Don't click on the footnote links. As usual Blogger is broken when it comes to footnote links.
8 Aftermath of Failure
As with much else in this era
of Watch Tower history, we find significant, purposefully-created
nonsense and bad research. For example, Graig Burns asserts that “the Bible
Students had split off from a group of Second Adventists under N. H. Barbour,
which later became the 7th-Day Adventist Church.” We’re
fairly certain Seventh-day Adventists would be surprised to know this. We
certainly were.
They
were small in number. Firm figures elude us, but we can make an educated guess.
They drew from Second Adventists, primarily Advent Christians and Life and
Advent Union adherents. Though Second Adventists claimed a combined membership
of thirty-thousand world-wide, this was a huge exaggeration and has no basis in
fact. Few Adventists found the Barbourite message attractive. Adventists turned
to 1877 and then 1879 as probable dates for Christ’s return. Age-to-Come/One
Faith adherents numbered less than four thousand.
Many Barbourites came from this group, attracted to Barbourite theology by its Age-to-Come
belief. In 1885 Barbour reported that the average monthly circulation of The
Herald of the Morning was one thousand copies, including missionary and
give-away issues. It was probably somewhat
less, and we are probably being generous if say that in 1877, they had something
less than two thousand adherents. The regularly-published money-received column
suggests far fewer committed believers. This was a very small movement.
They expected translation in
the spring of 1878. Some were hesitant to name a specific day, but many of them
pointed to Passover Day that April.
They saw the work of Moody and Shanky as an extension of their own and as proof
that God was calling to Christians preparatory to “the harvest” gathering.
Age-to-Come advocates and Second Adventists felt similarly, republishing Moody’s
February 1877 sermon on the Lord’s Return. Revival conversions were often
temporary, and lapsed behavior, if not lapsed belief, was common. But the
numbers attending Moody’s revivals convinced them that their prophetic scheme
was well-founded. Russell never abandoned belief that Moody did God’s work.
Historians of the Watch Tower movement seldom define “Translation.” Age-to-Come
adherents saw it as the change from a mortal body to an immortal one, both of
which were bodies of flesh and blood. Some postulated a temporary sojourn in
heaven before a return to a cleansed earth. Some saw it as mere change without
any heavenly experience. Barbour and his associates rejected an “agricultural
heavens” or a heaven-on-hearth theology in 1877, believing that the Bride of
Christ would have a heavenly home, ruling over a cleansed paradise earth. Translation
meant glorification to heaven in a new spirit body to be with and like Christ
who was himself a life-giving spirit. This was the next step, the expected next
move on the part of an invisibly present Christ.
Others
expected translation on the same or similar grounds. S. A. Chaplin, editor of The Restitution, adopted
much of Barbourite interpretation. Writing in the October 9, 1877, issue of The Restitution, he presented the Euphrates River as a prophetic image. He
identified it as interloping powers dominating the Promised Land, Immanuel’s
Land:
The mystic Euphrates is not
much longer to flood Immanuel’s land, in the stage of events now in progress.
Immanuel (Jesus) is to become the chief actor in the scenes. During the
evaporation of these mystic waters he comes as a thief. This coming is
to a locality in the deep ethereal to which he suddenly and secretly removes
his elect church. This is the next grand event of prophecy, and is now
imminent. Are we living in a state of preparation for the sudden translation?
The door into this heavenly household will soon be closed forever, and to all
eternity remained closed. The Gospel will soon win the last hair of a crown of
glory, and the princely priesthood be complete. The Coming One “Shall have
dominion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.” See Ps
Lxii, 8. The Euphrates will not bound his empire, but it will be world-wide.
He says, “Behold, I come quickly: hold fast thou hast, that no man take thy
crown.” Rev. iii. 11. And again, “Behold, I come as a thief. Blesses is he that watcheth and keep his
garments. This is a warning of current events. Shall we so live as to share a
part in his universal reign?
Chaplin
saw a two-fold, partially-invisible parousia, and he adopted Barbourite
emphasis on the Euphrates as a prophetic symbolism. Translation was at the
door. Chaplin spoke out of both sides of his mouth over this issue. He
reprinted an article from The Rainbow cautioning against fixing a time,
and he printed a letter from a Robert Baker of Kansas who asked: “Who of us will live to see the end of the
year 1878? Or will our blessed Lord come and restore all things back to their
former beauty?” Baker advised the brethren to be “more earnest in the cause of
the Lord.” In
fairness to Chaplin, he wrote for a diverse audience who freely debated issues
in his paper.
