Memoirs of William Miller - Sylvester Bliss

“Dear Brother Himes:-- I am yet in this land of
toil, where sin has spoiled all the blessings and
enjoyments of earth, which were appointed by our
beneficent Creator for the best good of his
creatures, and which, had it not been for sin, would
have led us to reverence and adore that Being who
had produced, by his power, this earth and all its
appurtenances, and placed in it man -- rational,
intelligent, social man -- to enjoy this vast and
wondrous piece of mechanism.
“Perhaps we are unable rightly to appreciate the
blessings which were placed within the reach of
man at his creation, when ‘the sons of God shouted
for joy.’ Yet I think that we do realize some of the
evils which man is heir to by reason of ‘sin, and
death by sin,’ which have entered the world. How
manifest it is, at the present day, that all the
influences of the pit are inciting men to crime,
bringing in their trail consequences ten-fold more
dreadful than those entailed upon us by the sin of
our first parents! If there were one spark of
philanthropy existing in the world, methinks it
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