A SUPREME devotion to truth in general, but especially to the Truth, and to Him who is THE WAY, THE TRUTH, and THE LIFE, characterized his public and private life. He entertained the loftiest, the richest, and the most soul-stirring conceptions of the peerless majesty, the ineffable beauty, and the superlative grandeur of the Lord, in union with a condescending mercy and a tender compassion toward a bewildered, alienated, and ruined world.

      His unselfish and self-sacrificing spirit knew no limit in its exertions to cheer and comfort the desponding, to animate the disconsolate, to alleviate the afflicted, and to pour the oil of joy and gladness into the broken and disconsolate heart.

      His piety was unfeigned, and his communion with God was constant, it, free, and familiar.

      His habits of Bible study furnished him with themes of spiritual contemplation and of edifying conversation.

      His deadness to the world, and to all matters of political agitation, enabled him to concentrate his mind and thoughts on themes heavenly and Divine.

      He seemed to be wholly apathetic on all the themes [265] of political agitation, and took no special interest in them.

      He was superlatively averse to evil-speaking, and seemed to cultivate an antipathy against every form of detraction and reproach in all his civil and social intercommunications with society.

      His strong aversion to political disquisitions and debates, to party spirit and to party strifes, was characterized by a profound silence on all such themes.

      He was uncompromising on all questions of religion and morality.

      His endeavors to unite all Christians on a Scriptural and evangelical basis, were earnest and unremitting.

      He was peculiarly unambitious of worldly honors and distinctions for himself' and family, apathetic of the honors that come from man, and ever condescending to men of low degree.

      Hospitality to strangers, without regard to differences of opinion in politics or religion, was a ruling maxim of his life.

      He went about continually doing good on the largest scale of all his means and opportunities. "And the case that he know not he sought out."

      Though not a professional physician, yet well read in the healing art, he freely waited on the poor and the humble, who were unable to procure professional aid; and in this way mitigated many an agony, and, no doubt, saved some useful lives.

      His family discipline was the most perfect that I ever witnessed. He always honored his own word. What he promised he performed, and what he threatened he executed and fulfilled to the letter. [266]

      The holy oracles were not only always on the table, but daily in the hands of his family, children, and servants. They were read in the family every morning; a portion was memorized every day and recited every evening. They were, again and again, reviewed and recited at special intervals; whole. epistles were committed to memory, and repeated especially on Lord's day evenings. Thus the Divine word became, as it were, incorporated with the minds of his household.

      "Attending church," or "going to meeting," as it happened to be called, was, in his family, a rather grave and serious matter. Every member of the family, child or servant, that attended church, "went to meeting" with the understanding that he or she was to give an account of what was spoken; not only of the text or topic, as it was called, but also a sort of synopsis of the discourse. In fact, this review was a miniature of the sermon or lecture, as it happened to be called.

      The advantages of this system of household training must, on a little reflection, be obvious to all, but especially to those of a thoughtful and inquisitive mind. The command of one's own attention is a great, a very great acquisition. It is, indeed, a most valuable science and a most useful art. Not more than a tithe of my intimate acquaintances have either studied or acquired the art and mystery of commanding and directing their own attention.

      The most useful series of college lectures, of which I have any recollection, was a series of discourses upon the science and art of attention, delivered A. D. 1808, by Professor Jordane, University of Glasgow, Scotland. This faculty, when fully developed and possessed, is of [267] paramount value to every human being, but most of all important to him that desires to acquire a familiar acquaintance with the sciences and arts comprehended in the curriculum of college education. If permitted to speak of one's self, we must say that to Father Campbell we are more indebted than to all other teachers and instructors for such a command of attention as enables me even yet (when I please to employ it) to recollect the materials of any lecture or sermon of the usual dimensions, without the loss of a prominent idea.

