S the word of the death of Thomas Campbell passed throughout the fellowship a wave of sorrow passed over all. Yet the sorrow was turned into joy as all considered that his lifework was done, and that he had entered into the rest and reward of God's faithful. From all sections of the world there came to Bethany messages that spoke appreciatively of the character and labors of the departed. But it was not in the mind of Alexander, the son, to magnify the deserving father, therefore he gave but a few of the messages to the general public. In the Memoirs of his father, he wrote no chapter concerning the last illness and death. He used rather the obituary notice which Dr. Richardson prepared for the Harbinger, and included the detailed notice of his father's last illness and death, written by Mrs. Selina H. Campbell (the son's wife) and sent to Editor Challen for insertion in the Christian Annual.

      From an intimate association of several decades with the father Campbell, Dr. Richardson, who had been his pupil in Pittsburgh in boyhood days as well as a colleague in preaching and editing in later days, writes:

"Never was there an individual who manifested greater reverence for the Word of God, or a truer desire to see it obeyed faithfully. Yet [198] this trust in the divine Word was not, with him, a mere verbal confidence, a faith or knowledge, like that of some professors, merely intellectual-lexical and grammatical; for never was there one who more fully, recognized the spirituality of the gospel, or sought more diligently to impress all around him with the importance of the work of the Holy Spirit in the salvation of the soul; and never was there one who more fully exemplified the, doctrine which he taught, or whose, life was more evidently guided by the teachings of the Spirit, and controlled by the divine principle of love to God and man. To the faith of Abraham and the piety of Samuel, he added the knowledge, the purity and warm affections of the Christian, and combined in his deportment a simplicity of manners and a courtesy singularly graceful, with a dignity which inspired with respect all who approached him."

In his Memoirs of Alexander Campbell, Richardson gives but two pages to the death of Thomas Campbell, and makes use of a letter of the son Alexander to a Brother Dungan in Baltimore. In that same occurs this estimate:

"I never knew a man in all my acquaintance with men, of whom it could have been said with more assurance that 'he walked with God.' Such was the even tenor of his path, not for a few years, but a period as far back as my memory reaches; and that is on the other side of a half century. How many say: 'Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last days be like his,' who, nevertheless, do not choose to live his life!" [199]

      There appeared in the Ladies' Christian Annual, published in Philadelphia in 1854, an account of a visit paid to the aged Thomas Campbell, by James Challen, possibly late in 1853. He relates that he heard him lead family prayers, listened to his recitation of Bible verses and hymns ("How happy are they who their Saviour obey," being one of his great favorites), marked his keen interest and belief in matters connected with the life eternal.

"He has one of the finest heads I ever saw. Phrenology would claim it as a model, both for its conformation and size; and the volume of the brain is very great. Though so very old, his skin has all the freshness and beauty of youth. His cheeks have but few wrinkles and are quite full. His noble brow is almost entirely smooth. . . . He is the patriarch of the reformation, the Jacob of the tribes, a type and representative of what we mean by a disciple of Christ, an exemplification of the truth and beauty of apostolic Christianity, of its spirituality and life, of the faith it inspires, the hope which it awakens, and the immortal principles which it inculcates. I would advise the self-constituted judges of orthodoxy to pay him a visit and learn to abate their zeal for an antiquated and toothless theology. I would urge the devotees of an empty, dry and bony ritualism to visit Bethany House and take a few lessons from this aged disciple and family on the value of that religion which is both spirit and truth. And to the philosophic mystics of the day, the super-spiritualized, whose highest evidence of their [200] interest in Christ consists in their contempt for or those who differ from them, and the conscious self-complacency which they feel, I would commend a visit, in the confident belief that, if their cases are not utterly hopeless, the result will prove beneficial."

      When Alexander Campbell set himself, in 1860, to write the memoirs of his father, he secured several appreciative letters from former fellow workers. Among them was one from the beloved Walter Scott. It was quite characteristic, and deserves to be better known than it is. Mr. Scott was living then in Mayslick, Ky. He wrote to Mrs. Bryant, daughter of the lamented father, dating his letter May 8, 1860.

"Mrs. Bryant: Very Dear Sister--The Lord bless you and yours! The Lord make you a blessing to many people! . . . Touching the matter whereof you write to me, I am, I regret to say, in possession of no documents or incidents that you would deem of any value in a biography of Father Campbell. Both of our families resided for some time in different apartments of the same house, he and I taught the same school, and presided together as bishops in the same church (Pittsburgh), and, therefore, upon continuous reflection, some incidents might occur to my mind which time has long obliterated. I made the acquaintance of your brother Alexander in 1821-2, and soon after that had the pleasure, at his suggestion, I presume, of a visit from your dear and venerable father. In his case, as in that of his son, we at once conceived an ardent Christian affection [201] for each other, which, by the way, continued uninterrupted and unabated while he tarried on earth. Alas! where now is the venerable man, the man of God, and the holy ones who, under his pastoral care, among the cabins of western Pennsylvania and western Virginia, worshiped the God of our salvation? Gone, all gone,

And left us weeping on the shore To which they will return no more.

. . . Since Father Campbell was so much better known to you all than to me, it would be improper in me to, attempt, for your benefit, a description of his excellencies, either intellectual, moral, social or religious; and yet I may, perhaps, state in a few words, without presumption, how he appeared to me under these several phases.

