HIS medical calls over for the day and the last patient gone, young Dr. Robert Richardson sat at his desk re-reading a well-fingered letter, which had come five days before. How should he answer it? His emotions were so mixed up. On the one hand, there was the sustaining elation that had been with him ever since he had followed Walter Scott to the Western Reserve for his baptism. On the other, there was his vexation over the complete misunderstanding of his father. "Misunderstanding" was hardly the word for it--the rage of his father! He had, too, an immense respect for the author of this letter. Although he knew the missive by heart, he read it yet again, his mind fumbling meanwhile for the right words with which to reply. It was dated at Pittsburgh--

JULY 9th, 1829

      MY DEAR YOUNG FRIEND,--You will not, I trust, take it amiss if I express to you the surprize and regret with which I heard from your father, of the change in your religious sentiments. But my design in troubling you with this, is not a controversial one. I merely wish to set before your excellent judgment a few reasons for questioning the propriety of your course, even supposing that your conclusion were a right one.

      You are the eldest of a numerous family; I believe I may add, the best endowed both by nature and by education, and engaged in a highly respectable profession. That you should be looked up to in a great degree by your brothers and sisters, and peculiarly [13] cherished by your parents, is, under these circumstances, a very rational consequence. That you are so, is a fact with which you must be perfectly acquainted.

      His eyes trailed on down the page. How these words misjudged him! Because he had failed to consult his parents over this recent change in religion, he was charged with contempt for their opinion. He had done nothing "to prepare them for the change" or "to lighten the blow." In short, his action was unfilial and cruel. This was a masterful attack upon Robert's weakest point. He continued to read:

      Have you done as you would, one day, wish your son to do by you? . . . Have you not been led by your zeal to do a positive evil, at least in the mode pursued to secure your object? And are you sure that your course has produced to others the hundredth part of the pleasure, that it has inflicted pain, on those whose love for you is probably greater than that of the whole united world besides?

      In spite of the vigor of his attack, the rector was writing without hostility. He really wanted to be helpful, but it was a helpfulness that could not rise beyond the limits of a mild and rather urbane religion. The young doctor read on.

      I trust you will pardon the frankness of this expostulation. I am a father, and therefore may presume that I can estimate the misery of a parent who sees and mourns over the estrangement of a darling son, much more correctly than you can yet do. God grant that you may never experience the terrible reality of such a visitation. But beholding, as I did, the grief of your father; hearing him say that he had passed a sleepless and a wretched night in consequence of your conduct in this matter, and [14] observing the tears of strong emotion which his manhood could not restrain while he spoke, I could easily conjecture the state of your mother's mind, and thought it a duty to intrude myself no longer as pastor, but as a Christian friend, to ask you whether you are not bound in conscience and in principle, to acknowledge your error in taking such a step without consulting them?

      Well, since receiving this letter, he had certainly done all he knew how to do to bring about the reconciliation which it counseled. From his understanding mother there had been immediate and wholehearted capitulation. But from his father? Nothing but wounded pride and cold, uncommunicative anger. Unrelenting, unforgiving anger. An anger that seemed to say, "You are disinherited from my affection forever!"

      Robert's eyes returned to the rector's letter:

      I do not mean at all to impeach the soundness of your religious views. My sincere desire is to have you unmolested and entirely free, even from any unwelcome solicitation on that subject. But I do beseech you not to suffer this breach between you and your parents to remain unclosed for want of a speedy and thorough effort to heal it. In the mode of your procedure, you have been exceedingly to blame, because this mode was a plain declaration of want of confidence, want of kindness, want of reverence, want of filial submission. I confine myself to this single point, believing it a plain one, and in the hope that, however your light may exceed mine in the other doctrines of Christianity, we shall agree in the practical application of the moral law: "Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you."¹

      The signature was that of John Henry Hopkins, rector of the Episcopal church of Pittsburgh. [15]

      The young doctor laid the letter aside and reached for quill and paper to frame his reply. To place religion within the confines of family loyalty and to make its claims subservient to the expediences of respectability, even when the appeal was expressed as urbanely as Hopkins' letter had phrased it, astounded him. He had recently discovered how searching and unconditional the call of faith really was, how far above old loyalties, and how wholly other from respectability and expediency. He had hoped that a decision so crucial would find acceptance in his own family; but if not, there was little question as to where his first loyalty belonged. Had not his former rector read his New Testament? "Think not that I am come to bring peace to the earth. I came not to bring peace, but a sword. For I am come to cause dissension between father and son, between mother and daughter, between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law; so that a man's enemies will be found in his own family. He who loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me."²

      He dated his reply at Carnegie, Pennsylvania--

JULY 15th, 1829

      MY DEAR FRIEND,--As it would be highly inconsistent with my profession to take amiss any friendly attempt to convince me of a supposed error, I am very far from doing so in regard to that which you have made. On the contrary, I have to thank you for endeavoring to convince me that I was at fault in not consulting my parents upon my choice of religion, although my own heart as yet acquits me. As I cannot, however, exonerate myself from the charge before others, without declaring the motives which prompted me to that choice, it becomes necessary for me to offer [16] to you an apology for preferring Christianity to Episcopalianism. An apology for becoming a Christian!--and to a professed minister of the gospel! This is strange--but circumstances require it!

