THOMAS CAMPBELL was born in County Down, Ireland, February 1, 1763. His ancestors were Scotch, and several generations before had moved from Scotland to the north of Ireland. From his early years he was of a deeply religious nature, but failed to find satisfaction and peace in the Church of England, to which his father belonged. His brothers belonged to the Seceder Presbyterian Church, and one of them, Archibald, had been a ruling elder for many years in the Seceder Church at Newry, County Down. Thomas was thrown into association with the Seceders and very much preferred their type of religious life and order to that of the Church of England. He put himself under their religious guidance and sought for several years that evidence of an "effectual calling" which was considered by the Seceders to be an indispensable mark of a genuine conversion. He is said to have found the peace he sought through prayerful strivings as he was walking in the fields. He immediately
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determined to devote his life to the preaching of the Gospel in the Seceder Church.
He had received sufficient education to enable him to teach school in rural places, but not enough to qualify him for service as a minister. He was enabled, through the patronage of a friend, to enter the University of Glasgow, to begin his preparation for the ministry. After completing his course of study at the university he entered the theological school of the Seceders, established and maintained by their synod, at Whithouse. After completing his theological course he was examined by the Presbytery in Ireland, and was licensed to preach as a probationer under the direction of the Synod. He seems not to have been settled in a single parish, but to have followed an itinerary among the weaker churches of a district. He was married in 1787 to Jane Carneigle, near Ballymena, Ireland, where she lived. She was descended from French Huguenots, who fled from France to Ireland at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. To them was born, in 1788, their first child, a son, Alexander, in County Antrim, Ireland.
He continued his work as probationer
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among the churches, in connection with his work as teacher, until 1798. In this year he was called to become the pastor of the Seceder Church at Ahorey, a small place four miles from the city of Armagh. He moved his family to a farm near Rich Hill, about ten miles from Newry. A little later the family moved into the town of Rich Hill, where Thomas Campbell established an academy. While living here the family came into touch with a congregation of Independents, and was more or less influenced by them. The Campbells belonged to the Antiburgher branch of the Seceder Church, which was characterized as other branches by a narrow, sectarian spirit. They were intolerant of other religious bodies to a degree which made them proverbial for religious bigotry. They denied the essential Christian character of other bodies and forbade their members on pain of censure or disfellowship to attend their public services, except occasionally when there was no service in one of their own churches near by. An instance is recorded of their going so far as to withdraw fellowship from one of their members for working as a mason on a chapel of the Church of England. They regarded the
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national churches of England and Scotland as especially antichristian. Such a spirit of narrowness was repulsive to the mind and heart of Thomas Campbell. He availed himself of every privilege of "occasional hearing" at the services of other denominations permitted by his church, and was very friendly with his religious neighbors. The divisions within his own body, the Seceders, seemed trivial, unnecessary and unchristian. In 1804 he led in an effort to unite the Burgher and Antiburgher synods of Ireland. He failed at the time, but it was finally accomplished in 1820, after he had removed to America.
Under the strain of his twofold duties as pastor and teacher his health failed and he was advised to make a journey to America, for the sake of his health and also with the prospect of finding a new home. He left his family in Ireland and made the journey to Philadelphia alone. When he arrived there the synod of his own church was in session. He was at once received upon his testimonials and assigned to pastoral service in western Pennsylvania. He found his brethren in the New World characterized by the same narrowness as his brethren in the Old World. He
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disregarded their intolerant practices in his pastoral ministrations, and drew upon him the censure of his Presbytery for the exercise of too great Christian liberty and charity toward other religious bodies. It was on this occasion that he wrote the letter to the synod, to which the case had been appealed. This document, in being the first from his pen in pursuance of his plan of Christian union, is of primary importance as showing the originating conditions, the impelling motive and end of the mission to which he felt himself called from this time on. It will appear that in the year of this episode, 1807-1808, he had firmly grasped the principles of Christian unity set forth at greater length in the "Declaration and Address." He protested against the hasty, unprecedented, and unjustifiable proceedings of the Presbytery of Chartiers, and appealed for reversal of the decision and censure of the course of the Presbytery, to the "Associate Synod of North America." It seems that the Synod removed the censure of the Presbytery in form but reaffirmed it in fact, by holding that there was "sufficient ground to infer censure, and refused to censure the action of the Presbytery according to the demand of
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Mr. Campbell. Upon this decision of the Synod he felt obliged to "decline all ministerial connection with, or subjection to, the Associate Synod of North America."
