THE FROLIC OF THE PIONEERS
By LOUIS COCHRAN

The place is Heaven; the time, the Present; the Characters, the Pioneers of the Restoration Movement; the Archangel Gabriel, and the Archangel Michael with the Flaming Sword, and the Devil.

The stars of Heaven cast a mellow radiance over Alexander Campbell as he folded his wings and glided to the designated rendezvous near the ramparts of the Celestial City. He hovered for a moment before settling close to the entrance to Gabriel’s study, mindful lest he disturb the mighty Archangel. With all his shortcomings, Alexander told himself, he had done his mortal best when on earth to point the way to Salvation. Many had scorned him, but he had also had his followers, and it was with a few of those who had labored with him the longest, and perhaps had loved him the most, that he had arranged for this reunion, a “Frolic”, Raccoon John Smith would call it; a reassessment and evaluation of their work on earth, now a century passed. He bowed gravely to the Archangel Michael with the Flaming Sword, gliding past him into Gabriel’s sanctum, and resisted the impulse to peer over the gleaming white ramparts.

He recalled what the Archangel Gabriel had told him when he had first petitioned for the reunion. “You are impatient, my son,” he had said. “The smell of the earth is still about you. You are but an Apprentice in Heaven as yet. But the experience may be a lesson for you, and for the others, too; so I will consent for a few of your old comrades to review with you the results of your labors, even though only a paltry century has passed since you left the earth.”

Alexander had the uneasy feeling that Gabriel had been half-provoked with him; a vision strong upon him of the Angel’s flaming wrath when aroused by the face of evil. But the thought was dispelled as a sudden rustling arose behind him, a murmuring as of warm friends in the greeting of one another; restrained yet filled with deep emotion; quick, hearty handclasps and warm chuckles of great souls who loved deeply, and had labored long together in a mighty cause, and had prevailed.

Or had they?

The thought disturbed Alexander as he turned slowly to face them, permitting himself the luxury of that slow, twisted smile he usually had reserved in that other life for his family and for little children, his long Roman nose, as ever, standing a little to the right.

They were all there, those early leaders of that dedicated host who had first turned aside from their human creeds and had followed him into the Movement for the Restoration of the New Testament Church, confident that theirs was the will of God. And now they waited for him to speak, as they had waited on earth for him to begin his “monologues,” as his enemies had styled his conferences with his associates; an opinionated autocrat, they had called him, who would brook no will but his own.

He winced at the recollection, acknowledging the truth of it, in part. Bur he had grown in grace as he had grown older among men, and wiser, he hoped; and before his summons had come he had even dared say that Christians could be found in all parties; although it was said he was senile when he spoke thus, or, like Paul before Agrippa, he had become mad with much learning. He had been the unquestioned leader of strong men in the greatest Reformation since Martin Luther, and if he sometimes experienced a touch of earthly pride in his accomplishments, at least on earth he had never claimed to be a saint. But no indecisive weakling could have led that Movement, he told himself. Men like his own father, Thomas Campbell, and Barton Warren Stone, and Walter Scott, and Raccoon John Smith, and Jacob Creath and Phillip Fall, and John T. Johnson and William K. Pendleton, and other leaders of the Restoration Movement, who had stood shoulder to shoulder with him during those early days, had strong minds of their own which no man could sway unduly, each of them a priest before God in his own right.

He waved at Raccoon John Smith standing square-footed on the fringe of the little group, a man who feared no man nor the devil, only God. The brawny mountaineer seemed full-fleshed and muscular as when in the prime of manhood he had initiated the first successful, voluntary experiment in Christian Union ever consummated between two wholly separate and distinct communions, when the “Disciples” under his own leadership, and the “Christians” under Barton Stone, had united into one body at Lexington, Kentucky, on that first day in January, 1832.

Alexander turned to Barton Stone, who stood watching him with warm, steady eyes, waiting for him to speak. He felt a little guilty as their hands clasped. He should have welcomed Barton Stone’s advances on earth with greater warmth; perhaps in his earthly state he had been a mite jealous of Stone’s priorities in Christian unity; of his priority in time, priority in experience, priority in independence of the Movement, and priority in the repudiation of Calvinistic theology. Stone had achieved all this, and more, in his sacrificial devotion to the Cause, and his debt to him no man could tell.

