ALTER SCOTT returned at once to the Western Reserve. His examination of the recent past of the Mahoning Association left no doubt that he was needed. In this year of his appointment, all the churches in the Association had reported only 34 baptisms. At the same time they had recorded 13 exclusions, 14 dismissals, and 4 deaths! Other years had been a little better. The year previous to Scott's first visit to the Reserve, 1825, showed 16 baptisms. In 1824 there were 29; 1823 showed 40; 1822--48; 1821 was better--there were 63! And 1820 was best of all; there were 103. Closer examination, however, showed that 75 of these were from two churches, 56 of them being from Adamson Bentley's congregation at Warren, and 19 from Bazetta. The Baptists had not been doing much baptizing!

      And he, Walter Scott, had been employed to shake them out of a lethargy seven years old, and a Calvinistic quiescence older still by far. Unless he could stop them from stating the gospel "wrong end foremost" he could do nothing. Faith, it was clear to him, was not the mystical fruit of the Spirit in the soul of one formerly depraved and incapable of believing; faith was the natural response to hearing; it was believing the evidence. Baptism was not a mere sign of an inward change of state; it was an act, completing personal obedience to Christ, and remission of sins followed upon it. Then came Christian experience! After one had become a Christian! That was where the Holy Spirit came in--when life [59] was made morally holy. But how could he say all this so as to overturn age-old prejudices, capture a hearing, and win souls? Galloping his new horse into his field of labor, he was thinking hard all the way. How could he do it?

      Exercising his prerogative to call four quarterly meetings annually to set him forward in his new work, he called the first one to meet at Braceville on September 16, 1827.¹ Braceville was the natural place for the meeting, for it was the church of Jacob Osborne, the man who had introduced into the Association the proposal for an evangelist. Braceville had been the center of agitation.

      The meeting went well, with Scott, Bentley, and Osborne as the speakers. The impression was favorable; the financial response was adequate. Walking in the grounds just after the session, the three speakers fell into a serious conversation, stimulated by a remark in Bentley's sermon.

      Jacob Osborne turned to Walter and asked, "Have you ever thought that baptism in the name of the Lord is for the remission of sins?"

      Had he ever thought about that! He could speak at length on it; but, desiring to hear what his friend was going to say, he held himself in abeyance and motioned him to go on.

      "It is certainly established for that purpose," Osborne continued. "It holds the same place under the gospel in relation to pardon, that the positive institution of the altar held to forgiveness under the law of Moses; under that dispensation the sinner offered the prescribed victim on the altar and was acquitted, pardoned through the merits of the sacrifice of Christ, [60] of which his offering was a type. So under the gospel age, the sinner comes to the death of Christ, the meritorious ground of his salvation, through baptism, which is a symbol of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ."

      "Very well," said Scott, "it is evidently so." He was thinking furiously, but not as Bentley and Osborne fancied. He was close upon the quarry now!

      After a while Osborne said to Bentley, "You have christened Baptism today."

      "How so?" asked Bentley.

      "You have termed it a remitting ordinance."

      "I do not see how we are to avoid the conclusion with the Bible in our hands," said Bentley.²

      Bentley had done little to enforce this conclusion in his own church, although he had been thinking about it for years. It was one thing to have reformed views about the church and quite another to reform church practice on their pattern.

      Bentley, Osborne, and Scott were a fortunate combination, for it was while the three were together a few days later at Howland that the last piece of Scott's stubborn puzzle dropped into place. Osborne had preached and during the sermon he had said, on the basis of Acts 2:38, that no one had the promise of the Holy Spirit until after baptism. The three men were again talking after meeting.

      "You are the boldest man I ever saw!" exclaimed Scott to Osborne. "Don't you think so, Brother Bentley?"

      "How so?" asked Bentley. [61]

      "Why, he said in his sermon that no one had a right to expect the Holy Spirit till after baptism."³

      To Osborne and Bentley it was a commonplace observation, and the day was a common day, but to Walter Scott it was Pentecost, and God had spoken.

      Alexander Campbell had insisted that the New Testament is the constitution of the Kingdom of Christ. And, if the ancient order is to be restored in the church, citizens must be received into the kingdom just as they were received by the apostles.⁴ But Campbell had not been definite. How were citizens received into the kingdom? Now, Scott knew. It was a matter of accepting the evidence for the Lordship of Christ and of acting on his authority. This, in distinction from the emotionalism and subjectivism of a Calvinistic conversion, was pre-eminently a rational matter. It was objective, and it could be acted upon immediately.

      Without making every conversion a new miracle of direct intervention by the Holy Spirit, what the Master said could be relied upon and acted upon with assurance that such obedience brought one into full citizenship in the kingdom. Conversion no longer rested on feelings. The long agonizing periods of seeking were over forever. A Christian messenger could present the evidence for the Messiahship of Jesus and expect to get the immediate obedience of his hearers. This he could do on the rational grounds that Jesus had promised remission of sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and eternal life to all who obeyed him.