Many friends of Mr. Campbell shared his religious views and sympathized with his course of action. They met and organized themselves into the "Christian Association of Washington," for the purpose of promoting "simple evangelical Christianity, free from all mixture of human opinions and inventions of men." That the public at large might understand the motive and purpose of the Association, Mr. Campbell drew up a statement of their principles and a constitution of the society, called a "Declaration and Address." This is the beginning of one current of that movement which has issued in a community of Christians calling themselves "Christians," or "Disciples of Christ."
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THE "Declaration and Address" is the product of the spirit and genius of Thomas Campbell. To understand him is to have the key to the explanation of it. To him belongs the credit for the discovery of the principles--if discovery there be--which have contributed more than anything else to the formation of a separate body of Christians calling themselves simply Christians or Disciples of Christ. He coined the great watchwords, "Where the Scriptures speak, we speak; where they are silent, we are silent," a "Thus saith the Lord either in express terms or by approved precedent, for every article of faith, and item of religious practice," "Nothing ought to be received into the faith or worship of the church, or be made a term of communion among Christians, that is not as old as the New Testament," and "The restoration of primitive Christianity."
Thomas Campbell has not received proper appreciation as the real formulator of the principles of the movement. His son arose to a place of leadership by reason of the more popular gifts of oratory and argumentation.
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He in no wise surpassed his father in intellectual insight, or originality. It is doubtful if Alexander Campbell added any very important contribution to the principles of the "Declaration and Address." Nearly every important idea or principle may be traced back to the utterances of Thomas Campbell. The son was more bold and aggressive, and possessed the natural gifts of leadership. The father was more retired and less fitted for the stress of combat and opposition that developed at once upon the announcement of the principles of the Association; yet he was the creator, the molding mind and genius of the movement. The testimony of Alexander as to the place of this Address confirms the position taken here. "The Declaration and Address contains what may be called the embryo or the rudiments of a great and rapidly increasing community. It virtually contains the elements of a great movement of vital interest to every citizen of Christ's kingdom." Thomas Campbell was a man of profound spirituality, Christ-like gentleness and sweetness of spirit, and of a generous nature. He loved God and all men. He longed for the fellowship of all God's people. Sectarianism
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and division first of all wounded his heart and contradicted his nature; then it was discovered to be contrary to the letter of Scripture. His large heart told him that it was wrong before the Book told him. The discovery that division was contrary to the will of God as expressed in the New Testament touched his gentle spirit into prophetic fervor. Withal his mind was of the highest order of intuitive insight and his speech the most persuasive. His spirit throbs through all the lines of the Address. One has but to imagine the coming together of Seceder Presbyterian sectarianism, bigotry and exclusiveness and Thomas Campbell's catholic and affectionate nature, to account for this document. One must read it with this background in mind.
As will appear from a cursory survey of the document, it is divided into three parts: the "Declaration," which gives the purpose and plan of the Association; the "Address," which goes into a more extended statement of the conditions in the religious world that necessitated such a movement, with a frank avowal of the motives and intentions which actuated them. This is the "Declaration and Address" proper. It is undersigned by
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Thomas Campbell and Thomas Acheson. This is followed by an "Appendix" which was designed to "prevent mistakes" and answer objections against the proposed Association and its principles.
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ought to be unity in the things that are essential and need be in nothing else; nay, to reassure her that there is unity therein, and that they are the things that stand sure and steadfast in the midst of all change; that all men should maintain and accord liberty in things not essential; and to preserve charity, love that suffereth long and is kind, in all things.
His contention was two-fold, that there is already unity in essentials, and that there need be unity in nothing else. The essential things were the things expressly enjoined by Scripture as necessary to salvation, and indispensable to the union and communion of the early Christians. These things are plainly taught in the New Testament, and are easily understood by the humblest or youngest Christian disciple. John Wyclif, the great English reformer who anticipated so many principles of the Lutheran reformation, gave utterance to the same thought in the words: "The New Testament is full of authority, and open to the understanding of simple men, as to the points that are most needful to salvation. It seemeth open heresy to say that the gospel with its truth and freedom sufficeth not to
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salvation of Christian men without keeping of ceremonies and statutes of sinful men."
