Highlights from Our Past . . .

 

THE TIME CAMPBELL TALKED ALL NIGHT 

In these days when disciples of Jesus spend more time watching TV than they do in sharing the scriptures, it is refreshing to read about people who become so excited over their biblical discoveries that they forget about time and find the morning dawning before they realize it. Excitement over the word of God! What has happened to us as "the people of the Book" that such joy of learning is now so rare? I recently came upon a reference to Moses Stuart of Andover Seminary, one of the renowned biblical scholars of his time, to the effect that when he came upon some fresh insight in the word he would become so excited that he could not sleep all night. That's quite different from the yawning we too often see in the pew, or the hands‑in‑pocket passivity frequently evident in the pulpit. But then again Stuart was excited by fresh insights!

 

Revolution is brooding in people's lives when they have enough interest to talk all night. Like old Nebuchadnezzar following his magnificent dream, sleep fled him because he was so eager to know. When folk are empty of desire to know, or when they suppose they already know about all there is to know, they are likely to go to sleep on you or prefer to watch TV, even if you do have fresh insights. Psalms 1 tells us that the man is blessed who "meditates on his word day and night," and that is part of what this essay is about.

 

There was an air of excitement in Alexander Campbell's life back in 1816-1821. He had only recently discovered what was probably the most important insight of his entire life, a truth that was to spark a reformation and give birth to a unity movement. It was indeed the truth that led to what is now the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ. It was the catalyst that led to all the other principles that gave substance to the Restoration Movement. This was his discovery of of successive covenants, which he first enunciated before the Redstone Baptist Association, September 1, 1816, at Cross Creek, Virginia. A historical marker now identifies the place where the old Baptist church once stood, and a visitor, as he views the tall pines that now stand there, can be assured that he is at the spot where Alexander Campbell's life changed. It could be claimed that it was there that the Movement really began. Things would never be the same again. The dye was cast. It remains the most renowned sermon in our history, known as the Sermon on the Law.

 

It was semi‑extemporaneous. He had only two hours notice, for he was chosen to give the discourse that Sunday morning only after another man was "providentially seized by sickness," as he later put it. He used rather copious notes and spoke upwards of two hours on the distinction between the old and new dispensations, the law of Moses and the gospel of Christ. He had no more than finished when the motion was made that his discourse be branded as "not Baptist doctrine," though one respected leader prevented this by suggesting the sermon just might be "Christian doctrine" and that they should all desire time for examination.

 

It was 30 years later in the 1846 Millennial Harbinger (p. 493f.) that Campbell republished the celebrated sermon, for it had earlier circulated in tract form only. In the preface to the sermon he explains that it was delivered "some two or three years after my union with the Baptist denomination" and he refers to himself as "one of the pastors of the Church at Brush Run." This is one of the several instances in which he unequivocally identifies himself as a Baptist. Up until 1830, at the time the Mahoning Baptist Association disbanded, Campbell was considered a Baptist minister and the Brush Run Church a Baptist church, however "different" they might have been. It is odd that our people today want to ignore this fact of our history, that our first congregation was a Baptist church and our leading pioneer was a Baptist for 20 years of his ministry. I remember when I was a student at Freed‑Hardeman College, painstaking efforts were made to show that Campbell was never a Baptist. Campbell is in fact on record to the effect that he intended to work with the Baptists so long as he could freely teach his convictions. He observes in this preface that the Sermon on the Law almost caused his excommunication, and would have except for the charity of two or three old men.

 

He goes on to say that he did not believe that in 1848 there was a single Baptist association on the continent that would persecute him for his views as did the Redstone Association in the years following that sermon. But he saw this as within the providence of God since it was unlikely that the Movement would ever have taken shape except for that persecution.

 

In this sermon he was doing for the church of his time what the apostle Paul did for the church of his day in the writing of Romans and Galatians. It was a believer's manifesto of freedom from the legal code of the Mosaic dispensation. It claimed that under Christ the believer is part of a New Institution, and not one that is a mere continuation of or a modification of the Old. There is a New Covenant, he argued, that is distinct from the Old Covenant. The New may be historically related to the Old and the Old may anticipate the New, but the New is different in its principles and content.

 

Most teachers in the church then considered the covenants as identical, the latter being an extension of the former. The ceremonial part of the law may have ended, but they did not think in terms of a new dispensation supplanting the old. Young Campbell argued that with the coming of Christ the whole law was done away. The moral principles abide, of course, but not because they were a part of the Mosaic law. God's moral laws are universal in character, existing in any relationship between God and man. The law of Moses declared God's moral principles but it did not originate them, for they existed both before and after that law.

 

This view of a New Institution led the Brush Run Church to reject the term Sabbath for the Christian day of public worship, for which they were criticized, and it projected Campbell into a very controversial position. When the sermon was published there were many who wanted to reject its author for his "damnable heresy." Campbell referred to this as "a seven years' war," for at each annual meeting of the association there were heresy charges brought against him, but they were always voted down. The majority believed that he was "sound on baptism," which was enough to make him an orthodox Baptist. It was this that led to his championing the Baptist cause in the debate with John Walker, a Presbyterian.

 

Campbell was a safe bet to defend the Baptist position on immersion against a learned Presbyterian, but what the Baptists did not consider was that this debate would give Campbell the platform he needed to further advocate the "heresy" he set forth in the Sermon on the Law. Since Walker's position was that infant baptism was scriptural on the ground that it came in the place of circumcision in the Old Testament, the stage was set for Campbell to draw his distinction between the covenants and point out that the church is now under a New Institution. By emphasizing a succession of covenants in which God has dealt with man, Campbell not only freed baptism from a false analogy with circumcision but in a general way set the Christian faith apart from Judaism. He also introduced a new method of biblical interpretation, showing that a passage's application to the believer is related to where it is found in the Bible.

