Highlights in Restoration History . . .

THE MAN WHO REFUSED TO ATTEND HIS OWN FUNERAL

The title is not exactly accurate, but it was something like that. Jacob Creath, Jr., who was born in Virginia in 1799, was truly a man of the Book and one who had a passion to be like Christ, even in death. Since Jesus had no funeral, he did not want one. So when he died in 1886, after preaching for 60 years, mostly in Missouri, his wife carried out his instructions. He was laid in a simple wooden box, with his New Testament and a copy of Campbell’s Living Oracles pillowing his head. Brethren laid him to rest in an unmarked grave. No funeral. To further keep the record straight he wrote his own obituary!

He was a volatile, reckless man, sometimes speaking and writing without thinking, but he virtually worshiped Alexander Campbell. When he got in trouble with a brother who was also a county official, he wrote a pamphlet about the man, exposing the unfair way he had been treated. The official responded in like manner, pamphlet against pamphlet, a classic example of the church showing its dirty linen to the world. Both men were willing to let Campbell serve as arbitrator. Reading the debate between the two brothers while afloat on the Mississippi, his highway between ,North and South, Campbell was appalled by the oppressive language. He conceded that Creath had been treated harshly, especially at a time when he was nursing a dying wife (who had fallen from a horse), but that he should never have published the pamphlet in retaliation, but if so “in a style more consonant to the genius and spirit of the Christian religion.” That is the way Campbell had to write, even when rebuking folk!

Creath tells of how he and Campbell got caught in a fierce storm while traveling from Lexington to Nashville. With trees falling around them they began singing:

How are thy servants bless’d, oh Lord!

How sure is their defense!

Eternal Wisdom is their guide;

Their help Omnipotence.

They not only survived, but did so gloriously, baptizing lots of people in various missions in Kentucky and Tennessee. He journeyed with Campbell now and again, including Campbell’s only tour deep into Missouri, which in 1845 was pioneer country. Even so the Movement had 196 churches reporting to the state meeting, and T. M. Allen wrote to the Millennial Harbinger (Vol. 16, p. 569) that Missouri had 15,000 members. He tells how 4,000 heard Campbell in Columbia, with 1,000 breaking bread together. Both Creath and Allen tell how Campbell often spoke in Methodist and Presbyterian buildings and how he was frequently the guest of leading clergymen.

Creath tells of seeing Campbell for the last time in Memphis when the reformer had passed his threescore and ten. But there was another distinguished visitor in town at that time, Prof. O. S. Fowler, a New York phrenologist. While this science of determining character by the shape and protuberances of the skull is now in disrepute, it was then more than a fad, believed in by the small and great alike in that day, including Campbell. Fowler read the skulls of both Creath and Campbell, the latter being persuaded by Mrs. Campbell, who wanted it for posterity. Both readings were said to be amazingly accurate, especially coming from a total stranger. But each had its amusing side.

What the phrenologist said of Creath could be said of many a man: he was a ladies’ man who almost worshiped the opposite sex; he was thoroughly sexed and preeminently manly. Campbell’s reading somehow fell into the hands of one of his adversaries, Dr. John Thomas, a heretic within the Movement, who summarized it: he is stubborn as a mule; personal ambition placed him head of a sect, and his conscience was not strong enough to counter his ambition. But the actual reading was ambivalent enough (like modern horoscopes?) that one could read it either way. Mrs. Campbell seemed to be pleased, and she might have teased her husband over the line that described him as having “great argumentative powers and a strong appetite”! The point that impressed me was the judgment that Campbell had indefatigable energy and was never sick. It is true that he never went to bed sick except to die. Reading back into that age one gets the impression that they had a lot of fun out of phrenology.

Jacob Creath, Jr. (Jacob Creath, Sr. was his uncle, not his father) stands tall in our history as a pioneer who planted many churches, especially in Missouri where the cause grew strong. He started our first church in St. Louis, and everywhere he went Disciples multiplied. When he first visited Shelby County, Mo., for example, there were but nine of our people. When he left there were 200. He went to Monticello, Mo. when we had no church, but he soon had a large congregation which ultimately produced three other congregations. He claimed to be the first to preach the primitive gospel in Minnesota. A meeting in Monmouth, Illinois, when 75 were baptized, had a telling moral impact on the town. His was obviously an age far different from our own.

