Professor William H. Whitsitt, of the Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary, at Louisville, Ky., has written a book that has for its
leading feature to make it appear that the Disciples are an "offshoot
from the Sandemanians."
The Sandemanians, like the Baptists, had both faults and virtues. They
were one of the earliest sects of the Scotch Presbyterians to protest
against a union of Church and State; they practiced a weekly breaking
of the loaf; held to a plurality of elders in every church, and were
exceptionally helpful to the poor; and surely, even Dr. Whitsitt will
not call these damnable heresies. But they were also rigid
separatists. They were Calvinists of the straitest sect, and made all
their opinions a bond of union. In this they were like the Baptists,
but essentially dissimilar to the Disciples. They exalted feet washing
and the holy kiss into church ordinances, and excluded all who did not
agree with them in these opinions, just as the Baptists exclude from
the Lord's table all who are not of "our faith and order," though they
admit that those persons thus excluded are regenerated, accepted of
the Lord, and enjoy the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Differing from
the Sandemanians in the most essential element of our plea, we hold a
very remote relationship to them--that of fortieth cousin, perhaps.
The Disciples are just as evidently an offshoot from the Baptists, as
children are an offshoot from the parental stock.
Twenty years after the writer had begun his work in Kansas, he was
able to count among fifty churches which had been organized within his
knowledge, twenty-five that were dead; and there were six
meeting-houses that were left unoccupied or sold for debt. And the
church members would say to me: "We can neither preach, nor pray, nor
read the Scriptures, nor break the loaf to edification, and we are too
poor to hire a preacher. What shall we do?" They had no training,
save that training they had obtained in the old Baptist churches, or
one similar in our own, and now that they were scattered over the
great West, and were poor in this world's goods, they were indeed in a
pitiably helpless condition.
I sometimes said, "Get up a Sunday-school." But the old heads would
get together and begin to debate where Cain got his wife, or who was
the father of Melchisedec, or what was the thorn in the flesh that
afflicted Paul; or they would dispute over the mode of baptism, or the
operation of the Holy Spirit, and the boys, verifying the old adage
that the devil always finds work for idle hands to do, and not
appreciating this sort of thing, would shoot paper balls at each other
and at the old folks, and the girls would do naughty things and grieve
their mothers, and the whole thing would go up in smoke.
Nothing seemed to be left to these brethren, only the protracted
meeting and monthly preaching. To many of them "pastorating" was one
of the sorceries which, with the mother of Babylon, had bewitched the
world. These brethren seemed to have forgotten that Paul gives highest
praise to that elder that not only rules well, but so addicts himself
to the ministry of the Word and teaching as to require that he shall
be sustained by the freewill offerings of the brethren. And when we
sought an arrangement by which all should give--each man, according to
his ability--we were alarmed with fearful prognostications of evil:
"Beware! beware!" These brethren said, "You are making a veritable
Popish bull, and he will gore you to death. Beware of missionary
societies!" And when we turned to these men and besought them, "Tell
us, dear brethren, how we shall obtain, without offense, the means to
send help to those perishing churches?" they were silent. This was not
their function. Their vocation was to warn the people against Popish
bulls and human missionary societies, for which there can not be found
a thus saith the Lord, in express terms or by an approved precedent.
Meantime the churches in the older States had contributed one hundred
thousand Disciples--this has sometimes been the estimated number--as
emigrants to the great West, and these were scattered over its wide
extended Territories, and it was to be shown how far this
contribution, more precious than gold or silver or costliest gems,
should be as water spilled on the ground, or as treasure cast into the
bottom of the sea, or how far it should be as precious seed bearing
fruit, some thirty fold, some sixty, and some one hundred fold.
When our first churches were organized in Kansas, Alexander Campbell
had become old and well-stricken in years. I have already written of
the missionary society that was created in 1864, and of the great
convention held in Leavenworth City in 1865, in which we sought to
perfect the workings of that society. Within the following year Mr.
