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This
is not intended as an essay on Isaac Errett as such, however
consistent that would be to the purposes of this journal. That will
have to await another time. Our purpose here is to pass along to you
Errett’s list of “Present Needs of Disciples” that
he included in his
Walks
About Jerusalem
in
1871. The seven points that he made strike us as appropriate to the
1970’s as they were to the 1870’s. We believe they will
encourage you to implement them in your own life and to use them in
helping to make the church what Christ would have it be.
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But
just a word about Errett so that you can have some appreciation of
what he says here. He was a man of action as well as of ideas, and
he was a confirmed pragmatist. Among the first of our “liberals,”
he was always getting himself in trouble with the conservatives. He
must have been the first of our preachers to accept the title
Reverend.
albeit
with modest enthusiasm, and then only when friends gave him a
doorplate with that title before his name. He was one of the first
to practice the one-man pastor system among us, and he was an avid
supporter of cooperative agencies and societies in a day when they
almost died from lack of support. He wrote for and travelled with
Alexander Campbell when the Bethany patriarch was an old man, and he
upset Campbell by taking an antislavery position. Campbell thought
slavery, pro or con, should be kept as a matter of personal opinion
and not made an issue in the church.
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Errett
thought the movement needed a clear-cut statement of what it was and
what it stood for, so he came out with “A Synopsis of the
Faith and Practice of the Church of Christ,” which consisted
often articles of faith. And did he get clobbered by the “Editor
Bishops,” especially by Moses Lard and Benjamin Franklin, who
cried
Creed’
Creed’.
even
if Errett denied it being such, for it was not something to be
imposed on anyone, but served only as a summary of what we stood
for. No one seemed to object to the points made, but that he made
them. This was in a day when our people had begun to fight among
themselves. Division was on the horizon. Errett was asked to edit a
new journal, the
Christian
Standard.
the
purpose of which was to save the brotherhood from legalism and
sectism. In its first issue in 1866 it carried a notice of the death
of Alexander Campbell. It was a new era for the Stone-Campbell
Movement, and for the next decade (he died in 1888) Isaac Errett was
the most influential man among our people.
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He
was always zeroing in on problems, always putting a finger on the
main point as he saw it. When they started fussing over the organ,
he said he thought some churches needed one, judging by their
singing. But others didn’t. In any event it should not be
introduced if anyone objected. When they argued over whether the
pious un-immersed are Christians, he insisted that there is only one
true mark of a Christian,
Christlikeness,
immersed
or not.
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Isaac
Errett must have been something else, and I can hardly wait to meet
him in that land where editors are no longer bishops. Things were
grim for our folk in 1871, and Editor Errett. who had a thing about
lists, made out still another one, on our present needs. You may
agree that the “present” becomes timeless. Here it is,
all from Isaac Errett, without editorial comment:
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1.
The preaching of Christ crucified, so as to enthrone Him in the
hearts of men in supreme dominion. This is better than theories of
conversion—better than a brave tilt at Calvinism, or any other
ism.
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2.
A greatly increased diligence in the study of the Holy
Scriptures—without
spectacles,
even
of the most modern manufacture.
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3.
A deeper insight into the
spiritual
attractions
of the gospel—such as shall lead us to seek after the
“communion of the Holy Spirit,” which is the foretaste
of heavenly bliss—the beginning of everlasting life-the
“earnest of the inheritance until the redemption of the
purchased possession.”
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4.
A more cheerful, and elevated, and fervent piety—a life of
prayer and praise —of grateful love and adoration, in the
closet, the family and the church.
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5.
A more complete conquest of the pride and selfishness of the
world—so as, in humility and self-denial, to devote ourselves
to the benevolent and philanthropic aims of the Christian life. A
deeper sympathy with suffering humanity-such as will lead us in the
footsteps of Christ, to labor for the world’s redemption.
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6.
A lofty attachment to righteousness—so as to make life a
constant exemplification of truth and justice—a living
condemnation of all injustice, oppression and deceit.
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7.
A more vital faith in God, which will enable us to throw ourselves
sublimely on His strong arm for support and do our duty, leaving the
consequences in His hands. (These seven points from
Walks
A bout Jerusalem,
by
Isaac Errett, p. 158) —the
Editor