Quickly, to hide his emotion, Alexander turned and embraced his father, Thomas Campbell, clasping his arms about his shoulders as he had done when his father had been old and bent and blind in the world of men. Now Thomas Campbell stood straight and slender, his mild brown eyes gleaming with fatherly pride in his tall son.

It was none else than Thomas Campbell. thought Alexander, who gave mankind its Declaration of Independence from spiritual bondage when he wrote his Declaration and Address in the mountains of western Pennsylvania:

The Church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally and constitutionally one . . .

The words echoed in his ears, stirring him as always with renewed purpose and inspiration:

Full knowledge of all revealed truth is not necessary to entitle persons to membership . . . Neither should they for this purpose be required to make a profession more extensive than their knowledge.

All who are thus qualified should love one another, as brothers, and be united as children of one family.

Division among Christians is a horrid evil, fraught with many evils.

No Declaration had been more right for the times than that one. But, after one hundred and fifty years, was it still right? They would soon see. God’s ways are immutable and everlasting; His breath is the ocean breeze and His footsteps are the sea. There is no change in God. But for finite man, change is, indeed, his only constancy. Had their brethren on earth been wise enough to see when change was needed? Had they been courageous enough to accept it when they did see it?

“Where the Scriptures speak, we speak,” Father Thomas had pronounced as the infallible Rule of faith and practice; “where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent.”

Under the influence of this Rule, thousands of men had broken their spiritual bondage, and, casting aside their human creeds, had rushed back to what they conceived to be the New Testament Church. Was the Rule still their guide? Or could it be, Heaven spare the thought, that they had attempted to interpret the silences as well as the commandments, and had thus created a babel of voices? Surely they still held to that cherished maxim: ‘In essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty; in all things, love.”

Or did they?

Alexander turned to greet Walter Scott. When he was at his best, no man on earth could evangelize with the power and eloquence of Walter Scott, his five-fingered program of salvation unanswerable in its logic. “Faith, repentance, baptism, remission of sins, and the gift of the Holy Spirit,” Scott had said. Thousands had been led to salvation by this formula, and millions more by this time had doubtless been converted by it.

They embraced, Alexander’s halo a trifle awry now, and he turned to Robert Richardson. He owed much to Dr. Richardson: scientist, teacher, writer, scholar, preacher; for his selflessness, his devotion to Bethany College, his friend and physician, and his great biographer. He would not ask so much of him were they to live in human life again.

There was John T. Johnson, as straight and solemn as the Judge he had been on earth, a shining armour about him, who had forsaken a brilliant political career among men to be an Evangelist of the Lord; William K. Pendleton, who had twice been his son-in-law, and his successor as president of Bethany College and as editor of the Millennial Harbinger; still the affable cultured Virginia gentleman, standing now beside Raccoon John Smith, whose bold blue eyes were twinkling as though he were about to erupt into speech.

Raccoon John Smith had never been in awe of him, as some of the others had been, and to forestall a possible witticism which might seem too earthy, if Raccoon John had a mind to make it so, he turned quickly to greet Jacob Creath, the greatest natural orator of them all, and Phillip Fall, the schoolmaster and preacher who had taken whole congregations with him at Nashville, and at Louisville, when he broke the shackles of human creeds and began preaching the Gospel according to the unfettered teachings of Christ and His Apostles.

There were others on the edge of the little group: James A. Garfield, first known to him as a student, who had lived to become President of the United States; David S. Burnett, Moses E. Lard, John Rogers and Samuel Rogers, David Purviance, Alexander Proctor, and in little whorls and eddies still others were arriving. He would want to greet them all. These were the stout souls of the early days who had borne the heat of battle; pillars of strength in a storm-wracked land, all of them, and scores more like them. And then Raccoon John Smith waved his arms as though unable any longer to restrain himself, his deep voice filling the heavens with its resonance.

