Some Interesting Historical Parallels (II.)
Five years after Isaac Errett's death on December 19, 1888, J. S. Lamar published a large two volume biography of Errett, entitled Memoirs of Isaac Errett. J. S. Lamar was no superficial writer himself, having written one of the best books to come out of the restoration effort, his Organon of Scripture. For many years Lamar was an assistant editor of the Christian Standard, and had worked under Errett. In the writing of the biography, Lamar commits what seems to be a common failure of biographers — he virtually defies his subject. It is very obvious in this biography that Lamar feels that Errett can do no wrong and can espouse no erroneous cause. Earl West says "To Lamar Errett was an idol." Lamar exonerates Errett in every particular. From this biographical account we are given the liberal side of the controversy involving the instrument and missionary societies.
Probably no man did more to promote these innovations than did Isaac Errett. At the time when these additions were in dire need of a champion, Errett was perhaps the most popular preacher. Even if Alexander Campbell had been disposed to champion their cause, he was too old to do so effectively, and died in 1866, the year that the Christian Standard started. Errett was an ambitious preacher, and was widely accepted. He saw in these conflicts an opportunity to advance himself even more than before. So he led in the introduction of mechanical instruments of music and missionary societies. This leadership has caused him to be given the ignominious title, "The Father of the Digression." Lamar has this to say of Errett: "And it was this that made him, more than any other man, our leader for five and twenty years. He led us out of the bitterness and darkness of bondage to a hard, narrow opinionated legalism, to the sweetness and light of the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free." (Memoirs of Isaac Errett, Vol. II, p. 290 — This is from a memorial to Errett in the Christian Standard, probably written by Lamar). Errett is also said to have saved the movement from becoming "a fissiparous sect of jangling legalists."
The first issue of the Christian Standard appeared April 7, 1866. As it was in the process of being prepared, Alexander Campbell died. So the first issue devoted the first page to a brief biography and appraisal of Campbell. It will be worthwhile for us to investigate the reason for starting the Christian Standard.
Until the Christian Standard was established, and for a good many years afterward, the leading papers among the brethren were opposed to the instruments and missionary societies. The paper published by Benjamin Franklin, The American Christian Review, was at this time the most widely read paper. The Gospel Advocate in these early days was also an "Anti" paper. Just a few months before the Christian Standard was founded, on January 1, 1866, a young man by the name of David Lipscomb had become editor of the Gospel Advocate, a position which he held for over fifty years.
To their honor it could be said that Franklin and Lipscomb could not be expected to be of any assistance in promoting any innovation. The advocates of the instruments and missionary societies knew that if their "idols" were going to be popularized, they would have to do so through media other than the American Christian Review and the Gospel Advocate. So plans were formulated to start the Christian Standard.
J. S. Lamar, in his biography of Errett, implies that there was a universal cry being heard among the brethren for a new paper that had a better spirit than those manifested by the Review and Advocate. Lamar states:
"There were several weeklies, also, among them the 'Review' and 'Gospel Advocate,' but these were not satisfactory. They were regarded as being narrow in their views on Scriptural truth, essentially sectarian in spirit, and, in many respects, hurtful rather than helpful to the great cause which they assumed to represent. I would say nothing here derogatory of the editors of these papers. They represented and fostered that unfortunate type of discipleship to which allusion was made in a previous chapter — a type with which the leading minds among the brotherhood could have no sympathy. We may credit these writers with sincerity and honesty, but we cannot read many of their productions without feeling that we are breathing an unwholesome religious atmosphere. They seem to infuse an unlovely and earth-born spirit, which they clothe, nevertheless, in the garb of the divine letter, and enforced with cold, legalistic and crushing power. The great truth for whose defense the Disciples are set, demand a wiser, sweeter, better advocacy — an advocacy that should exhibit the apostolic SPIRIT as well as the apostolic LETTER." (Lamar, I, pp. 300, 301)
You see, anytime you oppose what the liberals want, your spirit is bad. However, if you advocate and defend what they want, you are a "leading mind." Can we not see the same disposition on the part of the promoters of institutions today? Anyone who opposes what they advocate has a bad, "unlovely," "earth-born" spirit, and is not worthy of consideration. However, it was soon obvious that there was no such general clamor for the starting of the paper. David Lipscomb blasted Lamar's explanation for starting the Christian Standard with these words: "In one word, Brother Lamar's theory as to the origin of the Christian Standard is, that the whole enterprise was projected by the 'leading minds among the brotherhood' and that these 'leading minds' were 'wiser, sweeter, better' than the 'unlovely and earth-born spirit' which dominated such papers as the American Christian Review, Lard's Quarterly, and the Gospel Advocate, and inspired such men as Benjamin Franklin, T. Fanning, Moses E. Lard, David Lipscomb, E. G. Sewell, and Phillip S. Fall." (Gospel Advocate, June 16, 1892.)
