Highlights in Restoration History …

THE DAY CAMPBELL DIED

Some contend that Alexander Campbell was never the same after the death of the son of his old age, which was in 1847 while Campbell was in Europe. But this is hardly the case, for the last two decades of his life were as busy and productive as any. He traveled extensively under trying circumstances, rebuilt a college destroyed by fire, and did some of his most exacting work as an editor and publisher. It is more consistent with the facts to say that it was the dreadful Civil War, which desecrated his adopted country and threatened the peace of his church, that took its toll of Alexander Campbell.

The cruel hand of adversity taught Campbell how to live with death and tragedy, and he had his answer for the untimely passing of Wycliffe, who was drowned in a mill pond on the family farm when but 12. Since he was swimming with two other boys and knew the pond so well, it remained a mystery as to how he ever allowed himself to get trapped under the apron of the mill. Mrs. Campbell, who was not mystically inclined, had an unusual dream sometime after the accident. Once again she had her boy in her lap, and when she asked him how he could possibly have drowned under such favorable circumstances, he put one of her fingers to her lips, indicating that he could not tell her.

Campbell wrote to a friend back in Scotland: “How often do we see the sinner living to his threescore years and ten, while many a pure and excellent stripling is cut down as the green and tender herb, in the very morning of his existence?” He went on to tell his friend that there is the strong probability that God drafts many pure and noble spirits from our little world to serve Him in a rapidly increasing ministry in other parts of the universe.” (Mill. Harb., Vol. 18, 1847, p. 709).

As he grew older he spoke and wrote more and more about hope and heaven. “Heaven is not a mere state of repose,” he ventured. “Its raptures and ecstasies of bliss are all activities of the soul, in wonder, love and praise expressed,” he concluded, and he went on to say that there are ordinances of worship even in heaven, even “worshippers who unite and commune in the full radiation and fruition of the Divine presence” (Mill Harb., 1854, p. 125f.).

The last paragraph he ever penned spoke of how the present material universe will be fully regenerated into new heavens and a new earth, which will bring new tenantries, new employment, and new joys. “There is a fullness of joy, a fullness of glory, and a fullness of blessedness, of which no living man, however enlightened, however enlarged, however gifted, ever formed or entertained one adequate conception,” a fitting conclusion to 43 years as an editor. (Mill. Harb., 1865, p. 517)

Campbell’s biographer, Dr. Richardson, says that the last time he was at church he momentarily returned to his former glory as he gave his final discourse, which was on the glory of Christ as set forth in Eph. 1. While he never went to bed sick during his first 60 years of life, early in 1866 he went to bed never to get up again. When his wife Selina assured him that the Savior would lead him peacefully across Jordan, he replied, That he will, that he will! When the day came for him to be “absent from this planet,” as he once described death, which was a Sunday (March 4, 1866), the sun came pouring into his room, and once more he quoted his favorite passage, “The sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.”

Beside the simple service at the Bethany church, where Robert Richardson spoke after the congregation sang “We’ve here no abiding city,” there were memorial services in various parts of the country. One was given by Joseph King, pastor of the First Christian Church in Allegheny City, Pa., who revealed in his discourse that when he visited Campbell on his deathbed and told him of an effort to unite the Baptists and the Disciples, that the old reformer wept for joy and said that that was one of the happiest days of his life. Convinced that when Campbell died the nation lost its greatest mind, King told of how during his long and painful illness he never complained but was always kindly solicitous to the comforts of those who would visit him, regaling them with Scriptures that flowed from his mind like a fountain.

Being a student at Bethany in earlier years, Pastor King provided interesting insights into Campbell’s life, one being that the reformer always knelt in prayer when they gathered at chapel. He also tells of Campbell visiting his city as an old man. Still he knelt to pray, but now he had to have help in getting back on his feet. King tells how once when he was helping him from his knees that Campbell said, What a happy thing it is to be a Christian! (Mill. Harb., 1866, p. 205)

That is the way he died. His death made a big difference in the Movement he had begun, for now that his leadership was gone the divisive forces that had long been at work would not have him as a deterrent. The man most likely to receive his mantle and assume his leadership was David Staats Burnet in Cincinnati, but he had but one more year to live at only 58. Burnet, who had occasional confrontations with Campbell due to his leadership in the West, was terribly grieved by Campbell’s death. When he received the dispatch he wrote, I cannot break the spell.

But the Ohio editor did not lose his oratorical powers during what he called “the winter of our woe,” and in his memorial address he did Uncle Alex up right. “The knell has tolled! The quiet village of Bethany has sat down in sack cloth; and a million mourn, around our land, in sad sympathy: for a great man hath fallen in Israel!,” he told an assembly in Bethany a few weeks after Campbell’s death. “The sorrows of today must yield to the alleviating power of the scenes of tomorrow, and the mingled emotions which rest every wave of the tide of life. The shock that thrilled the social heart when Alexander Campbell died has subsided, and the gentle grief and sad remembrances have filled the bosoms lately convulsed. The green sod arching the narrow abode of his manly form speaks of the freshness of the perennial life in a fairer clime,” he told the students (Mill. Harb., 1866, p. 301).

They really said it back in those days, didn’t they? The orators did, I mean. In that address Burnet says Campbell was never greater than in the spring of 1830 when he often preached at the First Baptist Church during the Virginia Constitutional Convention to which he was a delegate. There he was heard by the small and the great who crowded to hear him, including former President Madison, who afterwards described Campbell as the most effective interpreter of the Scriptures he ever heard.

Burnet told his audience that he believed Campbell was as familiar with God in his word as Moses was with God on the Mount, and he reminded the students that when Lyman Beecher asked Campbell how he managed to know so much that he replied, “By studying 16 hours a day.” Burnet insisted that the secret of Campbell’s influence was his familiarity with the Bible.

On March 4, 1966 I remembered that it was the 100th anniversary of Alexander Campbell’s death, and I wondered if anyone else in the world remembered. There were no memorials that I knew of. I called my dear friend, the man who knew Campbell best of all, Louis Cochran, author of The Fool of God. He remembered. We read together some things that the old sage had said about the unity of believers and his faith in the future. There on the phone we had a memorial service for the man we both loved and admired, just the two of us. Together we remembered the day that Alexander Campbell died.

Old Louie, who is also now “absent from this planet,” was something else. He was always impressed that I was adamant about staying with the Church of Christ, not allowing myself to be run off. He would speak of this among his Disciples of Christ friends as one of the signs of hope, convinced as he was that reformations must come from within rather than from without.

He was impressed with the Churches of Christ. In a unity meeting we had in Murfreesboro, Tn. a few years before his death, he asked me from the floor which of the three churches of the Campbell heritage did I think Campbell would join if he lived today, the Disciples, the Christian Church or Church of Christ? When I suggested that he should be the one to answer that question, he stated that he believed Campbell would belong to the Church of Christ since he was opposed to instrumental music. His wife Bess immediately disagreed, insisting that the old reformer would not belong to any of them, that he would start over and do as he did before, working for the unity of all Christians.

Surely “the great conversation” goes on in another world, and dear old Louie and Uncle Alex must be right in the middle of it. On a quiet evening here in Denton, Texas methinks it might be Louie and Alex that I hear in the distance, urging us on in preserving the unity of the Spirit. the Editor