This has been a puzzling question. It is hard to find out precisely
what it is. Not a man yet, of all who have been engaged in fighting
this monster, has defined it, explained it, or told what it is. It
has been called a dangerous _heresy_, and so many hideous warnings
have been given against it, that the hair would almost stand upon
a man’s head to hear about it, and yet no one has told what it is.
The reason no one has defined _Campbellism_, is, simply, that _there
is no such thing in existence_, except in the imaginations of some
misguided doctors. As near as any man can now come, at what they mean
by Campbellism, it is _Christianity itself_, unmixed, unadulterated,
and without any other name. This is evident, for, when they hear a man
preach, who preaches nothing but Christianity, nothing but Christ,
simply aiming to convert men to him, and induce them to receive him
as their only Leader, they call it _Campbellism_. It is nothing but a
nick-name they have given the gospel, to keep men from hearing it. In
the same way, they call the preacher a _Campbellite_, who will preach
nothing but the gospel, nothing but Christianity, to raise prejudice
against him and prevent people from hearing him. In precisely the same
spirit, here comes Rev. N. L. Rice, of heresy-hunting memory, in a
tract of forty pages against Campbellism, which the reader may think as
he pleases about, but which is as much against the religion of Christ,
and those trying to receive it, practice it, and maintain it, and it
_alone_, as was in the power of Dr. Rice to make it, without, in so
many words, saying so. No man in this country, at this time, can preach
simply the gospel of Christ in the name of the Lord, under any other
name, and maintain the law of God, as the only rule of faith, without
being called a Campbellite, and branded with preaching Campbellism.