In the effort to start the Christian Standard, it was no accident that the initial meeting was held at the home of one of the wealthy Phillips brothers. They had to have money on their side. The Phillips's had it. The institutionalists of our day are without a peer at buttering up anyone who has a little money that they might eventually fleece them of it — if not in this life, they plan to get it when they are gone. It does appear that anyone smart enough to make as much money as some men make would also be smart enough to see the design of those who would exploit them. But the Christian Standard got money on its side with the Phillips brothers. They also enlisted the prestige of James A. Garfield, who had popularized himself during the Civil War, preparing himself ultimately to be President of the United States. He gave them renown. Errett was selected editor. And at this time I doubt that there was a more popular preacher. Yet for several years the paper almost failed. The "board" of the paper finally gave up on it in despair, and gave it to Errett to do with it what he could. From this near failure, it is obvious that the brotherhood clamor for the paper was not nearly as loud and universal as Lamar would have us to believe.
Instead of admitting that there was not as much liberalism as Errett had supposed, Lamar explains the near failure of the paper by stating the brethren had become so accustomed to the uncouthness and roughness of Franklin and others like him that they missed this roughness in the Standard, and had to be taught to appreciate the better things in life! Lamar says:
"Still, the brotherhood as a whole had not, at this time, been educated up to this high standard. Their leading weekly, before the appearance of Mr. Errett's paper, was the 'American Christian Review' edited by B. Franklin of Cincinnati — which, though in some respects strong and influential, was run on a lower plane, and catered to a lower taste. Its readers, therefore, missed in the 'Standard' the tone to which they had become accustomed, and that slugging sort of belligerency which had been weekly exhibited for their delection and applause. Many, consequently, who most needed the blessed influence of Mr. Errett's gentler and sweeter spirit, had to be trained and schooled to appreciate it."
The advocates of innovation in any age think themselves to be the only ones who can travel on these high planes, and exhibit the gentler and sweeter spirits!
I want us to look more closely at Lamar's appraisal of the conservative brethren of his day. Are not the liberals of our own time about like Lamar in their appraisal of those who will not bow to their behests? Please note the many derogatory remarks made in the following quotations by those sailing under the guise of a gentler and sweeter spirit.
Lamar says of Franklin, Lipscomb, etc. "For many years brethren of comparatively smaller caliber, whom chance has elevated to places of factitious importance, and armed with tremendous power of the press, had been exerting their influence to give a false direction to the whole movement." (II, pp. 3, 4) These men according to Lamar "were withdrawing attention more and more from the essential truth and vitalizing principles of Apostolic Christianity, and fixing it upon its mere accidents; and these crude and undigested conceptions they were, with endless noise and bluster, parading and insisting upon as the very standards and tests of soundness." (II, p. 4) In a bit of sarcasm Lamar observes: "We are amazed to note the pettiness and trivialities which the Disciples of Christ were forced, by these self-appointed leaders, seriously and gravely to consider. It really seemed that Christ had died to prevent the formation of Missionary Societies and to keep organs out of the churches!" (II, p. 4)
Lamar states that the editors of "The 'Review' of Cincinnati, and the 'Gospel Advocate," of Nashville.... were mainly influenced by aspirations after leadership.... were giving undue importance to the tithing of mint, anise and cumin, to the neglect of the weightier matters of law. Their weakness, and in some cases their coarseness, their pretentious self-assertion, and, above all, their extravagant claims and lordly intolerance, while they had imposed upon the unwary and ignorant, had driven out of sympathy the thoughtful and discerning." (II, pp. 4, 5) Lipscomb and Franklin, according to Lamar, were only trying to make a name for themselves, were coarse and lordly, and had duped only the unwary and ignorant, the more thoughtful and discerning ones aligning themselves with the sweeter Standard.
When the instrumental music question arose, Lamar said "it is just as evident that the opposition was grounded in partisan feeling, and the lust of ruling or crushing," though he reluctantly admitted the sincerity of a few of the opposers. "It was regarded as a matter of course for the 'Review' and 'Gospel Advocate,' and a few other papers of similar type and tone, to occupy extreme ground and to be fierce and bitter in their antagonism." (II, p. 26) Seemingly, Lamar thought it was impossible for one to be "fierce and bitter" in his advocacy of these things. Lamar says it had come to be believed "that these papers always opposed everything which they themselves had not originated." (II, p. 27) These brethren had come to he "chronic complainers." So radical had they become that "Their opposition, consequently, tended to increase rather than diminish the number of instruments introduced into the churches." These words from Lamar sound as absurd as the claim of some brethren today that certain preachers would not have opposed the Herald of Truth if they had thought of it first, or if they had been chosen as the speakers!
