Jesus say to
them, 'This is an old wives' fable; there is no such thing as a spirit'?
Did he not rather say to them,--'It is I; be not afraid.' So, also, when
he appeared to them in a room, the doors being shut, and they cried out,
'It is a spirit,' he said to them, 'Handle me and see; for a spirit
hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.' In all this Jesus
encouraged the disciples to hold the idea which was then popular among
the Jews, that the spirit may exist apart from the body, and after the
body is dead."

I thus discoursed to them for one hour in development of the Bible
teachings concerning human spirits; and in my turn ridiculed the persons
that had ridiculed the ideas that had evidently been held by Jesus and
the apostles.

Mrs. Chapman had always invited objections; but she was sure to make an
endless talk over them. I said, "We will not have an endless
confabulation to-night; but I will quote one passage of Scripture, and
on that I will rest my case. Any other person may then quote one passage
of Scripture and on that rest the case. I have preached one sermon; the
other party has preached twenty. So far we will count ourselves even,
and it only remains that I should quote my Scripture, and let the other
party quote the one Scripture on the opposite side, and then we will be
dismissed." I gave the views of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees as
detailed by Josephus, and then quoted Luke in the Acts of Apostles: "The
Sadducees say there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit; but
the Pharisees confess both." And Paul says, "Men and brethren, I am a
Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee." So I also say, I am a Pharisee, the
son of a Pharisee, and hold to the existence of human and angelic
spirits.

When I announced that I should call for objections, I saw Mrs. Chapman
take up her Bible in a flutter and nervously turn over its leaves. When
I sat down all eyes were turned on her, and there was a death-like
stillness in the house. Then she rose up, and in a moment was out of the
house. She left the town the next morning and never came back. Then it
was "Old Bob Burton's" turn to speak. He said to Billy Green, "Your
chest is locked, and the key is lost in the bottom of the sea."

The brethren were gratified that the power of this "soul-sleeping"
delusion was broken. Billy Green never recovered from his infatuation.
He afterwards built a house that, in the number of rooms it contained,
was wholly beyond his