[82]

Small, but a work divine,
Frail, but of force to withstand,
Year upon year, the shock
Of cataract seas that snap
The three-decker's oaken spine.
                                                -Maud.
 

After the commission had delivered its verdict, the revival party organized themselves into a council. They agreed on several things. First, that they would not cease preaching on account of any interdict of the commission; second, that they would refrain from official presbyterial action; third, that they would try to keep the revival churches alive and foster the revival; and finally, that they would labor for a reconciliation with the synod and the Presbyterian Church.

The revival party failed to appeal from the decision of the commission, because they utterly repudiated its right of jurisdiction in trying and silencing ordained ministers. The next meeting of the synod put all chances of appeal in the prescribed form out of their power, by dissolving the Cumberland Presbytery and remanding all the parties and their complaints to Transylvania Presbytery. It is plain that no appeal could have relieved the doctrinal difficulty, though all the other difficulties might have been settled.

The council spent four years in a vain struggle for reconciliation. It was not God's will that any reconciliation should be effected. The council sent a letter of remonstrance to the General Assembly in 1807. The case was warmly debated. The Assembly [83] sent two letters, one to the synod approving some of its actions, but disapproving its assumption of right to originate trial against a minister, and advising the synod to revise its action. The other letter was to the members of the council, condemning their course in rejecting the doctrine of fatality, but expressing sympathy in other things.

The synod did revise its action, but it reaffirmed its decisions; explaining, however, that its interdict against the ordained preachers was not meant for suspension in the technical sense.⁽¹⁾

Owing to the failure of the synod to send up its Minutes, the case did not reach the Assembly again till 1809--not in the regular way, at least. The council, however, had a letter before the Assembly of 1808. To this letter an unofficial answer was sent. It was written by Dr. J.P. Wilson. It pronounced the commission unconstitutional, and advised an appeal in the regular way.

In 1809 the Minutes of synod were sent up, accompanied by a letter from the synod, and John Lyle, the bitter enemy of the revival measures, was their bearer and defender. Lyle had, in a high degree, the donum lachrymarum--the gift of tears--and in his speech before the Assembly his weeping and his oratory carried the whole house. Dr. Davidson's account of Lyle's speech represents it as having completely turned the tide, so that the Assembly voted unanimously for sustaining all the actions of the synod, in this case, and added a vote of thanks to the synod for its fidelity.⁽²⁾ Dr. Davidson uses these words about Lyle's speech: "Bursting into tears, he made a most impassioned appeal, and the Assembly were so affected that their final judgment was very different from that to which they had at first inclined." {History of church in Kentucky, p. 119.} The case was now finally and hopelessly decided against the revival party.

In August of the same year, 1809, the council decided to make one final effort at reconciliation with the synod, and if that failed, then to organize an independent presbytery. The council submitted to the synod its ultimatum, the chief point of which was that those who chose to do so should be allowed to make the reservation [84] about fatality. To this the synod would not agree. The council met in October, 1809, and heard the synod's decision. McGready and Hodge being genuine Calvinists, withdrew and made terms for themselves with the synod. This left the council with only four ordained members--McGee, Ewing, King, and McAdow. McAdow was in feeble health, and had not been meeting with the council. The name of Rankin never appears on the rolls of the council at all. He went off to the Shakers. McGee drew back from carrying out the resolution to organize an independent presbytery. This left them without the constitutional number. They adjourned with the understanding that the solemn obligation into which they had entered to form an independent presbytery should remain in force till the next March, when, if a presbytery was not previously constituted, the council was to be disbanded.

Things looked gloomy. Ewing was willing to constitute with only two ordained ministers. James B. Porter, a licentiate, exerted himself to enlist a third. Ewing and King met together and went to the house of Ephraim McLean to consult with him. McLean's wife joined earnestly in the consultation.⁽³⁾ This was the second day of February, 1810. The party remained till a late hour that night at McLean's before reaching their decision, which was that they would go next day to the Rev. Samuel McAdow's house, in Dickson County, Tennessee, and ask him to aid in ordaining McLean. It was a long ride, but they were at McAdow's before night. McAdow hesitated. It was a grave step. He spent the whole night in prayer over the case. Next morning his face was all aglow with light. He said God had given him clear assurance that the proposed step was approved of Heaven.

On the fourth of February, 1810, they organized, or reorganized, the Cumberland Presbytery, and ordained Ephraim McLean. Years afterward, on his death-bed, Mr. McAdow spoke of that action, and said that he had never since doubted the rectitude of their course in organizing that presbytery, and believed it was done under divine sanction and direction.

Against these three men no charges had ever been brought by their own presbytery, which was the only ecclesiastical court to [85] which the written constitution of the church gave the right to originate process of trial against an ordained minister. The Kentucky Synod itself, after the action of its commission had been called in question by the General Assembly, explained that the action of the commission was not meant for suspension in the technical sense of that word.

Dr. Ely, who held a high position in the Presbyterian Church, published a long article in the Philadelphian in regard to the Cumberland Presbyterians. In this article he uses the following words: "Of these three men (Ewing, King, McAdow) it is admitted on all hands that they were never deposed from the Christian ministry." This whole article is published in the Revivalist of May 14, 1834, and brings to light the fact that the General Assembly sent a committee to the Kentucky Synod to remonstrate with that body about the proceedings of its commission. Ah, well! Lyles' tears set that all right afterward.

After the organization of the new presbytery, a judicature of the mother church proceeded to silence or depose these three preachers, but these acts were as harmless as the bulls of the Pope hurled at Luther, after Luther had renounced the Pope's authority. As the new presbytery grew, circulars and other publications were sent out warning the people that the new church had no right to administer ordinances. This provoked a smile from some, and drew forth from others a sharp reply. The reply held up in contrast the ordination of the first Presbyterians by Roman bishops, with the ordination of Ewing, King, and McAdow by a regular presbytery. It pointed to the fact that a large majority of the Westminster Assembly divines got their ordination from a single bishop. It contrasted the first presbytery of the mother church, organized by Viret and Farel, with the organization of the Cumberland Presbytery. It called attention to the fact that neither of these two men--Viret and Farel--had ever been authorized to ordain, but only to preach, when they proceeded to ordain Calvin. The efforts to break down the young church by this mode of attack utterly failed, and were soon abandoned.

I have used the language of Dr. Davidson in calling this "the Cumberland schism," but this epithet is misleading. Only four [86] ministers came out of the mother church into ours at that time. The first meeting of the new presbytery had no churches represented. The second meeting, regular, had just one. The third meeting had none. The fourth meeting, after a year of wonderful toil, had six. The fifth had eight. Several of these had been organized by the new presbytery. By and by some more of the churches, which had been with the revival party before the split, cast in their lots with the new church, but never enough of them to amount to a schism. The membership of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church today is, ninety percent of it, made up of converts won from Satan's dominion, and not of proselytes won from other churches. In the beginning it was an exceedingly little church.
 

"The green tiny pine shrub shoots up from the moss,
The wren's foot would cover it, tripping across,
The beech-nut, down dropping, would crush it beneath;
But warmed by heaven's sunshine and fanned by its breath,
The seasons fly past and its head is on high,
And its thick branches challenge each mood of the sky."
 

Our concern now, and for the remainder of this history, is with the work of the new church. The new Cumberland Presbytery held four sessions the first year. At these four meetings it ordained four men to preach the gospel. Besides these four, William McGee came in. He had been with them in heart all the time. Never was there greater activity and zeal than the new presbytery manifested in trying to carry the gospel to everybody within its reach. Grand meetings were held; new churches were organized, and missionaries were sent into the most destitute regions, even of the mountain districts. Dr. J. Berrien Lindsley has rendered the church good service by publishing all the Minutes of the Cumberland Presbytery, but ecclesiastical records can not be given here. Some important actions of the new presbytery must suffice. One of these was a last effort at reconciliation. Commissioners met for the purpose, but they not only failed, but made the breach wider, because our people refused to surrender their reservations about fatality. Another matter worth mentioning was the purchase of a circulating library by the presbytery for the benefit of its probationers. This was a policy long kept up in all the presbyteries. [87] Another was the temporary adjustment of the difficulties about "the union" with the Methodists, mentioned in a former chapter. Another, and a very important measure, was raising a fund for the education of some of its candidates for the ministry.

There was in this presbytery, as there was in the other denominations of that day, a mode of dealing with probationers for the ministry which belongs now to the returnless past. The same feeling which gave rise to college laws requiring a freshman when he saw a senior approaching, to stand to one side, hat in hand, till the senior passed, and which required freshmen to black the seniors' boots, showed itself in all the treatment of boys, whether by parents, school-teachers, or presbyters. To curb, to humble, to train to physical endurance, and the endurance of wrongs and outrages, was considered an essential part of the discipline through which a boy had to be taken. Authority was a tremendous thing in those days. A presbyter was an autocrat among the probationers, and woe be to that youth who, in presbytery or out of presbytery, disregarded that autocrat.

While this was the accepted rule in such matters, there were men whose naturally kind hearts made them, in the eyes of their stricter co-presbyters, grave defaulters in enforcing this system. I fear they felt very guilty when they remembered their delinquencies, but those delinquencies left a warm glow of hope and courage in many a poor boy's heart. About the close of this presbyterial period a new order of things came about. Men began to break the old regimen. At a later day still, spirits as sweet as an angel's, even in dealing with boys, were led by such genial souls as John L. Dillard, George Donnell, and James K. Lansden. What a thrill of gratitude comes along with the recollection of these blessed servants of God!

One more item about this first presbytery deserves commemoration. All its preachers had a thorough Presbyterian training, and were scarcely behind the Puritans themselves in their profound regard for the Sabbath. The customs of their families in this matter were regulated strictly by the Jewish law. No wood was gathered or carried, much less cut, on the Sabbath. No visiting, no pleasure-riding, no cooking, no strolling through the woods, no [88] whistling, no traveling, except to church, no conversation or reading, except on religious subjects, was tolerated. If a child committed an offense worthy of stripes the penalty was delayed till Monday morning. Stripes were not scarce in those days, except on the Sabbath. An illustration of this Sabbath observance is here given. In my boyhood I went to Thomas Calhoun's to board. My training on Sabbath observance had been of the modern character. Sabbath morning came, and, seated in "Aunt Polly" Calhoun's room, I picked up a newspaper and went to reading. Mrs. Calhoun. stared at me a moment, and then said, "That's a political newspaper, sir." I wondered why she told me that. Did she think I had not sense enough to know what sort of paper it was? I read on. Presently "Aunt Polly" raised her glasses and, with an emphasis that frightened me, she said, "We don't read political newspapers on Sunday, sir." O I knew then why she told me what sort of paper it was. That was lesson number one in a Presbyterian Sabbath. I counted those lessons by the hundred before my acquaintance with "Aunt Polly" closed. The precious, sterling, kind hearted old Puritan that she was! She used to put sugar in my sweet milk; she used to mend my clothes, and fill a mother's place to me, but she would not let me do wrong. I am thankful for that last item now more than for the sugar in my sweet milk.