      "I always regarded your father as a man of fine intellectual parts. The evidence of this was derived to me from two sources--sense and reason, the eye and the ear. It was impossible to look upon his lofty brow and facial lines of thought without reading in these exterior symbols intellectual greatness--reason, robust common sense, capacity, skill, wisdom. 'The trial of a man is his speech,' says the son of Sirach. Your father's public efforts fully vindicated, by the apocalypse he made of truth, all first impressions. Sometimes he spoke with great effect; and though he often protracted his speech to a great length--the manners and the taste of the times demanding it--yet he did not do so always. I heard him in my [202] academy, which was large, deliver a current commentary of James, first chapter; and can say, in regard to it, that I have not, since that time, listened to anything in the way of teaching more beautiful in expression, or in thought and reason more delightful and ravishing.

      "He was fond of discussion, and frequently offered propositions for debate. On such occasions he was a little sensitive and high-spirited. Amid the affray of words and arguments which his genius for dialectics had waked up, he ever held his old gold snuff-box in his hand, and snatching thence, at unequal intervals, "a hasty pinch" of the good old Scotch, as Henry Clay called it, he would immediately renew the conflict with increased energy.

      "He was, of course, fond of headwork. His intellectual system could not lay idle. He engaged its forces in various ways, therefore by abstract thought, reflection, meditation, lucubration, contemplation and excogitation; so that sometimes he looked pensive, sad, cast down, melancholy. Such appeared to me, intellectually, your pious and enlightened father. Those who think your brother's strong intellectual qualities were not derived to him from his father, differ from me toto caelo.

      "Touching his practical nature, its basis seemed moral rather than sentient. His affections were, therefore, stirred from within rather than from without, and shone forth in respect for the rights of others, rather than in excitability for their faults. He was patient more than impressible; [203] meek, gentle and resigned, more than passionate or easily provoked. He wished well to all the world, whose salvation he desired and loved with unspeakable complacency his neighbors, his family and the saints.

      "Though his nature, as I have said, was affectionate rather than sensitive, yet his sympathies could be stirred up to floods of tears by the occasion; and of this, the following is proof: Our preaching had, one day, taken such fast hold on the heart of a certain lady as to produce a slight alienation of mind, which, on our return, we learned had continued for a week. At the end of that time, on a second visit, many people offered themselves for the obedience of faith, and were baptized. In the conclusion of the beautiful scene, said lady pushed herself close up to my side, until indeed she almost leaned upon me. All the people saw her, and every heart was touched, for she spoke not a word. Father Campbell stood as close to my person almost as the lady herself. Looking upon the countenance of my venerable co-laborer, I said to him: 'My dear father, if the word of God has perturbed the soul of this poor lady, may not the same word also, under other circumstances, tranquilize it?' 'Brother Scott,' he replied, 'baptize her.' Turning to the woman, I took the confession and asked her if she repented of her sins. Without lifting her eyes from the ground, on which they were fixed, she replied, 'I have repented most wonderfully.' On the utterance of these extraordinary words, a flood of tears gushed from the [204] eyes of my venerable associate, as if his head had been a fountain of water. They absolutely fell in a stream to the ground. The memory of the fact must remain with me through life. I baptized the lady, and, thanks be to God, she awoke next morning in full possession of her senses. . . .

      "Touching his religion, he was the most devout man I ever knew. He loved God, and adored him for the gift of his Son in our great redemption. He was a man of prayer, a man of reading, a man of holy meditation, excogitation and reformation. He was fond of the analogies between the two divine systems, nature and religion, and read with delight in the works Of God, the spiritual relations of the universe. He ascended from infinite power to infinite wisdom, from infinite wisdom to infinite goodness, and read and realized in the things that are seen, the things that are not seen, but yet are eternal. All things he saw with delight were made for man and man for his Maker. He ascended then, by nature and religion, up to the God of nature and religion. He had tasted of the sovereign and universal good, and his heart was in the heavens. He was the most exemplary man I ever saw. His memory is blessed.

WALTER SCOTT."      

      Either the daughter who, received the above letter or the son who used it in the "Memoirs" of his father, was unwilling to let pass Mr. Scott's reference to the "old gold snuff-box." On the page where the same occurs it is followed by an asterisk, and it guides to the sentence at the bottom of the page, "*He gave up the use of snuff for nearly [205] thirty years before his death." If Thomas Campbell had followed the liberty and custom of the times for the clergy, he might have been a user of intoxicating liquors, as well as of snuff. But all evidence points to his having been a total abstainer.

      Evidently his co-laborer felt that Mr. Campbell might have been much briefer in his remarks on many occasions. He is very kind in writing "he often protracted his speech to a great length." Archibald McLean writes: "With all his estimable qualities, it would seem that Thomas Campbell must have been somewhat tedious at times. This appears when we recall that he took an hour to read a hymn and two or three hours for the sermon that followed." This was not a fault of old age, for on one occasion when he was yet a student in divinity, and being home for a season, Thomas led the family devotions. His father at the time was afflicted with rheumatism in his knees, and the son failed to remember this fact. He lost himself in a prayer so long that it turned his father's devotion into anger. When at a long last, the budding minister uttered the "Amen" and all rose to their feet, he was no doubt completely surprised to feel his father's cane on his back. The sound caning did not make of Thomas Campbell a pray-er of short prayers, nor a preacher of short sermons, nor a director of short services. But we recall that he belonged to an age that seemed to expect and could stand messages measured by hours rather than by minutes. [206]

[TCSCUA 198-206]