E. G. Sewell on the Tabernacle (3)

In a follow-up article, "The Altar of Incense, the Brazen Laver, Etc.," which appeared in The Gospel Advocate for February 3, 1886, E. G. Sewell continued his Christian, symbolic interpretation of the biblical tabernacle. In his first article, he had written about the table of shewbread and the candlestick.

Altar of Incense

In his second article, he turns to another item in the Holy Place, the altar of incense. Sewell notes that the priests of ancient Israel were to burn incense on this altar "every morning and evening continually." In this way, they constantly sent up to the Lord, as it were, a fragrant scent. And what does this image typify? Sewell answers that "the general understanding is that the offering of incense was a figure of prayer," and he cites a handful of passages from both the Old and New Testaments in which the burning of incense and prayer are related. For example, in the first half of Psalm 141:2 the writer says to God, "Let my prayer be set before thee as incense." In Revelation 5:8 and again in 8:3, the offering of incense is analogous to the prayers of the saints.[1]

Brazen Laver

This item stood "near the door of entrance into the tabernacle of the congregation," but was "on the outside." There the priests washed themselves before entering the tent. And this, wrote Sewell, "is understood to be figurative of baptism. And as the priest upon washing entered . . . into the tabernacle, so now those who obey the gospel, enter Christ by baptism." Conversely, "as the priest was not allowed to enter the tabernacle without washing at the laver, so no one can enter the church now without being baptized into Christ." Sewell highlights an inference that can be drawn from this interpretation: baptism, represented by the laver on the outside of the tent, comes before prayer, represented by the altar of incense which was inside the tent. Any priest who burned incense on the altar had to first cleanse himself at the laver. "So also if any one wishes to attend at the altar of prayer in the church of God, he must be baptized, must have his body washed with pure water at the door of entrance" into the church. Baptism, which brings the penitent believer into the church, comes before the life of faithful prayer.[2]

Moreover, wrote Sewell, this indicts "those people who teach alien sinners to pray to God for pardon, without baptism, without washing first." Such teachers are guilty of "reversing heaven's order." Sewell goes so far as to compare them to Nadab and Abihu of Leviticus 10. They were two of Aaron's four sons and were thus among the first priests in ancient Israel. Nevertheless, when the brothers "offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not," they were destroyed by fire that went out from the Lord (Lev. 10:1-2). Again, wrote Sewell, preachers who promote "a reversal of God's order" can be compared to Uzziah, King of Judah. According to 2 Chronicles 26:16-21, though he was not a priest, Uzziah burned incense upon the altar. Consequently, he was stricken with leprosy, a skin disease he had for the rest of his life. Only when people are "washed" and thus "sanctified, justified" do they remove all doubt about their being prepared to officiate at God's altar in all spiritual things," including prayer to God through Christ.[3]

Here, Sewell clearly reflects significant differences between the doctrine of Christian initiation according to the Stone-Campbell tradition and that of most other conservative Protestants, like Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians. Much earlier in the nineteenth century, Barton Stone, Alexander Campbell, and like-minded leaders concluded that according to the New Testament, people who came to believe in Jesus as the Christ were to turn from their sins in repentance and be immersed into him for the remission of their sins.[4] Their teaching generated a noticeable change in the way that preachers in the Stone-Campbell Movement concluded their evangelistic sermons. Unlike many other Protestant preachers, whose sermons ended with an invitation for individuals to walk to the front of the assembly in order to anxiously pray for salvation at the mourner's bench, preachers among the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ invited those who believed the gospel message to come forward as an indication that they were turning from their sins and turning to the Lord in repentance, and that they desired to be immersed into Christ.[5] When emphasizing the significance of baptism, however, Sewell guarded against the idea of baptismal regeneration: "Not that baptism is the only prerequisite by any means. Faith and repentance must precede baptism, or no one is ready to be baptized. Everything in its proper place."

