A spiritual pilgrimage

Preface

The occasion of this book is as follows: In May, 1916, at the meetings of the Congregational Union of England and Wales, held in the City Temple, the Rev. Dr. J. D. Jones of Bournemouth made public reference to my ordination in the Church of England, and said he thought some explanation was due from me. The assembly seemed to be of the same opinion. The speaker went on to remark that my secession from Nonconformity had had a disturbing effect upon the minds of some of the younger ministers, as indeed it was somewhat startling that the minister of their leading church should take such a step, involving as it did the necessity of being reordained. This was why, without any wish to embarrass me, he thought that some public statement of my reasons for the change of communion was called for. He concluded in the most courteous and Christian manner by expressing the hope in the name of all present that God's blessing would rest as richly upon my new ministry as upon the old.

This direct appeal from a friend and associate of many years' standing could not be ignored, especially as in spirit and language it was so wholly free from any taint of sectarian bitterness or resentment at my action. Being made under such circumstances it was practically an appeal from the entire denomination I had left, to say why I had felt compelled to take such a course after so long a period vi

PREFACE spent within it. Up till that moment I had said nothing in public and very little in private as to the significance of the step. I had asked all and sundry to allow me to maintain this reticence at least for the time being. Our country was at war, and anything more unseemly than a religious wrangle at such a time it would be hard to imagine, even if I had been disposed to face the prospect of such, which I was not. I shall never again be a party to religious strife as long as I live, if I can possibly avoid it.

All kinds of attempts have been made to break down my resolve. From the day I resigned the City Temple to the day of Dr. Jones's speech I had been besieged by callers and correspondents who wished to draw me on the subject — some of them from kindly motives, others not so. Determined efforts had been put forth to hector me into making a pronouncement which would have raised the whole Kikuyu issue over again with my personality for the storm center, which I have no doubt was what was wanted. I could not be guilty of such a breach of good taste as to do this when I had barely crossed the threshold of the Church of England, and had I done it, it would have rightly prejudiced me in the eyes of those with whom I was henceforth to be identified in Christian fellowship. So I gently but firmly declined to be rushed in this fashion.

In addition many of my more immediate friends and followers pressed me to say, as soon as I felt free to do so, what had influenced me most in coming to the decision to seek orders in the Church of England. Few of them were inclined to find fault with it, but all of them wanted to know how I stood with reference to the ecclesiastical and doctrinal questions involved.

PREFACE

After taking a few days to think over Dr. Jones's frank request, I decided to comply with it. Nearly a year has now elapsed since I said good-by to the City Temple, and it is easier to speak out now than it was then. But in any event I do not feel that it is of much use making a merely formal statement. It is best to tell the whole story of my religious life and let it speak for itself, and this is what I have done in these pages. That story is not known ; it has not been told before ; and to many Nonconformists as well as Churchmen it may in parts be a revelation. After careful thought I have taken the line of not arguing the various debatable issues treated in the narrative. Most of the arguments on both sides are already outworn, and if I were to plunge into the discussion of them I should only stimulate the irritation and party feeling which it is my principal purpose to allay. I have therefore confined myself to describing step by step the road by which I came to the position I occupy today. I may be mistaken, but I think this is better than writing a series of essays on points of doctrine, and is really more informing in the end, though it involves a considerable measure of self-restraint.

A word to critics. This book makes no pretensions and challenges no comparisons. It is a plain and unadorned account, honestly set forth, of one man's spiritual evolution. Nothing material to the end in view has been kept back, but I have not felt it necessary to enter into private and personal details which could add nothing to the elucidation of the subject.

It remains but to add that if anything herein contained hurts anyone's feelings or arouses a sense of injustice in anyone's mind I crave pardon in advance. It is far indeed viii

PREFACE from my intention. My earnest desire is to help and not to hinder, to heal and not to wound.

R. J. Campbell.

Edgbaston.

