It will be impossible to understand and properly appreciate this great movement of the nineteenth century, known in its organized capacity as the

J. H. MACNEILL.

"Christian Church," without first studying the causes which led to its existence as well as the circumstances which aided in its development and progress.

      What were some of the prevailing conditions in the religious world in 1809 which led to the existence of this religious body, and gave the primal impulse to their historic plea?

      I answer, first, the divided condition of the church of that day. The biographer of Campbell says: "There are few of the present generation who have grown up under the liberalizing institutions of the United States and the more enlightened views of Christianity since presented, who can form a proper idea of the virulence of the party spirit which then prevailed." The Campbells viewed with the deepest concern the evils to which this state of affairs gave birth. Hear them in their vivid portrayal of existing conditions: "Have we not seen congregations broken to pieces, neighborhoods of professing Christians first thrown into confusion by party contentions, and, in the end, entirely deprived of gospel ordinances; while, in the meantime, large settlements and tracts of country remain to this day destitute of a gospel ministry, many of them in little better than a state of heathenism, the churches being either so weakened by divisions that they can not send them ministers, or the people so divided among themselves that they will not receive them?" Again: "So corrupted is the church with those accursed divisions, that there are but few so base as not to find admission into some professing party or other. . . . [340] Thus, while professing Christians bite and devour one another, they are consumed one of another, or fall a prey to the righteous judgments of God; meantime, the truly religious of all parties are grieved, the weak stumbled, the graceless and profane hardened, the mouths of infidels opened to blaspheme religion, and thus the only thing under heaven divinely efficacious to promote and secure the present spiritual and eternal good of man, even the gospel of the blessed Jesus, is reduced to contempt, while multitudes, deprived of a gospel ministry, as has been observed, fall an easy prey to seducers, and so become the dupes of almost unheard-of delusions."

      In that immortal document, "Declaration and Address," written by Thomas Campbell and fully endorsed by his son Alexander, they registered their protest in the following vigorous language: "Division among Christians is a horrid evil fraught with many evils. It is antichristian, as it destroys the visible unity of the body of Christ, as if he were divided against himself, excluding and excommunicating a part of himself. It is antiscriptural, as being prohibited by his sovereign authority, a direct violation of his direct command. It is antinatural, as it excites Christians to contemn, to hate and oppose one another, who are bound by the highest and most endearing obligations to love each other as brethren, even as Christ loved them. In a word, it is productive of confusion and every evil work." One has but to imagine such sectarianism, bigotry and exclusiveness on the one hand, and Thomas Campbell's generous and catholic nature on the other, to account for the "Declaration and Address" which is essentially a reformatory document.

      The second cause I shall mention as contributing to this Restoration movement is the fact that the Bible was not held as exclusively the only authoritative rule of faith and practice by the religious world. As a discriminating writer on this point says: "There were protestations of love and reverence for the authority of the Bible--enthusiastic as now--but practically the Bible had but little authority with the various denominations. They claimed to take the Bible as the only rule of faith and practice, but they exalted to a position equally as binding human rules by which their faith and practice were regulated. The Bible which set the soul of Luther free was itself fastened by a chain in the cloister at Erfurth. In like manner each religious party had sought to secure the Bible within its own narrow sectarian cell, not indeed by a metal or material chain, but by the spiritual fetters of partisan interpretation." It was not the expression of a conviction or conclusion in a matter of religion that the Campbells opposed. They were opposed to creeds. But the mere statement of doctrines or the publication of convictions does not constitute a creed. The creed is not what I believe. It is what I say you must believe or I will have no fellowship with you. Only when I seek to force my convictions upon you as terms of communion and fellowship do they become a creed. Philip Schaff defines a creed as "a form of words setting forth with authority certain articles of belief which are regarded by the framers as necessary for salvation, or, at least, for the welfare of the church." A creed, then, is an authoritative document. It sets forth the articles which are affirmed by the church as necessary to salvation.

      I mention, as a third cause, the unwarranted and unscriptural authority and rule of the clergy.

      As already stated in this address, the grand, fundamental principle of Protestantism is the right of private judgment--the right of private interpretation. Notwithstanding this, the clergy of Campbell's day had assumed the prerogative of interpreting the Bible for the people, thus virtually taking it out of their hands. One denomination, while they recommended the reading of the Living Oracles, had incorporated in their "Acts of Assembly" these very strange words: "That the charge and office of interpreting the Holy Scriptures is a part of the ministerial calling which none, however otherwise qualified, should take upon him in any place but he that is called thereunto by God and his kirk." Here is a tremendous assumption of authority! Nowhere in the word of God is there [341] provided or appointed any power of authoritative interpretation. There is no supreme court of Jesus Christ, no divinely ordained judiciary, whose office it is to sit in judgment on the meaning of the Scriptures and render decisions from which there is no appeal. Hence they contended that the organization of the clergy into councils, synods, presbyteries, and such like, for the purpose of legislating for the church, is dishonoring to Christ, who has been "appointed head over all things unto the church, that in all things he might have the pre-eminence." Indeed, such legislation is the assumption of a divine prerogative. Hence all creeds and confessions of faith--products of these church judicatories--can not be made binding upon the consciences and lives of Christians. They believed, and urged their belief with all their splendid powers, that every child of God, every servant of Jesus Christ, has the right, and consequently the obligation, to interpret the meaning of Scripture for himself.

