Good afternoon session to begin.
As Dr. Bill Humble said at the 11:00 session,
at the end of that session, our speaker
at the 3:30 meeting is Dr. R.L. Roberts.
Brother Roberts has been a librarian at ACU for
many years, is now retired, but he's still
here an awful lot.
Dr. Humble described him as a walking
encyclopedia of the restoration movement, and
that is true.
That is absolutely true.
He has been for a number of people, Jerry
Rushford and myself, and countless other people,
a source of inspiration and a source of
information on restoration personalities and places.
And he is probably one of the most
knowledgeable, I guess he may be the most
knowledgeable person
on particularly the stone churches and
preachers, and I think that's what he's going
to focus
on for us this afternoon.
And so I'm very pleased to present to you R.L.
Roberts, who will be talking to us about
heroes of the saddlebag.
And I'm going to get you to clip this on your lapel.
Well first let me start off by talking about
Alexander Campbell.
I want to show you his picture.
This may be the only photograph of Campbell in existence.
There is an old tin type that was possibly made
in France.
You remember that when he took the trip to
Europe, to the British Isles in the 40s, that
he went over to France, and it's possible that
the tin type was made there.
But this picture is in the Campbell home in
Bethany in the Barkley room, and these are
Barkley grandchildren of Campbell, and it's a
very striking photograph, a very clear photograph
of him.
And it shows very clearly what Raccoon John
Smith said about him.
He described him, among other things, as having
a Roman nose that leaned a little to the north.
So you can see that Roman nose.
I wonder if that's strung out where I can go though.
I don't know if I've enjoyed the five lectures
or more of that than I have the five that
we've heard yesterday and today, and I want to
try to fit my material into the context
of these previous lectures.
I can say unreservedly that everything that
I've heard can be documented very extensively,
even much more extensively than has been
documented for you by these men.
I think these are especially important to our
understanding of our history or the explanations
that we need to understand of the division, not
only in the 19th century, but also in
the 20th century and in our time.
I want to talk about the heroes of the saddlebags.
This title is suggested by the fact that there
are a number of lists of preachers that emerged
in the 80s and the 90s, lists that were sent in
by some of the contemporaries of the early preachers.
In fact, most of the lists were sent in by them.
These lists are lists that were giving names of
men whom these men considered the heroes
of the pioneer days.
Along in the 80s, Brother R.B.
Neal from Kentucky was writing for the Advocate
and he had a series called Saddlebags.
He wrote extensively about Rackham John Smith,
who to him was a pure hero.
So the title, the heroes of the saddlebags.
Let's go back to the time of Joseph Thomas in 1810.
Thomas came from Virginia and North Carolina to
Middle Tennessee, what was then West Tennessee.
While he was on this journey of almost a year,
he wrote a journal.
He kept a journal.
He wrote almost daily in this journal.
By the end of his journey, when he got to
Philadelphia, he had the manuscript ready
and it was published the next year in
Winchester, Virginia.
Thomas traveled through Tennessee, Kentucky,
and Ohio.
He intended when he planned this trip to count
the churches, the preachers, and the members
and to be able to give statistics.
But he said he was not able to do that.
He could not visit every place and he could not
see everybody, he could not attend every
or see every church, visit every church.
But he wanted to assure the people who were
reading his book that he found in this country
7,000 men who had not bowed the knee to Baal.
Yea I may go so far as to say there are at this
time 13,000 people and 117 ordained preachers
in this western country who distinguish
themselves by the name of Christians who have denied
supremacy and delegated authority in the
church, holding the scriptures as the book of their
discipline, Jesus Christ as their master, and
themselves as brethren.
That's a very significant statement.
If you realize the context of that statement,
you know that that is a most significant statement.
Although Thomas published several names in his
journals, refers to people without giving
their names, he does name a few.
We can put together a list from his writings
that would include Lewis Byrum, Reuben Dooley,
Joel H. Hayden, Rice Haggard, John Mulkey,
David Provence, Colonel James Smith, you don't
know that man and I don't have time to tell you
about him, but he's an interesting man,
Barton W. Stone, and James Reed of Kentucky.
In Tennessee, this man who later became known
as the White Pilgrim, attended a conference,
what he called a social meeting at the old
Hopewell Church on Bledsoe Creek in Sumner
County where there were 21 preachers present.
