The Missouri Oath and A. Campbell

It is a melancholy fact that at this moment, and for long months past, the preaching of the gospel has been almost hushed in the state of Missouri, by the oath prescribed for preachers in the so-called Constitution of that State. Of this Constitution itself we not propose to speak. Whether legitimately, or not, the supreme law of the State is a question foreign to the objects of this paper. The question with the Christian is not how it became the law, but is it so in fact. Assuming this question to be, in the case in hand, settled, our first inquiry respects the nature of the restriction imposed.

Christ expressly declares that all authority in heaven and on earth is given into his hands. He further tells us that his kingdom is not of this world; and by the Holy Spirit has laid down the qualifications of those who are to preach, and assigned them the work they are to do. Now this Constitution, falsely claiming to be ordained and established by the people, in effect sets all this at defiance. It claims for the State, first, the right in general to interfere in matters of religion, and to regulate them. Otherwise, of course, it would never have exercised that right in the specific case in hand. Is this, its daring claim, just? If the State have the right to interfere and determine the conditions on which men shall be competent to teach and preach the gospel, then has the State the right to determine what the gospel is, and who is competent to obey it. For what the gospel is, is not more clearly determined by Christ, nor is the right to obey it any more indisputably derived from him than is the duty to teach it and preach it. Clearly the State of Missouri has just the same right to say who is competent to obey the gospel that it has to say who shall preach it. Not only so, but this Constitution claims for the State, second, the right positively to annul a solemn arrangement of Jesus Christ. Christ has ordained that certain men shall preach the gospel and live by it. But this Constitution says they shall “not be competent” thereto, except on a condition which it claims the right to lay down. A more insolent and heaven-daring usurpation the annals of States can not furnish. Let the State, ruled as it usually is, now-a-days, by its worst men, begin the work of setting aside the enactments of Christ, and where, in dread we may well ask, will its work end? When German atheists and frenzied upstarts, yclept politicians, conduct the process, it is not difficult, in the dark shadows of the past, to forecast the end. Until, then, brethren in Christ get their consent to see their Master’s appointments interfered with, his authority annulled, and his servants stricken down while in the discharge of their duties, I see not how [130] they can ever get their consent to take the oath herein alluded to. When they do so, they recognize a principle which, when carried out to its full extent, brings back the days of the Inquisition.

That Christ never yet established a government, or sanctioned the enactment of a law, to interfere with the preaching of the gospel, has for my mind all the force of an intuition. That the constitutional oath of Missouri does so interfere can not be denied. I hence conclude that it not only has not the sanction of Christ, but that his detestation lies on it. From this I conclude it to be the solemn duty of every child of God in the State to resist the law, at least to the full extent of utterly refusing to take it. But now arises this question: Shall the preacher still continue to preach? I answer, he should not be silent one day. That he may choose between the only two alternatives left—leaving the State, or suffering—is, I deem, clearly allowed him by the Book. Still, while I would advise the former, I should certainly prefer to see the latter. And though incapable of wishing any human being harm, I wish that every preacher, elder, and deacon within the limits of the State were this day in prison, each for discharging the duties of his office in defiance of the oath. This I wish, not because I wish to see any one suffer, but because I want the world and heaven to gaze on the workings of this Constitution. As the case now stands, its enormities are not seen. Some preachers leave, others are silent, and a few take the oath. Thus the infamy of the thing is seen only in its lettering, and not read in the deep and shocking distress it is calculated to work. Five hundred preachers, the purest men in the State, in jail, with all their scanty earnings dragged to the sheriff’s block, would be well calculated to wake the slumbering Americans to the thing they are either smiling or winking at. That such a scene would gladden the hearts of the Dutch atheists and other unfeeling tools who enacted the law we can easily believe; but millions of the good of earth would look on in horror. Still, while I say these things, I do not forget how easy it is to talk, but how hard to suffer. They are meant to be no reflection upon the conduct of any.

But my object on sitting down was not to argue the case of this odious law, nor even to state the case at any length. I had a different object in view, but inadvertently have been led into these rambling thoughts.

