HE Evangelist, which Walter Scott had suspended at the end of 1835 in order to write The Gospel Restored, serve Bacon College, and edit the Christian, was resumed in January of 1838. In place of its former simple title it now bore this one: "The Evangelist of the True Gospel." A number of synonyms for the phrase "the Ancient Gospel" had also been devised, and these were sprinkled liberally over the pages of subsequent issues: "the True Gospel," "the Original Gospel," and "the Jerusalem Gospel."

      Although the magazine was in a new series and some new phrases had been added, Walter Scott's purpose was unchanged. "We intend," he wrote, "as long as we live, to give ourselves to the cause of God and man--the Christian religion; and never to faint or grow weary; come good, come ill; come weal, come woe, our intention is fixed."¹

      In the pursuit of this purpose, Scott, the "Evangelist" in the flesh, was still "distancing all bounds." In November he had written:

      We are not allowed to remain at home a week almost. We are hurried from the one end of the land to the other, and demands are made upon us from Missouri and Baltimore, the Lakes and Tennessee. I have been so jostled about from one Big meeting to another, during the whole summer, that when I came to make up the [173] present number, it seemed as if it would be most fit to write that I could now write.²

      To accomplish all this evangelistic activity, resulting in the organizing of "several new and flourishing churches," the Evangelist for 1838 was issued in six bimonthly numbers of forty-eight pages each. Some subscribers complained, but the editor justified himself by citing the heavy draft upon his time.

      The church at Carthage, meantime, was making progress in social reform under its able pastor. Early in 1838, she gave public notice that she had "filed her vote against all wine and liquor drinking by passing a resolution that she will have no Christian communion with any one who sells it, except for medicine or the Lord's Supper."³

      This measure was taken at a time when many preachers both drank and made whisky. Even such an exemplary personage as Alexander Campbell kept a wine cabinet in his home and served wine to his guests. "There was as little disgrace in running a still-house as in managing a grist-mill."⁴ An elder of one of the earliest churches in Ohio, in return for bearing the expense of the excavation and foundation for a new meetinghouse, was allowed to make a liquor cellar of the basement to serve his general store across the street.⁵

      Walter Scott was strongly set against all this. Having stopped one night in the home of a preacher who distilled his own whisky, as he discovered, he bade him good-by the next morning somewhat unceremoniously with this parting shot: "Let the devil boil his own tea-kettle, my brother, and do you preach the gospel."⁶ [174]

      December of 1838 found the Carthage editor bringing out a new hymnal for the use of the Disciples.⁷ He had thrilled at the great singing on the Reserve and was determined to perpetuate and extend the joyous singing of those assemblies. Believing that Protestants in general were very poor singers, he offered, in the Preface, three reasons why "Christians should cultivate Sacred Music":

      First, Music is a Science; that is, it has its foundation in nature, or like all natural science, it has God for its author. Second.--It is commanded us to sing. The Holy Spirit enjoins us to "sing and make melody"--a thing which cannot be done aright without some knowledge of music. Third.--It is the office of a hymn to arouse impassioned devotional feeling, even as it is the office of teaching to illuminate the understanding.

      The hymns in Scott's collection were arranged under three heads: "The Church Department," "The Gospel Department," and "Miscellany." The selections for "The Church Department" were arranged according to the order of service followed in most churches of the Disciples: "Prayers for All Men," "Reading the Scriptures." "Teaching and Preaching," "Reception of Members," "The Lord's Supper," "The Collection of Monies, or the Fellowship," "Dismissal of Brethren." "The Gospel Department" was arranged "under the heads of the six elements of the True Gospel." The total organization was neat: "In these two departments we have a psalmody adapted to the order of the Gospel Church."

      The Edinburgh musician cropped out in the editor of this hymnal; he insisted that sacred music ought to be good music: [175]

      A few old hymns which associate themselves with our earliest and most devout recollections and which are remarkable for their nervous diction, have been corrected and inserted; but we could not bear to stereotype weakness or enthusiasm. There must be strength, feeling, and progression of thought in a hymn.

