OLD SCHOOL BAPTISTS IN THE WEST,

FOREWORD

There are histories that are forgotten because they were insignificant. And there are histories that are forgotten because the people who lived them did not build the institutions that later wrote the histories.

This book is about the second kind.he story of the Old School Baptists in the American West is not merely the story of a few stubborn preachers who resisted change. It is not simply an appendix to Kehukee, Black Rock, or the better-known controversies of the eastern states. It is the story of men and women who crossed mountains, rivers, prairies, and eventually an entire continent carrying with them a conviction that was more precious to them than institutional success: Christ had already given His church everything necessary to be His church.

They carried that conviction west.

They carried it into Kentucky and Tennessee.

They carried it across the Ohio and Mississippi.

They carried it into Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, and Texas.

And eventually they carried it in wagons across the plains and mountains to Oregon.

Some of them left behind farms they had cleared with their own hands. Some buried husbands, wives, children, and friends along the way. Some preached after working all week as farmers, carpenters, cabinetmakers, merchants, or laborers. Their meetinghouses were often small. Their congregations could be smaller still. Their names rarely found their way into the histories of great American religious institutions.

Yet they went.

And wherever they went, churches appeared.

That fact alone forces us to reconsider one of the oldest caricatures of the Old School Baptists.

They were not opposed to the gospel traveling.

They traveled with it.

They were not opposed to preaching in distant places.

Their ministers rode and walked extraordinary distances to preach.

They were not opposed to constituting churches.

They constituted churches across an expanding frontier.

They were not opposed to cooperation.

Their churches corresponded, sent messengers, organized associations, received visiting elders, assisted ministers, and maintained fellowship across enormous distances.

What they opposed was something much more specific and much more profound.

They questioned whether the church of Jesus Christ needed another organization standing beside it—or eventually above it—to accomplish the work Christ had entrusted to His people.

That question is the heartbeat of this book.

The western evidence makes it impossible to dismiss the Old School resistance as merely an eastern reaction that began at Kehukee in 1827 or Black Rock in 1832. In Illinois, Baptist opposition to missionary-board patronage had already become an associational issue by 1824. Daniel Parker had published his attack upon the Baptist missionary-board system in 1820, twelve years before Black Rock. The western controversy was therefore already developing while the eastern struggle was still taking shape.
That changes the story.

The Old School movement did not arise at one meeting, from one address, under one preacher, or in one region. The evidence in this volume points instead toward something broader: Baptists in widely separated places were confronting the same transformation and asking remarkably similar questions.

Who had the right to direct the work of the gospel?

Who should call and recognize ministers?

Who should support them?

Who should determine where they labored?

Could a society composed of contributing individuals perform work Scripture had committed to churches?

Could an educational institution gradually become the gatekeeper of the ministry?

Could efficiency establish authority?

Could necessity justify an institution for which these Baptists believed they could find no apostolic warrant?

Those were not trivial questions to them.

They touched the very identity of the church.

And there were sincere Christians on the other side.

That must be said.

John Mason Peck looked upon the vast western frontier and saw settlements without churches, churches without pastors, children without schools, and enormous opportunities for evangelization. His answer was organization—missionary societies, Sunday schools, educational institutions, denominational cooperation, publications, and eventually national home-mission machinery.

The Old School Baptists often looked upon the same frontier and reached almost the opposite conclusion.

If Christ had established His churches, called His ministers, given His ordinances, and commanded the preaching of His gospel, they asked, why should another permanent religious corporation be necessary to accomplish His work?

The disagreement was not between people who wanted the gospel preached and people who did not.

Both sides preached. Both sides traveled. Both sides planted churches.

The question was what stood behind that work.

The manuscript repeatedly demonstrates that rejecting the missionary system did not mean rejecting itinerant preaching or church planting. David Badgley, for example, had actually participated in organized missionary work, received society support, and traveled as an appointed missionary before rejecting that arrangement—and then continued helping constitute churches afterward.

That is one of the reasons this history matters.

It allows the Old School Baptists to speak from within their own world rather than forcing them into categories created by their opponents.

Their story becomes even more remarkable as it moves westward.

In Texas, Daniel Parker's people did something almost unimaginable today. They did not wait for a missionary society to identify Texas as a field and send an agent there.

An organized church moved.

Families, members, minister, faith, order, and congregational identity crossed the frontier together.

The church itself became missionary in the oldest sense of the word—not through a separate missionary corporation, but through the movement of the body and the subsequent constitution of other churches.

The pattern appears repeatedly in this history:

believers move,

ministers move,

families gather,

the gospel is preached,

churches are constituted,

associations follow.

The church came first.

The machinery did not.

And then the story reaches Oregon.

There is something deeply moving about Isom Cranfill crossing the Oregon Trail in 1847. He had been a cabinetmaker. He had made coffins during a terrible period of disease in Illinois. Then he placed his family among thousands of emigrants moving toward an uncertain western future. His surviving diary records the journey, and after reaching Oregon he worked with his hands while traveling through the Willamette and Umpqua valleys preaching among scattered believers.

He did not arrive backed by a national denominational apparatus.

He carried his faith with him.

So did John Stipp.