He doesn't name anyone except Joel Hayden who
had come up from Georgia and was on his
way to Kentucky, so we don't know who these
preachers are.
He names some other preachers in Middle
Tennessee that we have not named here, Brother Adams,
and that's possibly John Adams, who came from
Cane Ridge in 1802.
He mentions her brother Davis near Columbia in
Murray County.
That's possibly Ephraim Davis.
He mentioned her brother Barry in the same area.
Possibly James Barry, maybe Joseph Barry.
Joseph Barry was later, these men in early
times were all, Joseph, the whole Barry family
had a lot of preachers in their relationship.
Now, if Thomas had designed a list of men whom
he considered to be unfaithful men, he
would have excluded men like Richard McNamara,
James Hughes, or I mean Hugh Andrews, I'm
sorry, Robert Marshall, and John Thompson
because these men insisted upon the stone
churches having more creedal statements and
more organization in order to keep them from
splintering and dividing and being so loose.
They needed more organization, they thought.
But at a great meeting in Bethel, at the Bethel
Church just outside of Lexington, in 1811,
Joseph Thomas attended a meeting in which these
men presented their views and stone
and others presented an opposite view and these
four men did not receive any support
from the rest of the preachers and so they left
and went back to Presbyterianism.
There is another list published by Dr. W.D. Jordan.
He made this list in the winter of 1824 and 1825.
He said, I sat down and just wrote down the
names of preachers I knew personally or ones
of whom I had heard and on that list there are
140 names.
These names coupled with the names published in
Stone's periodical, The Christian Messenger
in the first volume in 1826 when he gives the
list of Tennessee preachers and a list
published sometime later by another person who
talks about preachers in this area.
A book published up in New England by the
Christian Herald, a magazine or a publication
known as the Christian Almanac, gives a number
of names in this same period of time and all
of these total more than 200 men in this area
of Middle Tennessee and Kentucky, Southern
Kentucky, who antedate the time of Alexander Campbell.
So it's no surprise that Campbell's name is not
included in these early lists.
He was simply not around in that time.
There were other men who gave lists.
One of these is James L. Thornberry.
You probably don't know who James Thornberry is.
He was a convert of Stone, baptized by Stone in 1833.
He later went to Transvania University to
become a lawyer, but in association with men
like Jacob Krith Sr. and others, Barton Stone,
he decided to become a preacher and he was
ordained by old brother Jacob Krith Sr. and others.
He gave this list and wrote this about these
early men in the Stone movement.
He lived at the time when Campbell had come on
the scene, but he doesn't include Campbell
in his list of heroes.
He says, some of our most pious and efficient
preachers were of the Stone side, such as
the Rogers, Thomas Smith, Harrison, Osborne,
John Allen Ganow, Thomas Allen, the Palmers.
These were all God-moved, pious, spiritual preachers.
They felt they were moved of God to preach, so
they did not wait for college education
nor salaries made up.
They labored with their hands to make a living,
studied their Bibles at nights, and preached
as they could.
Another brief list and a description of these
early preachers is given to us by Mansell
Matthews, who was baptized by John Mulkey in
Alabama in 1823.
In 1825, he was B.F.
Hall's Timothy.
In the 1880s, he talks about how he was
associated with Barton Stone and Walter Scott,
John T.
Johnson, John Smith, Francis Palmer, the
Mulkeys, Ephraim D. Moore, Abner Hill, Thacker B.
Griffin, and a host of other pioneer preachers
of the Restoration.
Matthews was for more than 60 years a frontier
preacher in Alabama, in West Tennessee, and
in Texas, along the frontier of Texas.
He talks about these early men with whom he associated.
He says, we went and labored without the hope
of earthly reward.
Our lives were freely spent, expecting our
reward beyond the coal river.
Matthews commended David Lipscomb for
Lipscomb's stand and his struggle against the departures
of that time under the name of sanctified
common sense.
He said, your position is right, Brother
Lipscomb, and he encouraged him to go on.
He noted that the churches tend to ignore old
pioneer preachers who, quote, wore coppers
and jean pants, tread down the grass, and swam
watercourses to preach, and now are made
to stand aside.
And the young and stylish with their hair
parted in the middle, who can sport a massive
chain, charm, and diamond ring on the finger,
are those who are fit to advocate the cause
of him who, while the foxes had holes, and the
bird's nest had not where to lay his head.
