ALEXANDER CAMPBELL’S FINEST HOUR

While there were of course many august moments in the illustrious life of Alexander Campbell, I would select one of his speeches in his debate with Robert Owen the infidel as his finest hour. At 41 he was in his prime and at his very best. The movement he had launched was enjoying phenomenal growth, and its influence had reached other continents. And yet this debate with a renowned socialist was to send Campbell’s star to even greater heights. Nonetheless, he was a man smitten by tragedy, rejection, and persecution. Already he had buried three of his little children, and only recently he had laid his beloved wife Margaret in her grave. And now he faced his greatest test against atheism and secularism as believers from many churches looked to him as a defender of the faith. The year was 1829. With this background it is reassuring to see what he conceived as the real issue in the debate. His biographer writes of the effect of this speech: “All fears were banished, and the unbidden tear was seen to trickle from many eyes.”

It is not the ordinary affairs of this life, the fleeting and transitory concerns of today or tomorrow; it is not whether we shall live all freemen, or die all slaves; it is not the momentary affairs of empire, or the evanescent charms of dominion — nay, indeed, all these are but the toys of childhood, the sportive excursions of youthful fancy, contrasted with the question, What is man? Whence came he? Whither does he go? Is he a mortal or an immortal being? Is he doomed to spring up like the grass, bloom like a flower, drop his seed into the earth, and die forever? Is there no object of future hope? No God no heaven — no exalted society to be known or enjoyed? Are all the great and illustrious men and women who have lived before we’re born, wasted and gone forever? After a few short days are fled, when the enjoyments and toils of life are over; when our relish for social enjoyment, and our desires for returning to the fountain of life are most acute, must we hang our heads and close our eyes in the desolating and appalling prospect of never opening them again, of never tasting the sweets for which a state of discipline and trial has so well fitted us? These are the awful and sublime merits of the question at issue. It is not what we shall eat, nor what we shall drink, unless we shall be proved to be mere animals; but it is, shall we live or die forever? It is as beautifully expressed by a Christian poet —

Shall spring ever visit the mouldering urn?

Shall day ever dawn on the night of the grave?

—Campbell-Owen Debate, p. 13