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word of God requires? And should not all this taken together satisfy the church, in so far, in point of profession?"
As to the indispensableness of Christian character as a condition of union, he says: "By the Christian church throughout the world, we mean the aggregate of such professors as we have described in Propositions 1 and 8." "It is such only we intend when we urge the necessity of a Christian unity." "A manifest attachment to our Lord Jesus Christ in faith, holiness and charity, was the original criterion of Christian character, the distinguishing badge of our holy profession, the foundation and cement of Christian unity." The emphasis in these passages is evidently upon the manifestation and preservation of a Christian character, Jesus himself being the standard of it. Such only did he contemplate as parties to the union: and only so long as they continued to manifest such character, would they be entitled to fellowship. He regarded a severer discipline in the church as necessary to the preservation of unity. The responsibility for division lay in the reception of persons unfit for Christian fellowship-- persons who have not the spirit of Jesus
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Christ, his love, his forgiveness, his meekness and forbearance. "We therefore conclude that to advocate unity alone, however desirable in itself, without at the same time purging the church of apparently unsanctified characters, even of all that cannot show their faith by their works, would be, at best, but a poor, superficial, skin-deep reformation."
A distinction is to be made between entering into union with Christians, and the preservation of unity within the Christian community; yet no distinction in the things essential to both. The thing that destroys the unity of the body, disqualifies one for union with it. In other words, no one can be a Christian who cannot live peaceably in fellowship with Christians. All dissocializing elements are unchristian. The Christian virtues are prevailingly social. Christian fellowship thus becomes both a privilege and a probation. The church has been divided and divisions have been perpetuated as much by the unsocial, that is, the unchristian, spirit as by unsound doctrine. If a union of all Christians could be consummated to-day, to-morrow they would be divided, if there was any one a party to the union, who was unloving,
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unforgiving, unforbearing, disputatious or proud.
It was felt that this principle was nothing short of the charter of a reunited church. The principle of liberty had been held as a theory in the Protestant church ever since Luther asserted the doctrines of justification by faith, and the right of private interpretation; but really there was little more liberty in the various Protestant bodies than in the Roman Church. The withdrawal of the civil power from the support of the church marked the
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first great step toward religious liberty. So long as the church and state were united, and the church could invoke the civil power to carry out her decrees, so long was there a kind of unity. But the moment they were separated, the unity that had existed was destroyed, and the church fell apart into a variety of sects. Division was the natural outcome of the Lutheran principles.
The next great step in the progress of the church toward religious liberty is marked-- and this is the contribution of Thomas Campbell--by the distinction between the personal faith of the believer and the theological faith of the creeds. With the breaking of the Papal tyranny, there ensued a theological tyranny, which has ruled in the Protestant church through its creeds to the twentieth century. Every new assertion of Christian liberty has resulted in a new tyranny. Luther exercised the greatest liberty of thought personally, but it was lost to his followers. Calvin exercised freedom in the pursuit and acceptance of new truth, but it departed from those who followed him. Thomas Campbell exercised the greatest possible liberty, and would be bound only where the Scriptures bound him; but is
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it any surprise that there has been less liberty among his followers? Where Luther stopped growing, there Christian thought and life hardened into a fixed form. That which Luther was free to think in his life-time, the next generation was obliged to think, as a condition of fellowship in the Lutheran Church. There is danger that where Thomas and Alexander Campbell arrived in their movement to restore primitive Christianity, there those who gather around them shall stop. The principle of liberty, the right to grow with the growth of truth, needs perpetual emphasis and incessant utterance. Back to this principle has gone every great soul for fresh inspiration and a new starting point in the ascent toward perfect truth as it is in Jesus Christ. Liberty of thought, liberty of opinion, is utterly opposed to authority in opinion. To grant liberty of opinion, liberty in the pursuit of truth, yet to fix beforehand the opinion at which one must arrive, is a denial of liberty.
