MRS. JANE CAMPBELL, the wife of Elder Thomas Campbell, was a descendant of the French Huguenots, who fled from France anno Domini 1681. It is said some hundreds of thousands of them fled from France, to Switzerland, Holland, Germany, England, and Ireland. A portion of them located themselves in the north of Ireland, in the county of Antrim, among whom was my maternal ancestry. The writer of this memoir was the last child of this family born on its patrimonial inheritance; one mile from Shane's Castle and three miles from Ballymena, county Antrim. His mother's maiden name was Jane Corneigle.

      Her parents were rigid Calvinistic Presbyterians, and, of course, she was strictly educated in the Christian religion, according to their views of it. Her father died when she was some seven years old. Her connections, the Corneigles and the Bonners, having purchased the township in which she was born, and being pious Presbyterians, they erected a Church and a school, in which their families were strictly educated and brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. In that school [309] the Bible was a daily theme; it was memorized and recited by the pupils as a part of their daily exercises.

      Having a peculiarly ready and retentive memory, she treasured up the holy Scriptures in early life, and could quote and apply them with great fluency and pertinence from childhood to old age. She, indeed, also possessed a mental independence which I have seldom seen equaled, and certainly never surpassed by any woman of my acquaintance.

      Greatly devoted to her children, and especially to their proper training for public usefulness and for their own individual and social enjoyment, she was indefatigable in her labors of love, and in her attentions to their physical, intellectual, moral, and religious training and development. She seemed to me, soon as I arrived at the age of reflection, as one of the most successful imitators of Solomon's beau ideal of a virtuous woman, as depicted in the close of his life and of his proverbs. And who ever had a larger experience of the sex than he! His climax of conception of a virtuous and excellent wife is given in the following episode: "She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth out her hand to the needy. Her husband is known in the gates when he sitteth among the elders of the land." (We presume because of the neatness and cleanness of his apparel.) "She makes fine linen and sells it, and delivers girdles to the merchants. She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands. She is like the merchant s' ships, she bringeth her food from afar. 'She rises' by the dawn of day, while it is yet night, and prepares food for her household, and a portion to her maidens. She considereth a farm and [310] buys it: with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard. She girds her loins with strength, and strengthens her arms. She perceiveth that her merchandise is good: her light goes not out by night. She applies her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff. She spreads out her hands to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy. She is not afraid of the snow for her household; for all her household are clothed with scarlet. She makes herself coverings of crimson; her clothing is cotton and purple. Her husband is known in the gates, when he sits among the elders of the land. She makes fine linen, and sells it; and delivers girdles to the merchants. Strength and honor are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom, and on her tongue is the law of kindness. She looks well to the ways of her household, and eats not the bread of idleness. Her children arise, and call her happy; her husband also, and he praises her. Many daughters have gotten riches, but thou excellest them all. Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that fears the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her works praise her in the gates" when he sits among the elders of the land.^* In all the essential elements of Solomon's picture of a good wife and mother, was the subject of this memoir.

      As a helpmeet of my father in the work of the Christian ministry, I think I never saw her superior, if I ever did her equal.

      He was frequently called from home on protracted tours in his public ministry of the Gospel; but though [311] her cares and solicitudes were always on such occasions more or less augmented, I never heard her complain; but rather to sympathize with him in his works of faith and in his labors of love. She, indeed, cheerfully endured the privations of his company, in the full assurance that his absence from home and labors in the Gospel would ultimately redound more to the glory of God and to the happiness of man, than his confinement to any one particular locality.

      Paul, though freed from domestic cares and without a home, was not unmindful of the aids and favors bestowed on himself by certain females that labored with him in the Gospel. He therefore occasionally took pleasure in giving them conspicuity in certain allusions to their works of faith and labors of love. He did not wish that any of those sisters who labored for him, or with him, should be overlooked, neglected, or forgotten by the Churches or by his follow-laborers. Honor to whom honor is due, whether to man or woman, is a standing law in Christ's kingdom; and every true Christian man will award it when falling in his path. Such a man was Paul, and such every admirer of Paul, or of his Master, ought to be. Jesus, in the dying agonies of the cross, forgot not his mother; but most feelingly commended her to the care and protection of that disciple whom he most loved--the loving and beloved John. This is one of the most eloquent and soul-stirring scenes in the biography of the most magnificent and divinely glorious personage that ever honored humanity It is an eloquent and soul-stirring volume in itself, superlatively indicative and suggestive of the honors due to a devoted mother, from a dutiful, a grateful, and a devoted [312] son. Never, after such an example, let a dutiful and an affectionate son forget his obligations to a kind and an affectionate mother. It is well pleasing to God, to angels, and to men.