There was another candidate for the ministry boarding at Calhoun's, going to school. One Saturday he went visiting, stayed all night, came to church next morning, and then came home. There was nothing said that day, but Monday morning before breakfast the Sabbath-breaker was called. The head of the household then began to clear his skirts of the disobedience to God which one who lived under his roof had been guilty of. That one had been away from home on a visit on the morning of God's holy day, not only sinning himself, but disturbing the Sabbath rest of others, and setting an example of Sabbath-breaking, all the more dangerous because a candidate for the ministry was its author. Worse still, the Sabbath-breaker lived under the authority, as well as under the roof-tree, of an old preacher, and might be supposed to represent the views and practices which that old preacher tolerated. [89] Turning to the offender with holy indignation, while those eagle eyes blazed with Sinai's fires, he shot words like bullets at the poor fellow till he quailed, and withered, and writhed like a tortured martyr flayed alive. The offense was not repeated by that boarder while he remained at Calhoun's house, although he was a mean man and never came to any good. Calhoun knew him and was intentionally severe.

From the nature of the case the little handful of preachers who composed the presbytery could not settle down into permanent pastorates. In this, as in the matter of education, they wisely adapted their actions to their necessities. In both, that action has since been unwisely urged as a precedent under circumstances wholly different. In the true sense of the word pastor, there was none in the church till many years later. All the ministers of the second period were missionary evangelists. There is no grander chapter in all church history than the record of these evangelistic tours. Their circuits extended over vast fields, some of them five

hundred miles in diameter. They were usually sent in pairs, one of the older men and one of the boys. They carried bell and "hobble" for their horses; crackers, cheese, and a tin cup for themselves. To these were added blankets for a bed. If they found lodgings in a house it usually had but one room and they slept on their own blankets. In the morning the owner of the cabin would take his gun and go out to hunt meat for breakfast. Yet in such cabins they held grand meetings and organized churches which stand today in the midst of wealthy communities. In many neighborhoods the pioneer farmers were just planting their first crop.

Robert Donnell held a camp-meeting near where Huntsville, Alabama, now stands, before any town was there. Timber grew thick around the great spring, though the camp-meeting was not at that, but at another spring a mile below. Calhoun and others held a camp-meeting at the spring where the town of Monroe, Overton County, Tennessee, was afterward built. None of these men got much, if any, pay at first. They wore homespun clothing made by their mothers or wives, and were at little expense. They often swam the rivers, because there were no ferry-boats except on the thoroughfares.

[90] The ordained missionaries of the presbytery were King, Donnell, Calhoun, McSpeddin, Foster, McLin, Chapman, Harris, Kirkpatrick, Barnett, Bell, and McLean, with large additions to the list toward the close of this presbyterial period. A course of study prescribed by presbytery was regularly kept up by the young men on all these tours of evangelism. They recited to their seniors as they rode along on their horses. This was the normal school of science and divinity for the first Cumberland Presbyterians. While it had its disadvantages, it generally made grand thinkers. Testimonies from the ablest alumni of the old colleges are in existence showing with what a grasp of original thought these men took up an investigation. A college president once sat down with Reuben Burrow to investigate a Bible question. They had gone but a little way in the investigation before the college man saw that he was in the presence of his master. In vigor of original thought, in grasp, and depth, and clearness of discernment, he could hold no hand with Burrow. Dr. Anderson, of the Presbyterian Church, warned his friend, Dr. Blackburn, against entering into any controversy with Finis Ewing, on the ground that Ewing would prove too hard for him. He said Ewing had already given Blackburn a Braddock's defeat. {See Life and Times of Ewing, p. 203.}

What heroism it required to enter the ministry under our first presbytery! There were no pastorates, no salaries, no possibility of earthly honors. To travel unpaid on horseback across wild wastes to the homes of pioneers in the new settlements; to swim rivers, and sleep on the bare ground; to go hungry and half clad; to belong to a struggling little church whose doctrines and practices were diligently misrepresented, as they are even to this day; to preach in floorless log-cabins, or gather the rough frontiersmen in camps around some spring, and there labor day and night for a week that poor lost men might be saved, and that our new territories might not all be given over to infidelity; and after all this, to die in poverty at last, was the prospect before that generation of our preachers. Thank God there were men equal to the occasion!

Brief biographical sketches of the ordained ministers of the new presbytery, up to the time it was divided, are here given:

Samuel McAdow was born in North Carolina, April 10, 1760, [91] and was converted in 1771. He was a graduate of Mechlenburg College; was married to Henrietta Wheatley, in 1788; licensed in 1797, by Orange Presbytery; ordained in 1798 or 1799. He moved to Kentucky in 1799; aided in forming the new church in 1810; moved to Illinois in 1828; and died March 30, 1844.

Finis Ewing was born in Virginia, in July, 1773; was married January 19, 1793, to Peggy Davidson; was a candidate in 1801, receiving licensure in 1802; was ordained in 1803. He assisted in the organization of the new church in 1810, and helped to make the Confession of Faith in 1814; moved to Missouri in 1820; died in 1841.

Samuel King was born in North Carolina, April 19, 1775; was married to Ann Dixon in 1795; licensed in 1802, and ordained in 1804. He aided in forming the new church in 1810; moved to Missouri in 1825; died in 1842.

Ephraim McLean was born June 26, 1768; married Elizabeth Walton Byers, of Virginia; was a candidate in 1802; was licensed in 1803, and ordained by the new Cumberland Presbytery in 1810. He died January 1, 1813.

James Brown Porter was born February 26, 1779, in North Carolina, and was converted in 1801. He became a candidate in 1803; was licensed in 1804, and ordained in 1810. He was twice married. He died in 1854.

William McGee was born in North Carolina, in 1768. He was licensed and ordained in North Carolina before 1796, at which time he was sent West as a missionary. He joined the Cumberland Presbytery in October, 1810, and helped to form the Confession in 1814. He died in 1817.

Robert Bell was born December 16, 1770. He married Grizzell McCutcheon. He was licensed in 1804; was ordained in 1810, and was sent as a missionary to the Indians in 1820. He died October 9th, 1853.

Thomas Calhoun was born in North Carolina, May 31, 1782. He became a candidate in 1803, and was married to Mary Johnson in 1809. He received licensure in July, 1810, and was ordained in 1811. He helped to make our Confession of Faith in 1814. He died in 1855.

[92] Hugh Kirkpatrick, the date of whose birth is not known, was a licensed preacher at the time the commission met in 1805. He was ordained in 1810. He died in 1864.

David Foster was born in North Carolina, May 4, 1780; was licensed in 1805. He married Ann Beard in 1806; was ordained in 1810; moved to Illinois in 1827. He died in 1833.

William Harris was born in 1772, and married Nancy Highsmith in 1797. He was a catechist in 1804, a candidate in 1810, licensed in 1811, and ordained in 1812. He published our first hymn book in 1824. He died in 1845.

William Barnett was born April 24, 1785; was licensed in 1810, and ordained in 1813. He was twice married. He died at a camp-meeting in West Tennessee in 1828.⁽⁴⁾

Alexander Chapman was born in Pennsylvania, January 2, 1776. He married Ann Dixon Carson in 1805; became a candidate in 1805; was licensed in 1811; ordained in 1813. He died in 1834.

David Wilson McLin was born December 24, 1785. He became a candidate in 1810, was licensed in 1811, and married Nancy Johnson Porter in 1812. He died in his adopted home in Illinois, in 1836.

Robert Donnell was born in North Carolina, in April, 1784. (The family records were destroyed by the Indians.) He was a candidate in 1806, was licensed in 1811, and ordained in 1813. He helped to form the Confession of Faith in 1814. He married Ann E. Smith in 1817. His second wife was Clara W. Lindley, to whom he was married in 1832. He died in 1855.

The licentiates under the care of the first presbytery were Philip McDonnold, William Bumpass, Samuel McSpeddin, and Samuel Donnell. The candidates were Robert Guthrie, John Barnett, John Carnahan, Elisha Price, Green P. Rice, Daniel Buie, Robert McCorkle, James Stewart, Ezekiel Cloyd, Francis McConnell, and Elijah Cherry. A few others conversed with the presbytery about their call to the ministry, and were advised to defer their decision. Most of these came into the ministry after the presbytery was divided, and after a melancholy period of doubt and struggle.
 

[93]

Man is higher than his dwelling-place;
He looks up and unfolds the wings of his soul.
                                                                --Jean Paul Richter.

"Thine arm hath led us on,
A way no more expected
Than when thy sheep passed through the deep,
By crystal walls protected."

It is indicated clearly all through the records of the first presbytery that a separate denomination was not at first aimed at, but only an independent presbytery of the Presbyterian Church, with reserved hopes that in some unforeseen manner the breach would one day be healed. These hopes were not all given up even when a synod was formed, as the preamble to the resolution establishing a synod clearly indicates; but the failure of all past efforts at reconciliation, and the necessities of the great work committed to their hands, required them to take one more step.

The Cumberland Presbytery, at the meeting held at Lebanon church, Christian County, Kentucky, November 3, 1812, put on record the fact that it had been struggling for a reunion with the Presbyterian Church, and that it still desired such reunion. {See Minutes in the Theological Medium, October, 1878, pp. 494, 495.} The preamble to the resolution to form a synod is as follows:

Whereas, we, the Cumberland Presbytery, have made every reasonable effort to be reunited to the general Presbyterian Church; and, whereas, from the extent of our bounds, the local situation of our members, their number, etc., it is inconvenient to do business in-but one presbytery; and, whereas, the constitution of a synod would be desirable, and we trust of good consequences, in various respects, and particularly as a tribunal having appellate jurisdiction; therefore, resolved, etc.

[94] The Elk and Logan presbyteries were formed. The Elk Presbytery extended from the mouth of Duck River northward to Tennessee Ridge, thence east to the Cumberland Mountains in Middle Tennessee. Its southern boundary was indefinite, but extended as far as the white settlements, and followed up the advancing wave of these settlements. Its first members were William McGee, Samuel King, James B. Porter, Robert Bell, and Robert Donnell. Its first meeting was at Mount Carmel, and William McGee preached the opening sermon.

The Logan Presbytery was bounded on the south by the other two presbyteries, but extended northward indefinitely. Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana territories were in its field, as were also Pennsylvania and New York. Its members were Finis Ewing, William Harris, Alexander Chapman, and William Barnett. At the organization the sermon was preached by Ewing.

The Cumberland (Nashville) Presbytery was composed of the following members: Thomas Calhoun, David Foster, D.W. McLin, Hugh Kirkpatrick, William Bumpass, Samuel McSpeddin, and Ezekiel Cloyd. The boundaries of this presbytery were limited only by the fields assigned to the Elk and the Logan. The first synod was organized on the 5th day of October, 1813, at the Beech meeting-house, in Sumner County, Tennessee. There were sixteen ordained ministers within its bounds. William McGee preached the opening sermon.