This principle seems most impossible of application in great transition periods such as the present. The opinions of the last generation of teachers, to which the Campbells belonged, were fixed and definite. They set-
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tled the question as to what were mere opinions and what essentials of the faith. To-day there is another set of opinions which has taken their place. The task is laid upon this generation anew to settle the relationship of these opinions to the old, and to the essentials of the faith. The inevitable condition has arrived in which some opinions are pronounced true, others erroneous. It seems the most difficult thing imaginable for those who think the new opinions erroneous, not to go on to judge those opinions dangerous to the faith. Yes, they say, we acknowledge that they are mere opinions, but they are dangerous and ought not to be tolerated. This is an abridgment of liberty in non-essentials.
The conclusion of the whole matter is that there is just as much need of liberty in new opinion as in old opinion with which adjustment has been reached. In other words, openness to new truth, new ideas, new opinions, is just as essential to the unity of the church as liberty in old opinion. The refusal of the teachers of the church to be hospitable toward new truth has driven some of her best spirits from her, and obliged them to form new organizations for fellowship. The church of
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the very next generation has frequently welcomed truth that was rejected by the preceding. There are new truths being uttered to-day, which, though denied a place in the body of Christian truth by the church of to-day, will become a part of it to-morrow. There are new sects arising every year and building upon rejected truth--truth for which the existing churches have found no place.
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second evil is, not only judging our brother to be absolutely wrong, because he differs from our opinions, but more especially our judging him to be a transgressor of the law in so doing, and, of course, treating him as such by censuring or otherwise exposing him to contempt, or, at least, preferring ourselves before him in our judgment, saying, as it were, ‘stand by; I am holier than thou.'" This evil of bringing a brother into contempt whose ideas we do not like is a favorite method with those who have no severer pains they can inflict. It is one in spirit and purpose with the medieval Inquisition which could inflict the pain of confiscation of goods or even death. It results to-day frequently that a brother can be made to suffer in his goods by injuring his reputation for soundness in the faith; for many a teacher is entirely dependent upon this for his acceptance among a religious people. Causing a brother any slightest pain of body or mind on account of difference of opinion is utterly contrary to the spirit of this great principle, and subversive of the unity of the Church. But when the early Protestants could not inflict pain upon the body of a heretic, they pursued this other method of
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sinister and invidious undermining of his good name as a means of showing him the truth.
The defense of religious controversy is often made on the ground that liberty in non-essentials is not intended to abridge the right or the need of discussion of doctrines or opinions. Campbell himself acknowledged the place of friendly comparison of views as a means to the discovery of truth. One may even go so far as to "declare that, in our judgment, our brother is in error, which we may sometimes do in a perfect consistence with charity;" but he did reprobate the arrogance and assumed superiority which led one to deny the right of a brother to confidence and fellowship because of difference of opinion.
"A third and still more dreadful evil is, when we not only, in this kind of way, judge and set at naught our brother, but, moreover, proceed as a church acting and judging in the name of Christ, not only to determine that our brother is wrong because he differs from our determination, but also, in connection with this proceed so far as to determine the merits of the cause by rejecting or casting him out of the church as unworthy of a place in her communion, and thus, as far as in our power,
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cutting him off from the kingdom of Heaven." His entire treatment of this matter is both suggestive and timely. He anticipates another apology for this sort of excommunication in the words: "If, after all, any particular church acting thus should refuse the foregoing conclusion, by saying, we meant no such thing concerning the person rejected (that is, exclusion from the benefits of the kingdom), we only judged him unworthy of a place among us, but there are other churches that may receive him"--his response is in substance: If the other church that receives the rejected brother is a church of Christ by acknowledgment, then it has condemned the action of the church that rejected him, and that church in turn condemns the one that received him. What is this but to invite division and strife into the church?
That Thomas Campbell entertained the most charitable and brotherly sentiments toward those Christians with whom he differed in opinion is evident from his kindly appeals to them as brethren to enter with him into the work of bringing the churches together. "our brethren of all denominations," "our dear brethren," "Dearly beloved brethren," "All
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the churches of Christ," are phrases recurrent on almost every page of the Address. Consistent with these professions of Christian regard for all the churches is his readiness to join with them in the laudable work of reformation. "But this we do sincerely declare that there is nothing we have hitherto received as matter of faith or practice which is not expressly taught or enjoined in the word of God, either in express terms or approved precedent, that we would not heartily relinquish, that so we might return to the original constitutional unity of the Christian Church; and in this happy unity, enjoy full communion with all our brethren, in peace and charity."