Beside Campbell, he labored beside the renowned preachers of our early history: Raccoon John Smith, John T. Johnson, Barton W. Stone, T. M. Allen. He and his aged uncle, Jacob Sr., sat with Raccoon John Smith when all three were tried and condemned without a hearing by the Elkhorn Baptist Association of Kentucky for not preaching Baptist doctrine. As each man attempted to speak a word of defense he was shouted down by the house. The elder Creath managed to refer to his 40 years in the ministry and to the fact that never before had he seen men condemned without a hearing. This was typical of the Baptist reaction to our pioneers who made some effort to stay where they were and work for reform. For the most part they were forced out and eventually became a separate church.

The Life of Jacob Creath, Jr. by P. Donan makes interesting reading, not only from the viewpoint of our history but as Americana as well. It tells of Creath’s visit to Lexington in 1833 during an epidemic of cholera. He found the streets empty and the houses barred. Upwards of 700 died of the disease, 40 of them near Creath’s farm home. He tells how he found the Psalms of great comfort to him during those dark days.

That same year he saw in Lexington what came to be known as “the falling of the stars,” which excited man and beast alike. His horse became so excited that he had to dismount. People panicked, supposing it to be the end of the world, some confessing that they were not ready.

Living through the Civil War, his life reflects the insanity of that dreadful episode. He tells how a Confederate general took one Andrew Allsman (a Disciple incidentally) from his home and, for some reason, executed him. The Federal general in the area decided that ten Confederates should pay for the crime with their lives, so ten soldiers that he had in custody were given the death sentence. Creath was allowed to minister to them during those days before their execution. It is a heart-rending account.

They wept as Creath talked with them, urging them to prepare to meet God by forgiving their enemies. Only one refused to do so, insisting that he was being killed unjustly and he could not forgive his murderers. He tells of young Lt. Sidener, a cultured gentleman who was soon to be married. Still in the bloom of youth, tall and handsome, he could not control his weeping. He did not want to die, having so much to live for. Creath sat down beside him and wept with him. At last, when death was certain, the lieutenant dressed himself in his splendid wedding suit of black broadcloth, with white satin vest, insisting that if he couldn’t marry in it, he would be murdered in it.

When they shot him he fell toward his enemies. A small hole in his white vest, fringed in red, marked the end. It was almost more than Jacob Creath, Jr. could take.

When it came time for him to die himself, he said there were two things that grieved him. First, he had done so little good; second, he had done so many wrong things.

Creath is a good example of how brethren can differ on opinions and methods and still accept each other and work together. When the missionary society became an issue, he was not only a staunch opponent but criticized Campbell for supporting it, insisting that he had changed his position of earlier years. Most of the pioneers with whom he labored accepted the society as part of the natural progression from New Testament times. They differed and argued about it, but they did not make it a test of fellowship. The real issue was the nature of the church. Campbell eventually reached the position that the church was more than the sum total of congregations, which meant that a society created by those churches would also be the church, not “a human organization,” as the opponents insisted, including Creath.

He was not one to keep records. He did not know how many he had baptized, but it is evident that they numbered in the thousands. Many churches in the Midwest, especially in Kentucky and Missouri, owe their beginning to him. And as with so many poor preachers, he labored at great personal sacrifice. He was offended that Robert Richardson said so little of his labors in his monumental Memoirs of Alexander Campbell, referring to him only when it was unavoidable, as he complained to the doctor. While it is true that Dr. Richardson says much more about Jacob Creath, Sr. than of Jr., noting that Henry Clay esteemed the former the greatest orator he ever heard, it is unlikely that so magnanimous a man as Robert Richardson would deliberately slight any person. After all, the doctor had quite a story to tell.

But why should Jacob Creath, Jr. care? The angels kept score for him, and what a celebration they must have had for him, funeral or no funeral. If those old brethren in Palmyra, Mo. who laid his body to rest amidst the tall pines of the countryside had stopped to listen, they might have heard the angelic commotion. No funeral? No way! --- the Editor