---

Essay 63 (3-7-05)

ALEXANDER CAMPBELL: THE MAN AND HIS MISSION

I. Introduction Part 1: The Showcase of the Movement

"Expect great things, attempt great things, and great things will follow."

When Alexander Campbell died in Bethany, West Virginia in 1866, he could be described as "the showcase of the Movement." He was one of its founders and had been its recognized leader for more than half a century. It was by then a respectable community that numbered upwards of a half million, and it enjoyed considerable international outreach. He was its representative speaker and debater. His journals and books reflected its ideals and mission. It could be said that the Movement was his alter ego

Campbell was as well known as any religious figure of the mid-frontier between 1830 and 1860. He traveled widely and attracted large crowds. More imposing than handsome, he stood almost six feet tall and bore the mien of a cultured European. He was urbane, intellectual, and eloquent. Those who heard him described him as "the master of assemblies." A man who watched him pass on a London street was heard to say, "There goes a man with the brains to rule all Europe."

Speaker and Preacher

In keeping with his times, it was not unusual for him to speak for two or three hours - and without notes. Well-read in the classics as well as history, literature, philosophy, and religion, he ranged widely over various areas of knowledge in his discourses, whatever the subject. He lectured nearly as easily on moral philosophy, the Anglo-Saxon language, the amelioration of society, phrenology, scientific farming, and the American republic as upon the Scriptures. He addressed skeptics as well as believers, and politicians as well as educators. His consuming themes, by both voice and pen, had to do with what he called "the new reformation" and "the ancient order of things."

While given to redundancy as a speaker as well as writer, he was seldom, if ever, boring. While always serious, he was pleasant and affable. He was never given to levity, and probably never told the first joke in the pulpit. He was not a storyteller in the usual sense, and he did not talk about himself. He was always informative, usually interesting, and occasionally scintillating.

A Presbyterian minister -- who heard him out of curiosity and with a critical ear -- conceded that Campbell's discourse on Psalms 24 -- which was in exaltation of the risen Christ -- was the most impressive display of divine eloquence he had ever heard. James Madison, former president -- who often heard Campbell while they served together at the 1829 Virginia Constitutional Convention -- revealed that he considered Alexander Campbell the best expositor of the Scriptures he had ever heard. General Robert E. Lee went so far as to say that if he should select someone to represent the human race on another planet it would be Alexander Campbell.

A common response from his auditors was that they were unconscious of time, however long he spoke, and they were impressed that he was as poised in the pulpit as if he were in his own parlor. Those who expected eloquent oratory were surprised to find him conversational in tone and quiet in demeanor. Despite his erudition, he was disarmingly plain and simple. Once positioned before an audience, he never moved from that position-not even during a two hour or three hour discourse. But in his latter years he would lean slightly on a cane that he took with him to the pulpit. His gestures were few, but he did sometimes emphasize a point with a sharp rap of his cane against the floor. He would also on occasion, in urging a point, bring his hand down lightly on his closed Bible on the lectern before him.

He trusted the common man to comprehend his most seminal and profound concepts. He did not save his groundbreaking ideas for educators or the clergy, but freely shared them with the rank and file. He did not have one message for the elite and another for the ordinary folk. He wrote and spoke as if he would be understood by all. He was a man for all seasons and for all people. Whether in a mansion in New Orleans or a coal miner's shack in Kentucky, his manner was the same.

While we have few of his sermons - perhaps because he put few in print-his numerous travel letters, published in his journals, reveal some things about his preaching. One of his favorite sermons was "The Sun of Righteousness," based on Malachi 4:2, in which he treated God's revelation as a progressive unveiling of light. There was first the starlight age (Patriarchal), then the moonlight age (Mosaic), then the twilight age (John the Baptist), and at last the sunlight age (Christian) that brought the Messiah as the sun of righteousness.

This was vintage Campbell. He preferred wide-ranging discourses that sought to integrate the various tributaries of God's disclosure of His purposes. Another frequent topic was "The Philanthropy of God," which, while based on John 3:16, was a broad sweep of Scripture in reference to what God has done for man. This was the sermon he gave before statesmen from both houses of Congress and their families in the House chamber in 1850. This has unfortunately been interpreted as a sermon delivered before a called joint-session of Congress, which has never happened in American history.

In recent years congressional leaders arranged for Billy Graham to preach in the foyer of the Capitol -- presuming there was no precedent for a preacher to give a sermon in the chamber of the House of Representatives. They did not realize that it was an occasional event in the mid-nineteenth century for prominent clergymen visiting Washington to be invited to preach (unofficially) in the House chamber. Alexander Campbell was one of them.

