ALTER SCOTT reflected with a thrill of pleasure upon the effect of the primitive gospel on the Western Reserve within the past year. In 1827 the Mahoning Association had reported only thirty-four baptisms; in 1828 there were more than a thousand. In 1827, and every year before that, there had been more than a dozen exclusions; this year only six or seven fell away.¹ The spirit of earnestness had deepened everywhere. The Bible was read; more than that, it was studied with purpose by thousands. Lives had been changed. Even the unconverted had become deeply concerned. Moreover, his personal influence had been multiplied; his converts had become zealous exponents of the gospel. There was scarcely a Reformed Baptist to be found who did not carry with him a small copy of The Sacred Oracles, the modern-speech New Testament which Alexander Campbell had published in 1826. They did more than read and study the Bible; they memorized it and quoted it until they became known as "Walking Bibles." Nearly every convert became a preacher. The Mahoning River had become a second Jordan, and he, Walter Scott, another John.

      Elsewhere in the nation, Reformed Baptists were multiplying at an amazing rate. In Kentucky, the Stone and Campbell preachers worked independently but with a growing mutual respect and with a common method. "Raccoon" John Smith, as an ardent follower of Campbell, had success no less startling than [103] that of the Reserve. During the year of 1827-28, his three churches at Mount Sterling, Spencer's Creek, and Grassy Lick had 392 baptisms, while the North District Association of Kentucky, as a whole, reported 900 baptisms, mostly by Smith "after the ancient practice." And five new churches, organized by Smith "on the Bible alone," were now in the association. Bishop Vardeman immersed about 550 persons during a six-month period, and Bishop John Smith immersed 330 in less than three months.²

      The 1827 meeting of the Mahoning Association had appointed Alexander Campbell messenger to the meeting of the Redstone Baptist Association that year, whereupon the Redstone Association, having cast this indigestible morsel forth some years earlier, refused to receive him. He did not abide by the creeds and articles of faith! So great was Campbell's following by this time, however, that thirteen of the twenty-three churches of the Association would not support the action advocated by the orthodox minority; these, in reprisal, were voted out of the organization by the ten churches!³

      The leaven was working in the meal!

      William Hayden, who now rode side by side with Scott as the second Mahoning evangelist, was twenty-nine, while Walter was thirty-two. William had grown up in the vicinity of Youngstown and was the brother of Daniel and A. S. Hayden, who also became prominent Reformers. In 1816, after a youthful struggle with atheism, he had joined the Baptists. As a reader of the Christian Baptist, he had been prepared for the preaching of Walter Scott and was won over to [104] his cause at Canfield the previous year. Within a few months, he had abandoned his Calvinistic creed and come to full support of the Reformation. His schooling had been neglected, so as the two rode along together, they were teacher and pupil on horseback. It was a congenial relationship, for "Scott's learning and genius were not chilling and awe-inspiring, but as a father instructing a son who delighted to learn."⁴ Scott called him "Willy."

      On one occasion, after Hayden's introductory remarks in a sermon had occupied too much of the address, Scott asked with a twinkle, "Willy, did you ever know a fish to be all head?"

      Later, after Hayden's exhortation at the close had been equally out of proportion, he teased, "Willy, did you ever know a fish to be all tail?"

      Although Hayden was to gain distinction as a preacher, his chief value to Scott in their earlier years was a rich singing voice of great range and power. On several occasions, when the name and eloquence of Scott failed to batter down the walls of prejudice and get a hearing, he retired from the audience, saying, "I'll send Willie, and he'll sing you out!"⁵

      Walter, in his own turn, was a student. He often rode with Daniel Hayden, William's brother, and on many occasions a scene like the following was repeated:

      "Brother Hayden, I was a grown man before I ever saw a full-grown forest tree. I was brought up in the great city of Edinburgh and knew nothing of the country and forest and the various kinds of trees; and now, brother, I want you to tell me the name of that noble tree by the roadside." [105]

      "That is a white oak."

