Ancestors

by William Maxwell

  After he put up a hundred panels of rail fence with his own hands in one day, the neighbors did not look down on him for being a scholar and a preacher. “No one could be more observant of the duties of social life,” Richardson says “or more careful to maintain the most agreeable relation with all his neighbors, than Mr. Campbell.… Full of the vivacity and wit belonging to the Irish character, and ever cheerful as the morning light, his presence diffused an agreeable charm over the social life of the neighborhood.” Even the religious prejudices of the Methodists and the Presbyterians “melted away under the influence of personal acquaintance.”

  Of Alexander Campbell’s vivacity and wit, some written examples have survived. When he first came to America he wrote, and published in a weekly newspaper, a series of ten essays, using the pen name of “Clarinda.” In the second, after describing a moment of general silence such as in my childhood always produced the remark, “It must be twenty minutes of or twenty minutes after,” he goes on to say, “when one of those chasms occurs in conversation, when invention is on the rack, you will observe that the person who speaks begins by telling you (as if you did not know) something about the weather. You will also observe that when one has broken silence in this way, there arises a general chatter among the rest, as when one goose of a flock chatters all the rest begin. When I am a spectator at these gabbling matches, the Turkish maxim comes into my mind, namely, that ‘women have no souls,’ and although this sentiment shocks me and causes me to search my own breast, yet frequently I must confess, if I were to judge from the frivolity of the conversation and the levity of the sentiment at these parties, I must conclude that female minds are not capacious.” And six sentences farther on, there is a smell of smoke and brimstone. “Will it be comfortable for you to say when you are bidding an eternal adieu to the world, I have spent many a precious evening in a genteel party, many an hour in giddy dissipation, in thoughtless mirth, in needless festivity? At some distant, far distant point in eternity, will you remember with joy or with sorrow that you spent an evening once a week, or once a month, for, it may be, then, twenty, or thirty years, in one of these parties which you now so much like? Ah, my female friends, did you but consider the value and dignity of your nature” and so on.

  The opinions and prose style of a young man of twenty-one ought not, I suppose, be held against him. Thirty-nine years later, when asked whether people who attend dances, theaters, the Thespian Society, or who indulge in chess, backgammon, or draughts should be allowed to stay in the church, he replied, in the Millennial Harbinger, that these were the works of the Devil and all who delighted in such amusements were not fit for the Kingdom of God.

  The whole history of the Christian Church hangs on a conversation the young Alexander Campbell had with a rather disagreeable Presbyterian minister. They had met accidentally, and it was probably Alexander and not the minister who brought up the matter of the Declaration and Address. They found themselves discussing article 3, which states that nothing should be required either as an article of faith or as a term of communion but what is expressly taught and enjoined in the Word of God.

  “Sir,” the minister said, “these words, however plausible in appearance, are not sound. For if you follow them out, you must become a Baptist.”

  “Why, sir,” Alexander replied, “is there in the Scriptures no express precept or precedent for infant baptism?”

  “Not one, sir,” said the minister.

  When Alexander found that he could not refute this statement, he asked Alexander Munro the bookseller to furnish him with all the books he had that dealt favorably with infant baptism. He went through them and was disgusted by their fallacious reasoning. Turning to the Greek New Testament he found no support there either.

  He spoke to his father about the matter and his father said, as always, that whatever was not found in the Bible they must of course abandon. Alexander was not ready to let the question drop. He could not bear uncertainty. He would have liked to believe in the claims of infant baptism, but the more he read, the more convinced he became that it was a human invention. His father said, “For those who are already members of the church and participants of the Lord’s Supper, I can see no propriety, even if the scriptural evidence for infant baptism be found deficient, in their unchurching themselves, or in putting off Christ, merely for the sake of making a new profession; thus going out of the church merely for the sake of coming in again.”

  Infant baptism had already on one occasion made Thomas Campbell lose his temper. Riding along beside James Foster, one of his deacons, he remarked that though there was no mention of paedobaptism in the New Testament, it was a concession that, for the sake of Christian union, he was willing to make. Turning to him, James Foster said, “Father Campbell, how could you, in the absence of any authority in the word of God, baptize a child in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit?” Whereupon Thomas Campbell grew red in the face and said, “Sir, you are the most intractable man I ever met!”