(1) The church, the body of Christ, is divided into warring factions.
(2) Such divisions in the church of Christ are unscriptural, unnecessary and wrong.
(3) The church is divided on account of its departure from the authority and teaching of the New Testament: the substitution of human tests of fellowship for the divine;
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devotion to human leaders and names instead of the one great Leader, Jesus; the confusing of merely human opinion with the essential faith as a requirement of salvation.
(4) The church of apostolic times was essentially one.
(5) The church may be reunited by a return to the divine standard and conformity thereto in all things.
1. It appears from the document that the bond of union was to be a common authority, the New Testament, or the teaching of Jesus and the apostles. He saw the need, first of all, of an authority to which all Christians would bow, as the essential condition of any enduring union. The question of authority conditioned the entire enterprise. He found in the New Testament an authority which all the churches acknowledged. This was the fundamental starting point. It is embodied in the motto, "Where the Scriptures speak, we speak; where they are silent, we are silent." This motto fixes two things, the seat of authority in religion and the limits of religious liberty.
2. The basis of union was to be the conditions of union or fellowship with Christ, as
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set forth in the New Testament. His plan was to ignore the intervening history of the church, with its corruptions, and begin where the apostles left off. The fundamental assumption of their preaching was to be that there had been no time since Pentecost. Hence the basis of union for the divided church was to be identical with the New Testament conditions of personal union with Christ. It contemplated every denomination as a single individual Christian. He had no thought of a concordat, or articles of association for churches, other than for individual Christians. With him organizations of the various sects, their forms, systems and governments had no essential existence. After all, relation to Christ is personal, not congregational or denominational, no more than national; and there can be no Christian union except of those in Christ. Those who are in Christ are essentially one, but are separated by unscriptural and human inventions. He had no plan for an ecclesiastical league. He had no thought of an alliance or confederacy of various institutions into a league of peace, but of a union of Christians.
3. The form of the union was to be "an
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entire union of all the churches in faith and practice according to the Word of God." He does not go beyond this general outline to specify the things that are to be believed or practiced, assuming that when once the principle of the sufficiency of the divine standard and model--the church of the New Testament--has been accepted, and men begin to inquire in its pages as to what is the will of God concerning his church, they will all at once fall upon the same self-evident truths of faith and practice. Then will follow a reduction of all existing church systems to "that whole form of doctrine, worship, discipline and government, expressly revealed and enjoined in the Word of God." Nothing would satisfy his conception but one church as in apostolic times, which however, "must necessarily exist in particular and distinct societies, locally separate from one another." A union which does not reduce the many sects to the one primitive church--a union which leaves out of its fellowship one true Christian or makes it impossible for one who is a Christian according to the scriptural requirement to become a member in it--is not an entire Christian unity. His conception of the church governed
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his idea of its unity. He says, Prop. I: "That the Church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally and constitutionally one; consisting of all those in every place that profess their faith in Christ and obedience to him in all things according to the Scriptures, and that manifest the same by their tempers and con- duct." Such was the church of apostolic times. There was unity without external enforcement, difference of opinion without disfellowship; many churches scattered through many lands, composed of many races but "one Lord, one faith, one baptism." A member of one local church was welcome to the membership of every other church. Thus ought it to be now.
Such a union will be visible and universal, but not formal, for it will grow out of vital relation to Christ, and all that are in him will be in fellowship with each other here on earth. It will embrace no more, no less. All other forms or schemes of union, upon any other plan, will inevitably leave out some one who simply belongs to Christ. He sought to make the visible church coextensive with the spiritual church--the one exactly covering and filling the other. To accomplish this end, "nothing ought to be inculcated upon Christians as
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articles of faith, nor required of them as terms of communion, but what is expressly taught and enjoined upon them in the Word of God." The Christian profession should describe the Christian reality.