There are other published lists, one from
Philip Mulkey, writing from way off in Oregon.
He had gone from Kentucky to Missouri and then
up the Oregon Trail, and he saw an article
published by a man about Campbell, and he
thought that this man was a little extreme
on Campbell.
He says, in order to correct the claims of this
article, Brother Campbell only stepped
upon the platform that Martin W. Stone had
erected and was standing on years before.
There was John Mulkey, Ruben Dooley, Daniel
Travis, and others who were all pleading for
the Bible alone.
These fateful men gathered around that standard
a host of young men and old ones who had the
love of God in their hearts, and went forth
without person script, and multitudes bowed
to the scepter of King Emmanuel, and the great
battle for the Bible alone was more than half
fault when Alexander Campbell entered the field.
There was another preacher by the name of John
Steele in the Green River country of
Kentucky, and if anything, the article that
Steele writes really gives us probably the
best picture of those days.
Steele talks about the frontier pioneer of the
Baptists who were associated with Campbell,
but he doesn't mention Campbell.
He says, May we not ask now, in our old days,
where stood the Chris, the Mortons, Smith,
Jacob Warriner, Walters, Sturman, John B. Steele?
With his old brother William D. Jordan in the
Green River and Cumberland River country,
did they not all stand on the Bible alone to
the exclusion of human creeds and human
traditions, and all other humanisms?
And were they not all persecuted and turned out
of the Baptist churches for these things alone?
Now listen to this, and there was earnestness
then, there was love then, there was honesty
then, there was humility then, there was
plainness and simplicity then.
Oh, where have many of these Christian virtues
fled since those days of hard labor?
These old pioneers are now nearly all gone.
In those days and in those times, the preachers
loved each other.
When he talks about the times when the central
church in Cincinnati was built, and they had
this large window at the front, he describes
this building and he says, just give me a
cave to worship in instead of these elaborate
buildings where $140,000 had been spent.
James L. Thornberry was truly a saddlebag preacher.
He came to Texas on several trips and traveled
around and preached.
He went to the lectureship at Thorpe Spring one
year, T.R. Burnett was there, the editor
of the Christian Messenger at Bonham, and he
described Brother Thornberry, he was telling
about all the preachers who were there,
describing them.
He tells where they were from, but he says,
Brother Thornberry is from all over.
His headquarters is in the saddle.
And so, Thornberry describes himself near the
time of his death, I am a harmless wanderer
in my 71st year of life, poor in earthly goods,
and all this because I believe that God put
me in the ministry.
I think my intentions must be sincere.
I from my first years of ministry opposed
making preachers as I was made a lawyer.
And he has some more to say about that a little
later, we will notice this.
Now Campbell is conspicuously absent from these
lists and from any mention by these
men almost, not that they do not think greatly
or highly of Brother Campbell, but they think
of him in a different way.
The early Campbell is the one that they emphasize.
They think about Campbell in the times when he
was editing the Christian Baptist.
So the early Campbell is the Campbell that they
remember, and they even talk about the
Christian Baptist as though it is almost equal
with the Bible.
And they talk about men who were unknown, men
who have risen, who are now preaching
in city churches, holding down these city pulpits.
And they are a type of men unknown in the
Christian Baptist days.
And so you can see that the heroes of these
people, people from the stone tradition were
really these men, Stone himself being the one
who was the epitome of the early type preacher.
Jacob Chris says, Father Stone himself has been
a great missionary through the different
portions and sections of the great valley of
the Mississippi, and has by his privations,
toils, persecutions, and sufferings spread the
gospel through the western states, and
has become a father in our Israel for the rapid
spread of the gospel.
He is now witnessing and reaping the fruits of
his fifty years of labor.
Stone then is the epitome of the frontier
preacher, and he is the model for these men
who lived and were influenced, lived along with
him, and worked with him, and were under
his influence.
Not long before Stone died, he wrote a very
significant article in the messenger in which
he called for a thousand spiritual preachers in
the veil of the Mississippi.
Stone was thinking about the type of preacher
that was necessary for the spread of the gospel
and for the growth of the church, and so he
called for spiritual preachers.
This is a particular type preacher that Stone describes.
He is not like the dandy who is much like the
man that Mansel Matthews described with
his gold chain and with all of his fine dress
and things like this.
