THE main stream in the historic development of the Disciples of Christ took its rise in the Christian Association of Washington, led by Thomas Campbell and his son Alexander. As a consequence the influence of the Campbells has been dominant throughout their history. Later in its course the main stream was joined by another current, of independent origin and decided influence, which arose in "The Springfield Presbytery," led by Barton W. Stone.

      Stone was born in the state of Maryland, December 24, 1772. His father died when he was still young and soon after his mother removed with a large family of children and servants to Pittsylvania County, Virginia. It was during the [64] Revolutionary War when the entire country was aflame with hatred of the English. The political events and conditions of the time made a lasting impression upon the mind of the boy. He was particularly impressed by the novel religious conditions which surrounded him in Virginia. The coming of Baptist preachers into the neighborhood of his home after the close of the war, with their peculiar manner of preaching and form of baptism, excited his interest and attention. The experiences narrated by the converts of their conviction of sin in dreams and visions, especially interested him. On the heels of the Baptists appeared Methodist preachers, of a prepossessing appearance--grave, holy, meek, plain and humble, who were bitterly opposed by the Episcopalians and Baptists. These religious excitements took hold of young Stone and created in him an earnest desire for religion, but not knowing how to get it, he turned his thoughts in other directions. [65]

      His first plan with reference to a career in the world was to become a barrister. With this in mind, he took the patrimony which had recently fallen to him, and went to an academy in North Carolina in 1790. He entered the academy in the midst of a great religious excitement under the leadership of James McGready in which thirty or more of the students were converted and began to hold prayer meetings every morning before recitations. The devout atmosphere of the school troubled him with thoughts of his own lost condition. He tried to find peace in associating with the worldly students, and joined them in making jests at religion. To get away from the annoyance of religious associations he even planned to go to another school. Under a sermon preached by McGready he was so profoundly moved that, "had he been standing, he would probably have sunk to the floor under the impression." Under the awful alarm of [66] being forever damned if he was not converted, he resolved "to seek religion at the sacrifice of every earthly good." He says: "According to the preaching and the experience of the pious in those days, I anticipated a long and painful struggle before I should be prepared to come to Christ, or, in the language then used, before I should get religion. This anticipation was completely realized by me. For one year I was tossed on the waves of uncertainty--laboring, praying and striving to obtain saving faith--sometimes desponding, and almost despairing of ever getting it." The doctrines then publicly taught were, that "mankind were so totally depraved, that they could not believe, repent, nor obey the gospel--that regeneration was an immediate work of the Spirit, whereby faith and repentance were wrought in the heart." Under continued preaching and the deepening of his despair and sense of helplessness, he sank into a state of apathy, in [67] which he remained for many weeks. He was again awakened by a sermon on "God is love." He says: "The discourse being ended, I immediately retired to the woods alone with my Bible. Here I read and prayed with various feelings between hope and fear. But the truth I had just learned, 'God is love,' prevailed." "I yielded and sunk at his feet a willing subject."

      At the end of his course of study he desired to give himself to the ministry of the gospel, but "had no assurance of being divinely called and sent." He disclosed his state of mind to a Dr. Caldwell of the Presbyterian Church, who removed his difficulty by telling him that he had no right to expect a miracle to convince him of a call. He became a candidate for the ministry, and was assigned certain studies and reading in preparation for examination. His reading on the doctrine of the trinity seemed only to confuse him. He resolved to give up his study and go into other business, but [68] was relieved of his difficulties on the trinity by reading Watts. He was examined before the Presbytery of Orange County, North Carolina, and was accepted; but before being licensed, took a trip to Georgia and engaged in school teaching. Returning to North Carolina in 1796 he was licensed to preach, and was assigned a preaching circuit in the lower part of the state. He was still troubled with doubts of his fitness for the ministry. To get out of the reach of all friends and acquaintances, he resolved to go to the Cumberland country, with the stream of emigration setting in that direction. He was prevailed upon to preach everywhere along the way through Tennessee; and by the time he reached Kentucky, he was quite restored to his desire to preach. He was induced to settle as permanent pastor of the Presbyterian churches of Cane Ridge and Concord.

      When the time for his ordination at the hands of the Transylvania Presbytery, as [69] pastor of these congregations, came in 1798, it found his mind in a state of doubt and perplexity over the doctrines of the trinity, election, and reprobation, as taught in the Confession of Faith. When the Presbytery met he went to two of the leaders and told them of his difficulties. He says: "They asked me how far I was willing to receive the confession? I told them, as far as I saw it consistent with the Word of God. They concluded that was sufficient." "No objection being made, I was ordained."

      The thing which disturbed his faith more than anything else was the doctrine of predestination and election taught in the Confession which he was supposed to accept. He says: "Often when I was addressing the listening multitudes on the doctrine of total depravity, their inability to believe--and of the necessity of the physical power of God to produce faith; and then persuading the helpless to repent and believe the gospel, my zeal in a moment would be [70] chilled at the contradiction. How can they believe? How can they repent? How can they do impossibilities? How can they be guilty in not doing them?" Under an experience of ardent love and tenderness for all mankind, as he was praying and reading his Bible one evening, he said to a person present that if he had power he would save them all. It came to him with startling power that if God loved all men, as he was taught to believe, why then, did not God save them? He has the power to save, and if he does not, is not that a contradiction of his love? He became "convinced that God did love the whole world, but that the reason why he did not save all, was because of their unbelief; and that the reason why they believed not, was not because God did not exert his physical, almighty power in them to make them believe, but because they neglected and received not his testimony given in the word concerning his son."

