USA > Ohio > A history of the Disciples of Christ in Ohio > Part 2
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the little or western or Catholic horse, which is 'Hades,' and which drives the fourth and last division of the church into the wilderness just as the eagle gives his call, and the words are: 'And he shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High: and he shall think to change the times and the law: and they shall be given into his hands until a time and times and a half time' (Dan. 7:25), or 1,260 years. ' And the woman [the church] fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that there they may nourish her a thousand, two hundred and threescore days' (Rev. 12:6), or 1,260 years."
During the period of 1,260 years there were individual saints and communities that tried to walk in the light of God's truth. There were Albigenses, Nestorians, Waldenses and others that tried to serve the Lord acceptably. The light of God's truth, however, was darkened- the Scriptures were taken from the common peo- ple-and so we have the Dark Ages. "Where there is no vision, the people perish." In the days when Samuel ministered unto the Lord be- fore Eli, the word of the Lord was precious : there was no open vision (1 Sam. 3:1). So, in the dark days of the apostasy, the vision of faith was obscured, and, like the blind man in the time of Christ, they saw men as trees walking.
Fisher, in the history of the Christian church, makes this record: "In the devotional system of the Middle Ages the celestial hierarchy of angels had an important place. Apparitions of angels were believed to be not infrequent. They were protectors against the demoniacal spirits with which the air was peopled. The swarming, busy,
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indefatigable, malignant spirits claimed the world of men as their own. They assumed grotesque and repulsive forms. Satan was fig- ured as having horns, a tail and the cloven foot. Connected with this ever-present superstition, the torment of the young and the old, was the belief in magic spells and the efficacy of talis- mans. The patent reliance of the timid, tempted, persecuted soul was in the help and intercession of the saints. These multiplied in number as time advanced. Every church, every village had its tutelary spirits. The miracles which they were believed to have wrought were number- less. ... Far above all the saints in the popular veneration was the Virgin Mary. In the numer- ous hymns to Mary she was described in most glowing terms of praise, and was exalted to a position of almost controlling influence over the divine Son. With the growing worship of mar- tyrs and saints, the interest in their relics in- creased. They were required in every new church that was to be consecrated. They were usually placed upon the altar or beneath it. They were worn upon the person. Of their ef- ficiency in working miracles there was no doubt. An oath taken upon the relics of saints was clothed with awful sanctity. Its violation was a terrible sin. The Crusades afforded the means of gratifying the desire for relics, which became proportionately more intense. The sale of them grew to be a branch of trade. Vast sums of money were expended in purchasing relics, pieces of apparel or bones of the saints. The homage paid to saints and relics amounted to a kind of polytheism."
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III REFORMERS
IT took centuries for the church to fall away and go into the wilderness. It will not be thought strange if it takes centuries to return to apostolic teaching and simplicity. Some good things were developed during the Dark Ages. Music was invented, art was developed, archi- tecture was fascinating, but Christian faith and living waned. The Nestorians and others pre- served a remnant of the primitive order of things. The day, however, began to dawn in due time.
From the twelfth century there were found here and there antisacerdotals who indulged in invectives against the immoralities of the priest- hood and their usurpation of power. Radical and influential persons began to move to the front, as Huss, Jerome of Prague and John Wyclif. One hundred and fifty years before the days of Luther, Wyclif antagonized the preten- sions of the Papacy. He set aside Papal decrees by a direct appeal to the Holy Scriptures. He denied transubstantiation; condemned auricular confession; held that the power to bind and loose is of no effect unless it conforms to the doctrine of Christ; opposed the multiplied ranks of the clergy-popes, cardinals, patriarchs, monks and canons; repudiated the doctrine of indulgences,
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the doctrine of the excellency of poverty as it lay at the foundation of the mendicant orders; set himself against pictures in worship and the celibacy of the clergy. He predicted there would arise from monks themselves men who would abandon their false interpretations of Scrip- tures and would try to reconstruct the church in the spirit of Paul. He translated the Scriptures into the English language in 1384. Though this translation was only in manuscript, it had a powerful influence in England. Huss, on the Continent, sympathized with Wyclif and, in 1415, was burned as a heretic. One year later Jerome of Prague was martyred. Wyclif is called the morning star of the Reformation. Fifty years after his death his enemies took up his bones, burned them and scattered the ashes on near-by waters.
