On his return from Oregon,
Kavanaugh met and presided over the Annual Conference at San Jose. One
of his old friends, who was troubled with skeptical thoughts of the
materialistic sort, requested him to preach a sermon for his special
benefit. This request, and the previous reading of the Lectures,
directed his mind to the topic suggested with intense earnestness. The
result was, as I shall always think, the sermon of a lifetime. The text
was, There is a spirit in man; and the inspiration of the Almighty
giveth them understanding. (Job xxxii. 8.) That mighty discourse was a
demonstration of the truth of the affirmation of the text. I will not
attempt to reproduce it here, though many of its passages are still
vivid in my memory. It tore to shreds the sophistries by which it was
sought to sink immortal man to the level of the brutes that perish; it
appealed to the consciousness of his hearers in red-hot logic that
burned its way to the inmost depths of the coldest and hardest hearts;
it scintillated now and then sparkles of wit like the illuminated edges
of an advancing thundercloud; borne, on the wings of his imagination,
whose mighty sweep took him beyond the bounds of earth, through whirling
worlds and burning suns, he found the culmination of human destiny, in
the bosom of eternity, infinity, and God. The peroration was
indescribable. The rapt audience reeled under it. Inspiration! the man
of God was himself its demonstration, for the power of his word was not
his own.

"O I thank God that be sent me here this day to hear that sermon! I
never heard any thing like it, and I shall never forget it, or cease to
be thankful that I heard it," said the Rev. Dr. Charles Wadsworth, of
Philadelphia, the great Presbyterian preacher--a man of genius, and a
true prose-poet, as any one will concede after reading his published
sermons. As he spoke, the tears were in his eyes, the muscles of his
face quivering, and his chest heaving with irrepressible emotion. Nobody
who heard that discourse will accuse me of too high coloring in this
brief description of it.

"Don't you wish you were a Kentuckian?" was the enthusiastic exclamation
of a lady who brought from Kentucky a matchless wit and the culture of
Science Hill Academy, which has blessed and brightened so many homes
from the Ohio to the Sacramento.

I think the Bishop was present on another occasion when the compliment
he received was a left-handed one. It was at the Stone Ch