Dear colleagues: Here is McGarvey's sermon preached on Mar 18, 1877 at the dedication of the Campbell Street building in Louisville, KY. A few words of orientation seem in order; I will not editorialize. What I have in my possession is a photocopy of the 1877 pamphlet. Where and when the original was photocopied, or who had it, I do not presently know. The original printed pamphlet was about 9" x 7" and about 8 pages. I have made every effort to transcribe the text verbatim. The spottiness of the photocopy may have led to the inclusion of an extra comma here and there, but I have tried to be absolutely faithful to the printed text. I also ran spell-check on my typing several times, but I assume some errors crept in. (The sentence frags in the two citations of 2 Pet, however, are such in the pamphlet.) The matter on the cover page, immediately below, was centered (which I cannot re-create in email). The body of the text was in two columns per page, approx. 2.5" per column, and set in about 9 pt. type. For citation purposes, I have indicated the original pagination with numbers in parens, just as they were in print; the numbering began with the body of the sermon on p. 3 Hope this is of some value to your historical interests. I will give more background on Campbell Street in a separate posting ASAP. Grace & peace, Barry [Sanford].

      Text.--Jer. vi:16. Thus saith the Lord: Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way: and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your soul. Phil. iv:9. Those things which ye have both learned and received and heard and seen in me, do, and the God of peace shall be with you. 2 Pet. iii:1, 2. This second epistle I now write unto you. in both of which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance, that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior.

      There are few happier days in the history of a family than when they move into a new house that is to be their own future home. So with a congregation of disciples when, in peace and unity, they first meet in a new house of worship, erected by themselves and their brethren. Such, brethren and sisters, is your happiness to-day; and I trust that a deep sense of gratitude to God is a large element of the joy that fills your hearts. Next to the homes which are hallowed by the joys and sorrows of domestic life, the dearest spot on earth to the Christian's heart is the house of prayer and praise, and for this even more than for that, we should render thanks to God. Let us hope that in this house of God, you, his children, will find a happy home for many years to come.

      The opening of this new house of worship, and the permanent location therein of the congregation for whose use it is erected, very naturally suggests an inquiry into the aims and purposes which you have before you. And inasmuch as you stand before the eyes of the world in the aspect of a comparatively new party among the many religious parties of our day, it is pertinent to demand of you what right you had to come into existence, and what right you have now to be maintaining an existence separate from other and older churches. I think I can safely affirm that no religious body has a right to exist whose aims and methods have not the approval of God, and that no company of persons have a right to organize themselves into a separate religious body, whatever their aims may be, who can successfully prosecute those aims within the bosom of a church already existing. What, then, is our aim as a people; what necessity is laid upon us to prosecute this aim; and why, in the prosecution of it, do we maintain a separate existence as a church? To answer these questions is the task which I have assigned to myself on this occasion.

      We have been very commonly called Reformers, and our movement is often generalized under the title of the Reformation. But this title is inadequate. While we seek to reform both ourselves and others, and might from this consideration be properly styled Reformers, yet this does not distinguish us from others. Our distinctive work is that of restoration, rather than to reform that which is. We aim to restore all that has been lost of Christianity as it was left by the apostles. I say, all that has been lost, because not all of primitive Christianity has been lost; and when we speak of any part having been lost, we mean that it has been lost from the practice of the Church, and not from the divine records.

      Our aim is to pass back through all the intervening centuries, back beyond the origin of all existing ecclesiastical (4) bodies, and taking our stand among the apostolic churches, to adopt all the items of faith and practice which existed among them with divine approval; to adopt all these and no others, as the rule of our faith and practice. Of course, our ultimate aim is to meet the approval of Christ, when he comes in judgment; but he who aims most successfully at this is he who most scrupulously observes His precepts and ordinances in this life.

      Such being our aim, we inquire whether the pursuit of it is a matter of mere taste and preference, or a necessity laid on us which we cannot shake off. If it were the former, we would be bound by the law of love to abandon it rather than allow it to disturb the peace of Zion by causing strife between us and others. But the voice of reason and the voice of conscience alike demand that when God undertakes to regulate our faith and our practice, human discretion is utterly and forever set aside to the full extent of its utterances. Such, also, is the demand of the inspired writers. The prophet Jeremiah lived in the degenerate days of the kingdom of Judah, when, on account of many and long-continued departures from the word of God, the house of David was about to go into captivity, and he pointed out the duty of man under such circumstances in these very striking words: "Thus saith the Lord: Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths; where is the good way: and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls." (Jer. vi:16) The paths of safety at that time, and the only safe paths, were those which had been marked out of old by Moses. Had Judah returned to these old paths even at that late hour, she would have been delivered from her foes; but because she would not, she was driven away out of God's sight, like her sister Israel, and made to dwell as a captive among the heathen. This points to our safety and our danger, showing us that the only hope for us is to be found in going back to the old paths marked out by Jesus and the apostles. While these paths were yet new, the disciples were earnestly entreated to walk in them. Says Paul to the Philippians: "Those things which you have both learned and received and heard and seen in me, do, and the God of peace shall be with you." (Phil. iv:9.) And the Apostle Peter, when he was about to put off this mortal tabernacle, and was watching for the future safety of his brethren in Christ, solemnly says to them: "This second epistle I now write unto you, in both of which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance. that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior." (2 Pe. iii:1, 2) If such were the exhortations of these holy apostles in their day, and if no new revelation has come from God since their lips were closed in death, how can we be safe if we fail to do the things which we have "learned, and received, and heard, and seen in them," and how, when we have done these things, shall we dare to add to them, and thus to launch our boats on an un-discovered ocean, where the inspired explorers ventured not to sail? As Israel in the wilderness moved only when the mysterious pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night was seen to move, as they followed with undeviating steps the way in which it led, and as they stood still when, where, and as long as it stood still, so must we be guided and limited by the precepts and precedents of God's word, if we would pass the wilderness in safety and cross over at last into the promised land.