There is a pen and ink sketch of the men who composed this synod at its second meeting, when the Confession was adopted. It was drawn by E. Curry, who was present at the meeting described:

The Rev. Samuel King was the moderator, and with modest step advanced to the chair,⁽⁵⁾ and with a solemnity and dignity of countenance peculiar to himself, entered upon the duties of his station. Upon the right sat Finis Ewing, with a keen eye, ready to scan every thing that came before the synod. Near him sat Hugh Kirkpatrick, with a heavy brow, prepared to define hard words and sentences. On his right sat James B. Porter, with a pleasing countenance, as though he was delighted that they were about to smite off the old shackles. ... On the left of the moderator sat Robert Donnell, writing resolutions to [95] offer to synod. Behind him was David Foster, with a critic's eye to detect any error. In this group sat my favorite, Thomas Calhoun, who once spoke terror to my heart and caused me to cry aloud for mercy. Just in front sat Alexander Chapman, with a serene look and attentive ear, that he might be prepared to give a judicious vote. A little back lay Samuel Donnell, brother of Robert (in an advanced stage of consumption), who seemed to be a sort of concordance to whom all applied for scriptural proofs. Farther back in the house William McGee was seen, tossing to and fro with deep thoughts and heavy groans, soon to be vented in a powerful speech. A little in front sat William Bumpass, a man of ready wit and good judgment, who always had language to tell what he knew. In a corner of the aisle stood William Barnett, about to deliver one of his thundering speeches, which made the walls of the church reverberate with his loud, shrill voice. Several more of the fathers of the church took part in the deliberations of that synod.

We regret that Mr. Curry did not continue his picture. At that meeting were William Harris, D. W. McLin, Robert Bell, Samuel McSpeddin, Ezekiel Cloyd, and Philip McDonnold. These men were "the fathers" of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church.

I often, in my boyhood, saw McSpeddin. He used to preach at my father's house on his circuit in the mountains. "Uncle Sam," everybody called him. He was a plain, earnest, honest, good man, and a great favorite with the mountain people. His favorite theme was experimental religion. I once heard Dr. Cossitt beg him to leave his thoughts on that subject in writing for posterity. "Uncle Sam" lived to great age and retained his memory fresh to the last. It was customary with all our writers on biography or history to go to McSpeddin for facts. Even his dates were always found to be reliable. Several times they were questioned, but investigation proved them to be right. His youngest son, Judge McSpeddin, of Center, Alabama, still lives.

I also knew William Harris. He presided in the examination when I was received as a candidate for the ministry. Dr. Beard has given us a beautiful biographical sketch of Harris; the most interesting, I think, of all his biographical sketches. Harris has sons and grandsons still living. One of his grandsons was a little child, two and a half years old, when Father Harris died. The dying man had this child brought to his bed, and laying his hands [96] upon his head poured forth a prayer of great earnestness for God's blessings on the life of the boy. That grandson is now the senior editor of the Cumberland Presbyterian.

Philip McDonnold died before my day, but as his father, Redmond McDonnold, was my father's uncle; and as his mother and younger brother, Barnett, long survived him, I used to hear his wonderful career discussed very often. The family lived in what was then called Stoglan's Valley, on the borders of what was then Wayne County, Kentucky. I made many a visit to their home, and the name of Philip was spoken with profoundest veneration. By some strange freak the orthography of his name is perverted into McDaniel, even in the published minutes of his own presbytery. The McDaniels were another family and no kin to the McDonnolds, but a noble preacher rose up among them at a later day. I know that Dr. Beard tried to collect material for a biography of Philip McDonnold, but as he never published the biography, it may be that he failed to secure the necessary facts.

McDonnold was an extemporaneous orator and left no writings at all. The old people said that when he came from the woods (which was the closet of prayer in those days) and went into the pulpit, he was often as white as a sheet. When he began his sermon, pouring down torrents of oratory and of fire upon them, there was but one way to resist, and that was to run as quick as possible out of hearing. Wonderful things are related about the effects of his oratory. People said he often made them feel as if the day of judgment had already come. Many of our old people, David Lowry among the number? insisted that the spiritual power of Philip McDonnold's oratory was never equaled on earth. He married a daughter of General Robert Ewing, who was Finis Ewing's oldest brother, and died in 1815, at the close of his twenty-first year. His only son, Philip Monroe McDonnold, entered the ministry, receiving licensure. He married, and then, like his father, died, leaving only one child. After Philip McDonnold's tongue had been dust for more than fifty years old men still wept when some of his thrilling appeals to sinners were mentioned in their presence.

Dr. Beard's Biographical Sketches give pen-pictures of most [97] of the fathers of our church. There is need of a few additions. In the sketch given by Mr. Curry of William McGee there is mention made of his groaning and restlessness. McGee had a long, hard struggle about doctrine. He rejected the stern features of the Westminster Confession, but he could not frame another system of theology which left out these objectionable teachings, and at the same time avoided the opposite extreme. He declined to aid in organizing the independent presbytery. He refrained a long time from preaching. Alone in the woods he labored and prayed over the system which was to take the place of the one he had rejected. A little light dawned on him and he went then and joined the independent presbytery. Still it was an unsettled question what new creed would be adopted under the new conditions. This was the pending question when McGee showed the anxiety described by Mr. Curry. He helped to make the new creed and voted for it. It was unanimously adopted. At last McGee's troubled heart had rest.

[98]

Not to know at large of things remote
From use, obscure, and subtle; but to know
That which before us lies in daily life,
Is the prime wisdom. What is more is fume,
Emptiness, or fond impertinence;
And renders us, in things that most concern,
Unpracticed, unprepared, and still to seek.
                                                                --Milton.

My banner--from my Master was it to me intrusted--
Before his throne must I lay it down at last.
I dare display it, because I have borne it faithfully.
                                                                                --Schiller.

The Cumberland Presbytery, before the organization of the synod, had felt the need of a more definite creed. Its candidates for the ministry all adopted the Westminster Confession, with exceptions about fatality. This was too vague. At the very last meeting of the presbytery before the organization of the synod, Finis Ewing and Robert Donnell were appointed a committee to prepare a synopsis of doctrines. Their synopsis was reported to the synod and unanimously adopted. The synod ordered this outline statement of its doctrines to be published. It appeared soon after in Buck's Theological Dictionary. It was as follows:

1.--That Adam was made upright, pure, and free; that he was necessarily under the moral law, which binds all intelligences; and having transgressed it he was, consequently, with all his posterity, exposed to eternal punishment and misery.

2.--That Christ, the second Adam, represented just as many as the first; consequently made an atonement for all, "which will be testified in due time;" but that the benefit of that atonement will be received only by the believer.

[99] 3.--That all Adam's family are totally depraved, conceived in sin, going astray from the womb, and all children of wrath; therefore must be born again, justified, and sanctified, or they never can enter into the kingdom of God.

4.--That justification is by faith alone as the instrument; by the merits of Christ's active and passive obedience, as the meritorious cause; and by the operation of God's Spirit as the efficient or active cause.

5.--That as the sinner is justified on the account of Christ's righteousness being imputed to him, on the same account he will be enabled to go on from one degree of grace to another, in a progressive life of sanctification, until he is fit to be gathered to the garner of God, who will certainly take to glory every man who is really justified; that is, he, Christ, has become wisdom (light to convince), righteousness (to justify), sanctification (to cleanse), and redemption (to glorify) to every truly regenerated soul.

The sixth item asserts the traditional doctrine of the Trinity. Then the synopsis states its dissent from the Westminster Confession as follows:

1. That there are no eternal reprobates. 2. That Christ died not for a part only, but for all mankind.
3. That all infants dying in infancy are saved through Christ and the sanctification of the Spirit.  4. That the operations of the Holy Spirit are co-extensive with the atonement; that is, on the whole world, in such a manner as to leave all without excuse.

After stating this dissent, our fathers then add:

As to the doctrines of election and reprobation, they think (with many eminent and modest divines who have written on the subject) they are mysterious. They are not well pleased with the application that rigid Calvinists, or Arminians, make of them. They think the truth of that, as well as many other points in divinity, lies between the opposite extremes. They are confident, however, that those doctrines should not, on the one hand, be so construed as to make any thing the creature has done, or can do, at all meritorious in his salvation; or to lay any ground to say, "Well done, I;" or to take the least degree of the honor of our justification and perseverance from God's unmerited grace and Christ's pure righteousness. On the other hand, they are equally confident that those doctrines should not be so construed as to make God the author of sin, directly or indirectly, ... or to contradict the sincerity of God's expostulation with sinners, and make his [100] oath to have no meaning, when he swears he has no pleasure in their death; or to resolve the whole character of the Deity into his sovereignty without a due regard to all his other adorable attributes.⁽⁶⁾

On this platform of doctrine they (the fathers of our church) dared spread their banner to the breeze; and we, their sons, hope, through God's grace, to keep it flying till the grand mission of the everlasting gospel is accomplished. This platform came not from human schools. It owes no debt to ancient or modern philosophy. In the great revival men who studied their English Bibles while laboring for the salvation of souls, rejected the medieval fatalism in that system to which their church adhered, and without being scholastic enough to attempt a theodicy, they confined their creed to the plain middle of the track of revealed truth.

A cold scholastic logic applied to theology always terminates in one or the other of two extremes. Grace and freedom are Jacob and Esau struggling in the womb together. Logic destroys one or the other and ends the struggle. Practical pulpit theology lets both live, and lets the struggle go on, nor makes any effort at reconciling things which, though both clearly revealed, are, in appearance, irreconcilable. We have far more confidence in a system of theology growing out of a revival, than in a system made by scholastics writing in the midst of their books and aiming at logical consistency.

The synod appointed a committee, consisting of William McGee, Finis Ewing, Thomas Calhoun, and Robert Donnell, to prepare a fuller creed. This committee worked first in two sections. They simply read over the Westminster Confession, item by item, changing such expressions as did not suit them. Then the two sections met and all went through the same process. By order of the synod, all the churches were observing a day of fasting and prayer for divine guidance to be given to the committee. Thomas Calhoun gave the writer a history of their meetings. They prayed much and had a clear assurance that divine direction had been granted.

I have Robert Donnell's memoranda of the action of the synod [101] of 1814 on the proposed creed. Though there were some amendments made by the synod, yet it is recorded by Donnell that the vote on every item was unanimous. What the proposed creed was before the synod's amendments we have no means now of knowing. Donnell's memoranda state the action in words like these: "Motion to strike out second clause carried unanimously."

The following exhibit of the principal changes made in the Westminster Confession, which I cut from an article published by Dr. C.H. Bell, will place the doctrinal status of our church before the reader:

God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

3.--By the decree of God for the manifestation of his glory some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.

4.--These angels and men thus predestinated and foreordained are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it can not be either increased or diminished.

[102]

6.--As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath he, by the eternal and most free purpose of his will, foreordained all the means thereunto. Wherefore they who are elected being fallen in Adam are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ by his spirit working in due season; and justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by his power through faith unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only.

7.--The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.

8.--To all those for whom Christ hath purchased redemption, he doth certainly and effectually apply and communicate the same, making intercession for them, and revealing unto them, in and by the word, the mysteries of salvation; effectually persuading them by his spirit to believe and obey. ...

All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, he is pleased in his appointed

[103]

and accepted time effectually to call, by his word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ. ...

3.--Elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by Christ, through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth. So also are all other elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the word.
 
 

4.--Others, not elected, although they may be called by the ministry of the word, and may have some common operations of the Spirit, yet they never truly come to Christ, and therefore can not be saved. ...

They whom God hath accepted in his Beloved, effectually called and sanctified by his Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace; but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved.

2.--This perseverance of the saints depends, not upon their own free will, but upon the immutability of the decree of election, flowing from the free and unchangeable love of God the Father; upon the efficacy of the merit and intercession of Jesus Christ; the abiding of the Spirit and of the seed of God within them; and the nature of the covenant of grace; from all which ariseth also the certainty and infallibility thereof.

