BX 7343 .Al H33 
 Haley, J. J. 1851-192A. 
 Makers and molders of the 
 Reformation movement 
 
i 
 
Makers and Molders 
 
 of the 
 
 Reformation Movement 
 
 A STUDY OF LEADING MEN AMONG 
 THE DISCIPLES OF CHRIST 
 
 BY J. J. HALEY 
 
 WITH AN 
 
 INTRODUCTION BY J. H. GARRISON 
 
 Editor Emeritus Christian-Evangelist 
 
 Printed and Published by 
 
 CHRISTIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION 
 2712 PINE STREET, ST. LOUIS. MO. 
 
Copyright. 1914 
 CHRISTIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION 
 Si. Louis, Mo. 
 
I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 To revitalize history, by making the men 
 who were chief actors in it to live again, is 
 the work of a literary artist. One who does it 
 successfully must know the history of the 
 movement he writes about, not only in its ex- 
 ternal phases of growth and achievement, but 
 in the hidden forces which underlie these 
 changes and activities. Great personalities 
 are the dominant factors of history. As no 
 one can know the history of the United States 
 without knowing something of George Wash- 
 ington, Patrick Henry, John Adams, Thomas 
 Jef¥erson, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Abra- 
 ham Lincoln, and a host of other patriot- 
 statesmen, so the history of the Reformation 
 of the Nineteenth Century, as urged by the 
 Disciples of Christ, can be understood only by 
 those who know something of the chief per- 
 sonalities who, at dif¥erent periods of its de- 
 velopment, have, under God, done most to 
 shape its policy and mold its spirit. In this 
 volume the author has called up out of the 
 more or less misty Past some of the most 
 forceful personalities in the history of this 
 movement, and with a few touches of a mas- 
 ter's hand, has caused them to pass before us 
 
4 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 again ; a noble company, whose memories we 
 are to revere, whose virtues we are to emu- 
 late, and whose mistakes, natural to their age 
 and environment, we are to avoid, if we are 
 able to discern them in the larger light of our 
 day. 
 
 Of the ten men whose character and work 
 are sketched in this volume, more than half 
 were personally known to the writer and sev- 
 eral were his w^arm personal friends. The 
 others are known by their writings. In every 
 case the able author has shown a discriminat- 
 ing mind in estimating the chief character- 
 istics of the man and his contribution to our 
 history. The readers of this small volume 
 may well feel that they have here true por- 
 traits, as far as they go, of the men and of 
 their work. 
 
 One of the most valuable features of this 
 volume is the faithful portraiture of the reli- 
 gious movement itself. Its mistakes and er- 
 rors are not concealed, but the author sees 
 that these are the natural, if not inevitable, 
 results of fallible men, no matter how great 
 and good they may be, who seek to incarnate 
 a high ideal. He points out how these mis- 
 takes have been, and are being, outgrown. 
 How could it be otherwise if the movement be 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 5 
 
 of God and is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, who 
 is to guide us into all truth? 
 
 We welcome this volume and the great and 
 good men it causes to pass before us again in 
 review. We seem to hear their voices, soft- 
 ened and mellowed by their celestial experi- 
 ences, bidding us to be true to the great Leader 
 and Captain of our salvation and to the holy 
 cause of unity among his followers. Inspired 
 by their heroism and their unselfish devotion 
 to high ideals, we shall be better able to ac- 
 complish the great unfinished tasks before us. 
 
 J. H. Garrison. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2014 
 
 https://archive.org/details/makersmoldersofrOOhale 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 \/ Page 
 
 THOMAS CAMPBELL 11 
 
 Creative Personality of the Union Move- 
 ment of the Nineteenth Century. 
 
 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL .... 25 
 Prophet and Leader of the Reformation 
 Movement. 
 
 BARTON W. STONE 42 
 
 Prophet of Evangelism and Piety in the 
 Reformation iMovement. 
 
 WALTER SCOTT 59 
 
 Masterful Preacher and Teacher. 
 
 ISAAC ERRETT 77 
 
 Major Prophet of the Second Generation 
 of Disciples. 
 
 MOSES E. 'lard 95 
 
 Prophet of Radicalism, Literalism and 
 Conservatism in the Second Generation of 
 the Reformation, Movement. 
 
 WINTHiiOP H. HOPSON AND GEORGE 
 
 W.^LONGAN 116 
 
 Two Representative Types of Leadership 
 in the Middle Period of Our History. 
 
 JOHN W. llcGARVEY AND ALEXANDER 
 
 ^PROCTER 136 
 
 Two Representatives of Conservative and 
 Progressive Leadership. 
 
 THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT UP 
 
 TO DATE 159 
 
MAKERS AND MOLDERS 
 
 OF THE 
 REFORMATION MOVEMENT 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL 
 
 Creative Personality of the Union Movement 
 of the Nineteenth Century 
 
 HEN a religion comes into the world 
 
 VV with vitality enough to survive in the 
 struggle for existence, four things happen in 
 the working out of its problems : 
 
 First, a supreme creative personality ap- 
 pears, who, passing the truth through the 
 alymbic of his genius, molds it into a vital and 
 consistent whole. A second personality, one 
 or more, but little inferior to the first, comes 
 after the founder, a man of interpretative 
 genius, who interprets and mediates the truth 
 in the application of its principles to life. Crea- 
 tion and interpretation call for a third man or 
 men in the supreme order, call for a man of 
 constructive ability, architectonic power, a 
 builder who organizes the religion into a sys- 
 tem and the church into methods, forms, and 
 an order of administration. It is in this period 
 of organization that the ecclesiastic, the priest 
 and creed maker get in their oars. Inspiration 
 is succeeded by convention, the spirit by the 
 
12 MAKERS AND MOLDBRS OF 
 
 letter, and things drop to a lower level. The 
 lofty ideals of the founder and his first inter- 
 preters are blurred, confused and lost. Cor- 
 ruption and stagnation come in like a flood. 
 This is the reformer's opportunity, and refor- 
 mation, necessitated by conditions, runs along 
 historic lines similar to those of the original 
 faith itself. 
 
 Moses was the creative personality of Ju- 
 daism, the great prophets were his interpre- 
 ters. Ezra and Nehemiah organized the law 
 into Leviticism. During the exile and after 
 the restoration, the Divine Legation of Moses 
 was organized into later Judaism, an inferior 
 product of ecclesiasticism and priestcraft. 
 Dead consciences, lowered moral standards, 
 corruption in faith and life, formalism, hypoc- 
 risy and shallowness ; no open vision, no in- 
 spired prophet to correct abuses till John the 
 Reformer appears in the wilderness, calling 
 upon the people to hark back to the founder 
 and his first interpreters. "Prepare ye the way 
 of the Lord, make his paths straight." 
 
 Pour Periods of Religious History 
 
 Jesus of Nazareth was the creative person- 
 ality of Christianity, John and Paul were his 
 first great interpreters, the Greek period 
 organized theology and the Roman period or- 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 13 
 
 ganized the church. Organization was the 
 straight way to crystallization, life and passion 
 went out, corruption and tradition came in. 
 Theological degradation, ecclesiastical prosti- 
 tution, creed making, sect building, low grade 
 morals in the life of the church, and the dark 
 ages came on for a thousand years. Prophet 
 reformers arose who felt the darkness and saw 
 the light: Savonarola in Italy, Huss in Bohe- 
 mia, Tyndall in England, Layfevre in France, 
 Luther in Germany. The dawn was breaking, 
 and when Luther nailed his theses to the door 
 of the university church at Wittenburg, the 
 Reformation Ship was launched, the banner of 
 Apostolic Christianity was flung to the breeze. 
 
 The four periods, therefore, through which 
 the evolution of the Christian religion has 
 passed have been the creative, the interpreta- 
 tive, the constructive, and the reformative — 
 creation, interpretation, construction and ref- 
 ormation. Reform and restoration move- 
 ments pass through similar phases. St. Augus- 
 tine was the creative, originating personality 
 of Calvinism, John Calvin and Jonathan Ed- 
 wards were its great interpreters, John Knox 
 was the organizing genius of the Calvinistic 
 reformation. 
 
14 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 The Creative Personality of Our Movement 
 
 Thomas Campbell, author of the Declaration 
 and Address, and founder of the Christian As- 
 sociation of Washington, Pa., was the crea- 
 tive personality of our restoration movement. 
 Alexander, his son, and Isaac Errett of the 
 second generation of Disciples, were his great 
 interpreters. W e are now, and have been for 
 thirty years, in the throes of the constructive 
 and organizing era of our reformatory ex- 
 perience. In the absence of conspicuous per- 
 sonal leadership in this branch of the service, 
 our organizing genius has yet to appear. Most 
 of our troubles have arisen, and are likely to 
 continue to arise, as in other reforming move- 
 ments. As Thomas Campbell was the Moses 
 of our Restoration, the Declaration and Ad- 
 dress was the Deuteronomy of our prophetic 
 reformation. As certainly as the fifth book of 
 Moses contains the basic principles and the 
 whole body of teaching and ideals of the 
 prophets that inspired and entered into the 
 structure of the Deuteronomic reformation in 
 Israel, this matchless document, whose orig-in 
 we celebrated four years ago, embraces every 
 truth we have taught, every principle we have 
 advocated, every ideal we have striven to 
 realize in the hundred years of our existence. 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 15 
 
 The Declaration and Address 
 
 Father Campbell was the originator. The 
 illustrious son was the advocate, the ex- 
 pounder, the defender, the illuminator, the 
 adaptor of the teaching of his father in the con- 
 stitution of the Christian Association, the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount of our New Testament, if 
 you will allow me to change the figure from a 
 discourse of Moses in the Old Testament to 
 a discourse of Christ in the New. The relation 
 of the Sermon on the Mount to the kingdom of 
 God is the relation of the Declaration and Ad- 
 dress to our religious reformation. The effort 
 that has been made to trace the Christian 
 unity conception and emphasis to Thomas 
 Campbell, and the primitive Christianity idea 
 as the basis of union, to Alexander Campbell, 
 and to make the two stand over against each 
 other as variant reforming types, has not been 
 a success. The fact is, the two conceptions, as 
 common integers of New Testament Chris- 
 tianity, were emphatically and profusely 
 taught by the elder Campbell in the historic 
 document penned a hundred years ago in 
 Washington, Pa. I have been amazed at the 
 comprehensiveness and all-inclusiveness of 
 this composition. It is the most admirable 
 summary of apostolic Christianity to be found 
 in the literature of the church this side of the 
 
16 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 New Testament. Even from the point of view 
 of modern criticism, which has claimed so 
 many new discoveries, we are chagrined to 
 find that Father Campbell has stolen all our 
 good ideas. The unification of Christendom 
 on the basis of the apostolic faith in Jesus 
 Christ, the restoration of the church with its 
 divine equipment for human service, '"the 
 union of all who love in the service of all who 
 sufler," the purification and elevation of 
 morals to make way for the building of char- 
 acter after the likeness of Christ, opposition 
 to a fake mysticism in conversion, and all 
 divisive and corrupting instruments, such as 
 human creeds and an ignorant ministry ; these 
 and all other essential and vital things that 
 pertain to the kingdom of God and the name of 
 Jesus Christ are distinctly and explicitly 
 taught, so that we have preached nothing the 
 last hundred years, and will preach nothing in 
 the oncoming centuries, not advanced, or at 
 least suggested, in this magna charta of our 
 restoration movement. 
 
 European Sources of Reformation Movement 
 
 I am not saying these things, of course, in 
 ignorance of the fact that many of the root 
 principles of the restoration can be traced to 
 European soil. Both of the Campbells were of 
 European birth and education, and there was 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 17 
 
 much in religious training and social environ- 
 ment to suggest the need of reformation, and a 
 cue to their future work. When Thomas 
 Campbell set sail for the United States, in 
 1807, a revolt against Calvinism^ and hair- 
 brained mysticism had gained a foothold in 
 Scotland. More than one harbinger had arisen 
 in the wilderness of sectarianism to restore the 
 tabernacle of the Lord that had fallen down. 
 John Glass and his son-in-law, Sandeman ; the 
 Haldane Brothers, and Greville Ewell, of Glas- 
 gow, were striking powerful blows at Calvin- 
 istic theology, the corrupt condition of re- 
 ligious society, and the divided state of the 
 church. Successive attempts at reformation 
 since Luther had culminated in a new effort, 
 at the beginning of the nineteenth century, to 
 •get back to Christ and the apostles. These 
 efforts, however, were tentative and partial, 
 and short-lived for lack of genius and person- 
 ality in leadership. They were quite success- 
 ful in their diagnosis of the situation, which 
 called aloud for the restoration of the ancient 
 order of things, and the remedies suggested 
 were adequate to meet the needs of the case, 
 the moment was imminent, but the man did 
 not appear. He had emigrated to the United 
 States. The field of a great apostolic restora- 
 tion movement had been transferred from 
 
18 MAKERS AND HOLDERS OF 
 
 Scotland to North America; from the Old 
 World to the New. 
 
 People not acquainted with the subject are 
 surprised to find in the books of Glass and 
 Sandeman, the Haldanes and Dr. Kirk, ideas, 
 arguments, doctrines, and even phrases, that 
 our reformation has made familiar to the world. 
 These men did not fail to grasp the truth, and 
 to realize the contrast between what they saw 
 and what Christ intended ; but they lacked the 
 power and the opportunity to incarnate these 
 principles in a personality strong enough in 
 creative and adaptive genius to make the 
 movement go in the face of old world difficul- 
 ties. It was on this side of the Atlantic that 
 the man and the moment came together. 
 
 The Man and the Opportunity 
 
 When the Campbells set foot on American 
 soil, they found the situation worse, the cir- 
 cumstances of contending sects calling more 
 loudly for reform, than in the old world. They 
 found more dogmatism, a fiercer sectarianism, 
 a more intense fanaticism, a wilder mysticism, 
 a narrower, harder, and less tractable denom- 
 inationalism than they had left behind them 
 in Europe. If the people were not hateful, 
 they certainly hated one another. Thomas 
 Campbell tells of a seceder divine who was so 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 19 
 
 intensely human that he exhorted his congre- 
 gation : "I beseech you, my brethren, to hate all 
 other denominations, especially the Catholics." 
 An age of increasing sects, multiplying creeds, 
 contending parties, and warring zealots, had 
 reached the stage where reaction must begin 
 to rally the forces of reformation. The time 
 had come to knock down the Dagons of the- 
 ology in the temple of sectarianism, and to call 
 back a divided church from the wilderness of 
 strife and bitterness to the unity of the Spirit 
 in the bond of peace. 
 
 The American Church in the Nineteenth Century 
 
 Three things had happened to bring about 
 this ecclesiastical reign of terror: First, the 
 Bible had been lost in the church ; second, 
 Christ had been lost in the Bible; third, the 
 church had been lost in the world. The first 
 thing a corrupt church does is to lose its Bible, 
 and the Bible is never lost in but one place, 
 and that is in the temple. The first thing a re- 
 stored church does is to find the Book and put 
 it in the place where it belongs. The greatest 
 spiritual reformation in Israel synchronized 
 with the discovery of the book of Deuter- 
 onomy in the Temple, where it had been lost 
 during the reign of corrupt Manasseh. John 
 the Harbinger launched his revolution by a 
 
20 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 rediscovery of the Book of the Law and the 
 Prophets in the same old place of hiding, the 
 Temple in Jerusalem. In the Reformation of 
 the sixteenth century, Martin Luther found 
 the Holy Scriptures buried in a dead language, 
 and a Standard Bible chained to the lectern of 
 a Holy Catholic Church. The Book had to be 
 liberated from its temple prison, and a transla- 
 tion of it made into the common vernacular be- 
 fore reformation truth could find a place in the 
 consciousness of the people. 
 
 Back to the "Book of Books" 
 
 The new religious freedom that came in 
 with Luther had its evil side. The abuse of 
 liberty brought in the era of sectarianism and 
 denominationalism. Two hundred years of 
 warring creeds and bellicose denominations, 
 and history repeats itself. The Bible is again 
 lost in a superincumbent mass of ignorance 
 and superstition and pharisaism, and the fate 
 of the Bible is always the fate of Christ and 
 the church. Necessarily, therefore, the first 
 characteristic of our restoration movement 
 was the rediscovery of the Holy Scriptures. 
 The assertion of the authority of the divine 
 Word and its all-sufficiency as a rule of faith 
 and practice was the first step towards realiz- 
 ing the need of reform. "Where the Scriptures 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 21 
 
 speak we speak, and where the Scriptures are 
 silent we are silent." The life and power of 
 every forward movement in the history of or- 
 ganized Christianity is a fresh and vital re-in- 
 terpretation of the Bible and a new application 
 of its principles to the life of the church. And 
 this, of necessity, leads straight to the redis- 
 covery of Christ, and his installation on the 
 throne of universal empire and Lordship, fol- 
 lowed by the restoration of the New Testa- 
 ment church. Mr. Campbell was quick to see 
 that any effective appeal to the conscience of 
 the Christian world must involve a fresh and 
 living interpretation of Holy Scripture, a vital 
 and loyal recognition of Christ as Prophet, 
 Priest, and King, as Saviour and Lord of all, 
 and an earnest efifort towards the realization 
 of the ideals of the apostolic church, before it 
 was possible for the Saviour's intercessory 
 prayer to be answered — "that they all may be 
 one," as He and the Father are one. The plea 
 was for the unity, purity, spirituality, and 
 catholicity of the New Testament church, 
 fresh from the hands of Christ, and guided by 
 the Holy Spirit in the apostles. A careful 
 analysis of the Declaration and Address will 
 show that this plea for unity was simple, scrip- 
 tural and catholic, an appeal to the conscience 
 of the universal church. 
 
22 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 Catholicity of Our Plea 
 
 1. The catholic creed of Christendom, "I 
 believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the 
 living God, the Saviour and Lord of Men." 
 
 2. The catholic rule of faith and practice, 
 the Word of God, written in the Old and New 
 Testaments. 
 
 3. The catholic ordinances, baptism and the 
 Lord's Supper. 
 
 4. The catholic name. Christian. 
 
 5. The catholic life, the ethics of the king- 
 dom of God, "Whatsoever things are true, 
 whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever 
 things are just, whatsoever things are pure, 
 whatsoever things are lovely, of good report, 
 if there be any virture. if there be any praise, 
 think on these things." 
 
 This plea is reasonable, feasible, beautiful, 
 and, in time, must become universal. The 
 spiritual movement originated and consecrated 
 in the manner I have endeavored to describe, 
 and brought forth on this new American con- 
 tinent in the last hundred years, is not a refor- 
 mation of existing institutions in the ordinary 
 sense of that term, nor a restoration of primi- 
 tive Christianity in the sense of literally re- 
 storing the historic apostolic church. It is a 
 realization movement whose aim and purpose 
 is to realize the ideals of New Testament 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 23 
 
 Christianity in the life of these modern cen- 
 turies. It was found not possible to reform 
 existing religious institutions, nor to restore 
 the primitive church by transferring it literally 
 and bodily to the nineteenth century, but it 
 was possible and eminently desirable to make 
 an honest efifort to realize the ideals of the 
 apostolic faith that shine and make their ap- 
 peal from every page of the inspired record. 
 
 The Peculiar Glory of "The Reformation" 
 
 This feature differentiates the movement 
 inaugurated by Thomas Campbell from all of 
 the mere reformations in the history of the 
 church. The old reformations would need to 
 be repeated through successive generations till 
 the end of time ; but what we have chosen to 
 call "the current reformation," if rightly under- 
 stood, forever remains current, because it em- 
 bodies a principle that makes crystallization 
 forever impossible and growth forever neces- 
 sary. So long as we strive to actualize the 
 originals, to realize the ideals of the inspired 
 Christianity of the New Testament, we safe- 
 guard our religion from stagnation, open the 
 road to perpetual progress, and thus forestall 
 the necessity of further efforts at reformation. 
 This is the peculiarity and glory of our great 
 religious movement, and if, under God, we are 
 
24 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 faithful to the charge committed to our care, 
 we shall contribute our share and more to the 
 bringing in of that far-off divine event to which 
 the whole creation moves, when they shall not 
 teach every man his neighbor, and every man 
 his brother, saying, "Know the Lord, for all 
 shall know him, from the least to the greatest 
 cf these." 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 25 
 
 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL 
 Vrophei and Leader of the Reformation 
 
 LEXANDER CAMPBELL was in the 
 
 JTx. twenty-first year of his age when he 
 joined his distinguished father in Washington, 
 Pa. Thomas Campbell had preceded his 
 family by two years, coming to these shores 
 from the old world in 1807. His family, es- 
 saying to follow him a year later, were ship- 
 wrecked off the coast of Scotland and were 
 compelled to return to the old country, where 
 they remained a year before again setting sail. 
 This calamity and subsequent detention 
 turned out to be a providence, as far as the 
 future of young Alexander and the reformation 
 he was destined to lead, were concerned. The 
 opportunity which it gave him of three hun- 
 dred days' study in the University of Glasgow, 
 and association with leaders of religious 
 thought in Scotland, was joyfully embraced, 
 and always in after years acknowledged as 
 
 Movement 
 
26 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDBRS OF 
 
 potential in its influence on his future life and 
 work. 
 
 The previous education of this coming re- 
 former had been in no less efficient hands than 
 that of his eminent father. In the days of his 
 adolescent youth he had shown a marked in- 
 disposition to study and all indoor confine- 
 ment. A stout and vigorous lad, overflowing 
 with animal spirits and in love with God's 
 great out-of-doors, he was fond of fishing, gun- 
 ning, trapping wild animals, and wandering in 
 the fields of his native heather. Athletic sports 
 had more attraction for him than the serious 
 business of acquiring an education. James 
 Foster, a friend of the family, says the first 
 time he saw Alexander Campbell, a boy of 
 fifteen summers, he had a long pole in his hand 
 with a net attached to one end with which he 
 was catching small birds under the eaves of 
 the houses in the outskirts of the town. 
 
 Like Adam Clark in his youthful days, our 
 nascent genius evinced but little ambition for 
 the acquisition of knowledge. He went out 
 under a shade tree one day to croon over his 
 French lesson in "The Adventures of Tele- 
 machus." A warm summer day, he was over- 
 come by the spirit of drowsiness, and falling 
 into a deep slumber, a cow came along, seized 
 his Telemachus and actually devoured it. On 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 27 
 
 reporting the disaster at home his father ad- 
 ministered a sound thrashing and told him by 
 way of further humiHation, that "the cow had 
 more French in her stomach than he had in his 
 head," a fact too obvious to be easily denied. 
 
 This love of sport and the exuberance of 
 animal vitality in the activities of outdoor life, 
 tended to the toughening of fiber and the de- 
 velopment of a powerful physique that stood 
 him well in hand in the strenuous responsibili- 
 ties and labors of after life. It was not long 
 after the Telemachus episode till the physical 
 energy of the boy began to transmute itself 
 into the intellectual aptitudes and powers of 
 the man. John Locke's "Letters on Tolera- 
 tion" and his "Essay on the Human Under- 
 standing" were the first books that made a pro- 
 found and lasting impression on his mind. 
 These books of the English philosopher, in 
 fact, laid the foundation of Mr. Campbell's 
 theology and his conception of religious and 
 civil liberty. The association of father and son 
 with the Rich Hill Independents, who were 
 more liberal and catholic in their sympathies 
 than any of the sects of Scotch Presbyterian- 
 ism, had much to do with the initial impulse of 
 reform and progress in their minds. 
 
28 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 Religious Influences of His Youth 
 
 After the shipwreck and the return of the 
 family to Glasgow, Alexander was brought 
 into connection more or less intimate with the 
 Haldane Brothers and their new Baptist de- 
 nomination. The Haldanes were philanthro- 
 pists and reformers, pleading for some of the 
 principles that afterwards characterized the ref- 
 ormation of the Campbells. The Haldanean 
 movement in Scotland was the "immersion 
 wing" of Sandemanianism, which terminated 
 in the formation of the Scotch Baptists, from 
 which the Old Disciples in Europe borrowed 
 their ecclesiology, in such practices as mutual 
 edification and close communion. Sandeman 
 himself and his father-in-law. Glass, led the 
 Paedo-baptist wing, but Alexander Campbell 
 never accepted the Sandemanian theology in 
 either of its branches. He sympathized with 
 these reformers in their revolt against Calvin- 
 ism, in their plea for religious liberty, the 
 rights of conscience, and the restoration of the 
 New Testament interpretation of religion; he 
 differed from them on other points of their 
 contention. He listened with a measure of ap- 
 preciation to the conversations and sermons 
 of John Walker, the founder of the Plymouth 
 Brethren, but never at any time was he even 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 29 
 
 tinctured with the peculiarities of "Brethren- 
 ism." 
 
 His Entrance into His Life Task 
 
 Providentially, young Campbell, in the sus- 
 ceptible and formative years of his life, was so 
 placed and environed as to breathe the atmos- 
 phere of religious revival and theological re- 
 form, by way of education and preparation for 
 the great leadership to which God was soon to 
 call him. When God raises a man up to per- 
 form a great task, he is prepared for its per- 
 formance, and the preparatory experience in 
 Scotland was the preliminary stage in the 
 education and inspiration of a prophet-re- 
 former who was soon to take his place as 
 leader of one of the great religious movements 
 of history. The man and the movement were 
 about to coincide, as they always do when the 
 hand of God directs the conjunction. The man 
 was being prepared and the moment was ap- 
 proaching. 
 
