When Thomas Campbell, a Seceder Presbyterian minister of northern Ireland, arrived in ill health, with scanty means, and quite alone, in the New World in the spring of 1807, and upon presenting his credentials to the Seceder Synod in Philadelphia, found assignment to the Presbytery of Chartiers in western Pennsylvania, it must have passed as an incident hardly worthy of two lines of record in the narrative of the sessions. Yet, from that moment may be dated the series of events which issued in the "Declaration and Address," the formation of the "Washington Association," the establishment of the [356] Brush Run Church and the thousands of churches that have followed it, and the promulgation of a world-wide plea for Christian unity.

      Thomas Campbell was called of God to be the prophet of the most needed reformation of modern times. It was his keen sensitiveness to the disasters that had fallen upon the church through its divisions that made him quick to hear the voice of God calling him to a new and imperial task. It was the fair vision of what the church has been, might be again, and, indeed, ideally is, that fired his spirit with the passion of a prophet. He saw the failures of the church in the light of its eternal purpose and essential unity.

      We have known Thomas Campbell all too little. In the rush and stress of the early days men made little record of events and utterances. The grief of mind with which he had pondered on the distracted and broken condition of the churches issued in earnest, but fruitless, efforts in behalf of harmony. Then to him, as the one man of his age who had the clearness of vision to see the city of God in its rare and undivided beauty, came the call to be the messenger of the Spirit in arousing the consciences of men to the sin of disunion and the love of brotherhood. Pen and voice joined in the task. He gave himself with unrestrained ardor to his mission. With keen sympathy for the affections that bound his fellow-Christians to ancestral and venerable symbols, he none the less made effort to turn their thoughts from human to divine leadership, from instruments of organization to ideals of service, from denominational possessions to universal responsibilities. While he thus moved, prophet-like and with persuasive voice, among the people, he met all the opposition of tradition, the cynicism of skepticism and the indifference of content. But there were some whose hearts the Lord had touched. If at first it seemed that all had joined the conspiracy of disdain, he learned ere long that there were some who would not bow the knee to Baal, and were ready to take up defense of the new truth. Of these the boldest was of his own household. With pride and satisfaction he watched his son maturing his courage and mastering his weapons. Nor was he alone. Others soon rallied to the same standard, and where the father had spoken with gentle and persuading voice, the son and his companions went out like champions to the fray. Soon the noise of battle arose, and before the long campaign was ended, and the right of the new message to the attention of the church had been vindicated, the man who had first seen the vision and had first spoken the word, had fallen into silence.

      As one calls up the name of Thomas Campbell, the few, yet significant, facts of his work which have survived to us, come rapidly to mind. The Scotch blood of the clan Campbell, of which the stoutest Highlanders, under the leadership of the Dukes of Argyle, had boasted for generations; the emigration of one of these families to the north of Ireland in the eighteenth century; the birth of the three boys, Thomas, Archibald and Enos, in County Down, the oldest being born in 1763; the deeply religious character of the family, connected

H. L. WILLETT.

as it was with the Established Church of England; the preference of Thomas for worship of the Presbyterian order, his deep and searching religious experience, and his dedication of himself to the Presbyterian ministry; his educational discipline as student in a military academy near Newry, as a teacher in the central part of Ireland, and again as a student at the University of Glasgow and the theological school of the Seceders at Whithburne; his marriage to Jane Carneigle, the daughter of a French Huguenot, in 1787; the pastorate of the Seceder church at Ahorey in County Armagh, and the effort to augment the slender resources of the household by the conduct of an academy at Rich Hill; the gradual breaking of his health under the double burden; the lonely journey to the New World in 1807 in search of strength, and perhaps [357] a new opportunity; his assignment by the Seceder Synod in Philadelphia to western Pennsylvania; the distress of spirit through which he passed by reason of the bitter schisms that were working division and decline in the Presbyterian churches of the region; the efforts at union made by him, and the ecclesiastical censures that followed; the publication of his great appeal for unity, the "Declaration and Address," and the beginning of that life-long career in behalf of the great principle of which he thus became the new discoverer and the advocate--these are the facts which need only fresh recalling as the significant items in a long and most notable career.

      As the story of Thomas Campbell's life is pieced out from the scanty materials that fall to us, simple candor

W. P. AYLSWORTH.

compels the confession that he was not a great man in the sense of much that the world calls greatness. Though dowered with an excellent intellectual equipment for the times, he was not one to be described as widely read. Though always effective in public speech, he had few of the graces and none of the arts of the orator. Though unwearied in his devotion to the cause he loved, he had little of that fiery zeal which has made the strength of many of the Reformers. In intellectual power he was not so resourceful as his son. In public address he was not so eloquent as Walter Scott. In the ardor of his service he was not so notable for tireless energy of effort as Barton Stone. They were competent for tasks at which he would have failed. And yet not one of them, nor any of the illustrious men who stood with them or followed them, has approached him in commanding and prophetic personality, and the supreme sense of infinite values. Great reformers they were, men of majestic gifts and compelling influence. He was the one man who, as a prophet of God, saw the vision of God's purpose for his generation, and with unquenchable faith and boundless patience set himself to its interpretation. Without the assistance of these men, Thomas Campbell's message could not have been effectively voiced to the world. Without his vision of the will of God for the age, and the word which that vision compelled, these other men would have gone unnoticed to the end of the day.