Savonarola, an Italian priest, cried out against Romanism, and was burned to death and his ashes were thrown into the river Arno in 1498. Tyndale, a century and a half after Wyclif, and after printing had been discovered, put a printed Bible into the hands of the people. He had to go to the Continent to do his work. His enemies applied the extreme argument and strangled him at the stake. So the heroic spirit of the father of the open Bible passed from earth.
The Reformation began in Germany in 1517. Luther had been a monk, but his insight caused him to become doubtful of the doctrines of the church. He adopted as the watchword of the Reformation, "The just shall live by faith." To defray the expense of building the great Cathedral of St. Peter's at Rome, Leo X. pushed
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the sale of indulgences. So great had this abuse become that it was even farmed out to bankers and others for private gain. The Primate of Germany, a young and very immoral archbishop, had bought his ecclesiastical dignities at such an enormous sum that the Pope was moved to aid him by a special dispensation of indulgences. The archbishop employed Tetzel, a Dominican monk of questionable character, as agent for these-a sort of sales manager-throughout Ger- many. Tetzel traveled over the country crying : "Pour in your money, and whatever crimes you have committed, or may commit, are forgiven! Pour in your coin, and the souls of your friends and relatives will fly from purgatory the mo- ment they hear the clink of your money at the bottom of the box." Luther preached vigorously in Wittenberg against the traffic in indulgences. In October, 1517, Luther nailed to his church door the celebrated theses, boldly denying the Pope's right to sell indulgences, and declaring the remission of sins is from God alone. Tetzel made reply to this, but the Pope gave little at- tention to it at first, saying: "It is a quarrel of the monks." But Dr. Eck, chancellor of the University of Ingolstat, published a book show- ing that Luther was guilty of the same heresy alleged against John Huss. In controversy with Dr. Eck, Luther maintained that the Papacy was a development some centuries after the rise of Christianity, by human arrangement. At this, Leo X. became aroused to the significance of the movement started by Luther in Germany.
Luther was excommunicated after having been summoned to the Diet of Augsburg in 1518, and his books were condemned to be publicly
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burned. But Luther burned the Papal bull of excommunication in the public square of Witten- berg. Summoned to the Diet of Worms in 1521, the emperor, Charles V., offered him safe con- duct. Luther's friends warned him not to go, but the intrepid reformer said: "I will go to Worms if there be as many devils there as tiles upon the roofs of the houses."
Melancthon drew up articles of faith, which were sanctioned by Luther, and so we have the Augsburg Confession of Faith, which is adopted by the Lutherans.
In Switzerland, Zwingli, born in 1484, became the leader of the Reformation, and is regarded as the founder of the German Reformed Church. John Calvin fled from persecution in France to Switzerland. He followed St. Augustine rather than the Scriptures, and so we have the doctrine of predestination. In Scotland the fol- lowers of Calvin were called Presbyterians. In England, Henry VIII. quarreled with the Pope and started the Church of England. Two hun- dred years later Wesley tried to inject more spirituality into the church, and, as the result, we have Methodism. Now, in our United States, there are scores of denominational, sectarian churches, all of them better than the medieval Roman Catholic or Greek Catholic churches. Are we not in a wilderness of creeds? What about the church of God? No historian, aside from God, can write that history. For 1,260 years it is wandering in the wilderness. The true church is not in Catholicism. Is it in Protestantism?
In 1870 a committee of disciples from the Ohio Christian Missionary Society bore fraternal
3
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greetings to the Baptists of Ohio. That com- mittee was composed of eminent men: Isaac Er- rett, R. R. Sloan, R. M. Bishop, Thomas Munnell, B. A. Hinsdale and W. T. Moore. In their greet- ing they stated:
"As a people, we are seeking the restoration of the Christianity of the New Testament, in letter and in spirit, in principle and in practice. We clearly see to be involved in this the over- throw of denominationalism, the repudiation of human creeds as authoritative expressions of faith or bonds of fellowship, the annihilation of party names, and the reunion of God's scattered people in one body, under the leadership of Jesus the Christ, that they may be bound together simply by a common faith in the Lord Jesus and a common loyalty to him as their only sovereign, and with one mind and one heart strive together for the faith of the gospel. In view of the ter- rible apostasy which all find embodied in the Church of Rome, we look with lively sympathy on every Protestant movement tending away from Babylon and toward Jerusalem. From the time of Wyclif down, we pause to praise God for every glorious revolutionary movement that tends to break the spell of priestly authority and guide captive souls out into the light of God's word.
