching of the people. By the narrowly verbal method
of reading the Scripture, so much in vogue in the polemical discussions
of the past generation, and still so fervently adhered to by many
people, the ground was prepared for Millerism. And to-day in many
regions the soil in made fallow for the next fanaticism. It is only a
question of who shall first sow and reap. To people educated as those
who gathered in Sugar Grove school-house had been to destroy the spirit
of the Scripture by distorting the letter in proving their own sect
right, nothing could be so overwhelming as Elder Hankins's "figgers."

For he had clearly studied figgers to the neglect of the other branches
of a liberal education. His demonstration was printed on a large chart.
He began with the seventy weeks of Daniel, he added in the "time and
times and a half," and what Daniel declared that he "understood not when
he heard," was plain sailing to the enlightened and mathematical mind of
Elder Hankins. When he came to the thousand two hundred and ninety days,
he waxed more exultant than Kepler in his supreme moment, and on the
thousand three hundred and five and thirty days he did what Jonas
Harrison called "the blamedest tallest cipherin' he'd ever seed in all
his born days."

Jonas was the new hired man, who had stopped into the shoes of August at
Samuel Anderson's. He sat by August and kept up a running commentary, in
a loud whisper, on the sermon, "My feller-citizen," said Jonas,
squeezing August's arm at a climax of the elder's discourse, "My
feller-citizen, looky thar, won't you? He'll cipher the world into
nothin' in no time. He's like the feller that tried to find out the
valoo of a fat shoat when wood was two dollars a cord. 'Ef I can't do it
by substraction I'll do it by long-division,' says he. And ef this