Many of the preachers of Missouri were born and raised in the South; their kin were all in the South; their sympathies from infancy had been with it; their ideas were formed in it and derived from it; and with it were bound up all the home feelings of their hearts. They did not look upon the action of the South as being of the nature of a rebellion. They regarded it as being wholly of the nature of a revolution. They deemed that its object was not in the least to interfere with the [131] laws and institutions of the adhering States, but to form a more congenial government in the seceding ones. This they believed the people of the South had the right to do. For if not, they argued, on what ground is the great American Revolution of 1776 to be justified? If our fathers were right then, how, said they, can the people of the South be wrong now? Now grant that in all this they may have been wrong; and the claim of infallibility has not been urged for them, still on a thousand scores they are entitled to this, that they were honest and sincere. Some of these preachers were among the first to lift their voices, west of the great Mississippi, in defense of the primitive gospel. They were venerable for their age and life-long devotion to the cause of Christ. Others still, in the prime of life, were, amid want and other hostile circumstances, spending the prayers of their hearts and the energies of their brains in the same great cause. In a few years they had increased the Lord’s people to little, if any, less than thirty thousand. They were united and sound. Never were preachers more so. They loved each other as brethren should, and worked as only heroes do. They were intensely devoted to their beloved Missouri, and still more so to her beloved children. They took no part in the war; for this they conscientiously believed Christians may not do. They were neither rebellious nor disloyal; for this they knew the Word of God did not permit them to be; and they were men scrupulous even in the smallest matters. If they had sympathies with the South, they kept them to themselves; and while they steadily worked for Christ, they religiously gave tribute to whom tribute was due, and honor to whom honor. They neither fomented strife at home, nor shouted over the slaughter of their countrymen elsewhere. They fervently prayed for peace; yet they committed their cause to God, and in their heart wished that his will might be done. They mourned over the desolations of Zion, and strove night and day to check them. They counseled all to be temperate in speech; in intercourse, gentle and kind; to cultivate fervent love one for another; and to suffer nothing to cool their affections for the children of God. In the pulpit they never alluded to the mad questions of the day, nor spoke so as to pain brethren of different views. They felt that their mission was to preach Christ, not Caesar; to comfort the broken-hearted; and work ever to keep down alienation and schism among the redeemed of the Lord. If they could not always agree with brethren of the adverse side, they at least hoped that they had not lived to the day when honest differences, in a case in which God had been silent, were crimes. These men were conscious of no sin against the State for whose good they had so long and faithfully toiled. They consequently felt the constitutional oath to be uncalled for and unjust. They declined to take it, most of them, from principle, nothing else. They looked on it as a horrid exaction; intended only to silence the [132] conscientious and pure, or drive them from the State, and fill their places with the vicious and bad, who were ready for anything, or oath, provided only it gave them place and bread. They looked on it as the initiation of restrictions on religious duties, which, if not resisted in the very outset, would end in the suppression of all religious freedom. They hence not only felt called upon not to take the oath, but to decline to take it even at the risk of suffering. Their act was not the act of mere time-servers, but the act of noble men, who, under Christ, knew their rights, and were unwilling to tamely to surrender them. That they are entitled to the respect and sympathy of all good men is a proposition we should respectfully decline to debate. Yet the coldness with which they are sometimes spoken of, and the cruelty with which they are twitted, and that, too, by the men who claim that they are not cruel, strike us as a strange exhibition of brotherly kindness. As a sample of what we mean, read the following:

“The Missouri ministers are exceedingly exercised about the constitutional oath,—putting it that it binds their conscience, and must be resisted for Christ’s sake. Well, it is hard on rebels; but we can not see why loyal teachers can not swear that they have not aided the accursed Southern rebellion. Perhaps the penitent ones could obtain pardon for their treason, and receive executive clemency, if they would sue for it. We advise them to do so, and go and sin no more.”

This is from a monthly published in Kansas, calling itself The Christian Messenger. On it we decline to comment. How far it will soothe the feelings of our sorrowing brethren in Missouri, and cause them to love the association of Christian brethren by whom the Messenger is published, we shall leave to the brethren of Missouri who can not take the oath themselves to say. Will not Bro. Proctor and Bro. Wilkes aid in circulating this “Christian” Messenger in the State for which they have so long and faithfully worked?

From the same paper, and of the same date, we take the following, to which is appended its author’s name:

“The reformation had become a real power in the world before A. Campbell embraced it. He did not bring so many excellent moral qualities into exercise as did his father, whose life and teaching were characterized by the moral; Alexander’s by the positive. One was like Christ, as John was. The other was like Christ, as Peter was. It is true that we may need both, and it is also true that there was one disciple, particularly, whom the Savior loved. It is true that we stood in absolute need of many good and noble qualities brought into exercise by A. Campbell. It is true also that, in vindictiveness and imperiousness of manner, he sowed many tares with the wheat. Our progress might not have been so rapid if the influences exerted on the masses had been like that of Thomas Campbell, but we would have had less to undo, less to repent of.” [133]

