Alexander Campbell and the Disciples; lectures delivered in Brite college of the Bible, Texas Christian university, April and May, 1925

Front matter

: See = = Se SS = = Se Sa SS at ae ee = = = = : = =

Se ae See Se ase ae ee a aes iy. ' 4 a 4 gh ae ted ‘5 Bh hae

ALEXANDER CAMPBELL AND THE DISCIPLES

Preface

THE gracious invitation of Dean Colby D. Hall to deliver a course of lectures to the faculty and students of Brite College of the Bible, Texas Christian University provided the urge which resulted in the following study. The substance of the volume was submitted as a successful thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh under the title ““The Theology of Alexander Campbell in its Relation to the Origin of the Disciples.” In the subsequent pages this dissertation has been revised and enlarged and much of it rewritten for popular dissemination.

It will be observed that copious quotations from the sources of Disciple history, especially from the writings of the Campbells, abound. Whether or not this be a weakness is, of course, largely a matter of taste. In the present case the realization that the documents of early Disciple days are not readily accessible in attractive form has dictated the method of allowing the Disciple Fathers to tell what they taught in their own words as far as space permits.

The exacting demands upon the time and energy of an evangelist whose field of service takes no account of oceans render consecutive research extremely difficult. Hours for the production of the following chapters have been snatched from a ministry whose behests have called the author from one end of the earth to the other. One was composed in a lovely little university town beside the laughing waters of the bright Willamette amidst the stately blue mountains of Western Oregon; others in the shadow of the grey old Castle Rock in Edinburgh; another in the spray of the “Smoke that Sounds” on the banks of the broad Zambesi. It is hoped that they have suffered no loss of penetration

vii viii PREFACE into the heart of those problems with which the path of Disciple progress is beset because they have issued from a vigorous life in which the power of the ground convictions of Disciple witness has been unsparingly tested in the fires of evangelistic endeavour. Perhaps they have rather gained thereby? The conclusions which they embody may at least lay valid claim to meet the modern demand for a basis in experience. The author finds himself impelled to agree with Principle Wheeler Robinson that “important as is the work of the theologian, it is always subsidiary to that of the evangelist, the missionary, the preacher and pastor, with whom lies, under God, the ‘Future of Christianity.” The one who has put his principles to the test and found them powerful in committing men to Christ is assuredly as well prepared to speak with authority in regard to their validity as he who sees in them only untried theories.

It is to be hoped that an occasional relaxation of that dispassionate reserve supposedly the concomitant of the purely historical presentation, or inadvertant indulgences in seemingly undue enthusiasms or modest eulogistic periods concerning one for whom the author confesses an everdeepening admiration may not receive too ruthless castigation as being uncritical or as evincing indifference to the sober facts of Disciple history as they are. Whether such enthusiasms mar a work of this nature must be purely a matter of opinion depending largely upon one’s theological predilections. For one whose ancestral roots strike deep into Disciple soil, whose infancy, childhood, and university years were lived in an atmosphere surcharged with a militant Disciple conviction and whose manhood has been engaged in an unremitting proclamation of that conviction upon four continents, a proper scholarly restraint of such ebullience may be indeed well nigh impossible. It is decidedly difficult for one so sired and for a life time committed to the substantial truth of the chief conclusions of Disciple teaching to assume that coldly detached attitude

PREFACE ix from that which has been the very life blood of his spirit. If that not altogether happy term “propagandist” be justly applied to a work in which the author confesses warmth for conclusions reached, then this study must be so catalogued. I wonder if any book which lives is ever entirely free from this quality?

To the Reverend Professor James Mackinnon, D.D., Ph.D., of the University of Edinburgh, I wish to render heartiest appreciation for his patient guiding of the work through many months. I am also deeply indebted to the Reverend Professor H. R. Mackintosh, D.Phil., D.D., of New College, for numerous helpful suggestions. The connection of the names of these, teachers warmly esteemed, with this book does not in any way commit them to agreement with the conclusions herein set forth. My deepest thanks are also due to my wife, Inez Toledano Kellems without whose inspiration and help the work could not have been published.

JEssE R. KELLEMs.

