My first introduction among them was dramatic, if, indeed, we could give to an incident almost frivolous and laughable, the dignity of a dramatic incident; and yet the matter had a serious side to it. I had been commended by Bro. Bates, editor of the _Iowa Christian Evangelist_, to the church at Rushville, where I held a meeting of days. 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. A Bro. McPherson undertook to contest the matter with her, but, not finding the scripture he was looking for, she exclaimed with bitter and vixenish speech, "Ah! You can't find it! You can't find it! It isn't there! I told you so!" And thus this couple were fast demoralizing the church, Billy Greenwell, the richest man in the church, being wholly carried away with this fanaticism. John Brown lived half way between Ripley and Rushville, but was a member of the church at Rushville. Bro. Brown was a man of good sense, excellent character, and had been a member of the Legislature. He attended our meeting at Rushville, and, in the intervals of the meeting, was full of questions concerning this heresy that had been sprung on them at Ripley. Our meeting at Rushville came to a close. It had been a good meeting; the church had been revived, and there had been important additions. I took dinner with Bro. Brown, and in the afternoon we rode toward Ripley. On crossing the ferry at Crooked Creek, "Old Rob Burton," the ferryman, a tall, stalwart Kentuckian, looking down on me, asked, "Are you the man that's goin' to preach at Ripley to-night?" "Yes." "Wall, don't you know thar's a woman thar that's goin' to skin you?" "Well, I don't know. We shall see how it will be?"