      Now, the pattern was revealed. After the evidence of Jesus' Messiahship was presented, first came faith, or the believing of the evidence; then followed in [62] logical order, repentance, baptism, the remission of sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and life eternal. There were three things for man to do: believe, repent, be baptized. There were three things that God, through Christ, promised to do: remit sins, bestow the Holy Spirit, grant eternal life. Here were all the elements of the ancient gospel, as preached by the apostles; and this was their proper order. Just as one needs all the right letters to make a word and then must arrange them in the proper order to spell that word correctly, even so one needs for the restoration of the gospel both the right elements and the right arrangement of these elements. Those doing these things in that sequence constitute the ancient order; they are the church!

     
A shaft of heavenly radiance had wedged its way into his life. The long quest which carried him back over the Allegheny Mountains to New York and Washington was over! The gloom that enveloped him because of "the miserable desolation of the church of God" was dispelled! Now, he knew why the churches which were following the primitive order could still be suffocating. The ancient order and the ancient gospel were two distinct matters. The ancient order referred to the life of the church, but the ancient gospel to entering the church. The gospel preceded the church; and the ancient order without the ancient gospel is necessarily barren. But unite the two! The expansion of the kingdom is bound to be incalculable!

      In his ecstasy, Scott now saw the whole panorama of the Reformation. First had come the plea for the [63] union of Christians on scriptural grounds. This had involved an attack on creeds, confessions of faith, articles of government, and the restoration of the New Testament to a position of authority. Second, Calvinistic conversion, with its subjective tokens of regeneration and evidences of pardon, had been abandoned. Infant baptism had gone the way of Calvinism. Next came the restoration of the ancient order in the church. And, finally, in this eleventh hour, there had come the restoration of the ancient gospel!

      The present century, then, is characterized by these three successive steps, which the lovers of our Lord Jesus have been enabled to make, in their return to the original institution. First the Bible was adopted as sole authority in our assemblies, to the exclusion of all other books. Next, the Apostolic order was proposed. Finally the True Gospel was restored.⁵

      Scott's instinct for neatness was satisfied to note that these three stages had been accomplished by three men. Thomas Campbell had pleaded for union on the Bible alone. Alexander Campbell had disclosed the order of the primitive church within that Bible, and he, Walter Scott, had discovered the ancient gospel, or the good news of how to enter the church. Yes, at last, the Jerusalem gospel was in his grasp!

      The key of knowledge was now in his possession. The points which before were dark or mysterious, were now luminous. It cleared away the mist, and let in the day just where all had struggled for ages, and many had stranded. The whole Scripture sorted itself into a plain and intelligible system in illustration and proof of this elementary order of the gospel. The darkened cloud withdrew. A new era for the gospel had dawned.⁶ [64]

      Once he was in possession of the missing something which had eluded him for the past five years, Walter's heart throbbed to share his transporting discovery with his wife, and his throat ached to preach this gospel. He decided to go home. Previously he had bought a plot of land in Canfield, and a house was being erected to receive his family as soon as it was ready. A visit to Steubenville could serve a multiple purpose: he could tell Sarah his secret; he could try out the revolutionary approach on a church near Steubenville; and he could prepare his family for the moving.⁷

      With buoyant confidence and straining expectancy, Scott preached his first sermon on the new plan. It failed! His audience was taken by surprise. Surely he was, however amiable, a deluded enthusiast! This sounded so different from anything they had come to expect as "gospel" that it seemed to them like a new religion. Some of Scott's hearers were amazed, others were moved to pity, and some to scorn.

      The rejected evangelist was plunged into gloom and invaded by uncertainty. His hopes had run so high and they had been blasted so dismally! But surely he had not been mistaken. His study of the Bible, which had engrossed him since he first met Forrester eight years ago, could not have misled him. No. The gospel had been revealed to him, but he had failed as its messenger. The thought drove him to his knees. He prayed: "This is thy word; I am thy servant. . . . I believed, therefore have I spoken. I am greatly afflicted. . . . I believe his word, and I will preach it again!"⁸

      During the next few days, while he was physically busy moving his household to Canfield, his mind was engaged with furious thinking and incessant praying. [65]

      Then came the time for the trial within the bounds of the Mahoning Association. He felt that his whole future was hanging on the outcome. It was at New Lisbon, on November 18, 1827, in the very meetinghouse where the Association had commissioned him only two months before. His sermon was taken from Matthew 16:16: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." The Golden Oracle! This was the fact which the four Gospels were written to establish, he said. Type and prophecy had pointed to it all down the ages. When Peter had proclaimed it, Christ had promised to him the keys of the kingdom, and these had been delivered into his hands on Pentecost. These keys were nothing other than the conditions upon which men should be admitted to the kingdom. When it became clear to the assembled multitude on Pentecost that Jesus was in truth the Christ, they cried out in great and earnest agony, "Men and brethren, what shall we do?"

