Calvin Campbell, ordained in 1790, slowly rose to first place among all
the preachers of Kentucky. His popularity was deserved. He was not only
a great preacher, but a scholar, a patriot, and a modest, winsome and
most unselfish Christian worker. His zeal was not smothered by a clammy
conservatism and his work was of the highest order; though his hearers
occasionally gave sensational physical manifestations of their
conversion, there was nothing sensational about his preaching.
For the decade beginning with the Great Awakening in 1800, religious
growth of all denominations in Kentucky had been phenomenal, exceeding a
thousand per cent.
Churches having large congregations were organized and no ministers were
available to preach to them. This was especially true of the
Presbyterian Church, grown strong in a land suffering from a dearth of
schools and colleges--a church which under its rules of government could
only license and ordain for service candidates having classical and
theological training. In Kentucky, as elsewhere, the growth of the
kingdom does not wait for a preacher to be educated to grammatically
enunciate the gospel of Christ.
The greatest growth from these revivals had been in the Cumberland
country--a section taking this name because it embraced the Cumberland
River valley in Kentucky and Tennessee, and which subsequently gave name
to the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. The cause of its severance from
the Presbyterian Church is not without interest.
Father Rice, the patriarch of Presbyterianism in Kentucky, visiting the
Green River and Cumberland country, saw the need of preachers and,
knowing of no other way to meet it, suggested to the Cumberland and
Green River Presbyteries that they select pious and promising young men
from their churches and prepare them for the ministry, saying: "You
understand they should be trained to meet the requirements of the church
rules, but the harvest is going to waste; there is no other way to save
it, and such training is beyond our reach."
This suggestion was adopted, and several young men, after a primitive
theological course, were advanced to the ministry.
This was the beginning of a great controversy between the liberal
preachers and those ministers who were sticklers for the old
ecclesiastical order. The sticklers not only found fault with this
method of supplying the demand, but criticised the revivals and their
attendant demonstrations. There was also between the liberals and the
conservatives some divergences in doctrinal belief centered upon that
portion of the confession of faith and the catechism which it was
claimed taught the doctrine of fatalism.
These divergences, protracted through several years, grew with time,
until finally they became so serious that the Synod of Kentucky
appointed a commission to meet at Gasper River Meeting House and
endeavor to adjust them. The attempt failed, the controversy seemed
unending. To end it, these two presbyteries were dissolved by order of
the Synod, but they still continued to advance to the ministry men not
up to the educational standard of the church, nor in accord with the
doctrine of predestination. This was very offensive to the conservative
membership and ministry of the church, while the liberal or revival
party, deeming themselves oppressed and wronged argued: "There is no
other way to supply our churches with preachers. Your doctrine of
predestination is the fatalism of the ancients."
The final result was a revolutionary measure headed by Samuel McAdoo,
Finis Ewing and Samuel King, men taken into the ministry and ordained
under the expedience policy. They met and formed their own presbytery,
calling it the Cumberland Presbytery after the one recently dissolved by
the Kentucky Synod.
A short while after this schism, the Synod of Kentucky met to devise
ways and means of adjusting the differences pending between the church
organization and the churches of the Cumberland country.
Every Presbyterian church of the state was represented by either a
presiding or ruling elder. The feeling from the first was intense. Three
distinct groups of partisans were in attendance.
The conservatives, led by the Reverend Thomas Small, were in the
majority. They insisted that all ministers who did not believe in
predestination and who had been ordained without possessing the
educational qualifications set forth under the rules of the church
should be suspended, and that all physical manifestations or exhibitions
of an exuberant Christian spirit by the congregation should be
forbidden.
The radicals, led by Samuel McAdoo, who, though he admitted he was not
up to the Presbyterian educational standard, insisted he was called,
possibly predestined to preach, and declared that the Synod to close the
breach, must take the Cumberland Presbytery with its uneducated
preachers and its schism denying predestination into the organization
else they would be forced to establish a distinct organization.
A third party, not exceeding a half dozen, led by Rev. Calvin Campbell,
looked upon their differences as not so divergent as to justify a split
in the church, rather demanding the exercise of a Christian spirit, as
all yet believed in the Trinity and in the Bible.
After the organization of the Synod, Rev. Calvin Campbell rose and
offered a resolution that: "No stationed or local preacher shall retail
spirituous or malt liquors without forfeiting his ministerial character
among us."
Speaking upon the resolution he told of the good work Dr. Benjamin Rush
had been doing in Kentucky by his prohibition movement; what a curse
Bourbon whiskey had proved to be since its manufacture began in 1789;
and deeply regretted that so many preachers in Kentucky found an easy
way of supplementing their meager salary by vending it almost under the
shadow of their churches. He said: "I call your attention to this
resolution because no preacher should profit by the weakness of his
brother, and as indicating how dense is the wilderness in which Dr. Rush
has raised his voice, crying for prohibition. I admit that a preacher
must engage in some other business to live, but like Paul we may make
tents, or shoes or grow corn; follow any occupation which does not tend
to bring misfortune to a weak brother."
Upon a vote by secret ballot, the resolution was lost. (In 1813, this
identical resolution was offered at a Methodist Conference in Kentucky
and voted down.)
Rev. Small, though Rev. Campbell did not know it, was a part owner in a
distillery and looked upon the resolution as directed at him. Therefore,
when he rose as the advocate of conservatism, the champion of
predestination, and of an educated ministry fully alive and thoroughly
grounded in all doctrinal tenets of the church, he was in no mood for
compromises.
