THE ROLE OF ROBERT RICHARDSON IN THE
RESTORATION MOVEMENT
LEROY GARRETT

It is an inequity of the history of Disciples that Robert Richardson should be generally known merely as the biographer of Alexander Campbell. While his Memoirs of Alexander Campbell is a substantial contribution to Restoration history, it is hardly a revelation of the significant role of Robert Richardson in the early stages of the Restoration Movement.

He was a quiet and kindly man who was content to work behind the scenes, and he sought an obscurity that he almost achieved. Richardson has been partly rescued from oblivion by the attention given him by Cloyd Goodnight, distinguished president of Bethany College from 1919 to 1932, who gathered data on his life and work for some fifteen years with the intention of writing his biography. Due to Goodnight’s untimely death the biography was completed by Dwight E. Stevenson, then of Bethany College and now a professor at The College of the Bible. It was published under the title Home to Bethphage, the “Bethphage” referring to the Richardson homestead, so named because it was “nigh unto Bethany.” The biography, published in 1949, is a fine piece of work and it is well documented, reflecting close and careful research. There is almost nothing else on Richardson’s life and even this book is inaccessible to most of our readers.

This treatment of Richardson is, therefore, a further effort to give him his rightful place in our history and to interpret his role in the Restoration Movement. One only needs to dip into the literature of Disciple beginnings to realize the significance of Richardson, and all the while he is amazed that so noble and influential a figure should be virtually unknown by modern discipledom. This essay proposes to show that Richardson was a kind of Phillip Melancthon to the Restoration Movement.

If for no other reason Richardson is important because of his close relationship to the better known pioneers. He was for thirty years the right hand man of Alexander Campbell, serving both as an associate in Campbell’s publication enterprises and as one of his professors at Bethany College. In his youth he received private tutoring from Walter Scott, who eventually baptized him, and he attended one of the many schools conducted by Thomas Campbell. His contact with Walter Scott was one of those strange coincidences that helped make the Restoration Movement a vital force. He also worked closely with W. K Pendleton, Isaac Errett, and Robert Milligan. J. W. McGarvey was a student of his and President Garfield a fellow college trustee. Despite his peaceful disposition, he was involved in the earliest controversies that threatened the unity of the new movement. He confuted with Tolbert Fanning, first editor of the Gospel Advocate, over the operation of the Holy Spirit, and with Benjamin Franklin, founder of the American Christian Review, over the open-communion issue. Richardson also had his say on such questions as instrumental music and missionary societies. He wrote more voluminously than any of the pioneers except Campbell himself.

CHARACTER AND TEMPER

Perhaps none of the pioneers was so well “prepared unto every good work” as was Richardson. He was born of cultured parents and was reared in a highly intellectual and refined environment. From private tutors he learned music, painting, languages and sciences exactingly. He was at home in Latin and Greek and he could handle French as well as his native English. He was trained to be a physician, the profession he followed all through his busy life as a kind of security against the paltry support he received as a preacher and teacher. Along with his neighbor, Alexander Campbell, he was one of the more progressive farmers of Virginia. He took his interest in science to the soil, conducting experiments in everything from Irish potatoes to crop rotation.

As an able physician, successful farmer, prolific writer and editor, a teacher who was “as clear as the ringing of a silver bell” (to use McGarvey’s description of him), a ready scientist and linguist, and a trustworthy biographer, he is doubtless the most versatile of the pioneers. Yet he lacked the more extroverted abilities that make for reputation. Even though he could quote from memory all of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, in the original Greek, and even though he was such a keen logician as to help Alexander Campbell keep his thinking straight, he was a halting, stammering speaker. He lacked the color and personality of a front man. He had trouble with his eyes all of his life, which was occasionally so serious that he was forced to take long recesses from exacting work. This condition caused him to go around with his eyes half closed most of the time, which probably detracted from a personality that already was not selling for nearly what it was worth. He was moderately tall and slim, wore a Prince Albert as did most physicians of that day, and dressed very humbly. His voice was thin and highly pitched. While he was certainly no Ichabod Crane, he obviously lacked the majestic bearing of an Alexander Campbell or the cyclonic dash of a Walter Scott.

He was a man of the Spirit, believing that piety and devotion are more important than evangelism. He was more mystical and emotional than any other of the pioneers. In stressing spirituality he meant more than holiness of mind, for he believed that “the Holy Spirit of God is imparted to the believer, really and truly, taking up his abode in his person, as a distinct guest, or inhabitant.” The doctor believed that the “word alone” theory was far too prevalent among Disciples, which had led to religious frigidity and philosophical insensibility. He felt that Campbell erred when in the Rice debate he contended that the Spirit works only through the Word, and he tried to dissuade the Reformer from that position before he left for Lexington for the encounter.

Richardson believed that if one must choose between the “word alone” or the “Spirit alone” theories, it would be better to take the latter, for it would lead the mind to seek after fellowship with God and to realize that there is a real communion to be enjoyed with the spiritual world. The beloved physician contended that “as a man increases in religious light or knowledge, so should he increase also in warmth of feeling and fervor of devotion.”

His mystical nature found expression in music, painting and books. He owned one of the renowned Stradivarius violins, and sometime the music he played upon it was of his own composition. His own paintings graced his walls at Bethphage. From a child he lived in the world of books. His father’s severest punishment was to exclude him from the family library. Many times he bathed his sick eyes so that he might read awhile longer.

Though McGarvey described him as one who “often indulged in exquisite flashes of humor,” we may think of him as a serious man. Though he was a man of sorrows, he reacted strangely to tragedy. He sought to dissuade one of his sons from espousing the cause of the Confederacy, and was terribly grieved when he learned that the boy had joined Morgan’s Raiders. When news came a year later that the son had died in battle at the age of 22, Richardson is said to have never mentioned his name again, not even within the intimate circles of his own family. Another son burned to death in a hotel fire in Wellsburg, only 7 miles from Bethany.

EARLY INFLUENCES

We have mentioned that Dr. Richardson in his youth was a disciple of both Thomas Campbell and Walter Scott. In 1815-17 he was enrolled in Thomas Campbell’s academy in Pittsburgh. During this time young Robert, then only 13 years old, saw Alexander Campbell for the first time. Alexander was several times a visitor in the Richardson home along with his father, Thomas. The purpose of the first visit was to solicit a donation from Nathaniel Richardson, a wealthy Episcopalian, for the erection of a meeting house in Wellsburg, which was to become the budding Movement’s second building, the first having been erected at Brush Run (near Bethany) in 1810. Mr. Richardson, who gave Alexander $20.00 for the new building, did not then know much about the revolutionary nature of the young man’s religion. He was interested in Thomas Campbell as the tutor of his son, and if he noticed anything unusual about Alexander’s thinking, he probably wrote it off as the impetuosity of youth.

The occasional visits of the elder and younger Campbell led young Robert to pen the following description of their personalities:

The father, full of affectionate sympathy and oversensitive in regard to the feelings of others, could not bear to inflict the slightest pain, and would rather withhold than confer a benefit which could be imparted only by wounding the recipient. The son, with more mastery of his emotional nature, could calmly contemplate the entire case, and, for the accomplishment of higher good, could resolutely inflict a temporary suffering. The former was. cautious, forbearing, apologetic; the latter, decided, prompt and critical.

When Thomas Campbell left Pittsburgh in 1817, Robert enrolled in a private school conducted by George Forrester, who incidentally was a lay minister for “Haldane Christians,” and in 1819 he came under the influence of Walter Scott, who came to Pittsburgh as Forrester’s assistant. It was Scott that made the big difference in Richardson’s life. Even though nine years separated them in age, they were much alike in disposition and temperament, and they were mutually equipped to exercise considerable influence on each other. Scott drilled his gifted student in the classics and required that he commit large portions of the Greek New Testament to memory. Robert was not at this time particularly religious, but he was impressed by the spirituality of his teacher. After all, not many teachers kept a reminder over the schoolroom door that Jesus is the Christ!

These were the days when Scott himself was experiencing revolutionary changes. In his revolt against Calvinism he worked some with Forrester’s “Kissin’ Baptists,” so called due to their practice of the love kiss, though they took a view on baptism and the Lord’s supper similar to the Disciples. Scott visited a church in New York that advertized itself as following the ancient order, but he returned to Pittsburgh disappointed, for the New York congregation was apostolic in profession only. He paused in Washington long enough on his return trip to ascend to the Capitol dome and weep over the condition of the religion of Jesus Christ in his adopted America.

Richardson spent many extra hours with his teacher. He afterward testified that Scott directed his thoughts to the Lord Jesus as the Rose of Sharon — “the rose of Sharon has no thorns!” But Scott never urged Robert to leave the Episcopalian Church nor to be immersed, even though Scott’s views on baptism were by this time fairly well crystallized. Scott’s search for the ancient order was independent of that of Alexander Campbell, who was laboring only 40 miles away, but who had not yet begun his Christian Baptist, which was so successful in publishing his views. It was in the Richardson home in 1822 that Scott and Campbell first met, and young Robert was impressed to find both of his friends so absorbed in the cause of church reform. He saw Campbell as tall, athletic, independent, coldly logical, and possessed of strong animal spirits, while Scott was slight in build, lyrical, poetic, and one with a flashing brilliance like that of a waxing and waning bonfire, depending upon a strong draft from his emotions.

