This is a camp-fire of the Veterans of the great Restoration Movement now one hundred years old. The fact that we are veterans, and that this is a camp-fire, indicates that we are soldiers, and this is true with regard to all of us. Many long years ago, when most of us were young, we heard the trumpet-call of the fathers calling for men to enlist as soldiers in the army of our God. We listened to the call, and with faith in the great Captain and love and devotion to the cause, we enlisted in the army of the King. We enlisted to fight, not with carnal weapons to fight in a carnal war, but to fight the good fight of faith that we might help to beat back the army of the enemies, to win souls to Christ, to capture the world for the King, and to help hasten the day when the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the whole earth shall be filled with his glory.

      We believed then, and we believe yet, that if that happy day shall ever come, that it will be when the pure, sweet, simple gospel only as revealed by the Holy Spirit and preached by men whose tongues were fired with the inspiration of the living God, shall be personally preached to every kindred and nation and tribe and tongue in all the wide, wide world.

      As soldiers we took a solemn oath to be true to our divine Captain and faithful

L. L. CARPENTER.

in the work he called us to do. First, he clothed us with the divine armor; our loins were girt about with truth, the truth as it is in Jesus Christ our Lord; then he placed upon us the breastplate of righteousness and shod our feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. He gave us the shield of faith and the helmet of salvation. Thus were we clothed with the divine armor with the exception of our backs. No provision at all was made to clothe our backs, which indicated that we were never to turn our backs to the enemy. Then he gave us weapons of warfare with which to fight. Not a [317] sword of steel or a musket or rifle, but the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints. Thus clothed, and with these weapons, most of us, more than fifty years ago, went out into the world to fight this good fight of faith that we might lay hold of eternal life.

      Fifty years ago there was but a small constituency back of these veterans; but fifty years ago the veterans believed the Bible, and that the Bible was the word of God. They believed that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. They believed that the word of God is quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword. They believed that it revealed the gospel of Christ, which is the power of God unto salvation, and that in that gospel it revealed the righteousness of God from faith to faith, as it is written, "The just shall live by faith." They believed this fifty years ago; they have believed it during all these years. They believe it now. And so they went forth to conquer the world for Christ. They have passed through many a hard conflict. They have made great sacrifices; but their faith has never failed them. They have never faltered in the good work that the Master has called them to do. Christ strengthening them, they have gained wonderful victories. They have come off more than conquerors. Their constituency has increased from a little handful to more than a million and a quarter. They are sending the gospel from sea to sea; they will send it from the rivers to the ends of the earth, for

      The highest honor that God ever conferred upon the veterans here assembled, was in permitting them to be soldiers in this splendid army and to battle for the right; to beat back the powers of sin and darkness and to hasten the day when the knowledge of God shall cover the earth as the waters cover the great deep.

      Comrades, we are here to-day, not to lay our armor down, not to ask a discharge from the army, not to pass the good work over entirely to others, but we come together to greet each other in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, to tell of our conflicts, our sacrifices, and of our work, and to rejoice in the victories that God has given us. We come to lay our hands together and to lay them all in the hand of the great Captain, and to pledge him that in the future, as in the past, we will be loyal to him, and that we will in future, as we have in the past, do what we can to help win the world to Christ.

      We all greatly rejoice that a great army of young soldiers have enlisted to continue the good work that we have been engaged in. God bless the young brethren, and may they do a much greater work than we have done. Fifty years from now, if God shall spare their lives, they will be veterans, and will come together to greet each other and tell of the battles fought and victories won. It will be a greater meeting even than ours to-day. Let us pray that, in the next fifty years, the old, old story may be told to all the people in all the nations on the globe, and that kings and queens and emperors, and presidents shall have bowed the knee to our Lord Jesus Christ.

      It will be but a little while and each one of us will receive our final discharge, and from soldiers we will become kings and priests of God and the Lamb forever. God grant that when we have fought our last battles and come to the end of the journey, and our feet shall dip in the cold river, that each one of us may be able to say, "I am now ready to be offered; I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, our righteous judge, shall give me at that day, [318] and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing." And may we all hear the Captain say, "Well done, good and faithful soldiers, enter thou into the joys of thy Lord." [Applause.]

      Mr. Wilcox: Let us sing, "Am I a Soldier of the Cross?"

      Mr. Cline: Four verses of the hymn, "Am I a Soldier of the Cross?" something we can sing without books.

      The Chairman: J. W. McGarvey, of Lexington, Ky., has been selected to deliver the regular address of the afternoon. You will all want to do him honor, and you will all want to applaud him, but remember that when you are clapping your hands he won't know a thing about it. He is deaf. So if you want to applaud Bro. McGarvey, as I presume you will, remember the Chautauqua salute. It is my great pleasure to introduce J. W. McGarvey, who will deliver the annual address. [Chautauqua salute.]

      Mr. McGarvey: I have not yet been able to command words adequate to the expression of my thoughts and emotions on this occasion. I am awed by the fact that my days have been prolonged to eighty years, not by reason of strength, as said the Psalmist, for I never have been very strong, but by reason of manifold favors bestowed upon me by my God and Father. I am awed by the immense gathering of the Disciples of Christ in this Convention, impressing me all the time with the same thought that we sometimes sing:

      I am awed, too, by the task imposed upon me, through the partiality of your venerable president, of delivering an address to a congregation made up of toil-worn pilgrims, all of whom have rounded out the allotted threescore years and ten.

      How shall I address you? I can not address you as I have many hundreds of other congregations, with exhortations and entreaties regarding the perils of a pathway stretching out before unsteady feet, for all these perils are in the past of your experience. You have fought the good fight of faith, lo, these many years, and the victor's crown is almost in sight. Your foes, even the world, the flesh and the devil: but the world is losing its hold on you; the flesh is growing weaker, and you will soon have your heels upon the head of that old serpent the devil. [Applause and Chautauqua salute.]