So did other Regular Predestinarian Baptists.

And while they were building churches in Oregon, something else was happening farther south.

Osgood Church Wheeler arrived in California as a commissioned missionary of the American Baptist Home Mission Society. In 1849—the very year the Siloam Association of Regular Predestinarian Baptists was taking shape in Oregon—Wheeler was beginning institutional Missionary Baptist work in California and organizing what became the First Baptist Church of San Francisco.

There, on the Pacific Coast, thousands of miles from the controversies of North Carolina and Maryland, the two Baptist visions stood beside one another again.

One came through a national society.

The other came through migrating churches, elders, and families.

One saw organization as a necessary instrument for meeting the demands of a growing nation.

The other feared that every new religious institution transferred a little more of the church's work into hands Christ had never appointed.

That is the tragedy—and the grandeur—of this story.

These people were brethren before they became parties.

They shared Bibles.

They shared Baptist ancestry.

They shared ordinances.

They shared much of the same theology.

They often shared the same meetinghouses, associations, families, and memories.

Then came the societies.

Then came the theological disputes over gospel means.

Then came questions of ministerial education.

Then boards, agents, salaries, schools, conventions, publications, and competing definitions of Baptist cooperation.

Churches divided.

Associations divided.

Ministers who had once sat together ceased corresponding.

Congregations that had once broken bread together declared one another out of order.

And from those divisions emerged two Baptist worlds.

This book does not need to pretend that every Old School Baptist was correct about everything. They were not united among themselves. Parker's Two-Seed doctrine created serious controversy. Later disputes over predestination, gospel means, church discipline, and other matters produced painful divisions even within the Old School ranks. The manuscript itself acknowledges these internal differences rather than manufacturing an imaginary golden age.

Nor does this book require us to question the sincerity of every Missionary Baptist.

The issue is not sincerity.

The issue is history.

And history demands that we hear the forgotten side.

The institutions built by the Missionary Baptists survived, expanded, accumulated resources, trained ministers, established colleges, published histories, and became enormously influential. Inevitably, much of Baptist history came to be narrated through the institutional descendants of the victors.

The Old School Baptists left something different.

Minutes.

Church books.

Circular letters.

Associational correspondence.

Personal diaries.

Old newspapers.

Graveyards.

Fading meetinghouses.

Names buried in county histories.

And sometimes nothing more than a sentence recording that an elder rode into a settlement, preached the gospel, baptized believers, and helped constitute another church.

Those fragments matter.

Behind every faded name was a human life.

Behind every associational minute was a congregation of people who had buried their dead, raised their children, worked the soil, crossed rivers, survived disease, endured loneliness, and gathered again on another Lord's Day because they believed that Christ would preserve His church.

Their story deserves to be told.

And perhaps the most powerful conclusion of this entire work is that the western Old School Baptist movement was not merely an eastern protest transplanted to the frontier. It was also a western response born from western experience. Illinois Baptists had encountered missionary organization and reacted against it before Kehukee and Black Rock. Parker resisted the board system in the West. Missouri divided. Iowa inherited the Regular Baptist network. Parker's congregation physically moved into Texas. Cranfill and Stipp carried Predestinarian Baptist life across the Oregon Trail. Meanwhile Peck, the Home Mission Society, Wheeler, and others carried west another Baptist future built upon organized societies, education, and denominational coordination.

Thus two Baptist migrations crossed America at the same time.

One effectively said:

Send the gospel west through organized institutions.

The other answered:

Let the churches go. Let the ministers go. Let the families go. And wherever God gathers His people, let churches arise according to the order Christ has already given.

The manuscript reaches this very conclusion: two Baptist westward expansions were occurring simultaneously, one through organized institutions and the other through churches, ministers, and believing families reproducing churches according to what they understood as apostolic order.

That is why this history should not be read merely as a denominational curiosity.

It asks a question that has never gone away.

Is the church sufficient for the work Christ gave the church?

Every generation answers that question, whether it realizes it or not.

The old meetinghouses may be gone.

The wagon roads have disappeared beneath highways.

The frontier graves are weathered.

Many of the associations recorded in these pages have vanished.

The voices of their elders have been silent for more than a century.

But the question they carried across the mountains still lives.

And before we dismiss their answer as backward, primitive, or obsolete, we owe them the dignity of listening.

That is the purpose of this book.

To recover their names.

To reopen their records.

To follow their footsteps west.

And, for a little while, to hear again the voices of those forgotten Baptists who crossed a continent believing that they did not need to reinvent the church in order to carry the gospel to the ends of the earth.

Guillermo Santmaria

 

THE INFLUENC OF THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES ON OLD SCHOOOL BAPTISTS

 

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FOREWORD

There are moments in the history of the church when the survival of a people depends not upon wealth, buildings, institutions, or political influence, but upon whether scattered believers can still hear one another’s voices.

The Old School Baptists of the nineteenth century were such a people.

They possessed no national convention to command them. They established no denominational headquarters to govern their churches. They rejected the missionary boards, theological institutions, benevolent societies, and centralized machinery that were rapidly transforming American Baptist life. Their congregations were autonomous. Their associations possessed no legislative authority over the churches. Their ministers were often farmers, craftsmen, physicians, laborers, and ordinary men who preached because they believed God had called them, not because a denominational institution had certified them.