As we
noted earlier, In February 1878 Chaplin printed Russell’s Object and Manner,
sending it out as a supplement to The Restitution. In a follow-up
article he explained wherein he and Russell differed: “We think that the coming
Messiah is the same Jesus that died, was buried, rose from the dead, and
subsequently ascended from Mouth Olivet into heaven.” He rejected the “spirit
bodies” arguments found in Object and Manner. He looked “for more
tangibility in the resurrection” than did Russell. He closed by observing that “The
‘fair chance’ part of the supplement will probably please some of our
readers.” J.
B. Cook’s negative review of Object and Manner, also noted in a previous
chapter, was published in the June 26, 1878, Restitution. It is noteworthy that Cook
waited until April passed before blasting Barbour. The degree of outrage found
in Cook’s review probably indicates a degree of disappointment.
Sending
out Object and Manner as a supplement to The Restitution and to Prophetic
Times was a last-ditch effort to bring as many into the Light as was
possible. Results seem to have been small, a poor return on the money invested.
Barbour published a single sheet double issue to Herald of the Morning
sometime in the in the spring, giving “the time arguments.” No copies are known
to exist, but Barbour claimed it had as much matter as two copies of Russell’s Object
and Manner. Ten thousand copies were printed, but not all were circulated,
and one could still order it from The Herald in the 1880s. “We
tried to make it clear,” Barbour recalled, “that [Christ] was present, and that
coming into the true condition, he might materialize and meet us at any moment.” Michael
Baxter, who seems to have jumped on nearly every prophetic speculation,
published a handbill widely circulated in London, “announcing the approaching translation to heaven of
144,000 Christians without dying.” We couldn’t locate this tract, but it was
circulated at the end of 1877 and early in 1878.
The spring of 1878 came and
went. A Yellow Fever epidemic broke out in the Mississippi Valley. Rutherford B. Hayes was sworn in as President, even
though by actual count he lost the election. (Democrats were accused of massive
voter fraud, and a special commission sustained the charge.) There were
tensions between Mexico and the United States over cross-border raids by Mexican bandits. Thomas
Edison invented the phonograph. William “Boss” Tweed
died in jail. England and Russia were on the brink of war. Harley Proctor introduced
Ivory Soap, causing Americans to rejoice that they no longer had to fish around
the bottom of the tub to find a lost bar of soap. Pope Leo XIII issued a papal
bull entitled Inscrutabili Dei Consilio bemoaning the loss of papal
influence over public institutions. But nowhere, least of all in Pittsburgh or Rochester, or in any of the little towns and villages where
Barbourite adherents lived, was anyone “changed in the twinkling of an eye” or
raised to the heavens. Their disappointment was profound.
A. H. Macmillan’s Claims
A. H.
Macmillan reported that “Pittsburgh
newspapers” said Russell “was on the Sixth Street bridge dressed in a white robe on the night of the
Memorial of Christ’s death, expecting to be taken to heaven.” We could not find
the original of this newspaper report, though we do not doubt its existence. The
fact of the report is interesting, but the conclusions many have drawn from it
are distorted. The report, no matter who printed it, was long removed from the
events of 1878. Macmillan’s association dates from 1900. The
newspaper article could be no older than that and is probably dated later,
perhaps after 1906. As Macmillan has it, Russell’s reaction was to laugh “heartily”
and say:
I was in bed that night between 10:30 and 11:00 P.M. However, some of the more radical ones might have been there, but I
was not. Neither did I expect to be taken to heaven at that time, for I felt
there was much work to be done preaching the Kingdom message to the peoples of
the earth before the church would be taken away.
One
should dispose of the ascension-robe claim first. It was an old, often-repeated
calumny. Though there isn’t a verifiable instance, everyone with clearly
defined end-of-the age expectations was subject to it. It is especially out of
place when applied to Russell. He expected a change to a spirit body, making
any self-made ascension robe irrelevant. He understood the “white robes” of
Revelation 6:11 to be symbolic, not literal. That he or any of the Pittsburgh believers dressed in robes is a newspaper reporter’s
lie. The story delights Russell’s enemies who discount his denial, and others
simply repeat it, believing it to be accurate because it saw print.