He dwelt at length upon the ludicrousness of the "jerks" or physical
manifestations, and called attention to the fact, which many had
forgotten, that they were first indulged in at the Gasper River Meeting,
conducted by the Rev. Calvin Campbell in 1799, and therefore should be
called the "Campbell Jerks."
He then spoke upon the theme of the necessity for a thorough theological
education, else a man could never be an able polemic, a well read
theologian, capable at all times and with all comers of holding his own
in a denominational controversy between learned men, so essential for
the spread of Presbyterianism; nor could he by logic convince all
hearers that all were predestined from the beginning of eternity, which
in itself established the creation of all souls when the soul of the
first man was created; nor that a man once converted could never fall
from grace--beliefs essential to a Christ-like faith.
He closed by saying: "My mind is set like flint upon the proposition
that when a man doubts either doctrine there is no room for him as a
member, much less a minister, in the Presbyterian church. I shall
therefore vote to suspend all newly ordained ministers until they are
properly qualified to preach this doctrinal gospel and can use 1
Corinthians 9:27, or the book of the prophet Jonah, as their text to
establish the doctrine of predestination. I shall therefore vote to
expel all who do not believe in every declaration in the confession of
faith and particularly in predestination."
When he had finished, the Reverend Samuel McAdoo presented the cause of
the Cumberland Presbytery. He expressed regret that the "split" had
occurred and willingness on the part of the churches of their presbytery
to continue in the Kentucky Synod, if permitted to retain the preachers
already ordained and serving them, all of whom were holy men selected
from their congregations to meet urgent needs, when highly educated and
regularly trained ministers were not available, stating: "It seems this
is not a great or unreasonable concession, nor the further request that
we be given a greater liberty of interpretation of the Holy Scriptures
and more freedom in preaching the gospel and supplying our churches with
ministers, provided that what they teach is in accord with the teachings
of Christ."
When McAdoo sat down, the assemblage, feeling that only one man had
sufficient influence to close the breach, expectantly turned towards
Calvin Campbell. He rose and spoke from beside his chair, until many of
the assemblage insisted that he occupy the pulpit.
"Twenty years ago, when I was ordained, this state had a population of
less than 74,000 and this denomination but five preachers and less than
a dozen churches. The state has grown rapidly, now it is seventh in
importance, with a population of 406,000, and our organization has
maintained a proportionate growth, doing its part ably and faithfully to
spread the gospel of Christ and make of this a Christian Commonwealth.
It is a record of which this Synod, representing several hundred
churches, is justly proud.
"Occasionally doctrinal controversies have arisen, but they have always
been taken up and considered in a spirit of love and prayer, and
adjusted by following the precepts of and in the footsteps of the
Master.
"We are met today by questions not more difficult of solution, but we
seem in their consideration to be guided by a different spirit. There is
more of contention and feeling and less of the old spirit of love and
prayer. May God soften our hearts and so solve the trouble. I ask that
the words I speak may picture the thoughts of a purged soul, and that
what I say shall be acceptable to and in the service of God.
"I must confess that within my heart there is no disapproval of physical
manifestations on the part of any one feeling himself emancipated from
the shackles of sin. Let him, like David, sing his songs of thanksgiving
or dance before the altar of God. God's grace to some of you is not a
new thing; may it never become trite to our souls. How can you judge of
your neighbor's spirit of praise for his salvation? He may have a
clearer perception than you or be lifted from a deeper darkness into a
brighter light. Do you think that the meeting on the great day of
Pentecost was without shouts of praise and physical manifestations? Do
you think that Christ's entry into Jerusalem when the multitude sang
'Hosanna to the Son of David, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of
the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!' was devoid of physical manifestation,
or the less pleasing because it was not? We are told that when the chief
priests and scribes saw these things 'they were sore afraid' and
questioned Jesus, saying: 'Hearest thou what they say?' and He answered:
'* * * have ye never read, out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou
hast perfected praise?' I beseech, you, that you do not as high priests,
as clammy conventionalists, criticise the gambols of a new born lamb
into the shelter of the fold.
"Again I must confess that to me there is nothing inconsistent with true
Christianity, if one of the brethren asks a freer interpretation of and
more liberty in preaching the Bible. The essentials of true
Christianity, taught by the Bible, are so simple that a child may
understand, and so complex as to be beyond the grasp of a mind lost in a
wilderness of doctrinal phrase worship, or of conventionality or in the
regulation of the width of their phylacteries.
"A preacher whose soul is filled with the power and the zeal of the Holy
Ghost, though he is a mender and caster of nets, has a greater message
and is better fitted to interpret the Bible than the scribe lost in a
theological hair-splitting discussion upon some phase of non-essential
doctrine. A man's own conscience is the best interpreter of his
theology, especially if quickened by prayer, when he talks with God, and
by the Scriptures, when God talks with him. Thus there becomes fixed in
his soul the essential doctrine which nothing can shake.
"Again I have never been thoroughly convinced that predestination as
taught in our creed is not tinctured with fatalism. To accept
predestination, without a belief in fatalism, is to believe that man is
a free moral agent; and this, as the years go by, I am inclined less and
less to believe. I have a friend, a physician, full of theories, who
contends that a child born with a misshapen head or diseased brain cells
is frequently a born criminal; and that a surgeon's knife may in rare
instances transform such a criminal into a saint.