  With respect to the proper form of baptism, Thomas Campbell was of the opinion that there was no question but that immersion was the action meant. “Water is water,” he said, “and earth is earth. We certainly could not call a person buried in earth if only a little dust were sprinkled on him.” But that did not mean that a person who had been sprinkled should consider himself a pagan. And he recommended that, since it had nothing to do with essential faith and therefore was not a doctrine of the first importance, it be left a matter of forbearance.

  When three members of his following who had never been baptized asked him to immerse them he consented. Standing on a root that projected out over a deep pool, he said, “In the name of the Father,” etc., and pushed their heads under. James Foster was present and didn’t approve either of the manner of the baptism or of the fact that someone who had not himself been immersed should undertake to immerse others.

  Out of respect for his father’s feelings, Alexander Campbell agreed to let the question of infant baptism alone. But when his first child was born, he was no longer content to abide by mere expediency: There was the child’s soul to consider. His wife and father-in-law were both members of the Presbyterian Church, whose position it was that a child who dies unbaptized is eternally damned. He applied himself to the Scriptures once more, and came to the conclusion that “the sprinkling of infants does not constitute baptism” because the word baptism in Greek could only mean immersion, and furthermore only those who believed in Jesus Christ as the Son of God was it proper to baptize. So his own baptism in infancy was the application of an unauthorized form to an incompetent subject.

  Richardson does not say what conclusion Mrs. Campbell came to with regard to the baptism of their child.

  Dorothea Campbell confided to her brother that she was greatly troubled about her own baptism, which had occurred in infancy, and had taken the form of sprinkling, and she begged him to speak to their father on her behalf. He did. But first he arranged with a Baptist minister who lived nearby to come and baptize him and his wife and sister, and only then did he reveal to his father that he had come to the conclusion that the form of baptism was a matter of the first importance, and that he was about to be immersed. To his surprise, his father had very little to say. Thomas Campbell stated his own position once more, and then said, “I have no more to add. You must please yourself.” But in view of the position they occupied in the movement it was only right, he said, that Alexander should make a public announcement and that the baptism should take place in the presence of the people they preached to.

  The next day, when the minister arrived, Thomas Campbell remarked that his wife was bringing a change of clothing for herself and him, and that was the first anybody knew that he had changed his mind and was going to be immersed with the others.

  On the riverbank, before a large gathering, he reviewed his past and present opinions about baptism at length, and when he sat down Alexander stood up. Together, they spoke for seven hours.
Very likely the Baptist minister had something to say also. In the end they all went into the water, and the movement was in trouble from then on.

  In 1836, Alexander Campbell, “though of the opinion that the science of phrenology is but in progress and not yet perfected,” allowed his head to be studied. In the scale of numbers, 20 represents the highest possible development.

  “Skull, thin; frontal sinuses rather full; temperament, nervo-sanguinous. Amativeness, 16; Philoprogenitiveness, 18; Concentrativeness, 18; Constructiveness, 14; Destructiveness, 17; Combativeness, 16; Secretiveness, 15; Firmness, 19; Self-esteem, 15; Love of Approbation, 14; Cautiousness, 16; Conscientiousness, 20; Hope, 12; Veneration, 13; Wonder, 10; Adhesiveness, 13; Acquisitiveness, 16; Ideality, 18; Causality, 17; Comparison, 20; Mirthfulness, 15; Tune, 11; Time, 12; Locality, 20; First Individuality, 18; Second Individuality, 14; Form, 16; Color, 12; Size, 17; Weight, 18; Method, 20; Language, 18; Eventuality, 14; Imitation, 17; Benevolence, 19.”

  This reading is on the whole, I should think, quite accurate.