      When we were young, how often did we sing,

      When we sang that hymn in our early days, we knew very little of its meaning. Now we know it all. And we are more than ever encouraged by the consolation that it affords, that the grace of God, having led us in our long past in safety, will surely lead us in safety through our short future. Yea, have we not sung a thousand times,

      It is becoming common to speak of you and such as you as the Old Guard, taking the figure, like many of Paul's metaphors, from military phraseology. When Napoleon's Old Guard was being slain and almost annihilated at Waterloo, a generous British officer cried out to the commander, "Surrender, and save the lives of your brave men." The answer came back, "The Old Guard can die, but they can not surrender." [Chautauqua salute.] So it is with you. You can die, and you are dying rapidly, but the word "surrender" is not in your vocabulary. [Chautauqua salute.] We are old, we are growing old, and we are old, but we are not like the leafless old trees that you see standing here and there in an abandoned field. We are not even like Tom Moore, when he sang that beautiful song so sadly:

      No, you are not like that. You are not alone. We belong, all of us, to a great, growing family, and while we have seen, every one of us, more friends falling like leaves in wintry weather all around us than the poet ever did, and they are still falling faster than ever, the young have been springing up all around us still, taking the places of the older ones who have gone, and in just a little further all of those true and faithful ones that we have lost will be restored to us to part no more. It was a great lack of godliness that led poor Tom Moore to propose that song which has been sung and sung so sweetly by thousands of us.

      I suppose that all in this audience--that is, my audience proper--I was about to say, I hope that you all are of my audience proper, and that would not be a bad wish; it would not be a bad wish to be seventy years old and a servant of God going on the right way. But while we are thus going on and passing away we realize that there is at last only

      Just one great, undivided army. I suppose the most of this audience, as I was about to say awhile ago, have heard something, and perhaps many of you have heard much, of Uncle Sammy Rogers, one of the most heroic, both living and dying, of all our pioneers in Kentucky. When he was eighty-four years old, having lived that long a life of poverty and struggle, faithfully and heroically preaching the gospel, he went on a tour of the churches, especially in Missouri, to whom he had preached in his early days, when the saints gathered around him and wept at his pleading, and where many sinners, hundreds of them, were turned to the Lord under his exhortation. He went to make a farewell visit. After returning home, he wrote the last paragraph of his autobiography, in which he said: "I have now well-nigh finished my farewells on earth, and will soon begin shaking hands with those who have gone before. I know not where those greetings will end, but I do know where they will begin. I will first greet my Father who has led me all the journey through, and my Saviour whose grace has been sufficient for me in every day of suffering and toil. Next, I will hunt up her whose love and goodness have imposed on me a debt of gratitude to God that I can never repay, and when we get together shall we not gather up the children and the grandchildren and sit down under the shadow of the throne and rest?" The old man's last night on earth soon came. He was sunk into a deep stupor, and his son, John I., from whose lips I obtained the story, aroused him up and said: "Father, the doctor asks me to tell you that he thinks you will die before morning." "What, that soon! That is sooner than I expected. John, is it true that I will really see your mother before morning?" John said: "The doctor thinks you will." "Then, glory be to God." And these were his last words.

      Did you ever, when you were young, at the close of some happy meeting, sing:

Then, you remember, while you were singing it, every hand in the audience clasped every other hand. Our eyes would dim with tears, our voices would choke with weeping, but when we came to the last verse, how we shouted it out:

Yes, you have sung that and wept, and felt almost happy again.

      When I was a boy, I remember one day lying sick on a summer day on a pallet in my mother's room. Two Christian women were present teaching mother a new hymn. I have forgotten that hymn. I never saw it in print. None of it remains in my memory except the chorus, and the chorus ran thus:

      Those three women have long since met at Jesus' feet, and it is my ardent hope after a little while to hear them sing that song again.

      When we were young we became familiar with the closing lines of "Thanatopsis," which was then a new poem:

      But we also learned the still more majestic lines of that old hymn that we have now forgotten:

      Brethren and sisters, we will soon take the parting hand. We can still say:

      When we take that parting hand at the close of this Convention, it will be for the most of us the last in all eternity, for in this world we will never meet again, and when we do meet again it will be where parting is no more. "God be with you until we meet again!" [Chautauqua salute.]

      Mr. Cline: No. 6--"Come, Let Us Anew Our Journey Pursue." One of the old camp-fire songs, and let us all sing it in that way.

      The Chairman: I have been asked to request all of the veterans who have been members of the body of Christ seventy-five years or more, to please stand up. Every one that has been a member of the church for seventy-five years or more, please stand.

      [Three arose. Applause.]

      The Chairman: Sister Dawson [one of those standing] made confession under the preaching of Alexander Campbell when she was nine years of age. [Applause.] I want to tell you further that Sister Dawson's husband's grandfather was Mr. Welch, in whose home Mr. Campbell wrote the "Declaration and Address." [Applause.]

      I am requested to ask all who have been members of the church seventy years or more, to please stand.

      [Two arose.]

      The Chairman: Now, all who have been members of the church fifty-five years or more, that will take in nearly all of you, please stand. [Many arose.]

      The Chairman: All who have been members of the church fifty years or more, please stand. [Many arose.]

      The Chairman: We come now to the short addresses; they will be limited to five minutes, and I am not going to call on you by name. I am going to ask that your speeches be volunteer speeches. I would like to have the older ones speak first, if they will; but we can not wait. We do not want to lose a minute's time, for we desire to give everybody an opportunity to say something. C. L. Loos is called for. [Applause.]

