Born: Near Port Tobacco, Maryland, 1772.
Died: near Jacksonville, Illinois, 1844.
Mr. Stone's father died when he was a little child. In 1779 his mother moved with her large family of children and servants to the backwoods of Virginia, in Pittsylvania County. Some of his brothers were soldiers in the Army of the Revolution, and the family was otherwise subjected to the vicissitudes of the war.
From childhood, he had a deep hunger for knowledge. He was early sent to school and made unusual progress. After five years in the country school, his teacher pronounced him a finished scholar. He soon decided to qualify himself for a barrister.
In 1790 he entered Guilford Academy, in North Carolina, and determined to acquire an education or die in the attempt. There he completed the academic course. While there, in much agony of soul, he turned to the Lord, uniting with the Presbyterians. With it came the desire to preach the gospel.
His special preparation for the ministry was attended with great anguish of mind. The Osage Presbytery licensed him to preach in 1796. He was presented with a Bible, not the Confession of Faith. Then he started on a preaching tour over the mountains that brought him, at the close of the year, to Caneridge and Concord, Kentucky. With these churches his ministry was richly blessed. In the fall of 1798 the Presbytery of Transylvania met to ordain him to the pastorate of the two congregations. He declined to subscribe unqualifiedly to the Confession of Faith, but answered, "I do, as far as I see it consistent with the word of God."
His study of the Bible was with an open mind and many prayers; so within two years he was relieved from the perplexity and distress in which the labyrinth of Calvinism had involved him. Henceforth he was a free man. With the turning of the century, he caught the spirit of, and became an active participant in, that great revival that marked the beginning of a new era in Christian teaching and life. Mr. Stone and his coadjutors preached that God loved the whole world and sent his Son to save men; that the gospel is the means of salvation, but it will never be effectual to this end until believed and obeyed by us. "Man-made creeds we threw overboard and took the name 'Christian,' the name given to the disciples by divine appointment first at Antioch."
"The sticklers for orthodoxy amongst us writhed under these doctrines," says Mr. Stone. "The sects were roused. The Methodists and Baptists, who had long lived in peace and harmony with the Presbyterians, and with one another, now girded on their armor and marched into the field of controversy. These were times of distress. The spirit of partyism soon expelled the spirit of love and union; peace fled before discord and strife, and religion was stifled and banished in the unhallowed struggle for pre-eminence." This was in 1803.
The next year, Mr. Stone formally withdrew from the Presbyterian Church. Thus the ship of the common, catholic gospel, whose compass had been lost for fifteen centuries, was again launched upon the wide sea of human life. Mr. Stone continued an earnest student of the Scriptures; so after a time he was immersed, as were many of those associated with him. "The churches and preachers grew and were multiplied." They came gradually to apprehend the application of their principles to the details of doctrine and duty.
Mr. Stone, after his removal to Lexington, Kentucky, made a trip to Meigs County, Ohio, for the purpose of immersing a Presbyterian minister named William Caldwell. While there he preached, on its invitation, to the Separate Baptist Association then assembled there. He says: "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--to throw away their name ‘Baptist' and take the name ‘Christian'--and to bury their association, and to become one with us in the great work of Christian union. Then they marched up in a band to the stand where Mr. Stone was preaching, shouting the praises of God, and proclaiming aloud what they had done. We met them, and embraced each other in Christian love, by which the union was cemented."
Mr. Stone says of Alexander Campbell when he first came into Kentucky: "I heard him often in public and in private. I was pleased with his manner and matter. I saw no distinctive feature between the doctrine he preached and that which we had preached for many years, except on baptism for remission of sins. Even this I had once received and taught, as before stated, but had strangely let it go from my mind, till Bro. Campbell revived it afresh."
When Mr. Stone moved to Georgetown, Kentucky, he met John T. Johnson, "than whom there is not a better man. We plainly saw that we were on the same foundation, in the same spirit and preached the same gospel. We agreed to unite our energies to effect a union between our different societies. This we easily effected in Kentucky." Mr. Stone came to Morgan County, Illinois, in 1832, and resided on his farm four miles from that place. Thereafter, he preached with great earnestness.
He was a finely educated man, speaking the French language, reading the Hebrew and teaching the Greek and Latin. He was a most successful teacher, and often turned to this profession for the support of himself and family.
Mr. Stone is justly entitled to far greater credit and honor for his work in the Restoration movement than has ever been given him. Like truly great men, he was simple and transparent On one occasion, he entered the home of John T. Jones just as the family was going to dinner. The good wife, as was the custom, began to apologize for her dinner. Whereupon, Mr. Stone replied: "Sister, if we are Christians, it is good enough and we ought to thank God for it; if we are not Christians, it is too good for us."
At another time, Charles W. Jones, a son of John T., was conveying Mr. Stone from the town to his farm by a conveyance drawn by one horse. He thought the horse was being driven too hard, and asked Charlie if he had ever heard the horse's prayer to his master. The driver answered he had not. Then Mr. Stone said:
"On the hill speed me not,
down the hill push me not,
on the plain spare me not
and in the barn forget me not."
When he joined the innumerable host of just men made perfect his body was buried in a locust grove on his farm. When the farm was sold it was reinterred in the Antioch Church Cemetery near by. Later, it was taken to Caneridge, Kentucky.