Campbell died, and the always welcome _Millennial Harbinger_ ceased
its monthly visits. The voice of Mr. C. had been a bugle blast calling
men to heroic deeds, and his overshadowing influence had restrained
from that tendency to division, for opinion's sake, which is our
inheritance from our common Protestantism. But now a great emigration
had come into Kansas from every part of the United States, and among
these were many who looked with no favor on any innovation on the
traditions of the fathers.
Mr. C. had said in his notable debate with the Rev. N. L. Rice, at
Lexington, Ky.: "Men formerly of all persuasions, and of all
denominations and prejudices, have been baptized on this good
confession, and have united in one community. Among them are found
those who had been Romanists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians,
Methodists, Baptists, Restorationists, Quakers, Arians, Unitarians,
etc., etc. We have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, but various
opinions. All these persons, of so many and contradictory opinions,
weekly meet around our Lord's table in hundreds of churches all over
the land. Our bond of union is faith in the slain Messiah, in his
death for our sins and his resurrection for our justification."
It is perfectly apparent that to harmonize these elements--often
opposite and conflicting--thus brought together in one body was no
easy task, but we had more than this to do; we were also to harmonize
the fierce antagonisms growing out of our early contests, and then to
make those brethren who had been heretofore averse to any combination
whatever for religious work other than that of the single
congregation--to make them feel the absolute necessity of united
action and cooperation. This was indeed a task most difficult. And if
the final good results have only slowly become apparent we are
entitled to the judgment of charity.
It is admitted that every liberty that God has given to men may be
abused, and has been abused. Marriage, religion, civil government, the
rights of property, eating and drinking--in short, all liberty, of
whatever kind, may be and has been abused. Still we must use our
liberty, our very existence depends upon it. I have said it already,
and I say again, if sixty millions of the American people can unite
together to promote the public tranquillity, and all citizens enjoy
more of personal liberty than they could enjoy if every county were an
independent principality, then our whole brotherhood, from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, may be trusted to meet together, by their
messengers or in person, to promote necessary Christian work without
endangering our Christian liberties. If all the churches of Macedonia
could unite together to send relief to the poor saints at Jerusalem,
then, surely, the brethren everywhere may combine together to send
relief to people perishing for want of the word of life.
And so with much weariness and painfulness, and often with gratuitous
and unrequited labor, with long rides by day and by night, and much
exposure to heat and cold, to floods and storms, and to rough
treatment by wicked men--in short, with that relentless and persistent
toil which makes a man old before his time, and in which one man has
carried on the work of two men year after year, I have labored on,
never doubting, but always hoping for that good time coming, when
churches will be just, and give honest pay to honest men who do honest
work. My hope has been that if I can not live to profit by that better
order of things, it will at least be better for the men that come
after me.
The wife of a traveling evangelist will always be the proper object of
pity and sympathy, if pity and sympathy are to be given. She is not
cheered by the smiles of admiring crowds, nor does she feel the
intoxication of flattering tongues. She dwells at home in the
desolation and loneliness of a practical widowhood, and often ekes out
a meager support from a stingy and starveling salary.
But somebody has to do this frontier and pioneer work; and might it
not as well be me and my wife as any other man and his wife?
I have given a wide range to these "Recollections." In doing so, I
have not followed the example of a cowardly, corrupted and
compromising Christianity, but rather have imitated the robust and
manly courage of the writers of the Old and New Testament, who tell of
the deeds of good men and bad men, and who also use the same freedom
in speaking of the evil deeds of wicked rulers that they use in
speaking of the things that more immediately concern the spiritual and
eternal interests of men.
I have made the briefest possible mention of the hapless condition our
churches were in twenty years ago. The picture is neither flattering
nor cheering; but right royally are the churches now redeeming
themselves from the reproach they were under then. A pastor is now
being settled in each church as fast as the pecuniary circumstances of
the congregation will permit, and a grand enthusiasm in Sunday-school
work, simplifying and illustrating all its details, has made it
possible for the weakest and poorest church to keep itself alive.
Wherever there are children with their young enthusiasm--and the
children, like the poor, are always with us--and wherever there are
parents ready to lead their children in the way in which they should
go, there the permanency of a church is assured.
And now, with many misgivings as touching our immediate future, but
with an abiding hope of triumph in the end, I bid the reader farewell.