4. His program was as simple as his basis. This union was to be accomplished by sending out preachers to proclaim the principle among the churches. The Association was not a church but "merely voluntary advocates for church reformation." The members were to retain their membership in their respective denominational churches. They expected to be received cordially into all the churches on an interdenominational mission. Just as to-day the "Woman's Christian Temperance Union" is a society for the promotion and unification of the temperance sentiment among the churches, so Thomas Campbell thought of this movement. How suddenly all doors were closed to him, and he was obliged to alter his program, seeking first to merge the movement with the Presbyterians, and finally merging it with the Baptists, has been recorded in the Introduction. Gradually those who adopted the principles of the Address among the Baptists became distinguished in all Bap-
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tist churches from orthodox Baptists. With the development of hostility between these two elements there came a period of division, which resulted in the complete separation of the "Reforming Baptists" from the "Regular Baptists." The former body took the name "Disciples of Christ" or "Christians," but were in various sections nicknamed "Campbellites." It must be apparent to every one who has followed the history of this body to the present time how different have been the issues and fortunes of the movement, as compared with the original purpose and program of the author of this document.
The circumstances which gave rise to the movement, the spirit which animated its leaders, the principles underlying their pronunciamento, classify it as a Christian union movement. They thought the reunion of Protestant churches would be an immediate realization upon the principles set forth. They discovered to their disappointment that the denominations were not ready to lay down their differences at the first suggestion. They found that there was very much ground to be cleared before the end in view could be directly worked at. They were set for the union of all Chris-
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tians, but the task of preparing the way for it was first in order and proved more serious. Hence they were thrown back upon the discussion and defense of the basis of union-- namely, primitive Christianity, what it is and how to interpret it. Common agreement has not yet been reached as to what it is in all of its essential elements. There are evidences, however, of a growing agreement as to the sufficiency, nay, the exclusive right, of primitive Christianity to be the basis of a reunited church. The desirability of union is acknowledged on all hands.
The Declaration and Address is essentially a Christian union document and belongs to the literature of the subject. It takes a place beside such documents as, "Tract on Union Among Christians," by John Owen; "True and Only Way of Concord of All Christian Churches," by Richard Baxter, and similar treatises by George Calixtus, Hugo Grotius and the philosopher Leibnitz. A brief survey of the chief attempts at union since the Reformation will help us to understand the Declaration and Address.
The inevitable result of the acceptance of the principles of the Reformation was division
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and sectarianism. No sooner did they see the mistake and weakness of division than they began to seek some basis for reunion. Before Luther's death there were various attempts at union. After his death they were renewed with greater earnestness. Lutheran and Catholic, Reformed and Lutheran, were now and again holding conferences over some consensus or concordat. It will suffice to pass in review only a few important efforts and proposals.
George Calixtus (1586-1666) led one of the earliest and most earnest efforts to reunite the Protestants and Catholics. He proposed that they go back to the creeds of the first five centuries of the church as the doctrinal basis of union. He held "That the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, sufficient for salvation, were contained in the Apostles' Creed, and in the common faith, explanatory thereof, of the first five centuries." In the main features of his proposal he followed Cassander. His basis of union may be designated as confessio-theological; that is, the basis of agreement is to be found in the doctrines of the early creeds or confessions, which are essentially theological.
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These principles were adopted and set forth by Leibnitz (1646-1716) in renewed efforts to effect a union between Protestants and Catholics. He was met on the side of the Catholics by Spinola and Bossuet. He met with such success at Hanover in 1683, in a conference with these men, that an agreement seemed imminent. It was under these circumstances that, in 1686, Leibnitz wrote his "System of Theology," in which he strove to find common standing ground for Protestants and Catholics in the details of their creeds. When it was discovered that the Catholic theologians were seeking not a compromise with the Protestants, but their conversion, the correspondence was dropped. He took the conciliar decrees of the first three centuries as the doctrinal basis of the union. The Catholics insisted on the decrees of the Council of Trent in addition.
Lessing, the German dramatist, the father and master of literary criticism, was directed late in life to a study of theology. He was led to ask himself the question, "What is essential to Christianity?" He contended that Christianity was older than the Bible, hence the New Testament was not absolutely neces-
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sary to Christianity. He adopted the view of an "essential Christ" of all ages and peoples, back of all creeds and history. He identified Christianity with noble character. This was his basis of union for all the world, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, and Mohammedan alike. They were all agreed as to the essential nobility of character. This may be called a naturo-ethical basis.