He is the man who in poor clothing, he's not
ashamed of his poor clothing if they're clean,
and Stone says that a spiritual preacher
traveling through the world, preaching and
weeping over
sinners in his jean clothes and things that are
very plain, and praying for the lost world
and preaching to the lost world, can accomplish
more than all of the dandy preachers who echo
their staid and cold messages from the pulpits
of that time.
These were men who were frontier, independent,
strongly independent men who loved liberty
and who respected authority, the authority of
God and the authority of scripture.
You might think about liberty as the first idea
that these early movements really were
concerned with.
If you look at the O'Kelly movement in
Virginia, it is a movement that divided or separated
from Methodism because of liberty, because of republicanism.
This was a fight over church government.
This was a fight over the authority of
conferences and general meetings or general conferences.
They broke with Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke
in the Methodist Conference in Baltimore
in 1892, but even earlier than this, they had
had trouble with the question of liberty
and authority.
They proceeded to separate from these people
who organized themselves in 1784 into the
Methodist Episcopal Church, but even four years
earlier than that, they were protesting against
the ecclesiasticism of the Methodist people as
they were in this formative period of organizing
in America after the revolution.
This eventually becomes the Methodist Episcopal
Church with Francis Asbury as the bishop.
Even men in Europe were astounded at what had
happened in America.
John Wesley, and especially Charles Wesley, was
very, very concerned about what had happened
in America.
He wrote about what had happened to Francis
Asbury when he had been made a bishop.
He writes in a very satirical way about Francis Asbury.
I do not read the poem that he wrote, but there
is liberty written all over the things
that you read in the history of this.
Let me read to you again from Joseph Thomas,
the man who came from the east to the west.
When he came into the western country, he
talked about how these people had tasted the
sweets of Christian liberty.
He wrote about freedom and liberty, the
glorious freedom of the people of God.
This is what he felt while he was among these
people in Kentucky and Tennessee.
The issue of slavery was addressed by him.
Here are his words that he talks about freedom
from a religious standpoint and from the standpoint
of the freedom of man, the freedom of the black man.
In a word, where he puts liberty, in a word,
nothing is more desirable to me than liberty,
that liberty which frees both body and mind.
This is the glorious liberty of the children of God.
There is no respecter of persons with God if
God makes me who has a white skin free
from sin and all kinds of grievous bondage.
God delivers another having a black skin and
brings him in to enjoy the same liberty.
If I take advantage of him and bring him under
the yoke of grievous servitude, I deprive
him of that which I esteem as dear and precious
as life.
Consequently, if I take him from his liberty, I
take from him his life by killing him with
the tedious round of 30 or 40 years hard labor
and sometimes extreme poverty.
These people believed in Christian and
religious liberty.
This was the foremost thing in their minds.
So he describes the people in the West as the
people who were a free people and they
acquire this freedom through the process that
we know about, began in the revivals, continues
in the separation of the stone people from the
Synod of Kentucky, and also the visit
by Rice Haggard to Kentucky in 1804.
This was a very significant event and Thomas
talks about this visit in April of 1804.
He says that Rice Haggard came to the Bethel
Meeting House, and that meeting house is still
standing seven miles west of Kentucky.
Rice Haggard, you remember, had made the
suggestion to the O'Kelly people in 1794 at Old Lebanon
near a Surrey courthouse in Virginia that they
just take the New Testament, which he
held up, and use it as their authority.
This book, he says, tells me that the early
Christians were called Christians only, and
I move that his people be called simply by that name.
There are two propositions made on that occasion.
The same two propositions are made by Rice
Haggard ten years later at Bethel in Kentucky
to the stone people.
Now this was in April of 1804.
These people at Bethel evidently accepted Rice
Haggard's proposals.
Thomas says they did.
Now there must have been a man there by the
name of Richard McNemar, and we don't know
what all was going through McNemar's mind, but
from April until June something was going on.
The stone preachers appointed a meeting at Old
Keene Ridge, and when they came together
on that occasion in June of 1804, Richard
McNemar brought a document called The Last
Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery.
I think that document was conceived after the
visit of Rice Haggard, and that Rice Haggard
was responsible for that document.
Joseph Thomas talks about the visit of Rice
Haggard, and he says, soon after this they
met at Keene Ridge, and they signed this last
will and testament.
He wants the world to know about this will and
testament of the presbytery.
He says that these people wrote these two items.