In 1827 Richardson begins his professional career after having studied with practicing physicians and “reading medicine” in their private libraries. While few physicians took the M.D. degree in those days, Richardson did spend a year at the Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania. During the early years of his practice in Pittsburgh and then Carnegie, near Pittsburgh, he continued as an Episcopalian, attending the Presbyterian Church when there was no congregation of his own denomination. Scott in the meantime had launched out as the first evangelist of the Restoration Movement, and his labors in Ohio had resulted in 2,000 baptisms. He visited Richardson at Carnegie in 1829 and told him of the “Restored Gospel,” explaining that the acceptance of Jesus as Lord is the essence of real Christianity. Man is to do three things, Scott observed: believe, repent and be baptized. God in turn does three things: remits sins, gives the Holy Spirit, and imparts eternal life. This visit preyed on Richardson’s mind, motivating him to turn to his Greek Bible once more to ascertain if Scott were right in his contention that baptism can be only immersion, as well as claims for weekly communion, plurality of elders, priesthood of all believers and local church government. Richardson was soon ready to lay aside all human names, creeds and theological tests of fellowship, and to accept the ancient gospel.

He rode a horse 120 miles into Ohio where he found William Hayden and Walter Scott baptizing people in the Cuyahoga River. One can appreciate how startled and pleased Scott was when the young physician walked through the crowd and requested immersion. Richardson had never seen anyone immersed until he saw those who preceded him. Back home in Carnegie the doctor set out to bear his testimony to others, and he had soon gathered and organized a congregation. From this one a second was soon begun. The doctor was now an important part of the blossoming Restoration which by now had upward of 20,000 adherents.

But he had wounded his father by breaking with the family religion and going to the Campbellites. Nathaniel Richardson was so hostile that his son did not feel free to visit his own home, though he lived but a few miles away. The family pastor wrote a letter to the doctor, urging him to be more thoughtful and blaming him for not consulting with his father about so serious an act. The correspondence between Robert and the Episcopalian minister is very interesting, revealing pastoral tenderness on the part of the rector and courageous devotion on the part of the physician. The rector wrote:

You will not, I trust, take it amiss if I express to you the surprise and regret with which I heard from your father, of the change in your religious sentiments. But my design in troubling you with this, is not a controversial one. I merely wish to set before your excellent judgment a few reasons for questioning the propriety of your course, even supposing that your conclusion were a right one.You are the eldest of a numerous family; I believe I may add, the best endowed both by nature and by education, and engaged in a highly respectable profession. That you should be looked up to in a great degree by your brothers and sisters, and peculiarly by your parents, is, under these circumstances, a very rational consequence . . .

I trust you will pardon the frankness of this expostulation. I am a father, and therefore may presume that I can estimate the misery of a parent who sees and mourns over the estrangement of a darling son, much more correctly than you can yet do. God grant that you may never experience the terrible reality of such a visitation. But beholding, as I did, the grief of your father; hearing him say that he had passed a sleepless and a wretched night in consequence of your conduct in this matter, and observing the tears of strong emotion which his manhood could not restrain while he spoke, I could easily conjecture the state of your mother’s mind, and thought it a duty to intrude myself no longer as pastor, but as a christian friend, to ask you whether you are not bound in conscience and in principle, to acknowledge your error in taking such a step without consulting them?

I do not mean at all to impeach the soundness of your religious views. My sincere desire is to have you unmolested and entirely free, even from any unwelcome solicitation on that subject. But I do beseech you not to suffer this breach between you and your parents to remain unclosed for want of a speedy and thorough effort to heal it. In the mode of your procedure, you have been exceedingly to blame, because this mode was a plain declaration of want of confidence, want of kindness, want of reverence, want of filial submission. I confine myself to this single point, believing it a plain one, and in the hope that, however your light may exceed mine in the other doctrines of christianity, we shall agree in the practical application of the moral law: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you.”

Robert’s reply is a lesson within itself to every father, for he explained to the rector that it was strange that his father should now take such interest in his son’s religion since “religion never was the subject of conversation between me and my father, and I never perceived him to be interested in it . . . As long as I ‘went to church’ as the phrase is, all was well. My being a christian seemed to be a secondary consideration, or rather no consideration at all.” And Robert added: “I know not how he could expect me to consult him in a matter in which I never saw him interested, and about which he never conversed with me.” He pointed out to the pastor that his father was exclusively Episcopalian and would never have consented to his turning from the family religion, even if he had consulted him. And if he had consulted him and then rejected his wishes, which his own conscience would have demanded, the result would have been even worse.

He further observed:

Believing that my Heavenly Father meant what he said, and that in everything essential to salvation his words were plain, I threw behind me all sectarianism, and took up the Bible. And I took it up with the resolution that what I discovered to be my Father’s will, I would endeavor to perform: and if the idea of consulting any human being about the propriety of doing what I believed to be the command of God, had ever entered my thoughts, it would have done so only to be discarded as a suggestion of Satan.

Considering the Christian church as it was first formed by the Apostles, and the ancient gospel as preached by Peter on the day of Pentecost, I perceived that faith in Jesus, as the Son of God and Saviour of sinners, was the first duty; the second, repentance; and the third, baptism for the remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit; and the fourth, that we should walk in newness of life.

Robert explained to the pastor that his mother did not feel as his father, for she rejoiced with him in his happiness. While his father was a case of “Affection conquered by Pride,” his mother was an example of “Pride conquered by Affection.” It seemed strange to Robert that his newly found happiness should be a cause for anger on the part of his father.

The elder Richardson virtually disinherited his son for going to the Campbellites. Even when his son married he stayed away. But finally his heart was touched. When Robert and his wife named their first son after grandfather, the old man could stand it no longer. He had to go see Nathaniel Richardson, II. What pride had caused pride had cured!

RICHARDSON AND CAMPBELL

Richardson had moved to Wellsburg in 1830. He was 24 years old and still single, though a well established and successful physician. His move to Wellsburg was motivated by a desire to be near the Campbells in Bethany and to take a more active part in the exciting new movement to restore the ancient gospel. His expectations were realized, for he was often a visitor in Bethany where he could not only talk at length with Thomas and Alexander Campbell, but share in the conferences with many leaders of the reformation who came to Bethany for consultation. Restoration magazines had begun to go forth: Campbell’s Millennial Harbinger had replaced the Christian Baptist and Walter Scott began the Evangelist from Cincinnati in January of 1832. The doctor wrote for these journals while in Wellsburg, sometimes using the pen name “Discipulus.” As for church life in Wellsburg, he worshiped with the Campbells in the meetinghouse that his own father’s donation had helped to build. It was known as a Baptist Church, but also as “the Reformers’ church.”

One time when Walter Scott came to visit Robert he told him, “I have just met the prettiest girl I ever saw.” That started it. A year later Alexander Campbell performed the ceremony for Robert Richardson and Rebekah Encell, who was only 14 at the time. Her father was an officer in the Wellsburg church along with Alexander Campbell and John Brown, Campbell’s father-in-law.

For two years Richardson labored with Scott in Carthage, Ohio, in the publication of the Evangelist, supporting himself as a physician. He wrote essays on such subjects as eternal life, faith, kingdom of heaven, parables and interpretation of scripture. His penetrating analysis of one of the problems facing the Disciples attracted the attention of Alexander Campbell, who in 1836 invited Richardson to join him in the editorial office of the Millennial Harbinger. Richardson was thinking about going to France as an evangelist since he was fluent in that language, but Campbell did not encourage that, suggesting that work in Bethany would be more rewarding.

These were the days when it looked as if the Disciples might take the whole western frontier into their movement. The followers of Stone and Campbell were now united. There were upward of 30,000 “Campbellites” pleading for the ancient order of things. Through his debates and publications Alexander Campbell was a famous man. The enemies compared the movement to “a prairie fire sweeping across the frontier.” The visionary Walter Scott could dream of winning the entire world. Andrew Jackson was president. America was growing up. The west was vibrant, self conscious, and nervous. The primitive gospel followed the frontier.

Campbell needed a gifted thinker and writer such as Richardson. He was now free to travel far and wide for long periods of time, leaving to the doctor the responsibility of his publications. Richardson wrote a number of articles on such topics as inspiration of the scriptures and the providence of God, and he undertook to answer the questions sent to the publication office. The doctor was happy. He was busy in the Restoration Movement and managed to find time to minister to the people as their beloved physician. His only problem was his sick eyes, which forced him into temporary retirement from time to time.

The two men worked well together, not because they were alike, but because they reflected that “unity amidst diversity” that made their reformation a possibility. Richardson was mystical while Campbell was coldly analytical. Campbell was the leader while Richardson was the adviser. While both were men of action, Campbell was the front runner while Richardson worked in the background. The doctor could handle details better than Campbell, and he was apt at implementing Campbell’s ideas. While it may be amiss to say that Richardson was more devotional, one might say that he seems to have lived in the world of the Spirit more than Campbell. While Campbell was not erratic, there were nevertheless times that he needed the doctor as a balance wheel. Had it not been for the influence of Jesus in his life, Alexander Campbell would have been more inclined toward pride, self-sufficiency, austerity, and even arrogance. The Lord may have used the humble physician as a means of preparing Campbell for noble service.

When Campbell started Bethany College in 1840, Richardson was on the first faculty as professor of chemistry. It appears that he was the kind of man who always did more than his share of the work, but who was always rewarded the least. He served as bursar of the college without pay and without title until that office was created by the trustees, at which time it was W. K. Pendleton who got the job with pay! He was also vice-president without pay and without title, for it was he who did President Campbell’s administrative duties for him in his absence. But when the office of vice-president was established by the trustees, it was Pendleton again, and not Richardson, who got the job.

In reading the sources one gets the feeling that the Bethany family, including Alexander Campbell, took advantage of Richardson’s goodness. When the doctor found himself doing more and more of Campbell’s work along with his own, he filed a complaint with the president, suggesting that if he were expected to do the president’s work that he should receive more pay, which at that time was $800 a year over against the president’s $1,600 a year. Campbell told the doctor that the trustees would have to settle the question, but we all know that Campbell could have satisfied Richardson on this matter if he really wanted to. The truth probably is that the first president of Bethany was a cold-blooded Scotchman as well as a good and wonderful man.