      "Hold my horse," said Scott as he scrambled to the ground and ran to the tree to impress this nature lesson on his memory by examining its bark and the leaves.⁶

      November 7, 1828, found Walter Scott at Deerfield, where the ground had been well prepared for the seed he was about to scatter. Several months before this, a Methodist Scripture society had been formed there by Rev. Cornelius P. Finch and his wife. To the group had belonged Ephraim P. Hubbard, an immersed Methodist, and his wife, who was a Baptist; Samuel McGown, Methodist, and his wife, Presbyterian; Peter Hartzell, Presbyterian, and his Methodist wife; active Methodist Gideon Hoadly, and others. Domestic differences over religion constituted an effective goad to serious study and discussion; the issue was not academic.

      The interest of this group formed a sensitive antenna, which soon picked up news of the reformed church at Braceville a few miles distant. Hubbard and Finch paid a visit to that church and came back with the light of discovery in their eyes. They had also invited Marcus Bosworth, the minister, and Adamson Bentley to come and preach for them. The result was the capitulation of the whole society. Hubbard, Hartzell, and Finch became ministers of the Reformers, and nearly every convert at Deerfield was a lay preacher.

      When Scott arrived in November, he went to the home of Hubbard, who rushed to Finch with the news that the evangelist had come to preach. Finch had been listening to rumor and was afraid of the fiery preacher. "It'll ruin us!" he protested, but finally [106] he yielded to Hubbard's insistence to go through with it, and the Methodist church was secured for the meeting.

      Scott's sermon, one which was completely convincing to Finch and which placed him immediately at the feet of the frontier evangelist, was three hours long. He began, "The world has been wrong three times, it has been well nigh ruined a fourth." He spoke on the three dispensations, Patriarchal, Jewish and Christian. As he concluded the Patriarchal and Jewish ages, he turned at the end of each to Jane Davis, a Welsh soloist who was present,

      "Sister Jane, sing us one of your songs. . . . Sister Davis, another of your beautiful songs."

      The sweep and majesty of this sermon had an immediate effect. There were eleven decisions, one of them being made by Captain Amos Allerton, a well-known, honest, intelligent, but somewhat belligerent critic of the churches.⁷ After his baptism, he became an effective preacher.

      A relative of his had been at Canton for an extended medical treatment and returned to find the community in a stir, which her sister hastened to explain, "I have been to hear them and O sister! they remind me of the 12 who followed our Lord when on earth; they are plain, pious men; they talk just like the Bible reads; they surely are the people of God!"⁸

      "The ancient gospel is most eloquent, sir, and makes all its converts preachers," remarked Scott, with the Deerfield church in mind. Continuing, he said:

      In the northern part of this state a Disciple in one of the new churches had an appointment and preached. A man enquired whence came the preacher. The answer was, "From Deerfield." [107]

      A second preached, and the same question and the same answer were made. A third and perhaps a fourth held forth in the same place, and the same question was put by the same person. "Where do you come from, sir?"

      "From Deerfield," was the answer.

      The man, surprised, exclaimed, "Deerfield. Why, pray, how many preachers have you in Deerfield?"

      "Sixty," said the brother.

      "Why, then you must all be preachers in Deerfield?"

      "Yes, sir," was the reply, "all our members are preachers either at home or abroad."⁹

      After the exhausting labor of several months, the tired evangelist took time out for a recreational trip to Pittsburgh, where he visited his friend and former pupil, Robert Richardson, who was practicing medicine there. Richardson was still a member of the Episcopal church. Though Scott had made his visit for friendship's sake and was seeking rest and not converts, he was so full of his recent adventures that the whole matter spilled over into their conversations.

      After his teacher had gone, the young doctor took to his Greek New Testament for earnest study. The result was that he became convinced that Scott had a true insight. Whereupon he left his practice and set out for New Lisbon to find his recent visitor and to be baptized. He found him, after three days, at Shalersville, arriving at two o'clock in the afternoon just after the sermon and just before the baptism of several converts. They went down to the Cuyoga River for the immersion. There Hayden delivered a preparatory sermon, the first utterance of, the Reformers Robert had ever heard, and then baptized the converts, the first immersions he had ever witnessed. [108]

      During these exercises Scott spied Robert and gave a start of delight. Not suspecting the purpose of his visit, he said in an undertone to Hayden, "Oh, that the Lord would give us that young man!" Later on, he found that the young physician had come 120 miles for just such a purpose.¹⁰