God did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, determine to bring to pass what should be for his own glory.

2.--God has not decreed any thing respecting his creature, man, contrary to his revealed will or written word; which declares his sovereignty over all his creatures, the ample provision he has made for their salvation; his determination to punish the finally impenitent with everlasting destruction, and to save the true believer with an everlasting salvation.

Section 3 omitted in Cumberland Presbyterian Confession.
 
 
 
 

Omitted.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Omitted.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Omitted.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

8.--Jesus Christ, but the grace of God, has tasted death for every man, and now makes intercession for transgressors; by virtue of which, the Holy Spirit is given to convince of sin, and enable the creature to believe and obey. ...

All those who God call, and who obey the call, and those only, he is pleased by his word and

Spirit to bring out of that state of sin and death in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ. ...
 
 

3.--All infants dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth; so, also, are others who have never had the exercise of reason, and who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the word.

Omitted.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

They whom God hath justified and sanctified he will also glorify; consequently the truly regenerated soul will never totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved.

2.--This perseverance depends on the unchangeable love and power of God; the merits, advocacy, and intercession of Jesus Christ; the abiding of the Spirit and seed of God within them; and the nature of the covenant of grace; from all which ariseth also the certainty and infallibility thereof.
 
 

[104] The great majority of the chapters in the Westminster Confession were placed in the new creed without any change at all, the changes here indicated being the only vital ones made. The Catechism was also changed in the matter of decrees to correspond with the views set forth in the new Confession. The chapters on faith, repentance, depravity, and imputation, in the new book, are the same substantially as in the old. The new Confession clearly enunciates the truth that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life;" and that "the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal." Through Christ's atoning grace, and by the Spirit's aid, man can be saved. What need have we of more metaphysics in our creed?

Besides these principal changes, the Confession of Faith of 1814 made some additions to the deliverances of the Westminster standards on the subject of sanctification, and about the gift or baptism of the Holy Spirit. On the former, our fathers, after giving all the thirteenth chapter of the old book, just as it stands, added the following words: "Although the remains of depravity may continue to affect the true believer in this life, yet it is his duty and privilege, through grace, to maintain a conscience void o~ offense toward God and toward men."

Finis Ewing tells us, in substance, that the compilers of our Confession of Faith aimed at medium ground on the sanctification question. He was one of those compilers. They did not believe that sanctification is all finished until the soul leaves the body; neither did they believe that a life of sin is compatible with that Christianity which has received the baptism of the Holy Ghost. They believed that a Christian could and should maintain a conscience void of offense, and so live free from condemnation.

While they retained as true the phrases about the remains of depravity continuing to affect the believer as long as he remains in the body, yet they feared these expressions might be abused so as to "make provisions for the flesh," and they sought to guard against this abuse by two very strong declarations. {Chap. xiii., sec. 4, and chap. xvii., sec. 3.}

It has been shown in a previous chapter that our fathers believed [105] in the baptism of the Holy Ghost as a distinct blessing after conversion. They changed the wording of the seventeenth chapter so as to give emphasis to this belief.

The Westminster Confession reads (chap. xvii., sec. 3):

Nevertheless, they {Christians} may, through the temptations of Satan and of the world, the prevalency of corruption remaining in them, and the neglect of the means of their preservation, fall into grievous sins, and for a time continue therein: whereby they incur God's displeasure, and grieve his Holy Spirit; come to be deprived of some measure of their graces and comforts; have their hearts hardened, and their consciences wounded; hurt and scandalize others, and bring temporal judgments upon themselves.

The book adopted by our fathers reads (chap. xvii., sec. 3):

Although there are examples in the Old Testament of good men having egregiously sinned, and some of them continuing for a time therein, yet now, since life and immortality are brought clearer to light in the gospel, and especially since the effusion of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost, we may not expect the true Christian to fall into such gross sins. Nevertheless, they may, through the temptations of Satan, the world and the flesh, the neglect of the means of grace, fall into sin, and incur God's displeasure and grieve his Holy Spirit; come to be deprived of some measure of their graces and comforts, and have their consciences wounded; but the real Christian can never rest satisfied therein.

If the quotations from McAdow's sermons, in the chapter on the Paraclete, are compared with this change in the Confession, the reasons for the change will be understood. Of all the doctrines held by our fathers, the one about the baptism of the Holy Ghost was most esteemed by them. Gradually it was allowed to be crowded into the background, after our fathers went to their rest. In nearly all our early judicatures of this period, strong resolutions are placed on record about the necessity of a godly life. It is constantly affirmed by all our early writers that all Christians should live in abiding communion with God. A state of full assurance was insisted on in every protracted meeting which these men held.

But enough of this digression. The Confession, studied as a whole, interpreting the scraps and phrases by the general tenor of [106] the book, and not interpreting the whole tenor of the book by these phrases, teaches "the medium system "--a medium between the old time Calvinism and Arminianism.

It has been so often denied that there can be any medium ground between Calvinism and Arminianism, that a few words on that subject seem necessary. The assertion of impossibility is a father's hat on a boy's head. Originally it was, "There is no medium ground between fatality and freedom." If there can not be a free volition with no antecedent cause outside of the fact that there was a free actor, then fatality follows inevitably. The impossibility, if it exists, applies to God's volitions as well as man's. The claim to medium ground was not to a medium between fatality and freedom, but a medium between the Calvinism of that day and Arminianism.

An attempt is here made to exhibit the representative creeds of Christendom, graded according to the amount of Calvinism or Arminianism which they contain. You begin to read the diagram in the middle. Each step upward is supposed to contain one shade more of Calvinism, till it passes Calvinism into atheistic fatality. Each step downward is supposed to be a step further away from Calvinism. Up and down refer only to the page, and not to any superiority in the creeds. From this diagram, if it be a true exhibit, the justness of the claim to a medium position, which we Cumberland Presbyterians set up, will be clearly seen. The place assigned some of the creeds was determined by averaging, some of their doctrines belonging to a higher grade and some to a lower than the one assigned. The fact that the New School Presbyterians and the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland both adopt the Westminster standards modifies their grading. Private and individual systems give other shades not here noticed. The pulpit theology of the New School Presbyterians was often far more Arminian than the system held by Cumberland Presbyterians; so, too, is the theology of many a modern Congregationalist. A large part of the Baptist churches hold about the same amount of Calvinism that the Cumberland Presbyterians do. While many reference books have been examined, Schaff and Hagenbach have been relied on more than others.

[107]

9. Atheistic fatality.
8. Theistic fatality. God under fate.
7. Two-seed Baptists. Antinomians.
6. Supralapsarian Calvinists. Dort.
5. Infralapsarian Calvinists. American Old School Presbyterians.
4. New School Presbyterians.
3. The Savoy Declaration, 1658.
2. The United Presbyterians. Declaration of 1879.
1. The Baxterians.
English Congregationalists, 1833 }
Evangelical Free Church of Geneva, }
Cumberland Presbyterians, } Medium.
Reformed Episcopal Church, }
Free Italian Church, }
1. Lutherans.
2. Freewill Baptists.
3. Evangelical Union of Scotland.
4. Methodists.
5. Quakers, "orthodox," not "Hicksite."
6. Campbellites.
7. Pelagians.
8. Socinians.
9. Atheistic freedom. No divine influence.

The range of our easy and hearty fellowship in work for the Master's kingdom takes in all the grades from five above to five below, and sometimes stretches over the sixth above and below. The sixth below has two wholly different elements among its membership, one class believing in experimental religion, the presence and power of the Holy Ghost, and in revivals. With them our people can cooperate in Christian work. The other class we can not work with, and might do them injustice if we tried to give their views. There are individual exceptions also in the grades which we fellowship. Men of any grade who oppose revivals can not work well with us, nor we with them.

[108] As to communing at the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, we put no barrier in the way, but refer the question to men's own consciences. I have seen Unitarians communing with our people. It is not our custom to require any test--church membership, baptism, or any thing of the sort. If a man believes that he is a Christian and his own conscience is clear in coming to the Lord's table, we invite him to come. This has always been our custom, and is the obvious meaning of our standards. There have been a few dissenting voices to this interpretation of the standards. These insist on church membership, in some orthodox church, as essential. Baptism is, according to them, prerequisite to communion.

One thing can be clearly proved as a historical fact, and that is that slowly but surely the doctrinal views of the Presbyterian Church, so far as the pulpit can be taken as their exponent, have been drawing nearer and nearer, ever since 1814, to this medium platform.

[109]

From the organization of the synod, in 1813, until the organization of McGee Presbytery, in 1819, there were just three presbyteries. These had the whole world for their field. It may be interesting to mention several customs which prevailed among them then, and which have long since passed away. The old custom among all Presbyterians of requiring tokens from communicants was kept up a little while by our people, but, without any ecclesiastical repudiation, was gradually dropped. James B. Porter made the first vigorous denunciation of the system. He had seen Colonel Joe Brown driven by it out of the Presbyterian Church, and he ever afterward refused to use tokens. The token was a little piece of metal like a trunk check, given by the session to a church member on communion day. It was his pass to the Lord's table when the sacrament was administered. The communicants took their seats at a long table. They always used real tables in those days. Then one man, appointed for the purpose, went round the table to see that all seated there had tokens. If any one there seated had no token he was pointed out to those who distributed the bread and wine, and they skipped him in their distribution. For many years the mother church withheld tokens from those of its members who had communed with "the Cumberlands," as they insisted on calling the members of the new church.

Colonel Joe Brown gave me, with his own lips, the history of his case. He had communed with the Cumberland Presbyterians, and his pastor ordered the session to refuse him a token. His sympathies were already with the new church both on account of its revivals and its doctrines. When the token was withheld, by [110] Gideon Blackburn's order, Colonel Brown then and there rose in the great congregation and told them that the Cumberland Presbyterians were God's people; that the attempt to bring them under the odium theologicum would recoil on its authors; and that he, for one, intended to cast his lot in with the church under whose ministry his children had been led to Jesus. While Mrs. Frances B. Fogg's little biography of this hero of Nickajack is interesting, it fails utterly to give the thrilling story of his life after his release from Indian captivity. I myself once took down from ColoneI Brown's own lips full memoranda of his whole life, but the memoranda were destroyed with most of my library during the war. It is hoped that some of Colonel Brown's family will yet preserve to the church and the world a full account of his wonderful career.

What was called "fencing" the table in the days of our fathers included this business of the tokens, and also the code of rules by which the token was either given or withheld. The preacher who publicly announced these rules, and presided in their application, was said to "fence the table." "A fence for communion," "a good fence for the Lord's table," was often published in church papers--that is, a code of rules which ought to be applied in distributing tokens. I have heard old people regret the laxness of discipline which took down the fence from the Lord's table. Whether this removal was censurable or praiseworthy, our own church was a prominent actor in its accomplishment.

