What I should have written was that C.T. Russell predicted Armageddon in 1874 (according to Pocket Guide to the Apocalypse). When nothing happened, he claimed that Jesus had returned INVISIBLY, and only those with "eyes of faith" could see him.
No, it didn't happen that way either. It was the Second Adventist preacher Jonas Wendell who predicted that Christ would come in 1874 and Russell first learned of this in 1869 or 1870, and he and his family subsequently joined a circle of like-minded friends (including George Stetson and George Storrs) to study the Scriptures in the years leading up to 1874 (Russell denied ever becoming a Second Adventist)...and it was Benjamin Keith who came up with the idea that Jesus came invisibly in 1874...a view which Russell learned from Nelson Barbour in 1876, and which Russell first publicized in 1877 in Object and Manner of the Lord's Return. What Russell and Barbour did expect and predict was that the rapture was going to happen in April 1878, and when this failed to materialize, Barbour and Russell disagreed about the implications of the failure (along with other doctrinal disagreements) and Russell split from him to start the Watch Tower journal in 1879.