September 25th, 1927.

Contents

1X) ‘THe CHRISTIAN: ORGANIZATION 9.0 00060 eu we 369 i VALASD, y

Pen eee)

ALEXANDER CAMPBELL AND THE DISCIPLES

Chapter I Introductory

In his vivid style Professor Streeter calls upon us to consider the spirit of our age. ‘The Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries reinforced in a new way the backward look of Europe. The Church, to its credit, was to the fore in the revival of learning. But learning meant the study of the Humanities, that is, of the great writers of the classical period of Greece and Rome, and the study of the Humanities again implies a Golden Age in a distant past. Down to very recent times, European education in general has been, and clerical education still _is, mainly along Renaissance lines. It has tended to suggest, as the ideal of intellectual attainment, acceptance and imitation rather than invention and experiment.

But today outside the Church men are looking forwards for the Golden Age. The really live intellectual activity of the present age is not so much conservative as adventurous. Its motto is not learning but research, not acceptance but criticism, not imitation but invention. Experiment and fresh construction are the dominating ideas, not only in natural science and engineering, but in economics, in art, in philosophy, and in political and ethical ideals. Outside organized Christianity the motto of the idealist in every department of life is ‘“‘Behold I make all things new.” * It would be difficult to dissent from this graphic statement. Men of the twentieth century are pioneers. The inexorable command which throbs through our spiritual blood bids us look up and ahead—‘“Look not behind thee for thy life” —‘‘Sail on, and on, and on.”

1“Christ the Constructive Revolutionary” in “The Spirit,” 356. $3

But while we thrill to the behests of this imperious spirit, let us pause ere we unwittingly speak a half truth. Is the backward look reprehensible if through it one draws into his spiritual veins the spicy wine of courage for the adventure of fresh beginnings? Is a classic less a classic because hoary centuries intervene between us and that time, electric with noble thought and instant with rich emotion, when whole it sprang from out some glowing heart? Is the radiance of Shakespeare’s name bedimmed because of swiftpassing years or do we accord to him a place less exalted than to the poets of our day because of their possession of modernity? The nineteenth century enthusiasm for the philosophical dogmas of evolution and eternal progress has waned, and the shallow method of historical interpretation which glimpses its Golden Ages only in some distant future has been frowned upon by modern men to whom the sobering power of more mature reflection has brought a truer view. Representative of this better tendency, Dean Inge with accustomed vigor reacts against the infection of this, in other fields, discarded surface method which has spread its insidious way through much of the religious literature of the present. “No one treats the history of art and poetry in this way, but the delusion has not been completely abandoned in the case of religion. We have discussions on what is supposed to be a serious difficulty in the way of accepting Christianity—that on the Christian hypothesis the highest revelation came to mankind nearly two thousand years ago. The truth is that the great religions—Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam—date from the millennium which ends with the career of Mohammed; and all of them were at their best when they were fresh from the mint.” ? How utterly abject indeed would be our poverty were there no classics to rivet our admiring gaze, that within us might be provoked that holy awe out of which high resolution rises, to fire our hearts for Golden Ages which shall transcend in wonder those ever farther from us receding into

2“Science, Religion, and Reality,” 351.

the misty past. Is not the assumption that a classic belongs only to the past an evacuation of the very meaning of the term? A classic is of the past, the present, the future—it is timeless. If we divest the present of what has been, ~ wherein is there meaning in history?

I

In this conviction that inspiration for future endeavor is ...

best derived from an immersion in the thought and spirit of classic epochs, has the present evaluation of the theological and religious contributions of Thomas and Alexander Campbell been essayed. The time has arrived when the Disciples should study the works of these doughty fathers of their communion. It must regretfully be admitted that for many years the majority of them have not done so. But few who have espoused Campbellian principles have perused the pages on which they are inscribed. A generation of splendid men has come to maturity absolutely unacquainted with that noble literature which a hundred years ago profoundly stirred American religious society, engendering a storm the rumbles of which even yet have not completely died away. Hundreds of these are devout and earnest ministers in Churches of Christ while hundreds of others, fellows of their college and university days, with high courage nurtured by a consuming love of Christ, and an idealism as pure as the gleaming snow on mountain crags, have eagerly gone forth into the far places holding aloft the light of faith to the wandering peoples of the world. Is it then to be thought strange that among such, even though their motives be acknowledged pure and good, there should occasionally be those whose indifference to teaching and practice in which there lurks the taint of sectarian tendency, bespeaks for them an ignorance of the foundation principles which alone constitute a reasonable apologetic for the separate existence of the Churches of Christ in a world already cursed to the full with belligerent sects and divisions?