Altar of Burnt Offering

Nearing the end of his second article, Sewell refers to the Torah instructions regarding the altar of burnt offering: "two lambs should be offered to the Lord every day."[7]  This, writes Sewell, is "another indication of continued sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving and of prayer to the Lord on the part of Christians." The sacrifice of two lambs each day at the tabernacle was the standard under the Old Covenant. If that was so, then should not "we that enjoy the reality, the New Covenant, the fullness of God's love and mercy . . . with a loving, a joyful heart approach God daily with our sacrifices" of thanksgiving and praise?[8]

Apparently, Sewell did not notice or did not care that in making these comparisons he seemed to contradict the principle he had established earlier: it is only after being baptized that the believer, now a member of the priesthood, inside the Holy Place, can fittingly participate in spiritual activities. If confronted with this apparent inconsistency, Sewell would no doubt have clarified that it is altogether fitting for all people, in or out of Christ, to praise and give thanks to God. His earlier concern involved the virtual substitution of prayer for baptism. And it is baptism, according to his view, to which all penitent believers must submit in order to receive the forgiveness of sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and entrance into the church that Christ established.

Notes

[1] E. G. Sewell, "The Altar of Incense, the Brazen Laver, Etc.," Gospel Advocate 28 (February 3, 1886), 65.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] See, for example, Barton W. Stone, "The Christian Expositor," Christian Messenger 1 (January 25, 1827), 56-63; Alexander Campbell, "Ancient Gospel--No. I. Baptism," Christian Baptist 5, no. 6 (January 7, 1828), 121-24; "Ancient Gospel--No. II. Immersion," Christian Baptist 5, no. 7 (February 4, 1828), 158-63.

[5] Thomas H. Olbricht, "The Invitation: A Historical Survey," Restoration Quarterly 5, no. 1 (First Quarter 1961), 6-16.

[6] Sewell, "The Altar of Incense," 65.

[7] Ibid. The reference is to Exodus 29:38-43 and Numbers 28:3-8, according to which a lamb was to be sacrificed every day, one in the morning and one at twilight.

[8] Sewell, "The Altar of Incense," 66.

E. G. Sewell on the Tabernacle (2)

Candlestick

Next, Sewell interpreted the candlestick which, like the table of shewbread, stood in the Holy Place. The purpose of the literal, Old Testament candlestick was obvious. "The tabernacle was without windows, or any means of admitting light from without, and hence the lamps in the candlestick were the only light." And what does this symbolize? It stands for "the light-bearing attitude" of the church. "The light that shone out from the golden candlestick fitly represents the word of God, as the only light to guide people in the service of God. As the tabernacle had no other light by which to guide its work, so the church has no other light for its work, for its guidance of men to heaven, but God's word." Because this is true, Bible reading, Bible study, and Bible teaching are vital to the life of the church if it is to honor God and bless the lives of people.[1]

Note

[1] E. G. Sewell, "The Tabernacle," Gospel Advocate 28 (January 27, 1886), 49.

E. G. Sewell on the Tabernacle (1)

In 1886, the same year that Meta Chestnutt came to Nashville to begin her studies at Peabody, E. G. Sewell, coeditor with David Lipscomb of the The Gospel Advocate magazine, based in Nashville, published two front-page articles that gave a symbolic interpretation of the biblical tabernacle.

Sewell began by establishing the tabernacle's New Testament counterpart. Not surprisingly, he identified what Protestants had favored for hundreds of years: "That the Jewish tabernacle, in many of its leading features foreshadowed the church of God, is admitted by all." From there, he submitted that the second room, the Most Holy place, should be understood as "a figure, or type of heaven," with "the divine presence upon the mercy seat to foreshadow the eternal presence of God himself in that blessed abode." The first room, or Holy Place, is "a type of the church of the living God on earth." This stood to reason, because in the same way that one entered the Holy Place before going further into the Most Holy Place, so one enters the church before finally reaching heaven. Consequently "all the articles of furniture" in the Holy Place "and the acts performed here are figurative of the worship of the Lord's house on earth."[1] This orientation--with the Most Holy Place as heaven, the Holy Place as the church on earth, and area outside the tent as preliminary--provided the template for Sewell's biblical exposition.