Contents

chapteb nan

I. Early Years 3

II. Youth and Early Manhood .... 24

Chapter I

My childhood was spent with my maternal grandparents in the north of Ireland, whither I had been taken from London when I was a few months old in the hope of saving my life, a well-founded hope, as it turned out. But I had a great struggle to survive, and should never have done it but for the tender and solicitous care lavished upon me by those in whose charge I was thus placed. My constitution was one of extreme delicacy from the first, and has always remained so, though, thank God, I have not the battles with ill health now such as form a large part of my early memories; or at least I do not suffer so much pain. As a child I was scarcely ever free from pain of one sort and another, and I think this fact has given me a certain amount of insight into and sympathy with the woes of others, both physical and mental. It is often stated, I hope with some element of justice, that this is a faculty which has characterized my pulpit ministry throughout its whole course. If so, I have undoubtedly paid a price for it. On several occasions before I was ten years old I was given up by the doctors, and once was actually pronounced dead. My grandmother and my old nurse (a woman named Jean Colvin, whose quaint personality is as fresh to my recollection today as it ever was) refused to accept this verdict and worked away at restoring respiration till their efforts were crowned with almost miraculous success, and here I am still. And, strange to say, in spite of all this chronic invalidism, with its not infrequent and dangerous crises, I was remarkably happy. It did not make me at all morbid, nor can I remember dwelling upon it in thought. The recognition of this is a great comfort to me sometimes nowadays when as part of my clerical duty I go to visit sick children in hospitals, for I think it quite probable that the pitifulness of their condition is not realized by themselves. Perhaps the happiest period of my life was this period of childhood and early youth, for I was surrounded with love and treated with an unfailing consideration which I took as a matter of course.

On my uncle's not very large estate were a number of cottier tenants whose children were allowed to play with me, and, as I now see, though I did not see it then, were expected to defer to my wishes and spoil me like the grown-ups. They did not do it, though, or not to any very great extent. These early companions of mine quarreled with me now and then, borrowed my toys and lent me theirs, got mixed up with all kinds of questions as to meum and tuum, took lengthy excursions with me through woods and fields, paid me visits and kept me company when I was laid up, but I cannot recall that they showed me any particular deference or that I expected it except when our elders were about, and then it was very artificial. The only ascendancy I ever possessed over them was that of superior knowledge and a more active imagination. Having plenty of time on my hands, I became an untiring reader, especially in history, and I could always rig up a game in which we individually impersonated famous historical characters and repeated their doughty deeds. My own favorite hero was Sir William Wallace, champion of the liberties of Scotland, a giant in stature as in generalship. There must have been something grotesque in such a puny creature as I was invariably choosing such a part, but I did. The others had to content themselves with being Robert Bruce or the Black Douglas or someone equally eminent or ferocious: I stuck to Wallace. Nobody, so far as I am aware, ever wanted to be Edward I, once I had explained to my own satisfaction and theirs the many monstrous crimes and misdemeanors of that monarch, "the hammer of the Scottish nation."

It will be observed that our preference was given to the chief personages of Scottish history although we lived in Ireland. Not all English readers may understand the reason for this. It was simply that we were Scottish in origin ourselves. I never heard any dialect but broad Scots during the whole period of my residence in that district. We had a great contempt for England and everything English, which was only exceeded by our hatred of Ireland and everything Irish. We did not put it in that way, but that is what it came to. We were terribly down on the Papists, the Home-Rulers, and everything they represented. We firmly and devoutly believed that outside our own little corner of Ulster all the rest of Ireland was in a hopelessly benighted condition and more or less seditious. What we thought sedition was is not clear to me, considering that our loyalty to the flag could not be held to be identical with loyalty to England, but only with hostility to Catholic Ireland. It strikes me that that is principally what Ulster loyalty is now. When my playmates and I were not crudely rehearsing scenes from Scottish or Continental history under my instruction we were reviving the battle of the Boyne and breathing all sorts of truculent sentiments against the descendants of the followers of King James as contrasted with those of King William. I do not think, however, that I ever wanted to be King William when these great events were toward. Being a Dutchman, he was not sufficiently attractive, notwithstanding the tremendous reputation he possessed and still possesses among Ulster Protestants.

He and King James are the Ormazd and Ahriman of Ulster polemics; and I was amused to observe, as my train was drawing into Belfast when I paid a summer visit there three years ago, an immense effigy of William chalked on a wall. As I remarked to the friend who was traveling with me, himself an Ulsterman, one might never have been away; thirty years had made no difference. There before us was the protagonist of Irish Protestantism, as always on horseback, in the old familiar pose with hand and sword uplifted, pointing the way across the Boyne water to the discomfiture of James's popish hosts. To hear an Ulster Orangeman talk one would think the battle of the Boyne ranked with that of Waterloo and had far more important results. How queer it seemed to be sitting in that railway carriage a few hours after leaving London, and to be back in a mental atmosphere, and in the presence of facts and symbols, of which the average Londoner had never even heard! Underneath the effigy of the deliverer was scrawled the time-honored objurgation, "To hell with the Pope!" Had we been in sentimental mood it might have moved us to tears, because of the tender memories it evoked. As it was I am afraid it only moved us to regret that the spirit of faction and unreasoning prejudice still so evidently prevented the realization of Irish unity. Sir Edward Carson's volunteers were marching through the streets. They were to have a grand rally the next day at Coleraine, when that redoubtable leader himself was to speak. It was all very homelike, but more or less like a dream too.