      With this as our chosen aim, it follows as a logical necessity that we take the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible as our rule of faith and practice. That is, we bind ourselves to believe all that the Bible speaks, and to do all that the Bible enjoins on those who live under the reign of Christ, and we neither bind ourselves nor ask others to believe or to do anything else of different. From the observance of this fundamental law arises everything which is distinctive in our teaching and in our observances. From it follows, first, our refusal to be called by any other (5) names than those applied to the followers of Jesus in the New Testament; and that we especially refuse to be called "Campbellites." Were we to allow ourselves to be called by any such name, we would to that extent be departing from our rule of faith, and none would be quicker to expose the departure than some who now blame us for not being guilty of it. We call ourselves Christians, or disciples of Christ, and our churches, churches of God, for these are then names given or accepted by our infallible teachers.

      From the same fundamental law arises, secondly, the fact that we receive into the church of God none but believers, none who are not penitent, none who are not immersed. We search in vain from lid to lid of our Bibles for either precept or example, type or anti-type, shadow or substance, in favor of infant membership in the churches of Christ. Not only so, but we find conditions of membership which absolutely preclude infants. They can not believe; they can not repent, nor can they be baptized. You may sprinkle them, or you may dip them, but you can not baptize them, for baptism is the intelligent act of a penitent believer, and to an infant it is strictly an impossibility. We search equally in vain for sprinkling or pouring as the act of baptism, but we read of the baptized in unmistakable language, that they went down into the water, that they were buried with Christ in baptism, and that in it they arose again to walk in newness of life. Reading thus, we are tied down by the inexorable force of our rule of faith to immersions as the only act of baptism, and when we immerse the penitent believer, it is by force of the same unbending rule, for the remission off sins, for the Apostle Peter, in first opening the kingdom of God to the Jews, commanded, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins;" and he who was sent by the Lord Jesus to baptize the Apostle Paul, said to him, "Arise and be baptized and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord." Acts ii:38; xxii:16.

      Having thus followed our rule on receiving persons into the church, we follow it as implicitly in all the ordinances of public worship. On every Lord's day, except when physical hindrances, or our own unfaithfulness prevent, we meet for public worship and to partake of the Lord's supper. We call the day the Lord's day, and we never apply to it the name Sabbath, which, in the Bible, is never applied to the first day of the week. The Sabbath and the Lord's day are as distinct as Judaism and Christianity; and he betrays lamentable confusion of thought who uses the one for the other. We call the supper, the Lord's supper, and neither "the sacrament," nor "the eucharist," for these latter terms are neither in the Scriptures, nor do they express the true conception of his solemn institution. The day and the supper are united together in their observances, so that the day is not adequately celebrated without the supper, nor is the supper properly celebrated except on this day. "What God hath joined together let not man put asunder."

      Around this sacred feast, as a center, we group the teaching, the prayers, and the praise appointed by God, while here, and elsewhere, and everywhere we preach the word. Except when unfaithful to our divine rule, we preach nothing but the word of God; we teach nothing but what the apostles taught; we pray for only those things for which we are taught to pray; and we offer no praise but the fruit of our lips giving thanks to God, imitating in this respect, not David, who praised God on the psaltery and the harp, but the apostles and their brethren; in whose assemblies no sound of a musical instrument was ever heard.

      We follow our rules as implicitly in the organization of our churches as in other things. Believing that the appointments of God are wiser, at all times and in all places, than the appointments of men, we dare not fail, when practicable, to appoint in the churches such permanent officers as He appointed (6) in the beginning, nor dare we go beyond and appoint such as He did not. We content ourselves with the overseers, deacons and evangelists, which all readers of the New Testament know were found in the primitive churches; and we have found by experience that in this, as in all things else, our rule is a wise and a good one. With no officers in the church but those of divine appointment, and no law in their hands to be enforced but the law of God, we meet as best we can the offences that must come, and the evils which we can not avoid or remedy we leave in the hands of God.

      As in our public order and worship, so in our private life, we bind on our souls as a never-failing rule of faith and practice, the word of God alone. We shall be judged by it in the great day, and we propose to be judged by it now. If in anything we fail of its requirements, and in many things we do fail, we allow our neighbors to condemn us, and we condemn ourselves; but in so far as we follow our rule, we allow no man to condemn us; for who shall condemn him whom the Lord hath not condemned?