 When young Campbell reached the United 
 States and joined his father at Washington, 
 Pa., the work of union and restoration had al- 
 ready begun. "The Declaration and Address," 
 the constitution of the Christian Association 
 just organized, was passing through the press. 
 The father submitted the proof sheets to his 
 
30 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 son, who read them with sympathetic interest 
 and profound approval. He lost no time in 
 expressing his determination to spend his life 
 in the advocacy and dissemination of the 
 principles so ably set forth in that immortal 
 document. The sole object of Thomas Camp- 
 bell in organizing the society known as the 
 Christian Association of Washington was the 
 inculcation of pure evangelical religion and the 
 promotion of Christian unity. The construc- 
 tive genius of Alexander Campbell led him not 
 only to clear the ground for the unification of 
 Christendom by the destruction of sectarian- 
 ism and human creeds that made the separat- 
 ing walls between the churches, but he sought 
 as the most fundamental thing, a basis of 
 union, the foundation of the reconstituted uni- 
 versal church of the Apostolic age. It had 
 been learned by experience and perceived, at 
 a glance, by observation that the viperous in- 
 tolerance and bigotry of sectarianism, and the 
 tweedledum and tweedledee differences of 
 opinion between warring denominations, were 
 the great hindrances to the unity among his 
 disciples for which the Saviour prayed. It was 
 this consideration that led to the war on 
 human creeds and opinionism by the Camp- 
 bells and their coadjutors. It was perceived 
 that these human formularies stopped growth, 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 31 
 
 hindered progress, made men dishonest, and 
 ministered everywhere to theological crystal- 
 lization fatal to the unity of the spirit in the 
 bond of peace. 
 
 Divine and Man-made Creeds 
 
 Beginning, as they did, with the presupposi- 
 tion that the Bible of the Old and New Testa- 
 ments was the Word of God and the only law 
 of faith and practice among Christians, they 
 reasoned, if a human creed contains more than 
 the Bible it contains too much, if it contains 
 less than the Bible it contains too little; if it 
 contains anything different from the Bible it 
 is wrong; if it contains nothing more and 
 nothing less and nothing different from the 
 Bible, it is not a human creed but the Bible 
 itself, the only inspired and all-sufficient rule 
 of faith and morals. 
 
 As remarked in the article on Thomas 
 Campbell, all religious reformations in any 
 way related to the history of Christianity, be- 
 gin, not with the discovery of a new Bible, but 
 the re-discovery of the old one. All progres- 
 sive and really effective movements within the 
 sphere of the Christian faith must begin with 
 a fresh and vital interpretation of holy Scrip- 
 ture. It was the consciousness of this fact that 
 led Alexander Campbell at the beginning to 
 
32 
 
 MAKERS AXD MOLDERS OF 
 
 honestly and fearlessly re-examine his re- 
 ligious position in the light of the inspired 
 teaching of Christ and the apostles. In line 
 with this conviction and while pursuing a de 
 novo investigation of his Greek New Testa- 
 ment, the fact, in the face of all his prejudices, 
 and pre-conceived opinions, dawned upon him 
 that immersion was the form of baptism com- 
 manded by Christ and practiced by his first 
 disciples. 
 
 Magnificent Loyalty to the Word of God 
 
 It has been impossible from the first for any 
 man to rightly understand or properh^ appraise 
 the reformation inaugurated by the Campbells 
 w-ithout taking into account their magnificent 
 loyalty to the Word of God, and its relation to 
 these men and their teaching. The now- 
 familiar utterance of the Declaration and Ad- 
 dress. "\\'here the Bible speaks we speak, and 
 where the Bible is silent we are silent," pro- 
 voked the remark from Alexander to his 
 father. "If you carry that out it will put an 
 end to infant baptism." The inspired Word 
 is the source of religious knowledge, the chan- 
 nel of divine authority, and the means of 
 spiritual edification, and because infant bap- 
 tism is not taught therein, it must not be 
 practiced or tolerated in the church of Jesus 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 33 
 
 Christ. The immersion of penitent believers 
 into the name of the Father, the Son, and the 
 Holy Spirit, for the remission of sins, is plain- 
 ly taught in the Scriptures, therefore the 
 Campbells were immersed, and all who fol- 
 lowed them into the union movement of the 
 current reformation. Nothing is to enter into 
 the program of preaching and practice not 
 definitely authorized by the Word of God, in 
 positive command, necessary inference, or ap- 
 proved example. On these ancient Scriptures, 
 inspired by the Holy Ghost, Jesus of Nazareth 
 is enthroned as divine Saviour and Lord of all, 
 the foundation of the church, the object of 
 Christian faith, and the inspiration of Chris- 
 tian character. 
 
 The Substance of Mr. Campbell's Plea 
 
 The scattered and warring fragments of 
 Christendom can only be gathered together 
 on the basis of one Lord, one faith, one bap- 
 tism, one body, one spirit, one hope of the 
 divine calling, declared by the apostle Paul in 
 his letter to the Ephesians. The existing church 
 could not be reconstructed out of the old ma- 
 terial of human opinions and dogmatic specu- 
 lations, but the New Testament message and 
 order of life could be restored by an honest 
 
34 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 effort to realize apostolic ideals in the life of 
 today. 
 
 This in substance was Mr. Campbell's plea 
 for the ancient gospel and the restoration of 
 the Word to its rightful place as teacher of 
 God and righteousness, the personality of 
 Jesus Christ which the Bible records, and dis- 
 closes the way, the truth, and the life, the un- 
 changed and unchangeable basis of unity 
 among the people of God, which unity was 
 necessary to the conversion of the world, and 
 the coming in of the kingdom. 
 
 Making the Word Clear and Simple 
 
 The new quest for truth and righteousness 
 on the pages of that Divine Library, known as 
 ha Biblos (The Book), naturally led the Camp- 
 bells to stress the importance of the applica- 
 tion of sane, practical, and common-sense rules 
 of interpretation to the sacred writings, writ- 
 ten under circumstances so different from the 
 ones under which we now live. The canons of 
 historical and literary criticism made familiar 
 by recent Biblical studies were thought out 
 and used by this illuminating interpreter of the 
 Holy Scriptures. No interpretation of the 
 Bible has come to us more intelligent and in- 
 telligible, more perspicacious and luminous, 
 more stimulating and suggestive than that 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 35 
 
 which bears the imprimatur of the genius of 
 Alexander Campbell. "Intellectuals" and the 
 best informed among his contemporaries ex- 
 pressed their amazement at the flood of light 
 thrown by his writings and sermons on the 
 pages of God's Bible. 
 A Sermon that Told 
 
 Raccoon John Smith, a born wit and man of 
 genius, who became a mighty preacher of the 
 ancient gospel, tells of the first sermon he 
 heard Alexander Campbell preach : 
 
 "He commenced in the usual way, and read 
 the allegory of Sarah and Hagar in the fourth 
 chapter of Galatians. After a general outline 
 of the whole epistle, and how it ought to be 
 read, in order to a correct understanding of the 
 apostle's meaning, he commenced directly on 
 the allegory. I watched all the time with my 
 whole mind to find out to what 'ism' he be- 
 longed, but he seemed to move in a higher 
 sphere than that in which these 'isms' 
 abounded. In a simple, plain and artless man- 
 ner, leaning with one hand on the head of his 
 cane, he went through his discourse. No ges- 
 ture or any kind of mannerism characterized 
 him, or served to call ofif the mind from what 
 was being said. 
 
 "The congregation being dismissed, I said to 
 Brother Vaughan, 'Is it not a little hard to 
 
36 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 ride thirty miles to hear a man preach thirty 
 minutes?' 
 
 " 'Oh,' said he, 'he has been longer than that. 
 Look at your watch.' 
 
 "On looking, I found it had been two hours 
 and thirty minutes, and simply said, 'Two 
 hours of my time are gone and I know not 
 how, though wide-awake.' 
 
 "Returning to Brother Reynolds, Brother 
 Vaughan asked me, 'Did you find out whether 
 he was a Calvinist or an Arminian?' 
 
 " 'No, I know nothing about him, but, be he 
 devil or saint, he has thrown more light on 
 that epistle and the whole Scriptures than I 
 have heard in all the sermons I ever listened to 
 before.' " 
 
 Dr. Richardson, in his Memoirs of Alexan- 
 der Campbell, said of T. M. Allen, an eminent 
 preacher who came into the reformation from 
 the Stone movement in Kentucky : "He had 
 obtained the 'Chris-Baptist' soon after it com- 
 menced, and was delighted with its develop- 
 ment of the simple nature of the religion of 
 Christ, its distinctions between dispensations, 
 and the new light which it threw upon the 
 themes of the Bible. He quickly abandoned 
 all the speculations for which, with others, he 
 had been contending, and accustomed himself 
 to speak always of Bible things in Bible words." 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 37 
 
 Rightly Dividing the IV ord 
 
 Perhaps the most important contribution 
 Mr. Campbell made to Biblical interpretation 
 and theology, was the insistence on dispensa- 
 tional distinctions. With great clearness and 
 cogency he traced the evolution of religion 
 through its well-marked stages which he 
 characterized as the starlight, moonlight, and 
 sunlight dispensations of revelation, running 
 from Adam through the Patriarchs, prophets, 
 and the Jewish economies, to its culmination 
 in Christ, the Light of the World. These dis- 
 tinctions enabled him to make a rational and 
 practical division and application of the Word. 
 
 The prophets, priests and sages of the Old 
 Testament prepare us for the advent of the 
 world's Redeemer; the four historic memori- 
 als, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, were writ- 
 ten to convince mankind that Jesus of Nazareth 
 was the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God; 
 the Acts of the Apostles indited as records of 
 the ministry of the Holy Spirit through the 
 apostles, the conversion of sinners under the 
 Great Commission, and the organization of 
 Christian churches; the apostolic epistles were 
 sent out as manuals of instruction on how to 
 live the Christian life ; the apocalypse of St. 
 John, the last book in the canon of Holy 
 
38 MAKERS AND HOLDERS OF 
 
 Scripture, communicated to the churches a 
 prophetic vision of the struggles of the King- 
 dom against paganism and its final triumph 
 over the powers of darkness, when the will of 
 God will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 
 The Gospels tell us what to believe in order to 
 become Christians ; the Acts of Apostles what 
 to do ; the epistles what to be ; Revelations 
 what to hope for in the far-off divine event to 
 which the whole creation moves. 
 
 By thus rightly dividing the Word of Truth 
 men were saved from the ignorant folly of 
 searching in Ecclesiastes and the Song of 
 Songs for the message of salvation through 
 Jesus Christ, or ransacking Leviticus and 
 Numbers to find an answer to the question : 
 "What must I do to be saved?" 
 
 Reaction against Mysticism 
 
 In the violent reaction against mysticism 
 and emotional sectarianism, Alexander Camp- 
 bell, especially in the early day of his reform 
 experiences, went a little too far in the direc- 
 tion of legalism. This was inevitable and to a 
 degree wholesome. Historically considered, 
 there were two Alexander Campbells as dis- 
 tinct in individuality as two diflFerent persons. 
 There was the aggressively radical Alexander 
 Campbell No. 1 of the Christian Baptist and 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 39 
 
 the Third Epistle of Peter; and the more 
 catholic and spiritual Alexander Campbell No. 
 2 of the Millennial Harbinger and the Lunen- 
 burg letter. The early radicalism and legalism 
 of the reformer was the dogmatic and polemic 
 era of the Restoration movement. Both of the 
 Campbells started out in the firm belief that 
 religious controversy w^as inimical to spiritual- 
 ity and a thing not to be participated in or en- 
 couraged. It was an age of theological war- 
 fare, polemic strife, a time of what the old 
 colored man called "spute," and the well-meant 
 resolution of abstention from public discussion 
 had to be changed. In self-defense and in 
 vindication of truth and justice, the armor had 
 to be put on, and Mr. Campbell put it on with 
 tremendous effect. His argumentative power 
 and dialectic skill astonished all who heard 
 him in debate. 
 
 Rare Argumentative Power 
 
 The story told by Bishop Jeremiah Varde- 
 man, a distinguished Baptist minister, who had 
 been chosen as Mr. Campbell's moderator in 
 the debate with McCalla, illustrates Mr. Camp- 
 bell's renown as a disputant before any of his 
 great debates had been held. Mr. Vardeman, 
 on his way to attend the debate at Washing- 
 ton, Ky., overtook a man on foot. He accosted 
 
40 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OP 
 
 the stranger and, in good old Kentucky style, 
 asked him where he was going. The man 
 answered that he was on the way to Washing- 
 ton to attend the debate to commence there on 
 the 15th of the month. Taking this traveler 
 on the ankle-bone express to be a zealous 
 Baptist, Vardeman affected to be on the other 
 side, and said, "Is not our man likely to whip 
 your man Campbell?" The man gave him a 
 searching look and asked: "Can you tell me 
 if this is the same Mr. Campbell who debated 
 with Mr. Walker at Mt. Pleasant, Ohio?" 
 Elder Vardeman said he believed he was, to 
 which the stranger replied : "I am not a mem- 
 ber of any church. I am going to the debate 
 on the supposition that this is the Mr. Camp- 
 bell who debated at Mt. Pleasant three years 
 ago. I heard that debate, and all I have to 
 say is, that all creation cannot whip that Mr. 
 Campbell." 
 
 The twelve-hour speech in the debate with 
 Robert Owen was a supreme masterpiece of 
 sacred eloquence and argumentation. As an 
 apologetic in defense and vindication of the 
 Christian religion it has never been surpassed 
 in any language. The debates with Presby- 
 terian Rice and Roman Catholic Purcell were 
 monumental triumphs of argumentative genius 
 against the strongest men who could be 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 41 
 
 brought into the field against him. These dis- 
 cussions and frequent preaching excursions 
 into the various states of the Union, together 
 with the publication of many books and his 
 two great periodicals, the Christian Baptist 
 and the Millennial Harbinger, gave Mr. Camp- 
 bell ample opportunities for the presentation 
 of his interpretation of Christianity, and very 
 abundant have been the fruits that have fol- 
 lowed these efforts. Mr. Campbell's theory of 
 the fundamentals of Apostolic Christianity is 
 his basis for the unification of the broken 
 church, and surely no better basis has ever 
 been suggested, for it is nothing more and 
 nothing less than Jesus Christ as the New 
 Testament interprets him. 
 
42 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 BARTON W. STONE 
 
 Trophet of Evangelism and Piety in the Ref- 
 ormation Movement 
 
 FOUR streams of religious reconstruction 
 broke out almost simultaneously in as 
 many different states of the American Union, 
 springing from a common impulse and motive, 
 but having no organic relation to each other 
 at the beginning. 
 
 A Southern Movement 
 
 A Methodist minister by the name of James 
 O'Kelly, of North Carolina, after pleading in 
 vain, within the ranks of the Episcopal Metho- 
 dism, for a congregational S3'stem of church 
 government, and the New Testament as the 
 only creed and book of discipline, formally 
 seceded from the Methodist Church in Decem- 
 ber, 1793. 
 
 At first this secession reformation was called 
 "Republican Methodists," but at a conference 
 subsequently held O'Kelly and his followers 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 43 
 
 resolved to be known as Christians only, to 
 acknowledge no head over the church but 
 Christ, and no rule of faith and practice but 
 the New Testament. The spread of this move- 
 ment has been confined almost entirely to 
 North Carolina and southern Virginia, where 
 churches of this faith and order still exist, and 
 are known as "Christian Churches." 
 
 In the New England States 
 
 The second stream in the order of time 
 broke out from among the hills of Baptist the- 
 ology in New England. A physician of Hart- 
 land, Vermont, then a member of a Baptist 
 church, became dissatisfied with sectarian 
 names and creeds, began to advocate their 
 abolition, and the substitution of Christian 
 character as the ground of Christian fellow- 
 ship. In September, 1800, Mr. Jones succeeded 
 in establishing his first church with 25 mem- 
 bers, at Lyndon, Vermont. He was joined by 
 several earnest and able preachers, who car- 
 ried the flaming torch of this unique reforma- 
 tion into several adjoining states. Its unique- 
 ness consisted in the astounding fact that, 
 for the first time since the apostles, churches 
 were being formed on the basis of spiritual 
 character, instead of intellectual creed. Those 
 who were concerned in this movement took 
 
44 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 the name Christian as their ecclesiastical and 
 personal designation, and adopted the Bible as 
 the only standard of faith and practice. 
 
 The Stone Reformation in Kentucky 
 
 According to the chronology of events in 
 these historic movements, the Stone reforma- 
 tion comes third, dating its origin from the 
 great revival in 1801 at Caneridge, Bourbon 
 County, Kentucky, eight years earlier than the 
 organization of the Christian Association of 
 Washington, Pa., by Thomas Campbell. In 
 any intelligent investigation of these refor- 
 matory origins and influences of the late 
 eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the 
 personality and piety of Mr. Stone and his 
 contribution to the religious thought and feel- 
 ing of the period, are by no means to be over- 
 looked or underestimated. 
 
 Barton Stone's Boyhood Environment 
 
 Barton Stone was a native of Marjiand,. 
 born December 24. 1772. He grew to early 
 manhood in Virginia, where he attained great 
 proficiency in his studies, and early mastered 
 all of the ordinary branches of an English edu- 
 cation. In 1790 he entered a famous academy 
 in Guilford, North Carolina, for the purpose of 
 obtaining a liberal education, with a view of 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 45 
 
 engaging in the legal profession. Great wars 
 are generally followed by great revivals of re- 
 ligion. After the close of the Revolutionary 
 War, a flame of revival interests swept 
 through the country. Thousands were con- 
 verted and hundreds of the male converts en- 
 tered the ministry. The theological war be- 
 tween Methodists and Baptists, the two dom- 
 inant sects of the South, created perplexity and 
 doubt in the mind of young Stone. He wavered 
 to and fro between the contending parties, 
 till his religious impressions faded, and he 
 settled down in the conviction that there was 
 nothing in religion but occasion for narrow- 
 minded people to quarrel. 
 
 His Varying Religious Experience 
 
 In the meantime, however, a wave of re- 
 ligious enthusiasm struck the town of Guil- 
 ford ; the young man's religious emotions 
 came back, his convictions were deepened, he 
 was converted, made a profession of religion 
 and joined the Presbyterian Church. In his 
 next experience, he was confronted by the 
 problem of entering the ministry. He vacil- 
 lated here, as he had done before his conver- 
 sion, in the matter of conflicting opinions of 
 warring sects, not because he was lacking in 
 decision of character, but because of the ir- 
 
46 MAKERS AND MOLDBRS OF 
 
 rational and repelling theologies delivered from 
 the sacred desks at the time. Calvinism, in all 
 of the naked deformity and monstrosity of the 
 "five points," was the dominant issue. The 
 object of every sermon preached was either to 
 defend Calvinism or to assail it. 
 
 Mr. Stone said of that time, "My mind was 
 continually tossed on the waves of speculative 
 divinity, the all-engrossing theme of the re- 
 ligious community at that period. Clashing 
 controversial theories were urged by the dif- 
 ferent sects with much zeal and bad feeling. 
 There is no surer sign," he declared, "of the 
 low state of true religion." This man of God, 
 long afterwards, delivered his soul and gave 
 expression to his most solemn conviction con- 
 cerning this abomination of desolation in the 
 Holy Place : "Calvinism is among the heaviest 
 clogs on Christianity in the world. It is a dark 
 mountain between heaven and earth, and is 
 amongst the most discourging hindrances to 
 sinners from seeking the kingdom of God ; and 
 engenders bondage and gloominess in the 
 saints." 
 
 He Enters the Presbyterian Ministry 
 
 In the titanic struggle with creeds, con- 
 fessions, and Calvinistic pulpiteers, he was, at 
 least, partially victorious in reaching the con- 
 
7 HE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 47 
 
 elusion that he had received a call to the min- 
 istry of the Presbyterian Church. All of his 
 troubles had not been overcome, for upon ap- 
 plication for his ordination papers, he frankly 
 confessed his difficulties to some of the lead- 
 ing ministers of the denomination. These they 
 tried, in vain, to minify or explain away, and 
 finally asked how far he was willing to receive 
 the Confession. He answered, "As far as it is 
 consistent with the Word of God." They con- 
 cluded this was satisfactory and a sufficient 
 basis on which to proceed with the ordination. 
 Accordingly, when the Presbytery propounded 
 the usual question, "Do you receive and adopt 
 the Confession of Faith, as containing the sys- 
 tem of doctrine taught in the Bible?" his 
 public answer was the same as the one he had 
 given in private. However, he was ordained. 
 
 The mental reservation with which he ac- 
 cepted the Confession was fatal to orthodox 
 conformity to the Calvinistic standards of 
 Presbyterianism. The more he studied the 
 Confession of Faith the less he liked it. Against 
 its hereditary total depravity, its special grace, 
 particular redemption, miraculous regenera- 
 tion, unconditional election and reprobation, 
 and damnation generally, his soul revolted 
 with horror and hatred unspeakable. Calvin's 
 God was Stone's Devil. 
 
48 
 
 MAKERS AND HOLDERS OF 
 
 The Light of the Word Breaks 
 
 The psychology of the Stone reformation 
 puts down its finger at this point, and finds the 
 beginning of that revolution in the revulsion of 
 a great soul against the theology of Geneva 
 and the Westminster Divines. Barton W. 
 Stone found his way out of the theological con- 
 fusions of mystery Babylon as all the reform- 
 ers before him had done. He is clear and 
 unmistakable on that point. He declares : 
 "From this state of perplexity I was relieved 
 by the precious Word of God. From reading 
 and meditating upon it, I became convinced 
 that God did love the whole world, and that 
 the reason why he did not save all was be- 
 cause of their unbelief, and that the reason 
 why they believed not was not because God 
 did not exert his physical almighty power in 
 them to make them believe, but because they 
 neglected and received not his testimony given 
 in the word concerning his Son, 'These are 
 written that ye might believe that Jesus is the 
 Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye 
 might have life through his name.'" 
 
 It has already appeared in the little that has 
 been said that Barton W. Stone was a man of 
 penetrating mind, benevolent heart, sensitive 
 conscience, fair, broad, and nobly candid, with 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 49 
 
 individuality enough to assert his right to 
 freedom and independence. He had prophetic 
 vision, the power to see truth and to distin- 
 guish it from error. There was in him the worst 
 of raw material for the manufacture of a sec- 
 tarian. He was too large of brain and catholic 
 in spirit to be caught in the toils of a shib- 
 boleth-pronouncing religion. His evolution out 
 of the denominational conception of Christian- 
 ity, and a sectarian interpretation of the Bible, 
 notwithstanding a bad environment, was only 
 a question of time, and not much time at that. 
 The processes of growth, and the bitter op- 
 position that theological growth always ex- 
 cites, did not take long to culminate in ec- 
 clesiastical censure and his withdrawal from 
 the Presbyterian Church. 
 
 The Great Caneridge Meeting 
 
 Shortly before his severance from the Old 
 Connection, he came to the old far-famed blue- 
 grass region of Kentucky, and began to preach, 
 on a wider scale, his new-found gospel of uni- 
 versal love and light. In the month of August. 
 1801, he began at Caneridge, Bourbon County, 
 what was perhaps the most renowned of the 
 historic revivals in the annals of American 
 evangelization. It was characteristically, and 
 shall we not say, prophetically, a union re- 
 
50 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 vival ; a number of preachers of "different de- 
 nominations" taking part in it ; but Mr. Stone 
 was the conspicuous personage in preaching 
 and personal leadership. More than 20,000 
 people came from many counties and from 
 different states, and stayed as long as they 
 could get anything to eat. As noted as Ken- 
 tuckians are for material supplies and big din- 
 ners, this vast concourse of consumers bred a 
 famine in the community. The mighty camp 
 meeting decamped prematurely on account of 
 the exhaustion of food supplies. A tremendous 
 wave of religious excitement and enthusiasm 
 descended upon the great throng as they 
 listened with breathless interest to the word of 
 life. Multitudes of people, many of them in- 
 fidels and the most hardened sinners, were 
 smitten down like soldiers in battle, and lay 
 motionless for hours, reviving at last to 
 scramble to their feet, either in agonies of re- 
 morse or in ecstasies of spiritual joy. These 
 cataleptic convulsions, known at the time as 
 the "jerks" on account of the strange bodily 
 contortions and violent agitations produced, 
 were regarded by Mr. Stone as special mani- 
 festations of the power of God in the conver- 
 sions of men. Perhaps he was right. Any 
 shock, or stroke, or "fit," we should imagine, 
 that would lead unbelievers and case-hardened 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 51 
 
 sinners to a consciousness of their need of re- 
 pentance and salvation through Jesus Christ, 
 might justly be regarded as the work and 
 power of God. 
 
 Ripeness of the Times 
 
 The profound and far-reaching significance 
 of this Caneridge revival cannot be adequately 
 appreciated, unless we consider the dark back- 
 ground of infidelity and worldliness then ex- 
 isting in the United States, from which it was 
 the first great reaction. French atheism that 
 followed the Revolution and eighteenth cen- 
 tury English Deism, held the field, followed 
 by the recrudescence of a crass paganism in life 
 and morals. The church had become a Kil- 
 kenny cattery and had well nigh threshed it- 
 self to death on silly dogmatic issues, from 
 one end of the line to the other. James Lane 
 Allen in his "Choir Invisible" is authority for 
 the statement that a batch of 100 copies of 
 "Payne's Age of Reason," sold like hot cakes 
 on the streets of Lexington, Ky., one hundred 
 and fifteen years ago. At that time, and dur- 
 ing the incumbency of the great Timothy 
 Dwight at Yale, there were but few students 
 in the college who had the courage to acknowl- 
 edge themselves Christians and members of 
 churches. There were numerous infidel socie- 
 
52 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 ties named after prominent French skeptics of 
 the period. Ministers of that day rode to their 
 appointments with a New Testament in one 
 end of their saddle-bags and a bottle of 
 whiskey in the other, and sometimes they 
 failed to materialize on account of a slight at- 
 tack of "overstimulation." 
 