And yet they were not isolated.

Across mountains and rivers, through growing cities and lonely rural communities, across the Appalachians and eventually onto the western frontier, they found one another.

One of the principal instruments that made this possible was a newspaper.

That newspaper was Signs of the Times.

It is difficult for a modern reader to appreciate what a religious newspaper could mean in the nineteenth century. We live in an age in which a message can cross a continent in seconds. A theological controversy can involve thousands of people before breakfast. A sermon preached in one state can be heard throughout the world before the congregation has left the meetinghouse.

The Old School Baptists inhabited another world.

A brother in Maine might never meet a sister in Georgia. A minister in Virginia might never stand in the same meetinghouse with an elder in Illinois. A Baptist family moving into Kansas Territory might settle many miles from another family believing substantially the same doctrine and never know that they were there.

Into that world came the printed page.

A letter was written.

It traveled to the editor.

It was printed.

The paper traveled outward again.

And suddenly brethren separated by hundreds or even thousands of miles were sitting, in a sense, at the same table.

That is the story examined in these pages.

Signs of the Times did not create the Old School Baptist movement. That distinction must be maintained. Opposition to the new religious institutions preceded the newspaper. Kehukee had already taken its decisive stand in 1827. The Black Rock meeting of September 1832 gave public expression to objections that had been developing among Baptists for years. Gilbert Beebe did not become a bishop of the Old School Baptists, and his newspaper possessed no ecclesiastical authority over their churches.

But something extraordinary happened when Signs of the Times began publication in 1832.

A protest became a conversation.

A conversation became a network.

And a network helped a scattered people recognize themselves.

Black Rock could issue an address once. An association could meet annually. A church could correspond with another church. But a newspaper could return every few weeks carrying letters, sermons, doctrinal arguments, meeting notices, obituaries, church troubles, Christian experiences, questions, answers, warnings, encouragements, and news from brethren hundreds of miles apart.

The significance of that achievement should not be underestimated.

The Old School Baptists were attempting something inherently difficult. They wanted fellowship without centralized government. They wanted cooperation without surrendering church authority. They wanted communication without constructing another denominational bureaucracy. They wanted ministers to travel and preach without turning the gospel ministry into an enterprise administered by missionary corporations.

Signs of the Times became one of the mechanisms by which that seemingly impossible balance could be maintained.

The newspaper could speak—but it could not command.

It could persuade—but it could not legislate.

It could warn—but it could not exclude a church member.

It could publish the writings of an elder—but it could not ordain him.

It could announce an association—but it could not govern that association.

It could carry the experience of a believer from Kentucky to New York—but it could not receive that believer into a local congregation.

Those powers remained where Old School Baptists believed Christ had placed them: in His churches.

This distinction is essential.

Without it, the history of Signs of the Times can easily be misunderstood. One might look at its enormous influence and conclude that Beebe simply created another form of denominational authority. That would miss the peculiar character of the newspaper. It possessed influence precisely because people voluntarily read it, answered it, argued with it, defended it, criticized it, and sent their own voices into its pages.

Even disagreement became evidence of its importance.

Gilbert Beebe was not universally followed. Samuel Trott was not universally followed. The absolute predestination controversy alone demonstrates that Old School Baptists were never intellectually uniform. Some of Beebe’s positions became extraordinarily influential; other Primitive Baptists vigorously opposed them. Books were written against positions associated with Beebe and his allies.

But that itself reveals the importance of the paper.

Men do not devote years to answering voices nobody hears.

The Signs mattered.

It mattered doctrinally.

It mattered ecclesiologically.

It mattered geographically.

It mattered devotionally.

And eventually it mattered historically.

Within its columns, Old School Baptists wrestled with regeneration, election, predestination, gospel means, church authority, ministerial qualifications, baptism, Christian experience, the nature of associations, the legitimacy of religious institutions, and the meaning of the separation between the Old and New Schools.

Samuel Trott could effectively preach from a pulpit larger than any meetinghouse he ever entered. A reader could send him a question concerning Scripture and later find an extended answer in print. Beebe could publish an argument in New York and find himself answered by brethren many states away.

Without establishing a seminary, the Old School Baptists created a vast theological conversation.

Without creating a national convention, they developed national consciousness.

That is one of the most striking paradoxes in their history.

The geographical evidence makes the story even more compelling.

The surviving record places agents, correspondents, readers, and distribution networks across a remarkable expanse. New York, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, California, Oregon, Washington Territory, and other regions appear within the documentary trail. Canadian Baptists entered the story as well.

The agents list preserved in Signs of the Times is especially powerful evidence.

These were not merely abstract dots on a map.

They were people.

Each name represented a human connection.

Someone received papers.

Someone collected subscriptions.

Someone carried copies to neighbors.

Someone handed an issue to another Baptist.

Someone read an article aloud.

Someone recognized familiar doctrine in words printed hundreds of miles away.

Someone discovered that he was not alone.

