Ancestors (14 page)

This time he didn’t take it back.

During the period when things were going well for him, Thomas Campbell instructed his family to join him in America. His letter, written in January, was delivered in March, and there was a further delay when the younger children came down with smallpox.

It was the beginning of October when the family embarked, on a sailing vessel that could hardly have escaped disaster. The crew was young and inexperienced, the captain was a drunkard. The ship was blown off its course by adverse winds and ended up off the island of Islay in the Hebrides. The captain ran it into a crooked inlet and, even though he was warned that many vessels had been wrecked
there, dropped anchor and waited for the wind to change, so he could return to the open sea.

On the evening of the third day, Alexander Campbell fell asleep over a book in his cabin and dreamed that the ship struck a rock and filled with water, and that he had to make the most strenuous exertions to save his family and secure their luggage. On waking, he felt the force of the dream so strongly that he said, “I will not undress tonight. I will lay my shoes within my reach, and be ready to rise at a moment’s warning; and I would advise you all to be prepared for an emergency.” A few hours later, the wind shifted, and the ship dragged its anchors and was dashed against a sunken rock and went clear over on its side. The sailors cut away the masts, and the ship partly righted itself, but then began to fill with water, and one has the feeling of having read the whole thing before, in Act I of Shakespeare’s
The Tempest.
While the wild waters were in a roar and the sea mounting to the welkin’s cheek and the passengers with whatever baggage they could rescue were crowded on the upper deck, young Alexander Campbell, having done all he could for the safety of his family, sat on the stump of a broken mast, Richardson says, and abandoned himself to reflection. “In the near prospect of death he felt, as never before, the vanity of life. The world now seemed a worthless void.… He thought of his father’s noble life, dedicated to God and the salvation of his fellow-beings,” and made up his mind to devote his life also to this elevated and most worthy calling.

The captain managed to get ashore in a rowboat, but he was so drunk nobody believed his story until daylight, when the islanders could see that a ship had run aground. They began to gather upon the beach, and by means of a rope line managed to get a boat out to the ship; the passengers were brought to shore, women and children first—but only, Richardson
says, because “the more resolute, drawing their swords, stood at the gangway and threatened to cut down any man that dared to go until the weaker portion of the passengers were landed.”

Wading ashore through the surf, Alexander found his mother and the children all safe, and they rejoiced together at their merciful deliverance. He then “repaired with the family to the nearest and most respectable house he saw,” where they were warmly received by a widow lady with a respectable fortune and several grown-up daughters. Her husband, a clergyman, was said to have translated from the Gaelic many of the poems of Ossian. “This lady’s maiden name was Campbell, and when it was discovered that her guests were of that name, she, as well as all the rest of the people, seemed to redouble her attentions, for as it now appeared, instead of going to America, they had been thrown directly among the Campbells of Argyleshire, from whom they deduced their lineage.… Warmed, dried and refreshed, along with many others of the passengers they proceeded to the town, which was about two miles off, where they obtained lodgings in the house of a Mr. McCallister. Here they meditated with grateful hearts upon the eventful scenes through which they had just passed, and recalling the premonition given by Alexander, were assured by him that the reality, as it occurred, was precisely what appeared to him in the forewarning.… He was a firm believer in special providences.… With him, these were simply facts, which he did not pretend to explain upon natural principles, but regarded as indications of God’s watchful care and interest in the affairs of his people.”

For some days afterwards he went back to the wreck, as often as the weather permitted, and recovered what books and clothing had not been washed overboard. The laird of the island, impressed by the young man’s water-logged books
—chiefly works of theology—and by his good manners, invited him to his house and treated him like a relative. The schoolmaster was equally kind.

It was too late in the year to risk a second voyage and Alexander saw in their misfortune an opportunity until now denied him: They would spend the winter in Glasgow, where he could attend the university. From the islanders he obtained several letters of introduction, one of which was to the Reverend Greville Ewing, and it changed the course of his life.

