IDEALS.
But no, the biographer, on second thought, will not go up to May's Lick
in the present chapter. Let that expedition be reserved for Chapter
Third. And let those who care for the story of lives merely for events,
not for motive-springs of action, skip the present chapter, if they
will. It will be to their loss, if they do so; for what life is to be
understood, without an understanding of the principles that direct its
course?
In the life we are seeking to trace, there were three great principles
that shaped events. The first has already been amplified--the resolve to
become a teacher of girls. The other two must be defined--one's thought
of country, and one's religious faith.
In those days, a man who had no opinion on the "slavery question," or on
the "current reformation," was no true Kentuckian. If one has slaves,
his children are not only disposed to regard slavery as right, but as
highly fortunate and desirable. Also, when one's religion is being
placed on trial at every crossroad's log-schoolhouse, the smallest
girls in the household have some opinions on the Gospel Restored, on
Election, on Baptism.
[Illustration: "Studying too Hard."]
[Illustration: "Brother Joe."]
In the veins of Mattie Myers flowed Southern blood, and it was with the
South that she sympathized with all that fire of young enthusiasm that
characterized Southern adherents in those days. As for her religion,
that calls for more particular description, because it is
indistinguishably blended with all her emotions and purposes. It was no
more Mattie's intention to become a teacher of girls, than it was to
spread a knowledge of the Gospel as she herself understood it.
In portraying the belief of this child--a belief that time served only
to strengthen--it is far from our thought to influence the particular
faith of the reader. That biographer is unworthy of his task who allows
his own opinions to color his narrative. What I believe has no more to
do with the life of Mattie Myers, than has the belief of the reader; and
this is the story of a life, not a controversy in disguise.
But at the same time, it is not only due the reader, but the object of
the biography, that the faith of Mattie should be presented so clearly
and so fairly that no one can fail to understand what it was. I shall
do my utmost to make it plain. It occupied too great a part of the
girl's life and the woman's life, to be ignored. As she sat at her
father's knee in Stanford, as she rested with her brother on the porch
of the boarding-house in Lancaster, as she made her stage-journeys, in
short, wherever she was, she heard religion discussed in all its
phases. And that phase which appealed to her was the same that Walter
Scott--kinsman of the illustrious novelist--had proclaimed from state to
state.
One peculiarity of this faith was, that whoever accepted it with zeal,
became more or less antagonistic, combative. It was not because it
despised peace, although peace, in later years has sometimes proved
fatal to it; but it was because every hand seemed turned against it. Had
it asked for peace in 1850, that petition would doubtless have been
derided.
And why? Because an acceptance of this faith meant an end to all creeds,
to all sects, to all denominational barriers. Therefore all
denominations felt that the faith of Mattie Myers had raised its hand
against them. When Walter Scott and his co-workers prayed the Savior's
prayer that all might be one, what--if that prayer be granted--was to
become of the _many_?
It may be true, in the Twentieth Century, that one need only have enough
money to hire a hall, in order to start a new religion; that Society has
but to smile upon the dancing of Dervishes to popularize Orientalism;
that a woman, by the writing of a book, can convince intelligent
thousands that diseases are but delusions of their mortal minds--perhaps
instincts would be a better word, since unimaginative quadrupeds
sometimes "think" themselves sick. But whether this is true or not, it
is certain that, in the first half of the Nineteenth Century, it
required much more than money, and more than the writing of many books,
this endeavor to re-establish the old religion of Pentecost. It called
for courage, firmness and ability; it invited persecution and
misrepresentation.
"I would rather," an aunt of Oliver Carr once declared--herself a stern
soldier of the Cross--"see you go to your grave, than have you join the
Campbellite Church!"
What was this "Campbellite Church" of which some spoke thus
disparagingly? And why "Campbellite"? And why did the denominations
regard the people they thus designated much as, at a later day, the
Mormons were regarded? Before we enter into details, it is enough at
this point to emphasize the fact of general intolerance. To worship God
in your own way is the right of all; and no man disputes that inborn
right, so long as you agree with him in your religious belief. The
Puritans were ready to sacrifice their lives to preserve religious
freedom, and to take the lives of those who desired a separate freedom.
In the first half of the Nineteenth Century, more especially in the
first quarter, the jangling and wrangling among different sects was
almost inconceivable. It would appear that often where differences of
tenets were but slight, the fight was the more determined, as if the
possibility of preserving a denominational integrity, depended largely
upon keeping alive a spirit of hostility to all other denominations.