Reaction and Opposition

Campbell had such a reputation by this time that a former president of Amherst College wrote of him in 1850: "Mr. Campbell has for more than twenty years wielded a power over men's minds, on the subject of religion, which has no parallel in the Protestant history of this country, nor of the Romish either." He went on to say that no one else had ever made such inroads into other denominations. He explained that this was due, as he saw it, to Campbell's rare combination of talents, which he listed as: a great knowledge of human nature, a superior education, smooth and captivating eloquence as a preacher, a skilled debater, an untiring industry of his pen and press, and his vast personal acquaintance in his wide circuits.

But he had his antagonists. J. B. Jeter, a prominent Virginia Baptist, wrote disparagingly of him. In 1855 he had published Campbellism Examined, a widely-acclaimed exposure of the errors of "the current reformation." A few years later -- following a visit with Campbell in Richmond -- he gave his opinion of the reformer in a Baptist journal. He allowed that Campbell was a good man and that the principles he advocated were right in the main, but that he was visionary, erratic, and unpredictable. Moreover, he so often and so glaringly contradicted himself that he could only conclude that there was "a screw loose in his mental machinery." This became more evident as Campbell grew older, Jeter insisted, until it terminated in "downright monomania."

Then there was the derogatory tag of "Campbellism," which was "spreading like a mighty contagion through the Western states, wasting Zion in its progress," as one journal put it. It complained that "one-half of the Baptist churches in Ohio have embraced its sentiments," and added, "In Kentucky its desolations are even greater than in Ohio." Others prayed that they might be delivered from "Alexander the coppersmith and Alexander Campbell."

Campbell usually responded to his critics. As for "Campbellism," he rejoined, "Men fond of nicknaming are usually weak in reason, argument, and proof." As for Jeter, the response in part was, "Our brother Jeter - Brother, did I say? Yes, and I will not erase it, our brother Jeter . . ." He did not pass up a chance to show that he could disagree with a man and still accept him as a brother - a basic principle of his plea for reformation.

Diverse Interests

His interests were vast and diverse - including serving as postmaster of the village of Bethany! It was a title he was apparently pleased to wear in that he asked his readers to address him as "Alexander Campbell, P.M." It also had its perks. With franking rights he sent out free of charge - over several decades -- something like a million copies of his journals, books, Bibles, and hymnals.

While at first reluctant, he entered politics long enough to serve as a delegate to the 1829 Virginia Constitutional Convention. He was also reluctant to debate, but eventually concluded that in some ways a week of debating was more effective than a year of preaching. He had five public debates - all were put in book form - and several written discussions.

Considering that his father was an educator before him, it is not surprising that he was deep into education. Not only did he have a boys' school in his home as early as 1818, but he founded a college on his own farm in 1840. He not only served the college as professor, treasurer, and president for a quarter of a century, but helped fund it in its early years with his own money. Along the way, he worked out an impressive philosophy of education, which became the source of numerous lectures across the country.

It was hardly predictable that he would be an entrepreneur -- something his father was not. Starting with 140 acres of land -- which his father-in-law had given to him and his wife to keep them from migrating to Ohio -- he eventually owned some 1500 acres. He bought land as far west as Indiana. Interestingly, part of the campus of Indiana University was once owned by Alexander Campbell. And most of the campus of Bethany College was once part of the Campbell farm.

On those fertile acres he raised Merino sheep imported from his native Ireland, which proved profitable. He was active in the American Wool Growers Association. He corresponded with John Brown, the abolitionist, who was also a wool grower. They had a common interest in defending the rights of the wool growers, which they believed were threatened by the wool buyers. But Campbell did not share Brown's abolitionist views, even though he was anti-slavery and freed his own slaves.

He also farmed those acres, doing some of the work himself, especially in his earlier years. Virtually all the food served at the family table, which included many guests, was raised on the farm. The food was prepared by hired help, and, until they were freed, slaves.

He became widely known not only by his journals and debates, but also as a translator of the New Testament. His Living Oracles -- the name it assumed, but actually published as "The Sacred Writings of the Apostles and Evangelists of Jesus Christ, Commonly Called the New Testament, Translated from the Original Greek"-- went through six editions. There would have been more, but Campbell deferred to the American Bible Union's translation, choosing not to compete with it. He served as one of its translators, doing the Acts of the Apostles.

He was even a hymnologist, though he could hardly carry a tune. He published Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs, Original and Selected, with 511 entries - lyrics only - four of which he composed. It too went through several editions, and, like most of his publications, was financially profitable.

Wealth and Grief

He became quite wealthy. His estate was estimated at upward of $200,000, which would be several millions by today's count. A mystery lingers concerning his will - as to why he favored the heirs of his "second family." While all the children of his first wife - the "first family" -- preceded him in death, there were numerous grandchildren and great grandchildren. Some of these he doted over in their youth, particularly the one who bore his name -- Alexandrina Campbellina Pendleton, known as "Miss Cammy" -- who became a professor at Bethany College. She too received an unequal share.

