because great revivals often followed. Few speakers have the power to hold an audience as Miller did: eager listeners hung on his words, spellbound for two hours at a time, and packed houses were the rule. The publication of his lectures and the reports of revivals that followed his preaching in the back country led to invitations to lecture on the New England coast. In the spring of 1840, when Miller preached a series of sermons in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, David Millard reported in the Christian