"Nor do I believe that a man once truly converted cannot fall from
grace. While Calvin insists this is true, it is denied by Luther and
Augustine. Man can only remain within the grace of God by constant
struggle and endeavor and by insistent and persistent prayer. His
spiritual life like his temporal has its days of sunshine and of shadow.
The doctrine that once converted, you can never fall from grace, tends
to a careless spiritual life and leads to discarding the teaching that
all are sinners and life a succession of falls, a never ending struggle
and prayer to live like the Master. Many a sinner has been saved who
never had one thought about predestination. Belief in it is unessential
for salvation. No soul who does not believe in it will be damned, if
that soul believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, loves the Lord his God with
all his heart and his neighbor as himself.
"The danger of educated religious organizations is that these
non-essential doctrines are apt to suppress the growth of the real
faith. There is a tendency to formalism, to doctrinal subtleties, to
measuring the relative importance of each commandment, to spending time
in fixing the character and location of hell, rather than striving to
avoid it, to fixing the form of baptism, to word weaving,
hair-splitting, letter worship; thus becoming blind leaders of the
blind; eyes set upon unessential and exaggerated regalia, while the
spirit loses sight of the light of the world.
"Think you a penitent sinner cannot be baptized, because there is not
water at hand? Baptize him with sand. Think you that the ordinance of
the Lord's supper cannot be observed because the wine is spilled? Fill
the vessel with water and the spirit of observance will symbolically
transform water into wine, as the wine stands for the blood of Christ.
Must the gospel of Christ remain unpreached because there are no
theologically educated ministers to expound it? Do you propose to create
a sort of purgatory in which these immature preachers may have an
opportunity to ripen until you say they are fit harvesters for the
grain, over-ripe and wasting?
"A seminary education is a good, but not the great thing. Shall you or
the Master say who is fit to serve as his messenger? Would you have
picked his twelve? Would you have chosen from the fishing village or
from the school of Gamaliel or the Sanhedrin? Any of you would have
considered himself more fitted to preach the Pentecostal sermon than
Peter. Had you done so, it is probable there would have been no physical
demonstrations and at most half a dozen conversions. Yet Peter was but a
fisherman, filled with the power of the Holy Ghost and telling in his
own heart to heart way what the Master had taught him in that itinerant
seminary of one teacher and twelve students on the shores of Galilee.
Who among you would have chosen Saul as disciple for the Gentiles, as he
traveled the road to Damascus, anxious to continue his persecutions.
"I cannot claim because I am the graduate of a seminary and a classical
college that God has given to me a greater perception and measure of the
power of the Holy Ghost to lead sinners to repentance than to Samuel
McAdoo; nor for the same reason that I and not he, am God's minister. A
preacher not fired with the Holy Ghost soon delivers his message.
"Brother Small, what has the Master taught these preachers of the
Cumberland Presbytery that you and I may not know?
"So often when I look back over the days that are gone, recalling my
follies, my mistakes, my presumptions and my prayer, my way, Lord, not
yours--I drop upon my knees and pray--God be merciful to me a fool.
"Do not think that I condemn the faith of our fathers, or advocate an
uneducated ministry. God can use the deformed, the broken vessel; He can
make the crooked straight and the blind to see; His the greater glory,
the more feeble the minister. God, Gideon, the three hundred, defeated
the host of Midian. When it comes to the sacrifice, God will provide
himself a lamb, but we should give as best we may for his service.
"And the Presbyterian Church, praise God for its glorious history. It
has always waged a never ending, uncompromising war against wrong and
oppression. The organization is a body of conservatives until aroused,
which must be by a cataclysm. Then we never sleep until right prevails,
though the road we travel grows wet with blood and tears. Presbyterians
came to America for conscience's sake. They claimed the right to worship
God as their conscience dictated. The first settlement was at New
Amsterdam in 1628. The church grows as the community is raised to a
higher educational standard. With them, religion and education go hand
in hand and the catechism used to be found in their school primers. The
history of the Presbyterian Church is interwoven with America's struggle
for freedom. In England the revolution was attributed to the
Presbyterians. Walpole addressing Parliament said, 'Cousin America has
run away with a Presbyterian parson'."
After a discussion by others, lasting for hours, a vote was had upon a
resolution, the adoption of which would recognize the Cumberland
Presbytery, license their lapses and confirm the ordination of Samuel
McAdoo and others advanced to the ministry by that Presbytery. The
resolution was lost.
Whereupon all the representatives from their churches withdrew from the
synod and on February 4th perfected a tentative organization, members of
which took to themselves the name of Cumberland Presbyterians. Its
growth was rapid. In three years there were three presbyteries and sixty
churches. They held their first synod on October 5, 1813, when they
proclaimed and published a summary of their faith. As this church came
into birth with a great revival movement, so always it has advocated
revivals.
----
On the night of Wednesday, November 10, 1813, several Shauanese Indians
came to the home of Rev. Calvin Campbell. They were runners who had been
sent by the nation to notify him that he had been made their chief in
place of Tecumseh, who had been killed in the battle of the Thames on
October 5th.
The next morning before day he left with them and was gone from home
nearly three months. Upon his return he had little to say about his
trip, never mentioning its purpose except to his wife.
