re-establish the old religion of Pentecost. It called for courage, firmness and ability; it invited persecution and misrepresentation.

"I would rather," an aunt of Oliver Carr once declared—herself a stern soldier of the Cross—"see you go to your grave, than have you join the Campbellite Church!"

What was this "Campbellite Church" of which some spoke thus disparagingly? And why "Campbellite"? And why did the denominations regard the people they thus designated much as, at a later day, the Mormons were regarded? Before we enter into details, it is enough at this point to emphasize the fact of general intolerance. To worship God in your own way is the right of all; and no man disputes that inborn right, so long as you agree with him in your religious belief. The Puritans were ready to sacrifice their lives to preserve religious freedom, and to take the lives of those who desired a separate freedom.

In the first half of the Nineteenth Century, more especially in the first quarter, the jangling and wrangling among different sects was almost inconceivable. It would appear that often where differences of tenets were but slight, the fight was the more determined, as if the possibility of preserving a denominational integrity, depended largely upon keeping alive a spirit of hostility to all other denominations. Happily that spirit of antagonism has largely died out, and men are not so ready to take each other by the throat because they are seeking to gain Heaven by different ways. This tendency to minimize differences of speculative opinions, and to draw close to each other on the fundamental truths as they are revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is doubtless in a large measure due to the pioneers of that faith which Mattie Myers had accepted, and which, at the time of her acceptance, was the object of so much bitterness and ridicule.

Thirty years had already passed since Walter Scott and Alexander Campbell first proclaimed their views in the "Christian Baptist." The distracted state of the religious world had grieved many a pious and erudite soul before 1819. In looking for a solution to the amazing perplexities that baffled the seeker after God, in trying to avoid the anomalous condition of changing a gospel of love to a gospel of interminable disputation, the solution proposed by Thomas Campbell was a return to the practices and faith of the early disciples. This solution was urged by Walter Scott and Alexander Campbell. What more simple? Everybody should be willing to accept the Bible; everybody should be willing to discard everything else!

In brief, then, that was the work of the "current reformation." It would call for a sacrifice of individual opinions, of sectarian names and dogmas, of that poetic atmosphere which time bestows upon any organization, of those intimate human associations derived from a commingling with relatives and friends whom a common rule of practice holds together. As a recompense for this sacrifice, was offered the privilege of returning to the Apostolic faith and manner of worship, the sense of security that should spring from following closely in the footsteps of the earliest disciples, and the privilege of performing one's part in the realization of the prayer of the Savior of mankind.

Alexander Campbell's life was given to this fundamental idea—that the world should go back, in its religious beliefs and practices, nineteen hundred years, to learn again the conditions of its salvation from the lips of Christ's apostles. Campbell himself, was but a voice calling in the wilderness. He seemed always to be crying, "Look back! Behold the Lamb of God!" As for himself, he would have been but the medium through which an enlightened vision might see that glorious spectacle of God in man. "Do not regard me," he seemed to say, "For I am nothing. I am but a voice—a voice proclaiming no new doctrine, only the old; asking you not to originate a new faith, but to remember the old. Look back! Behold the Lamb of God!"

But the world did not wish to look back. It exclaimed that these people who pretended to do away with all sects, were themselves the narrowest sect of all. These preachers who proclaimed that there was but one church, were accused of "wanting to get us into their church." The result was endless debates. We have seen that the denominations were at war with one another; but all of them became more or less cohesive, in their attack upon these people who claimed to be no denomination.

If Campbell and his friends urged that baptism should be administered as in the days of the Apostles, the cry was immediately raised that "These men believe in nothing but baptism." If their editors asked for an instance of infant baptism between the lids of the Bible, it was retorted that "They have only a head religion—they don't believe in a change of heart." If a preacher said no more about baptism than did Peter on Pentecost, his listeners went away observing that "he believed water would save him." If nothing was said about baptism, if on the contrary, the discourse were concentrated upon the idea that all Christians should follow the same rule and practice, should dwell together in one great homogeneous body, it was charged, "That is really another way of saying that immersion is the only mode of baptism." If, by dint of innumerable repetitions, Herculean efforts at self-restraint, monotonous insistence, these "reformers" succeeded in convincing the antagonist of the fact that nobody believed water would save him, and every Christian believes in a change of heart, all this laborious and indefatigable endeavor went for nothing.

"Well, maybe you do believe in a change of heart," it would at last be conceded, "but your church don't." Or "Maybe you don't believe water will save you, but your church does."

Such as the views of the disciples of Christ really were, Mattie Myers had received them at first hand. Her father was one of the "new faith." His home had from her earliest recollections, been a rallying point for the sturdy pioneers of the "Old Jerusalem Gospel." In that home, "Raccoon" John Smith and Barton W. Stone had held her upon their knees. She had seen Walter Scott and Alexander Campbell in childhood, and had heard L. L. Pinkerton's eloquence, and Robert Milligan's logic. She knew the matters debated, the arguments that sustained each side in its opinion,—and she could point out the verse of scripture that seemed to substantiate every claim of her friends, and to confound those of the enemy. And she knew how families had become divided; how bitterness crept in between life-long friends; how misunderstanding led to misrepresentation, and argument to vilification, and disapproval to hatred.

Whatever else the plea of the disciples accomplished, it led to a closer study of the scriptures; and to a fuller admission of their authority. This was inevitable because the adherents of what was disparagingly called the "new religion," based all their positions upon the Word of God. Even farther than that they went, in declaring that they entertained no doctrine not fully presented in the New Testament; they were willing to relinquish any belief, no matter how dear, on being shown that it was not divinely authorized.

It was futile to meet such claims by references to any other book than that of the inspired writers, unless those books were lexicons and dictionaries devoted to an explanation of biblical terms. To the lexicons, the friends and enemies of the "reformation" did indeed go. There were times when, if Polycarp, or Chrysostum, or even Sophocles, or Plato, could have stepped into the debating-room,