CAMPBELL, ALEXANDER (1788-1866), American religious leader, was born near Ballymena, Co. Antrim, Ireland, on the 12th of September 1788, and was the son of Thomas Campbell (1763-1854), a schoolmaster and clergyman of the Presbyterian “Seceders.” Alexander in 1809, after a year at Glasgow University, joined his father in Washington, Pennsylvania, where the elder Campbell had just formed the Christian Association of Washington, “for the sole purpose of promoting simple evangelical Christianity.” With his father’s desire for Church unity the son agreed. He began to preach in 1810, refusing any salary; in 1811 he settled in what is now Bethany, West Virginia, and was licensed by the Brush Run Church, as the Christian Association was now called. In 1812, urging baptism by immersion upon his followers by his own example, he took his father’s place as leader of the Disciples of Christ (q.v., popularly called Christians, Campbellites and Reformers). He seemed momentarily to approach the doctrinal position of the Baptists, but by his statement, “I will be baptized only into the primitive Christian faith,” by his iconoclastic preaching and his editorial conduct of The Christian Baptist (1823-1830), and by the tone of his able debates with Paedobaptists, he soon incurred the disfavour of the Redstone Association of Baptist churches in western Pennsylvania, and in 1823 his followers transferred their membership to the Mahoning Association of Baptist churches in eastern Ohio, only to break absolutely with the Baptists in 1830. Campbell, who in 1829 had been elected to the Constitutional Convention of Virginia by his anti-slavery neighbours, now established The Millennial Harbinger (1830-1865), in which, on Biblical grounds, he opposed emancipation, but which he used principally to preach the imminent Second Coming, which he actually set for 1866, in which year he died, on the 4th of March, at Bethany, West Virginia, having been for twenty-five years president of Bethany College. He travelled, lectured, and preached throughout the United States and in England and Scotland; debated with many Presbyterian champions, with Bishop Purcell of Cincinnati and with Robert Owen; and edited a revision of the New Testament.
See Thomas W. Grafton’s Alexander Campbell, Leader of the Great Reformation of the Nineteenth Century (St Louis, 1897).
CAMPBELL, BEATRICE STELLA (Mrs Patrick Campbell) (1865- ), English actress, was born in London, her maiden name being Tanner, and in 1884 married Captain Patrick Campbell (d. 1900). After having appeared on the provincial stage she first became prominent at the Adelphi theatre, London, in 1892, and next year created the chief part in Pinero’s Second Mrs Tanqueray at the St James’s, her remarkable impersonation at once putting her in the first rank of English actresses. For some years she displayed her striking dramatic talent in London, playing notably with Mr Forbes Robertson in Davidson’s For the Crown, and in Macbeth; and her Magda (Royalty, 1900) could hold its own with either Bernhardt or Duse. In later years she paid successful visits to America, but in England played chiefly on provincial tours.
CAMPBELL, GEORGE (1719-1796), Scottish theologian, was born at Aberdeen on the 25th of December 1719. His father, the Rev. Colin Campbell, one of the ministers of Aberdeen, the son of George Campbell of Westhall, who claimed to belong to the Argyll branch of the family, died in 1728, leaving a widow and six children in somewhat straitened circumstances. George, the youngest son, was destined for the legal profession, and after attending the grammar school of Aberdeen and the arts classes at Marischal College, he was sent to Edinburgh to serve as an apprentice to a writer to the Signet. While at Edinburgh he attended the theological lectures, and when the term of his apprenticeship expired, he was enrolled as a regular student in the Aberdeen divinity hall. After a distinguished career he was, in 1746, licensed to preach by the presbytery of Aberdeen. From 1748 to 1757 he was minister of Banchory Ternan, a parish on the Dee, some 20 m. from Aberdeen. He then transferred to Aberdeen, which was at the time a centre of considerable intellectual activity. Thomas Reid was professor of philosophy at King’s College; John Gregory (1724-1773), Reid’s predecessor, held the chair of medicine; Alexander Gerard (1728-1795) was professor of divinity at Marischal College; and in 1760 James Beattie (1735-1803) became professor of moral philosophy in the same college. These men, with others of less note, formed themselves in 1758 into a society for the discussions of questions in philosophy. Reid was its first secretary, and Campbell one of its founders. It lasted till about 1773, and during this period numerous papers were read, particularly those by Reid and Campbell, which were afterwards expanded and published.
In 1759 Campbell was made principal of Marischal College. In 1763 he published his celebrated Dissertation on Miracles, in which he seeks to show, in opposition to Hume, that miracles are capable of proof by testimony, and that the miracles of Christianity are sufficiently attested. There is no contradiction, he argues, as Hume said there was, between what we know by testimony and the evidence upon which a law of nature is based; they are of a different description indeed, but we can without inconsistency believe that both are true. The Dissertation is not a complete treatise upon miracles, but with all deductions it was and still is a valuable contribution to theological literature. In 1771 Campbell was elected professor of theology at Marischal College, and resigned his city charge, although he still preached as minister of Greyfriars, a duty then attached to the chair. His Philosophy of Rhetoric, planned at Banchory Ternan years before, appeared in 1776, and at once took a high place among books on the subject. In 1778 his last and in some respects his greatest work appeared, A New Translation of the Gospels. The critical and explanatory notes which accompanied it gave the book a high value.
In 1795 he was compelled by increasing weakness to resign the offices he held in Marischal College, and on his retirement he received a pension of £300 from the king. He died on the 31st of March 1796.
His Lectures on Ecclesiastical History were published after his death with a biographical notice by G.S. Keith; there is a uniform edition of his works in 6 vols.