      The subject of this memoir was, almost to his eightieth year, remarkable for the strength and the readiness of his memory, excepting that class of words which we call proper names. This frailty I, too, inherit. It is only by the association of a person or an event with some locality, or position, or concurrent fact, or circumstance, that we can command his or its name. Father Campbell's habit of concentrated attention for long, consecutive periods, manifestly impaired its organic power, and paralyzed in a considerable degree its former vigor and retentive power.

      As pronunciation is the most essential characteristic of the orator, so attention is the most characteristic attribute of the successful student; whether he reads or listens to a lecture or an oration upon any subject.

      To hear and to listen are not synonymous. Listening is voluntary; but hearing is more or less involuntary. There is neither virtue nor vice in hearing; but there must be either the one or the other in listening.

      The Hebrews, the Greeks, and the Romans were a listening, consequently, an intelligent and communicative people. In all schools the science and art of listening [268] ought to be a special study. It will pay well throughout the whole period of life.

      As a man of prayer, or rather of a prayerful spirit, Father Campbell gave the most satisfactory and impressive evidence. He might have appropriated to himself the language of the author of the one hundred and nineteenth Psalm, verse 164: "Seven times a day do I praise thee, because of thy righteous judgments. Great peace have they which love thy law." "They have no stumbling-block" in their path. "Thy testimonies also are my delight, and my counselors." "I will speak of thy testimonies also before kings, and will not be ashamed." "Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage." "Thy testimonies have I taken as an heritage forever: for they are the rejoicing of my heart."--Verses 24, 45, 54, and 111. "Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them. Lord, I have hoped for thy salvation, and done thy commandments. My soul hath kept thy testimonies; and I love them exceedingly. I have kept thy precepts and thy testimonies: for all my ways are before thee." "I have longed for thy salvation, O Lord; and thy law is my delight."--Verses 165-168, 174.

      This recipe for happiness, to them that seek it, is very ancient, and very well authenticated. It is now at least two thousand eight hundred and thirty-seven years old. But should this not be its exact age, its teachings, nevertheless, will be forever true. Accurately translated it reads in harmony with the question propounded as the subject of development, viz.: "I sought to see," to ascertain, "what is that good, that happiness or felicity which a man should pursue all the [269] days of his life ?"--Ecclesiastes ii: 3. In our current style, what is that special good, that happiness, which a man should pursue or seek after all the days of his life?

      It is very sententiously summed up in our vernacular in four words: REVERE AND OBEY GOD. This is the Roman summum bonum, the whole felicity of man.

      Who or what was Plato, Socrates, Seneca, or Æsop in comparison with Solomon? Were they all engrossed in one personality, they would be a pigmy by the knee of the gigantic Goliath of Gath. A regiment of our modern sages, and they are at least as great as any of the ancients, would, Queen Sheba-like, faint in the presence of Solomon, the son of David. Give me Solomon, the son of David, and I will give you, curious reader, all the magi of Persia, all the philosophers of the Greeks, all the magnates of all times and nations and languages of earth.

      In his family and daily teachings, Father Campbell was accustomed to teach and inculcate all the Christian virtues, personal and social; and to dehort not only against the fashionable vices of society in general--detraction, evil-speaking, foolish boasting, and foolish jesting--but also against all gossiping, idle tale-bearing, tattling, officiously interposing or intermeddling in other men's concerns.

      Vanity, vainglory, pride, and an ambition to excel others were with him prolific evils. His standing maxim, in my early days, was, "If it be a pleasure to you to excel others, it will, by degrees, be a pleasure to you not to see others as good and as respectable as yourself."

      We are divinely taught to cultivate the Christian virtues for their own sake, for our own honor and happiness [270] and that of others, and for the honor of Him to whom we are debtors for our rank and condition in life. It is, indeed, "more blessed to give than to receive good," was a maxim embalmed in his affections, and demonstrated to be worthy of Him to be the author of it who came from heaven to earth to raise man from earth to heaven.

      One of Father Campbell's most characteristic attributes, recognized and commended by all his intimate acquaintances, was, that which he reprobated in others he never practiced, nor yielded to, himself; and whatsoever he commended in others, or approved, he exhibited in all his deportment and social intercourse with his associates in life.