      He then set out to show Mr. Hopkins how he had already let his father do too much of his religious thinking for him, and that he had only lately come to stand on his own spiritual feet. "I was born and bred an Episcopalian," he observed. "At least as soon as I knew my right hand from my left, I found myself an Episcopalian-- . . . as far as compulsory attendance on Episcopalian ceremonies could constitute me one, and lived, until my sixteenth year, without religion and without God in the world."

      Alluding to the religious instruction of a former teacher, Walter Scott, though not calling him by name, he went on to say, "About this time a beloved Christian brother (not an Episcopalian) directed my thoughts and affections, in some degree, toward the Lord Jesus, as the Rose of Sharon that had no thorn; and the occasional reading of the scriptures, and a more particular attention to prayer and to sermons was the consequence." This teacher had never urged him to receive baptism or to leave the Episcopal church, "though he had ample opportunity to do so." At any rate, the young correspondent wrote, he had not left the Episcopalians at that time, but instead had finally offered himself for confirmation in that church. He reminded Mr. Hopkins that this step had been taken at his father's and the rector's request, even though there had been some prompting of a genuinely spiritual nature. "No motive," he declared, "had so strong an influence [17] over my conduct in this matter, as the fear of disobeying my earthly parent."

      The experience of confirmation, however, had not brought peace to his soul, he told his former rector. In fact, the burden of sin seemed to grow heavier; and all his efforts to rid himself of it were in vain. Following this was a period which he described as being "compounded of long seasons of torpid religious despondency," alternating with "transient glimpses of the happiness which religion would have afforded" if it had been possessed "in its purity."

      At some length, he went on to express to Mr. Hopkins the growing disillusionment he had experienced as he observed the sectarianism and petty strife within the denominations with which he was familiar, declaring that this had been an important factor in leading him to embrace a religious movement which he conceived to be more in line with the principles laid down m the Holy Scriptures.

      Believing that my Heavenly Father meant what he said, and that in everything essential to salvation his words were plain, I threw behind me all sectarianism, and took up the bible. And I took it up with the resolution that what I discovered to be my Father's will, I would endeavor to perform: and if the idea of consulting any human being about the propriety of doing what I believed to be the command of God, had ever entered my thoughts, it would have done so only to be discarded as a suggestion of Satan.

      Considering the Christian church as it was first formed by the Apostles, and the ancient gospel as preached by Peter on the day of Pentecost, I perceived that faith in Jesus, as the Son of God and Saviour of sinners, was the first duty; the second, repentance; [18] and the third, baptism for the remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit; and the fourth, that we should walk in newness of life.

      He then told Mr. Hopkins how he had studied his Greek Bible, only to come to the conclusion that scriptural baptism was always and solely by immersion. Having reached this conclusion, he had acted at once, and his action had been between himself and his God.

      Writing these words, the young physician's mind, raced back to the three days he had spent on horseback searching out Walter Scott on the Western Reserve. He recalled how he had found him at Shalersville, and how he had surprised his former teacher with his sudden appearance, and then astounded and delighted him by his request for baptism. So he had become one of "the Reforming Baptists"; a "Campbellite" some would call him. And there was irony in that situation, too, for two of those with whom he was now associated had been his former teachers, employed by his own father and entertained under his own family roof in Pittsburgh. At that time, of course, his father had not known or cared about the religious views of Thomas Campbell and Walter Scott. It was, enough for him that they were accomplished scholars and excellent teachers. Curious, now that Robert thought of it, that they had never told him anything of the work of reform they were doing in the church! Curious, too, that he had come to their way of thinking without suspecting that his change in sentiments would throw him with the Campbells! Of course, he had known that it would bring him into association with Scott. [19]

      He returned to the writing of his letter. His study had led him to the action which Hopkins so deeply deplored. So be it. "I could not conceive that I was bound, by any principle, to consult my parents, or anybody else, about the propriety of fulfilling this duty," he now wrote. "Besides this, my father's 'feelings and principles' in religion, which you say, are worthy of 'sacred regard,' I knew to be strictly and exclusively Episcopalian, . . . and I feared to rouse in my father those violent passions which it seems Episcopalianism has no power to subdue."

      That Nathaniel Richardson was now taking such a vital interest in his son's religious life was a matter of some surprise to him, Robert continued. "Religion never was the subject of conversation between me and my father, and I never perceived him to be interested in it . . . As long as I 'went to church' as the phrase is, all was well. My being a Christian seemed to be a secondary consideration, or rather no consideration at all. I know not how he could expect me to consult him in a matter in which I never saw him interested, and about which he never conversed with me."