      The book was published without a musical score, but "the Music of Mason's Sacred Harp has been set to the Hymn Book; so that to obtain tunes it is only necessary for the brethren to possess themselves of that incomparable work."

      Having tried in vain to stimulate the founding of a first-rate academy in Carthage so that his own growing children could have the advantage of a first-class schooling from that place of residence, Scott moved his family, in October of 1839, back to the city of Cincinnati, where he could better educate his family. John was now sixteen, Emily fourteen, William thirteen, and Samuel nine. Walter Harden was still a preschool child.

      So back to Cincinnati they went--home, printing office, and the Evangelist; but they remained there for little more than a year, Carthage reclaiming them at the beginning of 1841. Scott's determination that parents should not make ignoramuses of their daughters was served in the case of Emily by the kindness of a friend. Philip S. Fall, an eminent Disciple educator had founded in 1831 a flourishing female academy at Poplar Hill, Kentucky. Brother Fall had written to Walter, offering to undertake most of the expense of educating Emily, if she could be sent to Poplar Hill.⁸

      Scott replied: [176]

Carthage, 16th Feb. 1841

Dear Bro. Fall:

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      Touching Emily I appreciate your kindness: I made her Mother and her acquainted with your intentions: and the business approved [sic] so desirable to all that although I might on account of both the trouble and expense to which it will give rise on your part have intended to decline the acceptance of the very great benefit, but it is now fairly out of my power to refuse your goodness, for the party and her mother have decreed that you shall be gratified.

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	Yours truly,
Walter Scott

      Emily was duly enrolled in the academy shortly thereafter. What letters went back and forth between daughter and parents we unfortunately do not know, but the fond father of Emily wrote again to the head of the academy:

Carthage, 2 July 1841

Dear Bro. Fall:

      I hope these few lines go to find you and your dear family in good health. You think, no doubt, that I have given you my little girl for good and all. It is said of a certain Deacon that he went regularly to sleep when the flock were addressed by their proper Shepherd but when he knew them to be in the hands of a stranger no other body was more wakeful. Do not prejudge me then. If I am careless in some cases, I am confiding in the present one. Emily is very dear to me because she is my only daughter and has always been good and obedient; and I should have felt alarmed to put her in some Academies on any terms.

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      Emily had repeatedly written to us and I am happy to say that in every succeeding letter I perceive an [177] evident improvement both in writing and composition. In one letter she provided us with a description of your philosophical and chemical apparatus. She loves Sister Fall next to her Mother, and says Brother Fall is "Kind but very decided." This is as it should be. Excuse me. My family are all in good health, thanks to our Heavenly Father. . . . Believe me to be with great consideration and affection.

	Your brother in Christ,
Walter Scott.

      The next letter from Carthage to Poplar Hill tells something of John and the printing office, as well as of Emily:

Carthage, 14 Sept. 1841

My Dear Bro. Fall:

      Your welcome and highly esteemed letter came to hand yesterday. Bear with me when I tell you that in concluding it I involuntarily clasped it to my breast and with uplifted eyes gave thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ for your unmerited kindness to me and to my dear and only daughter. My dear brother, it is precisely as you say: the brethren who are situated as I am are totally "deprived of the opportunity of educating their own children. . . ." Men who receive fixed salaries for their religious labors may live like other men and educate their children also, but for those who like your humble servant and brother in the faith have to go forth to break up the fallow ground, sow the seed and change the barren field into a fruitful soil, nothing remains but stark poverty. Your own kindness and God alone prevents me at this time from having my whole five children at home. Want of funds prevents me from forwarding the education of my sons entirely.

      Son John is one of the best and most dutiful of children, has been one session at college; has read a great deal of Latin, some Greek, writes a first-rate business hand, understands vocal music and can teach it, desires to become a preacher of the word, and I believe has [178] though but 14, tried to deliver a discourse. But I have notwithstanding been compelled to keep him at home and to set him to work in my printing office. . . . From January to January he will save me from 3 to 4 hundred dollars. Had I not adopted this plan, I shall have had to abandon the Evangelist altogether.