With the sturdy independence of their sires these modern Disciples steadfastly have been disinclined to “glory in men.” And after all the Campbells were but men. We are certainly as free to interpret the Word of God as were any of the renowned heroes of the Reformation—a Luther, a Calvin, a Knox or a Wesley— indeed the basal truth which has ever been the dynamic urge to ceaseless Disciple progress exactingly demands it. There is, furthermore, no such thing as a Disciple theology and any over-stressing of the teaching of one man, even though that man be Alexander Campbell himself, might conceiveably involve us in the danger of crystallization, combining our plea, thereby, within the immobile confines of a cast-iron theological system. Like a grim spectre, the haunting fear of creedalism has dogged the footsteps of Disciple progress. But such fears are groundless. Having once breathed the free air of New Testament Christianity the Disciples are not likely ever again to be enmeshed in the toils of an effete sectarianism, nor lightly to throw away noble gains so hardily won. Theological Schools and Colleges of the Bible assuredly have a grave responsibility devolving upon them in the obligation which their very institution entails, to see to it that those who go forth from their halls as leaders of Disciple thought shall know the plea for the unity of the people of God upon the basis of a restored New Testament faith. If they fail in this—if they are but the poor copies of the great denominational training centers—the money which has been expended in their establishment were put to far better use if employed to send their young men and women to the colleges of their denominational brethren or to the universities supported by the state.

In dealing with the origin of the communion variously known as “The Disciples of Christ,” “Christians,” or “Churches of Christ,’”’ one instinctively feels that he is considering a movement rather than a church or churches. Jn its beginning there was no thought among any of those whose efforts resulted in its ultimate formation, of the organization of a mew Church or religious party. ‘The high ideal which had been the moving cause of all they thought ‘and did, was diametrically opposed to such a course; indeed, to abolish all divisions and parties was the lofty resolve to which they heartily directed their every energy. At the time of its inception, it profoundly affected the whole of American religious society. Like a new Renaissance or Reformation, it was an imperative call to freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and the right of the individual to interpret the Christian Scriptures. Its first leaders did not hesitate openly to preach its doctrines as calculated to reform the Church, to accomplish a destruction of sectarian walls, and to bring all Christians to a unity upon the truth. For the first period of its existence, it was a movement for Reformation, and those who espoused its principles were known as “Reformers.” Gradually recognizing the fact, however, that a new reformation, as such, was seemingly doomed to fail because of the simple fact that those to whom _ their appeals were addressed and in whose interests the work was being propagated, were treating it all with bland indifference, the movement began to crystallize into an independent organization. Since the reformatory principles would not be received into the Churches, the “Reformers” decided to organize around them, drawing to them christians from the churches, as well as sinners from the world. About the year 1830, therefore, the movement definitely changes its character and becomes a movement for the “Restoration of Primitive Christianity.” The great principles forged in the days of Reformation, were now courageously and unshrinkingly put to the acid test of actually trying them out in organizational life. In this period the movement definitely becomes a propagandist organization, tremendously militant and daringly evangelistic. Dr. Moore correctly dates the distinctively Restoration phase from 1830 to 1870. With 1870 began the third great era of Disciple history,—that which may be termed “the period of

REN ALEXANDER CAMPBELL

Toleration.” * Having waged to victory their war against what they considered the despotic reign of priestcraft, and having won a powerful and influential place in the religious life of America, there grew up at the close of the Civil War, a spirit of toleration which manifested itself in a hearty welcome of every opportunity to federate with other communions in furthering the progress of the kingdom of God. Points of agreement were more and more emphasized, while those things which divide were considered less frequently than in the former years. Our study has to do with the progress of the movement up to the year 1870, since this is the period in which Alexander Campbell did his epochal work,