The numbers become remarkable when placed geographically. North Carolina alone appears with thirty-three agents in the list examined here. Illinois had twenty-one. Kentucky twenty. Virginia seventeen. Missouri and Ohio sixteen each. Indiana fourteen. Georgia, Mississippi, New York, and Oregon each had twelve. Texas had eleven. Maryland eleven. New Jersey ten. Iowa ten.

And still the network continued outward.

Kansas.

Nebraska.

Arizona.

New Mexico.

Washington Territory.

California.

Ontario.

The paper that began amid the controversy of 1832 had become part of a communications network stretching across a continent.

That fact forces us to reconsider one of the common caricatures of the Old School Baptists.

They were not simply people retreating from the world.

They traveled.

They migrated.

They preached.

They corresponded.

They wrote.

They published.

They read.

They argued.

They maintained friendships across enormous distances.

They established churches on new frontiers.

They carried religious books and newspapers westward with their families.

Their objection was not to communication.

Their objection was not to effort.

Their objection was not necessarily even to organization.

Their question was far more fundamental:

What has Christ authorized His church to be?

That question stood beneath the missionary controversy, beneath the seminary controversy, beneath disputes over societies and boards, and beneath much of the theology appearing in Signs of the Times.

And the newspaper repeatedly brought the question before its readers.

But there is another dimension to this story that deserves to be remembered.

Behind the doctrinal controversies were suffering human beings.

Read enough nineteenth-century Baptist correspondence and the world behind the theology begins to emerge.

Children died.

Wives died.

Husbands died.

Ministers grew old.

Families moved west and left generations of relatives behind.

Churches divided.

Friendships were broken by controversy.

Poverty was common.

Travel could be dangerous.

Disease could destroy a household in days.

Some believers lived miles from another church of their faith.

Then the newspaper arrived.

Perhaps it contained an obituary.

Perhaps a letter describing a believer’s experience.

Perhaps an exposition from Samuel Trott.

Perhaps a word from Beebe.

Perhaps an announcement revealing that Old School Baptists lived closer than anyone had known.

Perhaps only a familiar name.

But sometimes a familiar name is enough.

There is something deeply moving about imagining one of those papers being unfolded in a farmhouse in Illinois, a cabin in Kansas, a home in North Carolina, or a settlement in Oregon.

The reader was far from Middletown, New York.

But for a few moments the distance disappeared.

Brethren were speaking.

The church was larger than the little congregation visible on Sunday morning.

There were others.

That realization may have been among the greatest gifts Signs of the Times gave its readers.

It told scattered believers:

You are not alone.

It also preserved their voices for us.

This makes the newspaper invaluable to the historian. The people who appear in its pages were not writing primarily for historians living generations later. They were writing to one another. They were explaining what they believed, defending decisions, asking questions, reporting church troubles, describing providence, remembering the dead, and trying to understand the Scriptures.

Their disagreements remain.

Their mistakes remain.

Their prejudices remain.

Their strengths remain.

Their weaknesses remain.

That is precisely why the record is so valuable.

Signs of the Times must never be treated as an infallible chronicle. It was a partisan newspaper. Its editors had theological positions. Its contributors sometimes spoke harshly. Its descriptions of opponents must be tested against church minutes, associational records, opposing publications, correspondence, and civil documents.

But once that historical caution is maintained, its value becomes immense.

Here we hear Old School Baptists speaking in their own voices.

Not as later generations imagined them.

Not merely as their opponents described them.

But as they described themselves.

And perhaps this is why the story still matters.

Institutions change.

Newspapers disappear.

Buildings collapse.

Associations dissolve.

Names are forgotten.

But the question these Baptists were asking has not disappeared:

Is the church Christ established sufficient for the work Christ gave His church?

They answered that question with remarkable consistency, sometimes imperfectly, sometimes controversially, and sometimes at tremendous personal cost.

They believed the answer was yes.

And because they believed it, they attempted to build a religious fellowship unlike the increasingly centralized denominational systems surrounding them.

No national ecclesiastical government.

No denominational executive.

No missionary corporation ruling the churches.

No theological institution defining the ministry for them.

Instead:

churches,

ministers,

families,

letters,

associations,

and a newspaper moving from hand to hand across America.

A fragile network by modern standards.

Yet it endured.

The pages that follow tell the story of that network.

They tell how Signs of the Times helped give the Old School Baptists a common vocabulary.

How it sharpened theological convictions.

How it preserved Christian experience.

How it connected isolated churches.

How it allowed disagreements to cross state lines.

How it helped form historical memory.

And how a religious newspaper published in New York became one of the great arteries through which the life of the Old School Baptist movement flowed across the nineteenth-century American landscape.

The names of many of its agents are now forgotten.

Their houses are gone.

Some of their meetinghouses have disappeared.

Their graves may stand unnoticed beneath weathered stones.

But once, they opened their mail.

They unfolded the paper.

They read the words of brethren they might never meet in this life.

And across the distances of a growing nation, they knew that somewhere beyond the mountains, beyond the rivers, beyond the forests and prairies, there were others who still believed that Christ had not left His church unfinished.

This work is dedicated to recovering that forgotten fellowship.

To the editors who wrote.

To the elders who preached.

To the correspondents who poured their experiences onto paper.

To the agents who carried the publication into communities far from New York.