The argument was then made that "while it made it a solemn duty to go, it did not say how to go" (II, p. 142), and this therefore made the missionary society right. Too, the "objectors were doing positively nothing upon any plan," and if they did so, "nearly all their work and worship was open to the same objections which they urged against the missionary societies." Doesn't this sound exactly like the institutionalists of our time? Notice what they say all the way through, and compare the similarity with what we hear constantly today. Lamar quotes W. T. Moore who said "The time has come to end this discussion concerning the difference 'twixt tweedledum and tweedledee.' It is work that is needed now, and not controversy." (II, p. 144) This sounds very much like J. D. Thomas of our day who maintains that it matters not how many hands or whose hands they are through which money to "missionaries" passes; the only important thing is to get the money there! Moore also speaks of "Certain brethren who oppose all cooperative missionary labor" and of "anti-missionary men." Who did he have in mind? He meant the "anti-missionary SOCIETY men." Today if we oppose benevolent SOCIETIES, we are labeled "anti-benevolent men." Moore charged that "selfishness is at the bottom of all anti-missionary logic...." Were Franklin and Lipscomb only selfish? Is that why they were "anti-missionary men?" If not, may we not also presume that "anti-benevolent SOCIETY men" of today are not opposed only because of selfishness, as is often charged? Errett further accuses, "All that ails a great many men who are braying with asinine melody and pathos over the evils of the time, is that they are not in the lead." (II, p. 267)
David Lipscomb was a young man at the time he became editor of the Gospel Advocate. So at first Errett's biggest guns were aimed at Franklin and the Review. But Franklin died in 1878. Thereafter, Lipscomb got more than his share of the attack. Speaking of some Lipscomb-Errett clashes in 1883, 1884, Lamar appraises Lipscomb and his efforts thusly: (Continued from page nine)
"David Lipscomb was editor of the 'Gospel Advocate,' published in Nashville, Tenn. The paper, which had a limited but respectable clientage, assumed to be the quintessence of soundness, and the uncompromising opponent of all the ills and innovations which churches are heirs to. The 'Advocate' seemed indeed, to be a sort of watch-tower, from whose lofty heights, its keen-eyed editor, aided by a glass of strong magnifying power, looked abroad and around evermore, so as to detect the earliest manifestations of nascent corruption and departures from the faith." (II, pp. 219, 220)
It sounds as though the Gospel Advocate's editor at this time was afflicted by that terrible disease called "Hypochondria" about which brother Tom Warren recently wrote in the Gospel Advocate. Religious hypochondria according to brother Warren is "a 'morbid anxiety' as to the health of the body of Christ and seem (s) to be constantly conjuring up imaginary 'ailments' (points of digression)." (GA, Aug. 25, 1960.) Of course, brother Warren did not think anyone connected with the modern Advocate had this horrible disease. Only the modern "Antis" had it. But old brother David Lipscomb hesitated not to warn about trends, innovations, departures, and apostasies. To brother Warren, this is religious Hypochondria. Somehow I cannot feature brother Lipscomb getting overly excited about being called an hypochondriac. He was called much worse things.
But enough of the past. Let us now take a brief look at the present. It is obvious that we are now undergoing another period in which disciples are again dividing into two camps, much as was done during the days of Errett, Franklin, and Lipscomb. The main purpose in rehearsing this previous conflict as we have done in this article is to permit those of us of this generation to see the respective attitudes of the innovationists and opposers of innovations. The attitudes of innovationists and anti-innovationists of today are very much the same as in the previous century.
Today the Gospel Advocate is the paper with money, power and prestige on its side. It is the paper that claims to have the "sweeter, lowlier, gentler" disposition. It is charging its opposers with being "legalists," "rule or crush" men, opposers of everything they did not start, self-appointed guardians of orthodoxy, very much as Lamar and Errett charged against Franklin and Lipscomb. Candidly I ask you to consider this question: Does the Gospel Advocate of today partake more of the spirit of the Gospel Advocate of yesteryear and of the American Christian Review under Franklin, or does it appear to be more like the Christian Standard about which we have studied?
And as the Christian Standard wanted to think the whole brotherhood was demanding its sort of paper, so would the modern Gospel Advocate like to think. A few years ago they boasted of having 100,000 subscribers. Why do we no longer hear this boast being made? Do you suppose they cannot now truthfully make it? Perhaps the modern Gospel Advocate, as her predecessor, the Christian Standard, has learned that the whole brotherhood is not as solidly behind her as she once thought, as indicated by a rapidly dwindling subscription list. There are many reliable evidences to indicate this to be the fact. But while the Gospel Advocate was basking in the shadow of its 100,000 subscription list, it boasted of having squelched the "anti-missionary movement" as evidenced by the universal acceptance of the Gospel Advocate. She seemed to reason that since she was right once before (under Lipscomb), therefore she inevitably must also now be right. But her counter-part, the Christian Standard, also came into brotherhood favor, if we accept their word for it. Lamar said, by 1871, "It had become, by all odds, the greatest power in the ranks of the Disciples." But did this prove it was right?
The Gospel Advocate of today is the Christian Standard of yesteryear, while the Gospel Guardian, Truth Magazine, the Preceptor and other similar papers, bear the same stigmas borne by the Lipscomb type Gospel Advocate (And there is considerable difference between the David Lipscomb type GA and the B. C. Goodpasture type GA!) and the Benjamin Franklin type American Christian Review.