      Robert Richardson was to become one of the most important Disciples, as the Reformers were often called after 1830. Joining the original faculty of Bethany College, he served for eighteen years as professor of chemistry and was, at the same time, the village physician and one of the editors of the Millennial Harbinger. Before taking this post, he was to assist Scott for two years with his magazine, the Evangelist, at Carthage, Ohio. Finally, he was to make the distinctive literary contribution of the whole first generation of Disciples in his monumental biography, The Memoirs of Alexander Campbell. As one of the recruits of Walter Scott, he was a fellow warrior of great strength. The cup of Scott's joy was overflowing.

      As in former months, not all was sweetness in these evangelistic forays upon the communities. There was opposition, misrepresentation, often bitter hostility.

      "In one place where I was baptizing," Walter wrote back to Alexander Campbell, "just as I raised the baptized person out of the water, I saw a great stick hanging or rather shaking over my head. On another occasion, I was interrupted by a person with a sword-cane. At one place they set loose my mare, in the night, and at Noblestown in the midst of six Presbyterian congregations, the sectarian population cut off all the hair from her tail."¹¹ [109]

      While Scott was on a visit to Samuel Hayden's near Youngstown, he heard that Rev. Lawrence Greatrake, a notorious Baptist opponent of the Reformers, was to preach in the vicinity. He desired to hear him, but since the "Great Rake" was noted for his rudeness and abusive language, the Haydens feared to have him go, lest he be goaded past endurance. After riding away on another errand, he changed his mind and turned about to the place of meeting, arriving late. Instead of going into the meetinghouse, he stood at an open window close to the pulpit. As the preacher began, he opened with prayer, "O Lord, do thou restrain or remove those wolves who are going about in sheep's clothing, scattering the flock and destroying the lambs."

      Scott responded in a clear ringing voice, audible to all present, "Amen!" The unexpected response from such an unexpected quarter so disconcerted Rev. Mr. Greatrake that he was momentarily thrown off the track and could not resume his prayer immediately. Scott had had his fun and was satisfied.¹²

      The family of Walter Scott at Canfield made out their existence not only without the presence of the head of the household, but without adequate financial assistance. John was five, Emily three, and William two, when on the very last day of December, 1828, a second girl was born. She was named after her mother, Sarah Jane. Her coming restored the perfect balance of the family group, two boys and two girls. But it also impressed upon the tender conscience of Scott the sorry mismanagement of his finances. He simply had no business sense; he did not know the value of a dollar or how to make it last [110] when he had one, largely because his overflowing sympathy for human need wherever he met it evoked generosity so immediate and so complete that he would empty his pockets without a single thought of tomorrow.

      Daniel Hayden, seeing that Scott's wife and children were weighing on his mind, told his friend that he was too generous for the good of his family, and that the needs of others seemed greater than his own.

      "Brother Scott, you ought not to handle a dollar; whatever means you have ought to be in the hands of someone with less sympathy and more judgment than yourself, to manage for you, and to see that your own are well cared for before others are helped."

      Scott's reaction was immediate and favorable: "Brother Hayden, I believe you are right; you are a good manager, a man of thrift and prudence. Will you do me this service?"

      "I will."

      "You are the very man for the work and I will hold you to it!"¹³

      Thereafter, in mundane matters, the growing household at Canfield was not so sadly neglected.

      At the instigation of a Rev. Mr. Winters of Youngstown, small fragments of the churches at Youngstown, Palmyra, Achor, and Salem resisted Scott and the whole Mahoning Association. He took his handful of adherents, probably less than eighty, and joined them to the Beaver Association, where he kept up such a constant agitation that that body, in August of 1829, published an anathema of the Mahoning Association, charging them with "disbelieving and denying the doctrines of the Holy Scripture." Specifically they listed eight "errors" of the "Reformers": [111]

      1. That there is no promise of salvation without baptism.

      2. That baptism should be administered on belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, without examination on any other point.

      3. That there is no direct operation of the Holy Spirit on the mind before baptism.

      4. That baptism procures the remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

      5. "That the Scriptures are the only evidence of interest in Christ"--whatever that means.

