The Story of a Life

by J. Breckenridge Ellis

One peculiarity of this faith was, that whoever accepted it with zeal, became more or less antagonistic, combative. It was not because it despised peace, although peace, in later years has sometimes proved fatal to it; but it was because every hand seemed turned against it. Had it asked for peace in 1850, that petition would doubtless have been derided.

And why? Because an acceptance of this faith meant an end to all creeds, to all sects, to all denominational barriers. Therefore all denominations felt that the faith of Mattie Myers had raised its hand against them. When Walter Scott and his co-workers prayed the Savior's prayer that all might be one, what—if that prayer be granted—was to become of the many?

It may be true, in the Twentieth Century, that one need only have enough money to hire a hall, in order to start a new religion; that Society has but to smile upon the dancing of Dervishes to popularize Orientalism; that a woman, by the writing of a book, can convince intelligent thousands that diseases are but delusions of their mortal minds—perhaps instincts would be a better word, since unimaginative quadrupeds sometimes "think" themselves sick. But whether this is true or not, it is certain that, in the first half of the Nineteenth Century, it required much more than money, and more than the writing of many books, this endeavor to re-establish the old religion of Pentecost. It called for courage, firmness and ability; it invited persecution and misrepresentation.

"I would rather," an aunt of Oliver Carr once declared—herself a stern soldier of the Cross—"see you go to your grave, than have you join the Campbellite Church!"

What was this "Campbellite Church" of which some spoke thus disparagingly? And why "Campbellite"? And why did the denominations regard the people they thus designated much as, at a later day, the Mormons were regarded? Before we enter into details, it is enough at this point to emphasize the fact of general intolerance. To worship God in your own way is the right of all; and no man disputes that inborn right, so long as you agree with him in your religious belief. The Puritans were ready to sacrifice their lives to preserve religious freedom, and to take the lives of those who desired a separate freedom.

In the first half of the Nineteenth Century, more especially in the first quarter, the jangling and wrangling among different sects was almost inconceivable. It would appear that often where differences of tenets were but slight, the fight was the more determined, as if the possibility of preserving a denominational integrity, depended largely upon keeping alive a spirit of hostility to all other denominations. Happily that spirit of antagonism has largely died out, and men are not so ready to take each other by the throat because they are seeking to gain Heaven by different ways. This tendency to minimize differences of speculative opinions, and to draw close to each other on the fundamental truths as they are revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is doubtless in a large measure due to the pioneers of that faith which Mattie Myers had accepted, and which, at the time of her acceptance, was the object of so much bitterness and ridicule.

Thirty years had already passed since Walter Scott and Alexander Campbell first proclaimed their views in the "Christian Baptist." The distracted state of the religious world had grieved many a pious and erudite soul before 1819. In looking for a solution to the amazing perplexities that baffled the seeker after God, in trying to avoid the anomalous condition of changing a gospel of love to a gospel of interminable disputation, the solution proposed by Thomas Campbell was a return to the practices and faith of the early disciples. This solution was urged by Walter Scott and Alexander Campbell. What more simple? Everybody should be willing to accept the Bible; everybody should be willing to discard everything else!

In brief, then, that was the work of the "current reformation." It would call for a sacrifice of individual opinions, of sectarian names and dogmas, of that poetic atmosphere which time bestows upon any organization, of those intimate human associations derived from a commingling with relatives and friends whom a common rule of practice holds together. As a recompense for this sacrifice, was offered the privilege of returning to the Apostolic faith and manner of worship, the sense of security that should spring from following closely in the footsteps of the earliest disciples, and the privilege of performing one's part in the realization of the prayer of the Savior of mankind.

Alexander Campbell's life was given to this fundamental idea—that the world should go back, in its religious beliefs and practices, nineteen hundred years, to learn again the conditions of its salvation from the lips of Christ's apostles. Campbell himself, was but a voice calling in the wilderness. He seemed always to be crying, "Look back! Behold the Lamb of God!" As for himself, he would have been but the medium through which an enlightened vision might see that glorious spectacle of God in man. "Do not regard me," he seemed to say, "For I am nothing. I am but a voice—a voice proclaiming no new doctrine, only the old; asking you not to originate a new faith, but to remember the old. Look back! Behold the Lamb of God!"