“I say, Bishop,” he called, “if it’s in your mind that we visit the earth again, I want to go back to auld Kaintucky. There must be descendants of some of my Baptist brethren there I could capsize, and thus make our victory complete!”

Alexander Campbell frowned a little at the title, “Bishop,” even as he chuckled. There was no irreverence in Raccoon John Smith, but there was no withholding his uninhibited spirit. He knew how Alexander disapproved of all titles for preachers which set them apart from their fellow men. Did he also suspect that he had taken a secret satisfaction in this one of “Bishop,” fastened upon him by his neighbors, seeking to justify it on the grounds of Scriptural authority? He ignored the shaft. He loved men like Raccoon John Smith, ever searching for the Truth, and ever ready, whatever the consequences, to speak his mind for what he considered to be the truth.

“No,” said Alexander. “This meeting is but a little frolic of the pioneers, as you might say, a reunion of old friends, that we might glimpse together the rewards of our labors upon the earth. The Archangel Gabriel thought the experience would sweeten our souls, though whether with joy or with sorrow, we shall soon learn.”

Raccoon John Smith shook his head. “There can be no sorrow in Heaven,” he said. “It is a joy merely to be here. Why, I’m seeing some old friends here I frankly never expected would get here at all.”

Alexander joined in the quiet laughter at the sally, his own face alight in anticipation and promise.

“It is but the twinkling of an eye, or less, in the Lord’s time, since most of us left the earth. But in man’s time it has been about a hundred years, a full century. Mighty works must have been accomplished; the victory of the cause we set in motion must be near completion.”

“When I left in 1868,” mused Raccoon John Smith, thoughtfully, “our ‘peculiar plea,” as they called it, was doing well; it was sweeping everything before it. It must have taken the whole world by now!”

Barton Stone nodded, his face aglow. “Yes, the hundreds that came to be called ‘Christian’ at Cane Ridge must have increased by now to millions, and all members of one church, one body in Christ!”

Alexander smiled in agreement. “Much should have been accomplished,” he said, “much can be expected. Come! Let us proceed to the ramparts and view for ourselves the fruits of our labors!!”

There was a happy, expectant rustle of wings as they gathered before the ramparts. For a moment there was silence as they gazed eagerly downward, their faces alight in anticipation. And then it was as though a thickness had settled among them, a wall of bewilderment and incomprehension; a quick in taking of breath which left them numb. For a full moment they stood, speechless in astonishment.

Father Thomas was the first to break the silence, his gentle voice almost a prayer. “I cannot believe it!” he said. “What has happened? It looks worse than when we left there!”

Barton Stone turned to Alexander, almost dazed. “That Christian Unity of which we were so proud? Where is it? I see only sectarian pride and pomp and strife. And divisions! Even in our own brotherhood!”

“It’s because we were guilty of sinful pride,” said Raccoon John Smith hoarsely. He mopped his brow as though to wipe away a chill. “We thought we were Daniels come to judgment. Why,” he peered closer, “I even see women preachers among our people!”

Alexander nodded, staring in almost disbelief. “They seem to be divided into three parts, like Caesar’s Gaul,” he said. “Look! There is one group calling itself ‘Disciples’; another ‘Christians’ or ‘Independents’; and still another, ‘The Church of Christ’. And they’re running in all directions, further dividing themselves. They’re scoffing at one another, and hurling anathemas!”

Walter Scott interrupted him, his voice heavy with concern. “And they’re divided on such non-essentials,” he said. “I see organists and anti-organists; one-cuppers and many-cuppers; cooperatists and non-cooperatists; open communionists and closed communionists; open membership and closed membership groups. And look here!” He pointed downward. “There are scores of theological seminaries, despite your polemics against them, Mr. Campbell. They have forsaken the old slogans; the five-starred way of salvation has been forgotten!”

“And look at the organizations!” said Phillip S. Fall. “They seem obsessed with organizations! The chief concern of one group now seems to be ‘restructuring’ their organized life, whatever that means.” He shook his head sadly. “I fear our brethren are leaving the task of converting the world to their organizations.”