The doctor did take his story of injustice to the trustees, explaining that for as long as seven weeks at a time he served as president as well as professor. This is when they created the office of vice-president and gave the job to Pendleton! Richardson was the victim of his own goodness, for he was too tender a man to say no to anyone. Even the students imposed upon his time. He was always giving himself to others, and it seems that few ever got around to thanking him, much less paying him. It is needless to say, therefore, that as a doctor he “forgave” more debts than he collected.

One is led to wonder if Campbell did not indeed take advantage of the beloved physician. The reformer did lend the doctor $1,000 in order to purchase the “Bethphage” farm, but with regular interest. Campbell did provide him with a house when he first moved to Bethany, but this is when the doctor was doing two men’s work on a salary from Campbell of $500.00 a year. And this is while Campbell was on his way to being the richest farmer in his part of the state. He taxed his sensitive eyes in Campbell’s workshop, but when he was forced to give his eyes a rest he no longer received his pay. During such seasons he depended upon his paltry income as a doctor on horseback.

Richardson had reasons, therefore, for entering into his notes on Campbell’s life, preparatory to writing the Memoirs, that the reformer put the Restoration Movement first in his life, then the spiritual interest and welfare of his own family, and then his property. As for his friends “he would not sacrifice property for them, but would aid them whenever it could be done with security to property.” He would lend to friends for interest and good security, and he was displeased over any loss and was apt to remember it and dwell upon it. Speaking of the Memoirs, one’s resentment mounts when he sees the injustice done Richardson regarding that expensive publication. Shortly before Campbell died Richardson consulted with him about the biography, and Campbell encouraged him to do it. When Alexander died, his widow, Selina, and other members of the family, urged the doctor to carry out his plans for the Memoirs, and they all offered to help him gather the necessary data.

Richardson spent two years writing the story of Campbell’s life, and it was finally published by J. B. Lippincott of Philadelphia at his own expense, which only shows that he was not as good a business man as he was a physician. The sale of the book never managed to pay for itself, or at least this is what the doctor was told by the publisher. This debt hung over the poor doctor’s delicate conscience the rest of his life. He made payments to the publisher as he could, but it was left for his family to worry with after he was gone.

The historian regrets that the Campbells were insensitive to this situation. He wishes that Alexander himself had anticipated his devoted friend’s predicament and provided for the necessary funds for the publication of this monumental work. If not Alexander, then surely Selina and family would have come to the doctor’s rescue, for the Sage of Bethany had made them more than moderately wealthy. But perhaps it is this sense of inequity that adds temper and color to the thrilling drama of the Restoration Movement. It is the human element that makes history real, and they, like ourselves, were very human.

One must not suppose that Richardson did not love and admire Campbell with all his sensitive soul. He was his physician during his long illness and he was his friend at his deathbed. And it was he who delivered his funeral oration and said:

No more shall we behold that intelligent countenance, beaming with a smile of kindly recognition. No more shall we hear that beloved voice in courteous greeting, or in lofty discourse upon themes of eternal interest. No more shall we clasp his friendly hand in love and fellowship. No more shall we see that commanding and venerable form. He sleeps.

As Professor Stevenson puts it in his Home to Bethphage: “The giant oak in whose shadow Robert Richardson had lived for thirty-five years was fallen, and the empty sky was lonesome.”

CRUCIBLE OF CONTROVERSY

This essay concludes that Richardson’s greatest contribution to the Restoration Movement was his opposition to the influence of Lockean philosophy upon Disciple thought. John Locke, who lived from 1632 to 1704, was highly regarded by the leaders of the American frontier because of his emphasis on freedom, individuality, and democratic government. Thomas Jefferson was greatly influenced by his thought, and Alexander Campbell extolled him as “the great Christian philosopher.” It is claimed that the pioneer preachers carried a copy of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding in their saddlebags along with their Bible and songbook.

Locke was the founder of English empiricism, which influenced education as well as philosophy. He was trained in science and prepared himself to be a physician. He learned to think scientifically and came to believe that all knowledge is derived from experience with the objective word, which made him radically different from both Platonic idealism and medieval scholasticism. He was therefore non-theological, if not anti-clerical, which caused Alexander Campbell to love him all the more. Even though he revolted against the ecclesiasticism of his day, Locke was a deeply religious man. He sought to make Christianity reasonable, but by this he did not mean “reason” in reference in mind, but to the experience gained through memory, imagination, deeds. and consequences.

Locke disagreed with the metaphysical philosophers like Plato who believed that man is born with certain universal ideas (innate ideas) that may be realized by the exercise of reason. Locke contended that man comes into this world with a blank mind and that whatever he comes to know will depend upon the development of his senses. So Plato believed in the weakness of human nature, that man is enslaved by his passions and that his senses are unreliable. Locke argued that man is free and that through “common sense” he can learn religious truth.

Campbell thought like Locke. Truth comes from a study of the Bible, science, human nature. Like Locke he was a true liberal, believing that truth must be tested and that ideas must be revised with further study. Thus the Disciples came to reject dogmatism and external authority, pleading for freedom of thought. They were like Locke in their criticism of the technical and vague language of the clergy and in their appeal to the common man. Christianity can be understood by an intelligent reading of a book! Locke said that facts come first, then testimony, then faith, then feeling, then action. This was a virtual anticipation of the way Campbell viewed the Christian system. The Disciples came to be sufficiently Lockean. Richardson stood almost alone, and most certainly without Campbell, in his efforts to “un-Locke” the Restoration Movement.

In 1857 the doctor wrote a series of articles in the Millennial Harbinger on “Faith Versus Philosophy” in which he disputed with Tolbert Fanning of the Gospel Advocate about Lockean philosophy. Fanning was condemning all philosophy and had accused Richardson of being guilty of philosophical speculation in teaching that man may learn of God through nature (the natural world and the human mind) as well as through special revelation (the Bible). This was then and is still called Natural Religion, which is contrary to the empirical thinking of John Locke which insists that man is wholly dependent upon the Bible for all his ideas of God and spiritual things. Fanning went so far as to label Natural Religion as infidelity, and he insisted that only infidel institutions would teach such philosophy. Richardson countered by pointing out that Alexander Campbell himself, whom Fanning highly respected, had taught a course on Natural Religion in Bethany College for 17 years. This Fanning could hardly believe, for he supposed that Campbell was on his side of this controversy.

The doctor further urged that Fanning had no reason to disparage all philosophy, for he himself was an advocate of John Locke, whom he hailed as the author of all correct thinking. Richardson pointed out that the two basic ideas underlying Locke’s philosophy were also fundamental to Fanning’s teaching. These were: (1) All of our knowledge comes through sensation and reflection, that the mind as a blank sheet receives impressions only from without, and that it is only from external influences that we know anything; and (2) The mind by means of reflection takes the impressions that come through the senses and manufactures them into correct thoughts and ideas, and this is the only way that man knows anything. Thus Locke taught, Richardson observed, that sensation furnishes us all our ideas, while reflection merely compares them with each other. Since God and things of the Spirit are not objects of the senses, we can gain no knowledge of them from our study of nature or man. Neither can man by his own reason or by any communion with nature learn anything of God or spiritual things. He is wholly dependent upon revelation.

Even though Richardson agreed with much that Locke taught and held the philosopher in high esteem for his revolt against the metaphysical speculation of his time, he believed that Locke went too far with his empiricism. To the doctor he was “a sensualistic dogmatist,” and his thinking was “a dirt philosophy,” meaning that it was earthy, mechanical, and spiritless. To Richardson it was a matter of what one believes about man. Is man merely the sum total of his sense experiences, a kind of machine that records impressions from without? Or is there something within man that makes him different from the animals, something that makes him a part of the moral order of the universe, thus making it possible for him to “seek after God” in the world of nature, in human reasoning, and in what might be called intuition.

Lockean philosophy starves the heart, Richardson believed. The reformers are letting Locke do their thinking for them, he urged, which results in an imbalance toward a bookish, literalistic, legalistic interpretation of religion. It is an “extravagant nominalism” that degrades and misinterprets the Bible. It is “bibliolatry” in that it ascribes to the Bible exclusive powers and attributes that it never claims for itself. “It is not a just appreciation of the importance of the word of God, nor an intelligent admiration of its perfections, but an overweening exaggeration, a positive misrepresentation, in fact, of the real nature and design of revelation.”

The doctor believed that Locke’s philosophy was the basis of the “word alone” theory that was causing an “absolute vacuum” among the Disciples. This was the idea that the Spirit operates only through the word of God, which in turn came to mean that the Spirit and the word are the same, or, if not the same, that the Spirit has no influence in the saint’s life except through the saint’s knowledge of the Bible. Many reformers were teaching that if the word dwells in a man, then the Spirit dwelt in him, and to “Be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18) means to “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Col. 3:16). The more Bible one knows the more of the Spirit he has in him! Richardson wanted to know if a man of the world can be filled with the Spirit since it is true that he can certainly learn much of the Bible. And does this not contradict the Lord who teaches that the world cannot receive the Spirit?

The doctor also wondered why one could not interpret “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” as meaning “Be filled with the Spirit,” and thus have a “Spirit only” theory. His point was that it is as reasonable to make the passages on “the word” refer to “the Spirit” as to make those on “the Spirit” refer to “the word.” He insisted that both the word and the Spirit play their role in the Christian’s life, and that it is wrong either to equate them or separate them. While the Spirit works with the word, he is something distinct from the word in that he dwells personally within the saint. The sinner is converted by obeying the gospel, and he then receives the Spirit as a result of his obedience. But one errs if he limits the Spirit’s work to the conversion of the sinner that is made possible by the gospel, for the Spirit continues to comfort and watch over the saint all his life. The doctor observed that some reformers equated the Spirit with conversion.