 The people had grown tired of infidel pa- 
 ganism, both intellectual and practical, and put, 
 therefore, a corresponding energy and earnest- 
 ness into the evangelical reaction, which had 
 its first great innings at Caneridge. The re- 
 ligious excitement evoked in this meeting did 
 not, like a similar phenomenon in the more re- 
 cent Welsh revival, react injuriously upon the 
 spiritual life of the people, but continued for 
 many years in the increased faith and fervid 
 devotion of the churches. 
 
 It may be said, I think, in perfect historical 
 fairness to all concerned, that the sustained 
 evangelistic enthusiasm and success charac- 
 teristic of the Disciples during the hundred 
 years of their existence, had one of its chief 
 sources here at Caneridge ; although it has 
 never been quite as emotional and perfervid as 
 the type of this early experience. The Dis- 
 ciples brought an intellectual element in that 
 modified it considerably in this particular. 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 53 
 
 The Movement Spreads 
 
 By the time this stage in the evolution of the 
 Stone movement had been reached, the leader 
 had gathered around him, mostly from the 
 Presbyterians, a number of ministers of "light 
 and leading," who became powerful and suc- 
 cessful evangelists of the new movement. 
 These men went forth and boldly preached the 
 sufficiency of the Gospel to save men, and that 
 the testimony of God was designed and able to 
 produce faith. "The people appeared," says 
 Mr. Stone, "as just awakened from the sleep 
 of ages ; they seemed to see for the first time 
 that they were responsible beings, and that the 
 refusal to use the means appointed was a 
 damning sin." 
 
 Many converts were made, and numerous 
 churches established, notably in central Ken- 
 tucky and the Western Reserve of Ohio. These 
 churches were founded on the Bible, in the 
 plain and obvious import of its words, as the 
 only and sufficient rule of faith and life. The 
 designating title chosen, both for individual 
 members and congregations, was "Christian." 
 
 Some years ago in examining the early rec- 
 ords of the church in Cynthiana, organized by 
 T. M. Allen in 1828, the charter written by Mr. 
 Allen, an associate of Mr. Stone, was found in 
 words like these, as near as they can be re- 
 
54 MAKERS AND HOLDERS OF 
 
 produced from memory : "We, the under- 
 signed, wish to form ourselves into a church 
 of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the 
 Town of Cynthiana, Ky. The name Christian 
 is the only name by which we desire to be 
 called, and the Bible alone is the all-sufHcient 
 rule of our faith and practice." Such were the 
 distinguishing elements of these new Christian 
 churches. 
 
 Union of Stone and Campbell Forces 
 
 At the time of the union of the Stone and 
 Campbell forces in Kentucky in the year 1832, 
 both sides were ripe and ready for the consum- 
 mation. The two leaders had carried on a 
 lengthy correspondence in their respective 
 papers with a view of ascertaining definitely 
 points of agreement, and differences, if any 
 existed. There was absolute harmony in fun- 
 damentals. The aims and purposes of the two 
 reformations were indentical. Only a single 
 minor point of variance appeared in the field 
 of theology, and that was in regard to the 
 eflFect of the atonement on God. Mr. Campbell 
 insisted on an intellectual explanation of the 
 atonement in its relation to the divine govern- 
 ment, in the matter that God, as a moral gov- 
 ernor, was enabled thereby to be just while the 
 justifier of those who believe in Jesus. Mr. 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 55 
 
 Stone declined to follow in any speculative or 
 philosophical effort to explain the mystery of 
 the cross in its relation to God ; simply con- 
 tenting himself with the everlasting yea of its 
 acknowledged effect as the reconciler of man 
 to God, and not God to man. This question 
 M-as eliminated from the discussion as of no 
 particular significance to either side. 
 
 The Immersion Question Settled 
 
 As most of the "New Lights," as outsiders 
 called them, were Paedobaptists at the begin- 
 ning, including the leader, the question of bap- 
 tism had to be taken in hand, and threshed out 
 to a finish. The adoption of the Bible as the 
 only and all-sufficient rule of faith and prac- 
 tice, as with the two Presbyterian Campbells, 
 at the beginning of their movement, the prob- 
 lem of baptism had to come up for reconsidera- 
 tion and final solution. It came up, and was 
 settled in the same old way, as it always must, 
 under similar circumstances; Mr. Stone, and 
 an overwhelming majority of his associates, 
 were immersed and infant baptism was rele- 
 gated to the shades. Those that held out and 
 were satisfied with affusion were so few as to 
 constitute a negligible quantity, when the ne- 
 gotiations for union were finally settled, and 
 the union consummated. This was not an in- 
 
56 
 
 MAKERS AND HOLDERS OF 
 
 stance of union by legislation of ecclesiastical 
 authority, for neither party believed in the 
 right of churches to legislate or command. 
 When leading congregations of the two bodies 
 in centers of population like Lexington, Paris, 
 Georgetown, Richmond and Mayesville, came 
 together, as they did, it was an easy matter for 
 the smaller churches and individuals to fall in 
 line. 
 
 Dr. Richardson in his Life of Alexander 
 Campbell says of the Christian Connection : 
 "They were characterized by a simplicity of 
 belief and manners, and a liberality of spirit 
 highly captivating, and possessed, in general, 
 a striking and praiseworthy readiness to re- 
 ceive additional light from the Bible." 
 
 It is hardly worth while to record the fact 
 for information, that a body of "irreconcila- 
 bles" refused to come into the union, and con- 
 tinued a separate existence under the old 
 name. These have developed into a com- 
 munion of respectable proportions, which has 
 inherited and maintained many of the ex- 
 cellencies of its illustrious founder and his 
 first associates. 
 
 Our Inheritance from Mr. Stone 
 
 In addition to the name Christian, the com- 
 bined movement has inherited from Mr. Stone 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 57 
 
 and his fellow-workers a larger measure of 
 the spirit of New Testament evangelism and 
 individual consecration of life. These re- 
 formers were mighty men of God. The intel- 
 lectual and argumentative tinge of the Camp- 
 bell movement needed relief by the influence 
 of the spirit of holiness and prayer. Campbell 
 men were didactic, exegetic, and logical ; the 
 Stone men were dynamic, explosive, and 
 hortatory. 
 
 Campbell and Stone Compared 
 
 The combination of these qualities was 
 needed on both sides. After the union, evan- 
 gelists, as a rule, went out by twos. The Camp- 
 bell man was the preacher who turned on the 
 light, the Stone man was the exhorter who 
 poured in the fire. A team, for instance, like 
 Aylett Rains and John Allen Gano. what 
 mighty engineering for the Kingdom of God ! 
 Rains, according to the colored preacher, 
 "argufied" and Gano "brought on the arouse- 
 ment." An as old mountain preacher once 
 said to the writer, "Come and go on a preach- 
 ing tower (tour) with me. You'll lighten and 
 I'll thunder, and we'll bring 'em in." The 
 Campbell preacher lightened and the Stone 
 evangelist thundered, and they "brought 'em 
 in," What the intellectual and theological 
 
58 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 teaching of the. "Disciples" most needed was 
 the spiritual and hortatory element brought in 
 by the "Christians." May this union be for- 
 ever indissoluble. 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 59 
 
 WALTER SCOTT 
 
 Masterful Treacher and Teacher 
 
 J- are Thomas Campbell, Alexander Camp- 
 bell, Barton W. Stone and Walter Scott. The 
 last named is fourth in enumeration, but by no 
 means fourth in distinctive importance. In 
 originality of conception, vigor of presenta- 
 tion, enthusiasm, courage, boldness and elo- 
 quence, he comes near heading the list. He 
 was not the initiator or representative of any 
 organized movement within the church like 
 his three illustrious comrades, but so far as the 
 distinctiveness of his contributions to the new 
 movement was concerned, he stands first in 
 historical and theological importance. 
 
 Biographical Sketch of Scott 
 
 Mr. Scott, as his name indicates, was a 
 Scotchman, and none the worse for that. The- 
 ology and the religious consciousness run in 
 the blood north of the Tweed. Brains and 
 
 current reformation 
 
60 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDBRS OF 
 
 reverence and appreciation of Biblical knowl- 
 edge appear to be congenital with the typical 
 Scotchman. Walter Scott, like the Campbells 
 from Presbyterian north of Ireland, had in- 
 herited the best instincts and qualities of his 
 race. Educated on his native heath, he came, 
 in his early manhood, to the United States. An 
 Episcopalian by affiliation and not by convic- 
 tion, he came back to the traditional com- 
 munion of his fathers, and took membership 
 with a Presbyterian church soon after his ar- 
 rival in this country. He had been trained for 
 a teacher in his native land, and soon after 
 coming to Pittsburgh, took educational work 
 in connection with an academy in that city. He 
 became tutor in several private families, teach- 
 ing in the home of the father of Dr. Robert 
 Richardson. Robert, the son, became his most 
 famous pupil, studying New Testament Greek 
 and the classics under the brilliant young 
 Scotchman. It seems to have been his associa- 
 tion with the Richardsons that brought him 
 into contact with the Campbells and many 
 other friends of the reformation in Pitts- 
 burgh. His deep religious nature, his love of 
 truth and righteousness, his keen perception, 
 his fine capacity for the acquisition of knowl- 
 edge, and his profound reverence for the Bible 
 and the Christian religion, made him a splen- 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 61 
 
 did subject for instruction and inspiration on 
 the part of the two reformers. One of the 
 finest passages in Dr. Richardson's Memoirs of 
 Alexander Campbell is a description of the 
 personality and powers of Walter Scott in 
 comparison and contrast to those of Mr. 
 Campbell, showing how one man reinforced 
 and supplemented the other in a combination 
 the most efficient and powerful that could be 
 imagined in the leadership and propagation of 
 the restoration movement. 
 
 His Sermonic Ability 
 
 Scott was a preacher of dramatic and thrill- 
 ing eloquence. When one of the pioneers who 
 had heard him has occasion to refer to great 
 preachers or preaching, he instinctively utters 
 the name of Walter Scott. Issac Errett once 
 said in referring to a great sermon preached 
 by Dr. Armitage of New York before one of 
 our conventions, "I have not heard such 
 preaching since Walter Scott." 
 
 I am reminded of what a great criminal 
 lawyer said to me of John J. Crittenden of 
 Kentucky, and his matchless oratory. "John 
 J.," said he, "why, at his worst he could beat 
 'em all, and at his best he could beat himself." 
 Mr. Scott was not always equal in his efforts, 
 and perhaps at his worst could not beat 'em 
 
62 MAKERS AND MOLDBRS OF 
 
 all, but certainly at his best he could beat him- 
 self and all the rest, into the bargain. I recall 
 some of the old fireside conversations in our 
 country home, when my stepfather, a preacher 
 of the first generation of Disciples, would talk 
 of the great preachers of our movement he 
 had heard and known. When he came to 
 speak of Scott, he glowed with an enthusiasm 
 and eloquence almost equal to the master he 
 was describing. A mighty torrential sermon 
 on the Three Divine Missions, one hour on the 
 Mission of Christ, one hour on the Mission of 
 the Holy Spirit, one hour on the Mission of the 
 Church, holding his audience spellbound to the 
 last word ! A phenomenon of preaching power 
 in an age when long sermons were expected 
 and customary. 
 
 His Methods of Preaching 
 
 This masterful proclaimer of the Word com- 
 bined the didactic, the poetic, and the evan- 
 gelistic to a degree astonishingly unusual. His 
 mind was as straight and clear in the compre- 
 hension and explanation of facts as his 
 emotional nature was strong and moving in 
 his appeals to men to be reconciled to God. 
 As a teacher he possessed illuminating powers 
 of comparison and illustration, while his spir- 
 itual mind enabled him to interpret analogies 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 63 
 
 in a way at once surprising and captivating to 
 his students and hearers. Walking in field or 
 forest with one of his pupils he would pluck a 
 flower from its stem, and holding it up, would 
 say with deep and tender feeling: "Do you 
 know, my dear, why in the scriptures Christ 
 is called the Rose of Sharon?" If the answer 
 was not at once ready, he would make reply : 
 "It is because the Rose of Sharon has no 
 thorns." And then he would go on to dilate in 
 rapt, poetic phrase on the beautiful traits of 
 the Saviour's character. 
 
 His Pedagogic Attitude 
 
 His chief theme of comparison and illustra- 
 tion, next to the glory and perfection of the 
 Redeemer, was the order and significance of 
 the elements of the gospel. His powers of 
 analysis and classification were phenomenal. 
 His pedagogic attitude to the gospel never for- 
 sook him. Sometimes he would gather around 
 him a group of boys and proceed to con- 
 struct for their benefit a little primer cate- 
 chism. "Now, boys," he would say, "let us 
 take a nice little lesson in the blessed 
 gospel." After a brief drill, the boys re- 
 peating after him, he would wind up the 
 interview in a fashion like this : "Well, 
 boys, in what does the gospel consist?" 
 
64 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 Answer: "In facts, commands and promises." 
 "How many facts?" Answer: "Three." 
 "What are they?" Answer: "Death, burial 
 and resurrection of Christ." "How many com- 
 mands?" Answer: "Three." "What are 
 they?" Answer: "Faith, repentance and bap- 
 tism." "How many promises?" Answer: 
 "Three." "What are they?" Answer: "Re- 
 mission of sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit and 
 everlasting life." "Now, boys," the teacher 
 would say, "what do you do with the facts?" 
 Answer : "Believe them." "What do you do 
 with commands?" Answer: "Obey them." 
 "What do you do with the promises?" An- 
 swer: "Enjoy them." He would then express 
 the ferv-ent hope that the boys would accept 
 this simple and glorious gospel and grow up 
 good and useful men. This luminous and 
 comprehensive classification of gospel ele- 
 ments, as an effective way of presenting the 
 subject, has made a lasting impression on the 
 Disciple consciousness. It may be doubted 
 if there is one of our preachers in the world, 
 or ever was in it. no matter how progressive 
 or scientific, or up to date, or how much of 
 the "modern spirit" he may have thought he 
 possessed, who has not for illustrative and 
 simplifying purposes, made use of this ar- 
 rangement of the gospel of our salvation. Its 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 65 
 
 exhaustiveness has been denied, it has been 
 modified and supplemented and interpreted in- 
 to a different gospel to the one Walter Scott 
 had in mind, but it continues to be used as a 
 helpful method of enabling the plain man to 
 understand and follow the way of life, and per- 
 haps it is the one thing by which its author 
 will be best known and longest remembered in 
 the history of our cause. 
 
 The Exclusive Basis of Christian Union 
 
 The distinctive and fundamental contribu- 
 tion of Mr. Scott to the theology of the ref- 
 ormation was not a simple and scriptural 
 classification of the facts, commands and 
 promises of the gospel. Not enough has been 
 made of the fact that he was the discoverer of 
 a new and adequate Christology based on 
 Peter's confession in Matt. 16:16, as the means 
 of salvation and the exclusive basis of Chris- 
 tian union. The honor of the discovery and 
 formulation and first presentation of the doc- 
 trine of the immersion of a penitent believer 
 into the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit 
 in order to the remission of sins, belongs to the 
 same source. The only conception or practice 
 in the restoration theology that could lay 
 claim to originality or peculiarity was this 
 idea of the immersion of a believing penitent in 
 
66 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of 
 sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Immersion 
 was familiar and baptism for the remission of 
 sins was a doctrine of all the creeds, but the 
 two combined in relation to the penitent be- 
 liever had not been taught or practiced since 
 the days of the apostles. Dr. Richardson, in 
 his Life of Alexander Campbell, brings these 
 points into view as achievements of Walter 
 Scott, in a single suggestive paragraph : 
 
 "His discourse was based upon Peter's Con- 
 fession, Alatt. 16:16, in connection with the 
 same apostle's answer to the inquiry : 'What 
 shall we do?' given to the penitents on the day 
 of Pentecost, Acts 2 :38. As the lordship and 
 glory of Christ, the Son of God, was his favor- 
 ite theme, and he was, on this occasion, ani- 
 mated with more than usual fer\'or, he became 
 most eloquent, and held the audience in a state 
 of rapt attention as he gradually developed 
 the power of the simple but comprehensive 
 Christian creed — the rock which Christ an- 
 nounced as the foundation on which he would 
 build his church ; the grand proposition proved 
 by the miracles of fulfilled prophecy, super- 
 natural wisdom, divine love, healing power, 
 and victory over the grave, detailed by the 
 evangelists, that men might believe, and 'be- 
 lieving, have life through his name.' And when 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 67 
 
 he went on to show his gospel was adminis- 
 tered in the beginning and that believers were 
 baptized into the name and into the death of 
 Christ, and being thus buried with him and 
 raised again to a new life, received in this 
 symbolic act the remission of sins and the 
 promised Holy Spirit, which was the seal of 
 the Christian covenant and the earnest of an 
 eternal inheritance, his hearers, while charmed 
 with such a novel view of the simplicity and 
 completeness of the gospel, were, as on the 
 former occasion, filled with doubt and wonder, 
 and were ready to ask each other, 'How can 
 these things be?' " 
 
 Messianic Interpretation of Peter's Confession 
 
 To take the most important consideration 
 first: Mr. Scott's Messianic and Christological 
 interpretation of Peter's confession, and his 
 eloquent insistence, with both tongue and pen, 
 upon the glorious fact that the personality of 
 Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, in his 
 threefold office of prophet, priest and king,, 
 was the creed of Christianity, the foundation 
 of the Church, and the basis of Christian un- 
 ion, far exceeds in value and significance any 
 other contribution which has been made to 
 religious thought and life in modern times. 
 His principal book, "The Great Demonstra- 
 
68 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 tion," was given to the development and em- 
 phasis of this sublime and far-reaching proposi- 
 tion, the fact of Christ and his place in the 
 Christian system. The other reformers were 
 inclined to build on the Bible as the funda- 
 mental creed, thus substituting a literary for 
 a personal foundation. They all had glimpses 
 of the truth, but Scott discerned with greater 
 clearness and decision the essential fact on 
 which supreme accent must be laid. No long- 
 er were men taught to attain salvation by be- 
 lieving in creeds and doctrines, but by be- 
 lief in and submission to a divine human per- 
 son, the one who had all power to save, and 
 all might to redeem. Christ was the object of 
 faith, not opinions and dogmas. ]\Ien were not 
 to trust in institutions, ordinances, or proposi- 
 tions for salvation, but in Christ, the Son of 
 God and the only Saviour of men. Faith was 
 personal conviction concerning a personal 
 Saviour, the outcome of which was personal 
 salvation and personal character. These re- 
 formers went forth as apostles and prophets 
 had done before them, preaching Christ and 
 practicing faith in him and obedience to his 
 commandments as conditions of salvation and 
 means of Christian manhood. 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 69 
 
 Its Bearing on Christian Union 
 
 The bearing of this Christological theology 
 on Christian union, the cardinal plank in 
 Thomas Campbell's platform, was obvious and 
 vital. It takes us back to Paul's declaration : 
 "Other foundation can no man lay than that 
 which is laid, which is Jesus Christ." The 
 rock foundation on which Christ was to build 
 his church was not Peter's confession as an 
 abstract truth or proposition, but Christ him- 
 self in his essential personality as the Son of 
 God. All the possibilities of unity focalize at 
 this point. Men may continue to arrange, 
 formulate, and ventilate bases of unity in ef- 
 forts to realize the unification of the churches, 
 but in the future as in the past, they will have 
 only failure for their pains. This is not the 
 business of men, they are not competent to its 
 adequate performance. If they were it is not 
 needed. The foundation is already in, the 
 basis has been divinely submitted by the Son 
 of God in Peter's confession at Csesarea Philip- 
 pi. Are not all existing evangelical churches 
 built on Jesus Christ, on his divinity and hu- 
 manity, his personality and power to save 
 and rule? Why, then, are they divided? Their 
 unity is fundamental, being the unity of the faith 
 in the Son of God ; their divisions are super- 
 
70 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 ficial, consisting of walls, like the Jews built 
 round the law, separating each section ecclesi- 
 astically from other Christian organizations. 
 These sectional walls are made of peculiar 
 phrases, usages, doctrines and interpretations of 
 certain portions of Scripture. These wall ma- 
 terials are sometimes foundations of the denom- 
 inations, but not of the church of Jesus Christ. In 
 order, therefore, to union as well as unity these 
 sectional partitions must be pierced, razed to the 
 ground, or rendered innocuous as separative in- 
 stitutions. All the churches need to do is to 
 recognize and realize their unity in Christ and 
 on Christ, and to pull down or climb over their 
 sectarian walls, which were built to promote di- 
 vision and prevent the union of the people of 
 God. The evolution and application of this con- 
 fession at Csesarea to the problem of union has 
 been the work of the Disciples for at least fifty 
 years. There is much more to come out of it. 
 
 Baptism for Remission of Sins 
 
 The story of the introduction and proclamation 
 and first practice, by Walter Scott, of the new 
 doctrine of baptism for the remission of sins is 
 too familiar to be retold at length in this con- 
 nection. Adamson Bentley, in a protracted meet- 
 ing held for Jacob Osborne at Braceville, preach- 
 ed on baptism and took the same position that 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 71 
 
 Mr. Campbell had presented in his debate with 
 McCalla, affirming that it was designed to be a 
 pledge of remission of sins. In referring to this 
 sermon Osborne said : "Well, Brother Bentley, 
 you have christened baptism today." "How so?" 
 said Mr. Bentley. "You have termed it a re- 
 mitting institution." "Well," rejoined Mr. Bent- 
 ley, "I do not see how this conclusion is to be 
 avoided with the Scriptures before us." "It is 
 the truth," said Mr. Osborne, who was a great 
 student of the Bible. Conversation with Walter 
 Scott, in which the matter was carefully can- 
 vassed, led him subsequently to reinvestigate the 
 whole question in the light of his Greek New 
 Testament. In this reconsideration of the subject, 
 be became deeply engrossed in a study of the con- 
 secutive order appropriate to the dififerent items 
 of the gospel, and his great powers of analysis 
 and arrangement came to his relief, and he 
 placed them thus: 1. Faith. 2. Repentance. 3. 
 Baptism. 4. Remission of sins. 5. Holy Spirit. 
 This indisputably was the Pentecostal order, and 
 so far as we know has not been revoked or 
 changed. Clearing up, as it did, the obscurities 
 and perplexities in which the gospel had long 
 been involved, it came to the mind of Walter 
 Scott with the compelling force of new revela- 
 tion. He was not long in preaching what he 
 discovered to be the truth of God, but the en- 
 
72 
 
 MAKERS AND HOLDERS OF 
 
 thusiasm of the prophet was not matched by the 
 interest of the people. His testimony, as eloquent 
 and thrilling as it was in the manner of presenta- 
 tion, fell on dull minds and doubting hearts. 
 The minds of men and women were so saturated 
 with theories of spiritual influence and a mysti- 
 cal miraculous regeneration, and hereditary total 
 depravity, that it was next to impossible for them 
 to understand a simple, straightforward, intel- 
 ligible gospel, like the one the preacher was urg- 
 ing upon their acceptance. 
 
 A Unique Conversion 
 
 On one occasion that turned out to be his- 
 toric, near the close of a masterful exposition of 
 the subject, a stranger came into the house and 
 took his seat in the audience. He heard none of 
 the sermon except a brief summary and reca- 
 pitulation and a few words of invitation in which 
 the speaker quoted Acts 2 :38 and urged his 
 hearers to come forward and be baptized for the 
 remission of sins. The stranger, Mr. Wm. 
 Amends by name, walked deliberately forward 
 and asked to be baptized for remission, accord- 
 ing to the promise of the gospel. The preacher 
 was astounded ; he did not know what to make 
 of it ; the stranger had not heard the sermon, and 
 yet he understood the matter perfectly just as 
 the speaker had presented it. Mr. Amends ex- 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 73 
 
 plained to Mr. Scott subsequently in a letter that 
 has assumed a place of historic importance in 
 Disciple literature. He had been reading the 
 second chapter of Acts and other cases of con- 
 version in the Acts of Apostles, and had more 
 than once remarked to his wife that when he 
 found a preacher who preached as Peter did on 
 the day of Pentecost and would give the same 
 answer to inquiring sinners as Peter did, he 
 would be baptized and become a Christian. He 
 was as good as his word ; he embraced the first 
 opportunity and it was as much of a surprise to 
 him as his response was to the preacher. 
 
