HERE was nothing to do but to return to Pittsburgh, accept the private school which Mr. Richardson had so graciously offered him, and continue his religious quest alone.

      The program of studies to which he directed his fifteen select pupils was a rigorous one. His rules for the classroom are summed up in three words--obedience, order, accuracy. Carrying his students through the Greek and Latin classics, as was in keeping with the pedagogy of the day, he was content with no stumbling translations but only with fluent mastery.

      Remarking some years later upon his teacher, Robert Richardson said:

      He took especial pains to familiarize the students of the ancient tongues with the Greek of the New Testament, for which purpose he caused them to commit it largely to memory, so that some of them could repeat, chapter by chapter, the whole of the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the Greek language.¹

      He also required the memorizing and reciting of long sections from the Greek and Latin classics. Although this was "irksome to those of feeble memory" it was nevertheless exacted with rigor.

      But Scott was something more than a stern preceptor. An innate sympathy enabled him to gain insight into the minds and feelings of those under his charge and to make himself their friend. He had tact, wit, and intuitive perception of character. These [32] seasoned the inflexible discipline of the classroom and made him popular with his pupils.

      In this school, moral training was regarded as an objective equal to knowledge, and the weaving of one into the other was done with such skill and naturalness that one pupil remembered some of the lessons long afterwards.

      "I would sometimes invite him to walk out of an evening to my father's garden in the vicinity of the city," said Robert Richardson, "but his mind could not be divorced, even amid such recreations, from the high theme which occupied it." Richardson goes on to say:

      Nature, in all its forms, seemed to speak to him only of its Creator; and although.  . . he sought ever to interest himself in the things that interested others, his mind would constantly revert to its ruling thought; and some incident in our ramble, some casual remark in our conversation, would at once open up the fountain of religious thought, which seemed to be ever seeking for an outlet.

      Thus, for instance, if I would present him with a rose, while he admired its tints and inhaled its fragrance, he would ask, in a tone of deep feeling, "Do you know, my dear, why in the Scriptures Christ is called the Rose of Sharon?" If the answer was not ready, he would reply himself: "It is because the rose of Sharon has no thorns."²

      Meanwhile, Walter's spare hours and other hours stolen from sleep in the dead of night were abandoned to his private search. Was there in the Bible one gospel or many? Was there only one divinely authorized plan of teaching the Christian religion? What was the central teaching of Scripture? These and other questions ruled his thoughts. And every day he committed [33] a new portion of the Bible to memory and stored it away in the spacious archives of his mind.

      His sifting of the New Testament was done in the Greek language. When he returned to the current English versions, they seemed to him archaic, flat, or inaccurate. This Book had come alive for him, and he wanted it to live for others, in their 'own speech. So thinking, he projected a plan to translate the entire New Testament from Greek into the clear and unambiguous English spoken by his contemporaries. After laying out the prospectus, he carried it to the printer, a Mr. Butler, in the city of Pittsburgh. He had not rightly estimated the expense of such an undertaking, and to his dismay soon heard from the lips of Mr. Butler such a figure of costs as blocked his plan completely. "My means are wholly too limited. I must abandon the attempt."

      It was, in consequence, a matter of delight to him when Alexander Campbell, no later than 1826, published just such a translation of the New Testament as he had envisioned.

      His study of the Bible was greatly advanced by the library of the late George Forrester. He pored over such volumes as Macknight's Harmony of the Gospels, Benson on the Epistles, John Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity, and the books of the Scottish independents, Glas and Sandeman.

      He was excited to read in the books of Robert Sandeman, who, after coming to America, had died in Danbury, Connecticut, in 1771, that it is within the power of every man to believe the gospel and obey its commands to his own salvation. He read with ready agreement that faith preceded repentance, and that faith was nothing more mystical than the belief of [34] clear evidence. It was the result of the testimony of the New Testament. Faith was believing evidence, and it came before repentance. What a simple and satisfying view of faith! To follow this line of thought--and he did follow it--was to desert the prevailing notion that depraved man was incapable of faith unless he was of the elect and until the Holy Spirit came upon him, enabling him to believe. To pursue this course was also to cast doubt upon the pattern of conversion almost universally accepted: a long, agonizing repentance followed by a sublime feeling of divine forgiveness, to issue in the relating of this subjective "experience" before the assembled church in order to elicit the favorable vote of the membership.