Happily that spirit of antagonism has largely died out, and men are not
so ready to take each other by the throat because they are seeking to
gain Heaven by different ways. This tendency to minimize differences of
speculative opinions, and to draw close to each other on the fundamental
truths as they are revealed in the life, death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ, is doubtless in a large measure due to the pioneers of
that faith which Mattie Myers had accepted, and which, at the time of
her acceptance, was the object of so much bitterness and ridicule.
Thirty years had already passed since Walter Scott and Alexander
Campbell first proclaimed their views in the "Christian Baptist." The
distracted state of the religious world had grieved many a pious and
erudite soul before 1819. In looking for a solution to the amazing
perplexities that baffled the seeker after God, in trying to avoid the
anomalous condition of changing a gospel of love to a gospel of
interminable disputation, the solution proposed by Thomas Campbell was a
return to the practices and faith of the early disciples. This solution
was urged by Walter Scott and Alexander Campbell. What more simple?
Everybody should be willing to accept the Bible; everybody should be
willing to discard everything else!
In brief, then, that was the work of the "current reformation." It would
call for a sacrifice of individual opinions, of sectarian names and
dogmas, of that poetic atmosphere which time bestows upon any
organization, of those intimate human associations derived from a
commingling with relatives and friends whom a common rule of practice
holds together. As a recompense for this sacrifice, was offered the
privilege of returning to the Apostolic faith and manner of worship, the
sense of security that should spring from following closely in the
footsteps of the earliest disciples, and the privilege of performing
one's part in the realization of the prayer of the Savior of mankind.
Alexander Campbell's life was given to this fundamental idea--that the
world should go back, in its religious beliefs and practices, nineteen
hundred years, to learn again the conditions of its salvation from the
lips of Christ's apostles. Campbell himself, was but a voice calling in
the wilderness. He seemed always to be crying, "Look back! Behold the
Lamb of God!" As for himself, he would have been but the medium through
which an enlightened vision might see that glorious spectacle of God in
man. "Do not regard me," he seemed to say, "For I am nothing. I am but a
voice--a voice proclaiming no new doctrine, only the old; asking you not
to originate a new faith, but to remember the old. Look back! Behold the
Lamb of God!"
But the world did not wish to look back. It exclaimed that these people
who pretended to do away with all sects, were themselves the narrowest
sect of all. These preachers who proclaimed that there was but one
church, were accused of "wanting to get us into their church." The
result was endless debates. We have seen that the denominations were at
war with one another; but all of them became more or less cohesive, in
their attack upon these people who claimed to be no denomination.
If Campbell and his friends urged that baptism should be administered as
in the days of the Apostles, the cry was immediately raised that "These
men believe in nothing but baptism." If their editors asked for an
instance of infant baptism between the lids of the Bible, it was
retorted that "They have only a head religion--they don't believe in a
change of heart." If a preacher said no more about baptism than did
Peter on Pentecost, his listeners went away observing that "he believed
water would save him." If nothing was said about baptism, if on the
contrary, the discourse were concentrated upon the idea that all
Christians should follow the same rule and practice, should dwell
together in one great homogeneous body, it was charged, "That is really
another way of saying that immersion is the only mode of baptism." If,
by dint of innumerable repetitions, Herculean efforts at self-restraint,
monotonous insistence, these "reformers" succeeded in convincing the
antagonist of the fact that nobody believed water would save him, and
every Christian believes in a change of heart, all this laborious and
indefatigable endeavor went for nothing.
"Well, maybe you do believe in a change of heart," it would at last be
conceded, "but your church don't." Or "Maybe _you_ don't believe water
will save you, but your church does."
Such as the views of the disciples of Christ really were, Mattie Myers
had received them at first hand. Her father was one of the "new faith."
His home had, from her earliest recollections, been a rallying point for
the sturdy pioneers of the "Old Jerusalem Gospel." In that home,
"Raccoon" John Smith and Barton W. Stone had held her upon their knees.
She had seen Walter Scott and Alexander Campbell in childhood, and had
heard L. L. Pinkerton's eloquence, and Robert Milligan's logic. She knew
the matters debated, the arguments that sustained each side in its
opinion,--and she could point out the verse of scripture that seemed to
substantiate every claim of her friends, and to confound those of the
enemy. And she knew how families had become divided; how bitterness
crept in between life-long friends; how misunderstanding led to
misrepresentation, and argument to vilification, and disapproval to
hatred.
Whatever else the plea of the disciples accomplished, it led to a closer
study of the scriptures; and to a fuller admission of their authority.
This was inevitable because the adherents of what was disparagingly
called the "new religion," based all their positions upon the Word of
God. Even farther than that they went, in declaring that they
entertained no doctrine not fully presented in the New Testament; they
were willing to relinquish any belief, no matter how dear, on being
shown that it was not divinely authorized.