      In the spring of 1801 occurred the strange [71] religious excitement in the south of Kentucky and in Tennessee, under the preaching of James McGready, who had created the awakening in the academy where Stone went as a student. Stone went down to witness the marvellous effects of the meetings and the "exercises" which seized the converts. He went in a skeptical and critical frame of mind, but returned to his congregations fully convinced of the genuineness of the conversions. His people came together to hear his account of the excitement. His own spirit seems to have caught the power of McGready, and the same scenes and exercises were reproduced under his own preaching. At a meeting which he opened in August, 1801, at Cane Ridge, there were as many as twenty or thirty thousand people, of all denominations, gathered together. Many persons came from Ohio and more distant parts to attend the meeting.

      Stone was not the only preacher in the [72] Presbyterian church of the region who demurred to the Calvinistic doctrines of the Confession. There were four others, Richard McNemar, John Thompson, John Dunlavy, and Robert Marshall. Stone says: "The distinguishing doctrine preached by us was, that God loved the world--the whole world, and sent his Son to save them, on condition that they believed in him--that the gospel was the means of salvation--but that this means would never be effectual to this end, until believed and obeyed by us--that God requires us to believe in his Son, and had given us sufficient evidence in his word to produce faith in us, if attended to by us--that sinners were capable of understanding and believing this testimony, and of acting upon it by coming to the Saviour, and obeying him, and from him obtaining salvation and the Holy Spirit." These preachers were known and singled out by their orthodox brethren for warning and reproof. The first one to be proceeded [73] against by the Springfield Presbytery of Ohio, for departure from the Confession was McNemar. His case was appealed to the Synod of Lexington, Kentucky. When it appeared in the course of the investigation that the decision would go against him, the five preachers held a conference and resolved to protest against the action of the Synod and withdraw from its jurisdiction, though not from the Presbyterian fellowship. Failing in an attempt to reclaim them, the Synod passed a decree of suspension, and published it in their respective churches. The five preachers, joined by several others, constituted themselves into a presbytery which they called "The Springfield Presbytery." Within a year they dissolved the Presbytery under the conviction that they were forming a new sect and thus adding to the divisions of the one Body of Christ; that there was no authority in the Scriptures for the name they bore, or the creed they confessed, or the Presbyterian organization [74] they adopted. In a semi-humorous vein they wrote what they called The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery, in which they willed that the body sink into union with the Body of Christ at large; that their name of distinction be forgotten and that the name Christian be adopted; that each congregation govern itself by the precepts and rules of the New Testament, without delegating any authority to higher bodies; that ministers take the Scriptures for their study in preparation for the ministry, and obtain license from God to preach the gospel; that each church choose its own pastor; and that the people take the Bible as their only rule of faith and practice. The document was signed by six preachers who had led in the revolt against Calvinism and the authority of the Synod, and was dated June 28, 1804.

      The ideas and motives at work in the Springfield Presbytery were strikingly like those at work in the Christian Association [75] of Washington. They were both guided by the desire for the unity of the people of God; both saw the way to that unity in the rejection of human creeds and authority, and in the adoption of the New Testament as the only rule of faith and practice; both originated in Presbyterianism and were precipitated in their course by the oppressive authority exercised by a presbytery and synod over the faith of a minister; but both acted independently and in ignorance of each other in the beginning--the Springfield Presbytery in Kentucky in 1804, the Christian Association in Pennsylvania in 1809. The development of the two bodies immediately after their inception took the same direction--towards the Baptist position. The first one of the ministers to adopt immersion, and this before leaving the Presbyterian church, was Robert Marshall. Stone heard of it and wrote trying to dissuade him from it. Marshall's reply in defense of immersion was so convincing that Stone [76] was shaken in his mind concerning infant sprinkling. He called a meeting of his congregations for the discussion of the subject, with the result that both preacher and people submitted to the rite of immersion.

      The influence of the teaching of Stone extended widely through Kentucky and Ohio. Through the defection of Richard McNemar and John Dunlavy to the Shakers, and the return of John Thompson and Robert Marshall to the fellowship of the Presbyterian church, Stone was the only one of the original five preachers left. He went on preaching, making converts, and organizing churches as an itinerant until he was called as settled pastor of a church he founded in Georgetown. On a journey which he made into Ohio to baptize a Presbyterian preacher who had adopted his views, he went into the meetings of a Baptist association. He says: "I exerted myself with meekness against sectarianism, formularies, and creeds, and [77] labored to establish the scriptural union of Christians, and their scriptural name." "The result was that they agreed to cast away their formularies and creeds, and take the Bible alone for their rule of faith and practice, and to bury their association, and to become one with us in the great work of Christian union." This union included about twelve Baptist preachers. He traveled extensively through Ohio preaching and baptizing people, his meetings attended by great crowds, and frequently marked by strange physical exercises and commotions on the part of converts.

      Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone had heard of each other during several years, but they did not meet until 1824. They found themselves in mutual agreement on the fundamental principles of their work. Their disciples spread over the same regions of country, and established churches side by side. Two bodies of people so closely related in ideas and principles could not [78] permanently remain apart. The story of their union, which took place in Kentucky in 1832, will be told in a subsequent chapter. [79]

[TDOC 64-79]