That Thomas Campbell was the founder of the communion sometimes known as ‘The Reformation Movement of the Nineteenth Century” is beyond refutation, Its ground principles were all thought out by him, and the work well under way, before his distinguished son left Scotland’s shores to take his part in it. Because of his elevation of intellect, his catholocity of spirit, the incisive accuracy of his scholarship, the burning passion of his soul for truth, and above all, his indomitable courage in the face of determined and at times seemingly over-powering opposition, Alexander became the leader of the movement and, because he was simply a more agressive fighter than his father, has virtually eclipsed him in the place which was by right his own. The son never failed, however, gratefully to accord him the credit for inaugurating the effort in his composition of the “Declaration and Address” and even in the work which preceded it and out of which it grew. While, therefore, any historical presentation of the theology of Alexander Campbell in its relation to the origin of the Churches of Christ must take into account the prefatory work of the father, no true disclosure of the inwardness of Disciple spirit is possible without incursion into the genius

3 “History of the Disciples of Christ,” Moore, v, vi. :

of the son. The father created the movement; the son made it to live, nor is it too much to say that without his fighting energy it might have died out in defeat amidst its native Pennsylvania hills.

There were some things which Alexander Campbell and his devoted fellow-laborers said better than anyone who had preceded them or any have followed in the path their feet have pioneered. Disciple indifference to the documents in which these pronouncements lie enshrined is censurable not alone for its want of appreciation of the heroic toil and sacrifice out of which the plea was forged, but also of the intellectual and spiritual heights to which their fathers attained. The desponding prattle that the Disciples have really made no worthy contributions to modern Christian life and thought evinces a culpable ignorance, not only of what the early leaders so fearlessly taught, but also of what the brave host who followed in their train have done. There are some things forever settled. Sober, constructive Disciple thought guards jealously the conviction that there is a “‘faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints.” While heartily agreeing with Professor Streeter that it is ours to criticize rather than meekly to accept, to adventure rather than blindly to imitate, they are yet convinced that there is a core of faith which criticism, reverent though it be, cannot whittle away, a precious deposit of divine and saving truth which must be accepted because it is true, a residue for which no amount of adventure or invention, however brave or hopeful, can ever find a substitute. Such was the masculine faith of Campbell and those who so untiringly toiled with him. As one journeys through the pages of the memorable works to which the white heat of his heart and brain gave being, one may once again enter into the thrill of that superb confidence that here was indeed a new reformation —a reformation through a return to the greatest period of the life of Christianity upon the earth, the period of its beginning. A discriminating modern exponent of this age, Dr. Vernon Bartlett, envisages the unity and freedom which characterizes the Church in the days of the apostles of our Master, as the final standard by which our own senseless divisions may some day be healed: ‘All the more striking, then, is the unity of spirit amid the diversity of thinking. ‘In things essential unity, in things secondary, liberty, in all things, charity’; if this be the abiding motto of a true Catholicity, then the Apostolic Age realized it to the full. And its necessary things were few, simple, but radical, reducible in the last resort to one—the heart’s devoted faith in one Lord, as pledged in baptism and evinced in obedience of life. But that one thing involved and carried with it all else needful for life and godliness. May the experience of the Apostolic Age, as it becomes better known not only in detail but also in its underlying conception of what Christian religion really is, yet prove the great Eirenicon, harmonizing the distinctions to which its partial rediscovery at the Reformation gave rise under the peculiar political and mental conditions of the sixteenth century.” *

Perhaps we may feel that here we are in the presence of an over-weening confidence—far too sanguine are these courageous pioneers in their rude, untutored western land. Such hopefulness of an immediate and joyous reception of their audacious appeal for Christian unity by the discordant sects whose bitter party strife made desolate true religion in the world bespeaks for them an immaturity both intellectual and spiritual, difficult to reconcile with truly great leadership. While it must be confessed that all the intricacies with which the problem of Christian unity bristles did not present themselves to their minds in the perspective possible to us, who have so greatly profited because they have gone the way before us, it is abundantly evident that their unquestioned assurance of ultimate success was the child of a mighty conviction that the basis which it had been theirs to discover was divinely true—God’s own plan for the reunion of His people. It may be that the antidote for the admittedly

