NDER a section in Memoirs of Elder Thomas Campbell, the son wrote ten pages of an appreciative nature, pointing out the striking and worthy characteristics and activities of his father. These open with "a supreme devotion to truth" and include such things as an unselfish and self-sacrificing spirit; unfeigned piety and free and familiar communion with God; habits of Bible study; deadness to the world and its political agitations; averseness to evil-speaking and reproach; exaltation of religion and morality; unremitting efforts to unite Christians on a scriptural and evangelical basis; hospitality to strangers and assiduity in searching out good to be done; thoroughgoing consistency; high consciousness in the work of the ministry. It is believed that what has been included in the foregoing pages fully establishes the clear title of Mr. Campbell to all that his son assigns to him. Alexander Campbell was not indulging in an admiring son's panegyrics.

      Attention should be called to the fact that Thomas Campbell never stood in the way of the young. He ever kept a youthful heart and wisely felt that place must be given to an oncoming generation of ministers. So from the time that he undertook the theological training of his oldest son [207] and two others in the Christian Association days, he encouraged the young to prepare themselves and speak out. He was able to save several young ministers for a lifetime ministry by championing their cause against the older ministers who would have squelched and silenced them. There was always a freshness and appositeness to both the spoken and written messages of Mr. Campbell. He bore on his heart the constant improvement of churches and the ministry.

      This present critical age must bear witness to the clarity of vision, both mental and spiritual, of our subject. Whether defending himself in the heresy trial, or advocating Christian union and apostolic Christianity, he was neither foggy nor muddy in ideas. In an age which believed in and entrenched itself behind a level Bible, Mr. Campbell discerned and advocated the Testaments of the Bible, maintaining the superiority of the New over the Old. There was an Old Testament church and an Old Testament authority over it; and a New Testament church with its corresponding authority, the New Testament. In this latter church the Lord Jesus Christ stood alone as supreme as the apostolic testimony unvaryingly maintained. From this position of supremacy the Christ ought not be dislodged and the unity of the church was natural and essential. The creeds which men fashioned supplanted Christ and helped to create and maintain division among Christians. He saw as a way to reunion and unbroken fellowship among believers a re-assessment of the place of Christ and the [208] apostles in the church and a devaluation of creeds "of human composure" as tests and bonds of fellowship. He set Christ in and over the entire church without apology in true Pauline fashion, and registered his dependence absolutely upon the apostolic writings for knowledge of the life and revelation and will of Jesus Christ.

      It has appeared that there were times of depression and discouragement in the life of Thomas Campbell. Men were so reluctant to receive what to him had such rightful claim both scripturally and logically upon all Christians. With great alacrity it seemed to him all Christians ought to have heeded after they had heard. It grieved him that partisans and parties, ministers and ministered to, would steel their hearts against what was so plainly written in what they acknowledged to be the Word of God. However, through it all he continued in great patience. He consistently refused to vitiate his essential New Testament plan for union by a compromise that would carry into the newly established churches things that rested on human traditions, no matter how ancient they were nor how almost universally received. Centuries of straying from the New Testament model of the church could not be remedied in a few decades. But a beginning could be made of a return to the apostolic ideals, and time would accelerate the movement.