He told her that a great remnant of the Mingo confederacy including many
Shauanese had moved several hundred miles west of the Mississippi, two
hundred miles from the nearest white settlement, and had there built new
villages upon the banks of the great river, near which were plains on
which grazed vast herds of buffalo. That John Mason, who was still a
missionary, had gone with them and he had assisted him in reorganizing
the nation and in building a church, much like the old Jackson River
Meeting House, except it was of logs instead of stone.
----
In the early days of Kentucky, when churches were few and far between,
the people found it impossible to follow the custom of their ancestors,
of burying their dead in the kirkyard. This resulted in each family of
prominence having its own burial plot about sixty feet square hedged
about by a wall of cut stone and overgrown with ivy or Virginia creeper.
Several cedar trees planted within the inclosure kept pace of growth
with the family death rate and their branches sheltered the slowly
widening circle of graves. The family graveyard was hallowed or
consecrated ground which could not be bought. Plantations changed
owners, but all conveyances exempted this plot, which descended from
father to son, from generation to generation. Laws were made to protect
it from incursion or desecration; it was a misdemeanor to tear down the
wall or a tombstone, or to plow over the grave of a white person. A
statute gave to relatives the right of ingress to such a place, "situate
within the lands of another--to visit and to repair the graves or
inclosure protecting same."
These desolate and usually neglected grave yards of half forgotten
stranger dead became to the superstitious, "hanted places" to be shunned
by night, and the favorite site of many a ghost story told by the "black
mammy" to the children of her master.
There is reserved to the memory of Rev. Calvin Campbell but small space
in the history of his state. He was buried at Campbell Station in the
family grave yard, beside his father and mother, as later was his wife
and years after her death their son.
Campbell Station is now the site of a thriving mining and manufacturing
town, Middlesboro, which, financed by English capital, sprang over-night
into being and prosperity. As a boom town, its founders claimed it would
rival Birmingham, possibly Pittsburgh, saying: "Just across the mountain
from us, easily reached through the Gap, are inexhaustible beds of iron
ore, and on this side, less than a dozen miles from the ore are great
veins of the finest coking and smelting coal, and our city lies
between."
In building Middlesboro, Yellow Creek was made straight. The redeemed
curves, filled by moving a mountain, were laid off into building lots,
which sold for a price that paid expenses and rewarded the promoter.
Streets were laid off and graded through the old family grave yard. The
tombstone which marked the grave of Colonel Archibald Campbell and
briefly reviewed his record as a colonel in the Continental Army, was
placed on exhibition in the city hall. The markers of the other graves,
as the earth that held the remains of the dead, was carted and dumped
into the old creek bed, to redeem and transform a bend into a building
lot.
The Town Company was a progressive corporation, and corporations are
soulless institutions, yet the recitation upon the tombstone of Calvin
Campbell might have saved for it a place of honor in the city hall. But
what matter, he is risen, he is present with his Lord who gives every
man according as his work shall be.
The inscription, after giving his name, date of birth and death read:
"This monument is erected to the father of this Presbytery by shilling
contributions from those persons who were brought to Christ by him.
After 1,800 had contributed, the fund being sufficient, further
contributions were refused."
THE MAN AND THE ELEPHANT
In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful, who created the
soul and gave to the tongue words of wisdom, Listen! and I will tell you
the story of a king and an elephant; of a man who rose above environment
and of an elephant who was a victim of it; though this is not the rule.
Let me illustrate. If a hog is shifted from the sty to a state of
nature, he lifts his snout from the mud and in time acquires the courage
of a wild boar; if a man returns to a state of nature, he becomes a
savage. Take an Indian, educate him in your great school Harvard; if he
returns to his tribe, he cuts the seat from his trousers and wraps
himself in a blanket. The desert nomads, wandering over the site of the
birthplace of civilization, philosophy and religion, scarcely glance at
the half-buried ruins about them, and live as did their fathers five
thousand years ago.
In your youth, do not let conceit shut your mind to the acquisition of
wisdom. Do not think that the world was in darkness until you were born.
Old age will shatter hope and you will lose confidence in your
generation and become an ancestor worshiper, because you are
birth-marked mentally and physically by your ancestors; because old age
loves youth, and the present the past, and contrasts the joys and sports
of childhood with the toil and pain and poverty of old age; because the
evil days have come, the clouds return after the rain, the house you
live in trembles, your grinders cease because they are few, your windows
are darkened; and having eaten, you know you are naked and are ashamed
and afraid.
Solomon the Wise, philosopher and preacher, says: "All is vanity * * *
one generation passeth away and another generation cometh, but the earth
abideth forever. * * * Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is
the whole duty of man."
The Story.
More than five thousand years before the birth of our prophet Muhammed,
The Praised One; even before Ur was; the ancestors of King Surgulla, who
belonged to a Turanian tribe, came down from the Heights of Elam on the
east, into the plain country and finally settled near Nun-ki, that is,
the place of the first water, on the left bank of the Euphrates.
Here was the temple of Hea, the water god; here the palm trees grew in a
great garden watered by crystal springs; which place the Jews, a modern
people, call the Garden of Eden. Here sat the fathers in judgment under
a great palm tree and the chief mufti read from the tablets:
"When the upper region was not yet called heaven,
And the lower region was not yet called earth,
And the abyss of Hades had not yet opened its arms,
Then the chaos of waters gave birth to all of them
And the waters were gathered together into one place."
