Bro.  Lewis Brockman was pointed out to me, when first I came to Mt.  Sterling, as a disaffected member; but, on a better acquaintance, it became apparent that his disaffection was that the church members had made a solemn vow to keep the ordinances of the Lord’s house, and did not do it.  When better order was obtained, he was once more in harmony with the church; came to Atchison County, Kansas, and died, a pattern of fidelity to his conscience and to every known duty.

During the period of three years in which I remained preaching in the Military Tract, I visited almost all its churches.  The number of disciples was large.  They had a large amount of 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 they trembled for themselves and their children, if they should not be found faithful.