      Such, in all its principal details, is our aim, and, as we have seen, it is an aim which we can not fail to prosecute without incurring the displeasure of our Lord. We now inquire whether we could successfully prosecute it without maintaining, at least for the present, our separate existence as a religious body. It is not difficult to answer this question; for while many of the details of our religious life, as we have enumerated them, are observed, some by one and some by another of the Protestant sects, in not one of these sects would me be tolerated who observed them all. It was for this very reason that the Campbells and Stone, and their compeers, were compelled to depart from the various churches in which they began this attempt at restoration, and although every one of these churches has since then made much progress in the same direction, not one of them has yet adopted in full the aim which we have selected as ours. Most gladly would we stand to-day in fraternal union with any and will all the parties in Christendom, if on the one hand we would be allowed to follow implicitly where the Bible leads; and, on the other, we would be responsible for nothing which the Bible condemns. But, as this cannot be as yet, we both labor and pray for the coming of the time when, by the disappearance from among the church of all the religious inventions of men, not only one or two, but all the parties of Christendom, shall be happily united in one.

      At this point I think it proper to correct a mistaken conception of our aims which has gained an extensive circulation. It is the opinion of many that we are a species of religious Ishmaelites, whose hands are against everybody and everybody's hands against us; that it is our desire to disrupt and to destroy all churches except our own; and that, by the assumption of the name Christian, we unchristianize all others. Let me say, in reference to these matters, that if we could have our wish to-day, we would not, I presume, disrupt or disband a single congregation of worshipers in this city. I suppose that the entire organized strength of every one of them is needed, and that the number had better be multiplied than diminished. But while we would not disrupt nor disband them, we would have them to do what we have attempted to do, to throw off from themselves every item of faith and practice for which they have not a thus saith the Lord. We would have them to put away all ordinances and observances which have been invented by men, and to observe only those of divine appointment; we would have them to abolish all the forms of church organization and government not required by the word of God; and we would have them to rescind all creeds and rules of discipline but the one infallible guide. If they would thus strips themselves of everything not provided for in the Bible, they would find themselves stripped of everything which distinguishes them one from another, except (7) the mere circumstances of locality and nationality, and they would no longer have any use for the distinguishing names which have usurped the places of those found in the Bible. We desire them to do all this, not because we have done it; but because it is right; and should they do it, we will bid God speed to every one of them, and have no other strife with them except to provoke one another to love and to good works. When we say this, we are sometimes met with the remark, "O, yes; you want everybody to come to you, and then you will be satisfied." We answer: No; we do not want anybody to come to us, but we want everybody to come to the word of God, and we wish to be there ourselves, so that all should stand, not on the foundation that any man has laid, but on the immovable foundation laid by God himself. Surely we can not be charged with arrogance or bigotry in making a request like this; and if, in our zeal for this most desirable consummation, we sometimes deal in words of more warmth than wisdom, and our warfare sometimes appears like that of Ishmael, let it be remembered in our favor, that we are fighting, not against men, but against their errors, and that only the heaviest artillery is usually able to batter down the walls behind which hoary-headed error is habitually enthroned. If this excuse is not accepted, we care not to offer another, nor are we greatly solicitous to defend ourselves, provided only we can defend our cause. Our own vindication is nothing, but that of our cause is everything.

      We have now endeavored to show what our cause is, and to show it is the cause of God and the Bible. In conclusion, we may be indulged in a brief attempt to forecast its future. We humbly trust that our Savior's prayer for the unity of all his disciples will not forever remain unanswered. The time was when all the churches of Christ were one, and we believe that they will be one again. Discord and strife are in their nature ephemeral, and they must pass away. Truth and peace are eternal, and they must yet wave their bright banners over the world. But when the present divisions of the church shall all have been healed, and the primitive unity shall bind the hearts of a coming generation, by what name shall that reunited church be known? By what creed shall its faith be set forth? By what ordinance of worship shall she honor her King, and by what forms of administration shall his government be enforced? We can safely assert that not one of the man-made ordinances now observed will continue to exist; not one of the creeds now binding into parties and separating from one another the churches of Christ, will be the creed of the united church; nor shall any party name of those now spoken be its name. But, returning again, after the long night of alienation, to its original unity, it will reassume its original name, its original creed, and all the elements of its original order. Then, the men who have labored and prayed for this restoration, whether they be alive and remain, or shall look down on the happy scene from the spirit world, shall rejoice with a joy unspeakable and full of glory. Even now we catch the inspiration of the blessed day, and exult in the confidence that our labor shall not be in vain. When we are done with this life, and shall, from the disembodied state, behold the progress of the coming ages, we desire not to see the name which we wore, the creed which we subscribed, and the church which we upheld, passing away into oblivion; but we desire to see it continue to the end. And when the day of triumph shall come, and the united Church, having reassumed her ancient name and ancient creed, shall equip herself for the last great conflict with Satan, to behold in the enrapturing sight the consummation of our own labors and hopes and prayers. This, our desire, shall be fulfilled, if only, with unfaltering faith and undying zeal, we shall continue to ask for the old paths, to search for the good way and to walk therein.