Table of Shewbread

The remainder of Sewell's first article interprets the symbolic meaning of two items in the Holy Place: the table of shewbread and the candlestick. "The table," he wrote, "foreshadows the Lord's table in the church of God on earth." In the same way that the twelve loaves were replaced every week, so it is that every week, Christians are to partake of the Lord's Supper. And in the same way that the priests removed the loaves each Sabbath day, so there is a "specified time" for Christians to observe the Lord's Supper, "the first day of the week." Sewell emphasized that just as divine directions were not to be neglected by the Old Testament priests, "so the breaking of the loaf must not be neglected by the children of God now in the congregations of the Lord." In fact, fidelity to the will of God should, if anything, be stronger in the Christian age. "While the Jewish priests cold only consider the table and shewbread as a formal ordinance, Christians can now see in the broken loaf of the Lord's table an emblem of the actual, real body of the Son of God that was broken, mangled upon the Roman cross, that poor sinners might live."[2]

Notes

[1] E. G. Sewell, "The Tabernacle," Gospel Advocate 28 (January 27, 1886), 49. See also "Temple Building," Gospel Advocate 31 (August 21, 1889), 536, where Sewell writes that the tabernacle "was figurative of the church of God, the spiritual temple on earth now," and "Information Wanted," Gospel Advocate 31 (October 2, 1889), 631. For a brief biography, see David H. Warren, "Sewell, Elisha Granville (1830-1924)," in Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, 680-81.

[2] Sewell, "The Tabernacle," 49.

Meta Chestnutt Sager's Letter to Eva Heiliger, February 11, 1945 (9)

Near the end of her letter, Sager identifies a major part of the background to her correspondence with her great-niece. Eva Heiliger had recently given birth to a daughter. Sometime later, the Heiliger's had had the child sprinkled in a Methodist service. "When I wrote you before I did not know you were a Methodist," said Sager. "I only wanted you to know that you had no Bible for having your baby sprinkled. The hurt may come by her believing she is in the church when she is old enough to really enter into the church of the living God through full obedience to His prescribed way.  . . . She is going to be a leader. Train her well."[1] The disagreement between the two women was no idle debate.

Sager ended her forceful letter on a note of forbearance: "Your faith alone salvation won't keep me from loving you. You are all mighty fine and I love you all."

Note

[1] Meta Chestnutt Sager to Eva Heiliger, February 11, 1945.

Moving Beyond Female Ministers and Missionaries

Much of what has been written about women in American religious history has featured those relatively few who were evangelists, teachers, and missionaries. The reasons for this emphasis are obvious. Most of this historiography came about as a result of various feminist impulses in America. Those who were looking for religious heroines found them in those women who aspired to the pulpit, or to at least to some greater public role in the life of the church.[1] Essentially, historians of women and religion have imitated an older, traditional way, one that emphasized leading men, great events, and turning points.

Meanwhile, religious historians who come from conservative and traditional circles have typically ignored the stories of female preachers from the past. This has left them with not as much to say about women, at least not much that was obvious.[2] Consequently, only some writers have told us only some of the stories of those women who represent just a tiny fraction of the devout in American history.