      The Reasonableness of Christianity, written by the noted British statesman and philosopher, John Locke, more than a hundred years before, was no less rewarding. Christianity, this book declared, is a revelation but it is not therefore out of accord with reason. It could not have been originated by the human mind, but once it has been disclosed, the human mind can grasp it, for Christianity is reasonable, and the profession and practice of it are to be undertaken in a reasonable way.

      As he read on, he found himself in agreement with statement after statement. Creeds, canons, and councils are superfluous as centers of religious authority. The New Testament is the only court of appeal, and reason its only arbiter. A study of the New Testament will disclose that the essential article of faith is the acknowledgment of Christ as Messiah. If a man really accepts Christ, he has accepted all his teachings! The authority of Christ is established by [35] evidence which appeals to reason, and this evidence is of three sorts: (1) his miracles, (2) his fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, and (3) the testimony of Scripture. It was possible to sum up the whole Christian life as the law of faith in Christ!

      With such help, his searching of the Scriptures had found a center. This Holy Book contained one truth which is the sun to which all other Christian truths are planets in a spiritual solar system. This truth is that Jesus is the Christ. It is the "Golden Oracle"! This "Golden Oracle" is the creed of the Christian, the bond of Christian union, and the way of salvation.

      In the school at Richardson's, it came time for examination, an exercise which was conducted in public. His pupils made such an excellent impression upon the assembled parents and citizens that there arose an immediate clamor that the school should be opened to the public. Reluctantly, Scott yielded. There were one hundred and forty applications! Most of these were from the homes of Scotch Presbyterians, who wanted the young master to teach the Westminster Catechism as part of the curriculum. Walter was pleased that they should want religious instruction, but at the present stage of his own pilgrimage he was as set as steel against creeds and catechisms. It was finally agreed that all instruction in religion would come directly from the New Testament, a chapter of which would be read and expounded every Saturday morning. Desiring to make the most of this and to see that its lesson stuck, the zealous teacher took a piece of chalk and wrote over the entrance, on the inside of the school, where all could see it as they left the building, the words of the "Golden Oracle": [36]

      Robert Richardson, who was thirteen at the time Walter Scott undertook his education,³ had previously studied in the academy of Thomas Campbell while the author of the Declaration and Address had lived and ministered in Pittsburgh during the year 1816.⁴

      It was then that the Richardson family struck up a warm friendship with Thomas Campbell and later with his son, Alexander, who often came to visit in their spacious and hospitable home.

      Alexander Campbell paid such a friendly visit in the winter of 1821-22, and there Walter Scott met him. Campbell was thirty-three; Scott was twenty-five. They were decidedly different from each other both in temperament and appearance, but they were immediately drawn into a compact of affection which was to last for the next forty years.

      Campbell was tall, vigorous, and athletic; Scott was of average height, slender, and without muscular strength. Campbell's hair and eyes were light; his glance was straight and piercing. Scott's hair was black; his eyes were dark and lustrous, and their keen intelligence was mellowed by softness. Campbell was alert and communicative, even when listening. Scott was abstracted and sometimes enveloped in sadness. Campbell was coldly logical. Scott also was logical, but he had a warmth of feeling which was as tender and sensitive as that of a child.

      In their approach to a problem, their methods also contrasted. Campbell was given to wide generalizations, to grouping facts under sweeping principles. He delighted in analogies and relations. Scott possessed an analytical mind, dividing a subject into finely balanced parts. His thought was inclined to [37] be somewhat mechanical, and often legalistic. This tendency was in conflict with the artistic, often erratic, oscillation of feeling which charged every idea of Scott's with electric current. He was at once clear but excitable, rationalistic but moody. No such inner tension seemed ever to tear at the vitals of Campbell; he was self-consistent, imperturbable, resolute, and unemotional.