The first settlement of tents grew into a city and was called the City
of The Good God, Urugudda, which in time was shortened to Eridu. Eridu
enjoying several centuries of peace and prosperity, became the capital
of a great nation; a seat of learning, philosophy and religion and
architecturally beautiful. Its many white public buildings, palaces and
temples of fretted marble and porphyry with their red and green tiled
roofs and cupolas and gold crescent-crowned minarets, resplendent under
a tropic sun, excited the cupidity of every bold robber, who, riding
from the desert, viewed its greatness from the distant sand hills.
The people of Girsu were nomads; and worshiped the sun, the moon and
water. Their chief had a half grown son, born to sit in the light of the
sun, Chalginna. His sole possessions were a light, keen spear, a swift
white camel, a water bottle made from a goat skin and a mat on which to
sleep. In the stillness of the night as he rested on his mat of camel
cloth, though he slept too soundly to hear the roar of the camels or the
bleating of the goats or the barking of the jackal, he saw the city and
dreamed of its conquest and pillage. Each morning fearful that during
the night something might have happened to it, he rode the miles across
the desert to the highest of the sand hills, from which with eyes keen
as an eagle's, he looked, the while whetting his wolf-like appetite to
feed upon it.
In the city there was a boy his own age, the son of the king, and nearly
as strong and brave as he, who day after day was drilled to take his
father's place; and who had dreams of empire more extensive than his
father's. When he was grown, he journeyed with a considerable retinue
eastward into Persia, where he was to marry the daughter of a great
prince. It was well his caravan guard was strong; because Chalginna, who
had gathered about him near a hundred kindred spirits ruled by his
fiercer spirit hovered upon its flanks, as a band of hungry wolves from
the shelter of the thicket eye the lambs while the shepherd is about and
lick their chops in anticipation of mutton at the first lapse of
vigilance.
The band reasoning that the wedding party, returning, would be richer by
the princess and her dowry, deferred their attack; but reckoned not that
part of that dowry would be a dozen elephants, the first brought into
the valley of the Euphrates.
In a seemingly boundless desert, where the hills of sand were shifted by
the winds and famine and thirst held cheerless dominion, they charged
the caravan; but their camels balked and ran away, never before having
seen or scented such monsters. Two, crazed by the sight of the great
beasts, lost their heads and charged alone, bearing their now unwilling
riders who rolled off and sought to hide in the sand drifts. The prince
and his mahout, on a young male elephant hunted them. The elephant
threshed the camels into helpless cripples and the prince killed the two
robbers with shafts from his cross-bow.
This failure taught Chalginna a lesson. When the elephants were placed
to pasture in the rich river plains; under cover of the night, he drove
his war camels into their vicinity, until they knew the herd and the
herd knew the camels. The boldest of his men provided themselves with
short staffs, tipped with an iron point and hook, first walked among the
elephants and then rode about upon their heads as did their mahouts. All
the elephants grew to know and mind them, except Gisco, the young bull
which the prince rode. He trumpeted wrathfully and beat about
dangerously with his trunk whenever a Semite or camel approached him.
Seven years have passed since the marriage of the prince. Chalginna,
first captain of the robber band, then chief of his tribe is now ruler
of Yemen and head of a great confederacy of desert tribes. Erigalla is
king of Eridu, having succeeded his father.
Each of his caravans is pillaged or made to pay tribute and his subjects
are kidnapped and held for ransom, by Chalginna. It is impossible to
follow the robber into the desert or to corner him in battle; because
when attacked, his force riding camels, scatters as chaff across the
desert of loose sand; and neither horses nor elephants nor man can
follow.
There are now thirty-three elephants, Gisco the bull, which bears the
king's howdah, is leader of the herd and knows no master except his
mahout and the king.
One night, the uproar and trumpeting of the elephants awoke the city,
though their pasture was more than a mile down the river. A company of
horsemen sent to investigate reported that seven of the elephants were
missing and the king's great elephant was badly wounded, having thirty
spear heads buried in his fleshy sides and many wounds about the head
and neck; while trampled into the earth about his feet or torn and
maimed almost beyond identification of form were the bodies of seven
camels and four of Chalginna's troopers.
King Erigalla sent out five hundred horsemen and a hundred and fifty
chariots to recover his elephants. When they came to the camp of
Chalginna, he did not run but gave battle and drove them back to the
very gates of the city. Then he dared the king to meet him in the great
river valley; but the king declined, feeling that now he should reserve
his strength, expecting an assault upon the city.
Again by night Chalginna visited the river pastures, having a dual
purpose; one was to kill the bull elephant, but he had been taken to the
palace garden, where, soothed by the cooling spray from the great
fountain, he was being nursed back to his great strength; the other was
to cut down a great tree and a number of saplings, which were dragged to
the desert camp by thirty work camels and need in the construction of a
portable ram. The great tree trunk was rigged to swing from a frame on
raw hide belts and a platform built on either side on which men might
stand and, grasping pegs driven in the log, propel it back and forth
with great force. Above the whole Chalginna built an oval canopy of
saplings, broad enough not only to cover the machine, but to shield the
four great elephants which would bear it. When finished the strongest of
his men, twelve on each side, took places on the platforms; and for some
days men and elephants were drilled in its manipulation. When the
training was completed, Chalginna having gathered six thousand troopers,
five thousand on camels and a thousand horsemen, at twilight started on
the march against the city of Eridu. The portable ram, suggesting an
immense land tortoise, led the advance; Chalginna and his staff rode
beside it on the other elephants and the troopers followed.