      Mr. Loos: I have been very much impressed since this Centennial has been before us in hearing, as we did just now, the reflections which have impressed themselves upon us. When I was a boy in France, my beautiful France, I often listened whole evenings to the old Napoleonic soldiers tell of their great victories, and who won, and how were won, those victories. And this was impressed upon me by those old gray-heads, many of them mutilated men: Napoleon, the "Little Corporal," as they called him, would rush between the French army and the Austrians, as [321] on the bridge of Acholi and Lodi, alone, and call upon the French army to follow him. The army was made up of young men, and they would rush after him and say, "There stands our General!" And every time they carried the day, swept sometimes by one hundred and fifty Austrian cannon. Now, I have been among this people, this great brotherhood, this mighty army, for many, many years, since 1838. And this reflection has come upon me: It is right, it is inevitable, that we should fix our attention upon what are called the leaders, such men as those whose names are every day in our mouths and on our lips here. These commanders-in-chief who conceived great victories. And

C. L. LOOS.

then, there are the field officers; who were they? They are the preachers. But there is another class you must not forget. I have been very near, as few living have been--very closely allied with these great leaders, and among them preachers; but this has been impressed upon me, and I do not want to forget it: What about this great assembly that constitute the rank and file of the people? Oh, I have sat among them in my boyhood. I do not look upon the great leaders, the commanders-in-chief, nor even the field officers; but I have sat many an hour, many an hour, among these that have constituted the rank and file of this great army, the men and the women who accepted this magnificent plea--took it in their hearts. What kind of men were these? Do not forget them. What kind of women were these? Do not forget them. Talk about them. Think about them, and thank God for them. Do you know what kind of people they were? I know what they were, and that is, men and women, first of all, of much more than ordinary intelligence. As a rule, it was the most thoughtful and intelligent of a community where our plea was offered who accepted it. That was very fine. It was so to me, a religiously inclined lad of fifteen years, always religious from my childhood up. I heard them discuss the great points of this Reformation, and with remarkable intelligence there the future of this great movement was seen; there the foundation of its future was laid. And then they were the religious part of the community. I do not say the only religious part; but they were a very religious people.

      You people of to-day must not forget them. It is not true that we were all disputants; that was not true. But they were profoundly religious, prayerful men and women, and enthusiastic for that Bible. I want to close with that. I am glad that my friend, Mr. Champ Clark, referred to that this morning in the other church on the other side of the city. They were believers in the Bible. [Applause.] I can tell you that; no man is more competent to tell you that to-day than I am. They had no doubts about any part of that Bible [applause], from Genesis to Revelation. [Applause.] Their minds and hearts were not addled with questions about Deuteronomy, or anything else; it is God's word, God's word, and there lay the granitic foundation upon which this mighty cause has built a future which you see to-day.

      Now, I say to you I shall soon, in a few weeks, enter my eighty-sixth year. I am older than Bro. McGarvey here, yet these young men have been kind enough to receive me among them. [Applause.] I am very much obliged to them.

      If you want this cause to triumph and live and be strong, be faithful to the Bible. [Applause.] Do not listen to anybody, however fair his speeches may be and beautiful his expressions, that tries to work into your minds questions about the validity of the Bible. [Applause.] Oh, my friends, I have studied that question perhaps longer than any man among us, on both sides of the Atlantic, and I know how it works. If you want to sap the foundation of this Reformation, if you want to see its towers fall to the ground, listen to that kind of talk here at the Centennial or anywhere else. [Applause.][322]

      The Chairman: Now, we allowed Bro. Loos to speak a little more than five minutes. We want you to try to confine yourselves to five minutes. D. R. Dungan is called for--Bro. Dungan, of Iowa. [Applause.]

      Mr. Dungan: I am so young that I scarcely hoped to get in. [Applause.]

      Delegate: Louder.

      Mr. Dungan: I will make everybody in this end of town hear if you will give me a chance. [Laughter.] Fifty-one years ago I first tried to preach in a log schoolhouse. The benches each had four legs. I stood by one and shook the bench. [Laughter.] There was a frightened feeling; and I was nervous. I remember the text; it was Mark 10:17. The rich young ruler asked what good thing shall I do that I may be saved, or that I may inherit eternal life. I do not know that I have ever used that text since. [Laughter.] My experience was not all that I had hoped. I have tried most of the rest of them since.

      We had peculiar experiences fifty years ago that some of our people do not understand, because we were compelled to defend ourselves against the opposition of the world. The idea went out that we were a set of controversialists; that we simply had a sword, or some instrument of warfare, and were quite ready to use it. Now, as for myself, I never carried a chip, as they used to say it out West; but it was a cool day if the other fellow had one on his shoulder. [Laughter and applause.] We felt that it was a duty to defend God's book against all comers, and I had an opportunity six times to defend God's word against the men who were supposed to be the ablest among the enemies of God's book. I met what we call "New Thought;" but it is not so new to me to-day, because it is the same thing that was called infidelity then. [Applause.] The battles fought and won have been on the book of God to men. We believed it. We risked everything on it, and that gained us the victory. We builded better than we knew, brethren. We went into the country because we were not able to go into the city; we could not have supported men in the city.

      I had my experience in the early sixties in Nebraska, for eleven years serving under the direction of the American Christian Missionary Society. Then was the time for riding horseback. Not being able to own a horse, I got a $30 pony. I called him Julius Cæsar. Afterward I got a mate for him and called him Mark Anthony. But we compassed a great deal of country. In connection with R. C. Barrow, of whom you do not know very much, but I do, one of the grandest men of God I knew, and could preach the original, simple gospel better than any man I ever knew--between us, with his count, not mine--he understood it and kept a better record than I ever did--there were 137 churches that sprang up in that new Territory, afterward a State, as the result of our work. [Applause.] I do not want to boast of anything I have ever done. I have worked awkwardly enough; God knows I have done my best. [Applause.]

      With thirty-seven regular debates, from six days to three weeks, and one hundred running fights, I am not nearly up in the warfare to a man I look right in the face, Clark Braden, who fought lovingly. I know you, Brother Braden; the rough side of your tongue is frequently up, but I know your heart, and God knows it, too, that you believe in God's truth and would not stand back to defend it yet.

      Well, brethren, those were days not of great plenty, but they were days of grandeur. There was love and sweetness among the brethren. Many a time in driving to a brother's home, living out far away from the settlements, he has thrown down the bars for me to drive in, and then taken me out of my carriage and hugged me. I refer to the brethren. [Laughter.] But, brethren, there was warmth. We were in God. We found in each other that we believed in God's word, and we preached it, and did not apologize for it, either. [Applause.]