      Nevertheless, the two men were drawn magnetically to each other. At long last, Walter Scott's search for a kindred spirit had found a welcome hearth. There was in his finding all the solace and joy of a homecoming. They were thinking along the same lines, both seeking the reform of a desolate church, both intent upon the primitive Christian order, the destruction of creeds, the elevation of the New Testament, and the investiture of religious experience with reason.

      They had read the same books--Sandeman, Haldane, Locke. They held the same views on faith, on Christ, on the Bible, on baptism, on church order! In fact, Alexander Campbell had successfully debated Rev. John Walker at Mount Pleasant, Ohio, on the subject and action of baptism as recently as March of the previous year.

      In late September or early October of 1821, John Tait, of Rising Sun, Virginia, had carried with him from Mrs. Robert Forrester of Pittsburgh, a copy of the Errette pamphlet on Baptism which had occasioned Walter's sudden trip to New York. Tait stopped on his way home for a visit with Alexander Campbell and, in the course of his visit, showed him the pamphlet. Campbell read it and was so arrested and delighted by it that Tait left the booklet with [38] him.⁵ The two men were therefore thinking together not only on the mode but also on the purpose of baptism. That was only a few weeks before Campbell's meeting with Scott.

      Scott now learned of the formation of the Christian Association of Washington in 1809, the publication of the Declaration and Address in the same year, the organization of the Brush Run Church, and Campbell's "Sermon on the Law" at Cross Creek, Virginia, in 1816.

      Although Campbell was then within the bosom of the regular Baptist church, his views were so completely at variance with those of most of his fellow ministers that be was constantly in danger of being cast out. Meantime, his itinerant preaching was winning an ever widening and ever more appreciative hearing for the principles of church reform. A flame had caught, and, although it had not become a prairie fire, it was slowly spreading.

      Campbell was conducting, at this very time, a school in his own home at Buffaloe (later Bethany), Virginia (now W. Va.). He called it the Buffaloe Seminary. It had opened in 1818 and it had yet two more years to run before its close. His father, Thomas Campbell, was helping him with the teaching. It was not very long until Scott met the elder Campbell and found in him a man of very similar temperament, whom he cherished from the very beginning as the most saintly man of his acquaintance.

      From this time forward, Campbell and Scott were in constant communication, by letter, by messenger, and by mutual visitation. On the lonely road there was now a companion--a robust, able, and aggressive champion of church reform. [39]

      During all this time, Walter, in addition to his duties at the school, was also acting as pastor of the little church that met every Lord's Day in the courthouse. Perhaps the most influential convert of these years was a young man of twenty-three, Samuel Church, who had been reared a Covenanter and who had become a member of the independent church conducted by Rev. John Tussey in Pittsburgh. His presence among the independents showed Church to be a young man of self-reliance and thoughtfulness, for he had taken his stand only after an examination of Scripture had convinced him of the error of the Covenanters' theology.

      When he ran upon Scott, only two years his senior, he discovered that his own investigation of the Bible had been cursory beside that of the young teacher. Having opened the Bible under his guidance for a few hours, he was convinced on the subject of baptism and was immersed. The two became staunch friends.

      Samuel Church, inspired by Scott's example, became a close student of the Scriptures, reading them through so many times that he knew almost the whole of them by heart. At the age of forty, he had read the New Testament one hundred and fifty times and the Old Testament seventy-five times. He grew in the habit of carrying about with him a small Bible, which he read everywhere when he had a few moments of leisure.

      The fruit of all this reading soon made Church one of America's foremost authorities on the contents of the English Bible. Alexander Campbell was moved to say, "I would rather trust Samuel Church in any subject that could be settled by the common version of the Bible than any other man within my knowledge."⁶ [40]

      Although he had been without much formal schooling, Church's private studies made him effective in the teaching and preaching of the Christian message. These abilities soon resulted in the gathering of a small congregation and the establishing of a second church in Allegheny City. This church grew until it outstripped Scott's in membership. For thirty years it prospered under the leadership of its original pastor. Working side by side with his able convert, at the same tasks in the same city, Walter Scott had found another companion of the Way.