      Then with flashing eye and impassioned manner, as one who would carry the whole present back into that inspired past or make that hallowed moment live in a hushed present, Scott answered, "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost."

      "The conditions are unchanged! The Word of God means what it says!" the preacher challenged. To receive the word of God is to obey, and to obey is to do what three thousand anxious souls did in response to the invitation of Peter. Scott spoke with power. The force of his impassioned yet lucid presentation gripped his hearers. [66] At this point a lone man entered the door at the back of the meetinghouse. The church clerk saw him and started. What a pity he had not come in at the beginning!

      The man was William Amend, a devout member of the Presbyterian church in the community. He had been reading his Bible and, quite independently, had come to hold many of the views of the Reformers, without knowing whether others thought as he did. Among other convictions, he came to feel that infant baptism was not sanctioned in the Bible and that baptism was by immersion. He had gone to his pastor with the request that he be immersed. The minister had been reluctant. Such an action might unsettle the congregation. Baptism wasn't essential to salvation, anyway. But, since Amend kept insisting, he would baptize him privately; then no one need know or be unsettled by it!

      Amend was disgusted. He decided that he would not be baptized at all until he could find a minister who thought as he did; but he despaired of ever finding him.

      A short time before this he had read the second chapter of Acts aloud to his wife, in the course of which he exclaimed:

      Oh, this is the gospel; this is the thing we wish, the remission of our sins! Oh, that I could hear the gospel in those same words as Peter preached it! I hope I shall some day hear, and the first man I meet who will preach the gospel thus, with him will I go.

      Two days before Scott's coming to New Lisbon, someone had invited William Amend to attend the meeting, and he had halfheartedly decided to go. [67] Having so long failed to find what he was seeking for and having been disappointed in preachers so often, he had not gone with much enthusiasm, and he was late. When he entered the church, the sermon was almost over, but the very first sentence he heard arrested him. It was in scriptural language and it sounded like what he had been seeking!

      "Oh," thought the church clerk, "I wish the preacher would repeat what he said before he came in!" To his surprise and delight, Scott made a brief recapitulation of his sermon and ended with the appeal: "The Scripture shall no longer be a sealed book. God means what he says. Is there any man present who will take God at his word and be baptized for the remission of sins?"

      "Glory to God!" exulted Amend within himself. "I have found the man whom I have long sought for." With startling promptness he went forward.

      "Who is this man?" whispered the astonished preacher.

      "The best man in the community; an orderly member of the Presbyterian Church."

      It was enough. He took William Amend's public confession that he believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and that same day, in the local stream and before the presence of the people, he baptized him in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins.

      This, to the mind of Scott, was a shining hour. The gospel which had been lost to the world, obscured and distorted since the time of the apostles, was now restored! The wonder of it filled him with rapture. He stood--the Christian world stood--at the beginning of a new age. The church would no longer [68] suffocate. It would grow triumphantly, and the world would be won for Christ!

      What Scott had done was sharply at variance with orthodox practice. This baptism was preceded by no relating of mystical experiences, by no recital of the creed, by no vote of the church. There had been before it no tribulation of soul, no agonizing grappling with election and damnation and enabling grace. It had been simple and direct.

      "I proceeded in this matter without example, without counsel, and without reference to any mode or practice which I ever saw or heard of," said Scott, looking back. "I followed Christ and his Apostles alone, and the experiment was crowned with complete success."⁹

      The unprecedented action of November 18 startled the community and stirred it up all the following week. There was only one topic of conversation. It is one thing to express new ideas in words; it is another to clothe the words in deeds. An epidemic of Bible reading broke out in New Lisbon. Some read to find confirmation of Scott's unprecedented methods. Many read to find ammunition with which to blast the preacher from his pulpit and drive him from the community. Arguments sprang up. Tempers flared. The church was jammed to overflowing.

      One by one others sought baptism on the novel plan. One man threatened to shoot Scott if he should baptize his mother. Scott baptized her! By the following Sunday fifteen persons had followed the example of William Amend.

      It was Walter Scott's old pupil, Robert Richardson, who assessed the work of his former teacher on this occasion: [69]

      Brother Scott really laid the true and distinctive foundation of the Reformation. In 1827, he first practically called on converts to be baptized for the remission of sins, at New Lisbon. Previously, from 1823, baptism was recognized by Brother and Father Campbell and others, as for remission but no one ventured to make a direct and practical application of it until Brother Scott did so, in 1827. We owe to him the restoration of the true Christian faith, and basis of union, baptism for remission--the great, main feature of the Reformation.¹⁰

      Naturally timid, deferential to the feelings of others, Walter Scott had stood in the New Lisbon pulpit trembling at the beginning of his sermon. It had taken great moral courage to cast off from the shores of tradition into a sea that could as easily mean shipwreck as it could the discovery of a new land. And now he had come, after a happy voyage, safely to harbor. There was yet before him the hardship of uncharted sea lanes, and much opposition. [70]

[WSVGO 59-70]