All three of the presbyteries had a custom which lingered a dozen years, and whose origin is hard to trace. A presbytery was composed of preachers, elders, and representatives. As in synod, so also in presbytery, every preacher was expected to have his own elder. Then the churches also were expected to send representatives to presbytery, but as the distance was in some cases five hundred miles, it was the custom of the remote churches to club together and send one representative for several congregations. There were instances where one man represented six congregations, so that there was no superabundance of elders even when both classes, the preachers' elders and the churches', were counted. In the synod the churches had no representatives. The preachers and their elders made the synod; but the preachers' elders were ap [111] pointed by the church sessions in obedience to a requisition made annually by the presbytery. For example: the Elk Presbytery, at its spring session, would designate what congregation should send an elder with Robert Donnell, and the session of that church was held responsible for the presence of said elder in the synod. The utmost rigor was used at first to enforce this arrangement. The elder appointed and failing to go, unless for good reasons, was to have charges preferred against him. Such was the rule in all the presbyteries.

All three of the presbyteries had vast fields to cultivate, and those fields were continually expanding. The Nashville Presbytery, a few years after it began its separate presbyterial existence, found the whole western end of Tennessee opened by the purchase of the country from the Indians. But this expansion of that presbytery was a little thing compared with the vast fields thrown open on the frontiers of Logan and Elk presbyteries. In the case of the latter, soon after its organization, South Alabama was opened to American settlers, then Arkansas, then North-western Alabama, then Missouri. At one session of this presbytery petitions for preachers were received from five hundred pioneers in the new settlements of Alabama alone, and also from vast numbers in Arkansas and Missouri. Both Logan and Elk presbyteries tried to evangelize Missouri. In the wide bounds of Logan Presbytery Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio were opened to white settlements, and the earnest petitions of emigrants begging for the gospel were part of the stirring business coming up at every session.

In all three of the presbyteries fast-days were repeatedly appointed, and all the churches were urged to pray for more laborers to be sent into the harvest. After these fast-days the presbyteries invariably received large accessions to their number of candidates. Yet the growth of the new settlements and the demands for the gospel kept far ahead of this increase in the supply of ministers. It was folly to talk about settling down into pastorates under these circumstances. Men were called pastors, and they will be so designated in these pages. The name existed, but the reality had no place in all the church till near the close of the second period in this history. Thomas Calhoun is called pastor in the next chapter, [112] but he made frequent tours of evangelism which required six months each. He attended camp-meetings for two or three months every year, and he cultivated a large farm.

The plan which all the presbyteries fell upon was threefold. All the vast fields under their care were districted, and itinerants sent to each district. These itinerants established circuits of preaching places, and made appointments for preaching every day in the week. This was generally missionary work, outside of all organized congregations. If the missionary could collect enough members to organize a church, he took their names, pledging them to form a church as soon as an ordained preacher could be had to organize them. The missionary was not usually an ordained minister. This was the first branch of the system.

The second branch pertained to organized congregations. In these the presbytery appointed sacramental meetings semi-annually, and designated the preachers who were to officiate. The fall meetings were camp-meetings, as well as sacramental, and every ordained preacher, no matter what his pastoral relations might be, was required to attend these camp-meetings during the fall months, and was also required to perform his part of that other work on the circuits which unordained men could not do. The presbytery, at every session, designated what portion of these duties fell to the lot of each ordained minister, and each was held to rigid account for his fidelity in the work assigned him.

The third branch of the system consisted of such features of regular pastorates as could be made consistent with the two preceding branches. In the orders of these presbyteries I find it no uncommon thing for a so-called pastor of this period to be required, in the course of a year, to attend as many as a dozen sacramental meetings, distant from fifty to three hundred miles from his home; and when called on to report at the next meeting of the presbytery, it was a rare thing for any one to report a failure. When failure was reported, the reasons were investigated.

The chief question at every meeting of these presbyteries was about the supply of itinerants and their support. These itinerants were always called missionaries by the Logan Presbytery, but they were frequently called circuit riders in the other presbyteries.

[113] Nashville Presbytery consumed one whole session in ?IBIS in discussing plans for the support of itinerants. The Elk Presbytery came with shorter steps to decided measures. It required every member of the church to pay one dollar to the itinerant fund. This action was taken in 1816, and for three years produced good results. Afterward we find R. D. King and others traveling under order of the presbytery six months on the frontier, without receiving a cent of pay. Nashville Presbytery tried several schemes. The best one, perhaps, was a central board, with auxiliary societies throughout the presbytery; but in two years' time this plan lost its vitality, and again the wail of "no circuit riders" made the meetings of presbytery a Bochim. This whole system of machinery broke down first in the Nashville Presbytery. It failed in all the presbyteries before any other system was introduced.

The first crash of the falling fabric came at the fall meeting of the Nashville Presbytery, in 1816. No itinerants could be secured, whereupon the presbytery apportioned its field and its churches among its ministers, requiring each one to supply the congregations assigned him as often as the circumstances permitted. The fact that no itinerants could be secured was regarded by the presbytery with alarm. A fast-day was ordered in all the congregations, and, after two years of mourning, the system had another brief resuscitation, only to break down more hopelessly than ever. In the new presbyteries organized from time to time, the original scheme was invariably employed. It was a scheme for planting churches, not for training them after they were planted.

This system of itinerant missionaries followed the system of circuit riding among the Methodists in some particulars, but differed from it in many others. In theory it was voluntary, but sometimes the pressure on a young man to induce him to take the circuit was very great. With shame be it recorded that many a dear boy has left his half-finished course of studies under this pressure, and gone out "to ride the circuit." Many such, when old men, left in writings, now in my possession, their bitter protests against a policy which robbed them of their education and crippled their life-work. Popular usage assigned to these itinerant missionaries the name which the Methodists used, but Logan Presbytery [114] refused to accept the name, and never used it in official records. A part of the church accepted the name with cheerfulness, since it was a true designation of the thing to which it was applied, and since, moreover, it came to us all perfumed with grateful odors from the fields of heroic toil for Jesus by Methodist itinerants.

The name Cumberland Presbyterian originated in a somewhat similar manner. The whole of Middle Tennessee, so far as it was settled, and some of Kentucky, was, in an early day, called Cumberland--not at first "the Cumberland country," but just Cumberland. The settlement in the eastern end of Tennessee was called Watauga. These were germs for two new States, and not till long after were they the eastern and middle portions of one State. Cumberland included all of McGready's field. Here the great revival, which was so bitterly opposed by some, began. Before the Cumberland Presbytery ever existed, the two parties of Kentucky Synod were designated by names which the people saw fit to apply. One was "the Cumberland party," which was also called the revival party. When Transylvania Presbytery was divided, and all that country which was called Cumberland assigned to a new presbytery called Cumberland Presbytery, the epithet "Cumberland Presbyterian" was already in popular use as designating all that part of the Presbyterian Church which favored the revival. All this was years before the organization of our church. When the church was organized in 1810, it adopted no denominational name. There was no intention then of starting a new church. It was an independent presbytery of Presbyterians, which still hoped for restoration to its old status in the mother church. The people called its adherents Cumberland Presbyterians. It was not till 1813 that the new church indirectly adopted the name which the people had already given. Associated with all that was most sacred while the new doctrines were costing men their ecclesiastical lives, and endeared on that account to such an extent that no subsequent effort to shake it off could be tolerated by those who knew and held sacred the traditions of our origin, the name remains to this day what the people and God's providence made it. It has been often mocked at, but, by God's grace, the church will make it as dear one day to all who love true work for Jesus, as it [115] is now to those whose ears still ring, when it is mentioned, with the holy songs of the great revival and the fearless sermons of those who first proclaimed a general atonement in Presbyterian pulpits.

Another custom originating in the Cumberland Presbytery, and kept up by its three successors for many years, was that of having a presbyterial library whose books were exchanged at every meeting of the presbytery. Each minister paid five dollars into the library fund, and also solicited contributions from the wealthy for the purchase of books, so that the library grew in a few years to a considerable collection. A list of the books allowed each preacher form part of the minutes of every presbyterial meeting. The itinerant system failed first in the Nashville Presbytery; so did the custom of having a presbyterial library. In 1819 that presbytery sold out its books. Cities, dense populations, and schools superseded the itinerant library, as they did all the system with which it stood connected.

Another custom was universal all through this period. At all the camp-meetings there was at least one sermon preached on a call to the ministry. The pressure on the presbyteries for more preachers was perhaps greater than was ever before brought to bear on any church judicatures since the days of the apostles. Several causes co-operated to produce this pressure. The first was the constant opening up of new territories to immigrants; for the period when these presbyteries were the only ones in the church is precisely the period when there was the grandest expansion of our national territory. The second cause was the emigration of Cumberland Presbyterians from Kentucky and Tennessee to these new fields. Let the population of Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi be examined to-day, and a very large portion of the people will be found to be descendants of Kentuckians and Tennesseans. These two States were the birthplace of the new church. Cumberland Presbyterian emigrants settled over all these vast fields, and they all wrote back to the presbyteries begging for the gospel. The point of special interest is that all that vast Western and Southern field, which drew its population largely from Tennessee and Kentucky, was opened to white settlers at a time when [116] the Cumberland Presbyterians of those two States were intensely active in sending out missionaries.

Two facts apparently, but not really, inconsistent meet us here. In all the older settlements where other denominations had established churches, and in all large towns, where a settled pastor was considered necessary to maintain the life of a congregation, our first preachers showed great reluctance to organizing churches. As a general rule, throughout this period, they absolutely refused, even when pressed to do so, to organize Cumberland Presbyterian congregations in such places. The other fact is, that in all the wild frontier, in the sparsest and most destitute neighborhoods, their readiness to organize churches, even where there seemed to be very little hope of any permanent supply of preachers, amounted to recklessness. The feeling that it was their duty to look first after the souls of those who were least likely to be looked after by others, no doubt prompted them to pursue this course.

Another custom was universal. Every regular minister was required to assemble the congregations and examine them in the catechism. All the licensed and ordained ministers were called upon at every meeting of the presbytery to report whether they had complied with this requirement, and there were very few cases of failure. Copies of the catechism were in nearly every Cumberland Presbyterian household, and every child, as well as every adult church member, was expected to study it. The old men who survived this custom mourned over its loss, and refused to be comforted, prophesying looseness and instability of doctrines as the fruit of its abandonment. In more than one case among the literary remains of the fathers which have been placed in my hands are found large packages of our first catechism.

The subject of a school for their candidates was discussed by each of the presbyteries. Then Nashville Presbytery (1822) asked the others to meet its delegates in convention to consider the question of a presbyterial school. This action was the forerunner of the synod's determination, in 1824, to establish a school for the whole church.

A prejudice existed all through this early period against statistics. An order requiring statistical reports passed at one meeting [117] of the synod, and was repealed at the next. At some of the sessions of presbytery the missionaries would report the number of conversions and accessions in their districts; but in most of the records no mention of any numbers can be found either in the reports of missionaries or reports of the Committee on the State of Religion. Great and precious revivals, without the mention of statistics, are reported at every meeting of presbytery. The clearest index to the rate of growth is found in the organization of new presbyteries. In sixteen years the three presbyteries grew to eighteen, the least of which was as large as the Logan Presbytery at its organization. It is true that the Committee on the State of Religion, at each session of synod, did report the number of conversions for the year; but the fact that no system of gathering statistics was in use by the presbyteries shows how incomplete these synodical reports must have been.