      The victory has come, or it is coming. I look upon a number of men here who fought these battles, and I am glad to meet you. We know how these things came, and we are glad. I am delighted in turning this work over to a large number of young men as faithful as we were, better panoplied, better supplied, [323] and I expect great things from them. Through my classroom have gone two hundred and fifty young men to preach the gospel. [Applause.] By their hands, brethren, if I can claim any honors whatever--I do not know that I am entitled to that--seventy-five thousand people have obeyed the gospel in baptism. I hope to meet the workers with those who follow their teaching. I am at the work yet, and expect to stay at the post until the last day in the afternoon. [Applause.] As for surrender, it never was in my vocabulary, and it is not now. I am not studying that line; I am only studying, brethren, just yet, what you are, how to make the best of the time still allotted me, and I will use it to the last minute and make the best of it if I can. We are bound to end in victory. It could not be otherwise. [Applause.]

      The Chairman: Who next?

      Delegates: Bro. Braden. [Applause.]

      Mr. Braden: I will endeavor, ladies and gentlemen, brethren and sisters, to answer so many questions that have been asked me by every one that I meet in the time that is allotted to me, and I give it to you in this form. Clark Braden was born Aug. 8, 1831, in Gustavus, Trumbull Co., O. He was immersed by Calvin Smith, Feb. 28, 1855, in Rome, Ashtabula Co., O. He has been preaching nearly fifty-five years. He has been what is called "pastor" for twenty-five congregations, and has been regular preacher for as many more. He has taught school sixty-nine terms of three months. He, has been president of Elgin College, Abingdon College, Southern Illinois College and Southern Illinois Christian College. He edited a Christian paper, the Herald of Truth. He is author of the "Braden-Hughey Debate," the "Braden-Kelly Debate," the "Problem of Problems," "Ingersoll Unmasked," "Errors in Regard to the Trial and Crucifixion of Christ."

      He has delivered more than three thousand lectures in nearly every State in the United States and Provinces of Canada. He can give time, place, proposition and opponent of more than 130 regular debates that had moderators and two written debates. He has held more debates than any other member of the churches of Christ. J. S. Sweeney comes next with 113 debates. He has held forty debates with champions of both wings of infidelity, materialism and spiritism--more debates than any other man living or that has lived. He has met in debate B. F. Underwood, the American champion; Charles Watts, the British champion of materialism, and Moses Hull, the champion of spiritism. He has debated the action, subjects and design of baptism, the work of the Holy Spirit, human creeds, justification by faith only, church organization, soul-sleeping, kingdom-come-ism, Seventh-day-ism, and Universalism. He has held eighteen debates with Mormons. He was challenged three times to debate with Ingersoll. Ingersoll was challenged three times to debate with Clark Braden. And six times Ingersoll backed out. He gave as his reason, and I beg your pardon for saying this, "I'll be G-- d----- if Bob don't know what he's doing. I am not such a G-- d----- fool as to place myself on the platform for six nights of debate with that fellow. Why, d--- it, he would wear me out." When S. P. Putnam, president of the Infidel Leagues of America, refused to debate with Clark Braden, Clark Braden chased him and replied to him until infidels, disgusted with Putnam's cowardice, forced him to quit the field. Charles Watts backed out of defiant challenges and left the Maritime Provinces of Canada when Clark Braden was selected to meet him. The Infidel Leagues of Canada backed out of challenges when Braden was selected to meet them. In 1889, in the last of eleven debates with Clark Braden, B. F. Underwood backed out in the middle of the debate, and took the first train next morning. Infidels withdrew their indorsement of Jamieson and closed the last debate with Jamieson. Last August, Elbert Hubbard, whom infidels regard as the successor of Ingersoll, and their champion, in the most cowardly and disgraceful manner backed out of a positive agreement, when he learned that he would have to meet Clark Braden.

      During the last twenty years, every prominent champion of infidelity has backed out of debating with Clark Braden. So have champions of Mormonism, soul-sleeping, Seventh-day-ism, [324] spiritism and kingdom-come-ism. The speaker does not make these statements in a spirit of personal vainglory, but simply to demonstrate the invincibility of the truth in fair contest with error.

      And now let me say to you, brethren and sisters, that I do rather avoid giving a challenge, but I have been selected by brethren; they have called upon me and I have responded and done my best in discussion. And another thing, when you get so very good and so very refined and cultured that you are unwilling to debate, you will know more than God Almighty, you are better than Jesus Christ, purer than the Holy Spirit. The last six weeks of the Saviour's life was one stormy debate, and he did some pretty plain talking, too. [Applause.] I want to say to you this, that just so long as there is error in the world, just so long as truth has to be defended, there will be discussion. Every reform was born in debate, rocked in the cradle of discussion, and grew strong in the battle for that which is right; and when you become so cultured that you won't debate anything any time, you will be a saint among saints, and then leave the result of it to God. I have the divine example of the Son of God for pursuing the course I have. I feel I am doing that which is right. It is said that the apostle John in his old age was carried in a chair into the church at Ephesus and placed upon the platform, and at the close of the services they turned to the old patriarch and he would stretch out his trembling hands and say, "Little children, love one another." And after this long, stormy, strenuous life, I sum it all up in this, that the supreme work of the followers of Christ is to learn the Christ teaching, live the Christ life, and grow in the Christ character in this life and in the eternal life, where we shall be like him, where we shall see him as he is. [Applause.]

      The Chairman: Bro. Teachout, of Ohio. He is ninety-three years of age. [Applause.]

      Mr. Teachout: I suppose Bro. Carpenter will expect a speech from me. I have heard for the last eight-five years, "Once a man and twice a child." Now, if this is the second childhood of man that my eyes are fixed upon here to-day, it is the most intelligent and the grandest and the best lot of children I ever saw together. [Applause.]