 The Spread and Acceptance of His Teaching 
 
 The new arrangement and interpretation of the 
 gospel made slow progress at first, but when once 
 the ice was fairly broken and the message un- 
 derstood, it went forward by leaps and bounds, 
 especially in the Western Reserve of Ohio, where 
 Walter Scott's first evangelistic work was done. 
 Barton W. Stone once said to Samuel Rogers 
 that he had preached baptism for the remission 
 of sins at the beginning of his reformatory work, 
 but had abandoned it because the effect was like 
 pouring ice water down the backs of his hearers. 
 That was because he did not preach it right, as 
 he afterwards learned. The man who preaches 
 immersion in its ceremonial religious aspects as 
 
74 
 
 MAKERS AND HOLDERS OF 
 
 a kind of juridic, legal and arbitrary external ar- 
 rangement between God and the sinner, will 
 have abundant reason to complain of a chilling 
 effect on his audience. In the language of the 
 old colored preacher, it will certainly have "a 
 coolin' influence on de meetin'." But the man 
 who puts the full, spiritual, New Testament con- 
 tent into the word "baptize," will not displease 
 his most intelligent and Christian hearers. A 
 polemic and dogmatic age gave us a lexical and 
 controversial baptism, with about equal propor- 
 tions of legalism and water mixed and generally 
 well shaken before taken. Untold harm has been 
 done by preaching this legalistic dogma of im- 
 mersion for the remission of sins. Walter Scott 
 and the Campbells, especially Thomas Campbell, 
 well understood that it was not "the outward 
 sign" and symbol that was a condition of salva- 
 tion, but the "inward grace," the cleansing of the 
 soul from sin by the power of God, compared to 
 the action of water on a soiled garment. The 
 symbol is put for the thing symbolized. This is 
 the baptism that "washed away" the sins of Saul 
 of Tarsus. 
 
 Peter explains what he meant by baptism for 
 the remission of sins on the day of Pentecost. 
 "The like figure whereunto baptism doth also 
 now save us, not by the putting away of the 
 filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good con- 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 75 
 
 science toward God." It is not the physical ac- 
 tion of immersion in water for ceremonial or 
 bathing purposes, but the purification of the con- 
 science from a sense of defilement and guilt by 
 repentance and the power of God, of which the 
 outward rite is the symbolic expression and rep- 
 resentation. This is the historic doctrine of bap- 
 tism for the remission of sins, written in all the 
 creeds and preached by the reformers, but prac- 
 ticed by none of them till the time of Walter 
 Scott and the Restoration Movement. 
 
 His Singular Unselfishness 
 
 No space is left to speak of the personal char- 
 acter and devotion of this great preacher of 
 righteousness. He was a Christlike man of sin- 
 gular detachment and unselfishness. A striking 
 story of his altruism still lingers about his old 
 haunts at Mays Lick, Ky., where he lived for a 
 time, where he died and found sepulcher. He 
 had preached one of his great sermons in the 
 presence of Alexander Campbell. At the close 
 of the service Mr. Campbell went forward and 
 said : "Walter, many people are complimenting 
 you on your masterly sermon this morning. I 
 desire to present you with a more substantial to- 
 ken of my appreciation," handing him a five dol- 
 lar gold piece. Mr. Scott thanked him and thrust 
 the coin into his vest pocket without looking at it. 
 
76 
 
 MAKERS AXD MOLDERS OF 
 
 They went into the country that day to dine with 
 one of the brethren. Riding along the road on 
 horseback, Walter still expatiating on one of the 
 great themes of the gospel, they encountered a 
 beggar who made a piteous appeal for alms. The 
 eloquent talker paused long enough to take the 
 coin out of his pocket and give it to the tramp, 
 again without looking at it. "Are you aware of 
 the denomination of that piece of money j'ou gave 
 the beggar?" said Mr. Campbell, a few moments 
 later, "Xo. no," said Walter; "was it the coin you 
 gave me in the church?" "Yes," said Mr. Camp- 
 bell, "and it was a five dollar gold piece." Here 
 was a man who did not think of himself, only of 
 the holy cause and of other people. 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 77 
 
 ISAAC ERRETT 
 
 Major Prophet of the Second Generation 
 of Disciples 
 
 IN the longest personal conversation I ever 
 had w^ith Isaac Errett he related two cir- 
 cumstances of the early movement in Pittsburgh, 
 so characteristic and typical that they may be 
 used as illuminating side lights of his first re- 
 ligious environment, and the trend of the reli- 
 gious movement with which he had identified 
 himself. The time was the early 30's of the last 
 century when the "reformed church," as it was 
 then called, began to segregate itself into a dis- 
 tinct religious body, separate and apart from all 
 existing denominations of Christians. In the 
 enthusiasm of an extreme literalism, the breth- 
 ren practiced the "holy kiss" in those days. 
 
 An Incident with a Definite Result 
 
 One bright Sunday morning a big, black, bur- 
 ly negro man strode forward, presenting him- 
 self for membership in the church at Pittsburgh, 
 
7£ 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 where Brother Errett was then a member. It 
 was the custom to march round single file, ex- 
 tending the right hand of congratulation and fel- 
 lowship to the new convert, imprinting, at the 
 same time, a resounding holy kiss on his glowing 
 cheek. When the time came for the usual per- 
 formance to begin on behalf of the brother in 
 black, no one moved. Impassive, unresponsive, 
 statuesque and cold, the people sat. reminding 
 one of a wilderness of marble slabs in an English 
 graveyard, until the situation became intolerably 
 embarrassing and painful. When sensitive breth- 
 ren began to feel like looking around for holes in 
 the floor through which to escape, a maiden sister 
 of uncertain age rushed to the front, impulsively 
 embraced her colored brother, implanting a fer- 
 vent kiss on his dusky cheek, shouting as she did 
 so. "I will not deny my brother his privilege." 
 "That," said Brother Errett, "put an end to the 
 holy kiss in the Pittsburgh church." 
 
 We agreed that two obvious inferences were 
 to be drawn from this incident. First, that the 
 truth of the universal brotherhood of humanity, 
 regardless of race, color, creed, social caste, or 
 previous condition of sen-itude. had not found 
 its way into the consciousness of the brotherhood 
 at that early stage of its history; and secondly, 
 that extreme literalism in the interpretation of 
 Scripture that makes a social custom of the an- 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 79 
 
 cient East as binding as a vital truth of the 
 gospel, is decidedly superficial. It passes into 
 "innocuous desuetude" at the first touch of the 
 stress and strain of life. 
 
 The second story referred to an election of 
 elders that had taken place in the same church. 
 The qualifications of church officers was a burn- 
 ing question in those days. So rigid and literal 
 was the construction put upon the qualifications 
 of elders in Timothy that it was always difficult 
 and sometimes impossible to find men to fill the 
 office. On this particular occasion, the church 
 had put in some of its best men to serve it in the 
 capacity of bishops. Satisfaction with the re- 
 sults of the election was general but not uni- 
 versal. An old Scotchman in the congregation 
 complained that the Scriptures had not been car- 
 ried out. The men put in were not qualified to 
 do the work of the eldership. Walking home 
 with his family that day, he growled his criti- 
 cisms all the way. He was not "satisfeed" with 
 what had been done. "Brother A. was all but 
 unanimously elected," said his wife : "what's the 
 matter with him?" "He's na qualifeed," said the 
 old Scot. "Brother B. is a most excellent and 
 capable man; what's the trouble with him?" 
 "He's na qualifeed." She named another and an- 
 other, and the same old answer came back, "He's 
 na qualifeed." Piqued somewhat at the carping 
 
80 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 attitude of the tough old Scot, the good wife in- 
 dignantly asked, "Who, then, is qualifeed?" "I 
 am," he replied, with a crashing guttural accent 
 on the broad a of the word "am." 
 
 The new democracy always takes care of the 
 individuality of its citizens. Where the way is 
 made for liberty, the self-conscious ego runs and 
 is glorified. It is the way of new movements to 
 attract egoistic cranks and homy-headed mal- 
 contents, men bom in the objective case and ac- 
 tive voice, the kind that foregathered with David 
 in the cave of Adullam. Our early history- had 
 its share of this species of the genus homo, who 
 are always at home on questions of church or- 
 ganization and government. 
 
 The Founding of The Christian Standard 
 
 Isaac Errett's leadership of our reformatory 
 movement began with the first issue of the Chris- 
 tian Standard in March, 1866. Previous to the 
 time of this publication he had won distinction as 
 a man of commanding power with both tongue 
 and pen. "The Living Pulpit of the Christian 
 Church," edited by ^^^ T. Moore and published 
 in 1868, begins a brief biographical sketch of 
 Isaac Errett with these two sentences : — "Among 
 the preachers and writers of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury who have plead for a return to primitive 
 Christianity, the subject of this notice stands 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 81 
 
 pre-eminently among the most distinguished. 
 For more than thirty-five years he has been con- 
 nected with the Disciples, and, during the great- 
 er portion of that time, has been an earnest, able 
 and successful advocate of their plea for reforma- 
 tion." 
 
 He Proves His Breadth and Power 
 
 The ancient and potent laws of heredity, en- 
 vironment and training, that made Saul of Tar- 
 sus the great interpreter and expounder of Jesus 
 in the first generation of Christianity, made Isaac 
 Errett the most luminous exponent in the in- 
 terpretation and defense of the Campbell move- 
 ment, for the time in which he lived. His apti- 
 tude as a scholar and his early and intimate as- 
 sociation with the Campbells and Walter Scott, 
 gave him exceptional opportunities to understand 
 and appreciate the aims and ideals of the "cur- 
 rent reformation." His great sermon in the 
 "Living Pulpit" on "The Law of Progressive 
 Development," placed him in the front rank of 
 progressive and liberal interpreters of the res- 
 toration plea. It soon became evident in the 
 conduct of the Standard that its editor was too 
 large to be small, too broad to be narrow, too 
 deep to be shallow, too clear and keen and pene- 
 trating of vision to be satisfied with a sectarian 
 conception of Christianity while pleading for its 
 
82 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 opposite. People who fight sectarianism acquire, 
 as a rule, the spirit of a sectarian, and those who 
 would overthrow denominationalism find them- 
 selves obsessed by a first-class instance of denom- 
 inational consciousness. When the limitations of 
 human nature bump against the problems of the- 
 olog}% there is apt to be a potent illustration of 
 the saying of Douglas Jerrold, that dogmatism is 
 puppyism come to maturity. Lutherans of the 
 second generation were as intolerant and perse- 
 cuting as the Catholics who tried to stamp them 
 out in the first. A dogmatic age begets dogma- 
 tism in those who set themselves to oppose dog- 
 ma, and the spirit of controversy is sure to ag- 
 gravate extreme tendencies. 
 
 It was hardly to be expected that Disciple hu- 
 man nature should differ from the human nature 
 of other people, or that they should be less in- 
 fluenced by environment and the temper of the 
 age than their contemporaries. 
 
 Alexander Campbell, Number One, of the cove- 
 nant theolog}', the Lochian philosophy, and the 
 third epistle of Peter, who stressed the objective 
 in revelation, the external and hence the institu- 
 tional in religion, begat a spiritual progeny in his 
 own image and after his own likeness, who ran 
 ahead of their maker in a hard, mechanical and 
 quarrelsome legalism, which they sought to fast- 
 en as a yoke upon the necks of their brethren. 
 
THB REFORMATION MOVEMENT 
 
 83 
 
 The most popular and authoritative and service- 
 able passage of Scripture used by these men who 
 esteemed themselves "infallibly right" was the 
 familiar declaration : "Where the Scriptures 
 speak we speak, and where the Scriptures are 
 silent we are silent," and this was the result of 
 a strict constructionism, the principle of which 
 they applied in the interpretation of other Scrip- 
 tures. 
 
 The Organ Controversy 
 
 About the time of the beginning of the Chris- 
 tian Standard, a fierce and internecine war 
 broke out on the subject of instrumental music 
 in the services of the church ; another product 
 of negative literalism. When the proposal was 
 made to put the organ in as an aid to the serv- 
 ice of song, it was met by the objection that the 
 introduction of musical instruments into the 
 house of God was a sin comparable to the golden 
 calf in the camp of Israel or infant sprinkling in 
 the modern church. It was idolatry and will 
 worship because the New Testament is silent 
 concerning it, and there is no "thus saith the 
 Lord" authorizing its use in the house of God. 
 Isaac Errett through his paper did yeoman serv- 
 ice in educating our people up to the point of 
 realizing that this kind of reasoning was a seri- 
 ous abuse of the whole question of divine author- 
 
84 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 ity in the Holy Scriptures. A purblind legalism 
 and a cocksure dogmatism were making a desper- 
 ate struggle to head the movement in the wrong 
 direction. "The old reliable," the pet name of 
 the American Christian Review, had gone over 
 to the firing line of anti-ism, and opened its bat- 
 teries on missionary societies, the organ, the one 
 man pastor, all progressive tendencies, and every- 
 body's sectarianism but its own. It is impos- 
 sible for men and women of our day who are 
 clambering into the band-wagon of progress, both 
 in politics and religion, to comprehend the fact 
 that a little more than a generation back the word 
 "progress" and all its derivatives were under 
 ban, among religious reformers too, and the most 
 damning thing that could be said of a man was 
 that he was a "progressive." 
 
 The Parting of the Ways 
 
 Times change, and so do men when they can 
 be persuaded to think. There was a prophetic 
 and providential line of lineal descendants from 
 Alexander Campbell, Number Two, of the Mil- 
 lennial Harbinger, Lunenburgh letter, and the 
 presidential chair of the American Christian Mis- 
 sionary Society. Men of the type of Isaac Er- 
 rett, Robert Richardson, W. K. Pendleton, W. 
 T. Moore, J. S. Lamar, Alexander Procter, Geo. 
 W. Longan, and others of similar caliber, broad- 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 85 
 
 ly intellectual as they were broadly spiritual, 
 were in the true prophetic succession from 
 Thomas Campbell and the matured and fully de- 
 veloped Alexander Campbell. At the time of 
 the death of the Sage of Bethany and the birth of 
 the Christian Standard, these events occurred 
 the same month, March, 1866, it was a serious 
 question as to which way the cat was going to 
 jump. The two tendencies had reached the part- 
 ing of the ways, and the choice lay between 
 hardening into a legalistic and belligerent sect, or 
 marching into the upward and onward way of a 
 catholic and spiritual interpretation of New 
 Testament religion. 
 
 Isaac Errett was called to the kingdom for 
 such a time as this. His relation to the Campbell 
 movement was similar to Paul's relation to the 
 Christianity of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, when 
 he saved it from being strangled in its cradle by 
 Jewish legalists, and buried in the tomb of a de- 
 cadent Leviticism, and set it in the highway of 
 holiness as the faith of mankind. If the religion 
 of Jesus needed interpretation and re-adaptation 
 to changing conditions in the first generation of 
 its existence, it is not strange that reform 
 wrought by human hands should need the touch 
 of reconstruction and fresh leadership in its sec- 
 ond generation. When a forward step is taken, 
 or changing readjustments occur, the old battle 
 
86 
 
 MAKERS AND HOLDERS OF 
 
 for freedom of thought and action has to be 
 fought over again. New religious movements 
 reach finaUty and crystalUze in less than a gen- 
 eration. They fought for liberty to overthrow 
 the old order and gained it, but they will not 
 grant a similar privilege to their contemporaries 
 and those who come after them. The last word 
 has been spoken and woe be to the man who 
 dares to speak another — he must be prepared to 
 take the consequences. 
 
 One of his first efforts was to break up the 
 cr)'stallization into which the cause was rapidly 
 drifting. The tendency to externalize Christian- 
 ity by spelling it out in institutions and writing 
 it into abstract propositions, supported by texts 
 of Scripture, superficially interpreted, was de- 
 plored. We were inclined to forget the impor- 
 tant distinction so carefully drawn by the Camp- 
 bells between faith and opinion, fact and specula- 
 tion, experience and dogma. The disposition to 
 lead people out of the synagogue, not for lack of 
 faith, or any deficiency in their experience of the 
 grace of God, but for paltry differences of opin- 
 ion, of little importance in themselves, was not 
 esteemed a part of the primitive Christianity for 
 whose restoration we were proudly contending. 
 The age of polemics and dogmatic literalism did 
 not end with Isaac Errett and the day of his edi- 
 torship of the Christian Standard, but a better 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 87 
 
 and broader spirit began to characterize our lit- 
 erature and the attitude of our people towards 
 other religious bodies. 
 
 "What Is Sectarianism?" 
 
 Perhaps the most illuminating contribution 
 ever made to a Disciple periodical was the article 
 written by the editor of the Standard to Moore's 
 Christian Quarterly entitled, "What is Sectari- 
 anism?" This essay was a masterpiece of exposi- 
 tion, throwing as it did a flood of light on the 
 fundamental principles of the restoration cause. 
 It was the Declaration and Address revised and 
 brought up to date, another stage of evolution 
 brought in, by the operation of the law of pro- 
 gressive development. It had been the custom 
 to invite men and women to unite with us on 
 the Bible and the Bible alone as the religion of 
 Protestants. This, of course, was an invitation 
 to union on the basis of our interpretation of cer- 
 tain portions of the Bible, a foundation no more 
 adequate or satisfactory than the creeds proposed 
 by the founders of other religious bodies. No 
 human interpretation of literary documents, in- 
 spired or uninspired, could be made the founda- 
 tion of the church or a basis of the reunion of 
 the churches. Walter Scott's Christology, based 
 on the inspired confession at Csesarea Philippi, 
 
88 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDBRS OF 
 
 was farther expounded and applied in some of 
 its most important implications. The "rock" on 
 which the church was to be erected was not a 
 proposition or an institution, but a person, and 
 that person was Christ himself. The divinity and 
 personality of Jesus of Nazareth, the object of 
 faith, the power of salvation, the foundation of 
 the church, the basis of Christian union, the in- 
 spiration of the Christian life, the essence of the 
 Christian religion, constitutes the rallying center 
 of all those in every place who call upon His 
 name. Other things, if in any way vital, may go 
 into the structure, but not into the foundation. 
 The Disciples have often been spoken of as creed- 
 less, but this is a serious misapprehension of our 
 position. Creedlessness is not one of our limita- 
 tions. The Bible is a source of spiritual knowl- 
 edge, a practical rule in the guidance of our lives, 
 but Christ is the creed of Christianity, the creed 
 that needs no revision, and no apology. If the 
 Disciples, at any time, have proposed a theory 
 of primitive Christianity and the ancient order 
 of things as the basis of unity, they have been as 
 much mistaken as others who have offered hu- 
 man theories for the fact of Christ. Having no 
 claim to inerrancy, above other people, it is prob- 
 able that some things have gone into the founda- 
 tion that belonged elsewhere, but at the same 
 time steady progress is being made towards the 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 89 
 
 realization of the ideal of unity in and on the 
 Son of Gk)d and Son of man, alone. 
 
 Approved by Present Day Leaders of Thought 
 
 To those of us who sat at the feet of Isaac Er- 
 rett and other great teachers of the time, it is a 
 matter of intense gratification that the profound- 
 est and most up-to-date thinking of these modern 
 days is falling into line with the Christological 
 position of our restoration cause. A notable 
 book has just appeared in Germany, from the 
 pen of Dr. Sapper, one of the great thinkers and 
 scholars of the Fatherland, entitled, "The New 
 Protestantism," in which he repeats and ampli- 
 fies with signal ability and force, the thesis of the 
 great Quarterly article to which I am referring 
 in this paper. He declares in refreshing Disciple 
 style that theological questions are being pushed 
 into a secondary place, and it is the work of the 
 leaders of the New Protestantism to define and 
 lay down those principles of evangelical religion 
 which unite rather than divide Christians. He 
 then reaches for the milk of the cocoanut in this 
 declaration : "All that is necessary is contained 
 in the formulary belief in Jesus Christ as our Re- 
 deemer. This is the essence of the Christian re- 
 ligion, and there is no other essence." 
 
 Arthur Bransewetter, a careful and temperate 
 writer and able reviewer, recognizes this and 
 
90 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 admits that Sapper's book is directed to unite 
 Christians in all that is great and essential in 
 their religion. "We must," says Bransewetter, 
 "under all circumstances and at any price find a 
 central point around which we can congregate," 
 and that point is the personality of Jesus Christ, 
 our Brother and our Redeemer. 
 
 Dr. Newton Marshall, one of the most brilliant 
 and scholarly preachers in England, who died re- 
 cently at the early age of forty, insisted in some 
 of his last utterances "that Christianity was cen- 
 tral to all religions, and a personal Christ was 
 the central fact of Christianity." 
 
 The people who have been contending for a 
 return to Christ will have to hurry up or some 
 of these outside men will beat them to a full 
 and practical application of our divine creed to 
 the solution of the problems of unity and the 
 world's redemption. . One of the most vital ques- 
 tions growing out of the contention for the cen- 
 trality and fundamentality of Jesus as prophet, 
 priest, and king, was the exclusion of things that 
 did not belong to the "essence" and the inclusion 
 of things that did. That, indeed, is the problem 
 of the New Protestantism of which Sapper 
 speaks. One of the first things to be considered 
 is the terms of Christian fellowship and brother- 
 hood, things that must be believed and done in 
 this new reign of God over the lives of men. 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 91 
 
 We must penetrate to the essence of what the 
 personality of Jesus incarnates, "the life of God 
 in the soul of man." According to the testimony 
 of Christ himself and that of his inspired apos- 
 tles, two things only are indispensable, faith in 
 Christ as Saviour, and obedience to Him as Lord. 
 In the nature of things the forms of religion do 
 not and can not belong to its essence. Institu- 
 tional and sacramental religion belongs at best 
 to the category of expression, not to that of sub- 
 stance or the things expressed. On the preach- 
 ing of the apostles they required nothing of men 
 but belief in Christ, the human life of God, and 
 submission to the eternal law of righteousness, 
 of which he was the manifestation. As long as 
 men maintained the integrity of their faith in 
 Jesus and their loyalty to him as the Son of 
 God, they were sound in the faith and mem- 
 bers of his body, the church. On these simple 
 conditions men came in and stayed in regardless 
 of their opinions and speculations on a thousand 
 questions, not affecting attachment and devotion 
 to Jesus the Christ of God. 
 
 Mr. Errett's Statement of the Restoration Plea 
 
 Mr. Errett thus sums up the restoration plea : 
 1. "It insists on faith in Jesus as the Mes- 
 siah, the Son of God, as the only condition of ad- 
 
92 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 mission to baptism and membership in the 
 church." 
 
 2. "It enjoins obedience to Jesus, the Head 
 of the Church, as the only condition of fellow- 
 ship in the church." 
 
 3. "It advocates the union of all believers on 
 these two considerations : Faith in Jesus ; obedi- 
 ence to Jesus — thus letting party names and or- 
 ganizations and creeds give place to a spiritual 
 brotherhood which, possessed of whatever di- 
 versity of opinion or of practice outside the sim- 
 ple teachings of the New Testament, shall be 
 one in faith and in character as the followers of 
 the Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 In no sphere of influence did Isaac Errett ex- 
 hibit more wisdom and usefulness than in the 
 realm of liberty, tolerance, and expediency. "In 
 all matters," said he, "outside of faith in Christ 
 and obedience to him, there were two regulations. 
 First, no one was allowed to judge his brother. 
 Every one was at liberty to follow his own best 
 judgment, responsible only to God. Second, if 
 this liberty was found, in the exercise, to work 
 to the injury of any brother, however weak, or 
 to disturb the peace and harmony of the church, 
 they were taught to waive their rights and re- 
 strain their liberties, in loving deference to the 
 prejudices or weaknesses of their brethren. The 
 reader is referred to Romans XIV for a lumi- 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 93 
 
 nous exposition of the Christian law of love in its 
 application to all such cases." 
 
 Features of the New Testament Church 
 
 The features of the New Testament Church 
 to be restored, or reproduced in our time, are 
 first, its ecumenical character. It was the holy 
 catholic church, exhausted by no sect or denom- 
 ination, belonging to no country, nation, or class. 
 Second, its universal equality. It has no hier- 
 archy, or priestly order. It is a great spiritual 
 brotherhood bound by spiritual ties of faith, hope 
 and love, and depends not on organization for its 
 unity ; its unity is from within, and not without — 
 unity of spirit, and not a mere external unity of 
 organization. Third, the simplicity and brevity 
 of its creed. It contained but one article of faith. 
 It came from heaven. "Thou art the Christ, the 
 Son of the living Gk)d." Fourth, the simple bond 
 of fellowship that held its members together. 
 Devotion to Jesus and consecration to the spirit 
 of love and obedience. For two reasons only 
 could men and women be rightfully cut off from 
 the fellowship of the saints ; first, for denying the 
 Lord that bought them, thereby renouncing the 
 divine creed; second, for persistent disobedience 
 to the authority of the head of the church. If 
 they were right here, no matter how far wrong 
 they might be in anything else, their fellowship 
 
94 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 could not be disturbed ; if they were wrong here, 
 no matter if right about everything else, they 
 forfeited their right to Christian brotherhood and 
 were delivered over to the world. 
 
 The Ideal New Testament Church 
 
 In the two following items he summed up his 
 conception and interpretation of the effort to 
 realize the ideal Christianity and the ideal church 
 of the New Testament. 
 
 1. "We must guard, with uncompromising 
 integrity, the essentials of this plea, namely, faith 
 in the Lord Jesus, and obedience to him in all 
 things clearly taught in his word. 
 
 2. "We must carefully guard, and with an 
 equally uncompromising faithfulness to principle, 
 against all attempts to coerce unity, either in re- 
 gard to inferential truths or matters of expedi- 
 ency. That is to say, while insisting on loyal- 
 ty to Jesus, we must allow every man to be loyal 
 to himself in all things not expressly commanded 
 or taught, and regard this liberty as his right and 
 not as our gift." 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 95 
 
 MOSES E. LARD 
 
 Prophet of Radicalism, Literalism and Con- 
 servatism in the Second Generation 
 of the Reformation Movement 
 
 AS thinker, writer, preacher, defender of 
 the faith, mighty advocate and propagan- 
 dist of the new cause of Christian union, few men 
 of the middle period equaled, and none sur- 
 passed, the man whose name stands at the head 
 of this article. The genius of Alexander Camp- 
 bell and the impelling force of the principles he 
 had sent out, as a bugle call to the churches, drew 
 around him in Bethany College a group of young 
 men of superior talents and consuming zeal, the 
 very best of raw material for the making of able 
 and successful ministers of the word. Like our 
 Lord's "Winnowing Sieve," spoken of by Prof. 
 Seely in his brilliant "Ecce Homo," the sieving 
 and winnowing process sifts out the light ma- 
 terial and retains the best of the wheat in the 
 first and second generations of a new cause. The 
 men who were trained by Alexander Campbell, 
 like the old students of the great Agassiz, always 
 
96 
 
 MAKERS AND HOLDERS OF 
 
 speak of him in the glow of a passionate enthusi- 
 asm, indicating a capacity for the understand- 
 ing and appreciation of genius not always to be 
 distinguished from genius itself. 
 