      In the first month of 1823, a third and still more important companion was added. Five miles from Pittsburgh there lived a "once wealthy farmer" by the name of Whitsette, whose daughter Sarah exercised upon Walter an irresistible charm. At the time of their acquaintance, she was a Covenanter Presbyterian, but the young Scotsman soon succeeded in persuading her to accept all his views, so that she not only became a member of his church but also consented to share his life. They were married, January 30, 1823.⁷ If Sarah was born to wealth and reared in it most of her life, that part of her career was over; for her newlywed husband was poor at the beginning and continued to be poor until the end.

      Alexander Campbell's success in his debate against Walker and his disappointment at the absence of ministerial candidates from his school led him to close Buffaloe Seminary in the spring of 1823 in the hope of reaching a wider audience through writing and by public debate. A debate with Rev. W. I. McCalla was in the making for the fall, and a magazine was projected for midsummer. Campbell had discussed the magazine with Walter Scott and had asked him [41] to become a regular contributor. It had been the budding editor's thought to call his journal the Christian, but Scott prevailed upon him to change this to the Christian Baptist for the sound business reason that it would be more likely to find a ready circulation among the Baptists under this title. Campbell assented. A prospectus was published while the young editor prepared his first issue and awaited subscribers.

      This prospectus read, in part:

      The "Christian Baptist" shall espouse the cause of no religious sect, excepting that ancient sect called "Christians first at Antioch." Its sole object shall be the eviction of truth, and the exposure of error in doctrine and in practice. The editor acknowledging no standards of religious faith or works, other than the Old and New Testaments, and the latter as the only standard of the religion of Jesus Christ, will, intentionally at least, oppose nothing which it contains, and recommend nothing which it does not enjoin. Having no worldly interest at stake from the adoption and reprobation of any article of faith or religious practice, having no gift or religious office or any worldly emolument to blind his eye or to pervert his judgment, he hopes to manifest that he is an impartial advocate of truth.

      Walter Scott was happy to join forces with such "an impartial advocate of truth" and did so in the very first issue of the Christian Baptist, which appeared July 4, 1823, contributing an article entitled "On Teaching Christianity."

      In four articles, which ran in succeeding issues of the new magazine, Scott presented his matured reflection on the intent of the Scriptures as he had come to see it. All articles were signed "Philip" for he was conscious of being on the threshold of a new religious reformation, in which movement he thought [42] of his friend Alexander Campbell as the Luther and himself the Melanchthon.

      "Is there one way, and only one, of preaching Christ to sinners?" "Philip" asked. "I answer in the affirmative, there is but one authorized way of making Christ known to men, in order that they may believe and be saved; and now it is my business to show, by Scripture, that this is the case."⁸

      "Dear Lord, when I reflect that I have spent twenty years of my life under the noisy verbosity of a Presbyterian clergyman without receiving the least degree of light from the holy word of God! Our blessed Saviour did not treat mankind as modern ministers do--scold and insult them for not believing or having faith in a proposition, for which they are no way careful to adduce the proper evidence."

      "The gospel is a question of fact."

      "The members of the Church of Christ are united to one another by the belief of a matter of fact, viz: Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.  . . The Scriptures propose the belief of this fact.  . . as the only means for increasing the body or church of God."

      "Times without number we are told in Scripture that the grand saving truth is, that 'Jesus is the Christ.' This is the bond of union among Christians--the essence--the spirit of all revelation. All the Scriptures testify and confirm this simple truth, that 'he that believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten by God.'"

      "We shall see that the heavens and the apostles proposed nothing more in order to convert men from the error of their ways and to reduce them to the love and obedience of Christ."⁹ [43]

      It was the vision of the "Golden Oracle" in print.

      Walter Scott, lonely pilgrim in quest first of a place, then of a purpose, and finally of persons who would share it with him, now had all three. With companions of the Way, he strode forward in confidence--Alexander Campbell, Samuel Church, and Sarah. Blessed Sarah! On November 19, 1823, she presented him with a new and a very dear companion, a baby boy. The fond parents proudly named him John Passmore Scott.¹⁰ [44]

[WSVGO 32-44]