IS marriage to the wealthy Eliza Sandidge brought Walter Scott for the first time into comfortable financial circumstances. He moved into the Sandidge mansion, a quarter of a mile south of the meetinghouse, taking Carrie Allen with him. Eliza cherished Carrie as though she were her own daughter. It was her one clear affection. Twenty-three years before, her own little Mary Eliza had died at the age of two months and nineteen days. It was as though her baby had been restored to her arms.¹

      But Scott himself she never really understood. Exactly ten years separated their ages. In 1856 Walter was sixty, and Eliza was fifty.² Mrs. Sandidge had been a member of the Mays Lick church under Scott's ministrations and had lived in the village when he made all his previous visits there. She had known him for years. It should have been a congenial marriage but it was not.

      The basis of the difficulty lay in their divergent views toward money. Eliza, as one who had lived all her days in the surroundings of opulence, had a strong respect for possessions; Walter had no conception of such a life, and if he had understood it he would have had contempt for it. Money was to use, or even better, to give away; and life was something very much more precious than the finest fortune. Wherever money was concerned, he was impractical and prodigal. His financial indiscretions irritated his wife; but as one who had always "managed" the finances [211] of his family, he insisted upon discharging this responsibility now. Needless to say, things were soon tangled up gloriously. In particular, he made one business trip to Missouri to see about some investments and so completely botched the transaction that large sums of money were lost. Eliza was goaded beyond endurance, and her exasperation blinded her to the poetic fineness and spiritual saintliness of her impractical husband.

      It became a shrewish marriage. Within the large, richly furnished house, Walter was a forlorn stranger, tolerated but not loved; and sometimes he was not even tolerated. When Eliza's rages were at their worst, he was driven from the house, locked out, and forbidden to return. On such occasions, early morning would find him on the doorstep of a neighbor.

      "I wonder if you would take me in for some breakfast this morning?" he would ask. "The little lady isn't feeling well."

      After one such expulsion, Scott was so depressed that he left Mays Lick altogether and was gone for days. His absence became noticeable to the community. The elders of the church gathered to discuss it; they decided that it was a scandal that one of the fathers of the Reformation was separated from his wife, and that they should step, in to see what they could do as peacemakers. Two of their number were sent off to Cincinnati to find Brother Scott; after a considerable search they came upon him, wandering the streets in a daze of misery.

      "Brother Scott, you must come back to your wife."

      "But she does not want me back," he protested. [212]

      "Then you must make her take you back, just the same. It will become a scandal in the Brotherhood. This must not be."

      "Very well. I will go back, but not alone. You must go with me."

      Behind the imposing doors of the Sandidge mansion a truce was declared, and Walter and Eliza lived together in an uncertain league amid changing domestic weather. Eliza was not always unreasonable; sometimes she was melting tenderness and consideration itself. In such hours she could be a very pleasant partner, and the days of their twilight years then held the promise of peace.³

      Walter Scott's schoolteaching days were over. A stock company had moved into Mays Lick with an academy of its own,⁴ and there was no longer any need for his services in that department.

      But his evangelistic labors were unabated. As late as 1859, when he was sixty-three years of age, he wrote: "I have just returned from a galloping excursion into Garrard County; twenty accessions were made to the good cause, and I have immediately to return thither."⁵

      It was only two weeks later that he again wrote:

      A few days ago, by stage and railroad, I traveled seventy miles, and ate no meat from two o'clock in the morning till five in the evening, and after supper had to address an audience waiting for me. Twelve persons have already presented themselves to the Lord. I am, thank the Lord Jesus Christ, now recovered from fatigue, and more animated in the preaching of the Word, than at any former period of my life. I know [213] that the weakness, incident to age must overtake me, if I live, but as yet I am as strong in every respect as I ever was.⁶

      From time to time he also preached in the Mays Lick church, although he never served as its pastor after his return from Covington. Year after year, without a single absence, he returned to Cincinnati at the time of the National Convention and thrilled the delegates with the poetic flight of his oratory as he charmed them with his animated conversation and "amiable manners."

      At this time, with the patriarchal Campbell, Walter Scott was one of the legendary figures of the Disciples. His name was revered as he himself was affectionately loved. H. S. Bosworth, of Cincinnati, knew that well, when he announced in December of 1858 the publication of the latest lithographic portrait of the tried old warrior:

      Just ready, a superior Lithographic Likeness of Elder Walter Scott. This is the first and only portrait of the truly ideal face, among the men of the Reformation. The multitudes of brethren who have long known and loved Bro. Scott, many of whom remember him from early times, and esteem him as more than a pioneer of our brotherhood, will be gratified to learn that a portrait, of suitable size for framing, and on which the best artistic labor has been employed, is now ready.