 Great Men of Our Second Period 
 
 Great men multiply themselves in other 
 men, a kind of self-multiplication by in- 
 spiration. For a whole generation and more 
 a strong force of men of capacity and per- 
 sonality went out from Bethany, who give 
 to the Christian Union Reformation a per- 
 manent place among the religious forces of 
 the world. Of these captains of a new spir- 
 itual industry, with no less an ambition than 
 the reunion of Christendom on a divine basis, 
 were such men as Dr. Robert Richardson, 
 W. K. Pendleton, C. L. Loos, Robert Graham, 
 Moses E. Lard, John W. McGarvey, J. S. 
 Lamar, W. T. Moore, L. B. Wilkes, William 
 Baxter, John Shackelford, Henry Haley, 
 Joseph King; and besides these other men of 
 light and leading, who came under the in- 
 fluence and teaching of the illustrious head of 
 Bethany College, Isaac Errett, L. L. Pinker- 
 ton, Robert Milligan, Dr. W. H. Hopson, and 
 others of both classes, too numerous to men- 
 tion here. 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 97 
 
 Moses Lard, Preacher 
 
 A book of surpassing interest and impor- 
 tance to the Disciples might be written on 
 these representative men of the second stage 
 in the evolution of our religious movement. 
 For our present purpose, only three or four 
 of these leaders can be considered, and they 
 as types of personality and teaching ability 
 characteristic of the period. Moses E. Lard 
 represented a phase of the Disciple reforma- 
 tion, which has changed since his day, and we 
 need to know something of the background 
 out of which these changes have been pro- 
 ceeding. As these articles are not primarily 
 biographical, we cannot linger over the de- 
 tails of his personal life in the development of 
 his character, as interesting and valuable as 
 these would be. We must begin with him in 
 the maturity of his powers, in the midst of 
 his career, as a great advocate of our reforma- 
 tory principles. 
 
 As a preacher he had few equals, and no 
 superiors, among his contemporaries. I have 
 heard nearly all of the supreme masters of 
 the pulpit in the English speaking world, in 
 the last generation and a half, and I have 
 never heard a better preacher than Moses E. 
 Lard. 
 
 Dr. Winthrop H. Hopson, Lard's greatest 
 
98 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 rival for pulpit supremacy among the Dis- 
 ciples at the time, was once asked, which was 
 the better preacher, himself or Moses Lard. 
 The answer was, "Up to thirty sermons Lard 
 can beat anybody, after that, up to two hun- 
 dred and fifty, I can beat him." This ques- 
 tion had brass enough in it on the part of the 
 questioner, but the answer was characteris- 
 tic of Dr. Hopson, and a pretty accurate judg- 
 ment of the relative merits of the two 
 preachers. Like Walter Scott, Lard was not 
 always at his best, and his efTorts therefore 
 were not always equal. His average sermons 
 as a pastor did not measure up to the special 
 eflforts on which he had spent his life. The 
 major part of his ministry was spent in the 
 evangelistic field, where thirty or forty great 
 sermons were enough to give his work the highest 
 efficiency, in a day when great preaching was 
 expected and appreciated. The labor bestowed 
 upon these "big sermons" was colossal. Such 
 thoroughness of preparation, such mastery^ of 
 material, I have never known in any preacher. 
 Every phrase and sentence was fixed and set 
 in order, and so familiar that his mind gam- 
 boled and bounded over the matter of his 
 discourse with a freedom that gave unusual 
 vitality and power to his utterances. The ef- 
 fects were sometimes electrical. 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 99 
 
 His Oratorical Power 
 
 He himself gave a specific instance of the 
 overwhelming power of these tidal waves of 
 eloquence. He does not refer to himself as 
 the speaker, but he was, all the same : 
 
 "The breathless stillness of the great crowd was at 
 times oppressive and painful. You felt as if you 
 wanted to see the crowd move, wanted some sign of 
 life — anything, in a word, to relieve the petrified scene 
 before you. Had you entered a room in some buried 
 city where a whole audience had perished in an instant, 
 where the spirits had left the bodies fresh as in life, 
 with the hue on the cheek, the sparkle in the eye, and 
 the thought on the brow, little more could you have 
 felt the awe-inspiring stillness than in the silent audi- 
 ence before you. Only on one occasion did the emo- 
 tion rise so high as to be overpowering. At the close 
 of one of the exhortations, even Mason Summers was 
 mute. He could not sing a word. Several tried, but 
 all failed. So overwhelming was the feeling that every 
 tongue and note was hushed. Here and there a deep- 
 drawn breath or bursting sigh was all that could be 
 heard. Men stood and looked like statues weeping. 
 First one and then another would rise and come for- 
 ward to confess his faith in Christ, until twelve strong 
 men sat on the front seat. Such a sight I have never 
 seen before ; I have not seen it since. Glad hearts were 
 in that audience that night, but far too full to talk. 
 Men thought but thought in silence; felt, but never 
 spoke. Even after the crowd adjourned, they glided 
 over the roads homeward through the deep shadows of 
 primitive woods noiselessly, as if they had been troops 
 of spectres marching to their last doom. Even Gill for 
 the time ceased to bray, while Huffaker was mute and 
 walked clerically. The sects grew sullen, bigots 
 
100 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 gnashed, even the wizard spirit of Collet Haynes was 
 dumb, and it is believed that any rake in the neighbor- 
 hood might, for the time, have climbed one of Andy 
 Fuller's saplings without the fear of presentment to 
 the grand jury." 
 
 For appreciation of local references to char- 
 acters like Gill, Huffaker and Collet Haynes, 
 the reader is referred to "Solomon's Confes- 
 sion," in "Lard's Quarterly" for October, 
 1864. It is worth looking up if one has access 
 to it. 
 
 The Story of the Pioneer 
 
 I have, myself, witnessed scenes in the preach- 
 ing of this great pulpiteer similar to the one de- 
 scribed, as occurring at Haynesville, Mo. I have 
 seen great audiences, when the invitation was 
 given, sit paralyzed, apparently unable to move 
 hand or foot or faculty of the mind. Not in- 
 frequently an exhortation had to be delivered by 
 some one else, to liberate the forces of reaction 
 and bring the people back to consciousness of 
 their power to sing or walk forward to make the 
 good confession. No speaker of my knowledge 
 could bring as many handkerchiefs into requisi- 
 tion, or make people sob aloud as if their hearts 
 would break. I witnessed, as many others did, 
 an unforgetable incident, in connection with the 
 delivery of his graphic and thrilling sermon on 
 the Wilderness Temptation of our Lord. Speak- 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 101 
 
 ing of the suffering of the hunger-lust of a forty 
 days' fast and the human impossibility of it be- 
 yond fourteen days, without miraculous inter- 
 position, he drew an illustration from the expe- 
 rience of a Missouri hunter, from whose lips he 
 had heard the story. 
 
 This pioneer tiller of the soil was in the habit 
 of traveling a distance from home, at least once 
 a year, on a hunting expedition. On this partic- 
 ular forage after wild game he had taken with 
 him, his horse, his little son, his faithful dog, and 
 a partial supply of food. After a camping place 
 had been selected, the tent put up, and other 
 preparations made, the hunter was priming his 
 gun, when it accidentally went oflf, the bullet 
 tearing into his body a serious if not fatal wound. 
 Far from help and home the situation was des- 
 perate if not irremediable. There was nothing 
 left but for the boy to take the horse and try to 
 find his way back home to tell what had hap- 
 pened, and if possible to bring or send relief. 
 The little fellow was solemnly charged not to try 
 to guide the horse, but to drop the reins on the 
 animal's neck and trust to his instincts of direc- 
 tion to find the way. He had not traveled very 
 far when he began to feel that the horse had 
 made a mistake. He seized the reins and turned 
 him in the opposite direction and — was lost. If 
 
102 
 
 MAKERS AND HOLDERS OF 
 
 I remember correctly it was more than a week 
 before he reached his home. 
 
 In the meantime the wound was Httle better 
 and the suffering man could not supply himself 
 with food. Morning and evening the faithful 
 dog went out on the surrounding hills and 
 howled by the hour that relief might come to his 
 dying master. No relief came. On the morning 
 of the fourteenth day the dog came in for the 
 last time and, lying down by his human friend, 
 he seemed to say. Well, master, I have done my 
 best, I hope relief will yet come. If it does not 
 we will starve and die together. The wounded 
 man, in a fit of hunger and desperation, seized 
 his knife and struck his heroic and devoted com- 
 panion dead at his feet. As he lay there welter- 
 ing in the blood of a tragic sacrifice, specks ap- 
 peared on the horizon like birds, which turned 
 out on nearer approach to be men on horses ; a 
 search-party had been organized to bring relief 
 to their unfortunate neighbor. The hunter was 
 rescued and recovered, but he never forgave 
 himself the tragic end of the more than human 
 friend, the faithful dog. 
 
 I have not told this story half as well as Lard 
 told it, and perhaps some of the details are not 
 correctly stated, but this is the tale substantially 
 as he related it, and the effect was magical and 
 unforgetable. Tears literally rained down the 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 103 
 
 faces of the people, and they wept aloud all over 
 the house. The speaker paused thirty seconds 
 or more and then said, in substance, as far as I 
 can recall it from memory : Yes, when I tell you 
 of the accidental wounding of a hunter and the 
 death of his dog, you shed copious tears, and 
 weep like your last friend had been taken from 
 you, but when I speak of the broken heart of my 
 Lord, who was wounded for our transgressions 
 and bruised for our iniquities, who was torn and 
 tortured upon the accursed tree, without a rem- 
 edy to deaden his pains, or a friendly hand to 
 give him a drink of water, you sit unmoved by 
 the world tragedy of God's dying Son on the 
 cross, not a tear falls, not a sigh or sob is heard, 
 not one heart is broken — brethren, what do you 
 think of yourselves ? 
 
 At the moment of the falling of this thunder- 
 bolt the brethren were not thinking much of 
 themselves. Other tears were shed, but they 
 M'ere tears of humiliation when the fact was 
 thrust into their consciousness that they had al- 
 lowed familiarity with the most moving story 
 ever told to rob it of its power to touch the 
 heart and move the soul. 
 
 Spontaneous Appreciation 
 
 "Old Uncle Si Collins," as he was called, 
 an eccentric but godly and consecrated 
 
104 
 
 MAKERS AND MOWERS OF 
 
 pioneer preacher, of Richmond, Ky., who was in 
 the habit of standing on the margin of a 
 stream or pool when the holy ordinance of 
 baptism was being administered, as the can- 
 didate was being lowered beneath the yield- 
 ing wave, would shout, "Farewell, vain world, 
 I'm going home" — this grand old man was a 
 great admirer of Moses E. Lard. He would 
 ride many miles on horseback, over dirt roads, 
 in all kinds of weather to hear his favorite 
 preacher. Once when Lard was holding a 
 protracted meeting in Winchester, old Uncle 
 Si sat by the side of his friend William Azbill, 
 listening to one of the speaker's greatest ef- 
 forts. The orator was in one of his happiest 
 moods. As he reached for one of his most 
 telling climaxes, it was evident that Uncle 
 Si was rapidly filling up. He leaned forward 
 smiling and nodding his approval, he slapped 
 his knees, he clapped his hands, and when, 
 like Job's friend, he had reached the bursting 
 point and could contain himself no longer, 
 he turned half way round in his seat, brought 
 down his open hand on the shoulder of his 
 companion, and shouted out loud in meetin', 
 "Brother Bill, isn't he a sugar stick!" So he 
 was in these great sunbursts of sacred elo- 
 quence, in which, like John J. Crittenden, in 
 a different field, "he could beat himself." 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 105 
 
 Lard's Fame as a Writer 
 
 His fame as a writer was scarcely second 
 to his reputation as a preacher. He leaped 
 suddenly into literary and polemical renown 
 one morning, when his book entitled "A Re- 
 view of Campbellism Examined" came out. 
 Dr. Jeremiah B. Jeter, a knight of the quill in 
 Baptist Israel, indited a somewhat preten- 
 tious volume, under the offensive name of 
 "Campbellism Examined." This book was 
 able and scholarly, but marred by serious 
 misapprehension, if not misrepresentation, of 
 the reunion plea. Mr. Campbell began a re- 
 view of it in the Millennial Harbinger, but 
 being unable to finish the job through press 
 of other duties, handed the Baptist editor and 
 his beloved bantling over to the tender 
 mercies of young Lard, then a recent graduate 
 of Bethany College. The "Review" had its 
 limitations in the temper and spirit of the re- 
 viewer, and in historical knowledge and ex- 
 egesis of Scripture on a few points, but for 
 the chief end and purpose of the book, noth- 
 ing more was left to be said. The opposi- 
 tion suffered overthrow and rout, almost 
 equal to annihilation, calling to mind the 
 more recent parallel of Lambert's Notes on 
 Ingersoll, in which the priest so completely 
 annihilates the infidel as not to leave two tips 
 
 I 
 
106 
 
 MAKERS AND HOLDERS Of 
 
 of tails tied together and a little fur, reminders 
 of the historic battle of the Kilkenny cats. 
 The remorseless logic and brilliant rhetoric 
 brought to bear by the reviewer in the defeat 
 of his opponent, was freely admitted by many 
 Baptists, who deplored the consorious and un- 
 charitable spirit in which the work had been 
 done. Years later Bro. Lard said to a friend 
 of mine, "If I had left out the caustic and 
 bitter things said in that book it would have 
 been much stronger and certainly more Chris- 
 tian." While nothing can be said in justifica- 
 tion of biting sarcasm, which Thomas Carlyle 
 declared was the language of the devil, some- 
 thing can be said in palliation of the of¥ense 
 under the circumstances in which the Review 
 of "Campbellism Examined" was written. At 
 that time, not so long ago, the furnace of 
 theological strife was heated seven times, like 
 the one through which the Hebrew children 
 passed, with this diflference : four men who 
 essayed to pass through the former came out 
 without the smell of fire upon their garments ; 
 whereas, when one man attempted to pass 
 through the latter when Moses E. Lard was 
 fireman, he barely managed to get out with 
 the smell of cooked meat and burning grease 
 upon his skin ; his garments had gone up in 
 smoke and flame. The time had not then 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 107 
 
 come for the elimination of personalities, ridi- 
 cule and caustic observations from religious 
 discussion. It has now. 
 
 Lard's Quarterly 
 
 Mr. Lard's literary career is seen to best 
 advantage in his Quarterly, published during 
 the Civil War. It ran through three and a 
 half volumes, if my memory avouches cor- 
 rectly. Its peculiarity was, that in the neigh- 
 borhood of three-fourths of its contributions 
 were written by the editor. A noteworthy 
 and pleasing feature of this characteristic 
 publication was the interspersing of many 
 theological essays and closely reasoned ser- 
 mons with racy narratives, vital stories, 
 epigrammatic delineations of character, lit up 
 here and there with touches of the creative 
 imagination that Charles Dickens and Wil- 
 liam Makepeace Thackeray would have found 
 it hard to excel. The editor of the Quarterly 
 was a matchless story-teller. He possessed 
 the rare gifts of narration and delineation 
 combined. Long ago such stories and his- 
 tories as "My First Meeting," "Dick and 
 South Point," "Solomon's Confession," "My 
 Church," and a ghost story, the title of which 
 I have forgotten, and a few other choice 
 selections from his writings, should have 
 
108 MAKERS AND HOLDERS OF 
 
 been gathered into a volume as a memorial 
 to the genius of its author. The New York 
 Ledger, while it was publishing the star 
 papers of Henry Ward Beecher, offered the 
 editor of the Quarterly five thousand dollars 
 a year to contribute similar stories to its 
 pages. Mr. Lard wisely declined, for these 
 productions were occasional inspirations. They 
 could not have been made to order with the 
 printer's devil standing at his elbow. 
 
 His Bald Literalism 
 
 Many of his great sermons were written 
 out in the form of theological essays and pub- 
 lished in the Quarterly. These editorial con- 
 tributions to the periodical had the same verve 
 and flash, concentrated power, note of dog- 
 matic certainty, and bald literalism of inter- 
 pretation that characterized the spoken ser- 
 mons. Rarely, indeed, if ever, has any man 
 been able to literalize the glowing symbolism 
 of Jewish apocalypses, and dramatize them 
 with such lurid vividness as prophetic descrip- 
 tions of historic events soon to materialize in 
 the affairs of men. Everything was literal, 
 everything that John said in an apocalyptic 
 drama was going to happen just as John said 
 it. While this method yielded realistic and 
 dramatic sermon material, as an effort to in- 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 109 
 
 terpret spiritual prophecy it was distinctly 
 bad. In his sermon on the New Birth in the 
 Living Pulpit, Bro. Lard occupies several 
 pages in arguing that water in John 3 :5 means 
 water. Of course it does, but does a liquid 
 used to describe the spiritual change of re- 
 pentance, mean nothing but a liquid? It must 
 be said, however, in justice to this good man, 
 that the spiritual and ethical elements were 
 not lacking in either his preaching or his life. 
 It is one of the most precious of God's prov- 
 idences that a man's mental concepts may 
 be mistaken in many things, his theology all 
 askew, when his heart is right in the sight of 
 God, his essential message is not stripped of 
 its saving power. 
 
 His Stand for Closed Communion 
 
 It was during the middle period or second 
 generation of our Disciple history that many 
 of the important problems of the new move- 
 ment had to be threshed out, and, if possible, 
 solved. The only method of threshing out 
 things which can find acceptance among a free 
 people is the method of public discussion. It 
 was said of a polemic preacher of that era 
 that he always preached from one text, a text 
 found in one of the minor prophets : "Arise 
 and thresh." In this particular instance the 
 
110 MAKERS AND MOLDBRS OF 
 
 preacher, who was always ready for '"spute," 
 threshed "the sects," but we found it neces- 
 sary at times to thresh one another, that we 
 might all find our bearing together. The 
 most memorable internal controversy of the 
 period was on the communion question in the 
 pages of the Millennial Harbinger, Lard's 
 Quarterl}^, and the American Christian Re- 
 view. Mr. Lard stated the issue interroga- 
 tively: "Do the Unimmersed Commune?" 
 
 In an elaborate and closely reasoned article 
 he answered this question in the negative. In 
 this attitude of a mechanical and ceremonial 
 interpretation of the terms of fellowship at 
 the Lord's table, he was joined by a number 
 of our strongest men: Geo. W. Elley, L. B. 
 Wilkes, Dr. J. W. Cox, and Benj. Franklin, 
 of the American Christian Review. The 
 other side was represented by such scholarly 
 and spiritual men as W. K. Pendleton, Isaac 
 Errett, and Dr. Richardson in the Harbinger, 
 and Thomas Munnell in the Quarterly. Mr. 
 Elley thus sententiously and catechetically 
 puts the argument for the support of the doc- 
 trine that the unimmersed do not commune : 
 
 1. Can any person be a Christian, who is 
 not in Christ, or who has not put him on? 
 
 2. If not, can any put him on who have 
 not been baptized "into him?" 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 111 
 
 3. Can any one be free from sin who has 
 not, from his heart, "obeyed the form of doc- 
 trine" delivered to him by the Holy Spirit? 
 If not, can he rightfully be allowed to break 
 the loaf by the action of God's church? 
 
 4. Can an unsaved or unpardoned person 
 be allowed to sit and drink the Lord's body 
 and blood by church consent? 
 
 5. Is baptism demanded of penitents in 
 order to pardon or Sonship? 
 
 All of these questions were answered in the 
 negative except the last. 
 
 If Mr. Elley's restricted communion prem- 
 ises are admitted, the restriction of com- 
 munion privileges to immersed believers 
 necessarily follows. The trouble was his 
 literal and legalistic process misinterpreted 
 some of his premises. 
 
 Isaac Erretf s Stand 
 
 Isaac Errett, who contributed a brilliant 
 series of articles to this controversy in the 
 pages of the Millennial Harbinger, expressed, 
 in a letter to Richard Hawley, the conclusion 
 which has prevailed among the Disciples. He 
 said : 
 
 "We are compelled, therefore, to recognize as Chris- 
 tians many who have been in error on baptism, but who 
 in the spirit of obedience are Christians indeed. (See 
 
112 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 Rom. 2:28, 29.) I confess, for my own part, did I un- 
 derstand the position of the brethren to deny this, I 
 would recoil from my position among them with utter 
 disgust. It will never do to unchristianize those on 
 whose shoulders we are standing, and because of whose 
 previous labors we are enabled to see some truths more 
 clearly than they. Yet while fully according to them 
 the piety and Christian standing which they deserve, 
 it is clear that they are in great error on the question 
 of baptism — and we must be careful not to compromise 
 the truth. Our practice, therefore, is neither to invite 
 nor reject particular classes of persons, but to spread 
 the table in the name of the Lord, for the Lord's peo- 
 ple, and allow all to come who will, each on his own 
 responsibility." 
 
 It remains only to be added that this discus- 
 sion was conducted on both sides with great 
 ability and admirable courtesy, and was, once 
 for all, determinative of our relations to the 
 Christian people of the churches around us. 
 
 Lard's O p position to Creeds 
 
 Bro. Lard's opposition to human creeds 
 \vas so straight as to lean considerably be- 
 yond the perpendicular. His fierce assault on 
 the harmless "Synopsis," a statement of 
 principles written by Isaac Errett, for public 
 information, is a case in point. As a matter 
 of course the distinguished editor of the Quar- 
 terly was sublimely unconscious of the fact 
 that in every issue of his paper he was per- 
 petrating a creed, and many creeds, quite as 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 113 
 
 human as the one he so bitterly assailed. The 
 first sentence of his criticism has acquired a 
 kind of historic notoriety on account of the 
 grimness of the unconscious humor that lurks 
 in it : "There is not a sound man in our ranks 
 who has seen the preceding 'Synopsis' that 
 has not felt scandalized by it." As the writer 
 went on, the humor increased. A little farther 
 down on the same page he declared : "When 
 Aaron's calf came out, had he called it a bird, 
 still all Israel seeing it stand on four legs, 
 with horns and parted hoofs, would have 
 shouted, a calf, a calf, a calf." 
 
 The American Christian Review joined the 
 Quarterly in the racket against Isaac Errett, 
 as arch-heretic and creed-maker, which caused 
 W. T. Moore in his "History of the Disciples 
 of Christ," to remark, "Both Mr. Lard and 
 Benj. Franklin continued to emphasize these 
 infinitesimal matters until it looked at one 
 time as if the whole movement might be 
 wrecked by an undermining of microbes." 
 While this microbic activity did not seriously 
 affect the main lines of the movement, it did 
 eat the bottom out of the organ controversy. 
 I have just laid down a volume of Lard's 
 Quarterly after reading his article on "Instru- 
 mental Music in Churches, and Dancing." 
 Notwithstanding my familiarity with the 
 
114 
 
 MAKERS AND HOLDERS OF 
 
 fierce intolerance of that controversial age, the 
 consuming heat, and domineering dogmatism, 
 implacable intolerance and bitterness of that 
 philippic over a matter so incidental and small, 
 I am almost surprised. We can hardly help 
 wondering that a great man under any condi- 
 tions or combination of circumstances, should 
 fail to see the difiference between secondary 
 and insignificant matters and the loftiest 
 fundamentals in the religion of Christ. That 
 is one of the mysteries of sin that still gives 
 us more or less trouble. At the same time, 
 when we take into account the tempera- 
 ment and environment of the man there is not 
 much to wonder at. He was a person of 
 marked individuality, great intensity of con- 
 viction, and feelings so strong as to be easily 
 fanned into a flame. As to the settlement of 
 the organ strife, the microbes kept on eating 
 till both gable ends and the puncheon floor of 
 the question fell out of their own weight. In 
 the face of preachers, editors, and ancient 
 elders in Israel, the people quietly put the 
 instrument in, as they had done long before 
 in their homes. There are other things troub- 
 ling our scribes the rank and file are destined 
 to settle in the same way. 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 115 
 
 Old Age Sweetens 
 
 But the distinguished editor of the Quar- 
 terly was right on most things, and concern- 
 ing the few on which he was wrong he got 
 right before he died. As the shadows length- 
 ened, and his western sun neared the horizon, 
 he added sweetness to the light he had long 
 possessed. In the last few years of his life 
 his mind broadened in its outlook, his soul 
 deepened in its consciousness of the love of 
 God, and he became more tolerant, charitable 
 and sympathetic than he had been in the heat 
 of the strife through which he had passed. A 
 year or two before his death he said to his 
 old friend, J. S. Withers, of Cynthiana, Ky. : 
 "If I had my life to live over, I would not 
 preach another gospel, but I would preach the 
 same gospel in a difYerent spirit. I would not 
 allow myself to be stranded on the desert of 
 dogmatism and a narrow construction of the 
 love of God, but I would preach with a new 
 vision of its meaning, that 'God so loved the 
 world that he gave his only begotten Son, 
 that whosoever believeth in him should not 
 perish, but have everlasting life.'" 
 