He talks about the use of the name Christian
and the scriptures as authority, but he quotes
an item which says, we will, that our power in
making laws for the government of the church,
and executing them by delegated authority,
forever cease, that the people may have free
course to the Bible and adopt the law of the
spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
In this curious and singular manner they made
their will, and the body died in ease without
a groan or struggle.
No one was seen to cry or shed a tear at the
loss of this respected friend.
There is one resolve made in this publication
which should be recorded in church history,
and kept in memory by all who love religious
liberty to the latest generation.
Here is the item.
We will, that each particular church is a body
actuated by the same spirit, choose her
own preacher, and support him by a free will
offering without written call or subscription,
admit members, remove offenses, and never
henceforth delegate her right of government
to any man or set of men.
You see how this idea of liberty and the
authority of scripture was so much a part of
the O'Kelly
movement, and then next as they merged with the
Stone Movement becomes a part of the whole
Christian connection movement.
So these people had had experience with liberty
and authority long time before Campbell ever
heard these words, because it was before
Alexander Campbell was born.
And so when Campbell comes on the scene and
talks about liberty and authority coming from
the background of the Enlightenment, from the
common sense reasoning that he has, he
is coming from a different world, he is a
different kind of thinker than these men are.
They associate liberty with independence, a
radical independence, a frontier independence,
a congregationalism where no one dictates
anything to them, they are all free under God.
Joseph Thomas would have this item preserved
for the last generation so that church history
might have this recorded, he wanted it to be
mentioned and quoted again.
So he says these men in the West came to the
Christian plan.
They never would have had Bryce Haggard unite
with them that year had they not done so.
Neither would they have had the unity that
emerges, that comes about from other men who
came West like James Reed and Clement Nance and
Abel Olive and a brother Pope and others
from the Eastern movement who joined with them
and became a united people.
Now the people in New England were also uniting
with the people in the Virginias, they had
some problems but the authority here was the
Bible, that was the issue, sprinkling and
emersion became an issue. OK.
Thank you.
An immersionist was at a conference in Virginia
where James O'Kelly was present in 189 or 10.
They had a disagreement over sprinkling and immersion.
O'Kelly never accepted immersion.
He refused to accept immersion, and he rejected
the merger with the New England people because
of their immersion.
And when he and Guiry got in this argument over
it, O'Kelly says,
Who rules this meeting? You or I?
And Guiry says, Neither one of us, brother,
Christ rules here.
These people used the term Bible government.
And they were willing to submit to the
government of God.
That's the only government there was as far as
they were concerned.
And as Richard talked about yesterday, there
really is just one government.
There really is just one king.
And we must submit to him.
This sovereign will of God, this sovereign king
is the one to whom we must submit.
And our allegiance is to him and to him alone.
So when Campbell comes to publish the Christian
Baptist, he of course at that time was a Baptist.
And he evidently was in agreement with the
Baptist Association arrangements.
You remember the statement that Campbell makes
in the Christian Baptist when he says,
He never thought to add to the number of
Christian sects.
You remember that statement?
Do you know what he says before that and after that?
He says, I'm a Baptist and I intend to stay one.
So he's not going to add to that.
But in two years he's out of the Baptist Church.
He's in the Mahoning Baptist Association.
And at their 18 and 30 meeting, they decide to
dissolve their associational relationship.
And Campbell doesn't like this.
The old man who makes the motion on that
occasion is John Henry, a preacher on the
Western Reserve in Ohio.
He was a very independent man, a man who
believed in independence.
He had had a Presbyterian background.
His father wanted him to make a Presbyterian preacher.
Before he had a chance to do that, somebody
converted him and baptized him and he became a
frontier preacher.
A splendid preacher.
Something of an unusual man.
He could play nine different instruments.
He could quote the Bible.
He is known as the walking Bible.
And he could speak 300 words without a comma,
they said.
Campbell said that of that kind of preacher,
Campbell spoke about him when he died about 1844.
He said, of that kind of preacher, there was
none who excelled him.
But you notice he says that kind of preacher.
And he was by some considered a better preacher
than Campbell.
On one occasion, the two went to a place to preach.
Both of them were scheduled to preach.
And the people in the congregation didn't know
either one of them.
And so they didn't know who was speaking.
Campbell spoke first.
And they were not enjoying that Sermon.
They said, why doesn't that man sit down?
So that Campbell can preach.
We want to hear him.
Well, that was Campbell preaching.