----
Gisco, the king's bull elephant, though fully recovered, was still
chained to a stake in the palace garden. There he stood, swaying his
great body, feeding upon rank and tender rushes brought from the river
marsh; and to drive away the flies and reduce the heat occasionally
sprayed his body and the earth around with water from the fountain. The
wind blew from the desert. Shortly past midnight he ceased swaying and
lifted his great ears, stood for a moment as a great beast of bronze;
then he raised his trunk aloft and trumpeted an alarm that was heard by
half the city. The wind had borne to his keen sense of smell the pungent
odor of the camel, the scent of the missing from his herd and given
warning that his old enemies, Chalginna's troopers, were at hand.
The watchman on the wall looking carefully desertward, saw a great black
mass approaching the main gate and gave a general alarm. The palace is
awakened. The king, his mahout and two of his guard come into the
garden; slaves having placed the war howdah upon Gisco, they take their
places, and the elephant lumbers off towards the great gate. At the gate
the king climbs from the howdah into a midwall opening and ascends to
the barbican. Looking about, he sees his soldiers in place behind the
parapets; the city is on guard; then looking desertward, he sees the
black mass quite near and gradually severs from it Chalginna's tortoise,
which he knows is some implement of war and surmises its purpose.
When the tortoise is within fifty feet of the wall, darts and arrows of
the besieged are showered upon it, but as it is well shielded by the
sapling cover thatched with rawhide, there is no halt until it is
against the wall. Then the great ram pounds upon the gate of bronze and
iron and the thuds are heard above the noise of conflict. Chalginna has
called and is knocking for admittance; and the city trembles.
Barrels of boiling water are poured upon the machine and great stones
and darts are cast upon it; but it turns all as a tortoise shell turns
rain and the sticks and pebbles of a boy. Then they throw burning pitch
and firebrands upon it, but they have so water soaked it that it will
not burn.
The gates begin to give and in a last effort to destroy the dread
machine Gisco and half dozen elephants loaded with warriors are let out
a secret gate and charge upon it. Three of the elephants reached the ram
but are so violently assailed by Chalginna and his staff and the
elephants on which they are riding, which turn against their old mates,
that they can do nothing more than protect themselves. Gisco strikes at
the machine and nearly upsets it. The operator shifts the ram from the
gate and drives the great log against his side with such force as to
break several of his ribs and knock him to the earth.
Chalginna, who has seen the king in the howdah borne by Gisco, jumps to
the back of the fallen elephant, but slips and falls within reach of his
trunk; his left arm is seized and broken, almost wrenched from its
socket. His followers after rescuing their leader, swarm about the king
and overpower him. He is bound and borne to the rear; and Chalginna is
lifted back upon his elephant. The gates yield; the robbers enter; and
the city is given over to pillage, violence and slaughter.
Many of Erigalla's soldiers are slain, many of the women are made
slaves. The queen and her young son, a boy of three years, though the
city is searched, cannot be found. Chalginna by conquest becomes its
ruler and adopts its standard as his own; an eagle with outstretched
wings bearing in her talons the cab of a lion.
----
On a bare spot, but a few hundred yards beyond the city wall, almost
beside the dusty road leading to the great gate; a place where lepers
and the blind are wont to sit and beg; Chalginna placed along the edge
of a huge, half buried, flat rectangular stone, great cubes of hewn
granite four inches apart, so that they formed a little doorless chamber
not much larger than one of the granite blocks used in its construction.
The people passing said to one another: "Our new king is building a
shrine or a tomb."
When finished, except the dropping into place of the cap stone weighing
ten tons, the captive king is brought forth and placed within. Then the
cap stone is shifted into place and the doorless prison closed upon the
prisoner.
Upon the front Chalginna cut this inscription:
"The palace of King Erigalla. His subjects are the beggars and lepers of
the city; they may render obeisance to their sovereign; but let no other
person dare, or to speak with, save to revile him. He who disobeys shall
be made a beggar and blind."
----
Gisco, the day after the battle, lay where he had fallen. When night
came on, driven by thirst to move despite the pain, slowly he rose on
his great columnar legs and stumblingly dragged his ungainly body to the
river where on the low bank he sank exhausted and filled himself with
the tepid water. Screened by a dense growth of water palm and creepers,
he lay there for several days; then having recovered sufficiently to
move about a bit, fed upon the tender rushes of the marsh.
After many days his strength returned. Going forth to feed in the
pastures he found another bull had usurped his place as leader of the
herd. After a battle lasting for hours he regained his supremacy.
Chalginna's mahouts, wishing to use the elephants to move some great
stones to strengthen the wall came down to drive the herd to the city.
Gisco would not let one of them approach him, but followed after the
submissive herd, trumpeting his resentment.
Instinctively he shunned the prison of Erigalla until he sensed his
master was within, then pressing his head against the great front stone,
backed by his seven tons of bulk he shoved upon it but could not shake
or budge it as the stones were set in cement mortar and riveted with
bars of iron. Then he passed his trunk into one of the apertures; and
the captive reached out his arm and stroked the end of it with his hand.
A trooper passing on a camel jabbed the elephant in the flank with the
point of his spear. He turned more quickly than seemed possible and
killed both trooper and camel; then driven to madness by the scent of
the nomad horde in possession of the city, or possibly to revenge his
master, he charged through the gate, killing and destroying as he went,
and for an hour was master of the city.
