The text was, There is a spirit in man; and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding. (Job xxxii. 8.) That mighty discourse was a demonstration of the truth of the affirmation of the text.  I will not attempt to reproduce it here, though many of its passages are still vivid in my memory.  It tore to shreds the sophistries by which it was sought to sink immortal man to the level of the brutes that perish; it appealed to the consciousness of his hearers in red-hot logic that burned its way to the inmost depths of the coldest and hardest hearts; it scintillated now and then sparkles of wit like the illuminated edges of an advancing thundercloud; borne, on the wings of his imagination, whose mighty sweep took him beyond the bounds of earth, through whirling worlds and burning suns, he found the culmination of human destiny, in the bosom of eternity, infinity, and God.  The peroration was indescribable.  The rapt audience reeled under it.  Inspiration! the man of God was himself its demonstration, for the power of his word was not his own.

“O I thank God that be sent me here this day to hear that sermon!  I never heard any thing like it, and I shall never forget it, or cease to be thankful that I heard it,” said the Rev. Dr. Charles Wadsworth, of Philadelphia, the great Presbyterian preacher—­a man of genius, and a true prose-poet, as any one will concede after reading his published sermons.  As he spoke, the tears were in his eyes, the muscles of his face quivering, and his chest heaving with irrepressible emotion.  Nobody who heard that discourse will accuse me of too high coloring in this brief description of it.

“Don’t you wish you were a Kentuckian?” was the enthusiastic exclamation of a lady who brought from Kentucky a matchless wit and the culture of Science Hill Academy, which has blessed and brightened so many homes from the Ohio to the Sacramento.

I think the Bishop was present on another occasion when the compliment he received was a left-handed one.  It was at the Stone Church in Suisun Valley.  The Bishop and a number of the most prominent ministers of the Pacific Conference were present at a Saturday-morning preaching appointment.  They had all been engaged in protracted labors, and, beginning with the Bishop, one after another declined to preach.  The lot fell at last upon a boyish-looking brother of very small stature, who labored under the double disadvantage of being a very young preacher, and of having been reared in the immediate vicinity.  The people were disappointed and indignant when they saw the little fellow go into the pulpit.  None showed their displeasure more plainly than Uncle Ben Brown, a somewhat eccentric old brother, who was one of the founders of that Society, and one of its best official members.  He sat as usual on a front seat, his thick eyebrows fiercely knit, and his face wearing a heavy frown.  He had expected to hear the Bishop, and this was what it had come to!  He drew his shoulders sullenly