      Hear Mr. Campbell: "The church knows nothing of superior or inferior church judicatories, and acknowledges no laws, no canons or government, other than that of the monarch of the universe and his laws. This church, having now committed unto it the oracles of God, is adequate to all the purposes of illumination and reformation which entered into the design of its founder."

      Alexander Campbell defined a Christian to be "one who believes that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, and obeys him in all things according to the measure of his knowledge of his will." Their plea was for the union of all these divided Christians. They were not seceders. They did not draw out of their own accord from the sects to which they belonged. They were driven out. They hoped to induce the several branches of the church to which they belonged to heal their divisions without forming another sect. They desired to accomplish this end from within. They only withdrew when they were given to understand that they must either cease to denounce division, and urge union, or get out. Rather than stifle their convictions in an ignoble silence, they came out from those who justified sinful division. They did not leave the denominations because they thought them so far reprobate and apostate as to have lost all right and claim to be called Christian; they left them because they would not be permitted to maintain their convictions among them. They believed in the essential and visible unity of the church and the consequent evil of sectarianism. They believed that a divided church is a violation of God's word, a necessary narrowing and dwarfing of the faith, the sympathies and the character of the church, and a stumbling-block to the unbelieving world, and they felt themselves bound by every law of love and truth and conscience and sound reason to oppose it. And so they repeated with burning hearts Paul's exhortation, "Let there be no divisions among you," and prayed with a confidence that had in it no thought of defeat, "that all may be one." How transcendently beautiful is the spirit in which they entered upon their work of restoration. Says Thomas Campbell: "The cause that we advocate is not our own peculiar cause, nor the cause of any party; it is a common cause, the cause of Christ and our brethren of all denominations. All that we presume, then, is to do what we humbly conceive to be our duty, in connection with our brethren; to each of whom it equally belongs, as to us, to exert himself for this blessed purpose. And as we have no just reason to doubt the concurrence of our brethren to accomplish an object so desirable in itself, and fraught with such happy consequences, so neither can we look forward to that happy event which will forever put an end to our hapless divisions, and restore to the church its primitive unity, purity and prosperity, but in the pleasing prospect of their hearty and dutiful concurrence." They were disappointed in their anticipations of an immediate response, and their disappointment is, in part, our own inheritance; but in these closing words we can make their loving appeal our own to the church of our day: "Dearly beloved brethren, why should we deem it a thing incredible that the church of Christ, in this highly favored country, should resume that original unity, [342] peace and purity which belong to its constitution, and constitute its glory?" Why should it be thought impossible to unite the church universal on Jesus Christ, Son of God, King of kings and Lord of lords, "by reducing to practice that simple, original form of Christianity expressly exhibited upon the sacred page: without attempting to inculcate anything of human authority, of private opinion, or inventions of men, as having any place in the constitution, faith, or worship, of the Christian Church, or anything as matter of Christian faith or duty for which there can not be expressly produced a 'thus saith the Lord,' either in express terms or by approved precedent?" These men sounded a note that must keep on ringing until the prayer of their Lord and ours is answered "that they all may be one." They were the prophets of the mightier church that is to be. All our accomplishments in other directions point to victory in this. The new vision, the new appeal, the new, persistent endeavor which came to birth then, and which found an adequate voice in the century which has intervened, must come to final, glorious achievement. These prophets of God at the beginning of the nineteenth century were the heralds of the dawn, and the light, praise God! has been growing brighter and brighter, and will until the perfect day has fully come. They sounded out the note of "unity in Christ" which has now become a mighty anthem the world around. They rendered a nobler service to their God and ours than they lived to know. They were sowing for our reaping. When the completed chorus breaks it will fulfill and reveal the unselfishness of their endeavor. The church will then acknowledge--if not before--how much they accomplished who laid the foundations of this splendid God-enthroned temple--a united church of Jesus Christ.

      May the Lord of heaven and earth speedily accomplish the work of these godly pioneers "of whom the world was not worthy," so that there will be, as at the beginning, one body, or church, with one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, and the vision of the seer of Patmos will become reality, "The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdom of our Lord and his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever."

[CCR 340-343]