The Church, the Falling Away, and the Restoration

by J. W. Shepherd

CHAPTER III.
Thomas Campbell

For the present I turn from the work of Stone to that of the Campbells. Chiefly because of failing health, Thomas Campbell, an humble, but intellectually and spiritually-gifted minister of the Seceder Presbyterian Church in the parish of Ahory, Armaugh County, Ireland, determined to seek for himself and for his family a home in this country. He came alone, intending to send for his family as soon as he had established himself. He arrived in Philadelphia May 27, 1807. The Seceder Synod of North America was in session in that city when he landed. He at once presented his credentials to that body, was cordially received, and at once assigned to the Presbytery of Chartiers, in Southwestern Pennsylvania. As soon as he became settled in his new home he began in a very earnest way to exercise his ministry as a member of the presbytery, which embraced a number of counties. He had come to this country as a zealous missionary of the cross, filled with the love of souls. Already in Ireland, through various influences, he had learned to cherish a liberal religious spirit, to esteem as of little value the barriers that separate into sects.

CONFLICT WITH THE SECEDERS

The Seceders constitute one of the “straitest sects” of the Calvinistic faith, and even to this day they will not affiliate in full fraternal fellowship with other Presbyterians. It was in the matter of the communion that the severe test of fellowship was applied. Thomas Campbell had come to this country with his heart filled with a burning zeal to labor in the Lord’s vineyard, and in largest charity for all communions, while still maintaining sincerely and fully his relations to his particular communion. He believed that in this freest land men’s hearts would necessarily be emancipated from the unyielding sectarian prejudices and animosities of the Old World. While eminently prudent and peace-loving, he was a man of heroic temper. He would not temporize nor bow to the tyrannous dictates of human traditions or human policy. “This grave spirit he had already shown in his early youth, when he decided from conviction not to follow the religion of his father, who was attached to the Church of England, and preferred, as he used to say, ‘to worship God according to act of Parliament.’ ‘The law of the Lord, in the word and spirit of the Gospel, which is ‘the law of liberty,’ was Thomas Campbell’s supreme rule of life.”

It is interesting to unfold the events which led to the final crisis that inaugurated actually and in a formal manner the restoration movement. The Seceders were not very numerous within the limits of the Chartiers Presbytery; the power of expansion was not in them. Mr. Campbell at once gained a wide and strong influence. His natural ability, his scholarship and literary culture, made him much superior to the preachers in that region; and his deep religious fervor and zeal and his rare courtesy of manner won the hearts of the people. He did not respect in his labors the narrow spirit and strict, illiberal rules and habits of the Seceder Church. Besides this, he had found near him a number of excellent people who had come over from Ireland, Presbyterians and Independents, some of whom had been his acquaintance and cherished friends in his native land. These gathered around him, and he promptly took them to his heart in his ministrations as brethren. This kind of freedom, however, was not in harmony with “the usages” of the Seceders. Later on he took a step which went even further than this, and thus in a very decided way transgressed the established custom of the Church.

He was sent on a missionary tour with a young preacher, a Mr. Wilson, up the Allegheny Valley, above Pittsburgh, “to hold a celebration of the sacrament among the scattered Seceders of that then sparsely-settled region. He found there many members of other Presbyterian bodies who had not for a long time enjoyed the privilege of these by them so highly-cherished occasions. His heart urged him to deplore in his introductory sermon the existing divisions among Christians, and to invite all the pious among his hearers, who were prepared for it, to unite in the participation of this sacred feast of God’s people; and many accepted the invitation. This was a bold infraction of Seceder custom.” Campbell could have no fellowship with such bigotry. Mr. Wilson soon discovered that Campbell had no regard for sectarian differences and prejudices and that he was not sound in the Seceder faith. “His conduct of inviting those not of his Church to partake of the communion was an overt act of extreme transgression that could not be overlooked;” but he made no objection at the time this grave offense was committed. He felt it his duty, however, to bring the matter before the presbytery at its next meeting. The charge contained several complaints, but the principal one was this public act in regard to the communion. It recited, moreover, that “Campbell had expressed his disapprobation of things in the ‘Standards’ and of the practical application of them.”

The presbytery, already much dissatisfied with his liberal course, readily took up Wilson’s charges. But they had before them a man who, although ever remarkably inclined to peace and warmly attached to the Seceder Church, would, nevertheless, not yield to any human authority against his convictions in matters of serious import. The present was a decisive moment in his life, reaching in its effects far beyond what was then thought.

After an investigation, which called from him a most earnest plea in behalf of Christian liberty and fraternity, he was found deserving of censure. In vain did he protest the treatment he had received at the hands of his brethren. In vain did he appeal from the presbytery to the synod. Party spirit was unyielding. He had expressed sentiments, it insisted, which were “very different from sentiments held and professed by the Church.” This, it held, was an altogether sufficient ground of censure. From that time many of his fellow ministers became inimical to him and were disposed to inflict on him at every opportunity their petty persecutions.

Unjust as he felt the censure of the synod to be, yet so strong was his love of peace and his desire to continue to live and labor with his brethren that he submitted to it; the condition, however, expressed in a written form to this tribunal “that his submission should be understood to mean no more, on his part, than an act of deference to the judgment of the court; that by so doing he might not give offense to his brethren by manifesting a refractory spirit.” After this concession he hoped that he would be permitted to continue his labors in peace; but, much to his regret, the hostility of his opponents continued. Misrepresentations, calumny, anything that would detract from his influence, were employed against him. Spies were employed to attend his meetings, that, if possible, they might find fresh ground of accusation in his utterances. At last, worn out with these efforts, and having satisfied himself that corruption, bigotry and tyranny were inherent in existing clerical organizations, he decided to sever his connection with the religious body to which he had given life-long support, renouncing the authority of the presbytery and synod. That this final decisive step caused him much grief can not for a moment be doubted; but it is certain, also, that the freedom which it gave him, as a servant of God, must have been to him a genuine joy and an impartation of a strength of soul he never knew before.

These painful experiences soon led to important consequences. By his forced withdrawal from the presbytery he found himself without church affiliations. But this only quickened his zeal in the efforts to extend Christ’s kingdom. He had gained a wide and strong influence in the region in which he lived. No meeting houses were at his command; but he held his assemblies, after the pioneer fashion, in private dwellings, barns, schoolhouses and under green trees. In these labors it was no part of his plan to organize a separate religious party. Such parties were already too numerous. At first it seems that he had no definite plan of action. He had simply determined to use his strength in such ways as Providence should open to him, in putting an end to partyism, by inducing the different denominations to unite together on the Bible. In this purpose many of his neighbors heartily sympathized with him, though shrinking from the conclusions to which they were being irresistably driven.