  By insisting that immersion was the only form of baptism sanctioned by the Scriptures (a belief shared only by the Baptists), Alexander Campbell narrowed the field to a point where there was no one the new movement could join but the Baptists. After many discussions, the Brush Run church managed to get itself accepted into an association of Baptist churches (“provided always that we should be allowed to teach and preach whatever we learned from the Holy Scripture, regardless of any human creed”—in short they were willing to join the Baptists but did not intend to be indistinguishable from them) and this connection lasted seventeen years.

  They got on badly.

  I don’t mean to slight in any way the combativeness and self-esteem of the Baptists, but it was largely Alexander’s doing. He accused the Protestant clergy in general of being proud, pretentious, covetous, interested in advancing their own personal ends, given to affectations of piety and professional mannerisms of speech and dress, to setting themselves above their brethren. “Amongst the Baptists,” he wrote, “it is to be hoped there are but few clergy, and would to God there were none!”

  He attacked Bible societies, all ecclesiastical structures, synods, presbyteries, conferences, and assemblies. He denounced all creeds—and the Redstone Baptist Association, which the Brush Run church had just joined, subscribed to the Westminster Confession. He said there were no missionary societies in the first century, there could be no missionary societies now. Organs were not used in public worship in the churches of Jerusalem and Corinth. They were “founded on the Jewish pattern of things” and in the same general category as the sprinkling of infants. The unimmersed must not be admitted to communion.

  He had begun to publish a small magazine, the Christian Baptist, which all the denominations found annoying, but the Baptists most of all, for they were being criticized from within. He said, referring to the poor Baptists, “I intend to continue in connection with this people so long as they permit me to say what I believe, to teach what I am assured of, and to censure what is amiss in their views and practises.” He described the unity of the early Christians in their simple obedience to and faith in Christ, and then went on to quote Jeremiah 1:10—“See, I have this day set thee over the nations, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, to plant.”

  Among the laity his preaching was very popular. His sermons were clear, and his approach to all religious questions was essentially rational and practical. His audience felt that they were on solid ground, even when with the greatest frankness he was cutting the ground out from under their feet—which he did regularly.

  He didn’t stick to his own churches but made preaching trips twice a year among the Baptist churches, from which he couldn’t be excluded because he was a member in good standing of the Redstone Baptist Association. He raised a thousand dollars and built a Reformer church in what was considered Baptist territory. He brought out a new translation of the Bible.

  The committee in charge of the annual meeting of the Redstone Association tried to keep him off the program, but there was a vacancy at the last minute and they gave way to pressure and had to sit and listen to him hacking away at the Ten Commandments.

  He was a more aggressive and disputatious preacher than any the Baptists had, and his position on baptism was sound, so when a Presbyterian minister of Mount Pleasant, Ohio, issued a general challenge to debate on this subject, the Baptists invited Alexander Campbell to represent them, and, putting aside his “natural aversion to controversy,” he did. Unfortunately he would not stick to the subject. Or rather, he enlarged the area of reference so as to include his views on the degree to which, and in what ways, and on whom the laws of the Old and the New Testament were binding. The laws of the Old Testament applied only to the Jews, he said, and had failed; with the coming of Christ, God made a new covenant that was radically different in principle and content and that applied to the whole human race. This was not what the Baptists had in mind when they invited him to represent them, and neither did they agree with what he said. To imply that the Mosaic Law was obsolete was surely antinomianism. But it was generally agreed that he had triumphed gloriously over his opponent.

  Though he took part in only five debates, in each instance he used the occasion to clarify his position on important matters of faith and doctrine, and so the Walker debate, the Maccala debate, the Purcell debate, and the rest, were constantly referred to by his followers and stand like so many signposts indicating where the church was going. The debate that achieved the most notoriety was with the reformer and philanthropist, Robert Owen, and took place in Cincinnati, in the spring of 1829, in a Methodist meetinghouse, before an audience of a thousand persons. Mrs. Trollope was present. Around the pulpit, she says, there was a small stage, large enough to accommodate Owen and Alexander Campbell and two stenographers. “The pulpit was occupied by the aged father of Mr. Campbell, whose flowing white hair, and venerable countenance, constantly expressive of the deepest attention … made him a very striking figure of the group.” On another platform—Mrs. Trollope doesn’t say where—sat the seven moderators.