      During the labors, the anxieties, and the toils of a long life her motto was--

      In all the trials and vicissitudes of her protracted life, and especially during the conflicts of her husband with the opposition, the enmity and the envy he had to encounter for duty and conscience sake, while endeavoring to effect a reformation in his own Synod and its Presbyteries, both in the Old World and in the New, she stood by him in faith, hope, and love, and most cheerfully became a partaker with him in all the trials and consequences incident to, and resulting from, his advocacy of primitive and apostolic Christianity, and its restoration to its beau ideal, as pictured and developed in the inspired writings of the apostles and evangelists of Jesus the Christ.

      There is no scene on earth, in the vision of mortal man, more sublime, more soul-stirring, more soul-subduing, more soul-elevating, than that of a Christian woman standing by the side of her husband and their offspring when, as a faithful martyr, he stands up for God and his Anointed, at every risk and hazard of life and all its tender and endearing ties. This is a scene, [313] in our appreciation, the most enrapturing and aggrandizing vouchsafed to mortal man in his whole pilgrimage from the cradle to the grave. Only a small measure of this spirit can, in our day, and under our institutions, be meted out to any man. Such victims, in our generation, and especially in our free country, are few, very few, and far between.

      But still old Cain yet lives in a numerous progeny, and has in all Christendom a few representatives, even a few still extant in our own free and magnanimous population. We, however, in the whole area of Christendom so called, more frequently find Cain's representatives than we do those of the type of Abel.

      Mother Campbell, by her French Huguenot ancestry, was most strictly educated in the Calvinistic faith. The horrid slaughter of Protestants in France to the amount of thirty thousand, on St. Bartholomew's day, A. D. 1512, when, at midnight, a signal was given to massacre all of that faith in the city of Paris, and throughout the whole kingdom, was the remote root and the reason of her people locating in the mountainous parts of that kingdom, and ultimately of leaving France and migrating to the Protestant north of Ireland, on the environs of Lake Neagh, county Antrim.

      We are of that type of. humanity that have some faith in blood as well as in water. In early life we were rather addicted to read biography and to trace blood with some discrimination. We found some branches of humanity whose blood had run through scoundrels and heroes, of all sorts, ever since the flood. And although there are exceptions, to general rules in grammar and in blood, we still can not divest ourself of the [314] that there are hereditary characteristics in the blood and mind of man, as well as in some other species of animated nature. Still, as we sometimes find in one and the same family of six or eight children a very great diversity of type, of constitution, of mind and body, we are cautioned not to build theories on consanguinity or affinity with all the firmness of faith or fact. How many and how diverse are the dispositions and characters found in one family of seven or eight children! We often find them as dissimilar as diverse ingrafted fruit on the same tree. We have family diversities, tribe diversities, and national diversities as striking as were in Father Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Of all our promises we are admonished against dogmatism. Yet we must still admit that there are differential attributes in every species of animated nature, and that these diversities obtain in the volumes of humanity. After all our speculations, we must say that it is mainly

      But what is education! We must have induction before we can have eduction, and both of these before we have education.

      There are few facts or events of great importance and value in the life of most men, and still fewer in the life of most women. A truly good woman, as a wife and a mother, is, indeed, the most splendid spectacle in the horizon of human apprehension. Her empire is small, but her power is immense. The destiny, temporal, spiritual, and eternal, of the family of which she is the mother, and in whose hands God has placed, more [315] or less, its temporal, spiritual, and eternal destiny, is one of the most interesting positions--the most soul-stirring, the most absorbing, and the most blissful in which a human being can be placed. Great are its cares, great are its labors, great are its responsibilities, but greater still are its honors, glories, and beatitudes.