These words from Richardson will reveal his effort to extol the word of God and at the same time not to confuse the word with the things revealed by the word:

It is most true that it is a cardinal feature of this religious reformation, to direct the attention of men to words, even to the precious words of Holy Scripture. But it was never intended that these should be made a substitute for the things which they reveal, or that mere grammar and logic should replace spiritual discernment, and be permitted to establish themselves as a barrier between the soul and spiritual enjoyment. Yet this is precisely what is done under the influence of the sensualistic philosophy “which sees nothing but metaphors in spiritual beliefs; which, after the senses, ascribes everything to signs and to language, and whose essential character is the negation of all the great truth which escape the senses.”

This controversy with Tolbert Fanning waxed hot and was of long duration. Campbell was not happy about it. He had published replies from Fanning in the spirit of fair play, and he handed the doctor a mild rebuke for writing upon an “infelicitous subject in an infelicitous manner.” Campbell also notified his readers that his policy of printing both sides of issues applied only when he represented one side, and that the policy did not extend to his associate editors, meaning of course Richardson. Campbell also wrote an article on “Christianity the True Philosophy” in which he urged that the Lockean dispute be shelved for awhile. Fanning published the article in his own Gospel Advocate as an indication that Campbell was on his side. The situation was worsened when Campbell’s enemies, especially the Religious Herald in Richmond, kept up with the dispute and published articles on “On Which Side is A. Campbell?” They had long chided Campbell for making too much of the word and too little of the Spirit, so they wondered what he, would now do with his ace writer and professor, Robert Richardson.

The doctor was smitten by all this, mainly because he felt that he was not understood. He resented Fanning’s effort to identify him as “an advocate of direct spiritual communications,” and he was hurt that Campbell did not more clearly state his own views as identical with those he had expressed, for he was certain that Campbell believed as he did about it. Richardson stated in a letter to P. S. Fall of Nashville that he had heard that Campbell took a dim view of the doctor’s essays because they were indeed intended to be against Campbell’s own teachings. Richardson made it clear to Fall that he had never intended such. As for the Baptists of the Religious Herald, Richardson gave a gloves-off treatment for their unchristian attitude in suggesting that Alexander Campbell was on both sides of the Fanning-Richardson feud. But the poor doctor had to belabor the point, for even though he had abundant quotations from Campbell’s earlier writings to the effect that he did indeed believe in the indwelling Holy Spirit, it was not an easy matter to identify his position with that taken by Richardson against Fanning.

These were dark days for Richardson. He felt Campbell’s disapproval, and because of his great love for the reformer this hurt him deeply. He resigned as an associate editor of the Harbinger. His sensitive soul was injured all the more when the college trustees passed a resolution about this time that all faculty must live in town, and the resolution named the doctor in particular, insisting that he move to town without delay so as to be nearer the students. Both Campbell and Pendleton, the vice-president, had urged the doctor for some years to move to town for his own convenience and to be more accessible to the students. Now he wondered if someone were not after his job.

The doctor confided with P. S. Fall by letter that he was perfectly willing to move into town, but that Campbell and Pendleton owned all the lots suitable for building, and that they either would not sell him one at all or wanted far too much for it! Neither could he rent anything suitable. He explained that Campbell and Pendleton knew all this, but still there was the pressure on him to leave his “Bethphage” and move to the village. So, the same day the trustees passed their resolution, which the doctor interpreted as an imperative, he submitted his resignation as professor at Bethany College. The trustees did not suspect or desire such drastic action on the doctor’s part, so they set out to reinstate him. They did so, and though Campbell gave his approval, Richardson still felt his estrangement. He did move to town when a non-Campbell house became available, leaving his “Bethphage” vacant. He was not the happy man that he had been.

It was about this time (December, 1857) that the main building .of Bethany College burned to the ground. Before the fire had completed its destruction Campbell instructed the faculty and students to prepare to rebuild immediately. Richardson stated later that he saw in Alexander Campbell that night, who was now 70 years old, a renewal of the vigorous mind that had made him a great leader. The Sage of Bethany was himself again by rising to the occasion of rebuilding the college. Campbell and Pendleton go out to raise money for the college, leaving the doctor once more to teach both Campbell’s and Pendleton’s classes as well as his own, and to serve as both president and bursar pro tem — still with no extra pay! This lasted until spring when the president and the vice-president returned with $30,000, enough to start an even better building than the one that burned, and which stands to this day.

In the meantime Kentucky University (formerly Bacon College, the first Disciple institution) was ready to do business again after having been closed for several years. They asked both Richardson and Robert Milligan, also on the Bethany faculty, to be professors. Campbell had got wind of this when he was out raising money for Bethany, so he came back telling the doctor that Kentucky University would not survive. He also insisted that if Bethany should lose both Richardson and Milligan it would seriously hurt the college. The doctor reminds him of the Fanning controversy, suggesting perhaps that it is just as well that he leave due to the misunderstanding. But Campbell hardly knows what the doctor is talking about, acting as if everything had always been all right.

Campbell moves to reinstate Richardson as a co-editor of the Harbinger and proceeds to demonstrate with his pen that he and the doctor had always seen eye-to-eye about the Holy Spirit and Lockean philosophy.

These are just the views which we have held and advocated, and I know not how the misstatement above referred to could have occurred, unless that writing the article away from home, I had not an opportunity of examining Brother Richardson’s essays, and had probably before my mind some of those misquotations and misrepresentations of which we have regretted to see in some of our western periodicals.

He tops this off with a stern rebuke to Tolbert Fanning:

He persists in endeavoring to make the impression on the public mind, that Dr. Richardson and certain other brethren whom he name”, are teaching, as he says “unmixed and unblushing infidelity.” This charge he affects to sustain by a few brief extracts from their writings. These extracts do not at all sustain President Fanning’s assertion, and we wish to say that we consider his attacks an outrage upon both editorial and Christian courtesy . . .

As to Brother Richardson, I am perfectly familiar with his sentiments on all questions involved, and I can assure President Fanning that he does him the grossest injustice . . . Others who can judge of the “meaning of words” as well as President Fanning, do not find in Brother Richardson’s essays the slightest ground for President Fanning’s charge, and invectives, nor will the intelligent brethren justify or sanction his reckless assertions.

The senior editor seems to have been unpredictable about some of these things, virtually dismissing the doctor on the one hand and reinstating him with full honors on the other, but Richardson attributed this to Campbell’s faulty memory caused by age. The important thing was that Campbell had vindicated the doctor’s cause against Fanning, and this was a very important matter to the doctor, for he was convinced that the future welfare of the Restoration Movement depended upon lessening the influence of Lockean nominalism. The attitude shown by both Fanning and Richardson toward Campbell in this controversy reflects the tremendous prestige and influence he enjoyed among the leaders of the Movement.

Bur Campbell was too late to save Richardson for Bethany, for while his spirits were low he had accepted the Kentucky offer, even though he really preferred to stay now that Campbell was no longer estranged. But he had promised and so he went, returning for the Bethany commencements (and at one time accepting an honorary degree) as a testimony to his love for Bethany and his respect for Campbell. In Kentucky he got caught in the Civil War. The soldiers took over the college buildings, the students went off to war, and the institution finally closed shop. The doctor returned to “Bethphage” in 1863. By now Campbell was terribly worn in both mind and body. While the doctor was greatly pained by the internal conflict of his country, Campbell’s tired mind was oblivious to it. Campbell was to die in 1866. The doctor was now thinking of writing The Memoirs of Alexander Campbell. He was yet to serve on the faculty again as well as a trustee. As a professor once more he was excused from living in the village!

MEANING OF THE RESTORATION MOVEMENT

By the time the Restoration Movement was a quarter of a century old it was important that someone should spell out its meaning and purposes in language that was both clear and forceful. The Campbells were profound but verbose, and their pronouncements were often blurred by disintegration of ideas. It was difficult for Alexander Campbell to integrate his thoughts into a tightly-woven exposition, for his mind was so volatile and diversified that he often wandered from subject to subject without proper clarification One gets the idea in reading Campbell that he is always introducing his subject. He was so active and miscellaneous in his thinking that he would become greatly involved in subjects that were but by-products of his main thesis. It was hard for him to pass up an idea without reaching into his great storehouse of knowledge and giving intricate and involved delineations to his readers. He did not have time to rework and rewrite his materials; he wrote as he thought. He did indeed provide the substance, but someone else was needed to present the Restoration ideas with the lucidity of a Readers Digest article.

This had been the case also with the Movement’s effort to proclaim the ancient gospel. It took the evangelist Walter Scott to present the profound concepts of the Campbells in terms both understandable and acceptable to the common man. What Scott had done for the Movement as an evangelist Richardson was to do as a writer, the most significant contribution on the fundamentals of the Movement being an 88-page book entitled The Principles and Objects of the Religious Reformation, Urged by A. Campbell and Others, Briefly Stated and Explained, which he issued in 1853, printed and published by Campbell himself.

Campbell hailed the book as “a well proportioned miniature view of the Movement in a lucid and chaste style, and is worthy of himself and the cause.” It was indeed a model of brevity, clarity, and comprehensiveness. Dwight Stevenson says it could well be called the “Disciple Manifesto,” It was widely distributed and soon went through three editions. W. K. Pendleton expressed gratitude in the Millennial Harbinger for “the liberal orders” which had come in for the book.

In his introductory remarks the doctor makes it clear that he is writing about “the general principles and objects of the Reformation,” and he identifies the Movement with the British Isles as well as with his own country, Since this book is inaccessible to most of our readers, and since it is significant in understanding Richardson’s role in the Restoration Movement as well as its value to all seekers after truth, it is proper that we give considerable space to a summary of some of the more important points.