116 MAKERS AND HOLDERS OF 
 
 WINTHROP H. HOPSON AND 
 GEORGE W. LONGAN 
 
 Two Representative Types of Leadership in 
 the Middle Period of Our History 
 
 In ever)' movement of thought and Ufe two 
 distinct and variant types of leadership inevi- 
 tably figure. It is customary to speak of these, 
 for the want of better terms, as conserv-ative and 
 progressive ; sometimes varied by the terms re- 
 actionary for the first and liberal or radical for 
 the second. These words will do well enough 
 in a loose, general way, but they are not the best 
 of descriptive terms that could be chosen with 
 the English language at our disposal. A more 
 specific and discriminating classification, in my 
 judgment, from a psychological point of view, 
 would be the plain, familiar terms, mechanical 
 and vital. A mechanical intellect, like any other 
 machine, is an organization ; a vital mind is an 
 organism. They both have energy^ and motion, 
 only one has life and growth. 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 117 
 
 The Mechanistic Brain 
 
 A mechanistic brain takes in ideas as a dis- 
 tended bladder takes in beans, or a vise grips a 
 piece of wood. Those beans roll and rattle, be- 
 coming harder and drier in the process, till they 
 rot, and the bladder falls to pieces from decay. 
 Those grains of wheat fovmd in the skull of an 
 Egyptian mummy had been there over three 
 thousand years, and when they rained down and 
 rattled over the floor of the British Museum they 
 were the same old grains of wheat, unchanged, 
 entombed in their bony sepulchre for more than 
 thirty centuries. When those ancient seeds were 
 gathered up from the floor and placed in the 
 ground they germinated and grew into a harvest 
 of wheat, the same, and yet how different ! The 
 man of mechanical turn of mind takes in, with- 
 out question, the ideas of his early teachers,, 
 forms, methods, words, and all, stores these 
 goods away in the warehouse of his cranium, 
 clamps down on them as bladder, vise and 
 Egyptian skull did on their precious contents, 
 and uses them unchanged all his life long, never 
 using any others. 
 
 The slightest departure, not only from the old 
 conceptions, but from the old and well-worn 
 phraseology, is looked upon with grave suspicion, 
 if not with apprehension of peril for the 
 
118 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 cause. The vital understanding sits at the feet 
 of the same teachers, feeds on the same pabulum, 
 takes in the same conceptions of truth and right- 
 eousness, but they root themselves in his mind, 
 they enter into his consciousness, they hook them- 
 selves to the law of evolution and he begins to 
 grow, and the products of this growth in life and 
 character are a part of himself, they are instinct 
 with life and power, they are not dead. 
 
 A mechanical theologian goes into the house 
 of his soul, locks the doors, fastens the windows, 
 draws the blinds, and thereby serves notice to the 
 sun that no more light or ventilation is wanted or 
 needed in that house. 
 
 The Vital-Minded Religionist 
 
 The vital-minded religionist leaves the door 
 unlocked, opens the windows, puts up the blinds, 
 and says all the air and light I can get in here is 
 welcome on these premises. Our reformatory 
 cause has had conspicuous instances of these 
 types, and many variations of them, in its educa- 
 tors and ministers. Two cases of these tempera- 
 mental diflferences have already been marked in 
 the personalities of Isaac Errett and Moses E. 
 Lard. Two others as widely differentiated in 
 type. Dr. Winthrop H. Hopson and George W. 
 Longan, are to be the subjects of our present 
 study; to be followed by a paper on John \X. 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 119 
 
 McGarvey and Alexander Procter, almost ex- 
 treme examples of the types of which I have 
 been speaking. 
 
 My sole object in grouping our teaching around 
 the personality of its historic leaders is to give 
 it interest and verisimilitude. Personality is the 
 finality of God's creation, and it is pretty much 
 the only thing in which humanity has any vital 
 concern. The great Joseph Parker once re- 
 marked, when he had read a book on theology 
 he hastened to the story of the prodigal son, to 
 take the bad taste out of his mouth. This master- 
 piece of our Lord's parables had as much theol- 
 ogy in it as any page of the other book on Sys- 
 tematic Divinity. It had also thinking, feeling, 
 acting, talking, personality in it, and that wins 
 any day against the discussion of abstract prop- 
 ositions. These biographical touches are added 
 only to make the discussion vital and of human 
 interest. 
 
 /. DR. WINTHROP H. HOPSON 
 
 Dr. Hopson, to speak of him first, was a great 
 preacher, a magnetic speaker, a man of attractive 
 and commanding appearance in the pulpit. His 
 thought was virile and clear, his language af- 
 fluent and copious, his voice was mellow and 
 agreeable, and his power to make himself fell 
 and understood was remarkable. As a sermon 
 
120 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 architect and builder he had no equal among 
 the Disciples, who were rich in great preachers 
 of sermons. His powers of generalization, clas- 
 sification, and logical arrangement were far be- 
 yond the ordinary. In fact, his ideals of ser- 
 monic perfection were such that he sometimes 
 sacrificed accuracy of statement to harmonious 
 arrangement in his sermon outlines. His cele- 
 brated sermon of "The Three-fold Aspects of 
 Divine Truth"' is a good instance of this homi- 
 letic peculiarity of the Doctor and will also serve 
 as an illustration of his conception of the way 
 of salvation, a theme on which the Disciples of 
 his time were particularly strong. 
 
 "Three-fold Aspects of Divine Tntth" 
 
 I heard him preach this sermon twice, and ac- 
 cording to my watch, it took him two hours and 
 thirty minutes each time to deliver it. He oc- 
 cupied the first hour in gathering up and mar- 
 shaling in solid array the sacred threes of the 
 Bible. Three persons in the trinity ; Father, Son, 
 and Holy Spirit; three kingdoms, nature, grace 
 and glory; three dispensations of religion, patri- 
 archal, Jewish and Christian; three crowns, the 
 crown of life, the crown of righteousness and the 
 crown of glory ; three conditions of salvation, 
 faith, repentance and baptism, and so on, I forget 
 how many triads there were. 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 121 
 
 This proposition was followed by one still 
 more elaborate, in which it was affimied that 
 these trinities were all ^.limactic. In every in- 
 stance the third member was the consummation 
 and, therefore, of more fundamental importance 
 than either of the other two. The Holy Spirit 
 being the last of the Godhead to participate in 
 the work of human redemption, the culminating 
 agency in the divine process of salvation was of 
 more importance than the Father or the Son. 
 The Christian dispensation, the sunlight age of 
 revelation, being last and immeasurably the 
 greatest, was more important than the starlight 
 and moonlight economies of patriarchs and 
 Jews. It was a self-evident statement of truth 
 that the crown of glory exceeded in brilliancy 
 and greatness the crowns of life and righteous- 
 ness. By the time he had reached this point, and 
 perhaps before, even as a callow youth in my 
 teens, I began to see a breaker ahead, I waxed 
 a little nervous and wondered if the great 
 Doctor, with all his ingenuity in making things 
 fit, and his dogmatic boldness, would march up 
 to his logic, and face the music when he came to 
 baptism ! Well, he did. Without a quiver or a 
 tremor of hesitation or trepidation, he marched 
 boldly up, affirming flatfootedly that baptism as 
 the consummating act of obedience in the proc- 
 ess of salvation, and the point where the bless- 
 
122 MAKERS AND HOLDERS OF 
 
 ing of pardon and peace was first realized, was 
 of commanding importance, even beyond that of 
 faith and repentance. It goes without saying, 
 that a man of Dr. Hopson's intellect and spir- 
 itual vision did not really believe that immersion 
 in water as a religious ordinance was of more 
 importance than faith and repentance. The elo- 
 quent Doctor was engaged in the exceedingly 
 important business of saving his climaxes and the 
 logical harmonies of his sermon. 
 
 A Tripartite Joke 
 
 This tripartite discourse, owing to circum- 
 stances that grew out of its delivery, became 
 quite famous, if not historic, in the preacherhood 
 of the Reformation. It is related that he held a 
 protracted meeting at Eminence, Ky., during the 
 pastorate of Sam Kelley, a well-known preacher 
 and debater of the time, a man with a saving 
 sense of wit and humor. The great "three" 
 sermon had been delivered on Sunday morning, 
 and as a group of brethren made their way home- 
 ward in company with the preachers, about two 
 o'clock in the afternoon, where much fried 
 chicken had long been waiting for consumption 
 by the belated and hungry saints, the Doctor said 
 to the pastor : "Brother Sam, what did you think 
 of my sermon this morning?" 
 
 "Fine, Doctor, exceedingly fine." 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 123 
 
 "Was it not logical, scriptural and conclusive?" 
 queried the preacher. 
 
 "Yes," replied the pastor, "it was unmistak- 
 ably logical, scriptural and conclusive, but," he 
 added, "it was not quite exhaustive." 
 
 "How is that?" said the preacher, surprised at 
 the intimation that he could have failed to ex- 
 haust anything in sight that morning. 
 
 "You left out an important trinity," continued 
 the humorous pastor. 
 
 "Pray, what could that have been?" said the 
 astonished Doctor. 
 
 "Breakfast, dinner and supper," answered Bro. 
 Sam. 
 
 The great shout of laughter that broke the still- 
 ness of the Sunday air showed that the point had 
 gone home. 
 
 The Hopson "Bible College" 
 
 The big preachers of that day moulded the 
 bullets for the little ones to fire. The young 
 theologues and preachers of the ancient order 
 were so eager to learn from the masters they 
 would ride long distances, under all kinds of 
 difficulties, sometimes on horseback, and some- 
 times on "the ankle bone express," to hear the 
 big preachers preach their big sermons. They 
 would sit for hours, spellbound, listening to these 
 master of assemblies, and it was marvelous what 
 
124 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 a vast quantity of predigested theological ma- 
 terial tliey could take in. Nothing escaped them, 
 facts, arguments, allusions, illustrations, uncon- 
 sidered trifles like pulpit mannerisms, were ab- 
 sorbed into their mental systems like water into 
 a sponge. This was their Bible college, their 
 theological seminary, and it wasn't a bad one, 
 either. Dr. Hopson had such an easy facility in 
 the construction of analyses and outlines, such 
 fluency and grace in arranging and marshaling 
 his propositions, that he became a great favorite 
 to learn from and repeat after. This "three" 
 sermon, to which I have been referring, was 
 preached by scores of men all over the country, 
 and sometimes with as much effect and power as 
 the original. 
 
 In fact, "The Three Aspects of Divine Truth" 
 became so prevalent in action and repetition, that 
 it got on the nerves of some of the brethren to 
 such an extent that Thomas Munnell, one of the 
 ablest and most spiritual writers of the period, 
 felt called upon to puncture it in an ironical 
 article published in Lard's Quarterly. In the 
 spirit of melodrama and mock heroics, Bro. 
 Munnell ransacked the heavens above, the earth 
 beneath, and the water under the earth. Meta- 
 phorically, he beat the bush in all the realms and 
 spheres of the universe where triplets of any 
 kind or description were likely to be found. 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 125 
 
 Where the sacred number seven abounded threes, 
 sacred and otherwise, did much more abound. 
 These were dragged out from their hiding places 
 and marshaled across the pages of the Quarterly 
 in stately and scientific order. It was then ob- 
 served with great solemnity and impressive dig- 
 nity that these trinities were all culminating and 
 climactic, including breakfast, dinner and sup- 
 per; that is to say, the third and last represents 
 the ascending scale, and is therefore of more 
 fundamental value than the other two members 
 that precede it and lead up to it. That, said he, 
 is the reason that baptism is more important than 
 faith and repentance. Thus reductio ad absur- 
 dum put an end to the abuse connected with the 
 plagiarism of the "Three-fold Aspect of Divine 
 Truth." It was a great sermon preached by a 
 great preacher, who was not to blame for other 
 people abusing their privileges over much. 
 
 Proclamation of First Principles 
 
 Dr. Hopson's great ability as a preacher was 
 seen to best advantage in his proclamation of 
 "First Principles." He doted on the "everlasting 
 yea" of faith, repentance and baptism, the remis- 
 sion of sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and cer- 
 tain of the fundamental characteristics of the 
 apostolic church. The "blessed dogmatism" of 
 the gospel, in its elements, appealed vigorously 
 
126 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 tc the Doctor's imagination. As an exterminator 
 of sects and sectarianism, he was a man of 
 '"mense magnitude and huge ponderosity." He 
 went straight and hard for the solar plexus of 
 all opposition to the restoration cause. How he 
 filled us Disciples with an uncontrollable enthusi- 
 asm in those good old days, when he landed 
 square onto the fifth rib of sectarian opponents 
 and denominational advocates, tumbling them 
 over the ropes, always to be counted out, when — 
 we did the counting. When he preached on the 
 "Plan of Salvation" or "The Scheme of Redemp- 
 tion," his critics ungraciously said it was all plan 
 and no salvation ; mostly scheme and precious 
 little redemption ; and while this was partly true, 
 it was by no means all true. All of the churches 
 fifty years ago, more or less, conceived of the 
 gospel in terms of legalism, they spoke of the 
 kingdom of God in terms of politics and geog- 
 raphy. It was kingdom, king, subjects, territory, 
 laws, constitution, conditions of citizenship, nat- 
 uralization of aliens, oath of allegiance to the 
 government ; all to be literally and legalistically 
 construed. In an age when men fight each other 
 with texts of Scripture, they are necessarily con- 
 cerned with the letter of those text weapons, the 
 spirit must be left to do the best it can for itself. 
 It is a blessed thing, however, that under the 
 most rigid and legalistic construction of the gos- 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 127 
 
 pel, enough spiritual light gets in to convert sin- 
 ners, and make saints of believers. The theology 
 of the situation is a little w^rong in the head, but 
 the religion is all right in the heart. 
 
 Surprise Power of Great Orators 
 
 Dr. Hopson had the surprise power of great 
 orators. Sometimes he would startle his hearers 
 by the enunciation of a proposition which was so 
 palpably literalistic and juridic as to be a plain 
 violation of the spirit of the gospel and the 
 mind of Christ. A typical instance is found in 
 his sermon in the "Living Pulpit of the Christian 
 Church," on "Baptism Essential to Salvation." 
 After offending a part of his audience, and 
 frightening all of them by the bald statement that 
 his theme was, "Baptism Essential to Salvation," 
 he would pause for a moment, square himself in 
 the pulpit, shrug his shoulders, first one and then 
 the other, and then commence with great delib- 
 eration and perfect composure : "Will a man, 
 then, he damned if he is not baptized? Certainly, 
 why not?" If the hearers could get consent of 
 prejudice to listen carefully for awhile to the ex- 
 planation that followed this sensational an- 
 nouncement, they generally found themselves in 
 substantial harmony with the speaker. 
 
 As heterodox as he seemed to be in sound, he 
 was practically orthodox in sense. 
 
128 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 Assertion was followed by interpretation, 
 which made it plain that the eloquent preacher 
 did not for a moment believe that the physical 
 act of immersion in water, either within itself 
 considered, or in relation to any of its associa- 
 tions as an ordinance, was literally necessary to 
 the salvation of the soul. From the point of 
 view of this particular sermon, baptism was re- 
 garded as faith and repentance out of doors ; as 
 faith and repentance in action and manifestation ; 
 faith and repentance objectified and made into a 
 visible and tangible line of demarcation between 
 Christ and the world ; the outer sign of God's 
 inner covenant with the soul, and, hence, an act 
 of obedience, involving the authority of Christ, 
 and submission to him as Lord of all. A man 
 who would reject or neglect a baptism like this 
 could hardly expect salvation by the gospel as 
 the New Testament records it. 
 
 While this sermon and many others preached 
 by Dr. Hopson were pitched to the key of the 
 legalistic and dogmatic in religion, a deeper in- 
 sight and a broader vision appeared now and 
 again, sufficient to make it plain that he had 
 enough of the vital in his mental composition to 
 insure a continuous growth to the end. Like 
 Lard, his horizon broadened and brightened to- 
 wards the going down of the sun. The charity, 
 catholicity and spirituality of the gospel he had 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 129 
 
 so often preached and vindicated, became more 
 real to him in life as the days of the years of his 
 pilgrimage were lengthened out. Always kind- 
 hearted, generous and manly, he did a great 
 work for God and humanity in his time, stood 
 high in the love and esteem of his brethren. He 
 died in the faith of the church of all good people. 
 
 //. GEORGE IV. LONGAN 
 
 Geo. W. Longan, of Missouri, as philosophical 
 thinker, profound reasoner, and luminous ex- 
 positor of the Bible and the Christian religion, 
 has had no superior among the Disciples in the 
 three generations of their history. As the- 
 ologian and literary exponent and interpreter of 
 a spiritual religion, it is doubtful if he had an 
 equal, who committed his thoughts to paper. 
 His excessive modesty, his lack of ambition and 
 self-assertion, put a serious limit on the area of 
 his activity and influence. Not that he was like 
 the "full many a flower," of Gray's Elegy, "born 
 to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the 
 desert air," still one cannot help regretting that 
 one so capable of molding thought and inspir- 
 ing life should have failed of an adequate op- 
 portunity to fulfill his high commission. Only 
 a few of the most thoughtful, who least needed 
 his help, found access to the treasures of his 
 thought, and the striking literary form in which 
 
130 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 it found expression. As an essayist he was great ; 
 greater in the opinion of the writer than any of 
 his contemporaries. His articles published in the 
 Quarterlies were masterpieces of theological ex- 
 position, and no one needed to hasten from them 
 to something lighter to take the bad taste out of 
 his mouth, unless the mouth in question held 
 the palate of a trash-doped feather-head or a 
 fish-brained ignoramus. His book in reply to 
 Whittset's on "Mormonism the Offspring of 
 Campbellism," little known to the brotherhood, 
 probably out of print, is a meritorious perform- 
 ance, especially as a constructive statement of 
 restoration principles. 
 
 Trend of His Sermonology 
 
 Mr. Longan's sermon in the "Living Pulpit" 
 is one of the finest in the book, both as theology 
 and as literature. It treats of the same theme 
 as Dr. Hopson's, but notice the characteristic 
 difference in statement of topic and treatment of 
 theme ; "Baptism Essential to Salvation," "The 
 Conditions of the Gospel Reasonable." 
 
 If Phillips Brooks was right when he said, 
 "No preaching ever had any strong power that 
 was not the preaching of doctrine," these ser- 
 mons had "strong power," and so had all the rest 
 of that day. Both of these strong men were doc- 
 trinal preachers, but their intellectual concepts 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 131 
 
 in the field of doctrine were not always the 
 same. They interpreted Christianity as the re- 
 ligion of authority, but they did not ground au- 
 thority in the same place. Hopson based the doc- 
 trine of baptism for the remission of sins on the 
 literal warrant of Scripture. The amnesty proc- 
 lamation of a king to a world in rebellion against 
 its ruler. Longan found the relation of baptism 
 to salvation in the moral significance of the ordi- 
 nance, in the truth which it embodied and repre- 
 sented. Hopson found his explanation in the old 
 distinction between positive and moral law, at 
 one time a great favorite among the Disciples. 
 Positive law was right because it was com- 
 manded, moral law was commanded because it 
 was right. Ordinances like baptism were backed 
 up by divine appointment and command, and this 
 was the sole reason why they should be observed. 
 In fact, it was held that obedience to positive 
 law was a finer test of loyalty than obedience to 
 moral law, for most anybody will obey a law the 
 reason of which he can see ; only men of strong 
 faith and devotion will submit to a law for which 
 there is no reason or righteousness, except that 
 God has commanded it. We were fond of arbi- 
 trary divine appointment in those days, because 
 we entertained the funny notion that God had the 
 right to do things just because he could. 
 
 Bro. Longan denied that there was any such 
 
132 MAKERS AND HOLDERS OF 
 
 distinction in the spiritual realm as that between 
 positive and moral law. No command, either 
 human or divine, can change the nature of moral 
 issues. Everything that God commands is right 
 in itself or God would not command it. Whether 
 we can or can not discern the reason of a divine 
 precept, the reason is there, and that much, at 
 least, if necessary, we may take by faith. The 
 philosophical necessity, intrinsic reasonableness, 
 and plain common sense, of faith and repentance, 
 as terms and means of salvation, it was easy 
 enough to demonstrate to people of ordinary in- 
 telligence ; but how could baptism in any relation 
 to remission of sins, be justified in the category 
 of moral law, where things are commanded be- 
 cause they are right and necessary in themselves? 
 If baptism were immersion only or chiefly this 
 could not be done. The best effort that had been 
 made up to 1868, among the Disciples, to pene- 
 trate the psychological and spiritual meaning of 
 the ordinance, is found in this sermon on "The 
 Conditions of the Gospel Reasonable." 
 
 "Conditions of the Gospel Reasonable" 
 
 This somewhat lengthy extract, justified under 
 the circumstances, will make that fact appear : 
 
 "In all the universe, the penitent sinner's stat- 
 us, until developed in an overt act, is known 
 only to himself and to God. But he has sinned 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 133 
 
 openly. With a bold front he has measured arms 
 with Omnipotence. His rebellion has not been 
 confined to his heart. It has not exhausted it- 
 self in sympathy. Men on earth, the partners 
 of his crime, have been the witnesses, and angels 
 in heaven have looked on with astonishment at 
 his defiant airs. Now, what does the nature of 
 the case seem to demand? Where does it ap- 
 pear to be proper that God should meet this once 
 bold and defiant, but now humble and stricken 
 outlaw? Where should God require him to 
 stand, when he bestows upon him the boon of a 
 merciful forgiveness of all his past sins? I 
 answer, 'Out before heaven and earth, confes- 
 sing his guilt, avowing his repentance, and pledg- 
 ing himself to unflinching fidelity in all time to 
 come.' His faith and repentance must be em- 
 bodied in an overt act, that men and angels can 
 see. Surely this is clear beyond cavil. Sinner, 
 in this issue between God and Satan, your right- 
 ful lawgiver demands that you shall define your 
 position. He requires you to choose whom you 
 will serve, and to declare your choice before 
 heaven and earth. Are you for your rightful 
 sovereign, or do you stand in the ranks of the 
 enemy? God has established an institution and 
 made it the line of separation between his king- 
 dom and that of the opposing power. This in- 
 stitution is Christian baptism. In this overt act 
 
134 MAKERS AND MOLDBRS OF 
 
 you externalize your faith and repentance, and 
 make them visible to your fellow-men. In this 
 act you formally and solemnly dedicate yourself 
 to Grod. In it, you vow eternal allegiance to His 
 throne. In it, all the holy desires and heaven- 
 born resolves of the inner man take upon them an 
 outward form, and can be seen and read by your 
 associates. Is it strange that God should demand 
 such an expression of your faith in Him? Such 
 a pledge of eternal feahy in time to come? Nay, 
 it would have been strange, indeed, if God had 
 tendered forgiveness without it. It has its 
 foundation in the eternal fitness of things. Its 
 reason is clear as a sunbeam. It is not the value 
 of the thing done. It is not that it has saving 
 merit in it. It is not that water, as such, has 
 power to cleanse from guilt. Baptism is no 
 charm. It has in it no mystery. Its sole value 
 is this : That as an open public avowal of your 
 faith and penitence, as a formal and solemn dedi- 
 cation of yourself to God, in a heaven-appointed 
 way, it places you in a proper position before 
 heaven and earth to receive the free and gracious 
 forgiveness of your past sins." 
 
 His Mind Grew with His Years 
 
 Forty-six years ago this was the best possible 
 interpretation of the psychology of baptism in 
 New Testament evangelism. G. W. Longan be- 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 135 
 
 ing an intensely vital man did not stop growing 
 at the age of forty-nine. He lived thirty years 
 longer and, like Gladstone, he grew to the last 
 day. That stage of brain petrifaction called the 
 dead line he never crossed. A subsequent re- 
 vision of this exposition of the philosophy of bap- 
 tism for the remission of sins, while not sub- 
 tracting anything from what had been written, 
 would have added elements of greater depth as 
 to the philosophical and real significance of bap- 
 tism in its relation to salvation of the soul. As to 
 this we will see farther on in these reflections. 
 Geo. W. Longan was one of the first of Disciple 
 leaders to face modern issues from the point of 
 view of the modem mind. Instead of receding 
 from him as a back number, it will be a long time 
 before we reach the "everlasting yea" for which 
 he stood. 
 
136 MAKERS AND HOLDERS OF 
 
 JOHN W. McGARVEY AND 
 ALEXANDER PROCTER 
 
 Two Representatives of Conservative and 
 Progressive Leadership 
 
 1. JOHN W. McGARVEY 
 
 As President McGarvey was my teacher in the 
 old Bible College of Kentucky University and a 
 life-long friend and helper, I must pay the first 
 tribute of esteem and affection to him, as a great 
 and most influential factor in the making of 
 Disciple history. 
 
 When I entered the college in the fall of 1869, 
 he was in his forty-first year, but looked much 
 younger. He looked boyish, but no one, after 
 hearing him, made the mistake of taking him for 
 a boy. While less magnetic and commanding 
 in personality when compared to some of the 
 men of whom I have written, in the fulness and 
 clearness of his knowledge of the Book of books 
 and his ability to communicate it in simple and 
 vital English, he was not equalled by any of 
 them. He was past master of facts and texts. 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 137 
 
 He had acquired more historical and text- 
 ual knowledge of Holy Scriptures than any 
 man of his time. One of his eastern guides 
 spoke of him as "that little man from Kentucky 
 who measured every hole in Palestine with a 
 tape-line" ; but he knew as much of the geog- 
 raphy and topography of the Holy Land before 
 his visit as he did after. His mastery of the land 
 and the book has hardly been equalled in our 
 time. One of the most impressive characteris- 
 tics of his knowledge was its unfailing accuracy. 
 In the matter of historical information concern- 
 ing facts or texts, it was the rarest thing in the 
 world that he was ever known to make a mis- 
 take. An opponent must make sure of his facts 
 before he dared to measure arms with this little 
 man from Kentucky. 
 