      You are here, my friends, to testify your faith in the cause of the Christian warfare, in the cause of Christ. This world would be in darkness if Christianity were stricken out of it. I lived for nearly forty years in that kind of darkness. My mind was taken up with some of the pleasures that young people have; but since I made the confession and obeyed the gospel and came into the life of Christianity, I have enjoyed more in this life than I ever did before. So I say to you, my friends, let us do all we can for the cause of Christianity, for it is truly the light of the world, and the blessings of life are drawn from real, genuine, true and faithful Christianity. That is my testimony.

      But we must consider that I speak as a business man. I am not a preacher. We must consider that to carry on Christianity as a part of our life and a part of our business takes money, just as it does to pay your grocer for the food you enjoy. Now, my friends, I frequently hear it said, and I presume you do, that it is a sacrifice--they call it a sacrifice to contribute one hundred dollars, or five hundred dollars, or a thousand dollars, to the missionary cause. It is no sacrifice, my friends, if we can do it, if we have the means; it should not be considered a sacrifice; it should be considered as doing a great work for the cause of Christianity.

      Finally, my dear friends,

      [Applause.]

      The Chairman: T. P. Haley has been called for. [Applause.]

      Mr. Haley: It is exceedingly difficult for me to speak this afternoon, but I shall be very brief. I can hardly think, hardly believe, that I stand among these veterans. I have been accustomed to regard myself as a comparatively young man, yet I have been a preacher for fifty-six years, ordained on the third Lord's Day of November, 1853. I have been engaged all my lifetime as a pastor. I don't know why it has been, except for the goodness of God. I have never been without a place for service three weeks since I was ordained. [Applause.] I have never been out of employment, I think, more than two weeks as a regular pastor of a church, and I have never sought a pastorate once. I am living now where I have preached for fifty long years, not continuously, but for the last thirty years almost without a break. I commenced in that young city of Kansas City, Mo., when we had only one small church not exceeding fifty people. I was absent from it during the war; returned to it after the war to find one congregation only, and that without a house of worship. One can not but note the difference between then and now. To-day we have twenty-five congregations, about twenty of them are housed, and about eight thousand brethren are affiliated for the service of God in that great city. [Applause.]

      I can only say, brethren, that it has been a continual surprise to me through all these years that God has so abundantly blessed my labor. It has been a greater surprise that within the last forty or fifty years my brethren have shown me every honor and given me all the encouragement and sympathy and help that I could possibly ask, and to-day, if I know my own heart, there is not a man in all our brotherhood that I do not love. I have no differences with men. I am in a city of seventy or eighty pastors in the various churches, and I am living in loving fellowship with all of them. That joy has been a great surprise to me. I expected to be feeble and to be out of touch with my fellows and be looking back constantly to the past. I expected that old age would hold no joy for me, but I want to tell you this afternoon, brethren, this is the happiest day of all the days of my service. [Applause.] I believe that the church to-day, the Disciples, is a better church than it has ever been in its history. [Applause.] I believe that Christianity has a stronger hold upon the world than it has ever held in its entire history in its conflict with the world, and I am going out now in a little while. These brethren have been telling you how young they are, or how old they are. I have passed my threescore by seventeen years, and can not hope for very many more years, but I am going to work every day as if I were to stay here a thousand years, and, by the grace of God, I want to live as if I were going home to-morrow. Oh, how many blessings await the old man when he steps across the river into the Eternal City. May God give us all that blessed realization. [Applause.]

      The Chairman: W. T. Moore has been called for. [Applause.]

      Mr. Moore: Dear brethren, I shall not say much about myself. I am very much ashamed of myself in many ways, but by the grace of God I am what I am. But I do want to say a few words about the great cause that has brought us all here together. I have been in it--I can not keep from saying this much; I want to say that I have been a member of the church for over sixty-one years, and I have been trying to preach for fifty-eight years. I wrote a book giving advice to preachers about how to preach, and I don't know yet how to do it myself. [Laughter.] But I have been trying it pretty hard, I tell you, brethren, to get there. I have been able to do something, I think, in that way; at least, God has blessed me. And that leads me to say just what I want to say, and I don't want to say much [326] else. Some of you will know that I have been for forty years gathering material, studying this religious movement, and have finally, in the good providence of God, finished a history that covers the whole field. I am not trying to advertise the book; that will take care of itself. But here is what I wanted to say, in writing that book, in studying this religious movement, I have been impressed--I have been overwhelmed--with the conviction that God has been with it all the way through. [Applause.] If there ever was a providential movement in this old world of ours, it is the movement with which we are identified. What could have brought all these people together here? It has been an expensive journey to many. Could anything else under the heavens have brought these people here voluntarily, coming up here spending their money and their time, but a deep conviction that this is the work of God?

      And I will tell you another thing. Brethren, it is simply impossible that we should have triumphed in the face of the opposition which this movement received, especially in the early days. Oh, you dear young men, God bless you, but you don't know much about it yet. [Laughter.] You are having too good a time, and I am glad you are having it. I would not take away one comfort from any preacher that is living now. I never had to struggle very much as many have, but I know something about how the grand old men, some of whom are here to-day, have had to struggle with poverty. But nothing, I say, under the heavens could have held this movement together and helped these men to stand to the great faith once for all delivered to the saints, but the conviction that they were all the time doing the will of Him who is in heaven. Brethren, that is the message I want to deliver to you, and if anybody thinks this movement is going to fail, I want you to remember, and you, young men, what I say to you to-day. General Garfield, when there was a dark cloud over this great country of ours, the time when Lincoln was assassinated, swayed the great multitude in Washington City when they were surging and crying out even for revenge, waving his hand over that great crowd of maddened men, he said: "Be still, men. God still reigns." I want you young men who are here to-day, when you find that storm clouds are threatening and clouds are lowering and difficulties seem to rise here and there, and there are conflicts within, just remember that God has been with this movement always, and he is not going to leave it at the last. [Applause.]

      A Delegate: Would you be pleased to hear from a private of the rear rank?

      The Chairman: Come to the front, please. This is Brother Bell, of Louisville.