  Her traveling companion, Auguste Hervieu, made a drawing of the interior of the meetinghouse that is reproduced in her book. In the foreground there is a row of large-brimmed bonnets trimmed with ribbon and ostrich feathers. Owen is on his feet, speaking, and looks rather like a member of the Pickwick Club. Alexander Campbell, with a book in his hand, is listening intently to his opponent’s argument, and Thomas Campbell’s head is seen over the top of the pulpit, faintly drawn, and unearthly.

  The debate lasted through fifteen sittings, and Mrs. Trollope was struck with the fact that neither Alexander Campbell nor Owen ever appeared to lose their tempers. “I was told that they were much in each other’s company, constantly dining together.… All this I think could only have happened in America.”

  Owen undertook to prove that religions are founded on ignorance and fear, that they are in conflict with unchanging natural laws, and that the entire history of Christianity was a fraud. An excited speaker saying the same things might have been tarred and feathered, but Owen’s tone of voice was so gentle, his manner so candid and mild, he showed such affectionate concern for “the whole human family” and his smile was so genuinely kind that the audience simply listened.

  When a half hour had passed, the moderators looked meaningly at their watches, and Owen then looked at his, smiled, said “A moment’s patience,” and continued speaking for another half hour.

  Mrs. Trollope found Alexander Campbell’s person, voice, and manner all greatly in his favor. His watch, she said, was “the only one which reminded us that we had listened to him for half an hour; and having continued speaking a few minutes after he had looked at it, he sat down, with, I should think, the universal admiration of his auditory.”

  Owen read a two-hundred-page manuscript largely devoted to what he called the twelve fundamental “facts” or laws of human nat
ure. To Mrs. Trollope they appeared “twelve truisms that no man in his senses would think of contradicting;… how he can have dreamed that they could be twisted into a refutation of the Christian religion, is a mystery which I never expect to understand.”

  Owen entrenched himself behind his twelve laws, which Alexander Campbell said applied equally well to a goat, and he in turn confined himself to quoting one theological authority after another as evidence of the truth of revealed religion. Neither one ever seriously attempted to answer the arguments of the other. As soon as Owen had finished reading his manuscript he conceded to his opponent the privilege of speaking uninterruptedly, and Alexander Campbell completed the course of his argument in a speech that went on—with adjournments—for twelve hours. Four or five sentences are perhaps enough to suggest what his manner of speaking was like when he closed his books and trusted to himself: “Whatever comes from religion comes from God. The greatest joys derivable to mortal man come from this source. I cannot speak of all who wear the Christian name, but for myself, I must say that worlds piled on worlds, to fill the universal scope of my imagination, would be a miserable per contra against the annihilation of the idea of God the Supreme. And the paradox of paradoxes, the miracle of miracles and the mystery of mysteries with me, was, is now, and evermore shall be, how any good man could wish there were no God!… Everything within us and everything without, from the nails upon the ends of our fingers to the sun, moon, and stars, confirm the idea of his existence and adorable excellences.”

  In following Alexander on the arguable question of immersion, Thomas Campbell, in effect, handed the leadership of the movement over to his son. He himself was approaching fifty, with a large family to support, and his heart was not in creating a new church but in uniting all the existing ones, which more and more appeared to be an impossibility. So he kept drifting away—to Cambridge, Ohio, ninety miles to the west, and then to Pittsburgh, where he opened a school, and eventually to Kentucky, where he started another. It was ten years before he came back to the neighborhood where the movement originated. Not very much had happened in the meantime. The ideas of the Brush Run church had been accepted by four other small congregations, two in Brooke County, Virginia, one in Harrison County, Ohio, and one in Guernsey County, also in Ohio. At every annual meeting of the Redstone Association, charges of heresy were brought against Alexander Campbell and voted down. And when at last his opponents believed they had mustered enough votes to bring about his removal, they discovered that they couldn’t get at him: He had taken the five Reformer congregations out of the Baptist association, and they weren’t a part of any other.