Notes from Travels in Europe …

MY PILGRIMAGE TO AHOREY

After that grim night in Armagh I was met at my hotel the next morning by Dr. Scott, pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Ahorey, a small village some ten miles from Armagh. It was such a blessing to have Dr. Scott as my host, for he is a longtime resident of the area and is most resourceful on “Campbell country,” which includes Richhill, Market Hill, Hamilton’s Bawn, and Ahorey, the places associated with the life and work of the Campbells. Dr. Scott did his doctorate at King’s College, Dublin, in an area of church history that includes the Ireland of Thomas Campbell’s day, and so he is most alert to the political and economic conditions that led Father Thomas to leave Ireland for America in 1807, to be joined there two years later by his son Alexander and the rest of his family.

I had the advantage of being part of “the Bethany family” that had entertained the Scotts during their visit to Bethany and the States a few years ago. Even though Ouida and I had by then moved from Bethany, the Scotts felt they were returning part of the hospitality tendered them in those picturesque West Virginia hills, and so they did it up right. The lady of the manse prepared a boiled Irish dinner, gracious as it was delicious, and we talked about the Lord, the Campbells, Watergate, the Irish war, and drew comparisons between Ahorey and Bethany. Dr. Scott reminded me that once Father Thomas arrived in western Pennsylvania he likened it to the rolling hills of his native Ireland. As one looks out upon those hills that have inspired many an Irish poet, still almost as untouched as in the early 1800’s, he is reminded of the terrain around Bethany for which Uncle Alex reserved that special adjective salubrious.

Mrs. Scott told me with that Irish emphasis that Thomas Campbell was by far her favorite, being the sweet and compassionate soul that he was, and that she had little use for Alexander, whom she saw as austere and unyielding. She yielded just a little when I explained that Alex found himself in the fight of his life on the American frontier where religious bigotry was as fierce as its mountain lions, and that those who would dare had to be undaunting. And she yielded even more when I told of Alex’s tenderness with Selina, when he would miss her about the house only to find her grieving inconsolably at the newly covered grave of her own little Wycliffe, buried alongside Margaret’s children, whom she had also nursed in their illnesses and borne to “God’s acre.” Easing up behind her, he would whisper those words again and again that she could not quite comprehend, “They are not here, my dear, they are not here.” Those men who have to wage the toughest warfare are often the gentlest souls.

Alexander was a boy of about eight or nine when the family moved to Ahorey, and his most impressionable years were those of his father’s nine-year ministry with this Seceder Presbyterian Church, which has been a continuing congregation all these years. As I moved up and down the aisle of the old building, still almost identical to the way it was then, I thought of those influences brought to bear upon young Campbell as he grew up in those pews, learning piety and scholarship from his pastoral father and commitment and integrity from his mother.

Dr. Scott and I talked of the time when young Alex sat there as a boy when a troop of Welch horsemen surrounded the place, The captain of the troop supposed he had found a covey of rebels, so, storming into the service, he created a moment of great suspense. As he walked down the aisle, an elder whispered to Pastor Campbell, “Pray, sir, pray!” Whereupon the pastor prayed, including extensive quotes from Ps, 46, until finally the soldier left them in peace.

My host urged me into the pulpit. He said, “Surely you want to stand in Thomas Campbell’s pulpit” to my hesitancy to impose myself. I told him I would read once more the psalm that Father Thomas quoted on the occasion referred to. While he occupied one of the pews in quiet dignity, I read the whole of Psa. 46, which begins with “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.” Those were uneasy times for the Campbells, and even when they sought peace in a new country, they found their lives continuing in such turbulence that Psa. 46 remained typical of the resource of strength they had to repeatedly call upon.

A bell tower now graces the building, erected by funds raised by American Disciples in memory of Thomas Campbell. A relief bedecks a vestibule wall, honoring him as the church’s pastor. A stained glass window, sponsored by the World Convention of Churches of Christ, is in memory of Alexander, “A member of this congregation, who with his Father, pastor of this church, founded the Christian Church in America.” It appropriately depicts an open Bible.

