The meetings
grew in interest, there were some important additions, and the church
was greatly revived. Twelve miles from Rushville was the town of Ripley,
a small village, where the people were engaged in the business of
manufacturing pottery ware. Here two Second Adventist preachers, a Mr.
Chapman and his wife, were holding forth. This Mr. Chapman was a devout,
pious, and earnest man, and a good exhorter, and had an unfaltering
faith that the Lord was immediately to appear. But his wife was the
smartest one in the family. She was fluent and voluble. She had an
unabashed forehead and a bitter and defiant tongue. It was her hobby to
declaim against the popular idea of the existence of the human spirit
apart from the body. With her this was equivalent to a witch riding on a
broomstick or going to heaven on a moonbeam. Spirit is breath--so she
dogmatically affirmed--and when a man breathes out his last breath his
spirit leaves his body. But it was her especial delight to declaim
against the Pagan notion of the immortality of the soul, and to affirm
that the Bible says nothing of the immortality of the soul.
Pages:
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42