      Woman, next to God, makes the living world of humanity. She makes man what he is in this world, and very frequently makes him what he shall hereafter be in the world to come. We do not infringe on the pulpit or on the press in so affirming. These are, indeed, a supply of means to compensate the want or neglect of maternal influence, enlightened by the Gospel, and properly directed by its spirit.

      Maternal influence is paramount to paternal influence. We read of an hereditary maternal influence possessed and developed by Grandmother Lois and Mother Eunice, but never of a grandfather's influence by any hero in the Christian Scriptures. I do not say that a grandfather or a father may not, can not be the means of saving his descendants; but I do say that such cases are the exception and not the rule. Maternal love and assiduity are paramount to paternal love and assiduity. Besides, every infant looks up more to its mother for everything it wants than to its father. It is mercifully necessitated to look up to and to love its mother more than its father; and, therefore, a mother's influence is paramount to every other human influence.

      In this excursive view of the character of a mother, of a Christian mother, We have been only sketching out the more prominent characteristics of Mother Campbell. She made a nearer approximation to the acknowledged [316] beau ideal of a truly Christian mother than any one of her sex with whom I have had the pleasure of forming a special acquaintance.

      I can not but gratefully add, that to my mother as well as to my father I am indebted for having memorized in early life almost all the writings of King Solomon: his Proverbs, his Ecclesiastes, and many of the Psalms of his father David. They have not only been written on the tablet of my memory, but incorporated with my modes of thinking and speaking.

      However out of place it may seem for me to note this fact, or to make these remarks, I do it from a moral obligation, a sense of duty to the living as well as to the dead. We owe it to our cotemporaries, and we owe it to posterity; and, stronger still, we owe it to the Lord, to perpetuate the memory of the sainted dead. Paul to the Hebrews is my model. After arraying his cloud of faithful witnesses in attestation of the redeeming, transforming, aggrandizing, and beatifying virtue and power of faith, especially of the faith formerly or originally delivered to the saints, he caps his climax with the heroines of the faith, the women who had through faith received their dead children to life again, and others were tortured or violently beaten, because they would not recant their faith, or deny the Lord who had ransomed them.

      We plead this license in doing justice to the character of a most affectionate and exemplary mother, to whom this tribute is pre-eminently due. It is emphatically the mother that gives to home, sweet home, all its fascinating charms and attractions.

      When a boy, reading Homer, one of the most ancient [317] and famous of the Grecian bards, I could not but admire and sympathize with the parting scene of Hector and his beloved wife Andromache. I could not, indeed, but memorize Pope's beautiful version of it, concluding in these words. In his response to her pleadings, vanquished, indeed, by her eloquence, he says:

      But Paul's heroines of faith incomparably excel these. "Women," said he, (in standing firm for truth on the Lord's side,) "by faith received their dead (children) raised to life again," as did the widow of Zarephath, (1 Kings xvii: 21,) the Shunammite, (2 Kings iv: 24;) "and others were tortured, (or violently beaten,) because they would not recant their faith, or deny their Lord."

      Mother Campbell, in sympathy with the afflicted, the poor, the orphan, and the friendless, was, in my area of observation, rarely equaled, and seldom, if ever, surpassed.

      I am now only minus a few months of her age when she calmly, resignedly, and hopefully passed over the Jordan, in a serene and blissful anticipation of the eternal rest, and of that inheritance guaranteed and secured by the ever-blessed Lord to all them that have betaken themselves to his mercy, and that have honored him with the allegiance and devotion of their hearts and the consecration of their lives.

      She had, in all, ten children, three of whom died in [318] infancy, whose ashes repose in the Old World. Seven accompanied her to this country, of whom only four, two sons and two daughters, now survive--Sisters Dorothea and Jane, Brother Archibald, and myself, in whose memory and affection, in whose esteem and admiration, she will most gratefully live while reason holds its scepter and memory its records. Her son Thomas and her daughters Nancy and Alicia died since their mother. My eldest sister, Mrs. Dorothea Bryant, assisted me much in the reading, and collecting, and revising the letters of my father.

      Truly blessed are they who fall asleep in the arms of the Lord; for they do rest from their labors, and their works of piety and humanity do follow them.

      ^* David Bernard's Version.

[METC 310-319]