If
Macmillan reports Russell’s belief that “there was much work to be done” and
that he didn’t “expect to be taken to heaven at that time” with any sort of
accuracy, then we must presume his doubts to have arisen in the last weeks
before April 1878. Any time prior to the spring of 1878, we find Russell and
Barbour believing with equal fervor that translation impended.
It is apparent that he believed and preached that translation was due. Taken as
a whole, this seems a very unreliable report. But we come away from it noting
two things: There was among the Pittsburgh brethren a “more radical” party; they were somewhat
fragmented.
We
see Macmillan’s claim that Russell did not expect translation and that he saw a
vast field of work ahead as wrong. Russell wrote that “since 1878 (and never
before that) we have felt at liberty to call God’s children out of the nominal
churches to a position … where they would be free to serve Him fully.”
This clearly dates his vision of a vast work to after the disappointment.
Doubts
That some doubts were expressed
is verified by J. H. Paton, who wrote: “That translation was not due in the spring
of 1878 is certain, and yet too many were inclined to treat others as not ‘in
the light’ for not expecting it then.” And there were some who doubted the
accuracy of their expectations. An example is Austin J. Marsh from LaCross, Wisconsin. Writing to Barbour after the failure, he claimed to
have had significant doubts. “I was not sorely disappointed,” he wrote. His
doubts focused on their understanding of the seventy weeks prophecy: “I had
thought there was something a little cloudy about the last ‘week,’ of the seventy,
in the midst of which Christ ‘made the sacrifices and obligation to cease;’ and
the parallel to which seemed to demand more time here. I assented to the
view that translation would take place this spring, but more than half thought
that instead of it, more light would beg given to make the ‘week,’ more
complete.”
Paton described some in the
movement as “positive” and “dogmatic,” observing that being so “does not make
anything true, even if it does make an impression.”
Be that as it may, any doubts Russell had were nascent, tenuous. Barbour
introduced the concept of translation in 1878 as a mere possibility. Stating
his belief that the Resurrection to heaven started in 1875, he suggested that
translation might “commence this side of 1878.”
He felt it would happen no later than 1878. His later statements were more
positive. In September 1875 he wrote that the spring of 1878 marked the second
half of a “double” or parallel between first century and 19th Century
events. He looked for “the kingdom” to manifest itself. “To us,” he wrote, “this
is an important matter; and the evidence seems clear that ‘the time is
fulfilled, the kingdom of God
is at hand;’ and that we have entered into the transition, or ‘time of harvest.’”
Those who doubted were treated as not in the light of Christ. Post-failure,
Barbour denied believing that Christ came as King in 1878. This was, of course,
an obvious lie.
Doubts
grew as April approached and events did not play out as they expected. Barbour
tried to assuage them: “We had often talked together, that if the time went by
we should certainly have an increase of light as on former occasions.” Most were fervent, fully convinced, and they
were disappointed. “We carefully re-examined our position in the dim light we
then had,” Barbour wrote. “We were disappointed, having expected that … we
should certainly be caught away to meet him. From that time until the autumn,
we were all trying to make our lamps throw more light.” For
some the disappointment was doubly bitter. Some among them had followed other
date speculations in addition to Barbour’s theories. They looked to a date in
1877. The Lockport and Hudson,
New York, groups looked to Sunday, July 8, 1877, but on what basis we do not know. Failure of hopes for 1878 was for them especially
bitter.
With
April’s passage, several doctrines were re-examined. Members of the Allegheny City congregation met to consider matters. William Mann
reports this, writing that they “looked back over the chronology, and found it
was solid as ever.” This was a replay of their approach in 1873, 1874 and 1875.
Mann focused on the Elijah “type,” their belief that the prophet’s life
patterned last-day events. Some fourteen years later, he explained his
thinking:
After the disappointments, we looked back over the
chronology, and it was solid as ever. Then it began to dawn on me that in
following that life journey, we should have seen that if one part was typical,
all was typical; and therefore the life, the last journey and the culmination,
horses, chariots, fire and ascension, were alike figures of good things
to come. A chariot of fire may seem a strange conveyance, but it has a
wonderfully purifying effect and a tremendous lifting power. The translation
is first ‘from the power of darkness … into the kingdom of his dear son’ Then
the progression is ‘Transformed by renewing your mind.” It now becomes
our privilege to be “raised up,” “from the earth, and from earthly
things even to sit in ‘The Heavenlies’ with Christ.”