They set out poisoned fruit to tempt him but he would not eat. They
sought to blind him with darts, but his small eyes were uninjured,
though his head and great sides bristled with arrows.
At the order of Chalginna, a gang of workmen set a great stake deep in
the earth, without the wall beside the road near the great gate and not
more than fifty yards from King Erigalla's prison; to this they fixed a
few links of heavy chain.
The mahout who had driven him before the city had been sacked was forced
by threats of death to bring him to the stake and fasten the chain upon
his leg, a few inches above his five great toes; and Gisco too was a
prisoner, and so near that when the king spoke his name he heard and
answered.
It was well for the sanity of the king in the first months of that
imprisonment that the elephant was a fellow prisoner; and by his low
trumpetings conveyed to him his sympathy and loyalty. No other being
dared, though a dirty beggar woman, bearing a small boy child upon her
hip, frequently passed, hoping to see the king, but he sat in a corner
out of sight, with his head bent forward upon his breast or overcome by
despair rolled in the dust upon the floor.
Had the woman seen the face of the king she would not have known him.
The bones of his cheeks stood out, his eyes were sunk in their sockets,
and his face and body were black from the dust of the highway, which
nearly choked him. Given barely sufficient water to sustain life, he
constantly suffered from thirst, and in a parched voice mumbled half
unconscious prayers: "Cast me not off, Oh God! for no one else can help
me. Grant that in my affliction my eyes shall not grow blind to Thy
goodness! Feeble as I am, Thou only art my refuge."
The man was nearly mad; the elephant ate his rushes in contentment.
Once, when the sirocco blew so fiercely that the beggars sought shelter
behind the angles of the city wall and the highway was deserted, a bunch
of blue lotus flowers rolled at the King's feet and a familiar voice
whispered his name. He rose from his corner and peering through a
crevice between the stones saw the face of the beggar woman whom he had
seen pass and repass so often, always carrying on her hip a little boy
or now and again feeding a handful of green rushes to Gisco. Reaching
out his grimy hand and arm he touched the tips of her fingers, and when
his eyes had grown accustomed to the light, he saw beside her face, that
of his little son. Think you they cared for the sandstorm?
The baby slept and woke and spoke of being hungry and the wind blew on.
The woman, because the jailer would shortly come, bringing a small
earthen jar of water and a cake of bread made of millet seed, was forced
to leave. From a small leather bag, hidden in the breast of her dress
she took several priceless gems and tossed them through to the king,
retaining several less valuable ones; then saying she would return
between midnight and morning she went to a hovel built against the outer
wall, in the beggar colony and prepared food for her boy. When the
morning star showed itself, lifting the sleeping boy she came again to
the prison, bringing a small skin of water and a bag of dried fruit.
From that day she rose with the morning star and visiting her husband,
brought water and food. When the boy slept in the afternoon, she sat in
the narrow shade of the prison and held him, but dared not speak a word.
In time, other beggars seeing the beggar woman resting in the shade of
the prison came there to rest and talk, and they came to know the king
and talk with him, telling him what had occurred throughout the kingdom.
The captain of the gate guard, who had supervision of the king and
Gisco, noticed that the beggar children played with and climbed over the
elephant and fed him grass and bits of bread, though he would not let
one of Chalginna's troopers approach him. He also noticed that the
beggars were beginning to gather about the king's prison and to talk
with him. This he thought to forbid, but before doing so asked Chalginna
for instructions. He thought it a great joke, saying: "It seems the
inscription is to be fulfilled. The prison is being converted into the
palace of the king of the beggars. Do not interfere with the king's
court, let his subjects render obeisance. How have the mighty fallen."
One day a beggar from a far country resting against the prison wall,
heard the king bemoaning his fate and asked:
"Why weepest thou?"
"Once I was king of this country, but now I am a beggar and a prisoner."
"What matter it? God giveth to one man a diadem and a throne; another as
great in his sight, sitteth in the dust at the gate of the city and
soliciteth alms; time may shift the one to the other's place, and one is
as well off as the other. If you would have peace, strike not the
feeble, soothe the afflicted, do good as it is offered to your hand. If
you would make the night of your prison as bright as day, light it with
the lamp of your good works. The less you have here, the smoother your
road to paradise. A camel carrying only his hump of curses and blessings
makes the best time. You see before you a beggar who would not exchange
his peace of mind for the sceptre of Chalginna. A king must be a light
sleeper or lose his head with his crown."
The king thought over this counsel. A few days later he asked the beggar
woman to bring him a bag of silver coins, and among them she placed a
few gold ones.
Thereafter, when a beggar spoke to the king of being hungry--after he
had promised not to mention the gift--a silver coin found its way into
his hand. A poor water carrier with a large family, who had lost his
donkey, received a gold coin to buy another. A mother of three small
children was given one with which to buy a goat and some food. A
crippled beggar, forced to visit a far country, was given two gold
coins, with which he purchased an old but serviceable camel.
The king advised with and comforted all who sought him. His subjects
grew in number, the homage they rendered was prompted by affection and
the tribute they paid was love.
On his birthday, in the second year of his imprisonment, the prison
house was dressed in blue lotus flowers and wreathed with palm leaves,
and a great collar of flowers was placed about the neck of Gisco.
Chalginna, riding in state beyond the great gate, was impressed by the
decorations and the gathering. More than three hundred beggars, mainly
women and children, bearing palm branches, were gathered around the
little prison house and on a throne covered with goat skins, just under
the inscription, sat a little boy, wearing a crown of blue lotus flowers
and holding a palm branch sceptre.