      He was a rare compound of the noblest virtues of the Christian life, the simple and beautiful virtues of which Protestantism has too frequently been forgetful. He was modest with a humility that asked not great things for self, but only for God. When censured by his Presbyterian brethren, he accepted reproof rather than be the cause of strife. Like Milton, "he traveled on life's common way in simple lowliness, and evermore his soul the humblest duties on itself did lay." In personal piety he lived in lofty and serene levels. The word of God was to him a daily study and an unfailing delight. Prayer was no formal utterance, but a precious experience of communion with God. His home was a place of devotion. There the altar fire never died down, and his children went forth into the world safeguarded by these sheltering ministries as by walls of fire. His convictions were correspondingly deep. The word of God, carefully studied, truly interpreted and finding its climax and final meaning in the person of Jesus, was to him "the sovereign law of decision in religion and in the conduct of life." To the end he held the profoundest evangelical convictions concerning the Bible and the Christian doctrine. His courage was equal to the steadfastness of his faith. No Scotch Covenanter, face to face with persecution, could have been more fearless and unflinching in defense of his beliefs, especially whenever he felt that important Biblical truth was at stake. Yet his whole career was marked by an exquisite courtesy which was the astonishment of those who knew him and an example which has not always marked the conduct of the men who revere his name. He believed that all who made the effort, however ineffective, to follow after the Lord he loved, were his brethren and entitled to the [358] name of Christian. From the beginning to the close of his work he fully recognized the Christian character and estate of all who accepted Jesus as their Lord and made a sincere effort to conform to his will. Towards all of every name who professed the Christian faith, he felt the close relationship of a fellow-believer. He saw in them the likeness of Christ, however obscured. He would have affirmed of them as the monk Ambrosius said of Arthur's Knights:

      "The principles he promulgated." So reads the theme, and yet it obscures the one element in the work of Thomas Campbell on which most emphasis ought to be laid. He held firmly to many truths, he promulgated but one principle. He accepted the great evangelic verities of his age, and every age. To him, God was a living reality, a divine presence, the Father of spirits, the inspirer and hearer of prayer. This faith he shared with the saints of all the years. The Saviour was the perfect God-man, who for us men and our salvation had taken up the cross, and by his atoning ministry and death had opened to us the gates of life. In him alone was life, and that life was the light of men. He had come that they might have life and have it abundantly. His was the pre-eminent name, nor was there salvation in any other. The Bible was the inspired record of God's chief redemptive relations with man, and since it contained all needful truth regarding the divine education of the race for immortality, its statements might well be taken for final. Therefore the motto was devised, "Where the Bible speaks, we speak, and where the Bible is silent, we are silent." But, stated more accurately, this motto applied rather to the New Testament than to the entire Bible, and in the teaching of Mr. Campbell it virtually stood for the person and message of the Christ.

      However, when one turns to ask what was the essence of his message, the answer must be given in clear and emphatic form. Mr. Campbell did not concern himself with a variety of interests. "Principles" is not a word that defines his statements. He held to one principle and to one alone--the union of God's people. To that one theme he devoted his life; he lived for nothing else. No really first-rank interpreter of God has ever had more than one commanding truth to proclaim. It was so of all the prophets. It was so of Christ. Men of the second rank can concern themselves with various ideas; the great prophets know but one. Thomas Campbell shared the fundamental convictions of his age and ours on the essentials of the faith. But the one principle which absorbed him and claimed his life, was the truth that the church is ideally one, and ought to realize that unity in actual and visible experience. To him this was the most outstanding and impressive fact in all the range of the church's life. Others might devote themselves to different tasks. But as for himself, and all who were minded to stand with him, this was the supreme need and duty. He was keenly sensitive of this crying necessity of the time. It haunted his soul like a prophetic burden. The waste places of Jerusalem, where the debris of sectarian strife lay scattered and obstructive, filled him with as profound a sorrow as Nehemiah felt in his night circuit of the city. With that same restorer, he might have cried, "Why should I not mourn when the city of my fathers lieth desolate, and its gates are burned with fire?" His hope and passion was the restoration of its undivided glory. The beauty of that vision allured him. The music of the reunited church already filled his soul. Though as yet a choir invisible, its anthem floated to him as if a door in heaven were left ajar and cherubim were singing. To the realization of this hope he devoted all his energies through the lengthening years of his life.

      One feels like paraphrasing the cry of Wordsworth, in the words, "Campbell, thou should'st be living at this hour. The world hath need of thee." And that cry, that finds echo in so many choice and elect souls in this mighty current of purpose and effort, must assure us that he is here, not only in that mystic sense in which the rare spirits who have entered into life watch from their high thrones the progress of their life-work in the world, but in that more [359] potent sense in which the ideals of one great leader become the ruling motives of succeeding hosts. Thomas Campbell lives to-day, and out of the dust and confusion that have too often obscured his prophetic vision and exalted purpose in the days since he was here, there emerges with ever greater radiance to the discerning eye the figure of the real explorer into the untrodden regions of Christian unity, the real discoverer of the way back to the land of heart's desire, the true interpreter of the Saviour's prayer and the apostle's plea.

[CCR 356-360]