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 beyond this they had never gone.  There was probably more Bible reading that day in Ripley than any day before or since.

At night the house was jammed, and “the woman” was there, Bible in hand.  I began:  “The Bible speaks of a man as composed of body, soul and spirit.  The body is that material tabernacle in which a man dwells, and which Paul hoped to put off that he might be clothed with a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.  The soul is that animal life we have in common with all living and material things.  Thus Jesus is said to have poured out his soul unto death.  But what of the spirit?  God is spirit, and God can not die.  The angels are spirits, and the angels can not die; Jesus says so.  Man has a spirit, and can man’s spirit die?  But spirit sometimes means breath.  Yes, and heaven sometimes means the firmament above our heads, where the birds fly.  But does it never mean more than this?  Paradise sometimes means the happy garden where Adam and Eve dwelt; but does it never mean more than that?  So, granting that spirit sometimes means breath, may it not also mean more than that?

“When Jesus said, ‘Into thy hands I commend my spirit,’ did he mean, ‘Into thy hands I commend my breath’?  So, when the disciples saw Jesus walking on the water and cried out, ‘It is a spirit,’ did 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