      Alike removed from Pharisaism and Sadducism, he was a strict conformist to that truly philosophic and fundamental oracle of the great Teacher: "All things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, (mutatis mutandis,) do you even so to them: for this is the law or sum of the law, "and the prophets."

      In my boyhood, when entering into his study, in which he had a large and well-assorted library, I was wont to wonder on seeing, with a very few exceptions, only his Bible and Concordance on the table, with a simple outfit of pen, ink, and paper. Whether he had read all these volumes, and cared nothing more for them, or whether he regarded them as wholly useless, I presumed not to inquire, and dared not to decide. But such was the fact.

      He, at least twice a year, made a tour through his congregation, in company with one or two of the ruling elders, as they were then designated. He called up the [271] children in the presence of their parents, and catechised them not only on the shorter catechism, but also on their Bible readings. If there appeared to be any neglect on the part of parents or children, an admonition or an exhortation was duly tendered to both children and parents, with a promise of another visit and another examination in due time. Under this system his congregation attained to the honor of being generally regarded the most intelligent in the Presbytery to which it belonged.

      In process of time, however, he began to dispense with the catechism, discovering that the children frequently confounded the Bible with the catechism, assigning to the latter a position of authority tantamount, if not paramount, to the former.

      That God could speak to man intelligibly, if he would, is not a debatable question. At least it was not so in the court of his understanding. That God would speak to man intelligibly if he could, is equally indisputable. Therefore every reflecting man must admit that God has delivered himself, his whole will and purposes, to mankind, so far as the present and eternal destiny of man is concerned; and, therefore, if any man, possessing the received and well-authenticated oracles of God in his own mother tongue, is ignorant of what God would have him to be, or of what God would have him to do, he is without excuse before the bar of his own conscience, and will be so, and feel himself so, on the day of ultimate judgment, when standing in the immediate presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, ordained by his Father and our Father, by His God and our God, to be the Judge, the ultimate Judge, of the living and of the dead, from whose decision there never can be one appeal. [272]

      Such were the prominent themes and views and teachings of Father Campbell. Among all my acquaintance, in the Christian ministry or out of it, I knew no man that so uniformly, so undeviatingly, practiced what he taught.

      I can not but gratefully add, that, to my mother as well as to my father, I am indebted for having constrained me to memorize, in early life, much of the sacred writings, especially many of the Proverbs of Solomon, all his Ecclesiastes, and many of the Psalms of his father, David, as well as much of the Christian Scriptures. They were not only deeply inscribed on the tablet of my memory, but in fact incorporated with my modes of thinking and forms of speaking. They have, indeed, been so incorporated with my mind, and modes of thinking, reasoning, and speaking, that I occasionally find myself thinking in the identical terms and sentences of these great masters of the human heart. There is as much of fact as of metaphor in speaking of having God's inspired teachings engraven or written upon the living tablets of human hearts.

      How much more quickening, elevating, and energizing are these divinely conceived and inspired words and sentences than the tame, set phrase of a cold, heartless, spiritless, speculative orthodoxy!

      On such cold, rocky peaks and towering cliffs, there is nothing green. On such mountain-tops there lies an everlasting snow, on which the Sun of righteousness is never felt, warming the heart, animating the soul, or cheering the spirit of man with rapturous conceptions and heavenly realizations of an "all exceeding and eternal weight of glory." [273]

      But Father Campbell's own letters,^* extending over many years' experience, addressed to myself and others, more fully, and, we presume to say, more satisfactorily, develop his Christian character and views of Divine truth than any other documents at our command. The letters of Paul and Peter, of James and John, indeed of all reputable writers, introduce the discriminating readers of them into a more intimate acquaintance with their authors and their more prominent characteristics, than could be imparted or acquired by a mere recital of our own opinions and conclusions, or those of others, concerning them. [274]

      ^* See pp. 141 to 193.

[METC 265-274]