Barton Stone pushed closer to the ramparts, peering anxiously upon the earth. “I’m trying to determine just what they do believe now,” he said. ‘Tm wondering if they themselves know.”

“They are going straight to the devil!” said Raccoon John Smith. “The brethren we led out of denominationalism are running like rabbits back to their shelter. I move we petition the Archangel for permission to drown the lot of them and start all over again!”

Robert Richardson turned his quiet eyes on Alexander. “What has become of our beloved Reformation, Mr. Campbell, our cherished movement to return to the simple teachings of the Gospel, our plea for Christian Unity? What has happened to our people?”

A rumbling voice came to them across the celestial intercommunication system, as though from a cavernous depth. “I can tell you what has happened to them! I, Beelzebub, the Prince of Devils, speak to you. Some of your brethren you see upon the earth are, indeed, among my choicest subjects, and I welcome them. It is I, the Devil, the King of Sin, and Lord of Hell, who has caused the strife among them. It is I who have created the divisions, the confusions, the distrust, the worldly ambitions. It is I who have caused them to point the finger of suspicion and doubt at one another. I have sown dissension among them, and have throttled their desire to love one another.” He laughed, a deep, penetrating rumble. “Your work is undone, ‘Bishop’ Campbell; you are a failure!”

Alexander stepped forward, his face stern. “Shut off that intercom! “ he ordered. “We had enough of the Devil while on earth without being taunted by him in Heaven. Was that some of your mischief, Raccoon John? Did you throw that switch?”

“Yes, I did it,” admitted Raccoon John Smith, as with a sharp click the connection was severed and the taunting voice abruptly ceased. “Let that be a lesson to all of us. We have only halfway obeyed the Gospel. The Saviour told us to watch as well as pray, and we neglected to watch over our brethren upon the earth. It’s partly our fault that the Devil got in his unholy work. Now the only remedy, as I said, is to drown the lot of them as they did in Noah’s time and begin again.”

Instantly, cries of protest arose.

“No! They can be saved,” cried one. “They can again be one body in Christ. But they must first abandon instruments of music in their worship. That has caused the trouble!”

“No, it is their organizations!” said another. “The trouble is caused by their church organizations and bureaucracies. All central organized church work is wrong!”

“No! No! The fault is plainly open-membership,” another said. “It is a shameful, dreadful sin. No one should be accepted into membership with the saints until he is baptized by immersion!”

“Open-membership is no worse than open communion,” cried another. ‘They both delight the Devil and open the sluice gates to damnation!”

The babel of voices rose higher and higher until the curious began to come out from the corridors of Heaven, and even the Archangel Michael with the Flaming Sword emerged for a moment from his conference with Gabriel, and stared at them sternly. And then the uproar subsided as quickly as it had begun, and they looked at one another in sudden shame and soreness of heart.

John T. Johnson pushed close to Alexander and spoke solemnly as he would have done from the bench. ‘We could ask for an injunction against the Devil,” he said. “We could petition the Archangels for an injunction prohibiting His Satanic Majesty from ever again stalking the earth. His evil influence among men should be restrained.”

Alexander looked at him in gentle reproof. “And thus deprive man of his free will, his right of choice?” he said. “No, that is not the way, our brethren must shame the Devil, and seek their salvation through their own free will, or be resigned to hell. Even though they destroy themselves, they have the right of choice. That is man’s divinity!”

There was silence for a moment, and then Alexander Campbell continued, his voice rising. “We are saints now, they tell us, but even so, we are still so soon from our human weaknesses that we should be able to understand and to bear more patiently with those still on earth, as Moses and the prophets and all the other saints did for us in our time. And besides,” his voice trailed off and for a moment the group thought he would not finish, “Besides,” he resumed slowly, speaking now with visible effort, “perhaps we are not wholly guiltless. Perhaps we stressed too much on earth the form of salvation and Christian unity instead of stressing the basis of it, which is our faith in God. Perhaps we talked too much of a return to New Testament practices of the early church, and not enough of advancing in Christian grace.” He paused, and then went on firmly. “I see the situation more clearly now. In spite of their confusion, our brethren are not lost. Rather, they have found themselves! They are beginning to move the church into the mainstream of current human life, where it was in the beginning and must ever be if it is to bear witness for the cause of Christ. They have come to realize that the essential facts of good and evil, the sublime truth of God, the saving power of Jesus — all these fundamental articles of faith we imparted to them, must be translated in each age by the church, in terms men of that age find vital. In effecting this translation to the needs of their age, our brethren seem to us confused, but that is only because they have become not quite so convinced that they are the only righteous ones; that they alone have all the truth.”