Richardson points out in his introduction that the great purpose of the present Movement is to establish Christian union upon the basis of a simple evangelical Christianity. The purpose of his book is to clarify this proposition, which he does under nine main points.

I. DISTINCTION BETWEEN FAITH AND OPINION

The doctor argues that it is impossible to make any progress toward Christian union without a clear understanding of the difference between faith and opinion, for “the fallible deductions of human reason are continually mistaken for the unerring dictates of inspiration, and human authority is blended with that which is Divine.” “Opinions,” he says, “are the plastic cement in which partyism has imbedded the more solid yet disconnected scriptural materials of its partition walls,”

He urges four points upon his readers in regard to faith and opinion:

1. The Scriptures mean precisely what they say, when construed in conformity with the established laws of language.

2. The Bible is the only Divine revelation to which man has access, and these revelations are perfectly suited to man.

3. True religious faith can be founded upon the Bible alone.

4. Opinions are mere inferences of human reason from insufficient and uncertain premises, or conjectures regarding matters not revealed, and they are not entitled to the slightest authority in religion.

Faith can therefore be measured only by the testimony of Scripture. What the Bible distinctly reveals is to be implicitly believed. When the Bible is obscure or silent, reason must not attempt to elaborate theories or supply conclusions as if they were of Divine authority. The key to union is for all sects to cease building dogmas around metaphysical subtleties and untaught questions and stand together upon the great revealed truths upon which there is almost universal agreement. The human mind is to be left alone with the word of God!

Richardson contends that it is preposterous to expect that men will ever agree in regard to opinions, It is neither necessary nor desirable that they should. The Bible speaks of “one faith” but not “one opinion.” He quotes Rom. 14:1 to show that Christians should receive each other without regard to opinions. “As well might we expect to conform the features of the human face to a single standard, as to secure a perfect agreement of men’s minds.” Peace is therefore dependent on liberty of opinion. Each person is to be left free to entertain what opinions he pleases, but he must not enforce them upon others or make them the basis for communion or fellowship.

The pious doctor emphasizes the following thesis:

Every proposition or doctrine for which there is not clear scriptural evidence is to be regarded as a matter of opinion; and everything for which such evidence can be adduced is a matter of faith, a fact or truth to be believed.

He hastens to add that he is aware that what is “clear scriptural evidence” to one man is not to another and that all parties appeal to the Bible in proof of their peculiar views. He sees this as an insult to God and the Bible. Are the Scriptures a tissue of contradictions and ambiguities? Is it possible to determine the true meaning of the Bible? Even though there is in the entire Bible “some things hard to be understood,” they can nevertheless be understood. He calls for simple rules of interpretation such as would be used in understanding any piece of literature and he warns against lifting passages from their context.

Richardson’s stress on faith and opinion is badly needed in our day. It is this writer’s position that many of our present woes stem from a mixup of faith and opinion. For example, there are new divisions in the making in both the Churches of Christ and Christian Churches over the question of cooperation. The main stream of Disciples are splitting over such cooperative agencies as the United Christian Missionary Society, while the Churches of Christ are at war over the Herald of Truth, a radio-TV organization involving hundreds of “cooperating churches.” Previously division has come over instrumental music, Sunday School, pastor system, colleges, plurality of cups for Lord’s Supper, premillennialism, etc.

The good doctor would insist that these things for the most part are interpretations based upon scriptural obscurities. There is room for differences of opinion since there is no way to be absolutely certain. The differences are largely a matter of the silence of Scriptures. He would urge therefore that we have a “to each his own” attitude. Congregations may have different practices, some using the instrument and some not or some supporting the societies and some not, but they can still be in fellowship with each other — a fellowship based upon what is clearly set forth in the Bible regarding the salvation of the soul.

II. THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

Since the fellowship of the saints is based upon faith rather than opinions, there is a question as to how much faith one must have in order to be received into the communion of holy ones. How much must one know before he can become a Christian? What is “the faith” which saves and sanctifies? Richardson attends to these questions in this section of his essay.

He insists that the Christian faith is personal rather than doctrinal. While the sects regard doctrines and tenets as the subject matter of “the faith,” the Restorationist conceives it to center in a person — the Lord Jesus Christ. Accordingly the sects require an elaborate confession of faith that is doctrinal and intellectual and studiously elaborated into an extended formula, while the Disciples ask only for a simple confession of faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. The Christian faith is not any theory or system of doctrine, but a sincere belief in the person and mission of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Belief in the Christ means more than an intellectual assent to his historicity. It even means more than a belief in what the Christ says. It involves giving heart and soul to him in humility, penitence and love. It means to trust and confide in him as the only Saviour. It means to receive him in all the glory of his character, personal and official, and to trust him as Prophet, Priest and King. It means to see in him our only hope and refuge and to lean on him as our only stay. He is the “Lord our Righteousness” and we are to trust in him as our Saviour, to walk with him as our teacher and friend. To believe in him means to realize his gracious presence with us and to discern his footsteps in the path we tread. To believe in the Christ means to think of him as a person whom we know and to whom we are known, to speak to him as to one who hears and to listen to him as to one who speaks.

The Christian faith is not therefore an assent to definitions, doctrines, orders, tenets; nor is it things or words, not even the words that Jesus is the Christ. The glorious proposition that Jesus is the Christ can be made a mere tenet or a mental abstraction. It is the simple, personal trust in Jesus that is “the faith” of the Bible. Belief in Jesus as the Christ is the only faith that can be lawfully demanded for admission to Christian fellowship. It is the only creed of the Christian, and it nullifies and repudiates all others. The doctor concludes, “We deny the right of anyone to complicate the simplicity of the Christian faith in this manner, and to demand, in advance, a degree of knowledge and experience in the child, which, in the very nature of things, can be expected only in one who has attained to the stature of a man in Christ Jesus.”

Perhaps the good doctor would have a quarrel with those of us who insist that one must “know numerous things before he is baptized, such as knowledge that baptism is “for the remission of sins.” We ourselves are not immune to sectarianizing the gospel. Richardson was keen to see that only the gospel (the fact of Jesus Christ) can be made the basis of fellowship. Christian doctrine, though important, is something quite distinct from the gospel. There is room for differences of opinion in interpreting doctrine, but it is upon the simple proposition that Jesus is the Christ, which is the gospel, that Christian unity becomes a reality.

III. THE BASIS OF CHRISTIAN UNION

Men do not receive each other because they cannot agree on opinions. While the Christian faith should be the basis of fellowship, partyism requires that men submit to a particular set of opinions and doctrines. Just as the Christ is the chief cornerstone and only foundation of the church, he is also the only basis of union and fellowship among Christians. God meets the sinner in the grand proposition that Jesus is the Christ. To demand more than a profession of faith in the Christ, such as exact knowledge of remote points of Christian doctrine, is as unscriptural as it would be irrational to prohibit men from enjoying the light and warmth of the sun until they had first attained a high proficiency in astronomy.

The proposition that Jesus is the Christ is especially significant, Richardson says, because it was a Divine Oracle delivered by God himself. At the baptism of Jesus and on the mount of transfiguration the Father says to Jesus, “This is my beloved Son.” The proposition is also the rock upon which the Christ declared that he would build his church (Mt. 16:18). Should not the foundation of the church be the only basis of Christian union?

The doctor anticipates such questions as whether he will receive into fellowship those who have only believed and have not repented and been baptized. His answer is that a sincere belief of the gospel will produce its appropriate fruits, and it is by these alone that we can scripturally recognize the sincerity of the faith and the repentance. He sees repentance and baptism as corollaries of genuine faith in the Christ. Baptism is no act that gives one a claim to divine mercy, but it is rather a faithful response to the grand proposition that Jesus is the Christ.

Those of us who have inherited the Movement begun by men like Richardson can profit by this view of fellowship. We have erected fences and built walls whereby we exclude each other. Our fellowship is vertical in that it draws lines that separate others because they do not accept our opinions about instrumental music, premillennialism, or the Herald of Truth. It is not horizontal because it is unable to cut across the differences of opinions and to accept as brothers all those who accept the Christ as their Lord. We build fences of separatism rather than bridges of understanding. In the face of scriptural evidence such as that postulated by Dr. Richardson we are unable to ,defend our view that people must agree with us on all these points of difference in order to be received into Christian fellowship. Richardson is right. We are wrong. He was truly a Restorationist in that he pled for unity on the grounds of the Lordship of Christ. We are sectarians in that people must believe more than what the eunuch confessed to Phillip in order to be received by us. They must be right about music and stuff.

IV. PATRIARCHAL, JEWISH, AND CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS

Richardson says that the first three points are “the leading principles of the Restoration,” and he spends more time on them. The remaining six are treated with more brevity, for he sees them as “the practical application” of the first three.

His thesis under this heading is that “Christianity is a distinct and peculiar institution, complete in all its parts, and requiring no addition from any system of religion previously established.” A common fallacy is to suppose that the Bible deals with one religion and that Christianity is but an improvement over Judaism as Judaism had been over the patriarchal age. The result is that many Christian sects have much Judaism in their belief and practices.

The Patriarchal, Jewish, and Christian institutions represent the remedial systems ordained of God through the ages. The first system was adapted to the early period of the world. The head of the family was its officiating priest; religious knowledge rested upon tradition, with special revelations to those who were distinguished for their faith and piety. This age had its own proportion of truth, its own special promises, its peculiar faith, and its appropriate ceremony and rites. The Mosaic system, on the other hand, was a theocracy with its own political regulations. Yet it was a religion, embodying in its precepts and shadowing forth in the various types and symbols of its elaborate ritual the most sacred truths. The Jewish dispensation was so unique that there is not the slightest difficulty in determining its nature and defining its boundaries.

