were
jubilant; and, above the din and hurly-burly, I heard a thin, squeaking
voice say, "Give that woman a Bible, and she would say more in five
minutes than that man has said in his whole dis-c-o-u-rse." This was
Billy Greenwell.

Brother Brown said nothing that night; but the next morning he said to
me:

"Bro. B., the people were disappointed with you last night."

"Why, Bro. B., was it not a good sermon?"

"Yes; but it was not what the people expected."

"Bro. B., did the people expect me, uninvited, to pitch into a quarrel
with which I have nothing whatever to do?"

"Oh, is that it? Well, wait a little and you shall have an invitation."

Bro. Brown went out, and soon returned with a request that I should
discuss the question that Mr. Chapman and his wife had been debating. I
sat down and wrote out a statement of the subjects on which I proposed
to speak in all the evenings of the coming week. The first commanded
universal attention: "Does the spirit die when the body dies?" They had
never thought of that. They had been thunderstruck when this woman told
them that the Bible says nothing about the immortality of the soul, but
beyond this they had never gone. There was probably more Bible reading
that day in Ripley than any day before or since.

At night the house was jammed, and "the woman" was there, Bible in hand.
I began: "The Bible speaks of a man as composed of body, soul and
spirit. The body is that material tabernacle in which a man dwells, and
which Paul hoped to put off that he might be clothed with a house not
made with hands, eternal in the heavens. The soul is that animal life we
have in common with all living and material things. Thus Jesus is said
to have poured out his soul unto death. But what of the spirit? God is
spirit, and God can not die. The angels are spirits, and the angels can
not die; Jesus says so. Man has a spirit, and can man's spirit die? But
spirit sometimes means breath. Yes, and heaven sometimes means the
firmament above our heads, where the birds fly. But does it never mean
more than this? Paradise sometimes means the happy garden where Adam and
Eve dwelt; but does it never mean more than that? So, granting that
spirit sometimes means breath, may it not also mean more than that?

"When Jesus said, 'Into thy hands I commend my spirit,' did he mean,
'Into thy hands I commend my breath'? So, when the disciples saw Jesus
walking on the water and cried out, 'It is a spirit,' did