bucket of cold water poured on the heads of my brethren. At any other
time it would have been accepted as a good and edifying exhortation; but
now, how untimely! The meeting was dismissed and the buzzing was as if a
hive of bees had just been ready to swarm. The woman's disciples 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