A better understanding of the significance of women in American religious history will require an approach that more closely examines the lives that almost all of them lived, the sorts of contributions they typically made. Along this line, one unexplored avenue is the role women have played in the establishment of new congregations. An overview of Stone-Campbell church planting in Indian Territory from 1888 until Oklahoma statehood in 1907 reveals that several new congregations began with the efforts of women. For example, the church at Ardmore in present-day Carter County was formed in 1888 when "Mrs. Sophia Simpson, the Cook sisters, and Mr. and Mrs. R. W. Campbell" began meeting each Sunday to study the Bible and observe the Lord's Supper.[3] A congregation at Silver City, now a ghost town in present-day Grady County, began in 1889 when Aunie Erwin and new arrival Meta Chestnutt "went to work in earnest, teaching the Bible every Lord's Day." In 1890, "when the Rock Island Railroad came through," the little congregation along with the rest of the town moved about seven miles west to be near the new tracks. This was the beginning of present-day Minco, Oklahoma. There, under the leadership of Chestnutt, who had come to Indian Territory in order to teach school, the church continued to "meet regularly each Lord's Day to study and teach the Word, break bread and contribute of our means to the Lord." By 1895, the church had grown "from two to some fifty or sixty."[4] About eighteen miles to the south of Minco, at Chickasha, a congregation began around 1892 sometime after the arrival of Mrs. Lillian Bohart Welsh, a staunch Disciple who sought out like-minded believers.[5] The Christian Church at McAlester, Oklahoma, was formed in 1893 after "Mrs. W. S. Ambrose and Mrs. Hammond Holler," decided to raise the money they needed in order to bring evangelist J. Harry Barber from Paris, Texas, just south of the Red River, to conduct a revival meeting.[6] A congregation began at Wagoner around 1895, when "Mrs. J. R. Thompson took the first step . . . by organizing a Sunday School in her home." Soon, Mrs. Thompson had twenty students. The Christian Church was organized sometime later when a preacher from Fort Worth, Texas, conducted a series of evangelistic meetings there.[7] A Stone-Campbell congregation began at Poteau in 1900 when a Mrs. McKenna, described as "a loyal Disciple," arranged for a church facility to be built there. The small congregation was not able to pay the mortgage and eventually sold its building to the Episcopal Church. Nevertheless, when evangelist W. S. Deartherage visited Poteau in 1916, he discovered a small group of Disciples. They formed the nucleus of what emerged as a permanent congregation.[8]

What these stories begin to reveal is that for every woman in Stone-Campbell history who preached to a mixed audience there were a thousand or more who established congregations, taught Bible classes, supported preachers and missionaries, and, above all, nurtured the next generation of believers.

Notes

[1] In Stone-Campbell historiography, two good examples are C. Leonard Allen, Distant Voices: Discovering a Forgotten Past for a Changing Church (Abilene, TX: Abilene Christian University Press, 1993), esp. ch. 4, "Your Daughters Shall Prophesy,." See also ch. 17, "The New Woman"; and Bonnie Miller, "Restoration Women Who Responded to the Spirit Before 1900," Leaven 16, no. 1 (2008), accessed February 20, 2021, https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/leaven/vol16/iss1/5.

[2] Again, in Stone-Campbell historiography, a good example is the website titled The Restoration Movement.com. The site is managed by Scott Harp, a conservative preacher among the Churches of Christ. Although it contains a large number of biographical sketches of male leaders, its page titled "Great Women Of The Restoration Movement" includes a total of six links to biographies of female leaders, accessed February 20, 2021, https://www.therestorationmovement.com/women.htm.

[3] Stephen J. England, Oklahoma Christians: A History of Christian Churches and of the start of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Oklahoma (St. Louis, MO: Bethany Press, 1975), 55.

[4] Meta Chestnutt, "Minco, Ind. Ter.," The American Home Missionary 1 (April 1895), 62. See also England, Oklahoma Christians, 56-57. For a brief history of Silver City, see John W. Morris, Ghost Towns of Oklahoma (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), 173-74.

[5] England, Oklahoma Christians, 58.

[6] Ibid., 59. Apparently, the next year, Barber made a follow up visit to McAlester. "Local Mention," South McAlester Capital July 26, 1894, includes the following note: "Rev. J. Harry Barber closed an interesting meeting here last week. He is an entertaining preacher."

[7] England, Oklahoma Christians, 60.

[8] Ibid., 63-64.