      Single copies will be sold at one dollar.⁷

      Scott was busy during these same months writing his most ambitious and most closely reasoned book, The Messiahship, or Great Demonstration. Characterized by the sharp, clean-cut analysis and the persuasive analogies which were second nature to him, [214] and written in the swift, clear sentences which were such a pleasant relief from the long meandering style of his contemporaries, this book was his greatest work. Note the rapierlike quality of his sentences:

      "The Bible is revealed, and beyond its sacred pages the true religion does not exist." "There is no natural religion. By nature we have the instinct but not the matter of religion."⁸

      "Power has to do with matter; authority with mind. Therefore power acts, and authority speaks. By the former, God made the world; by the latter, he governs it." "In Christianity, the two great generalizations are Christ and his religion. His Messiahship rests on power, and his religion on authority."⁹

      "God's love for man must reveal itself, and man's religious instinct cannot conceal itself."¹⁰

      The book was a work on "Christian Evidences," an apologetic for the truth of Christianity. Taking its stand upon the Golden Oracle (Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God), as the central proposition of the Bible, it organizes all Scripture from that point of view. "The author having assumed the Messiahship of our Lord Jesus Christ as the center of the Christian system, and placed himself as it were in that center, has for nearly forty years waited on its gradual development in his own mind."¹¹

      The line of reasoning followed out in the book rests back most strongly on two characteristic assumptions. The first assumption is that the Old Testament is the New Testament casting its shadow before, a presentation of the truth of the New Testament in type and symbol:

      Restricting our researches to the Bible, we find it divided into two parts, namely, the Old Testament and [215] the New--or the Jewish and the Christian Scriptures--the former the shadow, the latter the substance--the first typical, the second antitypical. These interact harmoniously with each other, and the whole is perfectly consistent with itself.¹²

      The second assumption is that the faith of Christianity--in Christ--rests on evidence, while the teachings of Christianity are taken by authority:

      In the Scriptures, the Messiahship is never placed on authority, but on proof: and the doctrine, on the contrary, is never placed on proof, but on authority; the reason for which is this: It being there proved that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, it is consequently assumed that nothing he teaches can possibly be false. The strongest argument which can possibly be offered for the truth of his doctrine is, therefore, this: Magister dixit--Christ taught it.¹³

      Let Scott give his own synopsis of the book:

      The first part of it is a synthesis, or an induction of particular typical and symbolical predictions indicating with irresistible conviction the general truth that their author is the omniscient God.

      The second part is an analysis, or resolution to the Messiahship into its various characteristic elements, evincive of this fact that the New Testament Christ meets all the characteristic conditions of the Old Testament Messiah. These two arguments are linked to each other by a third, which may be called the transitional part of the book. . . . consisting of literal prophecy, promise, and commemorative institutions. . . .

      The volume is designed, by types and antitypes, the church and the empire, to reduce the whole of revealed religion and government under one great generalization, namely, the Messiahship, which, including many other generalizations and many other laws, is yet itself the great law--the great generalization.¹⁴ [216]

      The book, more than 150,000 words on 394 closely printed pages, came out in April, 1859. It closes with a long poem of eighty stanzas on the theme of suffering, under the title of "Jacob and the Angel." All through his life Scott had written poetry and not infrequently in his preaching had taken flight on the wings of his own composing. A few lines of this poem will show the rich imagery and delicate balance of his rhythms:

      In 1860 the rumblings of discord in the nation leapt into violent lightning and angry thundering. John Brown's body had been hanged upon the tree in December of 1859, but his soul was marching on. Abraham Lincoln had been elected to the presidency in the fall of 1860. Then early in 1861, it became [217] certain that there would be war. In February, the Confederacy was organized under the presidency of Jefferson Davis; in March, Lincoln was inaugurated; on April 13, 1861, Fort Sumter fell. Two days later Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee formally seceded from the Union.