 His Prodigious Industry 
 
 The simplicity and clearness with which he 
 imparted knowledge was equally remarkable. 
 No man ever used words with a stricter refer- 
 ence to their meaning. Like the apostle Paul, 
 he used "great plainness of speech," so much so 
 that a child could follow, and grown people 
 wondered if anybody couldn't talk like that. 
 This, however, was the art that concealed art. 
 So great was the simplicity of his sermons and 
 addresses that a stream of light was left behind 
 
138 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 in which the humblest of his hearers could walk. 
 Like John Wesley he was methodical and regu- 
 lar in his habits. His industry was prodigious, 
 although to the onlooker its prodigiousness was 
 not apparent. He worked with such ease, and 
 with such absence of noise and friction, that he 
 did not seem to be working at all. If at any 
 time his place had been vacant, it would have 
 taken two first-class men to continue his work. 
 He had four classes in college and lectured four 
 times a day. He contributed regularly, most of 
 the time, to two or three of our periodicals. He 
 had a ver^' large correspondence, asking all kinds 
 of questions on all kinds of subjects. Every 
 letter was answered with his own hand. He had 
 frequent calls for lectures and speeches ; was 
 pastor of the Broadway Christian Church sev- 
 eral years, and of three other churches, with as 
 much preaching and pastoral work as other men 
 had, with nothing else to do ; he had always 
 one book, and sometimes two or three, in process 
 of preparation, besides matters of family interest 
 and business that always take a considerable 
 slice out of a man's time. In addition to this 
 long list of strenuous labors, all of his numerous 
 books and literary contributions to magazines 
 and papers were written in odd hours between 
 classes and at home in the evening between the 
 hours of eight and ten. In addition to his 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 139 
 
 voluminous writings he gave more oral instruc- 
 tion than any man among the Disciples. 
 
 McGarvey on Acts 
 
 His first book, written when he was about 
 thirty-five, a commentary on the Acts of the 
 Apostles, was perhaps his most notable achieve- 
 ment in the art of book production. The pecu- 
 liarity of this work was the originality of the 
 form of comment and exposition, which the 
 author was one of the first to adopt. Commen- 
 taries before this time had been like the old 
 woman's dictionary, "Mighty interestin' readin', 
 but powerful disconnected and scatterin'." In- 
 stead of exegetical comment on single texts, one 
 after the other, the new style was continuous, 
 historical exposition, that one could take up and 
 read through like a book of history or a work of 
 fiction. This was the first book of the kind I had 
 read through and the last, until thirty-five years 
 later, 1 began to read the "Expositors' Bible 
 Series," and George Adam Smith's two books 
 on "Isaiah." McGarvey's Commentary on Acts 
 is still bought and read, and no better manual of 
 Disciple teaching on the first principles of the 
 Gospel has yet been written. 
 
 Simplicity of Teaching 
 
 His method of teaching his classes was sim- 
 plicity and perspicacity in the most effective style 
 
140 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 of the art. He taught the historical books of 
 both Testaments, touching prophetic books and 
 apostolic epistles only when they were in some 
 way related to the history. He analyzed the nar- 
 ratives of these historical books, according to 
 their subject matter, into divisions, sections, par- 
 agraphs, notes and queries. He wrote these 
 down, and gave them out in his lecture, for the 
 next day's recitation. He did not aim at verbal 
 accuracy or completeness in reciting Old Testa- 
 ment lessons ; he gave the sense in his own 
 words, requiring only the same of the student. 
 In later years he put these analyses on the black- 
 board, leaving students to copy them at their 
 leisure. Later still, when they had been changed 
 and perfected, they were printed and distributed 
 for the use of his classes. In each recitation the 
 students were required to reproduce the lecture 
 of the previous day. In my day we committed 
 the New Testament histories verbatim, and for 
 good count gave back to the Professor every 
 point of his last lecture. When we had finished 
 Sophomore and Junior under "Little Mac," as 
 we called him, we knew Matthew, Mark, Luke 
 and John, and the Acts of the Apostles by heart, 
 and we knew the historical books of the Old 
 Testament in pretty much the same way. This 
 thorough drill in the inspired Scriptures set us 
 ten years forward in our studies and knowledge 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 141 
 
 as ministers of the Gospel. That is to say, we 
 were a decade in advance of anything we could 
 have acquired by any efforts or methods of our 
 own, or anything provided by the theological 
 seminaries of that day or this. 
 
 The First Real Bible College 
 
 A Bible College where the Bible is the text- 
 book, to be directly studied and taught, was the 
 conception of Prof. McGarvey and its establish- 
 ment the greatest achievement of his life. This 
 institution was for a long time the only real Bible 
 College in the world ; a Theological Seminary is 
 a dififerent afifair. It was a veritable modern 
 school of the prophets, and by means of it and 
 the holy passion with which he expounded the 
 truths of the book, he became the moulder and 
 maker of more preachers than any other man of 
 his day. 
 
 His Devotion to the Word of God 
 
 One of the things that most distinguished this 
 man of God was his supreme devotion to the 
 Bible as the word of God. He loved the book as 
 few men loved it. In his ordination vows he 
 took out a brief to defend the Bible through 
 thick and thin ; no matter how thick, and no 
 matter how thin. Like a scribe of the ancient 
 law, he was a legal advocate who vindicated his 
 
142 MAKERS AND MOLDBRS OF 
 
 client at all hazards, and against all odds. His 
 resources, skill and ingenuity as an ecclesiastical 
 lawyer were magnificent, and also, war. He 
 maintained from first to last the theory of the 
 verbal inspiration and absolute inerrancy of the 
 Scriptures. He knew nothing of a human ele- 
 ment in the Bible unless it was closely guarded 
 and censored by the divine. The first chapters 
 of Genesis were not religious poems to reveal 
 God, but a scientific manual to make known the 
 order and succession of the different elements of 
 the creation. The Mosaic cosmogony was literal 
 fact or literal falsehood. He knew history and 
 its lessons, but nothing of the idealization of his- 
 tory for teaching purposes. Bible writers were 
 men of literary genius, but unlike all other great 
 writers of their time, and all time, in the literary 
 framework of Biblical statements and stories, the 
 creative imagination was never brought into use. 
 They never condescended to idealize their ma- 
 terial, or to employ tradition, fiction, myth, or 
 legend, for didactic or illustrative ends. Brother 
 McGarvey went the length of denying that there 
 was an element of fiction, or work of the imag- 
 ination, in the parables of Jesus. The stories of 
 the Rich Man and Lazarus and the Prodigal Son 
 were based on observation of facts, not fancy. 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 143 
 
 No Room for Imagination 
 
 Isaiah was Isaiah, Daniel was Daniel, Job was 
 Job, Jonah in particular was Jonah, the great 
 fish and all, and Baalam's ass spake as good 
 Hebrew as his master, and what else? This 
 great teacher of history and fact, doctrine and 
 the letter of Scripture, did not neglect the spirit, 
 which he possessed in large measure, and taught 
 to others ; but he was deficient in the kind of a 
 temperament suited to a profound and adequate 
 interpretation of an Oriental book abounding, as 
 it does on almost every page, with figures of 
 speech, imagery, poetry and symbolism. 
 
 My old teacher hadn't enough imagination or 
 glow of feeling for a pulpit orator, but his 
 preaching was unique and wonderfully interest- 
 ing and instructive. From the point of view of 
 sermon construction and illustration, peculiarly 
 his own, and yet most ef¥ective, I have never 
 heard anyone preach as he did. His method was 
 original and has not, to my knowledge, been suc- 
 cessfully copied by anyone else. He would se- 
 lect a text from the New Testament, for instance, 
 from which he would educe a single truth or 
 principle; and then, instead of the anecdotal and 
 personal illustrations of other preachers, he would 
 take up an Old Testament story, bearing on his 
 theme, which he would relate and revitalize in 
 
144 MAKERS AND HOLDERS OF 
 
 all of its most striking details, clinching points, 
 and bringing out lessons, as he proceeded to his 
 main conclusion. I heard him preach from a New 
 Testament text on jealousy which he amplified 
 and illustrated by telling the story of Saul's per- 
 secution of David. This narrative told in a sim- 
 ple, artless, and almost dramatic manner, was the 
 main body of his sermon, illustrating by a con- 
 crete instance the wickedness and futility of the 
 green-eyed monster. 
 
 Those who said there was no religion in the 
 book of Esther because the name of God is not 
 found in it, should have heard the professor 
 preach on the special providence of God over his 
 people, demonstrating and illustrating his theme 
 by the simple narration of the story of Esther, 
 in which he showed that God and the power of 
 God for the deliverance of those who trust in 
 Him, were in every verse ; the only thing missing 
 was the number of letters, rightly assembled, it 
 took to spell his name. He always claimed that 
 this method of preaching had two advantages, 
 first, it illustrated his subject, and second, it fa- 
 miliarized the minds of his hearers with the Word 
 of God. 
 
 His Doctrinal Preaching 
 
 As a doctrinal preacher, his style of sermoniz- 
 ing was somewhat different. I once heard him 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 145 
 
 through a protracted meeting preach a series of 
 sermons on the cases of conversion in the Acts 
 of Apostles. If anyone in that community failed 
 to catch the New Testament idea of conversion 
 it was not the fault of the preacher to whom they 
 had been listening. The Lexington Professor 
 "lightened" in those sermons, and General R. 
 M. Gano came along soon after and "thundered" 
 and a great harvest of souls was gathered into 
 the kingdom. Those were days of doctrinal 
 preaching, followed by emotional exhortations. 
 
 It was on what the Disciples called the ele- 
 ments of the gospel or first principles that they 
 differed the most radically from their religious 
 neighbors. On these elemental features of the 
 message, faith, repentance, baptism, remission of 
 sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit, as conditions of 
 salvation and church membership, the subject of 
 this sketch was particularly strong, and in his 
 earlier day somewhat combative. 
 
 A suggestive instance may be cited here of an 
 episode that occurred in Lexington in 1870 or 
 1871. When the big congregation in the old 
 Main Street Church overflowed and swarmed, 
 and the new hive had been temporarily settled in 
 the opera house, the new organization purchased 
 the old brick Presbyterian Church on Broadway. 
 Prof. McGarvey, who had been installed as pas- 
 tor of the new congregation, a few days before 
 
146 MAKERS AND HOLDERS OF 
 
 they were to take possession, remarked half face- 
 tiously to a friend, that he proposed on the day 
 of entrance and dedication to deliver the first 
 gospel sermon ever preached in that house. This 
 half jocular threat was incautiously repeated, and 
 the fat was in the fire. The "sects" of that day 
 took their cue from Ishmael, and the whole de- 
 nominational outfit was a unit in peculiar mani- 
 festations of displeasure against the Disciples- 
 James Lane Allen's "Reign of Law" picture of 
 the theological situation in the capital of the 
 Blue Grass region in the late 60's and early 70's, 
 while technically inaccurate in a few particulars, 
 was substantially correct, both in spirit and in 
 truth. The Bible College Professor was de- 
 nounced for his narrowness and bigotry, and as 
 many bitter things were said as the occasion 
 seemed to call for. "Little Mac" was not a man 
 to back down in the face of a hostile demonstra- 
 tion. He straightened himself up, and putting a 
 little more stiffening material into his vertebra to 
 bear the added burden of obloquy to be heaped 
 upon him, he said, "I made that remark in a 
 joke, but since they have made so much fuss 
 about it, I will make it good. I will preach next 
 Sunday night on 'What is a Gospel Sermon?' 
 and I will demonstrate the literal correctness of 
 my assertion." 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 147 
 
 Definition of a Gospel Sermon 
 
 The first point was a gospel sermon in outline 
 according to the Calvinistic theology of current 
 Presbyterianism. 
 
 1. Original sin and hereditary total depravity. 
 
 2. Unconditional election and reprobation. 
 
 3. Special grace and particular redemption. 
 
 4. Miraculous regeneration by the Holy 
 Spirit. 
 
 5. Remission of sins. 
 
 6. Repentance. 
 
 7. Faith. 
 
 8. Baptism by afTusion. 
 
 9. Church membership. 
 
 Then began the outline of a gospel sermon as 
 he and his brethren understood the gospel. 
 
 1. Jesus of Nazareth the Son of God, so dem- 
 onstrated by his resurrection, ascension and 
 coronation as Divine Saviour and universal Lord. 
 
 2. Personal faith in the personal Christ, based 
 on the Divine testimony concerning Him. 
 
 3. Repentance, a change of the will toward 
 God and righteousness. 
 
 4. Baptism in the name and by the authority 
 of Christ. 
 
 5. Remission of sins. 
 
 6. The gift of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 7. Spiritual fellowship and church member- 
 ship. 
 
148 
 
 MAKERS AND HOLDERS OF 
 
 Here are two sermons, widely different, claim- 
 ing to represent the gospel according to the New 
 Testament, which one, if either, is correct? It 
 is no use to compare the one with the other, for 
 that would be to run in a circle and beg the ques- 
 tion at issue. If a standard can be found, the 
 authority- and sufficiency of which are admitted 
 by both parties to the dispute, the test can be 
 easily applied and the question settled. He 
 brought in the old yard-stick illustration at this 
 point. If the yard-sticks of two merchants did 
 not agree in length, the legality of these measur- 
 ing instruments could only be determined by tak- 
 ing them to the court-house, and comparing them 
 with the infallible yard-stick kept on hand for 
 settling such disputes as this. Here are two theo- 
 logical yard-sticks, not of the same length, ob- 
 viously one or the other, and possibly both, are 
 wrong, shall we exhibit as much grace and com- 
 mon sense as those hypothetical merchants who 
 made comparison with a measuring instrument 
 admittedly correct and thus forever brought their 
 controversy to an end? 
 
 Peter at Pentecost the Test 
 
 Fortunately for us we have only to carry our 
 sermonic yard-sticks over to the court house of 
 the Temple in Jerusalem and lay them along- 
 side the one used by the inspired Peter on the 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 149 
 
 day of Pentecost, and the dispute is settled, and 
 because settled right is settled forever. He laid 
 down the Presbyterian sermon and it did not 
 "subtend the analogy of the case" at a single 
 point. Even where gospel elements were put in 
 they were vitiated and disintegrated, being put 
 in the wrong place. When the professor laid his 
 own sermon down by the side of the infallible 
 standard, chosen by common consent as the ideal 
 of comparison, it fit all round to the queen's taste. 
 Indeed, it was not the professor's outline at all, 
 it was an analysis of Peter's sermon itself, which 
 converted three thousand souls on the occasion 
 of its first delivery. The Disciples were jubilant, 
 the Presbyterians silent. Our Calvinistic breth- 
 ten were squelched, in about the same way, I 
 suppose, that Brother McGarvey was when J. B. 
 Briney unhorsed him on the organ question, for, 
 a man convinced against his will is of the same 
 opinion still. 
 
 To Mr. Briney belong the honors of killing the 
 organ conscience in Kentucky, by the complete 
 overthrow of its father and first champion in a 
 public discussion pulled ofif in the pages of the 
 Apostolic Times forty years ago ; and also of 
 shattering the firm belief of his students that 
 their favorite professor was invincible in debate 
 — and so he was, unless he had the weak side 
 
150 
 
 MAKERS AXD MOLDERS OF 
 
 and a strong opponent, and he certainly had both 
 
 in that historic tussle on the organ question. 
 
 Mr. McGarrey's Finnncss and Conservatism 
 
 Brother McGarvey was firm and, under provo- 
 cation, obstinate. He was one of the immutables 
 who never changed. \\'hen he put his foot down 
 it was down. AMien once a conviction was 
 formed in his mind, an opinion espoused, or a 
 cause championed, he remained with it without 
 change to the etid. And yet he did not entirely 
 escape the law of evolution and the process of 
 the suns. He was never converted to the organ, 
 but he ceased openly to oppose it. The polemic 
 and combative attitude of his work in the earlier 
 years was softened and modified as time went on, 
 except when he was chasing a higher critic. No 
 one that knew him will controvert the statement 
 that he was entirely conscientious in the belief 
 that it was his sacred duty and solemn re- 
 sponsibility to stand between his brethren and all 
 danger from what he called "destructive criti- 
 cism." He was a conservative of conservatives 
 temperamentally, and hence the slightest change 
 was unwarranted and dangerous innovation. He 
 always had the courage of his convictions, was 
 always on the firing line, fighting for what he be- 
 lieved to be the truth of God. His critical column 
 in the Christian Standard, which he conducted 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 151 
 
 for about twenty years, though able, and at times 
 thorough, did not add anything to his reputation 
 as scholar or theologian. The spirit of ridicule, 
 banter, and sarcasm so often took the place of 
 serious argument on the merits of the issue that 
 quite as much harm as good was done. To be 
 always plastering the blisters onto the unpro- 
 tected skin of your opponent does the plasterer 
 harm and the plastered no good. People who 
 had no personal knowledge of Professor McGar- 
 vey, who had to form their opinion of him from 
 his critical and controversial writing, had no true 
 conception of the real man. When they con- 
 ceived of him as cross, crabbed, and picayunish, 
 they were shooting through an old abandoned suit 
 of clothes hung up to scare the crows. The man 
 had stepped out and was generally engaged in 
 better business than scaring crows ; although 
 from his point of view, this was a duty that had 
 to be performed and not with any special refer- 
 ence to the feelings of these black-suited, de- 
 structive critics who were pulling up the young 
 corn in the field of the Lord. A kinder-hearted, 
 sweeter-spirited man, one more devoted to the 
 highest ideals of divine service and human liv- 
 ing, it would have been hard to find. 
 
 He once read me out of the synagogue for a 
 pronouncement of mine on the subject of Bibli- 
 cal criticism, but he did it in such manifest pain 
 
152 
 
 MAKERS AND MOWERS OF 
 
 and sorrow, and with such expressions of esteem 
 and appreciation, that there was nothing to for- 
 give on my part, and no interruption of the 
 friendly relations that had always existed be- 
 tween us. I did not always agree with him, but 
 I loved him all the same. 
 
 //. ALEXANDER PROCTER 
 
 In this writing of John W illiam McGarvey and 
 Alexander Procter I have not a scrap of data 
 or source of information to draw from, only my 
 personal knowledge and memory of the men. 
 My long association and intimate acquaintance 
 with the former has furnished me more material 
 than I could use, but what shall be said of a king 
 who never organized a court, sat on a visible 
 throne, or left any record behind him? The hard- 
 est literary task is to write of a great man who 
 lived only in his thoughts. If you undertake to 
 reproduce his thinking, if he has written any- 
 thing, your effort is superfluous, and worse than 
 useless. If there are no events, episodes, out- 
 ward happenings and idiosyncracies to hang 
 points on, what are your Johnsons going to do, 
 if they cannot find Boswells to snatch the great 
 words from their tongues and put them down on 
 paper, for the world's profit and edification? 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 153 
 
 "He Went about Saying Things" 
 
 Oh, what a loss it has been that the great man 
 of Independence, Mo., never found his Boswell. 
 He was a masterful talker, write he would not. 
 This man of genius resembled his divine Master 
 in more respects than one. W. T. Moore is cred- 
 ited with the observation that "Jesus did not 
 preach but just went about sayin' things." This 
 modern Disciple of the man of Nazareth did no 
 mere conventional preaching, but if ever a teach- 
 er of men "just went about sayin' things," and 
 great things, it was Alexander Procter. He 
 would talk in his own wonderful and beautiful 
 way to anybody, to individuals of no particular 
 intelligence or importance, the same as to a phi- 
 losopher, or a great crowd assembled to hear him 
 preach. He had an aversion to writing even in 
 private correspondence. I never heard of him 
 answering a letter. Editors wrote him soliciting 
 contributions for their papers, offering him lib- 
 eral remuneration for his services, but these 
 anxious communications were never answered, 
 and no copy ever materialized. He did write 
 one great piece on "Living Issues" for the Chris- 
 tian Quarterly, and a few fragments escaped his 
 pen for early numbers of "The Christian," of 
 which he was supposed to be one of the editors. 
 
154 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 Poet, Philosopher, Saint 
 
 Like his Master, he spoke the simple word and 
 launched the burning thought, leaving them to 
 do their work in the hearts of men. He had no 
 egotism and less dogmatism. Poet and philoso- 
 pher and saint were combined in him in the right 
 proportions to make a prophet. He was the 
 second Isaiah of our spiritual reformation, the 
 greatest of all the prophets our cause has yet 
 produced. H the Lord intended to make a sec- 
 tarian or a partisan of Alexander Procter, he 
 put the wrong material in him for that purpose. 
 He was positively too big of brain and large 
 of soul to compress himself into the narrow limits 
 of any sect or denomination extant. Logic- 
 chopping, hair-splitting, Shibboleth-pronouncing, 
 prejudice-engendering sectarianism, under no 
 guise of pretense or sanctification, had any at- 
 traction for him. He once said to me, "I used 
 to preach what a few believed and made sec- 
 tarians, now I preach what everybody believes 
 and make Christians." He cared little for the 
 old orthodox distinctions of a formal theology ; 
 intellectual concepts of religion over which men 
 quarrel did not interest him, unless they stood 
 for the vital and the eternal in the Christian 
 faith. His working creed was the absolute re- 
 ligion expressed by the two great commandments 
 of the law and the prophets, the finalities of the 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 155 
 
 faith represented by the mind of Jesus Christ. 
 Spiritual insight, breadth of outlook, the open 
 vision, a vital and ethical application of religious 
 truth to the lives of men, and the healing of the 
 wounds of Christendom, are the qualities that 
 characterized his preaching, and his matchless 
 talks were never so matchless as when Jesus 
 Christ, his divine Saviour and human brother, 
 was the theme. 
 
 The mind of this universal man was a veritable 
 "Cave of the Winds," into which blew breezes of 
 thought and suggestion from every quarter, and 
 his mind was open to every breeze. 
 
 Intellectually Receptive 
 
 He was intellectually hospitable to ideas, no 
 matter from what direction they came, but he al- 
 ways maintained his virile intellectual independ- 
 ence and freedom. Things must be philosophi- 
 cally and rationally consistent and defensible to 
 command his allegiance. Mere external author- 
 ity in religion without reason, or justice, or neces- 
 sity behind it did not weigh a feather with him. 
 The only authoritative thing in the universe was 
 truth, the only authoritative person Christ, and 
 Christ was the incarnation of truth. 
 
 He had a mind that could penetrate essences 
 and see into the nature of things, and was there- 
 fore never in the slightest degree influenced by 
 
156 MAKERS AND MOLDBRS OF 
 
 minds that only hit the surface and saw into 
 nothing. He had brains and spiritual vision to 
 make the elements of a theology hang together, 
 which other people were trying to save by hang- 
 ing separately. I once heard him say that he 
 did not believe in a personal devil, because there 
 was no place for him in the universe of God. 
 From the point of view of a Christian interpreta- 
 tion of the world, there was no place in a rational 
 spiritual order for Theodore Parker's fourth 
 person of the Trinity, or the Satanic Majesty of 
 Milton's Paradise Lost. Like Henry Ward 
 Beecher he was an early convert to the doctrine 
 of evolution. He believed in the universality of 
 the reign of law. He believed with Carlyle in a 
 natural supernaturalism. From the viewpoint of 
 the lawgiver, and the forces behind his laws, there 
 was no suspension or violation of these laws in 
 creation or in redemption, if we could rise to the 
 comprehension of the higher levels. The same 
 laws that operate in the stars and suns, in the 
 continents and isles and oceans of the earth, 
 operated in Palestine in the progressive develop- 
 ment and evolution of the Christian religion, 
 "One God, one law, one element, one far-off 
 Divine event to which the whole creation moves." 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 157 
 
 Not Appreciated by Contemporaries 
 
 It goes without saying that a man of the di- 
 mensions of Alexander Procter was misunder- 
 stood, and only lialf appreciated by his reUgious 
 contemporaries. It has always been so and it 
 will be so for a long time to come. During our 
 National Convention at Nashville, in 1892, a so- 
 called religious paper of that city, which prides 
 itself on being a representative of Jesus Christ 
 and his mind of love, announced in its news 
 columns that "the infidel Procter" from Missouri 
 was present in the convention. The next day, in 
 conversation, without referring to this item of 
 intelligence to save the brotherhood from con- 
 tamination, he said, "The most pathetic thing in 
 the world is the fact that when a man comes to a 
 view of God, Christ, and the Bible, which he can 
 hold, and respect himself, from that moment he 
 is denounced as a heretic and an infidel." I could 
 not help but say, "Any worse, Brother Procter, 
 than the same class of men said about the Master 
 and all the prophets?" The fact of infinite pathos 
 is, as long as the type of men who could speak 
 of Alexander Procter as an infidel continue to 
 edit religious newspapers and play the role of 
 church leaders, both Christian union and the mil- 
 lennium will have to be indefinitely postponed. 
 