Dr. Burrow was perhaps foremost among anti-statistical ministers in our church. He entered the ministry in the Elk Presbytery, and was one of the noblest specimens of the itinerant preacher that any church ever had. He believed in reporting only to God. He was afraid of all counting, all sounding of trumpets; and all his life he advocated the "pay or no pay" rule about preaching; and not only advocated, but practiced it till his dying day. There were several thousand converts at his meetings the last year of his ministry.

Another custom in those days was to hold camp-meetings in communities which contained not a single member of any church. Not only were such communities found on all the frontier, but there were many people also who had never heard a sermon in their lives. If a few families of unconverted pioneers could be persuaded to move to the place selected, and there entertain the visitors, the camp-meeting was held. Nor was it a difficult thing to find liberal-hearted men who would engage in this work.

Out of many examples I select one instance of the sort, described by the venerable William Lynn, of Indiana, and published just before his departure to his crown and kingdom. This camp-meeting was in Daviess County, Kentucky. There was not a single church member in all the neighborhood; but men who were willing to [118] camp and feed the multitudes were found, and the camp-meeting was held. At that meeting those twin heroes of the cross, Chapman and Harris, were present, and also several probationers for the ministry. The meeting was greatly blessed of God, and among the converts were three men who afterward entered the ministry. This was a camp-meeting held by those heroic missionaries who are better known by the borrowed name of "circuit riders." But much more remarkable cases are on record. In the tours of R.D. King, Reuben Burrow, and Daniel Patton among the destitute settlements, it was a common thing for them to persuade unconverted men to establish a camp-ground. Indeed, there were fewer and smaller obstacles to success among the rough men of the frontier, where no churches of any denomination existed, than there were where denominational prejudices were active. One thing is worthy of special commemoration: these unconverted campers generally were converted to God in these meetings, and had abundant reasons to rejoice that they had ever undertaken to camp. One dear lady of this class said God had paid her back in her own conversion and the conversion of thirteen members of her family.

In all this period and long afterward the preaching of our ministers belonged to a very thorough system. They believed the doctrine that man is spiritually dead. This, to them, was not merely figurative, it was real. They taught that in his natural state there is no element of spiritual life in man. As well talk of cultivating a rose until you make it a bird, as talk of educating and training a man up into spiritual life. In his natural state man is thoroughly hostile to God and all spiritual good. Not only some of the imaginations of the thoughts of his heart are evil, but "every imagination." Not only that; but they are evil continually. These first preachers probed deep, and generally roused opposition and anger at first. Afterward the scales fell from the sinner's own eyes, until he saw his depravity and condemnation, and then cries of alarm and remorse broke forth from his lips.

Concerning the new birth their teaching was equally thorough. Regeneration meant a new creation, pot a mere training; not "let the goat run with the sheep till it becomes a sheep;" but divine creative power was first to make it a sheep, and then training was [119] to follow. They were equally thorough in their belief in the doctrine of eternal future punishment, and they preached it everywhere. About the atoning blood--the precious blood of Christ--their preaching was equally unambiguous and emphatic. They taught that our salvation rests on no mere moral influence and example, but on a divine vicarious sacrifice. The moral theory never had any place in the Cumberland Presbyterian system. They believed and taught that the Christian's legal standing before God is exclusively in Christ, and not at all in self--not partly in Christ and partly in works, but all in Christ.

They were equally thorough in their belief of inspiration, even ad verbum. In regard to God's indwelling presence, concerning his answers to the prayer of faith, and all similar matters, they held to no shallow system. If a probationer for the ministry in that day had taught any of the shallow systems of modern times he would have been instantly thrown overboard. Yet they insisted upon the necessity for good works, not as a procuring cause but as a fruit of the new life. If the fruit were lacking it was because the life was lacking. Works, out of love to Christ as the motive, they preached with great success.

While I mention the preaching of these doctrines as a peculiarity of our early pulpits, I do not mean to teach that our people have repudiated these fundamental truths. I am quite sure they have not; but I am also sure that these doctrines are not pressed in the pulpits of this day as they were by the fathers. In my opinion we lose by this change. Leave a vital doctrine long silent, and a generation will grow up which will utterly reject it.

[120]

                If called like them to cope
In evil times with dark and evil powers,
O be their faith, their zeal, their courage ours!
                                                            --W.H. Burleigh.
 

While it is impossible, as a general thing, to give the history of individual congregations, there are a few whose prominence requires special notice. The churches which existed before the revival, and afterward united with the Cumberland Presbyterians, have necessarily been noticed in the history of the revival. Of this class a few still exist as Cumberland Presbyterian congregations. Red River church, in Kentucky, is a center of historic interest. The old grave-yard, with dates which run back to 1730, is itself a history. Among these graves is that of the eldest brother of the Rev. Finis Ewing--General Robert Ewing--born 1760, a soldier in the revolutionary war, a member of the Kentucky legislature, etc. One of his sons still lives in the neighborhood. The grave of his daughter, Mary B., which is also there, has special interest for Cumberland Presbyterians. Her first husband was the Rev. Philip McDonnold. The parents of the Rev. A.M. Bryan lived and died in this neighborhood. When their old house was newly roofed, the old shingles were found to be pegged on. There were no nails in the country when that house was built, and iron was ten dollars a pound. Near this church the ruins of the old fort which protected the pioneers from the Indians can still be traced. It was called Mauldin's Station. Red River is still a revival church. The old log house is superseded by one of modern construction, but the old fire still burns on its altars. This church is an exception, too, among the old churches, in another [121] respect. It does not cling to the old programme of taking preacher's labors without pay.

The Beech church and Gasper River church are two more of our historic congregations. Gasper was for a time abandoned, its members going to Pilot Knob, but, since the war, it has been again revived, and still works for Jesus. The dates and names on the tombstones in its grave-yard form a precious record.

The Beech church⁽⁷⁾ was organized in 1800. Its first house of worship was a union meeting-house. The Rev. William McGee was its first pastor. In 1810 this church joined the new denomination. After McGee died this congregation had no regular pastor, but was supplied by Hugh Kirkpatrick and other itinerants. After many years they built their present stone church near the site of the union church, not being willing to leave the old grave-yard. In 1832 they organized their first Sunday School, the Rev. John Beard officiating. One hundred and twenty pupils were enrolled. Annual camp-meetings, great revivals, with many ministers rising up from among the converts, make part of the history of the Beech church.

When camp-meetings and itinerant supplies were given up, the Beech church, in spite of its Presbyterian origin, utterly failed to adopt the new programme of settled pastors in the true sense. By supplies and annual revival meetings it did, however, manage to keep alive. Like all the churches which pursue this course, it is sadly suffering, in spite of the "old fire" which is still there.

Of the churches planted by the revival party before the division, there are several still in existence as Cumberland Presbyterian congregations. Among these are Smyrna, Goshen, and Big Spring in Tennessee, and Piney in Kentucky. There are several others, in Alabama, and in other places but I can mention only a few prominent churches of this class.

Perhaps the most interesting of these is Big Spring, Wilson County, Tennessee. In 1801 some of the revival party who lived too far from Bethesda to attend regularly there, resolved to have services at the Big Spring. They secured a monthly appointment from the Rev. William Hodge. The next fall they held a camp [122] meeting on the original plan, without tents or cabins.⁽⁸⁾ This meeting was not held on the spot now occupied by that church, but just at the head of the great spring which gave its name to the congregation. The reasons for moving the camp-ground, years afterward to a smaller spring in the same neighborhood are unknown to the writer. In 1802 they built open sheds to camp under. These sloped to the ground.⁽⁹⁾ When the Cumberland Presbyterian Church was organized, the Rev. Thomas Calhoun was called to be pastor of this congregation. The word pastor must, however, be understood in a modified sense. It was in 1810 that the final location of a permanent encampment and the erection of a house of worship took place. The site was then changed to its present position.

When the father of the Rev. Thomas Calhoun had finished his log-cabin, where the new camp-ground was located, he stuck his sycamore handspike down in the ground, and it took root and grew to a great tree which still stands. People used to go to the Big Spring camp-meeting from neighborhoods a hundred miles distant. Twenty of our most efficient ministers were converted at that camp-ground. Its first camp-meetings were glorious visitations of God's power, sending out all over the State an influence which will live forever. All the Western States owe some of their noblest church officers to the Big Spring camp-meetings. I have heard many of the orators whom this nation and Europe loved to honor, but, in my humble judgment, Calhoun surpassed them all. If Moody has a special baptism of power for his peculiar work, in a far higher sense did that baptism rest on Calhoun. Many a time at old Big Spring camp-ground have the vast assemblies gathered there felt and acknowledged that God spake to them through human lips.

Thomas Calhoun lived near this church, and was pastor of this and Smyrna congregations from the time of his ordination till the close of his ministry--forty-five years. After his death, emigration to Texas seriously crippled Big Spring. The Lone Star State has drawn to its bosom nearly all the strength of many a Tennessee congregation. When the people of Big Spring sold their homes, [123] Baptists and others were the purchasers. Yet there have been great revivals among our people there in more recent times, and there is a respectable number of members now; but the very nearest of these live two miles from the church. It has, at last, been agreed to build a new house nearer the congregation. The old house of cedar logs, and those raised seats, and that pulpit with its "sounding board," and its clerk's seat, will not be left intact.

The Smyrna church, in Jackson County, Tennessee, also has an interesting history. In the private houses of two old men, Williamson and Sadler, meetings were held by Alexander Anderson, William McGee, and Samuel King, in 1800. The next year a church was organized, a spot selected for a camp-ground, and Thomas Calhoun, then only a candidate, held a meeting on this spot. Colonel Smith, the father of the Rev. Robert Donnell's first wife, lived there. People used to go a hundred miles to attend the Smyrna camp-meetings.

Calhoun's life-work as a pastor was in Big Spring and Smyrna congregations. All of Smith County and part of two other counties lay between his home and Smyrna church. A large part of this distance was filled with dense cane brakes. When there was snow, the high cane overhung the narrow path until it was difficult to travel on horseback. Yet he never missed his appointments. Colonel Smith has left us a written statement about several of the thrilling sermons preached there by Calhoun, and about the far-reaching revivals which often resulted from the camp-meetings.

I clip from the Banner of Peace the following notice of another historic church:

In 1799 a few persons, members of the Presbyterian Church, mostly from North Carolina, agreed to meet every Sabbath to read the Scriptures and pray with and for each other. They afterward constituted the Cumberland Presbyterian Church which was organized at New Hope, Wilson County, Tennessee. Their names are William and Catherine Gray, James and Margaret Stewart, Andrew and Elizabeth Bay, Alexander and Jane Kirkpatrick, John and Ann Kirkpatrick, David and Rebecca Kirkpatrick, Samuel and Sarah Motheral, Elias Morrison, Joseph Kirkpatrick, and Margaret Motheral. "These all died in the faith." The same year (1799) the Rev. William McGee preached the first sermon in the bounds of this congregation. From this time until 1810 they [124] enjoyed occasional circuit preaching by Samuel King, Alexander Anderson, Hugh Kirkpatrick, Thomas Calhoun, Alexander Chapman, James B. Porter, and David Foster--all of whom have joined the sacramental host beyond death's stream, where parting is no more.