To the churches that remained autonomous yet refused to become strangers.

And to the countless unnamed readers who received Signs of the Times and discovered, perhaps in some lonely place on the American frontier, that the Old School was not merely behind them.

It was all around them.

The paper did not create their faith.

It gave their faith a voice.

It did not create their churches.

It helped their churches find one another.

It did not govern the Old School Baptists.

It connected them.

And in doing so, Signs of the Times helped a scattered people become conscious that, though separated by hundreds and eventually thousands of miles, they still walked together upon what they believed were the old paths.

Guillermo Santamaria

Out of the Same Mouth: Blessing and Cursing James 3:9–10 (Santamaria)

Out of the Same Mouth: Blessing and Cursing

James 3:9–10 (KJV)

“Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.”

There is something frightening about the human tongue.

With it we whisper a prayer over a sick child. With it we comfort a grieving widow. With it we sing hymns, confess Christ, read the Scriptures, bless our children, encourage the discouraged, and tell a broken soul that there is still hope.

And with that very same tongue we can wound a person so deeply that the scar remains for decades.

James does not permit us to hide from this contradiction.

“Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men.”

The same mouth.

The same lips.

The same voice.

Perhaps only minutes apart.

A person may stand in the congregation and sing, “How Great Thou Art,” and before the day is finished use that same mouth to humiliate his wife, belittle his child, destroy a brother’s reputation, repeat gossip, mock an enemy, or speak contemptuously about someone for whom Christ died.

James looks at that contradiction and says:

“My brethren, these things ought not so to be.”

There is almost heartbreak in those words.

He does not merely say that such speech is impolite.

He does not merely call it poor manners.

He exposes it as a spiritual contradiction.

We bless God while cursing someone who bears God’s likeness.

That is what makes the sin so serious.

James says that human beings are:

“made after the similitude of God.”

The word “similitude” points us back toward creation itself.

“God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26).

Every person we encounter carries the dignity of having been made by God.

The person who irritates you.

The person who disagrees with you.

The person who embarrassed you.

The person who betrayed you.

The person whose politics you despise.

The person whose theology you believe is wrong.

The person who has little education.

The person who has great wealth.

The person living on the street.

The prisoner.

The stranger.

The elderly person whose mind is failing.

The child who cannot defend himself.

The opponent who has spoken against you.

You may disagree with them.

You may rebuke wrongdoing.

You may expose falsehood.

You may sometimes be required to speak with great firmness.

But you must never forget what James refuses to let us forget:

That person was made in the likeness of God.

Something belonging to the Creator’s workmanship stands before you.

And therefore the tongue that says, “Blessed be the name of the Lord,” cannot casually turn around and treat one of God’s creatures as though he were worthless.

That is the terrible inconsistency James exposes.

We imagine that our relationship with God can be separated from our treatment of people.

James says it cannot.

We think worship occurs vertically: God above, worshiper below.

James adds the horizontal dimension.

You cannot honor the Creator while despising what He made.

You cannot praise the Father while continually shredding His children with your words.

You cannot sing beautifully to God on Sunday and speak cruelly to your family on Monday and suppose that heaven is impressed by the song but indifferent to the cruelty.

The same God hears both.

He heard the hymn.

He also heard what you said in the kitchen.

He heard the prayer.

He also heard the conversation in the parking lot.

He heard the Scripture you quoted.

He also heard the rumor you repeated.

He heard the “Amen.”

He also heard the insult.

James is forcing us to bring the whole life before God.

Perhaps that is why the sins of the tongue are so easy to overlook. Words leave no visible blood.

A fist can bruise a face.

A knife can leave a wound.

A harsh word may leave nothing for the eye to see.

But the heart remembers.

Some adults still hear sentences spoken to them when they were children.

“You’ll never amount to anything.”

“You’re stupid.”

“I wish you had never been born.”

“No one will ever love you.”

Years pass.

The speaker may have forgotten.

The hearer has not.

A sentence spoken in thirty seconds may take thirty years to overcome.

There are husbands who have never struck their wives but have beaten them down for years with contempt.

There are wives who know exactly which words will humiliate their husbands and reach for those words whenever anger rises.

There are parents who provide food, clothing, education, and shelter while slowly crushing their children through criticism.

There are churches that have never physically injured anyone but have destroyed people through whispers, insinuations, suspicions, gossip, and character assassination.

And sometimes those doing the greatest damage are the same people who speak most loudly about defending the truth.

James will not allow truth to become an excuse for cruelty.

Truth matters.

Doctrine matters.

Correction matters.

But truth spoken without love can become a weapon in the hands of pride.

One can be correct in content and wicked in spirit.

There is a way of winning an argument while losing something of far greater value.

There is a way of defending orthodoxy while displaying a heart that has forgotten mercy.

There is a way of saying true things about another person that ought never to have been said publicly.

Not every true fact needs to be repeated.

Not every failure needs an audience.

Not every suspicion deserves circulation.

Not every offense requires retaliation.

Sometimes holiness means closing the mouth.

James continues his argument by asking whether a fountain can send forth sweet water and bitter from the same opening.

Nature itself rebels against the contradiction.