      6. That man's obedience places it in God's power to elect to salvation.

      7. That no creed is necessary for the church.

      8. That all baptized persons have a right to administer the ordinance of baptism.

      W. E. Garrison, commenting on the foregoing points, observes that "this is, on the whole, a more accurate statement than is often made of the position of one side in a religious controversy by the other." Dr. Garrison continues:

      In Tate's Creek Association, Kentucky, ten Baptist churches excluded the other sixteen as having sympathy with the Reformers, adopted the Beaver charges, and condemned these four additional errors:

      9. That there is no special call to the ministry.

      10. That the law given to Moses is abolished.

      11. That experimental religion is enthusiasm.

      12. That there is no mystery in the Scriptures.^*

      The Beaver anathema was widely circulated, provoking ratifications and additional denunciations of Campbell and Scott from every quarter. The Appomattox Association of Virginia, the Baptist Association of Anderson County, Kentucky, the Elkhorn [112] Association, and the Baptist Association of Sulphur Fork all joined the chorus of hate. There was a general movement afoot to purge Baptist churches of Reformers.

      Provoked by the cataclysmic events set going by Walter Scott, the reaction had set in which was to produce a clean separation of Baptists from Disciples.

      The Mahoning Association, against whom the Beaver anathema was directed, met in Sharon the latter part of August, in 1829, to learn that another thousand converts had been added. There were present Thomas Campbell, Walter Scott, Adamson Bentley, William Hayden, John Henry, Marcus Bosworth, and many others. No records were kept, but A. S. Hayden reported that four evangelists were chosen this time. In addition to Scott, there were William Hayden of Austintown, Adamson Bentley of Warren, and Marcus Bosworth of Braceville."¹⁴

      For the year 1829-30, a system of itineracy was devised. This was largely the work of Hayden. A circuit of sixteen stations was set up, with preaching in four places every Lord's Day, so that all sixteen churches were served once each month. This was necessary because churches had multiplied faster than preachers could be employed. The four evangelists followed one another in fixed order; rather, they were supposed to do so, for Scott could not be scheduled and routed in such a rigid manner.

      "Scott, somewhat erratic, distanced all bounds," Hayden complained. "He flew where the finger of God directed."¹⁵

      Let others organize, Scott would originate: "I was all transported with the gospel--its novelty, its power, its point, its glory."¹⁶ [113]

      Beginning about 1830, a wave of millenarianism broke over America. It did not stem from any one source but seemed to be a universal deluge. Perhaps the expectation of a heavenly new world, with Christ coming in the clouds of glory, was the religious counterpart of the physical frontier where a new social order actually was in the making. This general expectancy was reflected in Scott's projected magazine, the Millennial Herald, in 1827, by Campbell's Millennial Harbinger, which did arise in 1830, and by numerous stirrings in the Protestant world. William Miller, a New England farmer and veteran of the War of 1812, began in 1831 to agitate the nation with his prophecy of world's end for 1843 or 1844. His message, fairly typical of this trend, was somewhat as follows: Christ would appear in the clouds of heaven to judge the earth. The righteous dead and living would be caught up in the air, while a great conflagration consumed the old earth and its wicked ones. The wicked would then be shut up in a place prepared for the devil and his angels, the saints meanwhile reigning with their Lord on a new earth for a thousand years. Then Satan would be released, the wicked would be resurrected, and war between heaven and earth would ensue. This war would eventuate in the defeat of Satan and his hosts, who would be cast into hell forever.¹⁷

      It was not surprising therefore that William Hayden went to New Lisbon to fill an appointment and found Walter Scott at the home of Mrs. Jacob Campbell ecstatically talking of the millennium.

      "Brother Scott and I have just been contemplating how joyful it will be in the millennium--mortals and immortals dwelling together!" said Mrs. Campbell in [114] greeting. Scott then launched into a brilliant and enthusiastic survey of millennial prophecies in Ezekiel and Isaiah. This sort of thing was very exciting to him, although he never allowed himself to be carried away into the date-fixing aspect of it. He insisted that no one but God knew the day or the hour of this visitation.