"We rejoice to-day in every indication of restlessness and disquiet among Protestant sects which renews the protest against human authority and sighs for a purer and completer loyalty to Jesus than Protestantism has yet reached; and we are confident that God has, among these great Protestant parties, a people yet to be called out from remaining errors and
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corruptions and enrolled under the glorious old banner which the apostles unfurled in Jerusalem. But we are compelled to regard all these Prot- estant movements as unsatisfactory; and, while gratefully recognizing the obligations we are under to the men and the parties that urged on the work of reformation, alike among the Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, inde- pendents and Methodists, we are still constrained to regard their best performances as falling short of the desired object, if the restoration of primitive Christianity is had in view as the great object to be attained.
"As movements tending onward toward the grand object sought, we have pleasure in them; but as furnishing the consummation so devoutly wished for, we are compelled to repudiate them. The church of Christ and the Christianity of the New Testament, pure and simple, are not found in any of these sects to-day, nor can they be found in any possible combination of sects."
Has not the time come when the church of Christ shall be called out of Babylon-and the wilderness of creeds?
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Alexander Campbell
Thomas Campbell
Walter Scott
Jasper J. Moss
Wm. Hayden
Jonas Hartzell
Almond B. Green
Sidney Rigdon
J. W. Lanphear
PIONEER PREACHERS OF NORTHERN OHIO
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1529093
IV
RESTORATION MOVEMENT
THE church of Christ, which began by his au- thority on the day of Pentecost succeeding his crucifixion, an account of which is found in the second chapter of Acts of Apostles, after a series of years wandered or fell away from . apostolic teaching and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and went into the wilderness. After a long, dark period in the wilderness of apostasy, individuals and communities began to feel after a better order of things. The light began to dawn. Reformers and reformations multiplied. But they divided among themselves and each community crystallized around the teaching of its respective leader. They all said: "Thus far shalt thou go in reformation, and no farther .. Our formula of doctrine, our creed, contains what is in the Bible, and you must come to us or you do not come to God."
In the early part of the nineteenth century, individuals in various localities deplored the con- dition in which our country was found relig- iously. Infidelity and sectarianism were rampant. The colleges had few professed Christians in them. Dueling, slavery, intemperance and in- fidelity were prevalent. Church-members were throwing theological brickbats at one another. Ministers did not exchange pulpits. The pre-
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vailing religious thought of the people was Cal- vinistic. Bro. J. Harrison Jones used to de- scribe it about as follows : "If you haven't got
religion, you can't get it. If you get it, you don't know it. If you know it, you haven't got it. If you have got it, you can't lose it. If you lose it, you never had it." There was the mourners' bench system of getting religion among the Meth- odists, the anxious-seat among the Presbyterians, and the religious experience among the Baptists, and all these theories unknown to the Holy Scrip- tures. The word of God was regarded as a dead letter. Faith did not come as a result of testi- mony, but was a direct gift from God.
At this critical time, in 1807-1809, there came to this country from Scotland some God-fearing, God - reverencing, Scripture - believing men - Thomas Campbell and his son Alexander Camp- bell. They were Seceder Presbyterians. They tried to bring about a different order of things in religion. Thomas Campbell got out a religious declaration of independence in 1809. Alexander Campbell sanctioned it. They adopted, in mat- ters of faith, the motto: "Where the Scriptures speak, we speak; where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent." This position led them to be baptized, and they went to the Baptist Red Stone Association in Pennsylvania. Scriptural investi- gation led Alexander Campbell to make a distinc- tion between the law (of Moses) and the gospel under Christ. The Red Stone Association op- posed him, and he joined the Baptist Mahoning Association in Ohio. He had planted a church at Wellsburg, Va., and it was admitted to the Ohio Association. The Campbells claimed that infidelity is wrong, sectarianism is wrong, divi-
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sions among believers are wrong, and the thing to do is to restore original New Testament Christianity. Seek unity in the household of be- lievers, and, through this unity, go forth to the evangelization and salvation of the world.
