Bicentennial Notes on Restoration History . . .

IT BEGAN IN SCOTLAND

It is always risky to attempt to pinpoint the exact moment of any significant movement in history. I shall take that risk, however, for it should prove to be both interesting and helpful to be able to look back upon a single instance in history as the beginning of our Restoration Movement. I say our in reference to the Campbell-Stone reformatory efforts of last century, of which the Christian Churches-Churches of Christ are heirs. Most of us are aware of various restoration efforts through the centuries, and few there are of us who suppose that ours is the only such effort. But it is ours that we are studying in this series, so that we might better understand where we came from and where we ought to be going. In our first installment we got a general view of restoration efforts up to the American Revolution. Now we are ready to see how the Campbell-Stone effort itself got off the ground, developed, and went on to have the impact it had. And in this installment I propose to describe the precise incident that spurred our Movement into existence, along with the attending circumstances.

To do this sort of thing is a bit arbitrary perhaps. It is like naming the starting point of the Protestant Reformation or the American Revolution. If one points to the moment that Luther nailed the 95 theses to the cathedral door in Wittenburg as the start of the Reformation, he is not necessarily ignoring the influence of a Wycliffe or a Tyndale. He is only saying that incident provided the spark, without which it would have been a different story.

Some historians prefer to date the American Revolution from that moment in Concord when “the shot was fired heard round the world.” I would date it from that day when the colonists met to ratify the Declaration of Independence, the exact moment being when John Hancock, the president of the congress, took pen in hand and became the first of 56 signers. “There,” he said, imposing his bold and graceful signature on the document, “King George can read it without his spectacles, and he can raise the price of 500 pounds he now has on my head!” That was a great moment, a moment in which a new nation was born.

Our Movement began with a similarly dramatic moment and with the same kind of moral courage. The year was 1809, the place Glasgow, Scotland. The occasion was the semi-annual communion service of the Anti-Burgher Seceder Presbyterian Church. Eight hundred Scots had gathered for the occasion, a service restricted to that particular sect, which fastidiously excluded even other kinds of Presbyterians. But one of them, a 21-year old student at Glasgow University, lately come from Ireland, was troubled with gnawing doubts about breaking bread in such a sectarian atmosphere. Having been examined by the elders and found worthy of communion, he had been given a metal token by which he could gain access to the service. Token in hand, he waited for the last of eight or nine tables to be served, hoping he might resolve his doubts in those last moments.

With doubts still plaguing him, he dropped the token in the plate as it came by, but refused to break the bread or drink the cup, realizing as he did then that it was a communion with Christ from which other believers were barred. He turned away and walked out — and life was never again the same for Alexander Campbell. His biographer and physician, Robert Richardson, wrote of that occasion: “It was at this moment that the struggle in his mind was completed, and the ring of the token, falling upon the plate, announced the instant at which he renounced Presbyterianism forever — the leaden voucher becoming thus a token not of communion but of separation.”

We’ll let that “moment” be the beginning of the Restoration Movement in America. I realize that James O’Kelly and Barton Stone, along with many others, had already begun their labors in the New World. Even Alexander’s own father was having experiences at that very time which were crucial to the making of our Movement. But it took Alexander Campbell to make the Movement what it came to be, and the turning point in his life was that dramatic moment in which he turned his back against the party of his fathers and resolved to be a free man in Christ. He was as uncertain as to what the future might bring as was John Hancock when he signed the Declaration.

The circumstances that brought Alexander to Glasgow, completely unplanned by his family, were surely providential. His father left his pastorate in Ahorey, Ireland for America in 1807, a move that would hopefully improve his health and liberate him from both the religious and political strife that then taxed Ireland. The family, Alexander being the eldest, would follow once a new home was in order. A wreck in the Irish sea interrupted these plans. It also wrenched from Alexander a vow that he would give his life to God as a minister of the gospel if he were spared, a resolution that his father had long hoped for, but which, until then, had not been forth coming.

The delay in sailing for America enabled Alexander to study for upwards of a year at Glasgow. The university courses themselves seem to have had only a normal influence on him. Now 20, he had long been acquainted with books and study habits due to the influence of his scholarly father. It was the extra-curricular activities that had their impact and turned his life around, especially the “house church” that he attended in the home of one Greville Ewing. It was through him that he became acquainted with the principles of reform being advocated in those days by Robert and James Haldane.

It was only 17 years after John Hancock signed the Declaration that Greville Ewing was ordained as a minister in the Church of Scotland, his first charge being Lady Glenorchy’s chapel in Edinburgh. It was at this time that the Haldane movement began to be felt as an effort to reform the church. The two brothers always insisted that they were bringing no new doctrines but were seeking to complete the reformation begun by Luther and Knox. Ewing was affected by their efforts, and he did his thing by editing a paper, Missionary Magazine, the purpose of which was to arouse a decadent church as to its real mission in the world. More importantly, Ewing reflected the spirit of reform as advocated by the Haldanes, who were his close friends, and this was most evident in the intimate gatherings in his home. It was here that Alexander got hooked on restoration ideas, for he was often a guest in the Ewing home, and he came to admire his host greatly. This was no doubt part of what bothered him as he prepared to break bread with his own sect of Seceder Presbyterians. He knew that Greville Ewing, the Haldanes, and the great host of Scottish reformers that he had come to know, could not join him around the Lord’s table. They were not in the right party!

