REVELING IN THE WORD

Now and again I select at random a volume of Alexander Campbell’s Millennial Harbinger and thumb through it, often observing lines that I underscored years ago. They often mean more when I go over them a second or maybe a fifth time. Through the years I have made my own index at the front of each volume, an these call to mind particular goodies. This time around, in the 1852 volume, a particular item caught my eye once more. It meant so much to me this time that I wanted to share it with someone at once, so I bore it to the kitchen where Ouida and her mother, who now lives with us, were doing chores. I pulled up a stool and read to them what brother Campbell had to say about a university professor friend of his, Moses Stuart of Harvard, who had died after a painful illness.

I told the girls of an experience I had with Moses Stuart when I was at Harvard, even though it was more than a century after the renowned professor’s death. Checking one day to see what books the theological library might have of Campbell’s works, I came upon an old copy of his Christian System, or maybe it was his Christian Baptism. On the flyleaf were inscribed these words: To Moses Stuart, from the author, along with his other writings, affectionately, A. Campbell. I was deeply involved in other assignments at that time, but I took the time to appreciate the “find” I had made. It added to the evidence that Campbell kept in touch with the theological climate of his day and that some of the leaders were his friends, at least by way of correspondence. The library of course has numerous works by Moses Stuart. I have known for a long time that he was one of this country’s leading theologians of the nineteenth century.

What Campbell wrote about Prof. Stuart was actually an excerpt from the funeral oration given by a fellow professor. Campbell entitled it “The Last Hours of Professor Stuart,” and it summarizes the life of a man who reveled in the word of God, which is the phrase Ouida used when she heard his story. Reveling in the Scriptures! Ah, what a difference it would make for the modern church if there were more who enjoyed that kind of excitement in the study of the Bible.

What impressed Ouida and Mother Pitts is this description of the old professor: “Once when he made a certain discovery of a fact in Biblical interpretation, he could not sleep for more than thirty-six hours. His solace was in the Word of God.” We all know that people are made sleepless when they win a sweepstakes or in some way become rich over night, but how about becoming so excited over a newly-found truth in Scripture that’ one cannot sleep?

It reminds one of the love that the psalmist had for the word of God; “More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb” (Ps. 19:10).

The ability to become excited over Biblical truth is a grace to be cultivated. Devotion to Scripture will hardly come to one who does not seek it. We learn to love the Bible just as we learn to love anything else, and we are not going to love it if we do not want to love it. If a woman loves her flower garden because she tends it, it is also true that she tends it because she loves it. The person who takes the Bible in hand only occasionally and then mainly out of duty will never grow excited over it.

Rare is the Christian who really hungers for the word, as if there is no way to get enough. We can believe that the indwelling Spirit will help to cultivate a love for the word in those who are poor in spirit. Once we can get excited over the great truths of the Bible we will have little interest in those superficial issues that divide the Body of Christ.

Take, for example, the transfiguration of Christ. If that does not excite us, it can only be that we have been immunized by the world. Not only was Jesus gloriously transfigured before the eyes of the apostles, but the record tells us that Moses and Elijah put in an appearance, talking with Jesus. But only Luke tells us what the old saints talked with him about — “his departure, which he was to accomplish in Jerusalem” (Lk. 9:31). I can see a Moses Stuart digging into this passage with such excitement that it disturbed his sleep. The record indicates that the glory of this experience also disturbed the sleep of Peter, James, and John!

Or take one of the great psalms, such as the 139th where David realizes how his very being is laid bare before God: “O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me! Thou knowest when I sit down and when I rise up; thou discernest my thoughts from afar.” He goes on to say that God is acquainted with all his ways and “Even before a word is on my tongue, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.” The poet goes on to say that there is no escape from God’s presence: “If I ascend to heaven, thou art there! If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there thy hand shall lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.”

“Thou knowest me right well,” David concedes, realizing that God was there when he was formed in his mother’s womb. Even darkness does not limit the great God of heaven: “Even the darkness is not dark to thee, the night is bright as the day; for darkness is as light with thee.”

If that does not excite us, we can only conclude that we have been anesthetized by TV or mesmerized by things. It certainly excited David: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it.” Paul got excited like that: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways” (Rom. 12:33).

One position taken by the old professor is in keeping with what Campbell was contending for out on the new frontier: “I have long since learned that feelings in religious experience are deceptive.” He went on to say, “I look mainly to my life for my evidence. I think my first aim in life has been to glorify God, and that I have been ready to labor and suffer for him.”

A radical form of Calvinism greatly influenced American frontier religion, and feelings, which were mystically related to certain presumed workings of the Spirit, were the arbiter. This led to a mystical “call” to the ministry, a certain “conviction” that one had “received” before he even had the power to believe, and church membership based upon an “experience” that sounded sensational enough to satisfy the church. Thus Campbell’s first controversies were over “experimental religion.” It is most interesting that during those years there was an outstanding theologian at Harvard, steeped in piety and in the Scriptures, who was teaching that feelings in religious experience are deceptive.

A German philosopher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleirmacher, who is sometimes called “the father of modern philosophy,” greatly influenced American Protestantism in its emphasis upon subjective experience. He gave “heartfelt religion” a sophisticated turn, calling it intuition. He spoke of “the experience of grace” and “The consciousness of sin and guilt,” concepts that are appropriate in a proper context, but he made feeling the key to religion, not reason.

Campbell, on the other hand (and Prof. Stuart also we may presume) insisted that there must first be reason, which makes application of God’s revelation, and then feeling, which enjoys what reason has wrought. So feelings must be monitored by reason, which is ruled by the Scriptures, lest they be deceptive. So the Scriptures sit in judgment over feelings, not the other way around. The Scriptures, properly applied, never deceive, while feelings often do. We should of course “feel” that we are doing the right thing, which is what we call a good conscience, but it is equally important that our consciences be educated by God’s disclosure of His will for us.

It is remarkable how this old issue will not die. It is not only very much alive today in the charismatic movement, but it very much pervades the thought of many of us in all the churches. The villain is our own self-will. Our feelings, which we may associate with deep religious experience, are often dictated by what we want to do.

Feelings are deceptive. It is a wise warning from one who “being dead yet speaketh,” even from the hallowed halls of Harvard.

Campbell reported that the old professor often thought of death and was never more than a “a Sabbath day’s journey” from it. He lived to die. As he anticipated the great translation he wrote: “When I behold the glory of the Saviour, as revealed in the gospel, I am constrained to cry out with the believing Apostle, My Lord and my God.”

At last he wrote: “And when my departing spirit shall quit these mortal scenes, and wing its way to the world unknown, with my latest breath I desire to pray, as the expiring martyr did, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, receive my spirit.’ “ He concluded with: “1 ask for no other privilege on earth but to make known the efficacy of His death; and none in heaven but to be associated with those who ascribe salvation to his blood.”

Prof. Stuart obviously had deep feelings, but they were rooted in the Scriptures and in the living hope in Jesus Christ. His feelings even reached out to us all, a desire to be with us in the home of the redeemed.

That will be something to be associated with the dear brother, won’t it?—the Editor