Alexander Campbell's teaching, personally and through his periodical, the Christian Baptist, permeated the Mahoning Association, and in 1827 the association employed Walter Scott as an evangelist; and he preached the New Testa- ment doctrine that baptism is for the remission of sins, and he and the Campbells and the as- sociated churches abandoned their human creeds and joined together to restore original Chris- tianity. They used the text of Jeremiah (chap. 6:16): "Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls." They declared that we should hearken to God and not to men.
The stupendous task of calling the religious world back to the original teaching of the Word in precept and principle, in doctrine and practice, in faith hoping for apostolic results, is now upon us. This position is so broad that all men can stand upon it, and as narrow as Christ him- self made it. Christ prayed for everything em- braced in our plea. The future church must be the one established by Christ and his apostles on the day of Pentecost. If it was right then, it is right now.
Paul tells us there are seven gospel unities (Eph. 4: 1-6). In order to restore the New Testament church, there must be unity of wor- ship, because there is one God; there must be unity of authority, because there is one Lord and
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Christ; there must be unity of practice, because there is one baptism; there must be unity of preaching, because there is one faith; there must be unity of organization, because there is one body; there must be unity of life, because there is one Spirit; there must be unity of purpose, be- cause there is one hope. The Great Commission contains every essential and omits every non- essential in God's ritual. It tells clearly what a man must do to become a Christian. We must preach it just as it is-all of it and nothing else.
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Matthew S. Clapp
Wm. M. Roe
Calvin Smith
Lathrop Cooley
Dr. W. A. Belding
Edwin H. Hawley
Philander Green
J. Harrison Jones
Orange Higgins
PIONEER PREACHERS, WESTERN RESERVE
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V
THE RESTORATION MOVEMENT AND THE WESTERN RESERVE
THE Western Reserve includes eleven coun- ties in northeastern Ohio. Before the Revo- lutionary War, Connecticut claimed lands reach- ing far west. After the formation of the United States Government, she ceded all her lands to the United States except three million acres, in what is now northeastern Ohio. Originally this tract was called "The Connecticut Western Re- serve." Later the word "Connecticut" was dropped off, and it is now known as "The West- ern Reserve." It was settled mostly by people
from New England. The original lands were surveyed into townships five miles square. At the center of each township a village grew up. Schools and churches were planted, and business establishments were started. Our Pilgrim fore- fathers came from England via Holland, and were home missionaries. They were planters of churches, the founders of schools and foreign missionary societies. The settlers of the West- ern Reserve brought their religion with them, so that in nearly every township of the Reserve was planted a Congregationalist church. In the early part of the nineteenth century Baptist and Methodist churches sprang up, and later all kinds of religious and infidel fads.
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In 1820 the Mahoning Baptist Association was formed. The constitution declares: "It is our object to glorify God." After stating items in their creed, it closes by saying : "Finally, we be- lieve the Holy Scriptures to be the only certain rule of faith and practice." Each church was left, also, to form its own creed. Calvinism pre- vailed. The human creeds would not stay fixed. The association had sixteen churches. In 1826 Wellsburg (Va.) Church was received into the association. Alexander Campbell was one of the messengers from Wellsburg Church to the Ma- honing Baptist Association. The letter of intro- duction discriminated between the Jewish and Christian portions of the Bible, and repudiated all human authority over the churches, and really contained the germs of our Restoration move- ment. Bro. Campbell frequently visited the min- isterial meetings of the association. In 1823 the Christian Baptist was started and circulated in the association churches. The discussion be- tween Walker and Campbell was read. Also the McCalla and Campbell debate. And so a leaven- ing influence was going on. The Scripture motto of the Christian Baptist was: "Style no man on earth your Father; for he alone is your Father who is in heaven; and all ye are brethren. As- sume not the title of Rabbi; for ye have only one teacher; neither assume the title of leader, for ye have only one leader, the Messiah" (Matt. 23 :8, 9).