The Haldanes were something else, and they make a story all their own—their biographies being written in their own time give testimony to this. They were sons of a famous British admiral, and they themselves gained honors at sea. They took the wealth left them by their father and became even richer, especially Robert, the older one. The spiritual training given them by their mother at last had its effect, turning them from a career at sea to Christian ministry. God often works through common folk, and it was a stone mason who caused Robert Haldane to turn to Jesus and to his mother’s early influence. And when he turned he really turned! “Christianity is everything or nothing,” he told himself, and if it is everything it should command every sacrifice. From that moment on Robert Haldane poured his great wealth, his life, his blood — literally — into the Restoration Movement.

He financed a mission to India, liquidating some of his most valuable property to do so. It was at last blocked by the East India Company, which must have been the Lord’s doings, for this turned him to missions in Scotland itself and especially to the reformation of the church. He funded publications, built training schools, erected large tabernacles, supported evangelists, financed a home missionary society, and once brought 35 children from Africa and educated them in Scottish culture for several years. While he left it to his brother James to do most of the public speaking, he himself participated until he was compelled to refrain due to coughing up blood.

The Haldanes first attracted attention through their emphasis on lay preaching. Though neither of them was an ordained minister, they went into the highways and byways of their native Scotland proclaiming their message of reform. Others joined them — laymen preaching the gospel! Great multitudes heard them. Soon the clergy became alarmed and efforts were made to stop their unauthorized preaching. “It is not our desire to form or to extend the influence of any sect,” they told the people, “but to make known the evangelical gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Schoolteachers and dJiy laborers were sent out as preachers, along with efforts to train them as preachers of the word. Greville Ewing had one such school in Glasgow, which was moved to Edinburgh before Campbell arrived.

All this led to vast changes in their lives. Both the Haldanes and Greville Ewing left the Church of Scotland. Several independent congregations emerged, the first being in Edinburgh. They called it a Congregational Church. James Haldane was its pastor, a position he held for 52 years. He was still there when Alexander Cam pbell revisited Scotland 40 years later!

It was James Haldane who was first immersed. He told his congregation that he could no longer baptize babies, and by the time Alexander came to Glasgow he had been immersed. Afterwards Robert also submitted to immersion. So were other leaders in the free congregations, one being John Campbell, an iron worker by trade, who had tremendous influence. So were some clergymen, such as Dr. Innes, who encouraged the Haldanes, and who at last left the Church of Scotland. There is no evidence that I have found, however, that Greville Ewing was ever immersed, which may help explain why the Campbells were another five years being immersed. But Mr. Ewing did introduce weekly communion in his Glasgow congregation, though there is no evidence that Alexander was ever in attendance.

The churches started by John Glas and his son-in-law, Robert Sandeman, were also part of this picture, though a separate movement from the Haldanes. Many of these also adopted immersion, and they came to be known as Scotch Baptists. Their influence upon Campbell was less dramatic than that of the Haldanes, though he became well acquainted with their views.

The Haldane influence is evident in the following respects:

1. Their non-secterian approach, their freedom and independence from authoritarian religion, their break with the state church.

2. Their appeal to the scriptures, alone, apart from creeds.

3. Their “lay ministry,” a restoration of universal priesthood, their challenge of clerical prerogatives.

4. Their church order of rule by elders, independent congregations, pastoral function of elders and mutual edification. One William Ballentine, a Haldane, caused division in the Movement by insisting that all members, even incompetent ones, had to speak in the assembly. But the Haldanes opposed this, saying only able teachers are to speak, along with elders. This was later to be Campbell’s view also, as well as the early Movement in this country.

5. Their eventual practice of immersion, though this did not become general, nor was it made a test of fellowship. It was made a matter of forbearance, which was the position of the Campbells in the early years.

6. The gradual emergence of weekly communion, in some churches at least, including the Glasite group, which also followed the exact “order” as outlined in Acts 2:42.

Well, this isn’t the whole story, but it is enough to understand why young Alex was hardly prepared to go on with the sectarianism of his youth, just as with a lot of folk today. Too much was going on in his world! He couldn’t bask in the warmth of spiritual freedom in Ewing’s home, and zero in on all the Haldanes were up to, and still play the sectarian game carried on by his own little sect. So, he walked out into a new world, a new direction. The sound of that token on the plate is still reverberating. Can’t you hear it?

The Lord was always good to Alexander Campbell. Before sending him to America, he allowed him to relax in a world of young women for a spell. Once through at Glasgow and free of the Presbyterians, he was asked to tutor a bevy of lovely girls in Helensburgh, up north on the sea opposite Greenock, a place much like heaven. He had the women all to himself, the men having to be away in Glasgow. It was a highly cultivated and refined society. He later complained of having to walk the girls in the woods as well as tutor them. He insisted that he had rather be reading and meditating! But we may question that, for he likely relished every minute of it, just as he did all of life.

And surely I have missed it. That must be where the Restoration Movement really began. There in Dumbartonshire, on the shore of the Clyde, in the shady groves around Helensburgh, amidst all those pretty girls. How could I ever have figured it otherwise!

While he was frolicking with those lovely lasses, his father was having a peck of trouble in the New World. He, like John Hancock, had put his name to a Declaration, and it too meant war. We’ll look in on it in our next. — the Editor.