      Efforts have been made by some who look upon themselves as champions of the movement inaugurated by Thomas Campbell to claim that he was [209] favorable to a Christian union which left such subjects as baptism in the realm of private judgment; in more modern terminology, Christian union by "open membership" and "the equality of all Christians before God," each sect and individual assessing itself and himself. And so he was in the period of the Christian Association of Washington. Facts warrant the even further statement that he was favorable to a Christian union which had sprinkling for baptism and infant baptism as a church ordinance, for such was the actual condition of the Christian Association. But it must be remembered that Thomas Campbell had uttered the slogan, "Where the Scriptures speak, we speak; where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent." This committed him and his associates to the Scriptures and to them alone. Later he (or they) issued the "Declaration and Address" which most definitely set up principles which were to eliminate everything that was not biblical, and as old as the apostles' testimony, from church life. The Christian Associationists did not stultify themselves by refusing to walk in the way that they had chosen, and that way brought advance and change. The Christian Association became a church of Christ. The erstwhile infant-sprinkled Christians "got themselves baptized" (Goodspeed's New Testament phrase), for they were led by the Bible to see that nothing but immersion was baptism in New Testament times. The action of pious parents, the act authorized by pope and creeds, could have no standing before the fact that the Christ, the [210] Scriptures had spoken. It is unfair to Thomas Campbell to present as representative his attitude before he had come to see the reach and necessary result of his motto and principles. These were the light by which he advanced into becoming an immersed believer in Christ, bearing only the name of Christian and disciple of the Christ, eschewing all sectarianism in the church and advocating the union of the church and the conversion of the world. The writer has been unable to discover in any of the ministry or writings of Thomas Campbell, after he had settled the baptismal question for himself, any act or word that can be used as warrant for the omission of the immersion of believers from his plan for Christian union. That plan was in the truth and on the Bible.

      In his early ministry for union the people of the Baptist persuasion were looked upon as the most-ripe prospects for his message. Doubtless this, because they were right on the act which is baptism, were congregational in polity and less bound by creed. It was a Pauline procedure, Baptists taking the place of "Jews" in the phrase "to the Jews first." The Baptists were nearer to the New Testament ideal, as Jews were nearer than Gentiles to being Christians. It has been seen in some of the latest writings of Mr. Campbell, as they have been incorporated in this work, that he pays this tribute to the Baptists. He had a concern for their churches which does not appear for other Christian bodies as such. These latter had much greater and many more steps to take that they [211] might measure up as reformed and restored churches of Christ.

      There exists in the world today a body of people (if such loosely related units can be termed a body) that bears the name "Disciples of Christ," "Christian Churches" or "Churches of Christ," and numbers almost one million and a half members in all the world; also another body (very loosely related likewise) of almost half a million, which calls itself "Churches of Christ." Both these sets of people hark back to the motto and Declaration and Address of Thomas Campbell. Three main points of cleavage between the two peoples are the name, the system of settled pastors and instrumental music in the public worship of the churches. The irony of the situation appears in that while Thomas Campbell desired to form no party, yet a party came into existence. Was this not rather natural and necessary? There was no sect or party in existence that desired to be plainly and entirely biblical. The call for people to become and be so, really established the party, unless those who were persuaded remained in their unscriptural party. This seems to parallel the situation in the church at Corinth of which the apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, chapters 1 and 3. Those who did not claim to be "of Paul" or "of Apollos" or "of Cephas" were left to be, or claim to be, or to vaunt themselves as "of Christ." These last were right in not wanting to be anything else than "of Christ," for Paul closed the first chapter with the words, "But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who [212] was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption: that according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord." And in this fashion the apostle closes the third chapter: "Wherefore let no one glory in men. For all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's." There might have been something unworthy in the way in which those Corinthian Christians were trying to be "of Christ," and so they were entitled to rebuke, but the fact that they were "of Christ" was natural, and represented that to which the three parties had to return. They had to abandon glorying in men and return to glorying in the Lord. That was the only way in which partyism in Corinth could be eliminated. Such was the vision of the nineteenth-century advocate of Christian union, and he had caught it from that first-century champion on unity in Christ.

      This present-day party to end parties among Christians finds within its ranks large numbers who have followed Thomas Campbell as he felt he was following Christ, by renouncing creeds and denominational names, by procuring a baptism that is biblical and not traditional, by holding to the New Testament as the Book of rule and discipline, by urging upon other Christians union upon the Bible. Occurrences have not been uncommon of entire congregations adjusting their private faith and public procedure so as to become churches of [213] Christ, as happened in the lifetime of Thomas Campbell, especially among Baptist churches. Were he to return to earth, probably his first ministry would be among the two peoples who are so near together because they have looked to him under Christ. [214]

[TCSCUA 207-214]