The association met in New Lisbon in 1827. At this meeting Walter Scott was chosen as evangelist. A sentiment had been growing in the association that they should repudiate human creeds as authoritative and follow the Scriptures.
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In the fall of that year he held a successful meet- ing at New Lisbon, and, for the first time in mod- ern times, presented the Scriptural plan of the forgiveness of sin. Nearly all of the churches of the association repudiated their human creeds and accepted Christ as their creed and the Scrip- tures to guide them in all matters of faith and worship. The Mantua Church was the first to completely take apostolic grounds, as their dec- laration was made in the fore part of 1827, and the New Lisbon movement was in the latter part of 1827.
The restoration of the primitive gospel move- ment spread rapidly. They pleaded for a return to apostolic teaching and practice. They bap- tized believers on profession of their faith in Christ for remission of sins. They met the first day of every week to attend to the Lord's Sup- per. They made offerings every first day for self-support and for a relief fund. This relief fund offering for the poor is kept up in some of the oldest churches to this time. They called themselves individually disciples of Christ, or Christians. In a collective capacity they desired to be known as "churches of Christ." They thought they had the only ground of Christian unity for which Christ prayed. They called on all believers to come out of Babylon and to restore original Christianity. They adopted all that Luther and other Protestants advocated which was Scriptural, but protested that they had not gone far enough. It was not so much reformation that was needed as restoration of original apostolic teaching. They tried to break away from all human religious shackles. They repudiated the title of "Reverend" for their
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ministers. Instead of Sabbath or Sunday, they used the "first day of the week" or "Lord's day." They tried to speak of Scriptural things in Scriptural language. They discriminated be- tween opinions and faith, and held that faith and the obedience of faith brought the joy of salvation. They held that opinions would neither save nor damn a person. They were to receive one another without reference to opinions, and opinions must not be bound on others as tests of fellowship. The old association meetings were continued as evangelistic meetings till they grew so large that they were unwieldy and were most- ly abandoned. Isaac Errett was the first settled minister in this new order of things, first at New Lisbon and later at Warren.
Men, women and young people did as in apostolic times-they went everywhere preach- ing the Word. They carried the New Testament with them in forest, field and family. They were compelled to hold many discussions. Alexander Campbell debated in Cleveland with the infidel Irad Kelly. Isaac Errett debated with the Spiritualist Tiffany, at Warren. James A. Gar- field discussed with the infidel Denton, at Cha- grin Falls; Marshall Wilcox with the Universal- ist at Medina; A. B. Green with Methodists in several places, and one disputant, to ridicule him, got off the couplet :
"Ho, every son and daughter, Here is the gospel in the water."
To which Bro. Green aptly replied :
"Ho, every son and wench, Here is the gospel on the bench."
Jasper Moss met all kinds of opponents, and they called him the "Rasping Wasp" instead
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of "Jasper Moss." Opposition has largely ceased, and denominationalism is loving and lull- ing the disciples into quietude. Perhaps some have lost their aggressive spirit. Their attention is called to the disciples' claim that they hold the only possible ground of Christian unity for which Jesus prayed, and this was originally one of the chief features of the Restoration move- ment. They asked believers in Christ to come out of Babylon and sectarianism. While many joined in with the disciples in the Restoration movement, they were only asked to lay aside their human appendages and give full obedience to Jesus Christ in baptism, and all other things, and we would all be one, as Jesus prayed. They taught that the people were not to come to them, but to lay aside all humanisms in coming to Christ, and then we would all be one people, as Jesus prayed.
For their own good and edification, and the progress of restoration, the early churches be- came Bible schools for old and young. The elders of the churches became preachers of the gospel. After twenty years of experience and enthusiasm for original Christianity, aids to the movement were adopted. In 1844 Bible schools were started, and the D. S. Burnet Library of fifty volumes was produced. In 1850, Hiram College was planted. In order to strengthen existing churches and plant new ones, the Ohio Christian Missionary Society was started in 1852. At first the churches were in rural dis- tricts, and they builded small meeting-houses. Now larger houses are built, with Bible-school appliances. City churches are now flourishing. In 1866 the Christian Standard was started at
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