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      With sentiments of great esteem and loving obligation, I am

	Your Brother, in Christ Jesus,
Walter Scott

      When, some time in 1842, Emily was back home for good, her father's joy was unbounded, and his gratitude to Brother Fall overflowed in a letter of melting tenderness.

      Other activities were carried along abreast of one another on the familiar Walter Scott pattern. In March of 1840 he returned to Carthage from a ten weeks' tour in Kentucky. May found him for ten days attending the first state meeting of the brotherhood in Kentucky at Harrodsburg. The cause of the Reformation now embraced some 40,000 Disciples, and the movement had become very decidedly a separate denomination. Walter Scott had not wanted this, as a letter to Philip Fall, under date of August 4, clearly shows:

      When you express your doubts of the matters connected with the recent Reformation I sympathize with you, for the thing has not been what I hoped it would be by a thousand miles. We are indeed "a sect" differing but little, of anything that is good, from the parties around us. Alas! my soul is grieved every day.⁹ [179]

      Not a little of this grief of soul sprang from Walter's differences with his old friend Alexander Campbell. For sixteen years, since 1822, they had gone along together in a bond of friendship and common purpose which made their association very precious; but in August, 1838, the Carthage editor published a brief article which angered the Bethany editor, and replies from the Evangelist served only to whip him into a fury which was not fully spent for the next five years.

      It all began innocently enough. Discussing baptism, Francis W. Emmons, in the May, 1838, Apostolic Advocate, so presented Campbell and Scott as to make them appear to be issuing rival claims about their share in the Reformation. According to him, Campbell had said, "It was in 1823 when its [baptism's] true meaning and design were for the first time promulgated in America." Scott, on the other hand, in the Preface of The Gospel Restored, had said, "In 1827 the True Gospel was restored."

      Walter Scott was quick to see the implication of a clash between himself and Campbell and, in the August number of his own paper, the Evangelist, he undertook to refute Emmons' allegation. There was, he averred, no conflict. The Millennial Harbinger itself had recorded the conviction that "the theory and practice of Christianity are as distinct as the theory and practice of medicine." Campbell had in 1823 stated the theory correctly in the McCalla debate, but it was he, Scott, who had taken baptism, placed it in its setting in the six steps of salvation and made the first practical application of these steps--and that had been done in 1827. He had already said, in substance, in The Gospel Restored, as regards the separate [180] contributions of different men to the Reformation, that Thomas Campbell had restored the Bible to the church as the basis of union, that Alexander Campbell had restored the "Ancient Order," while he had restored the "Ancient Gospel."

      The restoration of the whole gospel in 1827, can never be confounded with the definition of a single one of its terms in 1823, or in any year preceding it. If the use of the meaning of baptism in a debate for the purpose of putting down an opponent may be regarded as the restoration of the gospel, then brother Campbell and myself knew baptism to be for the remission of sins two years at least before 1823. . . . The restoration of the gospel did not consist in the definition of baptism; but in publicly, obviously and avowedly receiving men to the remission of sins, and a participation of the Spirit of God on a profession of faith and repentance. Does Brother Campbell say this was done in 1823? He does no such thing; and, therefore, we do not contradict each other.¹⁰

      Alexander Campbell, in a half-sarcastic, half-serious vein, responded in the October Millennial Harbinger, saying that he had never cared for the phrase, "Gospel Restored," and that he had never said that it was restored in either 1823 or 1827. "To restore the gospel is really a great matter, and implies that the persons who are the subjects of such a favor once had it and lost it." He had never had any taste for fixing dates and personages, but if pressed to select a time for the great event, it would be when a penitent sinner was baptized on the apostolic confession alone. That might have been any time, who knows? He had been immersed that way himself. He then goes on to say that Walter Scott had got his views on the design of baptism from himself and his father in the late summer of 1823, just after he had shaped up the McCalla [181] debate; he had stated these views on the debate platform, but he had done so to get at the truth and not "to put down an opponent," as the Evangelist had said. He did not wish to deprecate the work of any brother, but neither 1823 nor 1827 was worthy of the honor Brother Scott was so eager to heap upon them. Instead of looking for honor, they had all better ask the Lord to forgive their mistakes.¹¹