In the 18th and 19th centuries there were upwards of forty small movements, none of them separate churches, that were bent on restoring in a more literal and precise way the simple patterns of early Christianity, and Ewing was at the center of a movement of this kind. As a young man he had wanted to introduce Christianity among the natives of Bengal, but the East India Company was uncooperative and the project had to be abandoned. When Alexander Campbell arrived in Glasgow, Ewing was conducting a religious seminary and preaching regularly to audiences of sometimes two thousand people, in a huge building that had originally housed a circus. He was a brilliant lecturer and a most kind and generous and openhearted man. He found better accommodations for the shipwrecked family and became Alexander’s mentor and friend. At Ewing’s house he met and became acquainted with other students and professors of the university, preachers of all sorts and kinds, and many persons of respectability. He had left a country village for the largest and wealthiest city in Scotland, where he found himself not only taken in but a family pet in the household of a man of importance.

He was already a member of the Seceder Church in Ireland, and he felt it his duty, while he was in Glasgow, to unite with the Scottish Seceder Church. He had no letter,
and therefore had to appear before the elders and be examined. His answers were satisfactory, but he was of two minds about the step he was about to take. One cannot travel, let alone go through a shipwreck, without having one’s mind opened to new ideas. At Ewing’s house, Alexander Campbell heard a good deal of talk about the behavior of the clergy of established denominations—how they were consistently opposed to any attempt at reformation, and how they often resorted to unscrupulous methods to hinder the progress of propositions they did not hold with. And he came to share Ewing’s belief that a religious congregation wholly independent and free from the dominating control of Synods and General Assemblies was much more in accord with the way things were in the primitive church. At the last minute, during communion service, he decided that the Seceder Church was not the Church of Christ, and he got up and walked out.

In America, Thomas Campbell continued to preach in the houses of a few loyal friends, mostly in the neighborhood of Washington. They had no intention of founding a new religion, Richardson says, but they felt themselves slowly drifting away from familiar teachings and in need of a clearer understanding of the course they ought to pursue. They met to consider the questions. “Thomas Campbell, having opened the meeting in the usual manner, and, in earnest prayer, especially invoked the Divine guidance, proceeded to rehearse the matter from the beginning, and to dwell with unusual force upon the manifold evils resulting from the divisions of religious society—divisions which, he urged, were as unnecessary as they were injurious.… Finally … he went on to announce, in the most simple and emphatic terms, the great principle or rule upon which he understood they were acting and … would continue
to act … WHERE THE SCRIPTURES SPEAK, WE SPEAK: AND WHERE THE SCRIPTURES ARE SILENT, WE ARE SILENT.

“Never before had religious duty been presented to them in so simple a form.… It was to many of them as a new revelation … for ever engraven upon their hearts. Henceforth, the plain and simple teaching of the Word of God itself was to be their guide. God himself should speak to them, and they should receive and repeat his words alone.”

It was quite some time before anyone presumed to break the silence. At length, Andrew Monro, who was a bookseller and postmaster at Canonsburg, said, “Mr. Campbell, if we adopt
that
as a basis, then there is an end to infant baptism.” Profound sensation. “If infant baptism be not found in the Scripture,” Thomas Campbell said, “we can have nothing to do with it.” Thomas Acheson, greatly excited, laying his hand on his heart, exclaimed, “I hope I may never see the day when my heart will renounce that blessed saying of the Scripture, ‘Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven,’ ” and burst into tears. Whereupon James Foster cried, “Mr. Acheson, I would remark that in the portion of the Scriptures you have quoted
there is no reference, whatever, to infant baptism.
” Mr. Acheson left the meeting to weep alone, and the proposal was unanimously adopted.

Subsequently Thomas Campbell prepared a “Declaration and Address of the Christian Association of Washington” which, when printed in the office of the local newspaper, was a pamphlet of fifty-six closely spaced pages. It and “The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery” are the two basic documents of the Christian Church. The “Declaration” assumes that it is possible to have a simple and evangelical Christianity derived entirely from the Scriptures; that the individual person has a right to interpret the
Bible for himself; and that when this right is recognized there will be unity among all the Christian churches. What is “expressly revealed and enjoined” in the Scriptures—such as, for example, the form of worship—does not require interpretation and should simply be obeyed.