The greatest day in the calendar in my youth was, of course, the twelfth of July, the anniversary of the battle aforesaid; and for months beforehand the Orangemen of our neighborhood would be preparing for it, marching and countermarching with drums and fifes through all the countryside. They thought about little else as far as one can ascertain. And even in the winter the same set of ideas was kept up — in fact, all the year round. In what they called

"the lang fore-suppers," that is, the winter evenings, the men of all ages would gather in the farm kitchens and talk and talk and talk Orangeism, and tell bloodcurdling stories of the evil deeds of the Fenians in the past. I knew every one of those stories; I know them now. And the worst of it is that many of them were true. There is no sadder tale in existence than that of the bitter and relentless feuds of the two races and faiths into which Ireland is divided. I say the two races and faiths, for somehow the settlers of the English pale farther south have not preserved the same fierce antagonism to the native Irish that is still evinced by the Scottish Presbyterians of the north. And when the twelfth of July came, what a glorious time we children had! — and the same might be said of our grave and reverend seniors. I do not know what may be the case now, but I know what was bound to happen then. Scores of thousands of Orangemen marched in procession to an open-air rendezvous where enthusiastic inflammatory speeches were made, bellicose songs sung — everybody knew them — and much strong waters imbibed. The Ulsterman would not thank you for beer, or would not in my young days; his consumption was spirits and plenty of it. The processions were gay with banners and colored sashes. High officials of the various Lodges even wore orange cloaks and carried Bibles and mallets. What the latter were meant to symbolize I do not know, but they were never omitted when we of the younger generation imitated our elders in the way of fervent demonstrations. That we did not in the least understand what all the fuss was about made no matter; I do not suppose very many, either old or young, troubled their heads greatly about that. If the twelfth ended without a few casualties or even a street riot or two it was exceptional. One of my most vivid recollections is that of an Orangeman who was killed on the roadside by some Fenians in a passing side-car. Being rather the worse for drink, he had been yelling his party war-cries at the top of his voice, and they leaped off the vehicle and bludgeoned him to death, driving off immediately afterwards at full speed. I happened with others to reach the spot just before the breath left his body. It was a ghastly sight, never to be forgotten; and its immediate result, as might be expected, was to infuriate all the already dangerously excited Orangemen, and reprisals quickly followed. Many people were injured, and I believe one or two were slain. A priest had a narrow escape with his life, and his house and church were wrecked. I remember watching with my uncle from the safe altitude of an hotel window the military riding at a quick trot up the street of the neighboring market town and the crowd fleeing before them. This was not a very unusual occurrence; it was only the kind of thing that was to be looked for on or about the twelfth of July.

From this brief description it will be seen that the mental climate in which I spent my early days was utterly different from that of England, so different, in fact, that I am at a loss how best to indicate it clearly. These people were intenselyconservative both in religion and politics. The family to which I belonged had never been anything but Tory, and would have had no sympathy whatever with most of the aspirations of English Noncomformists in the political and social sphere, and less than might be supposed in the religious — but I shall come to that presently. I have not met with anything in England exactly resembling the kind of patriarchal arrangements with which our household affairs were conducted. We had the same servants from youth to old age. No one ever thought of leaving, unless to go to America or Australia to push his fortunes. No maid "gave notice" when rebuked by my grandmother ; it would have been no use, her mother would have sent her straight back. They did not even leave when they got married, but remained about the place (unless they went to reside with their husbands in another township altogether), coming in every now and then to render special service as it might be wanted. And yet there was none of the caste distinction that is so tenacious in England, very little of the same fear of social conventions, and none of the vulgar desire to be considered correct and stylish. That peculiarly English habit of mind was completely absent from the folk with whom I had to do.