      When Walter Scott saw this he was amazed. Brother Alexander could not be serious; what he had written was clearly out of line with his past letters and with articles and statements known to him and to the public. In 1832 the editor of the Harbinger had printed this statement:

      Brother Scott, the first successful proclaimer of this ancient gospel, who was first appointed to the work of an Evangelist by the Mahoning churches in 1827, did, with all originality of manner, and with great success, not only proclaim faith, repentance, baptism, remission, etc., but did call upon believing penitents to be immediately baptized for the remission of sins.¹²

      Had Alexander Campbell changed his mind since then? And, moreover, Thomas Campbell had written from the Reserve, April 9, 1828, "I am at present for the first time upon the ground where the thing has appeared to be practically exhibited to the proper purpose."¹³

      It looked to him as though his old friend Alexander was trying to crowd him out of the picture and take over not only the leadership of the Reformation but the credit for having originated every part of it. He was goaded to reply.

      Under date of July 6, 1838, John T. Johnson had written to ask: [182]

      As the "Ancient Gospel" arranges itself in the order of faith, repentance, baptism, remission of sins, Holy Spirit, etc., permit me to inquire (so far as you are concerned with its restoration) 1st by what train of thought you hit upon this order? 2nd What fixed it upon your mind? 3rd By what testimony is it sustained? 4th How, etc."

      Scott had intended to answer this letter privately, but now he decided to reply through the pages of his Evangelist, thus settling, once and for all, what he regarded as fact, that the "Ancient Gospel," as distinct from the "Ancient Order," had been restored to the world, November 18, 1827, on the Western Reserve.

      He marshaled the documents: a letter from William Amend, one from John Tait, letters of both Campbells, of Adamson Bentley's, and the 1820 Errette pamphlet on baptism. He would appeal to a phalanx of facts.

      He wrote and published nine letters in reply to J. T. Johnson's questions. In them he reviewed his relations with the Campbells, quoted Father Campbell's own statement from the Reserve, gave excerpts from Alexander's personal letters, in one of which the Bethany editor referred to his McCalla debate in 1823 as "the first proclamation of the original gospel in America." He showed that if Alexander Campbell had talked about baptism for remission or had practiced it, he had done so in a very private and domestic manner, for three of his closest friends were rebaptized after 1827, when the matter came to be spoken of less reservedly.

      Anyway, he stated, baptism on the apostolic confession was not the "Ancient Gospel." What, then, was the "Ancient Gospel"? It was the whole plan of salvation, including the right view of baptism, plus [183] the practical application of the whole in winning sinners to Christ. One by one he took up and disproved the "evasions" and "misstatements" of the Harbinger article. Surely Brother Campbell was guilty of defective memory! It was not in 1823 but in 1821 that both he and Campbell had come upon the idea of baptism for remission by reading the Errette pamphlet from the New York Haldanes. He quoted this pamphlet entire, followed it by a letter from John Tait, proving that the pamphlet was carried to Bethany in late September or early October of 1821, and related how he had soon afterward discussed it with the Campbells in Bethany. Strangely enough, he had not even been in Bethany any time in 1823, to say nothing of his being there in the summer before the McCalla debate!¹⁴

      Alexander Campbell, on his part, was distressed by the December number of the Evangelist. Thinking to head Walter off, he wrote a letter to Ephraim Smith, of Danville, Kentucky, in May of 1839, from which the following excerpts are taken:

      I am much grieved at the foolish course of brother Scott touching those matters and things--It astonished me--His memory is very defective and his thirst for glory is alas! too apparent. Nothing which has yet appeared has given such a serious offence to the minds of many as that puff of Egotism and vain glory. . . . But really I am afraid the enemies will get hold of this thing and put me in the attitude in which I will have to clear myself of vanity, dishonesty and false testimony and thus to contradict and prove from facts and documents indisputable that I am no, plagiarist as the piece insinuates non supplante.. . .