“I agree,” said Barton Stone, “and I can see, too, that their efforts in translating the eternal truths to the needs of their own are giving them a new humility, and that humility is spreading among all followers of Jesus, even to the denominations.” He spoke softly, bending his head as though listening to earthly sounds, his face aglow. “They are all talking Christian unity now; for the first time in history they are beginning to realize that no man, nor any body of men, can possess all of God’s truth. Not even ourselves.”

Alexander joined him, peering closely upon earth, and listening. “Yet they are doing it without surrendering a single Gospel fact,” he said. “They are beginning to realize there may be ten thousand opinions, but, by speaking in terms of the Scriptures, no offense is given to any brother, no pride of doctrine engendered, nor divisions created. By thus speaking the same things, mankind may come in time to think the same things, and in the end be of one mind and body of Christ. Thus once I taught on earth and thus I do believe now.”

He paused, a sense of remembering in him, and then went on. “I was once so certain that I had the truth, the only truth and all the truth, that, like the Indian’s tree I leaned the other way. I was once so strict a Separatist that I would neither pray nor sing with anyone not as perfect as I supposed myself to be. And then I discovered that on the principle of my conduct, there would never be a congregation or church upon earth. I tell you,” his voice rose to a new sternness, “this plan of making our own nest, and fluttering over our own brood, of building our own tent and so confining all goodness and grace to our noble selves and the elect few like us, is the quintessence of sublimated Pharasaism. On earth, as in Heaven, we can have none of it! God is love, and love is the law of life! Our brethren must realize that sublime fact before they can save our movement for Christian unity, or themselves. Whatever their differences in forms and procedures, their status as a Christian body, or their opinions on matters of faith and order, they must be governed by love, and give their hearts to Him who loveth most!”

He turned from the ramparts and spoke directly to the group, a look of serenity and growing confidence on his face. “That, gentlemen, will be the salvation of our brethren upon the earth. They must decide; they must make the choice. They must realize that a Brotherhood that does not remember what it was yesterday, that does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do, is a futile thing. But I would not if I could take from any one of them that spark of divinity, that mark of the Godhead, which gives him the power and the choice to save or destroy himself.”

There was a silence over the face of Heaven, and as they waited the Archangel Gabriel and the Archangel Michael silently joined them, a sign that their time together was coming to a close, Michael’s Flaming Sword held downward, his hands folded about the hilt of it, a shining expectancy in their faces.

Alexander Campbell glanced at them, and his voice rose as if in triumphant vision. “In their quest for salvation and Christian unity, our brethren will learn that it is the image of Christ the world looks for and demands in His disciples,” he said. “And this does not consist in being exact in a few things, but in one’s general devotion to the whole truth so far as he knows it. We cannot make any one duty the standard of the Christian state, not even immersion. Everyone who believes in his heart that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of God, and repents of his sins, and obeys Him in all things according to his measure of knowledge of His will, is a Christian and a son of God!”

A rustle of wings; a faint exhalation of breath as those about nodded in agreement; a growing exultation in their hearts. And there was a silence, an emptiness, and the Archangel Gabriel and the Archangel Michael stood alone, smiling at each other. — 624 23rd St., Santa Monica, Calif.

_________________

An address delivered at the 8th Annual Dinner of the Disciples of Christ Historical Society, October 5, 1964.

The Wisdom of Einstein

People will only read what they already believe.

The Europeans have something the Americans have not yet learned — an appreciation of thought.

One quality essential for science which some physicists lack — humility.

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

If your paper is marked FINAL NOTICE, it means your subscription expired with the previous issue, and that you will no longer receive the paper unless you renew.