      Mr. Bell: I want the privilege of bearing my testimony, as a private in the rear ranks, to what has been said to-day. I felt a little embarrassed to ask the privilege of speaking before such men as we have heard. I want to say to you, coming as I do from Kentucky, that in my early life I was familiar with the men who were engaged in the work at that time. My mother's home was open to the preacher. I was born in 1833, the week the stars fell. Whether I was one of the fallen stars, I am not prepared to say. [Laughter.] I joined the church in the forties. I am now seventy-six years old and have been a member of the church for over sixty years. There has never been any time in my life, I believe, when I had any doubt about the propriety of the position that I have occupied. It has only been the fallibility of my own being that sometimes troubled me to know whether I was living up to my privileges or not. I want to say that this privilege of coming to Pittsburg to this Convention is the one of my life. I am here, I will say to you, on a bridal tour, golden as it may be, and I am here at the direction and as the representative of the First Christian Church in the city of Louisville--E. L. Powell, pastor. [Applause.] I was familiar with much of this early work in Kentucky, and I want to say this, that the opportunities that come to us now, as outlined in the proceedings of this Convention, bring us wonderful responsibilities to the age, and I want now to admonish these younger men that they shall be as equal to these [327] opportunities as the Campbells and the others were to theirs. [Applause.]

      A Delegate: I rise for the privilege of asking Brother Clement, from Richmond, Va., pastor through eighty-five years of unbounded consistency through days of trial and struggle, whose memory goes back to the time when Alexander Campbell came there into the city, to speak a few words to us to-day. He has been a bulwark of strength in the pulpit, and will be a glorious memory after he has ceased to be among us, and we want to hear him. [Applause.]

      The Chairman: Please come forward, Brother Clement, of Richmond, Va. [Applause.]

      Mr. Clement: Brethren, I am not a preacher. I have affiliated with preachers for so many years that I have been accused of being one, but always had to plead not guilty. If I live seven weeks longer, I shall have the privilege of celebrating the seventieth anniversary of my baptism. I was baptized the first Sunday in December, 1829. I united with our brotherhood in the First Church, city of Richmond, in 1842, and the Lord has blessed me abundantly. He has spared my life, and, as Brother McGarvey said, I have wondered at times that I am here eighty-five years of age with good health and strength. He has never blessed me financially. I have always been a workingman. I am a workingman to-day. I work nine hours every day for my living. But, brethren, there is nothing so dear to me as the church of Christ. I can look back and see how the Lord has blessed me and led me through all the difficulties of life, and I have my children and grandchildren in the church, and great-grandchildren coming on. And, brethren, I have lived to realize what the Saviour promised: "He that forsakes father, or mother, or houses, or lands for me, I will give to him fourfold." I have gotten tenfold. He has treated me so well I don't know how to appreciate it. I owe it all to the following of the instructions of this Book. I believe I am counted to be the oldest Disciple living now in Virginia. I have been in the church seventy years, and I don't know how much longer the Lord will spare me. I have prayed for him to spare me to see this meeting, and have rejoiced to lay aside my few pennies to come here, and I rejoice to view this vast conference, this great concourse, and this great and grand communion of the saints. I rejoice in it. God bless you all. "Trust in the Lord and do good, and verily thou shalt be fed. I will never forsake thee, saith the Lord." [Applause.]

      The Chairman: W. L. Hayden, of Indianapolis. [Applause.]

      Mr. Hayden: When I look within me and know how I feel, I can hardly think I have any right here. When I remember the family record and look in the almanac, I am nearly as old as T. P. Haley, have been in the church sixty years or more, and trying to preach for fifty-four years. I claim to have had some special privileges among the Disciples. My parents never were anything else; baptized by Walter Scott. I have grown up in this movement. I think I know it from the bottom up, for I have studied it since I was ten years old. I have sat at the feet of Bro. Loos in my early days, and have never heard or read anything from his pen that I did not approve. [Applause.]

      Now, I want to say that in my boyhood days, when I sat at the feet of Alexander Campbell and heard him preach, when I heard the Haydens of the older stock preach, one of the first students in Hiram Eclectic Institute, there the first year with Garfield and Everest and the Atwaters, one of whom is here [his son], this thought comes into my mind, that this religious position which we stand upon means that we face toward the Sun of righteousness; it means that we keep our minds open to all the rays of light that come from that source. That is not all. It means that we be open-minded for all truth, come from whatever source it may [applause]; that we will accept truth wherever we find it, whether on Christian or heathen ground. I have said I will hold to no position religiously, socially or philosophically that I am not willing to submit at any time to the closest scrutiny and most searching investigation that it can possibly have in the best lights of the age in which we live. [Applause.] I am not [328] afraid of this thing called "New Thought." I had a debate with the infidels just after I passed my majority. I have debated with all forms of error, with Catholic priests, and I know something of their position, and I am like Bro. Dungan here, whom I have known and loved for many years. I have never been afraid to meet any man who calls in question the correctness of the principles of the great movement with which we stand connected--not afraid of it. Let us have light, all the light we can get. Truth will combat error, come what offers. Give us a fair chance in the discussion and go where you will. I believe in debates if they are rightly understood. I think they are likely to be misunderstood many times. I believe in fair, honorable, Christian discussion, and I believe in loving the man with whom I differ, if he is a man who believes in Christ. [Applause.]

      I am afraid, more than anything else,

W. L. HAYDEN.

for the cause of Christ which we represent here, of drawing lines somewhere and ruling out somebody who believes in Christ just as well as I do, who loves Christ just as well as I am claiming to, who is trying to serve him as I am. Though I may differ with him on almost any question, if he is only true to the Christ, the Son of God, and is living and loving and trying to get the truth and disseminate it in the world, he is my brother. [Applause.]