It was futile to meet such claims by references to any other book than
that of the inspired writers, unless those books were lexicons and
dictionaries devoted to an explanation of biblical terms. To the
lexicons, the friends and enemies of the "reformation" did indeed go.
There were times when, if Polycarp, or Chrysostum, or even Sophocles, or
Plato, could have stepped into the debating-room, he might have fancied
himself just awakened from his long sleep, to hear confused murmurs in
his native tongue.
Under this awful weight of learning, the brain sometimes staggered. To
the imprudent, to the rash, to the over-zealous, vital truths might, at
times, be half-obscured, in showing the eunuch as he went down into the
water--_eis_, into; ah! shall we ever forget that _eis_ with its
suggestion of the cooling tide?--Into the water, then, the eunuch
descended; and good care was taken that he should not be left there. The
jailer, too,--was there no water in the courtyard? And Lydia's
household--what right has one to presume her mistress over a nursery? At
these debates, even the eloquent Henry Clay may act as moderator,
generously appreciative of the eloquence of A. Campbell. So, as we have
said, the theme may at times grow obscured with a sort of Greek mist;
but out of this mist there rises, at last, a face of meekness and
suffering beneath its crown of thorns--a crown of thorns, dear reader,
which the Son of God wore that you and I might wear crowns of glory.
It is interesting to note that here is a religion which its opponents
refused to take at its face value. Its adherents wished to be called
only by Bible names, such as Christians, or disciples of Christ. Their
opponents called them "Campbellites." These disciples claimed that they
had gone back to the days of the beginning of the church, to find there
the true standard of faith and practice. Their opponents said they had
started a new religion, and that it dated from the days of Alexander
Campbell. The disciples said that they added nothing to the Word of God,
took from it nothing; that where the Bible was silent they were silent,
that where it spoke they spoke; that, in matters of opinion, everyone
might think what he pleased, but that, in matters of essentials, there
should be unity. The opponents said that as a matter of fact, the
religion of the reformers was a religion of the head, and that its
central idea was baptism.
"You do not believe that baptism is necessary to salvation," the
disciples said; "then why do you baptize?"
"Aha!" the old cry was raised, "you think water will save you!" And
then the begrudged concession, "Well, if _you_ don't believe it, your
church does!"
In a word, then, the individual adherents of the religion were allowed
to hold opinions contrary to what the adherents as a whole, were
supposed to believe; while, at the same time, not one adherent of the
religion could be found who professed to hold the views that the
opponents of the religion ascribed to all the brotherhood! This was not
from a willful determination to misrepresent, but rather from a sense of
generous good-will. It was the only way to rescue one's kindred and
friends from the inevitable hell that awaits the adherents of heretical
doctrines.
"Tom is a good man," said a devout adherent of the established order of
things, referring to minister Thomas Arnold of the Kentucky disciples,
"but he preaches a lie and will be damned for it!" And the way to save
one's beloved from this damnation was to believe that they did not
really hold the views of these Ishmaelites of the "new religion," but
were "Baptists at heart"--or Pedobaptists, according to one's point of
view.
Thomas Campbell's "Declaration and Address" appeared in 1809; but it
was not until September, 1832 that the first general meeting of the
disciples of Christ was held, in Lexington, Kentucky. Everyone
understood that such an assemblage had no authority over local
organizations. Christian soldiers came together to talk over their
victories and defeats, and to plan for fresh campaigns. As time passed
by, such men as John T. Johnson and John I. Rogers were appointed state
evangelists; but they were supported by several churches combining to
furnish the funds.
At the time Mattie Carr was boarding at her brother's school, there was
no general board behind missionary enterprises. But later a convention
met at Harrodsburg and employed four evangelists; that was in 1857. The
next year sixteen were employed, and in a year they won 1,936 converts
to the church. The year following, twenty evangelists added to the faith
2,020. The "new religion" was growing at an unheard of rate, and the
more it grew the hotter raged the noise of battle and the clash of arms.
It is in such circumstances as these that one learns to weigh one's own
opinion, to use it, if need be, as a battering-ram against the opinions
of other folk; that one learns to realize the importance of
self-reliance, self-defense, self-assertion. Before Mattie Myers was
twelve years old, the leading purposes of her after-life were already
crystalized in thought and determination. It will be interesting to
watch how she adhered to these principles, and whither they brought her
at last. As we have said, they were three in number, more or less
commingled in her girlhood's plans of life; an unwavering devotion to
the South; a fixed resolve to become a teacher of girls; and a
conviction that the plea of the disciples of Christ was the need of the
world.