I have never seen finer men anywhere than the men of that part of the world. Tall, strong, muscular, they were more like Australians than Britons in physique, but fresh colored and bright eyed. Alas, I am afraid this robust stock has become greatly depleted within the last twenty years, chiefly through emigration. For reasons into which one need not enter here the rural population of Antrim has considerably diminished during the period in question. Economic influences have been at work there as in England, drawing the young men away from the country to the towns or driving them abroad. I remember many years ago coming across a sentence in the Spectator, I think it was, to the effect that if one were to discover a spot anywhere on this planet in which a human steam engine was making things hum generally the chances were that he was an Ulsterman. That is not an unjust reflection, as the records of the English-speaking race abundantly testify. Some of our greatest empire-builders have been Ulstermen, such as Sir George White, the brilliant defender of Ladysmith, and Sir Samuel Wilson, formerly Agent-General for Australia; as a boy the latter was my grandfather's playmate. It seems a pity that the vigorous country life to which I was accustomed as a child should have so largely disappeared, but it has. I have never looked upon what was to me a more melancholy spectacle than that revealed in a drive through the haunts of my youth in 1913. House after house whose inhabitants I had known well, including the one in which I was brought up, lay in ruins, and an air of silence and desolation brooded over all. It was a great and saddening change. It may not be the same everywhere, but it was the first thing that thrust itself upon my attention in the locality I had known best.

In those days of long ago I must have been a strange solitary boy. I liked company, but I liked being alone more. My uncle, my mother's brother, indulged me greatly. Being unmarried, he expected to adopt me as his son, though whether my father and mother would ever have agreed to this as a permanency I do not know. At all events his death in America while I was still in my early teens put an end to the idea. He used to buy me all the books I wanted, which is saying a good deal, and in fine summer weather I would fill a satchel with them and another with food, and go off to spend the day by myself in the fields, returning at bedtime. I had a perfect passion for nature in all its moods, and had a sort of mystic feeling about it. I never felt less alone than when in communion with the holy presence of which I was conscious everywhere in those habitual retreats. I knew what Wordsworth's nature worship meant long before I knew Wordsworth; it was exactly my own. I used to feel that the whole landscape was mysteriously alive, and every minutest object in it, every tiny flower and thorn, became to my naive perceptions instinct with Heaven. Nor have I ever lost this entirely. It gave me a view of life which I can only call sacramental, and which has remained with me all through my mature years and helped to put me where I am today, in Holy Orders in the Church of England and within her sacramental system. For weeks together I would pursue these solitary wanderings every day, readings, dreaming, wondering, after my own fashion praying. I remember making for myself an oratory in a remote corner of our woods, and carving a rude crucifix for it as well as erecting a rough stone altar. Why I did this I cannot imagine, as I am sure I never saw anything of the kind anywhere else at that time, and never took part in anything approximating to Catholic worship, never went inside a Roman Catholic church, in fact. Perhaps I may have taken note of Episcopalian sanctuaries, as we had some Episcopalian connections, but it is practically certain that there would be no crucifix there, nor any of the other appurtenances of elaborate ritual and ceremonial.

My earliest recollections of public worship are associated with Cloughwater Presbyterian Church of Ireland meeting-house. It was very awesome to my juvenile intelligence, very decorous and dignified, and withal very plain. The services were long. To the best of my recollection we went in at eleven and came out at two or thereabouts. Perhaps I am mistaken in this. It may only have seemed as long as that to a small person intent rather upon what was to be seen outside. But I do not remember grumbling at it nor objecting to going; I should as soon have thought of flying. It all seemed to me in the natural order of things, and I felt it to be very solemn and impressive. So it was. Anything more reverent, silent and orderly than the demeanor of the congregation that assembled in that unpretentious four-square building it would be impossible to find; and I shall never forget the shock I received the first time I was present at a Nonconformist service in England and heard the buzz of conversation that went on before the worship began and was resumed immediately it stopped. The atmosphere of North of Ireland Presbyterianism and Episcopalianism had not prepared me for it — far otherwise. I think my grandfather was an elder of Cloughwater about this time, but of this I cannot be sure as he died suddenly while I was still very young. But I can quite clearly recollect my uncle acting as precentor and "raising the Psalm." Whether this was a temporary duty on his part or not I cannot say; he had a very fine voice and some knowledge of music, but I can hardly think of him as ecclesiastically minded. He was more of a sportsman and social leader, and one of the best and most daring riders I ever saw. One of my greatest delights was to watch him take the fences in our annual steeplechase. He was able to perform feats on horseback that I have never seen ventured before or since.