      Now, I want to say, further, and this is to be my last word, I suppose, to the brotherhood, I think as the coming century comes upon us, and I look to the future rather than the past, for that is gone, that our want of proper organization will be our undoing in the next century, if we do not overcome it. We must adopt some sort of representative action or principle in our work, or we can never mobilize our forces, can never bring them to stand against the mighty organizations against which we must fight in the oncoming years in the advancement of our plea for Christian union. [Applause.] We must be able to stand, to stand together, to stand in some representative way, and not simply as great masses of people that come together and have a good time, great discussions involving policy, and then disband and fall away with the masses and bring no power to bear upon the great forces that we must come against in the oncoming years. So, my closing word is, be true, loyal to Christ, fair in dealing with men, fear not the results, love men and treat them as brethren even though they differ with us in some of these questions. Again, let us try to bring our forces in a stronger way to meet the great problems that come before us in the coming years by a better organization of our forces. [Applause.]

      The Chairman: We will hear Bro. Briney a moment. [Applause.]

      The request has come that all who have been members of the denominations before coming into the church of Christ, please stand up. [Nearly one-half the audience arose. Applause.]

      Bro. Briney is not here. J. H. McCullough is called for.

      Mr. McCullough: Mr. President and brethren, if I may speak a few words perhaps with regard to myself and the course under God's providence which seemed to be marked out for me, I am one of a family of twelve children. I would meet the approval of ex-President Roosevelt on that, I guess. Two of us died in infancy; ten of us lived to be grown. When we were fully grown we weighed a ton. [Laughter.]

      In my early childhood my father's house was a place of preaching and holding meetings. We had no church then. My father was one of six that settled in Montgomery County, Ind.; and before I was born, when there wasn't another white woman, mother said, within forty miles, that she knew. There was a white man that had married a squaw, but she didn't count. [Laughter.] And in our big room they used to carry in slab benches made with auger holes bored and legs put in, and James Hughes was in the habit of preaching once a month on Saturday at eleven o'clock, Saturday night, Sunday at eleven o'clock, and Sunday night. [329] One day he said to my mother, "Sister McCullough, you ought to raise a preacher out of this large family the Lord has given you," and she said, "It would be the very height of my ambition, Brother Hughes." "Indeed," said he; "well, why not dedicate this baby?" I was six months old then and I was lying in a cradle made by putting rockers on a sugar-trough. [Laughter.] And just at that moment I had my heels in the air and my hands gesticulated. "Well," said Brother Hughes, "he is a likely baby; this is a fine-looking baby." That was me, you know. [Laughter.] "Why not set him apart to preach the Word?" "Well, I am willing," said my mother and father, for they had been raised Presbyterians and they believed in dedicating children, but they did not believe in baptizing them any more. She was perfectly willing to have the baby dedicated to the ministry, and she said she would teach him not to count that baptism at all. That was her conception of infant dedication, and so they had a fast on Monday. All the members came together without their breakfast. That is what they meant by a fast, and had a season of prayer, and Brother Hughes was laying his hands on your humble servant, that baby spoken of a moment ago, and, turning to my mother, said, "What is the baby's name?" "Oh, we haven't named him yet; we are just calling him Baby." "Well, I claim the honor of naming the baby." And so my name is James Hughes McCullough. [Applause.]

      I was told all of this when I got old enough to understand it, and I never saw the day after that but what I felt that I was God's child. I want to commend this to the mothers and the fathers that there is much in this, if you want your boys to preach the gospel. I never got away from my mother's prayers and tears, though after a few years, when I grew old enough to join the church, the church got into a difficulty. We used to call it the "Seven Years' War." [Laughter.] There was time after time in which meetings were held to settle it, and some of the boys that were baptized when I was--there were about seventy of us young people baptized at a meeting held in 1846 by John O'Kane and Love H. Jameson--some of the boys had gone to swearing, and some of them had got to going to fox-chases and horse-races and such. And there were three of us, and I was the youngest, that concluded that we couldn't afford to wait until they settled that difficulty. Some of the boys would be lost. And we determined to hold a prayer-meeting. The other two, older than myself, were to talk and pray and I was to sing, for I could sing like a lark. If I felt like praying, I was to volunteer to do so, and I had made up my mind I would. Then we went to the elder of the church--we called him Major French, a large man with a piercing black eye--and we asked him if we could hold a prayer-meeting at his house, for we thought we ought to win the elders. And he looked at us, one at a time, with his keen black eye, and he said, "No, boys; what are you up to?" He thought we were going to try to settle the thing. We told him we were not up to anything, only to hold a prayer-meeting and try to save some of the boys; and we mentioned two or three that were swearing. And the tears rolled down his cheeks, and he said, "Boys, you may hold just as many prayer-meetings at my house as you want."

      And when the time came he had to throw open his middle door, and they filled up the other rooms, and all of those old members that could not settle the difficulty were there to see what the boys would do. And the two older ones read and prayed, and I led the singing, and then, when we were done, I said, "Let us pray," and that was my first prayer in public. I don't remember much that I said, only I know my heart was in it, and when we got up off our knees and had sung a song, my mother said, "Let us pray." And she was wonderfully strong in prayer. She had been baptized, and so had father, by Barton W. Stone, and those of you that know the work of Stone and those with him know how prominent the duty of prayer was. And when they rose from their knees, and mother started, "Am I a Soldier of the Cross, a Follower of the Lamb?" and sang the chorus, "O the Lamb, the loving Lamb, the Lamb that was slain, yet liveth again to intercede for me," the whole meeting was in [330] tears. And that meeting ran two hours, and that was the settlement of the difficulty. We didn't aim at it, but God settled it. [Applause.] At the close, Brother Graham, another elder, came with the keys of the church, for the church had been locked, and he said, "Here, boys, take the keys. Go back and unlock the house of God, and God be with you." And we three led the meetings for a year. We employed L. H. Jameson to preach for us. Forty people were converted. And then your humble servant was pushed to the front and soon became a minister.