The first wife's heirs challenged the will in court, but lost. James A. Garfield -- destined to be president -- defended the will for the "second family," and went on record to the effect that it was his most satisfying victory in court as a lawyer. There are obviously things about that story that are not known.

He was often beset by severe grief. He not only lost his first wife when he was but thirty-eight, but eventually buried ten of his fourteen children - "six of them daughters, all young mothers," he lamented. The bitterest loss of all, however, was the drowning death of his highly-promising, ten-year old Wickliffe in 1847 when the reformer was in Europe. It afflicted the family with "superlative severity," as Campbell described it.

The Civil War compounded his sorrows. It not only divided his adopted country --which he had envisioned as the sanctuary of "the millennial church" -- but it threatened the welfare of his reformation, especially in the South. It was a sad day when he could no longer send mail to his vast constituency in the southern states. And once the war was over, he had to witness the trial of his son, Alexander Campbell, Jr., in nearby Wellsburg, who was accused of treason against the United States after serving as an officer in the Confederate Army. Even though the son was pardoned by the president, it further intensified the pain of his aging father.

His response to these losses is reflective of his piety and spirituality - a side of him that may be overlooked when he is seen primarily as a rationalist and a son of the Enlightenment.

As for the loss of Wickliffe -- known for his "precocious piety" -- Campbell admitted that he had never been afraid of evil tidings, but "in this case God thought good to take to himself the choicest lamb from my flock, and has not revealed to me the reason why." But God is too wise to err and too kind to afflict His children without cause, he concluded. While God's ways cannot be traced, he ventured that Wickliffe was "drafted" -- due to his unique character -- to serve elsewhere in God's vast universe.

He held that while we are not to converse with the dead, we may commune with them. An instance of his doing this was in an ancient cemetery in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1847. He stood in reverence at the grave of George Campbell - longtime professor at Aberdeen University - whose writings he had admired. He wrote afterwards that on that day he had "conversed with the living and communed with the dead."

Personal Piety: A Principle of Reformation

He dealt with the mystery of the premature death of exemplary Christians in pietistic terms. "We must not think it strange," he wrote following Wickliffe's death, "if God will make all saints after death ministers of mercy or of public utility in some of the grand departments of this stupendous universe." He went on to suggest that God needs noble souls to minister elsewhere in the universe as much as He needs angels to serve on planet earth. He was enough of a Calvinist to acknowledge God's complete sovereignty over all His creation. God never acts without purpose in the life of His children.

He included piety in his "essential attributes of the proposed reformation." Reformation was not merely doctrinal, but personal - "personal reformation," he called it -- and he insisted that "We all need reformation." When he listed his "principle articles," he included: "More piety and devotion - more power and praise - more private meditation and communion with God, than appears to obtain amongst the great mass of those called Christians." He also called for self-denial and strict self-government.

He appears to have been as pious as he was intellectual -- which was part of his endowment from his deeply-spiritual father and his Calvinistic upbringing. There were morning and evening devotionals in his home. His children memorized and quoted Scripture in the family circle. They sang and prayed together, and he talked to them of eternal verities in the simplest terms, drawing illustrations from things they understood. One visitor to the family circle tells how Campbell on one occasion stretched out his hand before the children, referred to it as an example of God's majestic handiwork, and proceeded to point out amazing facts about the mechanism of the hand.

In public worship he always knelt to pray, if he were not leading the service. When joining in family worship in a Cincinnati home - tired and aging - he was unable to rise from his knees without assistance. As he was aided in rising, he exclaimed, "What a happy thing it is to be a Christian!" Regarding the advantages of private prayer, he once wrote that prayer implies more than we express, even more than we are able to express. It implies that God hears what is to human ears inaudible whispers, and "he reads what we ourselves cannot read - the language of our agonies and unutterable sighs and emotions."

While he preferred kneeling in both private and public prayer, he granted that standing was "Divinely sanctioned" for both prayer and praise - including lifting up holy hands. It was when he saw congregations sitting in prayer that he was indignant - "a heart-chilling and soul-paralyzing spectacle." "Sitting worshipers are lazy-bodies," he complained, noting that if angels cast their crowns before the Lamb of God, we should be willing to submit our bodies in His presence.

He applied this to giving thanks at the table at home. To "sit and address God is most indecorous and disorderly," except for a physical disability. "Shall a man arise to speak to a respectable friend, and sit down to thank God for his daily repasts?" he asked as he wrote about "Order," one of his favorite themes -- a principle to him.

The Jovial "Bishop"

He was not as solemn and austere as he is sometimes depicted. Around Bethany he was seen as the jovial and friendly "Bishop." He was sometimes seen in public in old farm clothes and a beat-up white hat, and he was known to wear Kentucky jeans in the pulpit. He had a hearty appetite and slept soundly for seven hours each night, but was usually up by 4 a.m. in order to get in sixteen hours of work and study. He worked in the fields and repaired fences like any other farmer. He talked with his fellow farmers about their mutual problems. He knew how to laugh and have fun. He and his wife were once guests of President James Buchanan in the White House. On another occasion he took his wife to hear Jenny Lind, the Swedish singer who attracted large audiences in the U.S. in the early 1850s.