While the Jewish institution was typical of the Christianity it preceded, the new religion of Christ is essentially different in its covenant, promises, mediator, priesthood, laws, and ordinances. The simple gospel of Christ must be freed from the corrupting admixture of Judaism, which is the burden of the book of Romans and the book of Hebrews.

V. COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH

It is important to Richardson to disassociate the Christian Church from the covenants of Moses and Abraham. The church began as a new institution on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2). “Without the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Church of Christ could have no life, nor power to exercise its functions, nor could it be recognized as distinctly and formally established in the world. Hence the disciples were commanded to tarry at Jerusalem until they should be endued with power from on high, and they were then to proceed to preach the gospel among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”

VI. THE ACTION AND DESIGN OF BAPTISM

The beloved physician points out that the leaders of the Restoration Movement were themselves once Pedobaptists (believers in infant baptism), and that their work for Christian unity had already begun before the subject of infant baptism arose. When the subject came up it was given rigid examination in the light of the Scriptures. It was found that there was not the slightest authority for the baptism of anyone who was not a believer, and so the practice was given up.

It is noteworthy that the Disciple movement did not begin as a result of a rebellion to infant baptism and other such practices, but rather as a move toward unity of all Christians. The position on baptism is to be considered a necessary consequent of the principles that initiated the movement.

The doctor points out that it is not necessary to state the case for the immersion of believers, for no one questions this. It is sprinkling for baptism and the inclusion of unbelievers (infants) that is in question. He cites sources to show that even the Pedobaptists admit that the sprinkling of infants rests on church authority rather than the Scriptures.

More important is Richardson’s emphasis upon immersion of believers only as the way that offers no impediment whatever to Christian union. There is no doubt about immersing believers, and all parties grant the divine authority for such. It requires no one to act contrary to the dictates of enlightened conscience. The Restoration makes no claim except what is unequivocally enjoined by the Scriptures. Our position is therefore eminently anti-sectarian and conciliatory, Richardson claims.

He regrets that “a mere theory of conversion” should so engross the religious world. Men neglect divine institutions and seek to find security in feeling. While the work of the Holy Spirit is important, one is wrong if he supposes he may receive the Holy Spirit for the remission of sins. It is unmistakable that the Bible relates immersion to the forgiveness of sins, and men should not seek to change that.

VII. THE AGENCY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CONVERSION AND SANCTIFICATION

The chief cause for misunderstanding regarding spiritual influence, Richardson asserts, is the confusion of the Spirit’s indwelling in the heart of the believer with his influence in the conversion of the sinner. Men suppose that the Spirit is to be received before faith and that faith itself is the result of some special operation of the Spirit. They thus come to look for certain mental or emotional impressions as evidence of pardon.

The Spirit’s work in converting the sinner is much different, however, from his relationship to one who is in the family of God. To the sinner the Spirit is a witness for the truth; the saint has the Spirit as a witness in himself. To the sinner he is an unknown visitant or stranger; to the Christian he is an indwelling and cherished guest. To the sinner he is as rain that falls to soften and subdue the earth; to the saint he is as a fountain from within, springing up into everlasting life. In short, the man of the world cannot receive the Spirit of God (John 14:17).

The doctor quotes Acts 2:38 to show that the Spirit comes as a gift to dwell in the believer, and he uses Eph. 1:13 to verify his contention that the Spirit is given only after people believe in the Christ. He points to Gal. 4:6 as evidence that it is “because you are sons” that God sends his Spirit. The spiritual birth is likened to natural birth — a regeneration from a generation! One is “begotten” by the gospel when he believes that Jesus is the Christ. It is here that God first meets the sinner. It is therefore the gospel that the sinner first receives, and not the Holy Spirit. While it may be said that the sinner is begotten of the Spirit through the word of God, for it is the Spirit who inspired the preaching of the gospel, it does not follow however that the sinner receives the Spirit until he has obeyed the gospel in baptism. Thus the new birth is consummated in being “born of water” (John 3:5), which means to be brought forth from the watery grave of baptism.

Being thus born from above by believing and being baptized into Christ, the sinner is now a child of God and may receive the Holy Guest which God bestows upon all his children. By his sanctifying influence and indwelling presence the Spirit produces such fruits as love, joy, peace and righteousness. It is apparent, the doctor avows, that the grand end of the gospel is the indwelling Holy Spirit. Unless the Holy Spirit be received and enjoyed all religious profession is nugatory and vain. “If any man have nor the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Rom. 8:9). The possession of the Spirit is indeed the evidence of sonship and the proof that the gospel has been truly believed. Without the Spirit one is without “the earnest of a future inheritance.”

Unlike the transient, evanescent nature of the Spirit’s presence as interpreted by those who look for some demonstration at conversion, the Divine Guest dwells with the Christian always. The true kingdom of God is within the heart and consists in “righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Jesus says, “If you, being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him.” The peace of God which passes all understanding and which keeps his heart and mind, the joy that animates, and the love which warms his soul, are experiences that must be produced by the presence of the Divine Spirit.

It is foolish to argue about the mode of the Spirit’s operation in conversion, the doctor asserts. “All should be content to preach the gospel. and prayerfully commit the event to God, confident that though even a Paul may plant and an Apollos water, it is He alone that gives the increase.” It is enough to say, the physician argues, that the gospel is the only revealed instrumentality through which the Spirit of God accomplishes the conversion of the sinner. As to how the Spirit may exert influences in aid of the gospel or as to the manner that the heart is “opened” for its reception, the doctor is willing to regard as subordinate questions of opinion upon which men may differ. It is nothing to stop work over in order to debate. The farmer may as well neglect to sow his fields in order to debate with others the various theories as to how the seed is made to vegetate as for the preachers of the gospel to take time out for discussions on the manner of the Spirit’s operation.

VIII. WEEKLY COMMUNION

In this section Richardson draws upon several scholarly sources to strengthen his own interpretation of Acts 20:7 as evidence of weekly communion in the primitive church. He quotes Wesley as saying in his Letter to America: “I also advise the elders to administer the supper of the Lord on every Lord’s day.” Calvin insists that the Supper should be served “Every week at least”! Dr. Scott says that “this ordinance seems to have been constantly administered every Lord’s day.” Dr. Mason is quoted as saying “Communion every Lord’s day was universal and was preserved in the Greek church till the seventh century.”

The Supper is the great and special object of the Lord’s Day assembly, Richardson believes. It commemorates the love of Christ. He believes that the saints should add to this observance “prayer, exhortation, teaching, etc. for mutual edification.” This writer noticed his glaring omission of preaching! Like Campbell, the doctor realized that preaching was not a part of early Christian worship. Teaching the apostles’ doctrine is for the Christian assembly and should be mutual, while preaching the gospel is for sinners. Richardson knew well that Campbell’s claim about preaching and teaching was valid, a claim he expressed very well in these words: “There was teaching, there was singing, there was exhortation in the Christian church; but preaching in the church, or to the church, is not once named in the Christian Scriptures! . . . We preach the gospel to unbelievers, to aliens, or those who have not received it.” (Millennial Harbinger, 1862, p. 154)

We just must add that Richardson concludes this point with the remark: ‘We recognize, also, the importance of Sunday-schools and Bible classes for the instruction of the young; and of wholly consecrating the Lord’s day to the above purposes, as well as to private reading of the Scriptures and religious devotion.”

IX. CHURCH GOVERNMENT

The Lord committed the care of his church to pastors or under-shepherds who are commanded to “feed the flock of God,” and the qualifications for such work are laid down by the apostle Paul. These pastors are sometimes called bishops, overseers, or elders. There was a plurality in every church. There is no such thing in the Scriptures as a bishop over a diocese or several churches. Popery is an arrogant pretension. By the very nature of their office the apostles could have no successors.

Richardson also says a word about deacons as the officers who were to take charge of the temporal affairs of the church and to minister to the sick, the poor, and the destitute. He sees evangelists as missionaries “sustained by the churches in the work of preaching the gospel to the world.”

Dr. Richardson on “The Office of the Holy Spirit”

This study on Robert Richardson has already stated that the doctor’s most significant contribution to the Restoration Movement was his teaching on the Holy Spirit. We have referred to his controversy with Editor Fanning and to his series on “Faith and Philosophy” in the Millennial Harbinger for 1857 in which he sought to alleviate the baneful influence of John Locke’s “pig philosophy” upon the Disciple movement. We have also summarized the doctor’s views on the Spirit as they were enunciated in his book on The Principles and Objects of the Religious Reformation. This section of our study, therefore, will deal with other of his writings on the Holy Spirit, some earlier and some later than the sources already used.

In the Millennial Harbinger for 1842 Robert Richardson began a series of seven essays on “The Spirit of God,” which continued through the volume for 1843. His purpose in preparing these essays is stated in the first installment:

It is a matter of deep concern to the truly pious that there is so little real devotion to God; so little true and heart-felt union to him on the part of many who profess the Christian religion. An immense number of proselytes may be made, multitudes may be added to the churches, periods of much animation and excitement may be enjoyed, but when we come to look for that for which alone all this preparation is made — an actual and spiritual union to Christ, spirituality of mind, devotion to God, creation anew in righteousness and true holiness — here it is that a lamentable disappointment occurs.

He goes on to say that “a lamentable want of spiritual union to Christ is clearly evinced by this prevailing insensibility in respect to the things that belong to the kingdom of God.” He contends that the “spiritual man is as fully alive to the things of the spiritual world as is the natural man to the things of the natural world.” One is said to be dead when he no longer hears, sees, tastes, and breathes the things of the natural world. So one is spiritually dead when he no longer hears the voice of Christ, when he perceives not the things of the spiritual world, when he is insensible to the affectionate approaches of the Holy Spirit and derives no inspiration from the things that are unseen.