      These other brethren have spoken of their debates and their advocacy of the first principles. I seemed to be called to lead the broken-down church into new life. [Applause.] God's blessing was upon my work, and it was unexpected, and when I was offered once the nomination to Congress, if I would accept it at the hands of the voters, I remembered the prayers and the tears of my parents, and I said, "No man that putteth his hand to the plow and looketh back is fit for the kingdom of God." [Applause.] So I have been preaching for fifty-three years, and the first three years I belonged, as John O'Kane said, to the schoolhouse militia. I preached under the shade of trees and in the schoolhouses, and about the end of the three years I tried to preach in Wildcat Prairie in the pulpit for the first time. It was one of those great, high pulpits, a kind of breastwork arrangement, with a stand over there for a lamp, and one over here, and my subject was--I got it from Alexander Campbell--three questions: "Who Are We? Whence Are We? And Whither Do We Go?" I thought I could make a sermon on that, and I started out, and the first thing that struck me was, "It is about twelve feet to the floor," and away went my thoughts. [Laughter.] I gathered up after awhile and got a double gesture, and just touched each lamp to see how far I could reach, and I thought, "What if I had punched both lamps, what a smash that would be," and away went my sermon again. [Laughter.] I got started again, and an old sister began to rub her forehead, and I thought, "There is one of them ashamed of me, sure." I managed to tell a little. I asked the first question, "Who are we?" and said something about creation, but whither we go I never could tell, for I don't know where I got anyhow. [Laughter.]

      Well, I want to tell just a little circumstance now, as this is reminiscence. Alexander Campbell visited my father's home twice. I remember it well, especially the last time. Isaac Errett was with him, for Alexander Campbell's mind was failing some. If he got started right, he was all right, but if he did not, why, he would get bewildered. And Isaac Errett told the folks, "Now you talk a little while before the meeting about the love of God, and Brother Campbell's mind will get in that line and he will preach you a fine sermon." And so we did, and he preached from the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians one of the grandest sermons I ever heard. So Brother Errett did not have to speak that time.

      At home in the circle Alexander Campbell's powers of conversation were superb, and there was a large number that filled my father's room, and while he was talking in his finest strain, a little short fellow, short by nature and short in his mind as well, ran up to Isaac Errett and he said: "Brother Errett, how much do you weigh?" And Brother Campbell stopped and sat in silence, and Brother Errett turned to him and said he, "Father Campbell, go on." "No, I will not go on until you tell the young man how much you weigh." [Laughter.] Said Errett, "One hundred and eighty," and then Brother Campbell went on with the conversation. This was a short time before his death.

      Now, I have occupied the time pretty much, perhaps. I want to say I am laboring in California. I will be eighty years old if I live until the twentieth of next month. I have hardly missed a Sunday since I was ordained to the ministry, and, God helping me, I am good for a good many years yet. [Applause.]

      The Chairman: It is half-past four, the time for adjournment. Do you want to adjourn now, or do you want to remain a few minutes longer?

      Delegates: Longer.

      A Delegate: Before we adjourn, there is a class of our preachers that I think [331] ought to be brought before us, and that is the class of the schoolhouse, horseback, saddlebag heroes, the men that did the work in the heat and burden of the day at great sacrifice, and who toiled among the hills and in the country and labored among the people. I think in this great meeting of our Centennial we ought to remember these heroes that are not here with us to-day to represent themselves. They are the men that did the great work and made us what we are.

      A Delegate: It has seemed to me during the service that since it will be impossible to hear so many of the dear old men, would it not be nice to have all who have preached fifty years line up upon the platform here or in the choir loft, and give them the Chautauqua salute and sing two verses of "Shall We Gather at the River?"? [Applause.]

      The Chairman: I think inasmuch as--

      A Delegate: I want to ask the privilege of having a man that has done more for the cause of Christ as we plead it in the State of Texas than any other man, one of the very few who were there to preach the gospel when I went there some years ago--Addison Clark; I want to have him speak here. He was born in Texas, raised in Texas. He is not seventy years old, but has done more for the planting of primitive Christianity in Texas than any other man.

      The Chairman: Before the brother speaks, I want to request the veterans, if it is at all possible for them to remain, to do so. Brother Clark.

      Mr. A. J. Bush: I would very much rather Brother Clark had brought this message from Texas.

      When I closed my little education I got under Dr. Hobson in Missouri, one of the grandest men I ever saw stand in the pulpit, and went to Texas, Brother Clark and his brother and illustrious father were among the few that were pleading for the return to primitive Christianity. As these dear old brethren have reported their work and their toils and their labors, I want you to hear of our early days in Texas. The first year I was in Texas, 1876, I rode sixty miles across the country, with no road, traveling to preach the gospel once. Another month I rode forty miles to reach another appointment. Our cause has grown. Then we had but five churches with regular pastors; now we have four hundred. Then we had but ten preachers giving themselves wholly to the ministry; now we have between four and five hundred. We have now in the State about eighty thousand Disciples, and the work is growing beautifully. As to what I have contributed to that growth, others know better than I do. I have done the best I could. I have been there thirty-four years now, and if the Lord will spare my life I shall labor on to the end, if it be threescore years and ten, or even threescore and twenty, as it may. I thank you very kindly for the privilege of bringing this message from the great State of Texas, soon to be the empire State of this great communion.

      The Chairman: Brother Waggener.

      Mr. R. H. Waggener: I suppose it is true that never in the history of our plea has there been such a scene as we have had here to-day. Next year when we come to the Convention at Topeka many of these places will likely be vacant, and the audience wants, and they have asked, that something be done by which we can get a great picture of these veterans, these our men who have fought these battles on the picket-line. We want these veteran ministers who have done this work about which we have heard, as soon as the benediction is pronounced, to go out in the yard and we will show you where to stand. It will make a memorable souvenir. Do that and give the brotherhood a chance to see who these men are.

      The Chairman: Then Brother Moore will be ready to take the picture we requested at the beginning of the service.

      Mr. Wilcox: Keep us, O Lord, in the hollow of thine hand; guide us by thy truth; fill our hearts with thy love; save us from sinning against thee in this life, and to do good in thy name, and that we may praise thee in thine everlasting kingdom, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

      Whereupon the camp-fire adjourned at 4:45 P. M.

      [The photographs were successfully taken.] [332]

[CCR 317-332]