      Walter Scott watched all these events with a sorrow nigh unto death. His love for America was overflowing. He once said to an intimate friend:

      I remember distinctly the moment that I became an American citizen in heart; it was not when I went through the forms of the laws of naturalization, but on the occasion of my meeting with a procession headed by a band playing the national air, and bearing the national banner; inspired by the strain as I looked on the national emblem, I felt that under that flag, and for it, if need be, I could die, and I felt at that moment that I was in feeling, as well as in law, an American citizen, that that flag was my flag, and that this country was my country.¹⁶

      It was in the midst of the tension, in the summer of 1860, that he wrote an essay called the "Crisis" to his thousands of friends in both the North and the South and threw it across the current of trending events in a valiant effort to turn that tide back. He pleaded earnestly for the preservation of the Union. Basing his reasoning on an analogy between the federal government of the United States and the solar system, he argued that the American government is not like the center of a heap of sand, but like the sun with its planets swinging about it; and that, since heaven knows no law of secession, a nation can own no such law. "Fraternal ties are being sundered," he wrote, "and sundered, I fear, forever." [218]

      Some good-natured and not far-seeing men imagine that our Federal difficulties will disappear as certainly and suddenly as they were suddenly and unexpectedly developed. God grant they may; but brothers' quarrels are not lovers' quarrels, and it requires but little logic to foresee that, unless the black cloud that at present overhangs the great Republic is speedily buried in the deep bosom of the ocean, it will finally rain down war, bloodshed, and death on these hitherto peaceful and delightful lands.

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      I thought that, your fears being soothed by the consideration that "all is not lost that is in danger," I might intercede with you to continue your prayer to God in behalf of the Republic; that he would have this great nation in his holy keeping; that he would preserve the Union in its integrity; that he would impart wisdom to our conservative statesmen; defeat the counsels of our Ahithophels, and cause this magnificent and unparalleled government to remain "one and indivisible, now and forever!"

      Launching into the body of his argument, he wrote: "In our political system each particular State is formed with federal relations. . . . In the greatness of the General Government each State is great; in its renown, each State is renowned; in its grandeur each is grand; in its splendor each is splendid; in its glory each is glorified. This is systematic political union."

      Admit secession to be a law or right, the confederation is at once transfigured into a simple aggregation, and would then more fitly be called the "Disunited States." . . . The States being organic, a body politic, a confederation, a constitutional order of things, no single member can more legitimately divorce itself from the central government than can the central government legitimately divorce itself from the single State. "The one can not say to the other, I have no need of thee. [219]

      He saw the government of his country without peer among the nations, and he praised it unstintingly:

      No one will deny that it is the rarest and most perfect piece of political workmanship ever framed by man, and that from amidst the planetary States by which it has hitherto been encircled, it looked forth upon the benighted nations, with sun-bright glory cheering our sin-oppressed nature, over the wide world, with high hopes of freedom, security, and an endless progress in science, art, and our blessed Christianity.

      If, however, worst came to worst, for all his grief over brothers' quarrels, Scott's sympathies were clear:

      The government . . . that will not, with all its force, in defiance of all obstacles, put down anarchy and the doctrine that leads to it, ought itself to be put down, as men are more ready to follow a bad example than attend to a good precept. If this course is not pursued with personages working treason, others will imitate their insurrectionary precedent, till the infection of revolt spreading far and wide among the people, our Union will be dissolved and the United States Government perish in the whirlpool of bloody revolution.¹⁷

      Thoughts of the nation occupied him. His evangelistic labors were suspended, and he stayed at home, weighted down by the burden of his beloved land. He went to church, but he even refused Communion. What could Communion mean when Christian brothers were refusing to be bound into one body within the nation? Only once did he respond when asked to speak. That was on January 27, 1861. Then he addressed a few broken remarks on the state of the Union, asked the brethren and sisters to pray for their country, and sat down.¹⁸ [220]

      In the closing months of 1860, he wrote to John, his oldest son, now thirty-seven, who was bound to his father by mutual convictions:

      I can think of nothing but the sorrows and dangers of my most beloved adopted country. God is witness to my tears and grief. I am cast down, I am afflicted, I am all broken to pieces. My confidence in man is gone. May the Father of mercies show us mercy! Mine eye runneth down with grief. . . .

      On Friday, let us go before the Lord fasting, and, humbling ourselves before the blessed God, confess, in behalf both of ourselves and our dear country, all our sins, and determine, with his help, to reform in all things. Let us say, with that great servant of the Lord, Moses, "If thou wilt slay all this people, blot me out of thy book of life." For all the nations will hear and say that it was because the Lord wanted to destroy them that he gave them their great inheritance. Oh, that the Lord would forgive the nation and heal the dreadful and ghastly wound that has been inflicted on the body of the Republic.

      After the grueling early months of 1861, at last came the shattering news of Fort Sumter, and father again wrote to son:

      The fate of Fort Sumter which you had not heard of when you wrote--which, indeed, occurred subsequently to the date of your letter--will now have reached you. Alas, for my country! Civil war is now most certainly inaugurated, and its termination who can foresee? Who can predict? Twice has the state of things filled my eyes with tears this day. Oh, my country! my country! How I love thee! how I deplore thy present misfortunes!

