“The watchful Providence which guarded him in the hour of deadly peril; the longsuffering which spared him while neglecting the talents bestowed, or misusing them in rebellion against the Giver; and that wisdom and grace which overruled all the dangers experienced, and the derelictions practiced, as in many other persons of distinguished usefulness, demand our hearty adoration. The close of Mr. Miller’s military life was to be the commencement of a new era in his history. The circumstances which preceded that change, the means and instrumentalities employed in its accomplishment, and the practical results which immediately followed in the circle of his acquaintance, must be left to another chapter.” The following, relative to Mr. Miller’s connection with the army, we take from his “Apology and Defense,” published in 1845:— “In 1813, I received a captain’s commission in the U. S. service, and continued in the army until peace was declared. While there, many occurrences served to weaken my confidence in the correctness of deistical principles. I was led frequently to compare this country to that of the children of Israel, before whom God drove out the inhabitants of their land. It seemed to me that the Supreme Being must have watched over the interests of this country in an especial manner, and delivered us from the hands of our enemies. “I was particularly impressed with this view when I was in the battle of Plattsburg, when with 1,500 regulars, and about 4,000 volunteers, we defeated the British, who were 15,000 strong; we being also successful at the same time in an engagement with the British fleet on the lake. At the commencement of the battle, we looked upon our own defeat as almost certain, and yet we were victorious. So surprising a result against such odds did seem to me like the work of a mightier power than man.” CHAPTER II. REMOVAL TO LOW HAMPTON—HIS CONVERSION—STUDY OF THE BIBLE—RULES OF INTERPRETATION, ETC. “On the retirement of Mr. Miller from the army, he removed his family from Poultney, Vt., to Low Hampton, N. Y., to begin there the occupation of farming. His father had died there, in the year 1812, leaving the homestead encumbered with a mortgage. That was cancelled by Mr. Miller, who permitted his mother to live there with his brother Solomon, while he purchased for himself another farm, in the neighborhood, about half a mile to the west. This lay mostly above the general level of the valley of the Poultney river, and comprised about two hundred acres of land, with a surface somewhat uneven, and with soil similar to that usually found in sections geologically marked by black slate and limestone. Two miles to the east was the village of Fairhaven, Vt., near the Poultney river; and eight miles to the west, on the southern extremity of Lake Champlain, at the foot of bold, precipitous hills, was the village of Whitehall, N. Y.