Meta Chestnutt Sager's Letter to Eva Heiliger, February 11, 1945 (8)

In her comments on Christian denominations and church membership, Sager repeated two lines of thought that by her time were commonplace among their heirs of the Stone-Campbell Movement. First, as Sager put it, the various Protestant denominations are "manmade churches" that "all came out of the Catholic Church." Along this line, she offered a brief history lesson on the origins of Heiliger's denomination: "The Methodist Church came out of the Episcopal and that church came from the Catholic church through Henry the VIII." And the Catholic Church did not come into its own until "three hundred years after the Church of Christ was set up on the Day of Pentecost." Therefore, any church established prior to the events recorded in Acts 2 would be too old. Conversely, all churches established since that time are "too young to be the church which Christ told Peter and the other apostles He would build."[1] Second, in keeping with the unity and undenominational character of the church in the New Testament, no one "gets saved" and subsequently joins the church of his choice. Instead, the Lord adds to His church each person who is truly saved, "for it is said in the 2nd of Acts, verse 47, 'And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.'"[2] Church membership is not someone's choice upon becoming a Christian. The Bible speaks of church membership as the result of a divine act; the Lord adds those who are saved to the church that Christ established.

Notes

[1] This is a reference to Matthew 16:18.

[2] Meta Chestnutt Sager to Eva Heiliger, February 11, 1945.

Walter Rauschenbusch and Meta Chestnutt Sager as Nineteenth-Century People

In his fine biography of Walter Rauschenbusch, the great theologian of the Social Gospel, historian Christopher H. Evans notes that although Rauschenbusch is associated with twentieth-century American theology, his social and cultural influences came from the nineteenth century. Born in 1861, he was very much a nineteenth-century man.[1] In the same way, although she lived until 1948, Meta Chestnutt Sager, born in 1863, was mainly a nineteenth-century woman. In her case, it was not simply the fact that she was born during the Civil War and came of age not long after the end of Reconstruction in 1877. It was also the result of her moving from North Carolina to Indian Territory in 1889, a few days before she turned twenty-six years old. When she was seventy-five, she recalled that upon arriving at Silver City, Chickasaw Nation, "there was not a sound save the prairie chicken's squawk, and no curious eyes save the jack rabbit's stare." She had brought along "clothes for a five year stay," because she knew that there in Indian Territory people "did have new clothes every time the moon changed." This was far from the industrialized world where the twentieth century would soon be dawning.[2]

Notes

[1] Christopher H. Evans, The Kingdom is Always but Coming: A Life of Walter Rauschenbusch (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004), xviii.

[2] Mrs. J. A. Sager, "Some Wildflowers from My Garden of Memory," box 10, Meta Chestnutt Sager file, Historic Oklahoma Biographies Collection, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma.

Meta Chestnutt Sager's Letter to Eva Heiliger, February 11, 1945 (7)

Sager critiques the practice of baptism by sprinkling or pouring, and advances baptism strictly by immersion, along several different lines. Specifically, she appeals to the New Testament phrase "one baptism," to church history, Greek philology, and the particulars of the setting in Acts 8:26-39, which tells the story of Philip's baptizing the eunuch from Africa. Using the language of Paul's Letter to the Ephesians 4:5, she writes: "the Church of Christ, the Kingdom of heaven on earth, has one Lord, one faith, one baptism." She adds that the "one baptism"--which she takes to as a reference to only one form of baptism--"was practiced until about three hundred years after Christ when the Catholic Church was formally established; and the one baptism was practiced by all Catholics until for convenience the Pope decreed the change to sprinkling. . . . Ask any priest and he will admit that immersion was the original form." There is no evidence that Sager ever studied Greek, the language of the New Testament. But she is able to cite what she regards as a personal authority: "I asked a Greek from Greece what they understood by baptize and he said no Greek understood anything else but to immerse." Finally, much like a good defense attorney, Sager preempts the suggestion that because the baptism of the eunuch took place in the "desert" (Acts 8:26), he could not have been immersed: "I know some try to say there was no water at that place in the desert, but it is a known fact from history that at that particular place and particular time of the year there was a pool of abundant water. No informed person will risk his scholarship in denying the fact."[1] Here, Sager is in all likelihood relying on her memory of having read J. W. McGarvey's commentary on Acts, or her memory of sermons by men like David Lipscomb and T. B. Larimore. Perhaps she had even heard McGarvey himself, who wrote:

The term desert is not here to be understood in its stricter sense of a barren waste, but in its more general acceptation, of a place thinly inhabited. Such an interpretation is required by the geography of the country.  . . . The only road from Jerusalem to Gaza, which passed through a level district suitable for wheeled vehicles, was that by Bethlehem to Hebron, and thence across a plain to Gaza. According to Dr. Hackett, this is "the desert" of Luke i: 80, in which John the Immerser grew up. Dr. S.[sic] T. Barclay, who traversed this entire route in May, 1853, says that he traveled, after leaving "the immediate vicinity of Hebron, over one of the very best roads (with slight exceptions) and one of the most fertile countries that I ever beheld."[2]

Notes

[1] Meta Chestnutt Sager to Eva Heiliger, February 11, 1945.

[2] J. W. McGarvey, A Commentary on Acts of the Apostles, 7th ed. (Lexington, KY: Transylvania Printing and Publishing Company, 1872), 95-96. The Barclay to whom McGarvey refers was J. T. Barclay, who became the first international missionary of the Stone-Campbell Movement when in 1850 he traveled to Jerusalem to launch a mission to Jews who lived there. See Paul M. Blowers, "Barclay, James Turner (1807-1874)," in Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004), 69-70.

Meta Chestnutt Sager's Letter to Eva Heiliger, February 11, 1945 (6)

On the question of infant baptism, Sager highlights how the conversion stories in the Book of Acts apparently do not support the practice. "You will read in Acts 8:12--'But when they believed Phillip preaching the things concerning the Kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women' (not babies)." Further on in her letter, Sager notes that in the story recorded in Acts 10, Cornelius spoke for himself and his entire household with the words, "Now therefore are we all here present before God, to hear all things that are commanded thee of God" (Acts 10:33b). She remarks that this did not include infants, "for those in the house were able to understand."[1]

Note

[1] Meta Chestnutt Sager to Eva Heiliger, February 11, 1945. Compare J. W. McGarvey, A Commentary on Acts of Apostles, 7th ed. (Lexington, KY: Transylvania Printing and Publishing Company, 1872), 43, where, commenting on Acts 2:39, says that the reference to the salvation of "children" must mean descendants and not "children as children," because the promise in question is based upon repentance, "with which infants could not possibly comply."

Meta Chestnutt Sager's Letter to Eva Heiliger, February 11, 1945 (5)

It appears that much of what Sager wrote to Heiliger was in response to a Methodist pamphlet Heiliger had sent as a way of explaining and defending her beliefs and practices.[1] It is impossible to know which pamphlet Heiliger had sent, but it certainly taught the same things found in the 1944 edition of Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Church: "We hold that all children, by virtue of the unconditional benefits of the atonement, are members of the Kingdom of God, and therefore graciously entitled to Baptism."[2] The same manual begins its discussion of the administration of the sacrament by saying, "Let every adult person, and the parents of every child to be baptized, to have the choice of sprinkling, pouring, or immersion."[3]

Notes

[1] "Your little pamphlet is good in so far as it goes," wrote Sager, "but your Methodist friends always stay short of baptism." Meta Chestnutt Sager to Eva Heiliger, February 11, 1945.

[2] Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Church (New York: Methodist Publishing House, 1944), 40. See also Frank S. Mead, Handbook of Denominations in the United States (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1951), 131-32.

[3] Ibid., 448.

Alexander Campbell on Infant Baptism

According to historian Douglas A. Foster, the birth of Alexander Campbell's first child in 1812 made the hotly-debated issue of infant baptism a personal matter. Campbell had been brought up in the home of a Seceder Presbyterian minister and certainly had been sprinkled as an infant. With the question now pressing, he threw himself into deep study of the Bible on the topic and at the end of several weeks of investigation "concluded that he could accept only immersion of penitent believers as legitimate baptism."[1] As Campbell came to understand the New Testament, especially passages like Acts 2:37-38, baptism was only for believers and brought the remission of sins. Infants obviously could not understand and believe the gospel. Moreover, since baptism was for the remission of sins, it made no sense to baptize infants because they had not yet committed any sins and could not make a profession of faith.[2] Campbell never taught that those who failed to understand this aspect of biblical teaching were lost. "I cannot . . . in my heart regard all who have been sprinkled in infancy without their knowledge and consent as aliens from Christ and the well-grounded hope of heaven."[3] Nevertheless, the New Testament taught believers' baptism, by immersion, for the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit, and so would Campbell.[4]