The doctor believed that even professed Christians were woefully ignorant of the Holy Spirit, and that this ignorance is the greatest hindrance to that intimate spiritual union between God and man that is the very purpose of Christianity. Ignorance of the Spirit may mean a corresponding loss of spiritual enjoyment or even a total destruction of the spiritual life. He who is ignorant of truth can derive no benefit from it. “There is no single point in Christianity,” Richardson insists, “in respect to which ignorance or error are more dangerous and fatal in their effects than as it regards the Spirit of God, because there is nothing so intimately and immediately connected with that spiritual life which the Christian institution is designed to impart.”

Another important source we shall draw upon is Richardson’s 324-page book entitled A Scriptural View of the Office of the Holy Spirit, published in 1875, a full 25 years after the Harbinger series on the Spirit and but a year before his death. In these several sources we have, therefore, a long-term view of the work of the Holy Spirit by a highly intelligent, dedicated, Spirit-filled physician who gave his life to a study of both the word of God and the nature of man. He believed in three books of God — the Bible, the book of nature, and the book of human nature — and he believed that the Holy Guest from heaven was closely related to all three. On the fly-leaf of the book referred to above he quotes Dr. John Owen as saying, “Not to avow the Holy Spirit in his work is to be ashamed of the gospel and of the promise of Christ as if it were not to be owned in the world.”

THE SPIRITUAL SYSTEM

Richardson sees two great systems in the universe which appear as two separate worlds, one is material, the system of nature, and the other is intellectual, which is the spiritual system. Man is equipped to commune with both of these worlds; he belongs to both and both have contributed to his nature. Man can feel within himself the great truth that he is a citizen of two worlds; his physical body is subject to the laws of physics, while his spirit is subject to Eternal Mind. There is an internal consciousness, more dependable than the outward senses, that acquaints man with the inward workings and distinct character of spiritual existence. It is not satiated with the banquet nor content with bodily enjoyment. Unlike the ox that rests satisfied and undisturbed after feeding upon rich herbage, man will feel an emptiness of soul and discontentment with his lot even when every physical desire is gratified, if the spirit is neglected. Like the hart in a dry and thirsty land pants for the water brooks, so man’s soul longs for the living God.

By the bodily senses man lays hold upon the material world; by faith he perceives the spiritual world. Both worlds have their delights and charms for man, for they are both from the same creating hand. The physical world has power to delight man’s animal constitution and to satisfy his passionate desires, while the spiritual realm provides man a gaze into that glorious world which is the dwelling place of the angelic hosts and of the spirits of the just made perfect. There are evil spirits in the universe that are well acquainted with man’s spiritual nature that seek to interpose the gross material objects of fleshly enjoyment so as to hinder the light of the spiritual life from shining into man’s heart.

Richardson is very sensitive to the eternal conflict between good and evil. He believes in a real Satan that is ever busy seeking to separate man from God. Satan triumphs by means of the flesh, the world, and the pleasures of sinful indulgence. The godly must combat these corrupting influences. The saint is at war against sin — sin that works its way into his own life and that finds expression in the evil propensity of his own flesh. It is by means of the indwelling Spirit that man has the power to subordinate the flesh to the spirit. In a Spirit-filled life the intellectual nature of man holds command over the sensual. Man must therefore choose between the two worlds that make up his nature, thus to develop the spiritual powers within him or to succumb to his animal nature and live so as to gratify the flesh. If he chooses to join the forces of the Prince of this World, who rules in the hearts of disobedient, then he must suffer the eternal destruction prepared for the rebellious spirits in whose fellowship he is found. He must perish with the system to which he belongs.

If by receiving the Spirit of God he connects himself with the spiritual system, he will receive eternal life, for the destiny of the spiritual world is honor, glory and incorruptibility. To live after the flesh means death; to walk after the Spirit means eternal life. The vital truth is that man is not alone in his struggle with the powers of darkness. God has interfered in the struggle in man’s behalf. Not only has God provided reconciliation through the death of his Son, but he has also given the Spirit to counteract the influences of Satan. Man’s spiritual nature must be acted upon by Spirit. It was an evil Spirit that first planned his ruin; it is the good Spirit that accomplished his recovery.

THE INDWELLING SPIRIT

Richardson observes that when a man chooses the spiritual system, thus turning to God through faith and obedience, that two things are done for him; he is pardoned of his sins and he receives the Spirit of God. The pardon of sins necessarily precedes the gift of the Holy Spirit, for that which is pure must be received into a pure vessel. Once man has pardon and the gift of the Spirit he is prepared to be a partaker of the eternal glories of the spiritual system. Man needs pardon to prepare him to receive the Spirit, and he needs the Spirit to prepare him for eternal life.

There are several passages that are especially pertinent to the good doctor. He often quotes Eph. 1:13-14: “After that ye believed ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession.” An earnest is a part of the purchase money paid beforehand as a pledge that the remainder will be forthcoming at the appointed time, Richardson explains. He also emphasizes Eph.. 2:22: ‘Ye are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.” And also 1 Cor. 3:16: “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?”

Other passages that Richardson uses liberally to show how the Christian receives the indwelling Spirit are the following:

Rom. 8:16: “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.”

Acts 2:38: “Repent and be baptized for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Gal. 4:6: “And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.”

1 Cor. 6:19: “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?”

Acts 5:32: “And we are his witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him.”

Rom. 5:5: “Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.”

Heb. 6:4: “were made partakers of the Holy Ghost.”

Gal. 3:2: “Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?’”

Acts 19:2: : “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?” (Richardson says this was the great question in apostolic times, though too seldom asked in our day.)

1 John 3:13: “Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.”’

1 John 3:24: “And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.”

2 Cor. 1:21: “God hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.”

1 Thess. 4:8: “He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us his Holy Spirit.”

Tit. 3:5: “According to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.”

Luke 11:13: “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?”

Richardson insists that the Spirit dwells personally within the saint. He rejects such figurative explanations as “just as a speaker communicates his spirit to his audience, so do the words of Christ Communicate the Spirit to those who receive them.” Other explanations equate the Spirit with the word, so the more of the Bible one knows the more of the Spirit he has. Neither is the reception of the Holy Spirit to be confused with the New Birth itself, for the Spirit is given as a result of being born again. All such views, the doctor asserts, make the gift of the Spirit no more than a change in the state of the human mind or spirit. The doctor sees the Holy Spirit coming to dwell with the spirit of the believer as a guest, comforter and counselor. He is a person dwelling within the Christian. When he is asked to explain how this can be, how it is that the spirit of man and the Spirit of God can both dwell within the human body, he points out that it is not within his power to explain the workings of the power of God. He adds however: “He may perhaps prove it to his own satisfaction arithmetically: if he will only first explain how ONE spirit can dwell in the human body, and then simply multiply his explanations by the figure TWO.” He goes on to say that if this is too hard one might try his hand at explaining eight spirits in Mary Magdalene or a legion of them in another individual.

BEING “PAST FEELING”

Richardson thinks it dreadful when one renders himself “past feeling” (Eph. 4:19), and yet this often happens to people who are extremely cautious about feelings in religion. Rather than cultivating religious feeling along with all other human attributes, these extremists repress man’s emotional nature and seek to encase religion with the ices of a philosophical insensibility. No one is endangered by admitting special spiritual influences upon the heart so long as they are tested by the word of God. While it is a great error to measure the reception of the Spirit by “feelings alone,” it is also a mistake to say that the Spirit’s influence is restricted to the word. If the Spirit does only what a knowledge of the Bible does when one obeys it, then there is no reason for the indwelling Spirit. So the gift of the Spirit is useless and unnecessary if the word serves all the needs.

He tells us that it is a mistake to suppose that the Spirit of God cannot influence the heart except by the written word, that he cannot exert power over the disposition, over the feelings and affections, over the memory and the judgment of man. The doctor points out that some men can influence the minds of others apart from either written or spoken word, and surely Satan himself has direct access to the soul, instigating it to evil by suggesting thoughts, exciting feeling, awakening hopes, and by bringing things into remembrance. Cannot the Spirit of God work good within the human heart with powers equal to Satan? Paul prays that disciples “might be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man.” The Spirit serves as an inward monitor, combating the evil influences of Satan by enriching the springs of human thought, feeling, and action. Thus Paul tells us that “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us,” and therefore his fruits are love, joy, and peace — feeling and emotions of the soul!

The mission of the Spirit is not to provide new revelations, but to maintain in the soul those convictions, affections and dispositions by which the believer is kept close to the written word of God. The written word constantly furnished the appropriate tests by which man’s feelings may be tried. No one can place his feelings in opposition to the word of God! But feelings are vitally important; man becomes callous when his emotions are stifled within the bosom and he becomes “past feeling.” Richardson makes this point so strong as to say: “It is far better to be without knowledge than without feeling.” Indeed one cannot truly “know” God apart from the feelings of the soul.

It is here that the doctor postulates what this writer considers the most significant thesis of his series on the Spirit: just as a man increases in religious light of knowledge, so should he increase also in warmth of feeling and fervor of devotion. Some are too fond of light or else too much afraid of heat. The sun gives forth heat as well as light. The good doctor would have appreciated the recent rendering of Rom. 12:11 as “Be aglow with the Spirit.” He affirms that there can be no real Christian love, no true heart-felt religion, no fervor of devotion apart from the indwelling of the Spirit. The “fruits of the Spirit” can come only from the tree of a Spirit-filled life.

It is a point of special interest that in these vigorous ideas about the Spirit, which were published in the Millennial Harbinger, that Editor Campbell had difficulty in going along with his beloved physician. At the close of one of the essays the Editor appended a note to the readers in which he criticized Richardson for attempting to answer the difficult questions about the Spirit by the use of metaphorical language (“I do not think that men’s views are always safely inferred from their use of metaphors”). While Campbell doubts that any set of metaphors can explain how the Spirit transforms the soul, he suggests that “a proper class of metaphors on this theme is a desideratum,” and asks “our brother R. R., so addicted to metaphor, to furnish us with a new suit.” There is surely an element of Campbell’s sarcasm in these words.