      He bade Mr. Hopkins imagine how displeased his father would have been if he had consulted him and afterward had gone against his express wishes! That fury would have been a storm indeed! Moreover, there was something very peculiar here: "I am happy; but my father is angry. And this is strange--that he should mourne for me--that my joy has become his sorrow, and my happiness his displeasure."

      He went on to explain that his action was in no sense to be taken as a mark of ingratitude or disrespect toward [20] his parents. Conceiving his first duty to be to God, he said: "My affection for my parents is unabated . . . To my earthly parents my obedience in things not interfering with rights of conscience, and abundant gratitude is due; since they labored for my comfort in temporal things, and incurred expense, and bestowed opportunities of education on me,. more than I deserved or duty required of them."

      It had been Mr. Hopkins' conjecture, expressed by letter, that Robert's mother must have been even more offended and hurt than his father. This was an unfounded conclusion, Robert now explained. "You seem to think that my mother regrets my happiness more than my father. You are in error. She rejoices in it. One presents the picture of 'Affection conquered by Pride'; the other, 'Pride conquered by affection.'"

      His zeal for his new religious commitment returning to the foreground, he went on.

      Finally, lest any thing I have said should cause the church of Christ to be misrepresented, I will observe, that for many years, in different parts of Europe, a few of the sheep of Christ, in various sects, have recognized their Master's voice, and refused to listen to the voice of a stranger: from some congregations, two or three--from others, eight or ten, separated themselves, and resolved to take the scriptures as their guide. All these appear to have fallen on the same plan, without any knowledge of each other, i.e., the plan formed by the Apostles. And this 'wild fire,' as you like to call it (in contradistinction, I suppose, to the glimmering taper of Episcopacy), is now making its way in America.

      He concluded his letter with an appeal, almost evangelistic in note: [21]

      That the purity and simplicity of the ancient gospel may cease to be foolishness to men, and that the elected by God may be enabled to walk worthy of their high vocation, is my prayer to him who is able and willing to save all who come to him through Christ our Lord.

      He sealed the letter and prepared it for the post. In the days that followed, when no reply came, and when nothing had availed to heal the breach between himself and his father, he felt himself engulfed in loneliness. His medical practice was busy enough, and his neighbors and patients were friendly enough; but still he was lonely.

      It was out of that loneliness that he sent off a letter to Walter Scott, urging him to visit western Pennsylvania and try his evangelistic powers there. Perhaps his success in winning thousands of converts on the Western Reserve would be repeated here, and--who could tell?--his whole family might see the light, and his troubles vanish! "I long to see you!" he pleaded.

      Scott, replying under date of July 28, 1829, sought to undergird the young convert's courage:

      If the Religion of Jesus is worth a straw it is worth the Universe. . . . I bless God for your conversion and may God bless you and make you a blessing to many people.

      You long to see me? I also long to see you exceedingly. I want most assuredly to reap the whitening Harvest in your parts but we must be prudent; the time of natural harvest is not always that of the Spiritual. This season is not quite opportune for the assault which I purpose making on the distracted profession of your country. . . .

      My best respects to your dear Mother. May all her varied trials and endurances be speedily forgotten in the reception and [22] enjoyment of the gospel of peace! But I know the difficulties--God Almighty Our Heavenly Father help you and her both.

      Seeing that young Richardson needed companionship, Scott went on in this same letter to invite him to the Reserve, where he could mingle with the brethren. There was no doubt what the enthusiasm there would do for him.

      On the Lord's-day 9th August I am to be in Warren where, I am sure, will be assembled a vast multitude of the Holy Brethren. I am personally acquainted with them all and should love above all things to have the pleasure of introducing you to every one of them. . . . If I don't see you against the 9th August, I shall perhaps come to see you and bring you to an Annual Meeting of the Brethren which is to take place on Friday the 28th August, when I bid you to be prepared to set out with me. I have many things to say to you. Write me immediately and I, will answer it.³

      In his loneliness, the young physician seized upon this proffered refuge with eagerness. The company of the faithful on the Reserve was precious and sustaining, but it was so far away! His medical duties would not allow him the time necessary for many of these long journeys. The weeks wore on into months, and year's end approached without a reconciliation with his father. Formerly it had meant much to live only a few miles from his family home in Pittsburgh, but now his father's persistent hostility had turned this haven into a forbidden territory. This, together with his growing interest in and labor for the reformation, seemed to make a change in residence necessary. [23]

      When, toward the end of 1829, he learned that there was an opening for a physician in Wellsburg, Virginia, only seven miles from the Campbells at Bethany, it was without hesitation that he gave up his well-established practice in Carnegie and made ready to move to that city. It was no consideration for his future in the profession of medicine that led him to do this, for although he was a physician and would always remain one, he was now, first and foremost, a convinced and responsive servant of God, wholly devoted to the cause of a great reform.

      "Think not that I am come to bring peace to the earth. I came not to bring peace, but a sword." [24]

[HTB 13-24]