But on that occasion, they liked the Sermon
that John Henry preached.
On one occasion, John Henry was holding a
meeting in a community.
And he was trying to get a neighbor of his to
come and hear it.
He invited him to come.
And the man said, I don't have any shoes to
wear at a meeting.
Henry said, sit up to my house and I'll send
you a pair of shoes.
You don't have any excuse.
I'll send you a pair of shoes.
And so in a little while, a young man came and
Henry gave him the shoes and he carried them back.
The man came to meeting that night.
John Henry came barefooted and preached.
The man wore his shoes to the meeting.
So these early men, it was this man, John
Henry, that made the motion to dissolve the
Mahoning Association.
And Campbell was disappointed.
Then Campbell spends 20 years developing an
idea of cooperation at a level above the
congregation, a senatorial government of the church.
There is a series that begins shortly after the
Mahoning Association meeting.
There's another series through the 30s.
In the 38, there was the series on the
senatorial government.
In November of 41, he begins another series of
16 articles.
And then at the end of the 40s, he has still
another series leading up to the organization
of the American Christian Missionary Society.
This is the issue, liberty and authority.
Campbell believed in liberty, but he thought
the liberty was something that needed to be controlled.
He didn't like all of the individualism and all
of the independence on the frontier.
He didn't like all of the periodicals that were
being spawned.
And so he objected to all of this.
And when he talked about this organization, he
really was rationalizing.
He was trying to make a case for something
other than congregational independence, the
strong, radical congregationalism of the Stone people.
And the Stone people resisted this.
When Campbell wrote about organization, Stone complained.
He asked, what is all of this writing about organization?
What we need today is the Spirit of Christ.
What we need today is the love for one another.
This will make the Church grow.
We don't need organization to do that.
You couldn't make the Church grow with
organization if you didn't have love for the
Spirit, having the Spirit to prompt and to
guide us.
We can't be united unless we're spiritual.
And so Stone really disagrees with this
approach or with the coming organization that
he sees looming on the horizon.
And Campbell, you remember, uses the term
disciple with a big D and insists that this be
the name.
And Stone objects because this is a different
use of the term disciple than is made in Scripture.
And so there are a number of men that object to
this, that object to Stone, I mean to Campbell
and his use of the word disciple.
And there are men who object to Campbell and
his writing about this in the periodicals as
they object to the conferences.
The Stone people had objected to this in the
Christian connection arrangement, in the
Christian connection churches back in the late 20s.
They sought to bring about a general conference
among the Christian connection churches.
But they were opposed by the people in Kentucky
and Tennessee.
And so the opposition to Campbell on the
organization and the opposition to him over
sectarian use of the term disciple was very,
very strong.
And this is where some of the Stone preachers
speak out so strongly against Campbell.
W.D. Jordan says back in the time when the
Christian connection tried to bring about
organization of a national nature, he says,
But my mind is roused up, he's writing to John
Allen Gignot in Kentucky,
knowing that the spirit that now exists among
the brethren, the Christian connection, now
trying to set on foot a general conference.
When this is properly done, the ruling of the
Church of Christ is at least begun or accomplished.
The next step will be to make laws and next to
enforce them.
First, they will want only an annual conference.
And now one step higher, they must have a
general conference.
For Jesus' sake, beware of conference. I
greatly confide in you.
We Tennesseans are determined to oppose all
conferences of business at the risk of our lives.
Will you stand with us?
When Stone wrote about the name Christian in
opposition to what Campbell said,
there are others who join him, John Allen
Gignot, Brother T.M. Allen, and Brother Talbert Fanning.
They write about Campbell's writings.
Brother Allen says, I wish Campbell would quit
as an editor. He's through.
His writings on the name disciple and his
objection to the use of the name Christian is
not biblical.
He's through as an editor.
Talbert Fanning wrote to his brother-in-law,
Philip Fall, and he says,
What do you think about Brother Campbell's
latest on the name?
He says, I scarcely believe a word of it.
And they objected to Campbell's writing in the
Christian system, all of his theological ideas
that were there, speculations.
The terminology was not biblical terminology.
T.M. Allen says, for that reason, I would not
buy it.
So you see, from the Stone people, you have
this strong opposition to Campbell.
When the Ecclesiastic Reformer edited by Carol
Kendrick wrote about the coming meeting in Cincinnati,
he says there are many people that are opposed
to this. He encouraged people to go.