4“Anostolic Age,” xi, xii.

prevalent pessism of our own time in regard to the ultimate possibility of Christian reunion, will be made apparent as we pilgrimage along the path which their brave feet have beaten out before us, back to the unpolluted source of our faith, there with devout and teachable mind to learn God’s way of its accomplishment. Typical of this persistent gloom are the dispirited words of Dr. Gore. ‘‘There cannot, I am convinced, be a reunited Church except on the basis of the Catholic Creeds, and the acknowledgment of the sacramental principle as well as the due administration of the sacraments, and the recognition of the episcopal link of connection and continuity in the Catholic body. Here again, then, unity seems a long way off. I do not know if anything can heal the breaches, unless very evil times force us together.” ‘But meanwhile” and assuredly this is language which every Disciple would approve, so distinctively Campbellian is its trend, “the best preparation for future unity lies, I believe, in the detached and disinterested study of our Christian origins and in close fellowship for social service.” °

It falls not within our purview to prosecute any exhaustive research into the sources of Campbell’s theology nor to accord more than passing notice to those influences which the environment of childhood and early manhood exerted upon him. A commendable contribution in this direction has been made by Dean Garrison in his “Alexander Campbell’s Theology.’’ In this work he has sought to assemble those sources, political, philosophical and theological out of which, consciously or otherwise, Campbell drew his theological conclusions, and an evaluation of their relations to the theology as such. The province of the present attempt, on the other hand, is restricted to a somewhat critical examination of that theology itself and an estimate of the inter-relation subsisting between it and the viril communion which it admittedly initiated and of which its fundamental conclusions have ever been the inspiration and driving power. Wher-

5“The Holy Spirit and the Church,” 352.

ever pertinent to this purpose such influences will receive candid attention, but for the inquiry to which we have addressed ourselves they are but secondarily important. I must, however, confess a large measure of debt to Dr. Garrison in the brief outline of such sources which is here included.

IT

Thomas Campbell was born in County Down, February 1, 1763. With his brothers, he received an excellent English education at a military regimental school not far distant from Newry. He early experienced a vital spiritual awakening which was the fountain of all his subsequent religious life. The cold formality of the Episcopal ritual, and the apparent lack of a deep and vital piety which he considered to be the essential thing in Christianity, caused him early to lose interest in the faith to which his father belonged, and to seek instead the society of the more rigid and devout Covenanters and Seceders. After attending their meetings for some time, he finally became a regular communicant in the Seceder Church. It was during his attendance upon the Seceder services, that he became deeply concerned about his own salvation, and for some time sought peace in vain. Though aided by the sympathy and prayers of many earnest friends, he could not find the assurance of the foregiveness which he craved with an agony born of a realization of his own exceeding sinfulness and his impotence to do anything for his own redemption. ‘While in this state, and when his mental distress had reached its highest point, he was one day walking alone in the fields, when, in the midst of his prayerful anxieties and longings, he felt a divine peace suddenly diffuse itself throughout his soul, and the love of God seemed to be shed abroad in his heart as he had never before realized it.” ° All doubt and fear vanished as if by magic, and he knew himself to be a child of God. At this very moment, he felt himself to be called, and the feelings which he experienced, —the sudden change from doubt and fear to peace,—he regarded as proceeding from a direct divine influence which had miraculously imparted to him a saving or justifying faith.

Filled with an ardent desire to devote himself to the ministry in the Secession Church, but unable to secure the consent of his father, who as a member of the Church of England, looked with no great favor upon his connection with the Seceders, and while a final decision was pending, he engaged in teaching, first in an English Academy which he established in Connaught, and later in a school at Sheepbridge, near Newry. Mr. John Kinley, through whose influence he had obtained his latter position, impressed with his high abilities and the deep piety of his life, urged him to carry out his desire to enter the ministry, and even proffered the means to defray the expenses of his classical and ministerial education. His father’s opposition having finally been overcome, he proceeded to Glasgow, where he became a student in the University.