It is worth noting that as early as 1820, in his debate with Presbyterian minister John Walker, Campbell had developed and was enunciating several arguments against infant baptism. These arguments went far beyond an interpretation of the conversion stories in the Book of Acts, according to which the approved examples did not depict infant baptism, but did, rather, suggest inferential evidence against the practice.[5]

Notes

[1] Douglas A. Foster, A Life of Alexander Campbell, Library of Religious Biography (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2020), 53.

[2] Ibid., 71.

[3] Alexander Campbell, "Any Christians among Protestant Parties," Millennial Harbinger, September 1837, 412. See also Foster, Life of Alexander Campbell, 160-61.

[4] Campbell preferred to avoid theological words that could not be found in the Bible. Yet, his mature view of baptism pictures the ordinance as a "sacrament," a divinely-appointed means of grace. See, for example, the entry for "sacrament," in Donald K. McKim, Westminster Dictionary of Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 245. See also Millard J. Erickson, The Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology, rev. ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2001), 174, who defines "Sacramentalism" as "The view that grace is conveyed through certain religious rites."

[5] See, especially, Alexander Campbell, "Evils of Infant Baptism," Millennial Harbinger (September 1848), 481-92, in which Campbell reprints the arguments he put forward in his 1820 debate with John Walker. See also the brief but helpful discussion in Royal Humbert, ed., A Compend of Alexander Campbell's Theology (St. Louis, MO: Bethany Press, 1961), 201, n. 16.

Meta Chestnutt Sager's Letter to Eva Heiliger, February 11, 1945 (4)

Having quoted Acts 8:35-38, Sager sets out to make two points about baptism. The first is a follow-up to her discussion about the necessity of the ordinance. She observes that the author of the Book of Acts does not quote Philip's sermon to the eunuch. Chapter 8, verse 35 merely says "he preached unto him Jesus." As Disciples were wont to do, Sager focused on that phrase in order to make her point: "something must have been said about baptism since the eunuch asked to be baptized."[1] According to the inference, because baptism is inherent to preaching Jesus, it is therefore an essential part of the faithful response to the gospel. In his commentary on the Book of Acts, first published in 1863, J. W. McGarvey had emphasized this point. McGarvey, an 1850 honor graduate of Alexander Campbell's Bethany College, was the leading biblical scholar in the second generation of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Disciples widely read and often cited his work on Acts. Commenting on the eunuch's question to Philip, "what doth hinder me to be baptized?" (Acts 8:36), McGarvey wrote:

The appearance of the water to which they had come suggested this question, but it could not have been done so unless the eunuch had been taught something concerning immersion as a religious ordinance. But he had enjoyed no opportunity for instruction on this subject, except through the teaching of Philip. Had Philip, then, preached him a sermon on immersion? No. Luke says Philip "preached to him Jesus." How, then, had he, while hearing Jesus preached, obtained instruction in reference to immersion? There is only one answer to this question. It is, that to preach Jesus, after the apostolic method, involves full instruction upon the subject of immersion. The prejudice, therefore, which exists at the present day against frequent introduction of this subject in discourses addressed to sinners, is altogether unscriptural; and those only preach Jesus correctly who give to it the same prominence which belongs to it in apostolic discourses. It was a part of Peter's sermon on Pentecost, of Philip's preaching to the Samaritans, and of his present discourse to the Ethiopian; and we will yet see, in the course of this commentary, that it always occupied a place in the preaching of inspired men on such occasions. Indeed, it would be impossible to preach Jesus fully without it.[2]

Sager's second point is related, but takes up a separate question: the scriptural mode of baptism. As noted earlier, the Methodist tradition to which Eva Heiliger belonged asserts that baptism may be administered by sprinkling, pouring, or immersion, and that infants as well as adults my be baptized. In practice, sprinkling has been common among Methodists. It seems clear that the pamphlet Heiliger had sent defended the position of her church. For, having quoted the passage in which "they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him," Sager comments, "And surely he was neither sprinkled nor water poured upon his head."[3]

Notes

[1] Meta Chestnutt Sager to Eva Heiliger, February 11, 1945. 

