Highlights in Restoration History …

A BLIND MAN GIVES HIS LAST SERMON

Thomas Campbell had not been blind all his life, certainly not back in 1809 when he launched that Movement to unite the Christians in all the sects. But in his late 80’s he could no longer see, his optic nerves giving way after a lifetime of study and preaching. He explained it in terms of God’s grace and mercy, and he went on to praise God in his blindness as well as when he had sight.

He was a very pious man. His son Alexander said that he walked with God more closely than any man he’d ever known, and Walter Scott went on record to the effect that he was the most pious man he had ever met. He had so filled his mind and heart with scripture and the great hymns of the church that even in his blindness he had sufficient resources within him both to praise God and to teach His word. Alexander tells of how he would be in his father’s room when he did not realize anyone was around, only to hear him praising God for His unspeakable gifts.

But his piety did not preclude a measure of occasional indignation, righteous indignation, perhaps. He once stormed out of a town where he had gone to teach in a school, shaking the dust from his feet, when the authorities forbade him teaching blacks. “I will not live anywhere that I cannot teach all of God’s children,” he protested. And when Sidney Rigdon, a prominent preacher in the Movement and a personal friend to both of the Campbells, converted to the Mormons, it was Thomas Campbell and not Alexander who wrote him a stinging letter for elevating the Book of Mormon to the place of scripture, and he challenged him to a debate. Thomas was eager to defend the sufficiency of the Bible, but Rigdon didn’t accept the challenge. Thomas even went to Rigdon’s hometown, Kirkland, Ohio, which was then Mormon headquarters, and taught from house to house, especially among the Disciples, to make sure Rigdon didn’t steal any of his sheep. The old boy had fire, even if he was pious!

When he was nearly 90, blind and feeble, both his son and his friends around Bethany suggested he give his valedictory sermon. Once the Sunday date was set, friends came from afar for the occasion. Father Campbell, as they affectionately called him, prepared his thoughts by drawing upon the great storehouse of knowledge that he had built up through long years of close study. He had always stressed memorizing the scriptures, and now that his world had grown dark he nonetheless had God’s word laid up in his heart. People no doubt were curious as to what Thomas Campbell’s last sermon would be. There is no evidence that he revealed his intentions even to his daughter-in-law Selina Campbell, who read to him from time to time during his hours of preparation.

When a buggy was brought in front of the Campbell mansion to bear him to the meetinghouse, it was found to be too high for the feeble old soul. Even though it was summer they brought out a low-slung, horse-drawn sleigh, a winter vehicle, to bear the aged brother to the place where he would give his last sermon ever. Deacons waited in the yard to accompany him to the place where he would speak. His son Alexander was away from home at the time and thus missed his father’s last address, but he was able to read it upon his return, for W. K. Pendleton, by way of his own shorthand technique, was able to make an accurate transcription of what was said, and in doing so preserved the occasion for posterity.

Those of us who have always had our sight cannot imagine the trauma one suffers when suddenly thrust into a world of darkness. Never again can one look upon the faces of those he loves, nor behold the beauty of nature that we so readily take for granted. And there are all those things that one can no longer do for herself once blindness comes. Never again will one drive a car—or a buggy! or go to town by himself, and a lifetime of reading and study comes to an end or is drastically curtailed. One takes a new grandchild into her arms never knowing with her own eyes how much it looks like her own offspring who gave it birth. Or if one who is now blind is a preacher, he speaks as if from a sea of darkness, but never again will he see the faces of those who listen to what he has to say.

On that June Sunday in 1855 Thomas Campbell quoted Matt. 22:34-40, the story of the lawyer asking Jesus which is the greatest commandment of all, and the answer that was given: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”

It impressed the old brother that Jesus made no reference to any great work for man to do, or to sacrifices, or to alms. No temple to build, no war to win, no cities to conquer. The greatest thing that man can do is to love the God who created him with all his being. Love God! Love your neighbor! Not only are these the greatest commandments, but the whole law and the prophets are, fulfilled in them.

Father Campbell recounted the story of the Good Samaritan. “I am sorry I cannot read it to you,” he said to them, “but you can read it for yourselves.” We are to love our neighbors, and our neighbors are those who need us. He went on to show how love is God’s great commandment to man, pointing to Jn. 13:33 where Jesus lays down “the new commandment” that his disciples are to love one another even as he loved them.

If it is true that one dies the way she has lived, then it may also be true that a preacher closes out his preaching the way he has preached all his life. It was so with Thomas Campbell. Love was his lifetime theme, which he identified as “the badge of the Christian.” As the Movement he started grew large and increasingly controversial, he would caution love. Plead in love! Preach in love! Teach in love! Those were his constant themes. He would advise young preachers that there is an almost certain way to avoid controversy. Preach the facts of the Bible in love, and keep your opinions to yourself. He did not think people would ever argue over what the scriptures state clearly and explicitly. They argue over opinions and deductions — and over “those things of which the kingdom of God does not consist,” to quote his Declaration and Address.

Everybody loved and admired Thomas Campbell. He made delightful company, always projecting the scriptures and the love of God. When Robert Owen, the infidel, came to Bethany to make arrangements for the debate with Alexander, he became well acquainted with Father Campbell, and later made reference to his great admiration for him. There is that argument for God’s existence that troubles every agnostic more than all the traditional arguments, the committed, pious life. When Thomas Carlyle went with his college roommate to hear an able agnostic, the roomate said to him afterwards, “Well, I guess that about does it for God.” Carlyle responded, “Not quite. He hasn’t explained my mother yet.” Thomas Campbell was like that. There was no way to explain him apart from a God of love.

The kids always got a bang out of him, simply because he loved them so. The Robert Richardson children especially enjoyed him, often going as he did to Bethphage, nigh unto Bethany, after he was widowed. Their eyes bugged out as he indulged in one of his few idiosyncracies, gathering a variety of foods onto his plate and then proceeding to cut and mix them all together in one heap, whereupon he would pour gravy or syrup, or both, and proceed to mix and stir even more. The kids watched this spectacle before their eyes with such intensity that they lost all interest in their own food, and would have to be told by their doctor father to attend to their own plates and leave Father Campbell to eat as he pleased. The old man would pleasantly remind them that he was but aiding nature, for once it reached his stomach it would be all mixed up anyway! No wonder he lived to be 91 even in the 19th century!

He was always growing, always studying, always praying, always praising God. He sat for a few weeks at the bedside of his dying wife, who must also have been very pious. The letter that he later wrote to a daughter about this experience, published by Alexander, is one of the most impressive documents in all of our history. It shows how a man and wife should live together, sharing all that life has to offer in simple, trusting faith. He said a remarkable and an unpredictable thing in that letter: that he had learned more about the love of God and the patience of Christ while sitting with his dying wife than in all the years before.

It was only a short time after he had given his valedictory sermon that Thomas Campbell went home to be with the Father of mercies, as he liked to describe Him. When Alexander returned home and read his father’s address, his very last sermon, he said it was a fitting climax to his long ministry in that love had filled his life as well as his teaching. It had been over 40 years since Thomas Campbell had written the Declaration and Address, our Movement’s most important document, which was a mandate to all disciples for a loving acceptance of each other as well as a charter of freedom for all those who are in Christ.

In that document he lays down the principle that was to consume the whole of his efforts to unite the Christians in all the sects, that we can never be united on opinions, deductions, or methods; but only by receiving one another in love, even as Christ has received us, in spite of the differences. —the Editor