He sought
any solution to their failed speculation short of abandoning their chronology. He
saw the inconsistencies in their previous interpretations and replaced them
with this. He did not focus on a continuing work but on Christian personality
development. When Mann wrote this in 1892, Paton suggested that none of this
was a specifically last-times work, writing that “the translation from darkness
to light, from Satan’s kingdom to Christ’s and the transforming of the mind
have been possible all through the age as well as now, so has it been the privilege
of sitting with Christ in the heavenlies.”
Barbour
was also committed to the pattern of failure, disappointment, and new
speculation. He followed in William Miller’s footsteps, seeing each failure as
proof of divine leading, if only one could determine what it was. Barbour saw
himself as God’s last-days spokesman. He took upon himself authority and
responsibility he did not have, putting himself at odds with those who did not accept
his further time speculations or accept each new doctrinal whim. There is no
other way to describe Barbour than as fanatically blinded to failure. The
string of failed dates and expectations between 1873 and 1878 was, for him,
proof that they were experiencing advancing truth. It was a chant, almost a
song for him.
Others accepted Barbour’s
self-definition. Writing to Barbour some twenty years after the 1878 failure, James
R. Deputy, an adherent from Missouri who entered the movement in 1871, was as adamantine
as ever:
Being rooted and grounded in these grand truths
concerning the restitution of all things, no power on earth can wrest them from
us. I have been in this movement for twenty-seven years, and at no time have
felt like giving it up. And although getting on in years, my desire and faith
is that I shall live to be change to incorruption without tasting death. How
much I would like to be at your meetings, and hear you talk about the return of
our coming King.
Others
expressed similar views. An H. R. Perine of Denver,
Missouri, wrote:
My confidence in this, as a prophetic movement, is
unchangeable. Have been a reader of your writings since 1873; have been
confident all through this quarter of a century, that we were in a shining
pathway that would lead us on to the consummation of our hopes. Have never doubted
this; hence, disappointments have not destroyed my confidence and rejoicing.
Barbour’s self-anointing as
God’s last-days prophet meant that he couldn’t simply say, “We’ve been wrong
all along. I am sorry.” If he had the character of George Storrs, he would have
done so. He did not, the difference being that Storrs saw himself as one of God’s servants and
Barbour saw himself as God’s servant. Barbour addressed the issue in the
June
15, 1878, Herald of the
Morning. He recognized that adherents were grievously disappointed:
From 1843 to the present time, the light on the Time
and manner of the advent of Christ has been continually on the increase;
and as we have passed terminus after terminus of the prophetic and
chronological periods … the pathway after each crisis had been passed was made
to shine more and more. And now, what we had fully believed to be the last of
those terminal points has been reached and passed, and the hoped-for
deliverance is still unrealized. And the question is again forced upon us, What
scriptural position, if any, can now be occupied in harmony with all this
unfolding light in relation to the closing work of this dispensation?
Barbour
re-stated his belief that they were entering “the time of trouble” in
fulfillment of Daniel 12:1. There “was no room for doubt” that they were, he
wrote. “Our reasoning was, that this time of trouble could not progress far
until after translation” because the saints were to judge the world. Barbour
had to give the whole thing up as bad work or find prophetic events to fill the
time between when “the time of trouble” began and change to spirit life. He
presented a new scheme. Pointing to the “wine press” judgment depicted in
Isaiah chapter sixty-three, he suggested his readers “learn that when this ‘winepress’
is trodden, the saints are not yet with Christ.” There was more work to do. The
“wheat” Christians still in the nominal churches were to be gathered. And the “wheat”
had to mature:
If we are not mistaken, there will be a ripening of ‘wheat;’
a sanctification of the spiritual element of the churches, during the next few
years by the spread of these glorious truths, which shall not leave a kernel
ungarnered. God is in this movement, the glorious light of truth is shining
from his word, as it has never shone before; and his ministering spirits are
abroad in the land …. And in this dark hour, that is settling down on the
nations, the angels are to gather the wheat; not to a locality, but to a
condition of victory over the world.
Implicit in this is a claim to
a special place in dispensing truth. Barbour’s was convinced that he possessed
and dispensed “truth.” He was God’s special spokesman. Those who remained
unshaken saw him as such. One woman addressed him as “Dear Leader.”
Helen H. Landis of Rochester, New
York, believed
every setback was proof of increasing light: “I have been in this glorious
pathway since 1875, during which time the light has steadily increased until
now (1898), when the pathway is illuminated even to the perfect day.”