He was planning to go, but there were many who
were not going, but he wanted to go.
And he says, if there's any calf that is raised
up, I want to be there to kill it.
One old brother says that if that meeting did
not enter a wedge, it came close to it.
These men were all predicting division.
They saw that division was coming. Carol
Kendrick says, I have long thought that we
would be a divided people.
He could see from association with the early
Stone people and with the Campbell people that
this is certainly inevitable
because they were a very different people.
And so the great difference over liberty and
authority between Campbell and Stone,
it's rather subtle in Campbell, even in the
Christian Baptist, some think.
For this reason, they try to make the case that
Campbell is right when he says later,
and he approves societies and colleges and
things like this.
He didn't change because he opposed the
Mahoning Association being dissolved.
And so he accepted this delegated assembly,
assembly of delegates from the churches,
and this evolves into the Missionary Society.
But Stone would not enter into that.
His close associates thought, Brother Taylor
from over in Missouri says, now that Stone is
out of the way,
he's writing to Jacob Prince, he says, now that
Brother Stone is out of the way,
I'm afraid that many things will be tried that
would not have been tried if he were still here.
And he says, Brother Chris, you must oppose
these things and you must contradict these things.
And so, you see, the difference between
Campbell and Stone preachers and Campbell and
the Stone men who survived Stone
was very sharp. Their differences were very
evident when you read some of their personal
letters and things like this.
In the discussion between Campbell and Stone on
atonement, there is a very obvious difference
between Campbell and Stone.
Doug mentioned this morning about in the
Enlightenment there was the use of reason.
And this use of reason, of course, was
different from what was natural, you see.
Stone and the old Kelly people were strong individually.
And they believed that what was natural, what
men could do from their own observations and so on,
what men were able to accomplish was, of
course, very important when it was from Heaven
or directed from the Scriptures.
But Campbell uses reason and logic and they objected.
Let me read to you some of the things that were
said when they were writing about atonement.
Campbell talks about the death of Christ and he
uses a speech which Stone says is not biblical.
He says, Do, Brother Campbell, let us use pure
speech or Bible language.
What you're using is of Ashdod.
Repeatedly, Stone expressed the view that he
understood Campbell's views as those stated in
the old orthodox system.
And he says, Where is this in the Bible?
I dare not be wise above what is written.
He calls Campbell's statements conjecture and
speculation repugnant to the plain Scriptures.
He said, Let this be established, what you're
saying, let this be established by divine Scripture.
And I yield to the old orthodoxy.
He says, This is not from divine revelations
which we have received.
He calls Campbell's statements speculations
novel, entirely unsatisfactory, unsupported by
one writer in the Bible.
Where in the Scriptures, he says?
There is certainly no testimony nor information
concerning this in the Bible.
Campbell's position is indefensible by the Scriptures.
One of the statements of Campbell, he says, is
the most unguarded expression I ever saw.
He objected to the non-Biblical terms, and so
did Rogers and D. Pat Henderson.
You see, these men had agreed to unite with
Campbell on the platform of calling Bible
things by Bible names, and Campbell had
forgotten that.
John Rogers reminds him of that.
He reminds him that his phraseology is not scriptural.
No scriptural idea can be attached to it.
It is not the use of such language then clearly
a violation of Brother Campbell's own plan for
putting down division.
And so he said, I could multiply specimens of
such unscriptural style.
What are they doing?
They're objecting to Campbell's logic, you see,
the use of logic.
Pat Henderson said, Where is the burning zeal,
the true devotion of the early days of union?
Echoes answer, Where are they?
They appear to have fled with the New Life-ism
of former days, and to have left in their place
the love of the world, the love of debate, and
a cold, dull, speculative, philosophic religion.
He's talking about Campbell.
A change, alas, how great!
I repeat, we united upon facts, not opinions.
Our opinions and speculations were to be held
as private opinion.
Henderson added, The only way to remedy the
evil is to speak out at once, as you have done.
He's writing about stone.
Era always creeps and crawls at first.
It cannot stand up and look one full in the face.
So departures from facts to opinions, and from
faith to inferences, from time to time.
So it will argue, and Era will soon stand
alone, will soon walk, and make its appearance
dressed to suit the taste of the times.
So you see there is a great difference between
the Piet-ism of the stone people and the
Campbell people, and you have so much tension
in all of these words expressed in these words.