[2] J. W. McGarvey, A Commentary on Acts of Apostles, 7th ed. (Lexington, KY: Transylvania Printing and Publishing Company, 1872), 98. See also McGarvey's, New Commentary on Acts of Apostles (Cincinnati, OH: Standard Publishing Company, 1892), 1:157-58, which presents similar remarks. For the place of McGarvey in the history of Disciples biblical scholarship, see M. Eugene Boring, Disciples and the Bible: A History of Disciples Biblical Interpretation in North America (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 1997), 221-23. For McGarvey's impact on all subsequent interpretation of the Book of Acts within the Stone-Campbell Movement, see Ibid., 248-49. For excellent brief biographies, see Henry Warner Bowden, Dictionary of American Religious Biography, 2nd ed. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), 325-26; and M. Eugene Boring, "McGarvey, John W. (1829-1911)," in Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, (Grand Rapids, MI: William. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004), 506-07.

[3] Meta Chestnutt Sager to Eva Heiliger, February 11, 1945. A standard reference work of the time noted that in Methodist churches in America, baptism was administered "usually by sprinkling." Frank S. Mead, Handbook of Denominations in the United States (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1951), 132).

Meta Chestnutt Sager's Letter to Eva Heiliger, February 11,1945 (3)

Next, Sager cites another passage from the Book of Acts, the episode in which the evangelist Philip teaches the gospel to a eunuch, an official in the government of "Ethiopia." According to the story, the eunuch had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and was now returning (Acts 8:27-28).[1] As he traveled, the eunuch was reading the Book of Isaiah, specifically Chapter 53, one of the Church's favorite messianic texts ever since: "He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth: In his humiliation his judgment was taken away: and who shall declare his generation? for his life is taken from the earth" (Acts 8:32-33). At this point in her letter, Meta picks up the story:

You will note in the 35th verse that Phillip [sic] "began at the same scripture and preached unto him Jesus. And as they went on their way they came unto a certain water: and the eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized? And Phillip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. And he commanded the chariot to stand still: and they went down both into the water, both Phillip and the eunuch; and he baptized him.[2]

Two features of this part of Meta's letter suggest she was writing out the biblical passage from memory. First, while she quotes the eunuch confessing, "I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God," the King James Version, which she no doubt read and from which she memorized Scripture, reads: "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." Second, she misspells Philip's three times as "Phillip." On the other hand, the placement and specific type of punctuation are perfect in Meta's transcription of the passage, suggests use of the printed text.[3]

Notes

[1] I. Howard Marshall, The Acts of the Apostles (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980), 162, states that the man "came from the country now known as Sudan (rather than modern Ethiopia)." Likewise, Ben Witherington, III, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), 295, writes: "The geographical location Luke has in mind is the Nubian kingdom whose capital is Meroe, south of Egypt, which is part of Sudan." If not a proselyte, the eunuch was one of the gentile admirers of Judaism, like the centurion Cornelius of Acts 10:1-2, described as "one that feared God with all his house." The Book of Acts contains several more references to this category of people, virtuous Gentiles. See Acts 13:16, 26, 43; 16:14; 17:4, 17; 18:7. The existence of these people in the Greco-Roman world has been established by, among others, John G. Gager, "Jews, Gentiles, and Synagogues in the Book of Acts," Harvard Theological Review 79, no. 1-3 (1986): 91-99; and Louis H. Feldman, "The Omnipresence of the God-Fearers," Biblical Archaeology Review 12, no. 5 (1986): 58-63. See also the good discussion in Craig S. Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), 2:1566-67.

[2] Meta Chestnutt Sager to Eva Heiliger, February 11, 1945, Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection, Oklahoma History Center, Oklahoma City.

[3] Ibid.