We would be astonished to approach a spring one morning and drink fresh water, then return that afternoon and find poison flowing from the same source.

Yet James says we tolerate precisely this contradiction in ourselves.

Blessing.

Cursing.

Praise.

Contempt.

Prayer.

Gossip.

Worship.

Slander.

“My brethren, these things ought not so to be.”

The problem, of course, lies deeper than the mouth.

Jesus said:

“Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.”

The tongue reveals what the heart has been storing.

Eventually the reservoir overflows.

Anger comes out because anger was inside.

Pride comes out because pride was inside.

Envy comes out because envy was inside.

Bitterness comes out because bitterness had been given a place to live.

The tongue does not create every evil it expresses. Often it simply opens the door and lets the heart walk into the room.

That means the answer cannot merely be, “Try harder not to say bad things.”

We need more than improved vocabulary.

We need grace in the heart.

We need God to expose the bitterness before bitterness becomes speech.

We need Him to humble the pride before pride becomes contempt.

We need Him to heal the wound before the wound becomes vengeance.

We need Him to teach us to see another person not merely as an annoyance, rival, enemy, failure, or theological opponent, but as a human being standing beneath the eye of God.

And perhaps nowhere is this more difficult than when someone has genuinely wronged us.

James is not asking us to pretend evil is good.

The Bible does not require victims to call abuse kindness or falsehood truth.

There is righteous confrontation.

There is church discipline.

There are warnings against false teachers.

Jesus Himself spoke severe words when holiness required them.

But there is a difference between exposing evil and enjoying another person’s destruction.

There is a difference between correcting someone and humiliating him.

There is a difference between warning others and feeding gossip.

There is a difference between saying, “This action is wrong,” and communicating, “This person has no worth.”

The gospel teaches us that even enemies are to be viewed beneath the shadow of divine mercy.

Christ said:

“Bless them that curse you.”

That command cuts deeply.

Our nature says:

“They hurt me. I will hurt them.”

“They embarrassed me. I will expose them.”

“They spoke against me. I will speak against them.”

“They made me suffer. I want them to suffer.”

Then Christ stands before us and says:

Bless.

Not because evil does not matter.

Not because justice does not matter.

But because vengeance does not belong to us.

How different Christian communities would become if believers truly took James seriously.

Imagine churches where no one feared becoming the subject of whispered conversations.

Imagine homes where children knew that correction would never become humiliation.

Imagine marriages where anger could be expressed without contempt.

Imagine disagreements where opponents still recognized one another as persons created in God’s image.

Imagine Christians refusing to forward the rumor.

Refusing to repeat the accusation they cannot verify.

Refusing to join the mockery.

Refusing to destroy a reputation merely because everyone else is doing it.

Imagine a believer saying:

“I could say something devastating right now, but I will not.”

That silence may be an act of worship.

Perhaps greater worship than many songs.

Because worship is not merely what comes from our mouths when we are singing to God.

Worship is also demonstrated by what we refuse to let come from our mouths when we are angry with people.

James forces us to ask an uncomfortable question:

What does my speech reveal about my religion?

Not merely what do I say about God?

How do I speak about people?

Especially those who cannot benefit me.

Especially those who disagree with me.

Especially those who have failed.

Especially those who are absent and cannot defend themselves.

Anyone can speak kindly when kindness is profitable.

Grace becomes visible when kindness costs something.

There is tremendous power in the tongue.

A few words can resurrect courage in someone who thought he could not continue.

“I believe in you.”

“I forgive you.”

“I was wrong.”

“You are not alone.”

“I am praying for you.”

“Thank you.”

“I love you.”

Words can become instruments of grace.

A person may be standing closer to despair than anyone realizes, and one compassionate sentence may become a small light in his darkness.

A discouraged minister may continue because someone said, “Your labor has helped me.”

A child may carry confidence into adulthood because a parent repeatedly said, “I am grateful God gave you to me.”

A grieving person may survive another night because someone sat beside him and whispered, “I’m here.”

The tongue that can destroy can also heal.

The mouth that can curse can bless.

And this is where James’s warning becomes an invitation.

Our speech does not have to remain divided.

God can teach us another way.

A way in which truth and love are no longer enemies.

A way in which conviction does not require cruelty.

A way in which disagreement does not require contempt.

A way in which correction does not destroy dignity.

A way in which our speech toward people begins to agree with the praise we offer to God.

Before we speak, perhaps we should remember:

This person was made by God.

This person has wounds I cannot see.

This person may be carrying a burden I know nothing about.

This person will remember some of my words long after I have forgotten saying them.

And God is listening.

Then perhaps our prayer should become very simple:

“Lord, put a guard over my mouth.

Do not let me praise You with lips that destroy others.

Teach me when to speak.

Teach me when to remain silent.

Give me courage to speak truth.

Give me tenderness in how I speak it.

Take bitterness from my heart before it reaches my tongue.

And when I look at another human being, remind me whose likeness I am looking at.”

Because the deepest issue in James 3:9–10 is not merely speech.

It is integrity.

Will the God we praise with our mouths be visible in the way we use those mouths?

Will our Monday conversation agree with our Sunday hymn?

Will our treatment of people confirm what we claim to believe about their Creator?

“Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing.”

Then comes the tender rebuke:

“My brethren, these things ought not so to be.”

They ought not.

And by the grace of God, they need not.

May the tongue that once wounded learn to heal.

May the mouth that once repeated gossip learn to defend the absent.

May the voice that once humiliated learn to encourage.

May lips that have spoken bitterness learn the language of mercy.

And may the praise we offer to heaven become visible in the grace we speak to one another on earth.

Then the same tongue that says,

“Blessed be God”

will also demonstrate that blessing by remembering the sacred dignity of those who are

“made after the similitude of God.”

“I Know the Thoughts That I Think Toward You” An Emotional Meditation on Jeremiah 29:11–14

“I Know the Thoughts That I Think Toward You”

An Emotional Meditation on Jeremiah 29:11–14

Sovereign Grace and Good Works (Trott) 1845

Sovereign Grace and Good Works



When I first saw the proposition, I shrank from it as a task less befitting me to undertake than others of our brethren, seeing that my practice or feelings seemed less corresponding with the gospel than was the case with others. But on further reflection, I thought that my experience in the case might have its use, and would be more




consoling to some of the children of God than would a treatise from those who have been enabled more uniformly to keep under the workings and corruptions of their nature; if indeed mine is the experience of a child of grace. I therefore commenced writing on the subject previous to brother Jewett’s death; and I have since thought that perhaps what I had written might not be unacceptable to some of the readers of the Signs; I have therefore finished what I had to say on the subject, and changed the address to the Signs. I have no doubt that some positions which my experience will oblige me to occupy will astonish some brethren.

Brother Jewett rightly qualified this subject by defining it as a spiritual reception of the doctrine of Christ; for a mere theoretical reception of sound doctrine, or having only the natural judgment convinced of the truth of it, is but a dead faith, and of course brings forth no spiritual fruits. A connection between the doctrine of Sovereign Grace and Good Works was evidently understood, by Paul, to exist; for after making a full representation of the sovereignty of God as manifested in the experience of salvation, (Titus iii. 3—7,) he immediately adds; (verse 8,) “This is a faithful saying, and these things I will, that thou affirm constantly, that they that have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works.” He thus teaches not only that this doctrine has a tendency to good works, but also that this is the good works themselves to excite believers to them. How different thus from the notion that this doctrine tends to licentiousness! When the natural judgment alone is convinced that salvation is by grace, and there is a reliance on that, only for escaping future punishment, there may probably be a tendency to licentiousness. And it is no wonder that the opposers of this doctrine, who know nothing but natural reason as their guide, should view the doctrine of grace in this light. But we may be assured, that whoever can deliberately draw such a conclusion and act under its influences, gives decisive evidence that he is ignorant of that hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory, even that mystery that, “had the princes of this world known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”

In coming more directly to the subject in view, I will first try to determine what good works are in a gospel sense.


The old scholastic definition of good works is, “that they are such as are done from a right principle, by a right rule, and to a right end;” but I would prefer a definition more simple. Indeed, good works do not require so much to be done by rule; they are not like positive institutions which require a strict observance of the letter of the command. Hence our Lord has resolved all religious rules upon this point in one, “Therefore all things that ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” Matt. vii. 12. The Lord himself thus explains it, for good works are such words as are kind and useful to others. Hence the apostle defines them by saying, “These things are good and profitable unto men.” Titus iii. 8. Many seem to suppose that good works principally consist in religious exercises. Hence they lay great stress upon a round of what they call duties, or upon a certain kind of bodily exercises; and being attentive to these, are not careful to avoid covetousness, dishonesty, hatred, &c. They suppose that they are to do good to God, and that for this goodness he will reward them; as though if they kept the Sabbath strictly, or gave their money for religious purposes, God was thereby benefited. Even Eliphaz, the Temanite, had a better view than this of these things; he says, “Can a man be profitable unto God as he that is wise may be profitable unto himself?” So Eliphaz, “If thou sinnest, what doest thou against him? or if thy transgressions be multiplied, what doest thou unto him? If thou be righteous, what givest thou him, or what receiveth he of thy hand? Thy wickedness may hurt a man as thou art; and thy righteousness may profit the son of man.” Job xxii. 2; and xxxv. 6—8. The Psalmist in evidently personating Christ says, “O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord: my goodness extendeth not to thee; but to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent, in whom is all my delight.” Psalm xvi. 2 & 3.

Religious exercises, such as waiting upon God, have come more properly under the idea of privileges, than of works; though there is an obligation resting upon the believer to observe the institutions of the gospel, and to honor God in all his ways. Good works are set forth in the scriptures as carrying out the spirit of the second table of the Decalogue. Thus Paul in his exhortation to the Romans summed it all up by saying, “Love is the fulfilling of the law.” He before said, “For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, &c., and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself;” and adds, “Love worketh no ill to his neighbor.”—Rom. xiii. 9 & 10. By an examination of all that is said on this subject in the New Testament, we shall find they are presented to view as both positive and negative: that is, they consist in being beneficial to others, or in doing good unto all men, especially unto those who are of the household of faith, as we have opportunity; and also in a filling up of the relations we may sustain, both civil and religious; as well as in refraining from whatever would be injurious to others. But then good works, in a gospel point of view, or as evidences of a gracious state, consist in something more than a mere performance of the act. Many acts which in themselves are beneficial to others, are performed in a spirit or from a motive that is not good, but evil. Such is the case manifestly with much of “charity and self-denial” made of what they call charitable societies, &c., by the religious multitude at this day. They are done either to be seen of men, or as a means of bringing those to whom they are done, in some way under their influence; or to make up a sum of righteousness on which to rest their hopes of salvation; or perhaps in a real infidel spirit, to show how good they can be and how much better human nature is, than those who believe the scriptures describe it to be.