To doubt Barbour was to sin. To fail to follow him into every speculation and
doctrinal twist was to fall out of the light.
“Although
we expected translation this present spring, we find the road leads on a
little further,” Barbour wrote. He postulated a short period during which true “wheat”
Christians would mature and pass through a “fiery” test. “The time for the
gathering the wheat of the gospel church may be three and a half years, but
cannot be determined with accuracy,” he wrote. “Yet, until the wheat is
gathered, the change of the living from mortality to immortality cannot be
expected.” By the end of his article he was more positive: “The work of the
gathering of the wheat … will doubtless be about three and a-half years.”
Barbour was more disappointed
than he admitted. After the 1843-1844 failure, he was ashamed to have been
associated with the Advent Movement. Yet his disappointment was followed by a
reaffirmation of belief with additions and alterations to account for failure.
He continued that pattern after the 1873, 1874, and 1875 failures. These were
personal crises calling his faith and authority into question. After the 1875
failure, he published a letter suggesting that he and his assistant editors
were like the Two Witnesses of Revelation. He defined the movement as the
faithful virgins with himself as head.
Some decades later, Edward
Payson Woodward, one of Barbour’s associates in the 1873 movement, commented on
Barbour’s exegesis. Woodworth’s comments in their entirety are a bit convoluted
and a whole lot disingenuous. He avoided saying that he was involved in the
1873 movement. He avoided using Barbour’s name or Wendell’s. Yet, he touched on
the essential weakness of the Barbourite movement:
Certain persons satisfied themselves that Jesus Christ
would return to this world in A. D. 1874. The prophecies on which their belief
rested were to them so plain, that there seems to have been no doubt in their
minds – He would come then.
This ‘set time’ went by, and Christ did not appear.
Yet, so minute had been the predictions and so positive that statements
concerning the expected fulfillment of Prophecy, that (like others previously)
it was hard for the men of 1874 to acknowledge … “we were wrong: Christ has not
come as we expected.’ On the contrary, they … repeated what had … been said by
some connected with the 1844 Time Movement – ‘We were right regarding the Time,
though wrong concerning the Event.’ Instead of a frank confession of their
error (with an acknowledgement that ‘time-setting’ was wrong in itself), they
tried to modify the shock of failure by affirming that Christ did return to
earth in 1874, as they had predicted, only his
return was invisible!
Within not many sentences,
Woodward wrote, “Just who originated this ‘device,’ may never be known.” That was,
of course, a lie. He knew very well who originated it; he had been in the
movement up to at least 1874. For Woodward, the issue wasn’t sincerity.
Woodward wrote of Russell: “I do not question his honesty in his first belief
that the Lord would return in 1874 – others have made a similar mistake.” He
had, of course, to include himself, though he does not say so. The issue was failure
to “admit his own mistakes, as he probably would be insistent that others
should admit theirs.” While these comments are about Barbourite and later Watch Tower belief concerning 1874, they apply with equal ease to
the 1878 disappointment.
photo here
E. P. Woodward
An
article by J. H. Paton followed Barbour’s. He defended the idea of “Definite
Time.” He refuted several competing concepts, none of which are relevant to
this history, then, in defense of Barbourite practice, wrote that their “premature
expectations no more invalidate the arguments than the premature
expectations of the disciples of Christ proved the incorrectness of their faith
in him as the Messiah, and the ‘day of visitation.’” Russell didn’t contribute
to the July 15th Herald of the Morning. His article appeared in
the next issue.
Russell wrote a letter to
someone in Lynn, Massachusetts. As Barbour has it, he speculated about the “Elijah
type” and “that as Elijah went back, and re-crossed the Jordan, so we must return and re-cross, or something to that
effect.” There is no more detail, but it is evident that Russell sought in
prophetic types a remedy for their disappointment. Barbour loved to
misrepresent Russell, so while he doesn’t give us details he sniffs that Russell
“said nothing to me.” Barbour’s italics tell us that he thought Russell
owed it to him to consult before preaching.
Barbour
reported that “some of the friends” wrote to him saying they were “disgusted”
and “thought it was foolish.” They were “on the point of ‘giving up the
whole movement.’” When this was written, it was in Barbour’s interest to
blame division on Russell so he could point to Watch Tower adherents as the “foolish virgins” of Christ’s
parable. The real issue for Barbour was Russell’s independent thinking.