Grotius of the Reformed Church of the Netherlands was occupied many years with a program of union between Protestant and Catholic bodies. "The differences among Christians appeared to him small compared with the points on which they were united." He spent many years in close conference with the Catholic leaders in France. Grotius advocated a general council of Protestants and Catholics as the only means of arriving at a consensus of doctrine. The basis which he proposed was likewise a theological one.
All these proposals agree in starting with something the parties to the union could acknowledge as of binding authority. The tendency was to go back toward the early symbols of the faith of the church to find a common ground on which to stand together.
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None proposed going back so far as Thomas Campbell. The difference between Campbell and his predecessors in this effort for union is apparent. Campbell's basis was not theological or ethical, nor did it center around a creed or council; it was Biblico-ethical and Christo-centric.
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to excite the jealousy, or hurt the feelings of any party. On the contrary, every effort toward a permanent Scriptural unity among the churches, upon the solid basis of universally acknowledged and self-evident truths, must have the happiest tendency to enlighten and conciliate, by thus manifesting to each other their mutual charity and zeal for the truth." Of these universally acknowledged and self-evident truths which constituted the common basis for Christian union, the following seem the most important and apparent:
1. The Scriptures of the New Testament are the supreme and ultimate source of authority for Christian faith and practice.
The ever recurrent appeal in the Address is to the Scriptures--a "Thus saith the Lord for every article of faith or item of religious practice." This is no less than the formal principle of the Protestant Reformation. It will be observed that he distinguishes the authority of the New Testament from that of the Old. Proposition 4 of the Address reads as follows: "That although the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are inseparably connected, making together but one perfect and entire revelation of the Divine will, for
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the edification and salvation of the Church, and therefore in that respect cannot be separated; yet as to what directly and properly belongs to their immediate object, the New Testament is as perfect a constitution for the worship, discipline and government of the New Testament Church, and as perfect a rule for the particular duties of its members, as the Old Testament was for the worship, discipline, and government of the Old Testament Church, and the particular duties of its members." Here lie the germs of that distinction between the old and new covenants, which subsequently became so important in the teaching of Alexander Campbell.
2. That the New Testament contains a perfect and complete model of the Christian institution, as to faith, life, worship, ordinances, and government.
The evident meaning of such exhortations as, "conform to the model," "conform to the original pattern laid down in the New Testament," is that Jesus and the apostles anticipated every need, and provided for every exigency in the career of the church on earth, before they passed away. Those provisions have been preserved for us in the New Tes-
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tament. In other words, nothing was left to the church to devise, and no liberty was allowed the church to alter those things already devised. As the ordinances were observed by Jesus and the apostles, so were they to be observed forever in the church. As the church was organized by the apostles, with elders and deacons, so was it always to be organized to the end of its existence on earth.
3. That the Scriptures are essentially and intentionally intelligible, as far as matters of salvation are concerned. The right of private interpretation is assumed on every page, as well as the certainty that all who read the Scriptures without preconceptions, will come to the same understanding of them. The things that concern one's salvation are plain and simple. They must be so, else the church would be a place for none but the learned; but it has ever consisted of "little children and young men, as well as fathers." The Scriptures therefore do not permit of a double or doubtful meaning. He says: "Should it be still further objected that all these sects and many more profess to believe the Bible, to believe it to be the Word of God, and, therefore, will readily profess to believe and prac-
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tice whatever is revealed and enjoined therein, and yet each will understand it his own way, and of course practice accordingly; nevertheless, according to the plan proposed, you receive them all. We would ask, then, do all these profess and practice neither more nor less than what we read in the Bible, than what is expressly revealed and enjoined therein? If so, they all profess and practice the same thing, for the Bible exhibits but one and the, self-same thing to all."