 A stenographer in his congregation, if I have 
 been correctly informed, without the knowledge 
 
158 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 of the preacher, took down a number of his dis- 
 courses, which have been published in the form 
 of a vokime of sermons. These selections con- 
 tain many of the characteristic utterances of this 
 Christ-inspired seer of the New Age. The glory 
 of a cause is its great men. Judged by this stan- 
 dard the Disciple movement has had its share of 
 glory. Many good and noble men, as these 
 papers demonstrate, have plead this cause, but 
 few of them have been as great, and none great- 
 er than the man Alexander Procter, who gave to 
 our time the stimulus of a great appeal and the 
 inspiration of a great example. 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 159 
 
 THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 
 UP TO DATE 
 
 A Christian minister delivered an able series 
 of lectures in a western town on the great 
 churches of Christendom, their founders, and 
 respective missions in the historic evolution of 
 Christianity. The peculiar characteristic of each 
 and its distinctive contribution to religious de- 
 velopment was pointed out, and in the closing 
 part of each lecture, in addition to a summary 
 of achievements, theological errors and doctrinal 
 blunders were indicated as spots on the sun in 
 the ecclesiastical and reformatory movements of 
 history. 
 
 The Roman Catholic Church, the Greek Cath- 
 olic, the Anglican, the Lutheran, the Presby- 
 terian, the Congregational, the Methodist, Bap- 
 tist, and Disciple, came under review, with their 
 founders and representative leaders : Luther, 
 Calvin, Henry the Eighth, Wesley, and the two 
 Campbells. The serious mistakes of the older 
 Protestant bodies and their efforts at reforma- 
 tion were the importations from Rome that hin- 
 
160 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 dered reform and multiplied sects. These doc- 
 trinal errors inherited from Romanism and passed 
 along the line from one denomination to another, 
 were specifically and plainly stated in each case, 
 as still standing in the way of Christian union. 
 
 An intelligent lady in the congregation won- 
 dered to a neighbor, who sat by her side, if the 
 lecturer would be as ready to uncover the doc- 
 trinal mistakes of his own religious body when 
 the time came, as he had been in the case of all 
 the others. 
 
 The speaker had no specifications in his in- 
 dictment of doctrinal errors against the Disciples. 
 He referred to the woman's remark but had 
 drawn up no catalogue of theological mistakes 
 against his brethren. He said very frankly that 
 his own people were not infallible, they had 
 never claimed to be, and he did not hesitate to 
 affirm that few of the Disciples had realized their 
 ideals, doctrinal or otherwise. 
 
 Is this arraignment quite as definite and 
 specific as historical and theological accuracy 
 require, in the issue raised by the lecturer's 
 critic ? Did the Disciples make no doctrinal mis- 
 takes in their passage from Protestant denomina- 
 tionalism which brought with it so many objec- 
 tionable things from Rome? Have we failed to 
 understand, and rightly to appraise the fact, that 
 some of the denominations that had least of the 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 161 
 
 doctrines of Rome had most of its spirit? Have 
 we yet to learn that intellectual misconceptions, 
 called erroneous doctrines, weigh as light as 
 feathers in comparison with the spirit of pride, 
 arrogance, intolerance, self-righteousness, and 
 infallible cocksureness, generated by high church 
 Phariseeism wherever you find it? The dog- 
 matic interpretation of the Bible originated with 
 Greek and Latin Christianity. Legalism and 
 formalism came from the same source as far as 
 Protestant churches are concerned. Protestant- 
 ism was born in a rebellion against the dogmatics 
 of Rome and Constantinople, and then in less 
 than a generation set up a counter-irritant almost 
 as bad; worse, in fact, in its emphasis of dogma, 
 but not quite so rank in its stress of sacraments 
 and priestcraft. 
 
 An Overplus of Intellectualism 
 
 The Disciples appear to have committed fewer 
 doctrinal mistakes than their contemporaries, 
 because they learned early in their history that 
 there is no more salvation in a Protestant dogma 
 than there is in a Roman Catholic ceremony. 
 Their first weakness was an overplus of intel- 
 lectualism. They conceived and interpreted re- 
 ligious truth in terms of the intellect, failing at 
 first to perceive that this would lead them di- 
 rectly into the dogmatism and legalism from 
 
162 MAKERS AND MOLDBRS OF 
 
 which they were trying to escape, and some of 
 them have not perceived it yet, but most of them 
 have. As the Disciples have been often charged 
 with legaHsm and a legalistic construction of the 
 law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, and I 
 have used the term several times in these papers, 
 it may be well to pause here and ask what the 
 word connotes in our religious terminology, and 
 how far they have been guilty of the charge 
 which they have, with open-minded frankness, 
 sometimes preferred against themselves. 
 
 Legalism stands to religion as technicality 
 does to politics and the courtho.use. It is the 
 substitution of form for substance, letter for 
 spirit, phraseology for fact, symbol for the thing 
 symbolized. More correctly, perhaps, it is the 
 exaltation of the form of godliness above the 
 power, of the outward above the inward, the sign 
 above the thing signified, intellectual belief above 
 moral and spiritual character. The Quaker who 
 when smitten on one cheek meekly turned the 
 other and then said, "Now, friend, I have ful- 
 filled the law, and I'll give thee a lickin'," was a 
 legalist. In observing the letter he had broken 
 the spirit. It was a conscientious and highly im- 
 portant act to keep the letter of the law, but of 
 no importance whatever to keep the spirit. The 
 man who insists on immersion more than on the 
 regenerate life for which immersion stands, is 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 163 
 
 legalistic, and guilty of exalting form above es- 
 sence, and the letter above the spirit. Conscious- 
 ly the Disciples have never made this mistake in 
 theory, but sometimes, unconsciously, they have 
 made it in practice. The effort to abolish the 
 distinction between the essential and the non-es- 
 sential, the formal and the spiritual, and the as- 
 sumption that the outward form is as indispen- 
 sable as the inward meaning for which it stands, 
 is one of the ear-marks of a legalistic construc- 
 tion of the Christian religion. 
 
 That the Disciples did make this mistake is 
 abundantly attested by the preaching and the 
 literature of the first two generations. The old dis- 
 tinction, so strenuously insisted on, between posi- 
 tive and moral law, and the belief that the truth 
 was not obligatory till it became mandatory, 
 were off the same piece of cloth. These things 
 are seldom heard now, in either pulpit or presSj 
 except as relics of an almost forgotten past. 
 
 The Folly of Legalistic Religion 
 
 The worst thing in historic legalism is the as- 
 sumption of finality and self-infallibility which 
 inheres in all its conclusions. A typical legalist 
 of the ancient order was an infallible who never 
 erred, and therefore an immutable who never 
 changed. All of his opinions were finalities. He 
 had the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but 
 
164 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 the truth ; other people must come to him or be 
 damned. Some of us are still living who heard 
 Dr. Hopson's famous saw, "Others may be right 
 and they may be wrong, but we are right and 
 can not be wrong." The man who suspends 
 theological mountains by textual hairs, must be 
 sure that his hairs will hold, and he always is. 
 The creed of a new reform quickly crystallizes 
 and assumes that the last word has been spoken. 
 Its pillars of Hercules go up on the outer rim of 
 things, with its encircling motto, Ne plus ultra — 
 nothing beyond. This is petrifaction, and rocks 
 are dead. There can be no Christian union with 
 folks of this kind, for the other fellow must 
 make all the concessions and do all the changing. 
 A reformation of this type goes out on a mis- 
 sion of conquest, scalps dangle at its belt, as 
 tokens of victory. Its only terms of union are 
 those of General Grant in our Civil War : "Un- 
 conditional surrender." 
 
 As the Disciples were committed body and 
 soul to the great cause of unification, on the 
 foundation of Jesus Christ our Saviour and Lord, 
 they were bound to see in this assumption of 
 finality in a human interpretation of the Scrip- 
 tures, the consummation of all that was unin- 
 telligent and silly. They saw that flexibility was 
 a fundamental characteristic of a working the- 
 ology. If our fathers had left us an inflexible 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 165 
 
 routine of perfect religious beliefs and practices, 
 semper idem, like the Roman Catholic Church, 
 we, their sons and daughters, would have noth- 
 ing to do but to sit and look on. At best an inane 
 and tiresome business ! If God had made a per- 
 fect world at the start, with all loose ends fast- 
 ened at both ends, all questions answered, all 
 problems solved, all perfection of thought and 
 life automatically attained, you and I, friend 
 reader, would be out of a job, and the universe 
 would be unspeakably a dull and dreary place in 
 which to live. There is no finality in our reli- 
 gious conceptions, and there never will be, al- 
 though it is the way of human nature, especially 
 religious human nature, for each generation of 
 men to take for granted that the heights of the 
 absolute religion have been scaled, and no change 
 beyond is thinkable. A pardonable conceit, per- 
 haps, but regrettable on account of its conse- 
 quences. 
 
 But the legalism of the early Disciple move- 
 ment was inevitable if not justifiable. In the 
 war with a wild emotionalism and a subtle mysti- 
 cism, a literal, legal, and matter of fact construc- 
 tion of the constitution became a practical neces- 
 sity. The man in the field and on the street is 
 a born legalist. A plain, literal, common-sense 
 proposition, backed up by clear, intelligible 
 Scripture statements, that declare or confirm it, 
 
166 MAKERS AND MOLDERS Of 
 
 finds him, it liits where he lives, whereas, mysti- 
 cal and metaphysical references to the "inner 
 light," and the baptism in Holy Ghost, which he 
 has not experienced and does not understand, 
 do not attract him. These legalistic expounders 
 of the word made thousands of converts who 
 had turned away from ecstatic emotionaUsm and 
 mystic religionism as quite impossible to them. 
 What they wanted was a plain gospel that could 
 be proved by Scripture in a way that a plain man 
 could understand it. 
 
 Moreover, a controversial age is necessarily a 
 legalistic age. When men debate, they use the 
 letter that kills, leaving the spirit that gives life 
 to do the best it can for itself, under the cir- 
 cumstances. The polemic discusses words, 
 phrases, forms, methods, and verbal propositions ; 
 spirituality and morality are not debatable ques- 
 tions. The Disciples came up in an age of dog- 
 matism and disputation, and were therefore com- 
 pelled to fight their way into recognition and 
 success with such weapons as existing conditions 
 put into their hands. The time for a hard and 
 fast construction of our spiritual constitution to 
 enforce the letter by compromising and sacri- 
 ficing a large part of its spirit has passed ; and 
 the Disciples were a little slow at first to compre- 
 hend the change; of late years they have made 
 rapid progress in the better way. 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 167 
 
 Sonic Outgrown Issues 
 
 The Disciples are no exception to the law of 
 evolution. They have grown, and therefore they 
 have changed, and they have changed continu- 
 ously for the better. To say we had lived a cen- 
 tury without growing would be equivalent to 
 saying we had lived a hundred years without 
 living, for to live is to grow and to grow is to 
 change. In the world of intellectual construc- 
 tion, to live is to change, and to have lived long 
 is to have changed often. As our fundamental 
 aim is to realize the ideals of apostolic Christian- 
 ity, the better we succeed the more marked and 
 vital will be our changes, not so much in our 
 conception as in our application of truth. 
 
 A man's theology is his explanation of religion 
 in terms of the understanding, and hence theol- 
 ogy is always in a state of flux, while religion 
 remains the same. Changing attitudes of mind 
 towards theological issues come about in two 
 ways. First, these issues are settled or they 
 pass into other and more vital issues; or second, 
 they expire by statute of limitation and lack of 
 breath. Most of the old questions that caused 
 division and separation between Baptists and 
 Disciples eighty years ago, like a Christian 
 Scientist when he dies, have passed on. The 
 famous sermon of Alexander Campbell on the 
 
168 MAKERS AND HOLDERS OF 
 
 Law, the chief cause of the rupture, and the war 
 that followed would be innocuous and harmless, 
 if preached today before the most provincial and 
 out-of-date Baptist Association in America. The 
 head and front of Mr. Campbell's offending 
 was the affirmation that Christians are 
 under the grace of Jesus Christ and not under 
 the law of Moses, and everybody knows in these 
 enlightened days that modern investigation has 
 settled this question in favor of Mr. Campbell's 
 contention and the Disciple position. 
 
 Forty years ago one of our favorite themes 
 was "the setting up of the kingdom." We used 
 the kingdom and the church as interchangeable 
 terms, and we had no trouble in demonstrating 
 the proposition that the kingdom was "set up" 
 and the church established on the first Pentecost 
 after the resurrection. Our Baptist brethren af- 
 firmed that the church began in the wilderness 
 of Judea under the ministry of John the Baptist, 
 and some of them thought that was the reason 
 the Baptist church was called Baptist. This is 
 another one of the old issues that modern schol- 
 arship has completely settled in favor of the Dis- 
 ciples. 
 
 The ancient controversy on the priority of faith 
 or repentance died a natural death because there 
 was not enough in it to keep it alive. After de- 
 bating several decades on the unpsychological 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 169 
 
 question as to whether faith came before repent- 
 ance or repentance before faith, they woke one 
 morning with clear heads from a long night's 
 sleep, to discover that their discussion had been 
 pure logomachy — a war of words. They saw at 
 once, according to the constitution of the human 
 mind and the will of God, if a man believes and 
 repents at all he must believe and repent in the 
 right way, that an unbeliever cannot repent, and 
 an impenitent man cannot trust, and therefore 
 there must be two elements in faith, one before 
 repentance and the other after, so that both 
 parties had been right in what they affirmed and 
 wrong in what they denied, as is usually the 
 case with people who debate religious questions. 
 
 Some years ago when engaged in conversation 
 with a young Baptist pastor in a Southern city, a 
 graduate of one of their leading colleges and 
 theological seminaries, something was said of the 
 old, out-worn issue between Baptists and Dis- 
 ciples, about as they have been stated here, when 
 the young man innocently said, "And which side 
 did the Baptists take?" This was immensely 
 funny to one of the parties to that conversation, 
 but perhaps some of our own sprouting theo- 
 logues are similarly well informed on the dead 
 issues of a generation ago, which are not even 
 taught as history in our denominational schools. 
 
170 
 
 MAKERS AND HOLDERS OF 
 
 Our Growth in Spirituality 
 
 The Disciples have grown, almost from the 
 beginning, in the matter of their attitude towards 
 the Holy Spirit. The old charge that they denied 
 the Holy Spirit never had any semblance of 
 truth in it. They beheved profoundly and rev- 
 erently all that the Bible said on the subject, but 
 they questioned many things affirmed by igno- 
 rance and superstitious fanaticism, and the frothy 
 emotionalism of the time. As one extreme usu- 
 ally begets another, it was rather to be expected 
 that some of the early teachers would enter the 
 speculative realm, and unduly rationalize the 
 w^ork of the Spirit. A negligible number believed 
 that the word of God and the Holy Spirit were 
 one and the same. There was a general disposi- 
 tion to admit his personality as the third person 
 in the Trinity, but some of the brethren made no 
 other use of him than to inspire the Bible and 
 reveal the plan of salvation. In itemizing and 
 elucidating the gospel for the benefit of inquiring 
 sinners, the gift of the Spirit was put in as num- 
 ber five ; being the mystical element in the proc- 
 ess, however, they felt that they did not certain- 
 ly understand, and it was really inserted in the 
 interest of theory and classification because Peter 
 put it in on the day of Pentecost. They were 
 faithful in following the Bible even when they 
 were not certain that they understood where it 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 171 
 
 would lead them. The current interpretation of 
 the baptism in the Holy Spirit, to be administered 
 by the Saviour, as the distinguishing character- 
 istic of his reign, made it out a miraculous affair 
 to launch the new dispensation confined to the 
 twelve apostles, or at most, to the hundred and 
 twenty disciples present when the gospel was first 
 preached and the church established. 
 
 A correspondent wrote to Professor McGarvey 
 asking, "Why, in all your voluminous writings 
 have you had so little to say on the subject of 
 the Holy Spirit?" He answered with commend- 
 able frankness : "Because I know so little about 
 it." That same professor knew more of the Bible 
 than anybody, and the book from beginning to 
 end is full of the Holy Spirit. His sermon in 
 the Living Pulpit is based on a great Pauline 
 mysticism : "The Spirit himself bears witness 
 with our spirit that we are the children of Gk)d," 
 but he rationalized it by an effort to show that 
 the Spirit bears witness through the Word. The 
 late David King of England said in an annual 
 conference of the Old Disciples : "The Holy 
 Spirit is in the church, but not in its individual 
 members." "Yes," answered a spiritual man, 
 speaking from the floor of the house, "that is like 
 saying : there is life in the forest but none in the 
 trees, life in the army but none in the soldiers." 
 
 When Isaac Errett said, in his Detroit 
 
172 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 "Synopsis," "The Spirit that indites the Word 
 can best bring home to the heart the significance 
 of its truth," the first part of the sentence was 
 sound, but the last part brought him under sus- 
 picion of tottering towards the marshy bog of 
 sectarian mysticism. 
 
 The Disciples never taught the word-alone 
 theory of conversion, but in some instances their 
 conception of spiritual influence in turning men 
 from darkness to light and from the power of 
 Satan to God, resembled it so far that there was 
 not much to choose between them. Men in this 
 practical age would ask. What difference did it 
 make so men were converted? And they would 
 be right. 
 
 Mr. Campbell in his great debate with N. L. 
 Rice in Lexington, Ky., in 1843, on the subject 
 of spiritual influence, affirmed this proposition : 
 "The Holy Spirit in conversion and sanctification 
 operates only through the truth." The argument 
 in support of this thesis is perhaps the most 
 eloquent to be found in the literature of the 
 Spirit's relation to saint and sinner, but it fails to 
 carry conviction to the religious mind of today. 
 Mr. Rice agreed with Mr. Campbell that the 
 Spirit operated through the truth, but denied 
 that it operated through the truth only. He said 
 in his criticism of the adverb in the proposition, 
 "If the Holy Spirit operates through the truth 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 173 
 
 only, why does Mr. Campbell pray for the con- 
 version of sinners?" Why not preach the Word, 
 and leave the truth to do its work, without the 
 invocation of an influence outside of both? If 
 the affirmation is true, said the Presbyterian di- 
 vine, that the spirit is shut up to the word of 
 truth, the devil is more resourceful and powerful 
 than God, for he reaches the minds of men with- 
 out the intervention of words. Mr. Campbell 
 did not answer these points, but the Disciples, 
 for more than a generation, have answered them 
 by the elimination of the word "only." 
 
 A child, today, in religious experience, and the 
 study of Holy Scripture, has learned some things 
 about the divine Spirit not known to these giants 
 of seventy years ago. Our people have been 
 among the first to learn that the principal, though 
 not the exclusive channel, of the Spirit's opera- 
 tion in conversion and sanctification, is the per- 
 sonality of regenerated and consecrated men and 
 women. The circulation of the inspired word in 
 heathen lands makes few if any converts, until 
 word and Spirit find the opportunity of incarna- 
 tion in the personality and holy character of the 
 missionary, who carries to the dark lands of the 
 earth the message of salvation. Peter's soul, il- 
 luminated by the Holy Spirit, and endued with 
 power from on high, did more to convert the 
 Pentecostians than the words of his sermon. 
 
174 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDBRS OF 
 
 Otherwise a written communication, read by the 
 people, would have done as well. 
 
 Our View on Fundamentals 
 
 In these latter days of up-to-dateness, the Dis- 
 ciples are in sympathy and touch with the best 
 thought and deepest interpretation of the Holy 
 Spirit and his offices in the work of redemption. 
 They are in harmony with the best Christian 
 scholarship in its findings on the present status 
 of the Spirit question. 
 
 1. The Holy Spirit in the Old Testament is 
 God in terms of life and energ^\ 2. It is the same 
 in the New Testament up to John 14 where per- 
 sonal attributes are first ascribed to the Spirit. 
 Where the Holy Spirit is referred to objectively 
 the definite article is used ; where it is referred 
 to subjectively, the article is omitted, and it is 
 simply "Holy Spirit." 3. On the day of Pentecost 
 the Spirit appears as the element of a baptism 
 administered by the risen and glorified Saviour. 
 This new spiritual baptism differentiates the 
 Christian dispensation inaugurated by the Spirit's 
 coming on Pentecost. 4. The gift of the Holy 
 Spirit is promised to all true believers, the unc- 
 tion from the Holy One that brings the crowning 
 and consciousness of sonship. Ye have an 
 anointing or christening from the Holy One and 
 ye all know. 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 175 
 
 For a revival of interest and a restudy of the 
 Spirit question, we are more indebted to J. H. 
 Garrison and the Christian-EvangeHst, and an il- 
 luminating book he wrote on the subject, than to 
 any other human agency. 
 
 Have faith, repentance, and baptism been 
 brought up to date among the Disciples? Do 
 they need to move up in order to synchronize with 
 the theological situation of the present day? We 
 still preach "the old Jerusalem gospel" in its 
 familiar triple conditions, but we put into them a 
 greater depth and wealth of meaning than was 
 done in the middle period of our history. There 
 is always a tendency in an age of dispute and dis- 
 ruption to harden elements of the gospel into 
 mental concepts and theorizing material, so me- 
 chanical and commercial as to be more interested 
 in the salvation of definitions, plans and for- 
 mulas, than in the salvation of souls. This was 
 the old gospel of three steps into a house, three 
 miles to a town, three sections to a bridge, more 
 interested in conversion to a system of thought, 
 apparently, than in the actual turning of the 
 soul to God. We have passed almost entirely 
 out of this period of a superficial intellectualism, 
 and our only concern now is to emphasize these 
 great gospel words and put into them the fulness 
 and richness of meaning inspired by the Holy 
 Spirit when it wrote the New Testament. 
 
176 MAKERS AND MOLDBRS OF 
 
 The searching inquiries of a century, and of 
 many centuries from all sources, have confirmed 
 and demonstrated our practice of immersion and 
 believers' baptism, and the future is not likely to 
 bring any change in this regard. In the mat- 
 ter of the design of baptism, or the relation of 
 the ordinance to the remission of sins, or salva- 
 tion, there has been a change, and an improve- 
 ment. The dogmatic and legalistic construction 
 of immersion as literally necessary to remission 
 of sins, virhich arose out of the exigencies of con- 
 troversy, and gave such mortal offense to our 
 religious neighbors, unlike the voice of the turtle, 
 in the Song of Songs, is not any more heard in 
 the land. 
 
 We still believe that baptism is for the remis- 
 sion of sins, because the Bible says so, and so 
 declare the historic creeds of Christendom; but 
 that assertion throws us back on what the Bible 
 and the creeds mean when they relate baptism 
 to salvation. The church fathers used immersion 
 and regeneration as interchangeable terms, be- 
 cause immersion was the symbol of regeneration. 
 When Paul says the bath of regeneration saves 
 us, he does not mean that the bath saved us, but 
 it stood for the thing that did, regeneration. 
 Water in religion signifies moral purification, the 
 inward cleansing of the soul, and when the New 
 Testament says that baptism is for the remission 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT \77 
 
 of sins, as a matter of course it puts the symbol 
 for the thing symbolized, an allowable and very 
 common form of speech. 
 
 While the Disciples will continue to practice 
 immersion as the New Testament form of the 
 ordinance that initiates and incorporates us into 
 the body of Christ, they will spiritualize baptism 
 very much as Paul spiritualized circumcision : 
 "For a man who is only a Jew outwardly is not 
 a real Jew ; nor is outward bodily circumcision 
 real circumcision. The real Jew is the man who 
 is a Jew in soul ; and the real circumcision is the 
 circumcision of the heart, a spiritual and not a 
 literal thing." (Rom. 2 :28, 29.) 
 
 Baptism did not take the place of circumcision, 
 but with Paul's consent, Disciple sanction, and 
 permission of the translators of the twentieth 
 century New Testament, the passage is thus 
 brought up to date : "For a man who is only a 
 Christian outwardly is not a real Christian ; nor 
 is outward bodily baptism real baptism. The 
 real Christian is the man who is a Christian in 
 soul ; and the real baptism is the baptism of the 
 heart, a spiritual and not a literal thing." 
 
 The Disciples have always been great on 
 evangelism, and in these early decades of the 
 twentieth century have become a leading factor 
 in the educational and missionary forces of 
 Christendom. The Men and Millions Movement 
 
178 
 
 MAKERS AND MOLDERS OF 
 
 has no parallel in any other religious body. There 
 has been no abatement or modification of the 
 claim that as individuals we aim to be Christians 
 or Disciples of Christ, as congregations of be- 
 lievers, Churches of Christ; as a whole, collec- 
 tively, a part of the church universal, and a move- 
 ment within the church to bring back the lost 
 unity of the apostolic church at the beginning. 
 
 The Work that Lies Before Us 
 
 The most timous and up-to-date document in 
 the literature of our great union plea is the 
 Declaration and Address by Thomas Campbell, 
 that launched it a hundred years ago. The work 
 that remains is to go forward to the New Testa- 
 ment and practical Unification by way of the con- 
 stitution of the Christian Association of Wash- 
 ington. Idealization of primitive Christianity 
 and the ancient order of things would be harm- 
 less enough, provided its exploitation did not sub- 
 stitute a theoretical basis of union for the one 
 foundation laid in Zion. Christendom will not 
 unite on a human formulary. It is useless for 
 men to draw one up. Evangelical churches are 
 spiritually united in Christ and on Christ, and 
 almost the only thing required to carry unity 
 forward into union is the mutual recognition of 
 each other as Christians and each other's 
 churches as Churches of Christ, and practice in 
 
THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 179 
 
 harmony with this action. This would tear down 
 at a single stroke all separating walls, and the 
 people of God would flow together into one great 
 forward movement, to bring in the time when 
 "They shall not teach every man his brother 
 and every man his neighbor, saying, know the 
 Lord, for all shall know him from the least to 
 the greatest of them." 
 
Princeton 
 
 f^lli2 01199 2072 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 5^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 GAYLORD 
 
 
 
 PRINTED IN U S A.