So these men were men who came to the middle of
the century, really to a time when there was
great tension.
Someone said that before the Civil War came, we
were a dividing people.
I think the Civil War just slowed it down.
Somebody said we divided over the Civil War.
There were some divisions, of course, during
that time, but the Civil War just slowed it
down, slowed down the division, really.
So you can see, if you look at stone and think
about the 30 years between the death of stone
and the time when David Lipscomb was living and
working in Tennessee,
you see a 30-year period that represents really
a very critical time in the Church.
By the time you get to the 1870s, the Church in
Tennessee is growing more rapidly than any
religious body had ever grown.
It attracted the attention of Beecher and the
Christian Union Magazine, the National
Religious Magazine.
And Beecher says that the churches of Christ in
Middle Tennessee are growing faster than any
religious group has ever grown.
And yet the missionary people were totally
ignoring this, and they were calling these men
croakers and donkeys.
Loose them and let them go!
And James Thornberry says they'd better be
careful how they refer to God's preachers.
Thornberry went to a meeting in 1850 in
Kentucky, a state meeting.
The stone people had had meetings throughout
the years, I guess from the time of 1804, 1803.
They'd had these annual meetings where they
enjoyed each other's fellowship and company.
But at the 1850 meeting, Campbell was there,
and so was John Allen Ganot.
Thornberry was there, and he heard Campbell
stand up and say,
Not enough just to hand a man the Bible, he
needs to have a college education.
And brother Allen mentioned to James Thornberry that,
I'm afraid that our meetings will never be the
same anymore.
I'm afraid that if we think that we have to
have men run through a college,
that God won't send us any more men like Stone
and Johnson and Raccoon Smith.
And Thornberry says when he writes about these
years later, he hasn't sent us any more men
like that.
Well, there's a great deal of difference, but I
want you to see how these men in the stone movement
really were the men who built the church on the
frontier and resisted.
If you look at the American literature in the
19th century,
you have a lot of this in that literature of
James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain even,
and others like the literature, the novels of
the 19th century, the frontier hero.
Well, really the preacher in the frontier and
the churches of Christ in the early restoration movement
have many, many of the characteristics of the
frontier heroes of these novels of the 19th century.
And so they were a frontier church,
individuals, strongly individual and strongly congregational,
and they resisted the culture. You can see all
of this in the early development.
These men were men who looked at themselves as
God's men and God's preachers.
They went without food many times, without
support to preach and to spread the gospel.
So these are the heroes of the generation of
Lipscomb's time.
And oh, they look at Campbell, the early
Campbell. They think of him as he wrote in the
Christian Baptist.
He is their kind of man there, but he is not
the kind of man,
that kind of man when he progresses and becomes
a different kind of person.
I think that these people certainly came
together in the stone movement with other people
because they had a formula and had an attitude
that worked to bring about union.
Stone is involved in a number of unions.
But I ask you to think, was Campbell ever
involved in the unions that the stone people
were involved in?
How many times did Campbell ever bring about a union?
Well, you could say that the union between him
and the stone people was one, but there isn't
any other.
He was a great reformer of the Baptist.
But Stone and those men knew what the union was.
From a practical standpoint, they knew what
would work.
And they said it's not organization. It's not
that we need delegated authority.
We need the spirit of God and we need the love
of God.
Stone has this dialogue with the old preacher
and the young preacher.
They were talking about conferences and this
young preacher said, Brother Stone, it seems
like you're opposed to these conferences, are you?
He said, no, not really.
He says, are you going to go to this conference
that we're planning in Illinois?
Yeah, I'm going to go. Why are you going to go?
Why? He said, I'm going to go because it's an
opportunity to teach these people.
Teach them that they need the love of God and
the spirit of God and the zeal of God and they
need the spirit of God.
He says, what we really need is to have a
conference where we pray for the Holy Spirit.
I'd like to attend a conference like that
before I die.
So I say to you that these men in the tradition
that we've talked about for these two days were
great spiritual men.
They were spiritual giants really in that time.
And they moved the people and baptized
thousands and thousands of people.
They were not so eloquent people in their preaching.
But they were men who were plain and honest and
sincere, as John Steele says.
They were sincere then. They had love then.
And they brought the people to conviction and
they converted these people.
And they pled for these old days and wanted
them to come back.
Well, that's enough for this time.