“The letters addressed to him and his son at this period show that a report was in circulation that he was dead; and, that as soon as that was successfully contradicted, another was current that, on re-examining his calculations, he had discovered a mistake of one hundred years. Both of these rumors were several times subsequently revived, and had to be as often contradicted.
“On the 15th of September, in compliance with ‘the wish of many in Rutland, Vt.,’ who were ‘very anxious to hear’ his ‘course of lectures,’ he visited that place, and lectured each day, to the 22d, when he returned to his family, and made arrangements for a second visit to Massachusetts.
“He commenced his labors at Groton, Mass., on the 13th of October, and lectured ten days. In reference to these lectures and others in neighboring towns, Rev. Silas Hawley, Congregational minister, wrote from Groton, on the 10th of April, 1840, as follows:—
“‘Mr. Miller has lectured in this and adjoining towns with marked success. His lectures have been succeeded by precious revivals of religion in all those places. A class of minds are reached by him not within the influence of other men. His lectures are well adapted, so far as I have learned, for shaking the supremacy of the various forms of error that are rife in the community.’
“Closing his lectures in Groton, Mr. M. gave a third course of lectures in Lowell, continuing from the 23d of October to the 1st of November. These, like the previous lectures in that place, were attended with precious fruits.
“From the 2d to the 10th of November, he lectured in Haverhill, Mass., where he made the acquaintance of Elder Henry Plummer, pastor of the Christian church, who embraced his views, and was a steadfast friend till Mr. Miller’s decease.
“On the 11th of November, Mr. M. commenced a course of lectures in Exeter, N. H., which continued till the 19th. On the 12th, a conference of the Christian Connection was in session there, and they called on Mr. Miller in a body. He was a stranger to nearly all of them; and few of them regarded his views with anything more than mere curiosity. Several of them questioned him respecting his faith; but they were speedily silenced by the quotation of appropriate texts of Scripture.
“It was on this occasion that he became acquainted with Elder Joshua V. Himes, then pastor of the Chardon-street church, Boston. Elder H. had written to Mr. M., on the 19th of October, inviting him to give a course of lectures in his chapel. He now renewed his invitation, and got the promise of a course of lectures in December. Before commencing there, Mr. Miller gave a second course of lectures in Stoughton, Mass., from the 24th to the 29th of November, and one in Canton, Mass., from the 1st to the 6th of December. In this last place, he writes to his son, that he ‘lectured three times on the last day, to a house jammed full.’ Pressing invitations for further labors in the surrounding region had to be disregarded, in order to fulfill his engagement in the metropolis of New England.
“He arrived in Boston on the 7th of December, and from the 8th to the 16th lectured in the Chardon-street chapel,—his first course of lectures in that city.