Dr. Scott has a little library of Restoration Movement books, and he is well aware of the Movement’s significance in the States and elsewhere, and he is proud of the role his church played in it all. He says his members were rather vague about it all when he began his work there 18 years ago, but they have come to have some appreciation of it. He was of great help to me in explaining Father Thomas’ involvement in unity efforts while he was still in Ireland, working as he did for the unity of his own Presbyterian church, which was finally effected some years after he had left for the States. Though he belonged to a strict sect of the Presbyterians that broke away from the state church, he always had an independent mind and a sense of unity of the church.

My host walked me about Richhill, where I mailed a letter to Ouida and saw the building where Thomas and Alexander conducted a school, still in good repair. And I saw the old church where preachers of independent mind proclaimed their views of reformation, including some of the Haldane persuasion (the Campbells probably heard James Haldane at Richhill, the reformer from Scotland) and others of the persuasion that eventually formed the Plymouth Brethren. It was there in Richhill that the synod once met to consider the uniting of the Burgher and Anti-Burgher Presbyterians, something dear to the heart of Thomas Campbell. In his address to them on that occasion he said things about the oneness of the church and the sinfulness of divisions similar to what he later said in the Declaration and Address in this country.

We also visited nearby Market Hill where young Alex was in elementary school and where he boarded with a local merchant after his family had moved to a farm near Ahorey. Hamilton’s Bawn, the Bawn standing for barn, is the tiny village where the family lived for awhile, walking to Ahorey two or three miles distance for their meetings.

It was sad to see these peaceful little communities barricaded by troops because of the current religious war, reflecting a condition that has been all too similar all these years, causing anyone, then or now, to think of moving on to a more peaceful land such as ours. It took both vision and fortitude for a self-effacing man like Thomas Campbell to leave country, family and kin and embark upon a dangerous voyage for a new world. He had no way of even imagining what awaited him and his son in the American west.

As long as I was in North Ireland I continued to see a bruised land. Railway terminals bombed out, some having no toilet facilities because of it; a country of fear and uncertainty, wracked by fratricide; a land of ropes and barricades, with travelers few and far between. But I made my way through Dublin to Limerick, to that “Bed and Breakfast” dump that I’ve told about, and on to Shannon for the flight home. But this was Eire in the south where there are no visible marks of civil strife, and where they have their own money, though they do accept British currency.

Shannon is Eire’s claim to progress and prosperity, with lots of business booming in the airport area. A giant Irish Airlines jet bore me to New York in seven hours nonstop. A new brother, Bryan Boss, met me at Kennedy and took me to Ron and Ruann Miller’s in Hempstead for a round of meetings for the weekend before Christmas, but amidst all the action it was 3 a. m. by my old European time, and for awhile I didn’t know what continent I was on. I spoke on unity at the Mid-Hudson Christian Church on Lord’s day and visited with Warren and Norma Van Tuyl, a couple I immersed into Christ almost 30 years ago back in New Jersey while at Princeton. They have hung in all these years, but their little Jennifer, whose picture we have as a baby in Ouida’s arms, is no longer all that little. She now sports a law degree and is an assistant D. A.! Life does sometimes bear down on me like that.

The Van Tuyls bore me to LaGaurdia on a pleasant journey of reminiscing, and while I was still trying to put Europe back together I found myself none too soon at the giant D-FW airport, which no one can put together. The next day the family and I took off for our little laughing place on Cedar Creek lake in East Texas, with Mother Pitts, who had stayed with Ouida during my absence, in tow. Before a roaring fire on Christmas Eve I told about “reconciled diversity” in Geneva, our blessed heritage from Scotland, that grim night in North Ireland, and my pilgrimage to Ahorey. And now I’ve told you. —the Editor