My grandfather was very different. He was a grave, silent man, simple, devout, and of a gracious, loving nature. I have never known anyone whose expression so belied his character, for he always looked somewhat stern, and at times even grim, but I should think he never hurt anyone or anything in his life.1 He was the gentlest, kindest and most patient of

1 There is a story that he once shot a robin, and was so remorseful about it that he never afterwards took a gun into his hands. My uncle had no such scruples and was an excellent shot. His shooting parties were a great delight to me.

men. No one ever saw him out of temper or heard him raise his voice in rebuking a defaulter in the house or out of it. Nor was his piety of the gloomy sort, notwithstanding the mental environment in which we dwelt. I have read many things about the Scottish Presbyterianism of that period and earlier, which remind me vividly of my youth, but I cannot say that I was ever made to feel the somberness and oppressiveness of the Sabbath which the writers are wont to describe. When I went to see "Bunty Pulls the Strings" I found myself back among the good folk of my childhood, but with one exception : Sunday was never a dreary day to me, nor was the practice of religion ever tiresome. My grandfather would not have it so, and my grandmother was of the same mind. True we had the blinds drawn, and nobody ever whistled or sang — unless it was the metrical psalms, for we rarely if ever had a hymn — but I was not wearied with religious exercises nor repressed when I wanted to play. I can see my grandfather's sober smile at this moment at the puzzling questions with which I plied him about the Bible, the Covenanters, etc. He did his best to answer them, dear good man that he was, but I cannot remember any of the answers. I can remember my grandmother's much better, for she was bolder on points of theology and freely said what she thought. When I come to think of the Auld Licht atmosphere in which my grandparents were born and bred I am amazed at the broad, human way, conjoined to a profound spirituality, in which they lived their life and ordered their household in the fear of God. My grandmother was something of a Biblical critic without ever having heard of such a being. I had a great fondness for the Old Testament because of its picturesque stories, and when I told the old lady that I did not think it quite fair of the Almighty to penalize the world so severely for Adam's transgression she quite agreed, but added that she thought the account must be more or less allegorical, which was good, sound sense and would be still in any assembly of theologians. She had some strong things to say also about the morals of the patriarchs and the unedifying language of certain portions of Scripture. David was a favorite of hers, but she regarded him with a critical eye as, indeed, she did every Old Testament character.

My grandmother was a remarkable woman in every way, and would have been recognized as such in any society. No one could fail to be arrested by her appearance in the first place. She was like "a Roman matron, tall and straight." As I remember her best she carried herself with a dignity which no one ever ventured to disturb. Self-respect and strength of purpose were written in every line of her face, and yet there was no suggestion of self -consciousness in anything she said or did. I here set down my grateful testimony that I owe more to her noble example and untiring devotion than to anyone with whom my lot has been cast. She was utterly unselfish, though not exactly what one would call amiable, in which latter respect she was a great contrast to my dear mother whom I really came to know much later, and who, I rejoice to say, is still living and active in body and mind. The two women were alike in their devotion to those about them, and in the fact that they never thought of themselves at all in connection with the service they continuously rendered; but my grandmother was of sterner mold than my mother, and not one to brook any crossing of her will when she had once made up her mind as to what ought to be done. I think all who had to do with her stood a little in awe of her — all, that is, except me. There was a saying then, and still is, amongst the members of our family, that I was a privileged person from the first in that establishment, and the recipient of a tenderness not bestowed in the same degree upon anyone else. Probably my need was greater, but everyone who knew my grandmother will agree with me that, even if I had been well and strong, my opinion of her would have been just the same; it would be impossible to think of her with anything but reverence and gratitude. To all in the neighborhood she was simply "the mistress"; and I am told that when after my uncle's death she left the old home to come and reside with my father and mother in England, the most touching farewell she received was from a small, silent crowd which stood bareheaded to see her pass as she was driven away. No one who knew her in her old age could have much idea of what she was in her prime. The loss of her only son completely broke her, and she never had much hold on life afterwards. The only person she cared much about in England outside the family circle was the vicar of the rural parish where she dwelt, and she was buried with Anglican rites. It is quite in keeping with her character that she should have retained her interest in public aff airs up to the last. She was a vigorous anti-Home-Ruler, and I believe the only person in the world whom she sincerely detested was Mr. Gladstone. When she died my mother found a history of Scotland under her pillow.