While Richardson was always very sensitive to criticisms from Editor Campbell, whom he loved like a father, his reply on this occasion shows that he was no Casper Milquetoast. He expresses his regret in not being able to supply a new suit of metaphors for the Editor, for One “who opened his mouth in parables” and in metaphors, the Great Teacher, has provided an adequate suit of figures regarding the work of the Holy Spirit. The doctor proceeds to quote numerous passages in which Jesus uses metaphor in his instructions about the Spirit, including Lk. 11:9-13. The physician also states in reference to his remark about “the light of the word and the heat of the Spirit” the following: “Being, it seems, ‘addicted to metaphors,’ I will add further, that if any man will show to me his light without heat, I will engage to prove that it is nothing better than moonshine!”

The doctor was never more elegant! One can see from this round that the grand old Sage of Bethany did not win all his skirmishes. Richardson was no doubt goading Campbell when he said in the same context: “Some are too fond of light, else too much afraid of heat.” The doctor also adroitly refers his readers to “an admirable essay by brother Campbell” in which the Editor makes it clear that the original words of the New Testament require the conclusion that “the gift of the Holy Spirit” is the Holy Spirit himself. Campbell also intimates in the essay that the Holy Spirit exercises a distinct influence upon bodies, souls, and spirits of those who receive the Spirit as a gift. In several essays to follow (volume 5 of the Harbinger) Campbell has much to say about the Holy Spirit, and in general his position is much like that of Richardson, and they preceded the doctor’s essay by nearly ten years. There are some basic differences, however. Campbell, for instance, argues that the spiritual gifts in 1 Cor. 12 are different “measures of the Spirit” (John 3:34). Richardson would insist the spiritual gifts were something entirely different from the personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The big difference between their positions, however, is that the doctor placed entirely too much emphasis upon feeling to suit Campbell. The Editor was indeed a Lockean who could never go along with Richardson’s contention that feelings are even more important than knowledge.

In his Office of the Holy Spirit, written late in life, Richardson emphasizes even more the relationship between the indwelling Spirit and human emotions. He contends that man’s feelings are as reliable as the intellect: “Nor is he at all more liable to be deceived, as many erroneously suppose, by his feelings than by his reasonings.” While man is quick to discover deceitfulness in his emotions as the excitement of feeling subsides, he may be a lifetime working out the flaws in his inadequate knowledge and especially in his logic. False reasoning may mislead one throughout the whole of life. The warm heart may wish to do some generous deed only to be repressed by the frigid reasonings of the head; the springing emotions of tenderness, love, sympathy, penitence or trust are often crushed by a thousand cold and selfish considerations of the intellect.

The doctor points to childhood as the only time when man’s emotional nature seems free to express itself. In most of life the native affections of the heart are spoiled by the empty formalities and hollow courtesies of the world. Much evil springs from this habitual repression of feeling, which may eventually extinguish every throb of emotion in the human breast. The sympathy and tears of Jesus teach us no such lesson. He regrets that so many seem to think that religion is designed for the intellect alone, and that they have a dislike for all excitement and every manifestation of emotion. And yet he is aware of those who make religion a matter of emotionalism, or feelings alone. So the doctor stresses the fact that Christianity is designed for both the head and the heart. The Holy Spirit dwells within the Christian to influence both his intelligence and his emotions, and to implant a tenderness and such “fruits of the Spirit” as to make man like a child again, and thus make him a part of the kingdom of God.

BAPTISM OF THE HOLY GHOST

Richardson believes that every saint of God has the promise of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, that this is indeed but a metaphorical description of “the gift of the Holy Spirit” which is bestowed upon the penitent believer when he is immersed into Christ. Those passages which our people have often restricted to the apostles the doctor applies to all believers. Mark 1:8: “I indeed have baptized you with water, but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost.”

The design of Jesus’ ministry was to prepare disciples for the reception of the Spirit. The baptism of the Holy Spirit was the sending and giving of the Paraclete or Comforter to all Christians. The “baptism of fire” is the judgment that Christ would bring upon all who reject him. All saints are “filled with the Holy Spirit” just as the apostles were on Pentecost. It is true, the doctor admits, that the apostles had certain manifestations of the Spirit for the purpose of confirming their testimony and giving them such ability as to speak different languages, but all this is quite unrelated to the pouring Out of the Spirit, which is for all God’s people.

He cites Titus 3:5: “He saved us by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit, which he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour.” The pouring out of the Spirit is the baptism of the Spirit that Christ came to give, and it is made clear in this passage that all who are immersed into Christ receive this baptism of the Spirit. 1 Cor. 12:13 is also emphasized: “By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jew or Gentile, whether we be bond or free, and have all been made to drink of one Spirit.” It is this spiritual baptism that unites all believers in Christ in the one body. The Greek preposition en shows that it is actually the Holy Spirit that is the element in which the saint is baptized. This forbids applying this passage to water baptism. Paul is not referring to the formal act of immersion that brings one into Christ from the world, but “his subject is the real spiritual unity which exists in the body of Christ.” Believers are not one by virtue of water baptism, for there are many parties of immersionists, but they find unity in the body when they are pervaded by one Spirit. This fits the context of 1 Cor. 12, while water baptism does not.

This baptism of the Holy Spirit provides for the saint “to drink of one Spirit.” This fulfills the promise of Jesus that “whosoever thirsted should come to him and drink, and that the water he would give should be a well of water in the believer, springing up into everlasting life.” It is this abundant reception of the Spirit that transforms the sinner into the image of Christ. Even the ethical life of Jesus, his great exemplary life on earth, was not sufficient to change the lives of the disciples, for they continue to be proud, weak, lying, faltering men even unto Pentecost. Ethical precepts alone can hardly change the human heart. It was “the power from on high” that changed the lives of the disciples. It was only when they “walked in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit” which came to them by the pouring forth of the Spirit into their hearts that they were changed men.

Summary of Richardson’s Significance

As a brief summary of Robert Richardson’s contribution to the Restoration Movement we suggest the following, which we believe are inferred by this presentation of his life and work.

1. His most significant contribution was his own Spirit-filled life and his emphasis upon the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian. While most of the pioneers were concerned with the extreme views on the work of the Holy Spirit in conversion and spent considerable time and effort arguing this point with the sects, the doctor was primarily interested in the Spirit’s influence in the life of the Christian. He saw the indwelling Spirit as the chief end of Christianity. He stood almost alone among the pioneer Disciples in emphasizing feeling and experience in religion. He was in this respect “the Melancthon of the Restoration Movement.”

2. There is no way of ascertaining exactly how influential he was in combating Lockean empiricism in the early period of the Movement, but since he wrote so voluminously upon subjects hardly touched upon by others, and since his writings were widely read, we may conclude that he served as a balance wheel in a time when gospel preachers were so enraptured by English empiricism as to carry copies of John Locke in their saddlebags. It made a difference when they read Richardson. He put heart and feeling into a Movement that was in danger of becoming intellectually frigid.

3. His own exemplary life must have had tremendous effect upon all who knew him, especially his students who became leaders in the Restoration Movement. He fought against severe limitations, including poverty and poor eyesight, to attain great heights in intellectual grace. It is hardly conceivable that a busy physician would study Christianity with such diligence as to know by memory all four records of the gospel in the original Greek. He was perhaps the keenest thinker of all our pioneer fathers. He was well read in many fields. He was a beloved physician, a good man, a gentleman, humble and self-effacing, generous and benevolent. He was a splendid teacher and perhaps the best writer of all our early editors.

4. His early training equipped him in a special way for his role in the Disciple movement. From early youth he was trained in the fine arts. He communed with artists and their art, musicians and their music. He too was both an artist and a musician, and he knew French almost as well as English. He was a poet at heart and even somewhat in practice. His love for the beautiful and for the aesthetic were developed by his cultured parents. And yet his mind was scientific, logical, calculating. He was a professor of chemistry, a doctor of medicine, and a scientific farmer. It was consistent for him to adopt the pen name of Luke. This intellectual balance between the aesthetic and the scientific he sought to instill into the budding religious reformation that he loved so much.

5. He set an example as a multi-disciplined man, showing that the Christian can truly be “prepared unto every good work,” even including the ministry of the word in which he supports himself. He was evidence that a man can be very productive in the ministry and yet serve at his own expense. He was of course called upon to suffer hardship. He stands in bold contrast to modern discipledom where a “Pastor System” is securely established upon the principle of being hired to preach the gospel and where preaching has become a rather lucrative and distinguished profession.

6. His influence on Campbell is significant, especially his exemplary relationship to him. His labors with the Millennial Harbinger and Bethany College made it possible for Campbell to do extensive traveling. It is most significant that he could differ with Campbell and even oppose some of his teaching, and yet love and respect him so much. Had the doctor been of a different spirit he could have injured the cause of Restoration. He shows us that men can differ and yet enjoy fellowship with each other, and how love can hide the sins they see in each other. We think it not amiss to conclude that Richardson’s keen perception and analytical thinking was helpful to Campbell in working out his own ideas. It is not without reason that some conclude that Richardson’s influence can be seen in Campbell’s Christian System. Last, but not least (and yet by no means first), is Richardson’s worthy contribution of The Memoirs of Alexander Campbell, which will remain a classic in the literature of the Restoration Movement, not only as a thorough treatment of the Sage of Bethany, but also as a reflection of the spirit and temper of the time, places, and persons that initiated the cause of Restoration that so many of us have grown to love so much.