      It was not without relation to this consuming grief for America in strife that he became seriously ill [221] on Tuesday, April 16, shortly after he had written this letter. The disease of the body was typhoid pneumonia, but the disease of the soul was a broken heart. The progress of his illness was rapid, and by Sunday its outcome was no longer in doubt. A new invention, the telegraph, was used to call the children from Pittsburgh. Elder John Rogers, an old friend of the evangelist, happened to be in the vicinity and called to see him.

      "Brother Scott, is this death?" he asked.

      "It is very like it," Scott replied.

      "Do you fear death?" asked his friend.

      "Oh! no," he said, "I know in whom I have trusted."

      To L. P. Streator, his pastor for the past year, he said, "Many a true soldier has gone before me over Jordan."

      On Sunday in the presence of his pastor, he roused himself and broke into ecstasy.

      He spoke of the joys of the redeemed when they should be ushered into the presence of the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and the myriad hosts washed in the blood of the Lamb; of the angelic bands, thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers; of the great white throne and Him that sat thereon.¹⁹

      He then fell into an exhausted slumber from which he awoke to say: "I have been greatly blessed; it has been my privilege to develop the kingdom of God. I have been greatly honored." Mercifully, all thought of his recent sorrow over the present strife was washed from his mind. He was back again, in memory, amid his labors for the gospel. He recalled the names of the great and good men with whom he had been yoked: Thomas and Alexander Campbell, John [222] T. Johnson, Barton W. Stone, Elder John Smith, and scores of others. By Sunday evening he was too low to speak, and on Tuesday evening, April 23, at ten o'clock, he fell quietly into his last slumber.

      The funeral was conducted by Elders John Rogers and L. P. Streator, with the use of a text from Isaiah 57:1-2: "The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart. . . ." His body was placed in a copper coffin and buried in an unmarked grave.

      At Bethany, when the aging Campbell received the sad news that his intimate associate in the Reformation and his very dear personal friend was no more, he communicated the information to his readers in these poignant lines:

      No death in my horizon, out of my own family, came more unexpectedly or more ungratefully to my ears than this of our much beloved and highly appreciated brother Walter Scott; and none awoke more tender sympathies and regrets. Next to my father, he was my most cordial and indefatigable fellow laborer in the origin and progress of the present reformation. We often took counsel together in our efforts to plead and advocate the paramount claims of original and apostolic Christianity. His whole heart was in the work. He was indeed, truly eloquent in the whole import of that word in pleading the claims of the Author and Founder of the Christian faith and hope; and in disabusing the inquiring mind of all its prejudices, misapprehensions and errors. He was, too, most successful in winning souls to the allegiance of the Divine Author and founder of the Christian Institution, and in putting to silence the cavilings and objections of the modern Pharisees and Sadducees of Sectariandom.

      He, indeed, possessed, upon the whole view of his character, a happy temperament. It is true, though not a verb, he hod his moods and tenses, as men of genius generally have. He was both logical and rhetorical in his conceptions and utterances. He could and he did [223] simultaneously address and interest the understanding, the conscience, and the heart of his hearers; and in his happiest seasons constrain their attention and their acquiescence.

      He, without partiality or enmity in his heart to any human being, manfully and magnanimously proclaimed the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so far as he understood it, regardless of human applause or of human condemnation. He had a strong faith in the person and mission, and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. He had a rich hope of the life everlasting, and of the inheritance incorruptible, undefiled and unfading.

      I knew him well. I knew him long. I loved him much. We might not, indeed, agree in every opinion nor in every point of expediency. But we never loved each other less, because we did not acquiesce in every opinion, and in every measure. By the eye of faith and the eye of hope, methinks I see him in Abraham's bosom.²⁰

      It was not until November of 1897, one hundred and one years after his birth, and thirty-six years after his death, that Walter Scott's coffin was moved from its lonely spot and, on land provided by a grand-daughter, Mary Scott Brookes, was buried in a grave with a modest stone marker. The pastor of the Mays Lick church at that time, Brother F. M. Tinder, and editor Walter Scott Smith, were, instrumental in raising the money and arranging the ceremonies.

      Today, at the head of the grave in the Mays Lick cemetery, there stands a granite monument about five feet tall; on it is engraved the single word, "Scott." At the foot of the grave there is a low stone; the face of the stone is cut in the form of an open book, and on this book are engraved these words from the eighth verse of the seventeenth chapter of John:

[WSVGO 211-224]