In the fall of 1810 this congregation, afterward noted for camp-meetings, held their first camp-meeting near the "Double Islands," on Cumberland River. At this meeting they were much revived and encouraged; so much so, that the next year (1811) they purchased a lot of ground, erected camps, and held a second camp-meeting one mile above their first encampment. The Rev. William McGee, who was present, called this new camp-ground New Hope. Here, in 1812, the Rev. Hugh Kirkpatrick, with the names designated above, organized a Cumberland Presbyterian Church, and preached once a month till 1816, when he was succeeded by the Rev. John Provine, who preached monthly until 1830. From this date to 1843 they were supplied with preaching by the Rev. George Donnell and the Rev. John L. Dillard. The former served four, the latter nine years. The Rev. M.S. Vaughan then accepted the charge and preached until 1850, when he was followed by the Rev. J.E. Davis, who continued two years.

In the fall of 1852 the Rev. William D. Chadick was regularly installed pastor of this church by the late Rev. F.R. Cossitt, D.D., and continued his labors till 1855, when the Rev. J.C. Bowden supplied the congregation one year.

The Rev. M. S. Vaughan again received a call to this congregation and preached until 1859, when he was succeeded by the Rev. William A. Haynes, who served as pastor, with the exception of two or more years during the late war, till the spring of 1866. The Rev. W.W. Suddarth succeeded Mr. Haynes, and labored till the fall of 1867, at which time he received a call from Lebanon congregation, and the Rev. M.S. Vaughan was called for the third time to New Hope.

From these facts, which I find in the church records, we learn that New Hope has enjoyed the means of grace from 1799, and an organized existence of fifty-six years' standing. During this time the church held and supported fifty-three camp-meetings. At these meetings hundreds, if not thousands, of sinners were brought to a knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus, and obtained through grace a good hope of a happy immortality beyond time. Among these are many able ministers of the gospel. Some of them have laid down the gospel trumpet for glittering crowns in glory. Others, trembling under the effects of age and hard service in their high vocation, are yet preaching Jesus to a perishing world, each cheered on in his "labor of love" with this most precious promise of his divine Master? "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life," FELIX H. TAYLOR, Clerk.

[125] The first church organized as a Cumberland Presbyterian Church was Mount Moriah, in Giles County, Tennessee. The Rev. C.N. Wood, lately gone to his reward, secured for me the historical sketch of this congregation which is here used. He was converted at one of the meetings at Mount Moriah, and became a member of that congregation. This church was organized in March, 1810, by Rev. James B. Porter. A very full history of its work, written by one of the elders, is before me. This congregation has had fifteen "pastors." Mr. Porter served from 1810 till the death of his wife in 1815, when he resumed the life of an itinerant preacher. There was one year in Mr. Porter's pastorate of wonderful religious interest. The camp-meeting was unusually successful. The people carried the interest home with them. The earthquake (1812) filled all the country with great solemnity. Mr. Porter knew how to follow up these impressions, and the whole year round there were conversions all through the neighborhood. The interest in the private houses resembled that in the Gasper River neighborhood fourteen years before.

Carson P. Reed served this congregation as pastor sixteen years. After Reed came J.N. Edmiston who served three years. When he resigned, the church fell upon the miserable expedient of itinerant supplies. One thing the session put on record in their history which deserves emphasis. The church, they say, did not prosper under preaching from itinerants as it did under permanent pastors.

The Rev. G.W. Mitchell became pastor of this church early in the year 1867, and served until the close of 1871. During this time the congregation enjoyed its greatest prosperity. The session testifies that the whole membership was quickened into new life and activity. This church has tested three systems: it has had regular pastors, it has depended on the ministrations of itinerant preachers, and at other times it has employed temporary supplies. Its highest success has been attained under the labors of regular pastors. During the five years in which the Rev. D.S. Bodenhamer (now of Trinity University) served as pastor, there were ninety-six accessions to the congregation. Twenty-two converts of this church have become preachers. There are some noted [126] names on the list, such as N.P. Modrall, C.P. Reed, W.S. Burney, Lee Roy Woods, C.N. Wood, all now gone to their reward, besides a noble band who still labor for Jesus.

The venerable Joseph Brown, one of our old preachers, made his home near this church, and was buried in its cemetery. When he was nearly a hundred years old he would ask permission to stand in the pulpit beside the preacher, in order to catch every word. As his hearing was bad, he would hold his ear close up to the preacher, and occasionally cry out "Glory to God!"

This congregation has now a large brick church, built in 1856, and is in a prosperous condition. Its camp-meetings were kept up, with one intermission, until 1853, when they gave place to protracted meetings.

Another one of our first churches is Goshen, in Franklin County, Tennessee, on the Boiling Fork of Elk River, near the Cumberland Mountains.⁽¹⁰⁾

Its site is beautiful. Nearly all the first settlers here were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. In 1811 the Rev. Samuel King and the Rev. William McGee persuaded the people to hold a camp-meeting. A shed and camps were built, and King and McGee held the meeting. There were hundreds of conversions, and a Cumberland Presbyterian Church was organized. An incident of this meeting is characteristic of the times. King preached on the Sabbath. As the sermon progressed the solemnity grew oppressive. The mighty power of God rested like a weight upon the people. Men almost held their breath. The preacher felt it as well as the others. By and by the solemnity grew so great that even the preacher's tongue was silent. He stood a moment with looks of unutterable awe, and then went down from the pulpit and started to the woods. When he had gone about a hundred yards, he turned abruptly back, and entered the pulpit. There was no longer any look of awe, but a holy, rapturous light on his face, and he resumed his sermon with a thrilling power which swept every thing before it. From that day on that congregation has been noted for its revivals. Several of its converts have become ministers.

[127] In 1813 Robert Donnell began preaching in Nashville, Tennessee. Mr. Craighead was then in charge of a small church in Nashville, and he exerted himself to keep the people from hearing the new minister. At first neither preaching place nor hospitality was extended to him. He preached in the court-house, and boarded at the hotel. The court-house was afterward closed against him, but the mayor offered him the city hall. After Donnell had filled a few appointments in this hall, the mayor died, and the hall also was closed against the preacher. So great was the opposition in town, that he consented to move his appointment to the dwelling-house of Mr. Castleman in the country. Here several distinguished Tennesseans were converted. Donnell's tour in East Tennessee, described a little further on in this book, interrupted his Nashville work. By and by he secured the assistance of the Rev. James B. Porter, and held a protracted meeting in the court-house. He and Porter lodged at the hotel, but when they once got a hearing, hospitality was extended to them by various families. The preaching in this meeting stirred all Nashville. Under one of Donnell's sermons Felix Grundy, an unconverted man, afterward United States senator, sprung to his feet, seized his friend, Colonel Foster, also a United States senator, by the hand, exclaiming, "That is the truth, Foster, every word of it, and it will stand at the day of judgment." Donnell and Porter organized a church at this meeting, and raised funds for a building.

[128]

Hark! from the West a voice is heard,
    A voice beyond the mountain's side;
It breaks along the deep, dark wood
    Where roams the savage in his pride:
A star appears, its cheering ray
Dawns on the red man's darksome way.
                                                    --S.O. Wright.
 

The house of Samuel McAdow, in which our first presbytery was organized, was not more than thirty miles from the Indian territory. These Indians were still in their wild and savage state. There were, it is true, a few exceptions, but only a few. Most of these red men were as far away from civilization or Christianity then as the naked sons of the forest who first greeted Columbus over three centuries earlier. Some of the Mississippi Indians of that day wore no clothing, and kept up all the habits of savage life. There is a testimony of great significance from the Presbyterian General Assembly to the effect that the revival of 1800 produced new interest in the evangelization of the red man and the negro. The facts abundantly sustain this testimony. Gideon Blackburn belonged to the revival party in East Tennessee. He planted a mission among the Cherokees, and devoted years of toil to that interest. None of the anti-revival party of that day ever became missionaries.

In Thomas Calhoun's first evangelistic tours he entered the newly settled portions of Tennessee before the whites raised their first crop, and before the Indians ceased to roam over the country. He and others held a camp-meeting at the spring where afterward Monroe, the county town of Overton County, Tennessee, was built. Roving bands of Cherokee Indians attended the meeting. One of these became greatly impressed, and there are reasons to believe he [129] was there converted. He went home and named an Indian town after Calhoun. This was before the organization of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. In talking to Calhoun about these early days, I once expressed some surprise at his frequent mention of Indians attending his meetings. His reply was, "Why, the Indian line was just over here on Duck River. "

In Calhoun's and Donnell's tour in East Tennessee (1815) they held two protracted meetings for the Indians. One of these was at Pumpkin Town, and there was deep interest manifested by the hearers. The Rev. James Stewart also preached to the Indians before the existence of our first missionary board.

All three of the presbyteries which composed our first synod began early experimenting on plans for missionary work in their own vast bounds. Missionaries were sent to our new territories as fast as these territories were opened, but societies formed with a special view to work among the Indians and the heathen originated in 1818, and were organized in all three of the presbyteries in the spring of that year. The missionary impulse in the three presbyteries was simultaneous, and the indications are that it started with Samuel King, James Stewart, and Robert Bell. All of these men belonged to the Elk Presbytery. A constitution⁽¹¹⁾ for a ladies' missionary society was drawn up by Robert Bell, and submitted in March, 1818, to the congregations of Elk Presbytery; and that plan is the same one on which the missionary societies in all three of the presbyteries were organized. This points to Elk rather than Logan Presbytery⁽¹²⁾ as the first to move in this work. But its priority, if it existed, was one of only a few days at most, for the 9th of April⁽¹³⁾ of that year was the birthday of the ladies' society in Russellville, Kentucky. One thing can be fairly claimed by the Elk Presbytery: its missionary board (there was a central board for the presbytery) was the first to send missionaries to the Indians. In October, 1818, the Elk missionary board sent Samuel King and William Moore to a work which lay along the borders of the Indian country on the Tombigbee River.⁽¹⁴⁾ When these two men returned, [130] in the spring of 1819, and reported to their presbytery,⁽¹⁵⁾ they made a strong appeal in behalf of the red men, representing them as eager to hear the gospel, and to have a missionary school located among them. The language of this appeal would indicate that the schools under the American Board in Mississippi were not yet in existence. The missionary board of Elk Presbytery⁽¹⁶⁾ then sent Samuel King and Robert Bell, in the fall of 1819, to travel as evangelists among the Chickasaw and Choctaw Indians. On their return Mr. King brought a young Indian convert with him, intending to educate him for the ministry. He kept this boy at his own house, and sent him to school.

These missionaries made arrangements in the Choctaw Nation to secure a location and money for a missionary school, but their plans were thwarted. Then the missionary society of Elk Presbytery sent Mr. Bell to establish a school in the white settlements close enough to the border for the Indians to patronize it. Accordingly in May, 1820, Mr. Bell opened a school on the east side of the Tombigbee River, nearly opposite the dividing line between the Chickasaws and the Choctaws. He taught here only four weeks, when the missionary board of Elk Presbytery directed him to move the school into the Chickasaw Nation, the board having sent men thither to negotiate a treaty for that purpose.

The Chickasaw Nation had never been at war with our people. It had just sold out to the whites all that portion of Tennessee and Kentucky lying between the Tennessee River and the Mississippi, a delta far better known in early times for David Crockett's bear hunts than for its cotton. The Chickasaws, so long the near neighbors of Tennesseans, were still neighbors to the white people farther south. Only the Tombigbee River (Indian name Itomba Igoba) lay between them and the white settlements.