      Congregations joined in singing hymns like the following with great animation:

      If millenarianism was countenanced, Mormonism was not. Sidney Rigdon was already involved in the Mormon movement as early as 1827. But in 1830, when Joseph Smith was driven from Palmyra, New York, to Kirtland, Ohio, Rigdon joined the group openly. In 1830, at Austintown, Alexander Campbell and Rigdon had a passage of arms in which Rigdon was bested. To a friend the budding Mormon complained, "I have done as much in this reformation as Campbell or Scott, and yet they get all the honor of it."¹⁹ Thereafter he withdrew from the Reformers.

      It was Rigdon who, gave the Mormons their name, the "Church of the Latter Day Saints,²⁰ and it was he who threatened for a time to carry with him a large section of the Reformation into the new movement. Rigdon lived happily within the new church until the [115] death of Joseph Smith, when he contested the leadership with Brigham Young, to whom he lost. As a result, he retired in confusion to central New York, where he lived out the rest of his erratic life in obscurity.²¹

      The meeting of the Mahoning Association at Austintown in August of 1830 was its last. Over one thousand converts were reported in this third year of evangelistic effort.²²

      Walter Scott, alarmed at the tyranny of Beaver and other Baptist associations, and also convinced that they were without scriptural sanction, had determined to end the Mahoning organization. John Henry had concurred, and it was he who made the motion:

      "Moved: That the Mahoning Association, as an advisory council, or ecclesiastical tribunal, should cease to exist."²³

      Alexander Campbell was alarmed by such precipitate action and was on the point of rising to speak against the motion, when Walter Scott, discerning his intention, went up to him and, placing a hand on each shoulder, begged him not to oppose it. He yielded, but with reluctance.

      The voting over, with the motion carrying unanimously, Campbell arose and said: "Brethren, what are you going to do? Are you never going to meet again?" This fell upon them "like a clap of thunder, and caused a speedy change of feelings." Campbell then proposed that the brethren meet annually for preaching, fellowship, and reports of progress on a purely voluntary basis. This carried without dissension.²⁴ [116]

      Although the Bethany editor reported to his readers: "This Association came to its end as tranquilly as ever did a good old man whose attenuated thread of life, worn to a hair's breadth, dropped asunder by its own imbecility,"²⁵ still he had misgivings, as he later acknowledged:

      I confess I was alarmed at the impassioned and hasty manner in which the Association was, in a few minutes, dissolved. . . .

      Reformation and annihilation are not with me now, as formerly, convertible or identical terms. We want occasional, if not stated, deliberative meetings.²⁶

      Scott's starry-eyed idealism was great, in part, because it was never bogged down in the machinery of organization. The mundane or the expedient had no claim upon him. He was not so constituted that he could foresee how the precipitate action of August, 1830, would cut off his own work; for, with the abolition of the association, its employment of evangelists ceased.²⁷ He could not then see that so much creativeness without careful husbanding and cultivation was dangerous.

      Jacob Osborne saw and lamented the absence of a system for training and holding converts. William Hayden also foresaw confusion and a coming disappointment, and, as his brother reports:

      They remonstrated with Scott, but that angel of the tempest, beholding victory on all sides, blew louder his silver trumpet of salvation and replied,

      "O convert the people, and give them the Holy Ghost, and they will be safe!"

      Benjamin Austin, a man of sense like a governor, said to Bentley and Henry, "You must stop; the longer you go on the worse it will be. It will come to confusion. [117]

      If you go on twenty years in this way, it will be all the worse, for you will have to stop at last. There must be suitable men appointed to take care of the converts!"²⁸

      At the 1831 meeting of the Disciple groups of the former Mahoning Association, it was found that only one man in the whole Reserve devoted his full time to the ministry. The others were laymen who preached or preachers who farmed. Stewardship had been overlooked. Church organization and Christian nurture had been slighted.

      But when Scott reached the end of 1831, he, by the genius of his analytic mind and his infectious enthusiasm, had completed the creation of the Disciples, given them an evangelistic method, separated them beyond all returning from the Baptists, and set them on their independent course. Without him there may never have been a multitude of converts presenting the problem of organization and pastoral care. A measure of chaos is the price of all creation, and he was pre-eminently a creator. [118]

[WSVGO 103-118]