Contemptuously curious, he asked the child's name and was told, "He is
the son of a beggar woman, probably a leper, that lives in a hovel near
the gate," whereat he laughed and rode on.
The celebration ended by the planting of a thrifty young palm to the
right of the prison. From the day of its planting, each beggar when he
had water to spare, poured it about its root, and the tree grew rugged
and thrifty from these libations.
On each succeeding birthday the same ceremony was repeated, until a
grove of fifteen thrifty young palms shaded the prison and made a
comfortable resting place for the beggars and the traveling poor.
The boy who took the part of king, now almost a man, continued in that
character. The assembly of beggars at these birthday ceremonies now
numbered thousands. They looked upon the imprisoned king with more favor
than on Chalginna, who to feed his extravagances, became an extortionist
and was fast making beggars of even his most loyal subjects. It was
beginning to be whispered about that many of those who participated in
the ceremony were not really beggars, and the captain of the gate
suggested to Chalginna that the crowd was growing dangerous. He rode out
to see and, impressed by its proportions, determined in the future to
forbid the ceremony.
Ants ate to a mere shell the stake to which the chain that bound Gisco
was attached, and it parted almost of its own accord. He was a great
overfed elephant, ponderous in bulk and frame, weighing more than seven
tons, and at last grown as tractable and lazy as a puppy.
When the stake parted, he had no thought to move beyond the radius of
the circle of the chain, but continued to walk the old beat, or stand
and sway his great bulk as he had done for so many, many days. He no
longer struck at or trumpeted with rage when Chalginna's troopers rode
within reach, but ate nuts and dates from their hand.
His old mahout visiting the spot and seeing how the long imprisonment
had affected the elephant was moved to tears. He made up his mind, by
some expedient, to rouse the spirit of the great beast. Coming through
the gate before it was closed, he spent the night without the city and
after midnight mounting to the old place on the elephant's head, sought
to ride him to the river pastures; but he circled the old limit of his
chain and could not be budged beyond.
As the beggars looked after the material wants of Gisco, so they had
cared for the king; and he within the confines of his prison, which was
a space not a fiftieth as great as Gisco's circle, had found room to
exercise and keep his body in condition. Gradually, the wants and wrongs
of his subjects, which were many, forced upon him the resumption of the
cares of a sovereign, until he was now the servant of the beggars,
though he advised, counciled and commanded them.
The man had lived above his environment, the elephant had not.
Environment tended to Chalginna's destruction; he was too primitive by
nature to be the king of a great city. Had he been as capable as when he
took the city, he would long since have been alarmed by the influence of
Erigalla, and have placed him where deposed kings are harmless; but
power and the vices of the city had ruined a great nomad chieftain. He
was ambitious now only to indulge new vices and extravagances, and
energetic only in the collection of tribute.
In the sixteenth year of Erigalla's imprisonment the beggars with
certain of his former subjects, men who could remain loyal to a deposed
king, if he were a just man, made extensive preparations to celebrate
his birthday. Many who heretofore had worn disguises as beggars, came
this time armed and habited in their usual garb. More than ten thousand
gathered without the gates to celebrate the occasion.
Chalginna had forgotten his resolve to forbid the ceremony. In these
days he forgot many things. When told of the great gathering, he called
together his personal guard and rode out, curious to see and if he
should deem it expedient, forbid the ceremony.
He was scarcely noticed by the multitude, though a few, feeling safe in
the crowd, hooted their derision.
As he approached the prison, three strange elephants drew a derrick
against the wall and the great cap stone was lifted half off. The
captive king, wearing the crown which Chalginna had never found, and
dressed as was his wont in the olden days, was lifted over the wall and
took his seat on a throne in the palm grove in front of the prison.
Gisco, whose neck was bound about with a great wreath of lotus flowers,
seeing his old master or disturbed by the three strange elephants,
stepped gingerly beyond the circle of his captivity and came slowly
towards them, giving low trumpetings of joy.
Chalginna, who assumed to treat the king's temporary release as a part
of a farcical ceremony, but was so exercised by it as to determine upon
his death that night, was incensed beyond self-control when the elephant
which had disabled his arm, passing near seemed to sneeze contemptuously
in his very face.
He struck at the great beast with his short sword, and though he did
little more than scratch through the thick hide, he severed the wreath
of lotus flowers and it dropped to the ground.
Gisco the spiritless, the lazy, for a moment was transformed into Gisco
the war elephant. He struck the king's horse lifeless; grasped the king
about the middle and lifting him high above the heads of the astonished
multitude, dropped him head down, through the roof of the prison; then
shoving the half removed cap stone into place, slowly walked back to his
old circle and began eating from his rack of rushes.
While yet the multitude stood apathetic in astonishment, the beggar
seer, who was consulted as an oracle, the same who had advised the
captive king in the early days of his imprisonment, climbed upon the cap
stone of the prison and addressed the multitude: "Let no one oppose the
decree of God. Chalginna is deposed." And the people echoed: "It is the
will of God! Long live King Erigalla! Long live the King!"
And he reigned in peace sixty and seven years from that day, saw his
son's sons and their children, died in honor and full of days, and was
succeeded by his son, the beggar boy, known as Surgulla the Great, who
for forty and three years ruled all the land from the Red Sea east to
the Persian Gulf and from the Black Sea south to the Gulf of Aden.
The End