The Address begins: “Dearly Beloved Brethren, That it is the grand design and native tendency, of our holy religion, to reconcile and unite men to God, and to each other, in truth and love, to the glory of God, and their own present and eternal good, will not, we presume, be denied, by any of the genuine subjects of Christianity;” and goes on to list thirteen propositions that have to do with building a united church and the formation of similar associations devoted to the same principles.

The Postscript contains this most admirable sentence, “Our dear brethren, of all denominations, will please to remember, that we have our educational prejudices, and peculiar customs to struggle against as well as they.”

Early in October Thomas Campbell had word that his family had landed in New York, and were going by stagecoach to Philadelphia, and had made arrangements with a wagoner to convey them from there to Washington—a distance of about three hundred and fifty miles.

Sometimes walking and sometimes riding in the wagon that conveyed their luggage, Alexander and his mother and the six younger children pursued their westward way across ridge after ridge of the Allegheny Mountains. They were enchanted by the wild and romantic character of the landscape and by the colors of the autumn foliage. When they first reached the country of extensive, unbroken forest, Alexander was so excited that he went for an evening walk. “Returning to the hotel, he found that all its inmates had retired to rest, a light having been left for him upon the
table. Upon attempting to fasten the door, he was surprised to find it without lock or bolt, and with nothing but a latch, as he perceived was also the case with the door of his sleeping apartment.” Lying in bed, he concluded that in the New World, robbery and injustice were unknown, because here you had a purely Protestant community.

Richardson describes the inns of the period as “very spacious and comfortable buildings, and abundantly provided with all necessary comforts for the traveler. They were sometimes frame buildings, with long capacious porches in front and rear. Others were built with a species of blue limestone, which, contrasting with the white mortar between the blocks, and the white window frames and green Venetian shutters, produced a pleasing effect, and formed solid and substantial structures. On the opposite side of the road were usually placed the spacious stables, sheds, and other outbuildings required for the accommodation of teamsters; and, near at hand, was the immense wooden trough, into which poured constantly, from a hydrant, a stream of pure water, carried under the ground in wooden pipes from a spring upon the side of the neighboring hill. As the hotel stood back some distance from the road, abundant room was left, in the wide recess, thus formed for the wagons and other vehicles, from which the horses were disengaged. The interior of the hotel itself was usually plain, but commodious—a bar-room, connected with a dining room, and this with the kitchen, on one side of a wide hall; and, upon the other, the parlors for the better sort of guests. These were entirely covered with carpeting of domestic manufacture. At other times, only the middle portions were thus covered, the rest of the floor being strewed with white sand, arranged in curving lines and forming various patterns, according to the taste of the tidy hostess. In some cases, the white sand was used as an entire substitute for carpeting, and gritted unpleasantly beneath the feet. Above stairs were usually the comfortable sleeping
apartments. At this period hotels of this character could be found every ten or twenty miles …”

When they were about three days’ journey from Washington, Thomas Campbell’s family stopped for the night at just such an inn. He himself slept at another, to the west of them. Early in the morning he started on and met his family a short while after he left the inn. He “kissed and embraced them all with the utmost tenderness. When Jane was presented to him, so much changed in appearance by the effect of the small-pox that he would not have recognized her, he said, as he took her into his arms, ‘And is this my little whitehead?’ a phrase of endearment amongst the Irish, and kissing her affectionately, gave thanks to God for her recovery.”

All that day, and the next, and the next, they talked. He told them about the wilderness they were coming to, and they told him about their voyages, and about Glasgow, and Mr. Ewing’s kindness to them, and the last news they had had from home. At some point he got around to telling Alexander about the Declaration and Address, but he could not do this without also explaining the circumstances in which they had been written. Leaving out as much as possible of the animosity he had met with—for he wanted his family to like their new home—he presented rather fully the background of his withdrawal from the Seceder Church. As he did this, he was aware that Alexander kept opening his mouth as if there was something he wanted to say.