When he was seventy-one he anticipated travel as if he were half that age, and with the spirit of a poet: "We promise ourselves, the Lord willing, a visit to Iowa when the birds are singing, and the Prairie flowers are blooming in all their loveliness and beauty." In the same travel letter he wrote of "those grand Christian excellencies" which prepare and purify the heart, and make it suitable for "the pure and Holy Spirit that condescends to become a guest in the Christian's bosom." It may have been this concern to make his body a temple of the Spirit that led him to give up tobacco.

His was a consummate optimist. That he named his journal The Millennial Harbinger is evidence of this. He actually believed -- especially in his earlier years -- that a millennial reign of peace and righteousness was in the offing - including a united church - with America at its center. His Movement was a harbinger to that end! He often gave expression to a favorite motto: "Expect great things, attempt great things, and great things will follow."

While a house guest in Scotland, he bounded down the stairs on one occasion singing, The Campbell's are coming, Aha, Aha! And it appears that all through the years he enjoyed the attention fawning women heaped upon him. That he was attractive to women is apparent enough. In a letter to his wife from Richmond, during the 1829 Constitutional Convention, he playfully revealed to her that the women of the city seemed to like him!

He was skilled in repartee touched by humor. When a skeptic challenged him with, "Would you have me trust in the bare, bare, naked truth?" he retorted with, "Yes, as naked as two bares can make it!" When asked about what he thought of growing old, he said, "Well, considering the alternative . . ." In defense of a crying baby, he granted that wailing was not his favorite music, but that the baby should be listened to, for it was claiming its rights -- "There are rights for men, rights for women, and baby rights!"

One gets an on-the-scene view of his good humor amidst difficulty when he was speaking in Martinsville, Indiana in 1851, and was disturbed by crying babies. There were "some fifteen parts rending the air," and he was so overwhelmed that, "Cried down, I sat down." He called on John O'Kane -- who was traveling with him and who had a powerful voice -- to speak in his place. As O'Kane spoke the babies were "allured into a speculative silence." With the babies quiet, O'Kane motioned for Campbell to resume his subject. But he no more than began when the babies resumed their wailing -- all in concert! With the mothers at their wit's end, and with no one willing to give way, "I confessed myself wholly vanquished, drew to a close, and dismissed the assembly."

David S. Burnet -- who traveled with him more than anyone else -- told the students at Bethany following Campbell's death that, "The twinkle under his heavy eye-brow, and the gleam of sunlight over his countenance, with a jeu d'sprit, or a jeu de mots were an irresistible contagion of pleasure." Twenty years younger than Campbell and endowed with comparable gifts, Burnet was looked to as his possible successor.

Campbell was so impressed with his younger colleague that he might well have thought of him as taking over the leadership of the Movement once he was "absent from planet earth." They shared the conviction that some basic corrections needed to be made -- such as a better educated ministry and more cooperation among the churches -- and together they made some progress to those ends.

Burnet was minister of the Christian Church in Baltimore when word reached him that Alexander Campbell had died. "I cannot break the spell," he said, realizing that things would not be the same. The Movement had just gone through its greatest crisis, the Civil War. It now faced one equally daunting - moving on without Alexander Campbell. David S. Burnet might have filled the void had he too not died the following year at only fifty-nine.

One of Burnet's favorite mottoes seemed appropriate, "The future is born of the past."

(To be continued in Essay 64)

Note___________________________________________________________

This extended essay on Alexander Campbell will appear in six installments. Those who have copies of The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement may notice that the essay appears there, albeit with some editorial alterations. Some of them are inexplicable, such as -- in this installment -- the excision of what Robert E. Lee said about the reformer, and the paragraphs about David S. Burnet and Campbell. And for some reason the editors (or more likely some proofreader) did not want to include that Campbell asked his readers to address him as postmaster at Bethany! And that he teased his wife about women liking him! And how in old age he sometimes had to be helped to his feet after kneeling in prayer, but would rise praising God. It must not have been to shorten the essay that these deletions were made, for I had no space limitation. In depicting the old hero, I had in mind Cromwell's orders, "Paint me as I am, warts and all." Not that Campbell had all that many warts.

But that said the essay in the Encyclopedia preserves most all of what I submitted, so I have not let the sun go down on my wrath. The tome is a monumental piece of work, and I recommend it highly. I am pleased to have already sold over 60 copies. You may still order a copy from us at regular retail price of $50 plus $3,10 postage. Address: 1300 Woodlake Dr., Denton, TX 76210. Please prepay.

[TOP].