The course prescribed for students in Divinity, at this time extended over three years. It being considered proper for ministers to have some knowledge of medicine, Thomas Campbell, while carrying on his other studies, also attended the medical lectures. At the conclusion of his University career, he entered the Divinity Hall of the Secession or Antiburgher Church, which at this time was at Whitburn. Doctor Archibald Bruce was minister of a Secession church there, and ‘during the week conducted the classes in Divinity.’ Having completed the five sessions of eight weeks each required by the Synod, he submitted to the usual examination and trials for license before the Presbytery in North Ireland, and became a probationer or preacher, under the direction of the Synod, to such churches as were destitute of a fixed ministry. It was during the vacations between his periods

7“Memoirs of Alexander Campbell,” Richardson, I, 23, 27. 8 [bid., 27.

of study in Scotland, that he became acquainted with the descendents of the Huguenots who had settled on the shores of beautiful Lough Neagh. These deeply religious people had fled from France upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV, and had settled first in Scotland, and later in Ireland, where two families, the Bonners and the Corneigles, purchased an entire townland on the shores of Lough Neagh. Here they devoted themselves to agriculture, and established schools in which the Bible was carefully taught, and the forms and practices of the Presbyterian Church were faithfully inculcated.? While engaged in teaching school during the vacation periods, Thomas Campbell met Jane, the only daughter of the Corneigles, and in June of his twenty-fifth year he was married to her. To this union, on September 12th, 1788, in Ballymena, about a mile from the silvery waters of Lough Neagh, was born his first child, Alexander Campbell.*°

After a ministry of several years among various congregations near Sheepbridge and Market Hill in County Armagh, Thomas Campbell was called, in 1798, to a newly established church at Ahorey, about four miles from the town of Armagh, and about ten miles from the flourishing town of Newry. He accepted the call and moved to a farm near Rich-Hill. It was here that most of the boyhood of Alexander was spent, and those early impressions made, which so largely formed the character of his thought in after years.** It was here also, during his ministry at the little country church in Ahorey and as master of the academy which he later founded at Rich-Hill, that Thomas Campbell was brought into contact with those influences which bred within his heart that hatred of sectarianism which, in the new world, grew so amazingly into a mighty movement for a return to the pristine unity and purity of the Church.

In order to an understanding of his subsequent course in

America, it is essential that some of these influences be detailed and the impressions made by them evaluated. (1) The politico-religious distraction of North Ireland at this time was undoubtedly one of the most powerful of these influences directing his mind toward a consideration of the necessity for Christian unity. His ministry was coincident with those travail years which brought forth the rebellion of 1798, and ended with the attempt of Emmet and others in 1803. Intent upon driving the Roman Catholics from North Ireland, the society of Orangemen was formed in County Armagh in 1795. Various contending parties such as the ‘‘Defenders,” the “‘Peep-o’ day Boys,” etc., kept the whole province of Ulster in constant commotion. Under the pretense of searching for arms, many went around by night, and since the doors were generally opened at the first summons, common robbers often took advantage of this excuse to carry out their depradations against the property of the ravaged and distracted people. In the midst of all this anarchy, Theobald Wolfe Tone, a Protestant lawyer of Dublin, organized his secret order, known as the ‘‘United Irishmen,” purposing through them to launch a rebellion against the government, which would eventuate in an Irish Republic. The Catholics became members of this order that they might secure protection against the Orangemen; the Presbyterians in order to bring about reform in Parliament, through which they hoped for equality in taxation and representation. The organization eventually secured membership of one hundred and fifty thousand men. The Presbyterians of the six Northern Counties formed the major part of it, and the fact that Campbell steadfastly refused to have anything to do with it was calculated to bring him into disfavor with many of his people ardent in its support. He went even to the lengths of denouncing secret societies and secret oaths. There can be no doubt but that all this political and social disorder made a profound impression upon his mind. The firm conviction which followed him, and also his son, through life, that secret societies were wrong for Christians, can be traced directly to the experience of these chaotic times.