4. That the church needs reforming by being restored to the New Testament model, and that a complete restoration is both desirable and possible. There was probably less agreement among the churches as to the last two than the first two presuppositions. There was serious doubt of both the desirability and, possibility of restoring the primitive church. This, however, was the firm conviction of Thomas Campbell, that the divided condition of the church is perfectly hopeless on any other basis. To Campbell's mind the sufficiency of the apostolic model grew naturally and consistently out of the authority of Scripture. To the Protestant churches of that day, the authority of Scripture was one thing, the
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sufficiency and fitness of the primitive church as a model for the church of all times was another thing.
5. That the church of apostolic times was essentially and intentionally one organic body. This is expressed in so many words in the first proposition of the Address, and in the frequently occurring phrase, "The original constitutional unity of the primitive church."
6. That matters of faith and opinion in Christianity are easily distinguishable, and that recognition of what is thus essential and what is non-essential will result in unity of faith and practice. All Christians agreed that there was a difference between faith and opinion, but where to draw the line, and what to put on one side, and what on the other side, was not so easily settled. Campbell went no further in the classification of faith and opinions than to say that matters of faith were those things expressly enjoined by the Word of God as necessary to salvation, while private opinions were inferences or deductions from them.
7. That the apostles stood upon the same plain of infallibility and authority in their teaching as that on which Jesus stood. This question had not been raised in the year 1809.
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A distinction between the authority and value of the Old and New Testaments had not been made until the Campbells began to make it. The entire Bible was looked upon as a single revelation of God, each part equally valuable and authoritative for the Christian. The question of a difference of value between the writing of the New Testament is a late nineteenth century question.
These are the presuppositions upon which Thomas Campbell founded his confidence in the possibility of restoring unity to a large part of Christendom. These principles have been quietly assumed in most of the teaching and preaching of the Disciples of Christ. Since the writing of the Address those who gave in their adherence to it have gone on to define primitive Christianity in the concrete, and to fill in the content. In the Address it is merely an outline, a principle, a plan of action. The task of defining primitive Christianity was inevitably forced upon them. All parties might agree and doubtless did agree, that primitive Christianity is an authoritative and sufficient model; but, "What is primitive Christianity," would be sure to be the first question raised.
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Differences arose at once and still continue among the supporters of the Declaration and Address as to the essential elements of primitive Christianity. More or less latitude has been exercised in the practical work of reproducing the primitive model. Some have been more strict than others in the interpretation of the principle. Some have maintained that the essential elements of primitive Christianity extend to details of time, place, and season of observing the ordinances; to custom, order, and furniture of public worship; to method and plan of missionary activity; to names and function of service in the church. We find accordingly, those who regard the use of modern instruments of music in public worship as a violation of primitive precept and example. Missionary societies, Christian Endeavor societies, Sunday schools, prayer meetings, trustees, pastors, hymn books and a multitude of other modern helps, have each in turn been opposed as violations of the principle. Who shall construe for us the exact meaning of primitive Christianity? Who shall fix infallibly the application of the principle to the varying exigencies of the times? The Disciples have settled down to the exercise of
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the greatest liberty consistent with the Christian spirit.
As there is difference among the Disciples concerning the interpretation and application of this principle, so is there with respect to all of these presuppositions. The practical question to-day is not whether there was general agreement in these principles in 1809, but whether there is general agreement in them in 1904. It may be confidently asserted that they do not precisely represent present-day Christian thought. But since it is not within the scope of this historical study to interpret the thought and attitude of the church of to-day toward them, it will suffice to indicate the presence here of an important inquiry. Are the Disciples entirely satisfied with the achievements of nearly one hundred years of advocacy of Christian union? Are they ready to fight it out on these lines if it takes a millennium? As a Christian union program are these principles a success? Have they been faithfully interpreted and applied? As an evangelistic force, as fishers of men, as founders of churches upon the primitive model, all men agree that the success of the Disciples has been signal. But besides having a mission
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as a church of Christ, which is to seek and save the lost, the Disciples have clung to another special mission as a society for the promotion of Christian union, growing out of their attachment to the Declaration and Address. This inquiry refers solely to the historic mission of the Disciples, not to their mission as simply Christians, which they have in common with all Christians. The Declaration and Address was put forth before the Christian Association of Washington was compelled to constitute itself into a regular church. That Association was not a church in any sense at the time of the writing of this Address; it was the constitution of a Christian union and church reformation society. It did not lose its purpose as a society when it became a church.