 

So the Baptists got more than they bargained for. They were pleased that their man won, but they were less than enthusiastic about the way he did it. Still he was flooded with invitations from Baptists, which took him into eastern Ohio, and 4,000 copies of the debate were soon circulated. He was becoming a famous man, but it proved to be the beginning of the end of his days as a Baptist.

 

Eastern Ohio was then called the Western Reserve. It was the home of the churches of I the Mahoning Baptist Association, which in 1830 moved into the Campbell movement by dissolving itself as an association. So they were no longer "Baptist" churches, and began to call themselves Reformers and Disciples. This was the beginning of the Disciples of Christ as a separate group. Insofar as the records indicate there was not one instance of anyone being immersed again, including the Campbells. For decades to follow, it was considered wrong and improper to immerse a believer already immersed, irrespective of his understanding of baptism for remission of sins. It simply wasn't done. In the light of these indisputable historical facts, it would be interesting for some of our Church of Christ preachers, who insist on rebaptizing immersed believers "for the remission of sins," to tell us when the true church was actually restored back in those days.

 

It was just after the Walker debate and the days when Campbell's views began to circulate in Ohio that two Baptist ministers rode into Bethany from the Western Reserve for a visit with Mr. Campbell. They were brothers‑in‑law, one being Adamson Bentley and the other Sidney Rigdon, both of Warren, Ohio. They had read the Walker debate and had great interest in the new hermeneutics as taught by Campbell.

 

Adamson Bentley, strangely enough, first saw Alexander Campbell as he rode across western Pennsylvania in a wagon with his family, fresh from the Old World, on the way to meet his father. While Bentley only nodded in passing, he knew who they were, having met Thomas Campbell at an inn a few miles back west, who was making inquiries of any who might have seen the immigrant family. But he remembers noticing Alexander, then only 21, in particular, little realizing that in another decade or so that young man would be largely responsible for a great change in his life.

 

Robert Richardson, Campbell's biographer, records that this meeting with Bentley and Rigdon was to have important consequences. Campbell also writes of its importance in his "Anecdotes, Incidents, and Facts" 17 years later in the 1848 Millennial Harbinger (p. 523). He tells how he was sitting on his porch one summer afternoon in 1821 following dinner when Rigdon and Bentley approached. Bentley explains that he had just read the Walker debate and that he had come with lots of questions to ask. Campbell, who was still conducting Buffalo Seminary, promised to talk with them once school let out.

 

After tea that evening they began their discussion and they talked all night long! Campbell recalled the topics covered:

 

"Beginning with the Baptism that John preached, we went back to Adam, and forward to the final judgment.

The dispensations, or covenants Adamic, Abrahamic, Jewish and Christian, passed and repassed before us. Mount Sinai in Arabia, Mount Zion, Mount Calvary, Mount Tabor the Red Sea, and the Jordan — the Passovers and the Pentecosts — the Law and the Gospel; but especially the ancient order of things and the modern, occasionally commanded and and engaged our attention."

 

Rigdon's response was that if he had taught one error in the pulpit he had taught a thousand. Campbell afterwards encouraged him to move to Pittsburg and minister to a Reformed Baptist church. He was a powerful orator and became a man of influence among the Disciples, but within a decade he accepted Mormonism and worked closely with its prophet, Joseph Smith. One wonders what Rigdon thought of it all when his own daughter revealed to him that the prophet was trying to take her to his bed. The prophet was an expert in that area as well as in prophecy. Rigdon died a disillusioned old man, insisting that he had no part in the production of the Book of Mormon, and he probably figured by then that it was just as well. But Campbell never presumed that Rigdon forged the Mormon Bible. About the only one of his day to present a serious review of the book, he declared its author to be Joseph Smith himself. Or was it the angel Moroni? The Disciples explained Rigdon's demise as a reaction to his failure to achieve the prominence that he desired. Mormonism served him little better if that is what he wanted. Following the prophet's death, Rigdon vied for power with Brigham Young and lost. He had to be content to serve as the leader of one of several small Mormon sects that followed Smith's death.

 

But Rigdon served the cause of reformation well while he was with us, and Adamson Bentley even more so. The all‑night discussion was a turning point in their lives, and it served to help move the Baptist churches of the Western Reserve to the position of the Reformers. Bentley once presided over the Mahoning Association and served with Walter Scott as an evangelist, and it was he that was largely responsible for opening the doors for Campbell and his ideas. In fact, but for that all‑night conference the Mahoning Association might never have served as the nucleus for the Restoration Movement. They returned to Warren, Ohio different men.

 

There may be no particular virtue in talking all night per se, but there is virtue in having that kind of concern. If the time has come in our history when our preachers had rather get together and talk about their jobs, or sports, or other preachers rather than the great ideas of the New Institution, then we need to look back to our roots and see from whence we came.

 

An extemporaneous talk in a country church that set forth a new idea. A debate that proposed a different approach in interpreting the scriptures. An all‑night conversation that caused three concerned men to put a lot of things into focus. With these ingredients the God of heaven started for Himself another reformation of His church. Doesn't it really blow your mind to be a part of it all. Each of us can at least make his or her own life a reformation effort. — the Editor.