The Chickasaws of Mississippi, at the time our first mission was opened, were in advance of other Indians. Many of them had built cabins to live in. These were plastered tight with mud. The door was in the back part of the hut. There was no floor but the ground, and the cabin had but one room. The dead were [131] buried in the cabin under the bed. The corpse was doubled up before it was buried, and the vault, after receiving the mortal remains, was closely plastered over with mud. When the body was buried the squaws present took down their hair and wore it dishevelled around their faces for one whole moon. During sickness they had what was called a sick dance. They laid the sick out wrapped in blankets, and danced around them. Some of these Indians raised patches of corn and sweet potatoes; only a few raised cotton. {See Ladies' Pearl, November, 1860, p. 76.}

The traditions of the Tombigbee River surpass in thrilling interest those of the Mississippi. At no spot do more of those traditions center than at Cotton Gin Port. Here at an early day the United States government established a cotton gin among the Indians to induce them to engage in the cultivation of cotton. Levi Colbert, the most enlightened of all the Chickasaw chiefs, moved to the neighborhood and devoted himself to persuading his people to raise cotton, he himself setting the example. Here at Cotton Gin the United States government had a post-office. The country on the eastern side of the Tombigbee, in Robert Bell's day, belonged to the white people, and some families lived there, the father of Dr. C.H. Bell among them. Cotton Gin Port as early as 1800 began to be a shipping point for emigrants to the Tensas and other new countries. Canoes lashed together and covered with a floor of cane made the boats. The wreck⁽¹⁷⁾ of one such boat at night, just below Cotton Gin, furnishes one of those thrilling traditions of the Tombigbee of which there are so many; but this tradition is eclipsed in interest by the more recent one of the burning of the Eliza Battle, and the fearful loss of life on that bitter night in March, 1858. A beloved Cumberland Presbyterian minister, A.M. Newman, was among those who perished when that steamboat was burned. Many of the passengers escaped on cotton bales. A gentleman who was on the boat gave me an account of that catastrophe. Newman threw a bale of cotton into the river and placed his wife and child upon it, and then leaped in himself without any cotton bale. Mrs. Newman and daughter were [132] taken up by my informant and saved, but Newman perished in the waves.

When Robert Bell's two comrades (the commissioners of Elk Presbytery) arrived at Cotton Gin Port, they went to Levi Colbert's house. Bell had preached in that house on his former visit. Colbert was eager for the establishment of the school, and to have it located near him. He assembled the king and chiefs of the Nation at his house, where the three commissioners of the Board of Missions of Elk Presbytery entered into treaty with them. The commissioners promised instruction in mechanic arts and agriculture, as well as in the literary course. They promised, also, within the limits of their ability, to teach, board, and clothe the indigent gratuitously. The chiefs promised protection, and the free use of land for cultivation. This treaty was signed the 11th of September, 1820, the names of the white commissioners standing on the right and those of the king and chiefs on the left. The names affixed to this agreement are: Robert Bell, Samuel King, and James Stewart, for the mission. On the part of the Indians the names are: Shako Tookey, king of the Nation; Tisho Mingo, Appa Suntubba, Samuel Sealy, William McGalba, James Colbert, and Levi Colbert, chiefs.

Three miles below Cotton Gin Port, at the base of the bluff, were some springs of pure water. This spot was selected for the school. It is seven miles from what is now the town of Aberdeen, Mississippi.

At the same time that the Elk Presbytery was taking these steps for an Indian mission, it was also urging upon the General Synod the propriety of having a board of missions for the whole church. Elk Presbytery was not alone in this view of the case. In the fall of 1819, at the meeting of the synod, it was resolved to have one central board, and to make all the others tributary. The arrangement made was certainly novel. The ladies' missionary society of Logan Presbytery, without ceasing to be a presbyterial society, was also made the general society of the church, and all the ministers of the church were appointed trustees. Robert Donnell, of Elk Presbytery, became the president of the general board at Russellville, and Bell's mission was turned over to this board.

[133] The antecedents of the Russellville board deserve a passing notice. In September, 1817, H.A. Hunter, of Russellville, Kentucky, professed religion at Liberty church, near Russellville. His mother also became concerned about her soul. The young convert, Hunter, with one other Christian to aid him, began a weekly prayer-meeting in his father's ball-room. This was with the consent of his parents. Then the Rev. Finis Ewing and the Rev. William Barnett⁽¹⁸⁾ came and held a meeting in that ball-room. There was no meeting-house then in the place. The town had been nick-named "The Devil's Camp-ground." This meeting in the ball-room was greatly blessed. The whole town was revolutionized, and several of the converts entered the holy ministry. At the close of the meeting Finis Ewing organized a ladies' missionary society in that same ball-room.⁽¹⁹⁾ By request of the ladies of this society, the Logan Presbytery⁽²⁰⁾ became its board of directors. After the action in 1819, consolidating the missionary work of the church, this society had two boards of directors. As the society of Logan Presbytery it had the ministers of that presbytery for one of these boards; as the general missionary society of the Church it had all the preachers in the church for the other. Cumberland Presbyterians had no chartered board of missions until 1845. Men even opposed chartered boards as savoring of Church and State.

It was under this curiously organized society that Mr. Bell's mission was placed soon after the school began. The site chosen for Bell's mission was in a beautiful country; but in the early settlements there was a good deal of sickness. Bell and his wife opened their school in the fall of 1820, in Levi Colbert's house, which he generously tendered for that purpose.

Robert Bell was one of "the young men" (licentiates) arraigned before the commissioners in 1805. A memorial for his ordination was pending when his presbytery was dissolved. His heroic wife belonged to the McCutcheon family of Logan County. Bell professed religion at McGready's meeting, September, 1800. When he felt himself called to preach he commenced a thorough classical [134] course of study; but under the heavy pressure of calls from the destitute regions, and by the advice of the old preachers, he abandoned his studies and took the circuit. In his later writings he expresses his profound conviction, based on a life-time of close observation, that it would have been better for him to have completed the required course of study. Bell's manuscript autobiography is thoroughly interesting. He was living in Logan County, Kentucky, when McGready's great meetings began. He attended every one of them. His account of the commission and the council is also deeply interesting.

Robert Bell was the grandfather of the Rev. Dr. C.H. Bell, so well known in the church as general superintendent of missions. The father of Dr. C.H. Bell superintended the erection of temporary buildings on the site chosen for the mission, while Robert Bell and his wife taught temporarily in Colbert's house. In four weeks these temporary buildings were ready, and the school was moved into them.

In 1823 the Rev. John C. Smith and his wife were sent to assist in the mission. With a variable amount of hired help a tan-yard was built, a farm cleared and fenced, and a blacksmith shop and a saddler's shop established. Much of the manual labor was done by the missionary himself. With a family of thirty boarders, Mrs. Bell often had less, never more, than two assistants in the cooking and washing departments, though she generally had some ladies to aid her in the work of teaching the girls to spin and weave.

Government aid, under a general regulation of the United States, was secured for Bell's mission. The United States was aiding schools, under certain restrictions, in all the Indian tribes within our domains. Often, however, rivalry sprung up in the struggles of different churches to secure this aid. It was thus our first bargain for a school among the Choctaws was lost, and thus other far darker wrongs blackened the annals of our Indian schools in the North-west. Mr. Bell's mission secured government aid to the amount of about three hundred dollars per annum. This is the average, for there was an unaccountable irregularity both in the government aid and also in the contributions sent by the missionary board. The latter amounted, in 1824, to over a thousand [135] dollars, but sunk to $272 in 1826, and to $142 in 1830. Until the last two years of the mission's life, during which no help was sent, the annual receipts from both these sources ranged between $367, the lowest, up to $1,494, the highest. The average, omitting the two years just mentioned, was $640. Out of this Mr. Bell paid all his assistants, and boarded, taught, and clothed gratuitously an average of twenty indigent students annually. His chief reliance for support was on his farm, which the students helped him to cultivate. There were also ten or twelve students who paid their own way. The assistant teachers were often changed. I find half a dozen persons mentioned at one time or another as assistants, who had grown weary of the hardships and the poverty, and left the institution; but Mr. Bell could not be driven away by hardships. If his meat gave out, he mounted his horse, rode back to Tennessee, and begged hogs from his old acquaintances, and drove them himself to the mission. If the money gave out, he drew on his own little estate, hoping perhaps to be repaid, but if he had such hope, he had to wait till he got to heaven for its fulfillment. If his teachers left him, he put his son and daughter in their places, and doubled his own labors until other help could be had. He was farmer, preacher, traveling agent, government agent, with orders to collect information in philology, Indian archaeology, Indian traditions, and to report in detail on the ornithology, zoology, and all the other "ologies" of the land he lived in.

It was hard enough to struggle as he had to do, without having burdens of heartache super-added by opposition from ministers of his own church. One of the dark backgrounds to every beautiful picture of the Cumberland Presbyterian ministry is the element of opposition to foreign missions which has always been found among the preachers. It is never opposition to foreign missions per se, but opposition on the plea of some fancied inexpediency. This element has never been very large, but it exists even today in all its mischievous power. It is no native growth. Its fitting home is with the Antinomians.

At the close of the late civil war, while the South was still a smoking ruin and the people impoverished, the General Assembly of the Southern Presbyterian Church had one man who raised the [136] question of expediency in regard to foreign missions. Then there rose in his place a man who still wore his army suit because too poor to buy any other, and uttered a sentence which deserves to be written in gold. He said: "To debate whether we shall now undertake missions to the heathen is to debate whether we shall now do what the Lord Jesus told us to do." There was not another voice raised in that Assembly against the expediency of foreign missions.

A suggestive history showing how a strong man was cured of his opposition to Bell's mission is found in a letter written by the Rev. Thomas Calhoun. This man was the Rev. William Barnett. The missionary society fell upon the expedient of sending him to inspect the mission for them, and report its condition. He accepted the appointment, and made his tour of inspection. Mr. Bell showed him all the exercises of the school, and had the children sing for him. This completely won him, and from that day onward the mission had no warmer friend than William Barnett. It would be well if all opposers of foreign missions could be brought into contact with those who are now laboring among the heathen, and see the fruit of missionary work. There were at least half a dozen cases of opposition to Bell's mission cured by visiting the institution. Opposition to missions, by good men, only needs to have the light shine on it, and it dies.

There is another interesting case. The Rev. William Moore, who was one of the first advocates of a mission school, removed, before Bell's school was established, to South Alabama, where at that time we had no organized churches. A few families of Cumberland Presbyterian immigrants were scattered in the vast whirlpool of new settlers from different countries, like Virgil's wrecked Trojans in the boiling waves of the ocean.⁽²¹⁾ He wrote to Mr. Bell that he could do nothing in that new field for the mission. Mr. Bell made a vigorous presentation of the laws of success in home work, and their relations to a faithful discharge of our duties to the heathen; and Mr. Moore became a regular contributor himself, and collected money also from that pioneer people for Bell's Mission.

Among Mr. Bell's papers are letters from nearly all the minis [137] ters who belonged to the synod at that day. Bell's correspondence with the Hon. John C. Calhoun, Secretary of War, is in these files. A copy of a letter from the Indian chief, Levi Colbert, is here given:
 

Chickasaw Nat