      I have not said one word about it in the forthcoming No. 5--which is mailed today, but the questions asked me and the letter written will bring me out I fear in self-defense. [184]

      Could you, Ephraim, think you, induce him by letter to save himself from this fall--I feel for him and for the cause.¹⁵

      In a subsequent issue of the Evangelist, Scott wrote a few tart sentences about Campbell in an article on "Our Name." Contending heatedly for the name "Christian," against the Bethany editor's aggressive push to have "Disciple" adopted, he said that a man given to pride and anger was not worthy to march in the front of a great people and that "he who names a people claims them." Thus he gave vent to his suspicion that Campbell, who had charged him with vainglory and conceit, was merely projecting his own delusions of grandeur. The "Sage of Bethany" wanted to be the leader of the Reformation; he regarded the Harbinger as the magazine of the Reformation, with the others, including the Evangelist, as subordinate; and he was fairly in the way of making himself a Protestant pope! Scott was disillusioned and wounded, and he let it show in print.

      So matters dragged on until 1839, when Campbell and Scott met in Cincinnati in the presence of some mutual friends to end the scandal of their public quarrel. The October issue of the Evangelist carried letters from the two parties pledging peace. Scott wrote:

      I am happy, extremely happy to have it in my power to inform all whom it may concern, that our difficulties, which have arisen chiefly from our taking different views of the same subjects, have been happily adjusted; and that our ancient, amiable, and Christian feelings have been restored to their wonted channel.¹⁶

      By now he regretted the whole incident, and especially the publication of the incendiary December Evangelist. [185]

      But matters were not to be settled so quickly. Scarcely had the peace been agreed upon than Scott and his Carthage elders began to see slurring sentences and paragraphs in the Harbinger. They protested and demanded apologies; when none were forthcoming, the attack was renewed through the Evangelist. There were replies, charges, and countercharges involving personalities more than principles.

      Campbell was even ungrateful enough to say that "there is reason to complain of multitudes being. . . urged into the Christian profession by an improper preaching of baptism for the remission of sins. But, then, as the brethren say, no man in the nation is more to blame for this than the Carthage Evangelist. I have long remonstrated against the passion for bringing in multitudes of untaught persons into the Christian Church."¹⁷ In lamenting the division of the Reformers from the Baptists, he blamed Walter Scott for provoking the Baptist associations to declare disfellowship and thus to force the formation of a new denomination.¹⁸

      Had his feelings been wounded? Scott asked. No, he replied, "the most sacred affections of my heart have been outraged."

      And so, on through 1840 and 1841 the quarrel rumbled, and, although it had died down, it sputtered a few times as late as 1844.

      Although Walter Scott had been literally correct as to the facts in dispute, he came away from the encounter with a diminished prestige. He had pitted himself against the imposing fame of Alexander Campbell, who, in many eyes, could do no wrong, and he had suffered loss. He had never wanted, as Campbell did, the sole leadership of the movement, but he did [186] want recognition for his own distinctive contribution to it. According to his own view, the gospel had been lost since the apostolic age, and it had fallen to him to make its glorious recovery in the six steps of salvation and in the first practical application of this plan to the conversion of sinners. He felt that the New Testament contained one gospel and only one and that he had recovered it as it had been in primitive days. Campbell did not share this assumption; he did not view the gospel quite so literally; he thought of Scott's six steps as an "expedient arrangement" and, though tremendously effective, only one of several possible ways of putting the matter. He depreciated Scott's practical program of evangelism in comparison with his own intellectual leadership and he did not see, or, having seen, failed to appreciate, that it was Scott's evangelism which had given his movement its almost miraculous power of expansion.

      Public disapprobation of the quarrel dealt a death blow to the Evangelist. Its editor had always had to struggle to keep its budget balanced, but now a declining list of subscribers and a growing list of arrearages forced its discontinuance. He was able, by sheer strength of will, to drag it on into February and March of 1844; but, finally, he could endure no longer. On April 7, 1844, he stood in the pulpit of the Carthage church to preach his farewell sermon, and the same afternoon he and his family left for Allegheny City, Pennsylvania.¹⁹ The "Carthage Editor" was no more. [187]

[WSVGO 173-187]