wealth at their
disposal, and were not averse to using it to promote the advancement of
the cause. But the children of this world are, in their generation,
wiser than the children of light, and there is a certain practical
wisdom that has been abundantly learned by other religious communities
that has only come to our churches through a sore and bitter experience;
and it was through the fire of this experience they were passing at the
time of which we write. "Billy Brown" had been a notable evangelist
among them. Indeed, he had been the father in the gospel of the churches
in Brown and Schuyler Counties. He was popularly described as having a
head "as big as a half bushel," surmounted by a great shock of hair. He
was an iconoclast, and devoted his life to the business of
image-breaking, and, of course, the breaking in pieces of the idols of
the people created a great tumult. There was this difference, and only
this difference, between the work of Billy Brown and Sam Jones; Sam
Jones declaims against sins already condemned by the popular conscience,
but Billy Brown assailed convictions enshrined in the innermost
sanctuary of the hearts of the people. He did so because these popular
superstitions stood in the way of the acceptance by the people of the
apostolic gospel. Of course, the work of such a man carried with it an
inconceivable excitement. At Mt. Sterling a man in the audience made
some objection.

"What is your name?" said Billy Brown.

"My name, sir, is Trotter."

"Well, come forward, and I will knock your _trotters_ out from under
you."

But Billy himself sometimes found his match. At Ripley he had been
preaching after his accustomed style, and riding away from the place of
meeting--it was in the spring of the year when the mud was deep--he saw
an old man painfully and with difficulty making his way through the mud.
Knowing that he was a preacher from his white cravat, his broad-brimmed
hat and single-breasted coat, he said to him:

"Well, old Daddy, how did you like the preaching?"

"Haven't heard any," stiffly replied the old gentleman.

But when the tumult and excitement of this conflict had passed away, and
his converts were brought face to face with the grave duties of a
religious life, and with the serious work of keeping the ordinances of
the Lord's house, they did not know how; they had been born in a
whirlwind and could only live in a tempest. Notwithstanding, they loved
the Lord's cause, and t