IMMERSION INTRODUCED.

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came and were baptized. My congregations very generally submitted to it, and it soon obtained generally; and yet the pulpit was silent on the subject."

In tracing the origin, aim, and progress of the Disciples, we must now cross the Atlantic and study the genesis and nature of an influence destined in time to affect very powerfully this movement in the United States in behalf of peace and unity among Christians, by a return in belief and in practice to the religion of Jesus as described in the New Testament.

CHAPTER IV.

PREPARATORY EVENTS IN EUROPE.

THOMAS CAMPBELL was born February 1, 1763, in County Down, Ireland. His father, Archibald Campbell, was in early life a Roman Catholic, but this representation of the Christian religion he rejected as being out of harmony with the teaching of the Bible. He became a member of the Episcopal Church. His grandfather Campbell, whose name also was Thomas, was a member of the Roman Catholic Church. The formality of the worship in the Church of England, of which his father was a member, and the apparent want of piety in that church, led Thomas Campbell to the fellowship of the Covenanter and seceded branches of the Presbyterian Church. He became a man of marked piety. The consecration of Thomas Campbell to the service of God is thus described by Dr. Robert Richardson in the first volume of his "Memoirs of Alexander Campbell":

"In his early youth he became the subject of deep religious impressions, and acquired a most sincere and earnest love for the Scriptures. The cold formality of the Episcopal ritual and the apparent want of vital piety in the church to which his father belonged led him to prefer the society of the more rigid and devotional Covenanters and Seceders, and to attend their religious meetings. As he advanced in years his religious impressions deepened. He began to experience great concern for his salvation, and the various doubts and misgivings usually presenting them

CONVERSION OF THOMAS CAMpbell.

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selves when the sense of sin is deep and the conscience tender pressed very heavily upon his mind. For a long time his distress seemed to continually increase. By earnest and diligent prayer, and the constant use of all the means prescribed by sympathizing and pious friends, he sought, apparently in vain, for those assurances of acceptance and those tokens of forgiveness which were regarded as necessary accompaniments of a true faith, and evidence of 'effectual calling.' While in this state, and when his mental distress had reached its highest point, he was one day walking alone in the fields, when, in the midst of his prayerful anxieties and longings, he felt a divine peace suddenly diffuse itself throughout his soul, and the love of God seemed to be shed abroad in his heart as he had never before realized it. His doubts, anxieties, and fears were at once dissipated as if by enchantment. He was enabled

to see and to trust in the merits of a crucified Christ, and to enjoy a divine sense of reconciliation that filled him with rapture and seemed to determine his destiny forever. From this moment he recognized himself as consecrated to God, and thought only how he might best appropriate his time and his abilities to his service."

All men are to a considerable extent creatures of circumstances. The influences about us in early life contribute in no small degree to the formation of the characters that belong to us in the high noon and evening of life. It is important, therefore, in any attempt to understand the Campbells, Thomas and Alexander, father and son, who were destined to so greatly affect religious society in the New World, especially the movement in behalf of Christian union, whose genesis has been given on the foregoing pages, to look briefly at the condition of men as regards the subject of religion in the portions of the world. in which their characters, during the pliant period of their

lives, received, we may assume, the most permanent impressions.

Thomas Campbell was born, as has been said, in the year 1763; Alexander, his son, was born also in Ireland, September 12, 1788.

In 1729 four young men, students at Oxford, began to spend some evenings together, reading chiefly the New Testament in Greek. The band increased so that in 1735 the number of names together was fourteen. All the members of this society were staunch churchmen. They scrupulously observed all the sacred days and appointed fasts of the church. They partook of the Lord's Supper every first day of the week. They spent on themselves only so much money as was needful for their subsistence. They exercised the most severe self-denial. They gave in charity as much as they could spare. They visited the sick and the poor in their homes, and prisoners in their places of confinement. They paid for the education of some poor children, and educated others themselves. The consecrated young men thus united and working together were called, in derision, "The Holy Club," "Bible Bigots," "Bible Moths," "Sacramentarians," "Supererogation Men," and " Methodists." In the writings and sermons of John Wesley from this early and small beginning to the close of his incomparably busy and useful life, he refers again and again to what he calls the primitive church. The idea of restoring primitive Christianity in faith and life dominated him from the year 1729 until he terminated his earthly career and entered into glory in 1791. This was the charm which the Moravians possessed for him. He thought their faith and manner of life were more like the belief and conduct of primitive Christians than anything he had seen elsewhere.

John Wesley's work, as an itinerant, began in 1738, and

JOHN WESLEY'S WORK.

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The mere figures which

continued more than fifty years. represent his labors are almost enough to take one's breath away. For a man to commence at the age of thirty-six, and to travel 225,000 miles in the slow manner of the eighteenth century, preaching more than 40,000 sermons, some of them to congregations of 20,000 people, is an experience in the Christian ministry which probably stands without a parallel in the annals of the Church of Christ.

What was the immediate visible result? No pen can place on paper a complete answer to this question. It is easy enough to say that Mr. Wesley left a well-trained itinerant ministry 550 strong, a local ministry of thousands of hardly less effective workmen, and more than 140,000 members of his societies-for it must ever be borne in mind that to the very last he adhered to the idea that his organizations did not constitute churches, nor in the aggregate the church, but that they were simply societies in the church, the Church of England. The people of England, Ireland, and Scotland were profoundly moved by the ministry of John Wesley and his co-workers.

Mr. Wesley first visited Ireland in 1747, and he crossed the Irish Channel forty-two times. At Dublin there were more Methodists than in any other place except London. Some of his most efficient helpers came from Ireland. He loved the Irish, and the Irish were fond of him. His farewell to Ireland, when he was long past eighty years of age, was quite an ovation.

At this time Thomas Campbell was a young man—a young man of ardent piety. This mighty movement was gathering force and momentum before his eyes. Was he ignorant of it? Was he uninfluenced by it? Had it nothing to do with making him the man that he became in later years?

The condition of Mr. Campbell's own denomination in