Bro. Campbell is now a venerable old man, with his work all done, and waiting the will of the Lord to go hence. For forty years of grand life he wrought for the cause of his great Master, as only one man in a thousand years works. He now rests from his toil, and watches for the beck of his God to sleep his last sleep; and while we are proud of his noble work, we shall not be shy to acknowledge the debt of gratitude we owe him. We feel deeply mortified and pained at the preceding. It is unjust, mean, and truthless. It is the product of a mind too small to comprehend even one act of Bro. Campbell’s life, and just small enough to hate him, and to seek to injure him in his sunset of life. The whole brotherhood have reason to feel insulted by the unmagnanimous thrust. With his brethren it can do Mr. Campbell no harm. This we well know. But after his noble heart ceases to beat, his bigoted religious enemies will wish to tell the world what he is. To them the preceding would be a gem, were it allowed to pass uncontradicted. But we shall particularize.

1. “The reformation had become a real power in the world before A. Campbell embraced it.” This statement is untrue in every word and feature of it. It is, however, but another proof of the mournful fact that we have among us those who, though they owe their present position to the great work of Mr. Campbell, are yet unmanly enough to turn on him in his last years and wound him. But for the labors of Mr. Campbell, the writer of this piece would have remained in the Baptist nest which hatched him, and to which we suspect he still belongs, unknown to the world and fame in his life, and unwept and unsung in his death. Why was the statement made? No great truth is brought out by it. It was uncalled for, and is hence wholly gratuitous. The truth is, its sole object was to rob a great and true man of the honor which the world is willing to award him, and to sting his heart at a time when he is incapable of self- defense.

2. “It is true, also, that in vindictiveness and imperiousness of manner, he sowed many tares with the wheat.” Here it is gravely implied that in manner Mr. Campbell is imperious and vindictive. Had he been accused of falsehood and theft, the accusation would have been as just as the one here alleged. We do not believe there lives a man among the thousands who know Mr. Campbell well, who will pronounce the charge true. Indeed it can not be pronounced true, except by false lips. We have known Mr. Campbell for twenty years, and known him well. We have known him in the pulpit and out of it; known him in the college hall; seen him in public life and in private; met him at home and abroad; traveled with him on the highway, and ate at his table; and we pronounce the foregoing charge to be without the semblance of truth.

But what were those tares which Mr. Campbell sowed with the wheat? Was it the great truth that the Bible, and that only, teaches [134] the true religion? Was it that we must accept only what the Bible says as the matter of our faith? Was it that we must do only what it bids as the matter of our duty? Was it that no man’s opinion is authoritative in matters of religion; and that in all matters the expressed will of Christ it to be our supreme guide? Was it that all the children of God should be one body; and that there should be no sects and parties? Was it that Rome is the scarlet woman, and infant sprinkling sects her harlot daughters? Are these the tares which Mr. Campbell sowed? These are certainly the things which he taught. Does the author of the foregoing piece believe them? If not, why is he in our ranks? If he does, why does he call them tares? We shrewdly suspect the soundness of any man in the faith the moment we see him turn impugner of Mr. Campbell.

3. “Our progress might not have been so rapid if the influences exerted on the masses had been like that of Thomas Campbell, but we should have had less to undo, less to repent of.” What the writer of this left the Baptist ranks and came into ours for we never were at the pains to inquire, and hence did not know. We understand his case now, and wish others to understand it. He is among us to “undo” and “repent” of things done by Mr. Campbell. We had heard the writer well spoken of, and were glad to welcome him among us. But if this be his work, we beg to tell him plainly his presence gives us pain; his departure will give us pleasure. Further than this let me tell him, that unless he rewrite the preceding sentences, and retract their offensive contents, he has cast a suspicion over himself, which he will not soon find it easy to remove. We want no men among us to “undo” what Mr. Campbell has done; and as for having brethren among us who are repenting of his work, we would not give them the pain. We have already had a few among us who have risen up to reform the reformation we plead for, men of the class who feel themselves called upon to “undo” what Mr. Campbell has done, and to “repent” of his work. We know their end, and feel ashamed of it. We shall be glad to have no more of them.

We shall only add, that to deal in personal reflections on brethren is no part of the business of the Quarterly. The thing was, however, to some extent, unavoidable in the present case. Bro. Campbell was attacked by name, without cause. The name of his assailant is signed to the attack. He then, we take for granted, wanted himself to be known as its author. We hence feel that we should do him no injustice were we to send his name and his slander abroad together. Still his name shall be withheld.

THE MISSOURI OATH AND A. CAMPBELL