Re-examining the “Elijah type,” which for “some time” they had “looked with
interest,” without consulting him
shook Barbour’s confidence. His statement that Russell had preached new
doctrine in Lynn was questioned, and he had to retract it. He also
retracted the claim that “some friends” wrote, amending it to a “sister.”
Shortly
after the June 15, 1878, Herald of the Morning reached its
subscribers, the principals, except for Paton who was hurt in a fall from a
carriage, met in Rochester. Paton
participated through an exchange of letters. Barbour described the meeting:
Bros. R[ussell] and K[eith] at my office in Rochester, and Bro. P[aton] by letter. I endeavored to satisfy
them as to the last half of the harvest … &c. They were at first a little
stiff, so that I began to realize that there was a division, yet they seemed
to see the new light on the present half of the harvest, and some of its work,
so much so, that they immediately commenced making a chart, then and there, at
our rooms, in harmony with the new position. And, though I had misgivings, that
it was not clearly seen and accepted by them; but as they arranged their charts
so as to promise with the advanced light, and to show the last 3 1-2 years of
the harvest, I hoped for the best.
Barbour
wanted to show them as “eagerly” seeking light from him, but he felt his grip
on their allegiance was slipping. They seemed to doubt. They were reluctant.
They were becoming the “foolish virgins.” Barbour’s self-esteem depended on
being God’s voice. His description of this meeting was designed to show him as
the fountain head of truth to which others turned.
Previously, Russell and Paton had readily deferred to Barbour. He was disturbed
to find them hesitant to accept his new speculations. (He and his followers
would call it the “shining path” doctrine.) Yet, he reported:
They came and listened to what we [he means himself]
had to say; heard the explanations in relation to the last half of the harvest,
as it was explained and illustrated on a small paper chart, and immediately
copied that chart on a larger scale, and began to preach this advanced light as
seen, as soon as they left Rochester, and also in the next articles from their
pen, which appeared in the Herald.
Leaving
the Rochester meeting, Russell traveled to Lynn,
Massachusetts, preaching an extension time for refining and
ingathering of Saints. They had maybe the next three and a half years. Whoever
faulted Barbour for misrepresenting him said Russell “greatly strengthened the
brethren.” While grudgingly acknowledging he may have misrepresented matters, Barbour
implied that Russell rejected the “light” that extended “time” to 1881. This
was also false.
Barbour
seems to exaggerate what ever reluctance Russell and B. W. Keith felt. The
issues to which he points were not the immediate cause of group fragmentation.
Russell gladly accepted the new emphasis on the Wedding Garment and an extended
time of favor to nominal Christians. Describing this period he wrote:
Coming to the spring of 1878, the time parallel to the giving up
of the Jewish church and ending of the Gospel church by the Spirit, we
naturally and not unreasonably expected some change of our condition, and all
were more or less disappointed when nothing supernatural occurred. But our
disappointment was brief, for we noticed that the Jewish church (and not the
Gospel church) was the pattern of ours, and therefore we should not expect
parallels to Pentecost or to anything which happened in the beginning of this
church.
We looked again at the Jewish church as the pattern and saw that
though Jesus gave them up as a fleshly house at the close of his three and a
half years ministry, yet he continued special favor to them …
We then looked for the parallel to this in the Gospel Age and
found that the nominal Gospel church, the parallel of the Jewish church, was “cast
off” or “left desolate,” “spewed out” at the parallel point of time, 1878, but
was due to have favor as individuals for three and a half years, or until the
autumn of 1881, during which they were to separate themselves from the “Babylon” church.
Some
of their new thoughts were developed as late as the spring of 1879, but the
most important of them appeared in Barbour’s July 15th article.
Russell noted that their disappointment was “brief.” This marks Barbour’s claim
that they were reluctant learners as exaggerated. None of them gave up preaching
set time, but their emphasis changed:
Up
to 1878, though Restitution was the key note, and entire consecration was
always urged, yet the time element was one of the most prominent features
always. Since 1878, however, though the same time element is recognized in all
our preaching and teaching, and is repeatedly referred to as a proof of our
position, yet the direct teaching of time has almost stopped among all the
preaching brethren – and this too, without any pre-concerted arrangement, and
without any other reason, than that other elements of truth came into greater
prominence.
With the July 1878 Herald,
Barbour converted the magazine into a monthly, dropping the notice that it was
published by both Barbour and Russell. Russell’s post-failure article appears
in that issue.
