Preacher Bonds’ sermon that morning ran something like this:  “Twenty years ago I came to this country.  Well do I remember the first few months after landing here.  Some of the older members will recall the mighty religious fight that was just beginning in those days between the holiness heresy and the doctrines of the Bible as believed in by this church.  Those few who are here this morning who have known me and have been my co-workers throughout these years, I am sure, testify to the steadfastness with which I have stood by the work.  I said when I came here that God had sent me here to fight the doctrine of holiness.  I still hold to my mission.  I have stood four-square against that doctrine and all its advocates, and I still stand.  I have used every means to put it down.  But strange as it seems, this heresy appears to have grown fat upon our opposition, and the more we have fought the more it has flourished.  Even at this very hour not a mile from here, in the schoolhouse, there is a group of people five times as large as this audience worshipping the Lord in what they call the “beauty of holiness.”  They have for a preacher, as you know, old man Benton, who twenty years ago was cast out of this church for teaching crooked doctrine.  He has had no preparation whatever for ministerial work, but in some way he has been able to keep his bunch together for nearly twenty years; and now since he is an old man, it seems that they still persist in following him.

“In the early days of my pastorate here my strongest supporter and co-laborer was Deacon Gramps.  This name will sound familiar to some of the older members.  Gramps owned the beautiful farm just to the west of this Church.  A good many years ago through some play, fair or foul, Gramps was charged with a criminal act and was convicted and sent to the penitentiary, where three years ago he died.  His wife went to St. Louis to live with her son, and departed this life shortly after moving there.  You are all more or less familiar with the Gramps story, so I shall leave it, as it is not at all a pleasant topic to discuss.

“It may be of interest to some of you to know just how the doctrine of holiness ever got started in this community.  Well, this old man Benton whom you all know as the leader of the holiness movement used to be a member of this church.  For many years he lived a consistent Christian life in this church, so they tell me.  About twenty years ago he spent a whole summer herding cattle down in the hills about thirty miles from here.  While he was down there in the woods all alone with nothing to occupy his mind, he fell to musing on the death of his little girl who died a good many years previously to that time and it seems that he became mentally unbalanced, at least on religious matters.  According to the information given me, he came in contact at this time with a religious paper teaching strange doctrines, and he embraced these doctrines and began