There is a meekness, a kindness of feeling in doing good works, a fear of God and regard to the honor of his cause, in shunning to do wrong, which are more decisive evidences of a gracious spirit, than the mere doing or shunning the act. Yes, the humility and self-condemnation frequently manifested by the children of grace, for doing what they ought not to have done, and for not doing as they ought, gives more assurance to others of their true love to God, than would the not doing or doing the acts. The child of grace does nothing for mere ostentation and show, but from a sense of duty and a love to righteousness.



Neither is a studied austerity, unless on some peculiar occasions, necessary. Some are so shy in what they do for the poor, and for the support of the gospel ministry, as almost to lead to the belief, that they are ashamed to have it known that their religious impressions disposed them to kindness to the one, or fellowship for the other.

But to come to the existing connection between a spiritual reception of the doctrine of Christ and good works; we will remark,

First, That such reception of the doctrine of Christ implies the being born again—not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible; consequently it implies that the law in its spirituality has been written in their hearts, so that the love of God has been implanted therein. In this change, is at once presented the principle of good works. Love to God leads to a desire to be like him, and to a delight in his law after the inward man. This change also produces an equal repugnance from a loathing of sin and of ourselves on account of it, and consequently we desire not to be under its influence. But the inquiry looks to the tendency whether soundness of doctrine as received by faith tends to the maintaining of good works. Its direct tendency evidently is towards the maintenance of good works. The notions of conditional acceptance with God, by observing the holiness of God, in supposing that he can let possessed with imperfect obedience, and by hiding the exceeding sinfulness of sin so as to make the creature satisfied with his imperfect and unholy performance of duties, tends to make him careless about motives, so long as he can keep up the appearance of religious devotion, and about the performance of good works or religious duties, any further than he expects to be rewarded for them, or than he supposes necessary to secure his acceptance.

But the doctrine of Christ gives such enlarged views of the holiness of God as to lead those who receive it so to feel the hidden abominations of their own hearts in contrast therewith as to destroy all confidence in any of their own acts, and to pant after more holiness in heart and life. In addition, sound doctrine gives such a view of the riches of the love and grace of God towards vile, unworthy sinners, that whenever faith gives a glimpse of it, every power of mind is captivated thereby, and they are made earnestly to desire to glorify God in their bodies and in their spirits which are his.

Again: a belief in this doctrine, by giving us a deep sense of the deceitfulness of our hearts, and the depravity of our nature, leads us to be guarded against trusting to our own hearts, or depending on our own resolutions and strength, and to seek frequent supplies of grace and strength to resist temptations, and to overcome the corruptions of our natures, and to do that which is right. And “what was Paul’s experience, is the experience of every believer.” “When I am weak, then am I strong.” 2 Cor. xii. 10. And again, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” Phil. iv. 13. Whosoever we go forward carelessly or with self-confidence, we are sure to come short or fall; but more so even confounded in what manner this weakness, this heart so readily trusting in God. Once more, that faith which receives and rests upon the doctrine of Christ, is that which overcometh the world, even our faith. “I John v. 4. Faith, taking hold of the immutability of God in his purposes and promises, leads us forward as disciples of Christ, to face the frown and scorn of the world; presenting to us the certainty and fulness of salvation in Christ Jesus; it stifles us from the fiery darts of the adversary, and strengthens us to meet the sword and the fury of the persecutor; assuring us of the love and mercy of God to our souls, and the bounteousness of the Savior, it drives away these death-like chills which the world by its influence tends to throw over the graces of the Spirit and our soul’s comfort; and presenting to our minds the declarations of God’s word, it fills the tempted in his motions to ensure us, as for instance, when satan would persuade us that we might indulge in this gratification of the flesh, or that, without regarding to the cause of Christ, as it would not be known, &c., faith brings forward such antidotes as these, “Be sure your sin will find you out.”—Num.

xxxii. 23; “You only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore will I punish you for all your iniquities.”—Amos iii. 2; or as temptation is varied, so faith brings from the treasury that which meets it.



There may be subdivisions of tendencies connected with the reception of sound doctrine, to maintain good works. 1st. As already noticed, the love and mercy of God invites us to gratitude, and a strong desire to show our love to him by a denying of ourselves, and a walking in obedience to his ways. 2d. From our love to his doctrine, the very reproach and opposition it meets with tends to increase in us the desire to show forth its holy and beneficent nature in our lives and conversation, and to avoid occasioning reproach to it. 3d. The promises of grace and strength, and of escape in the time of temptation, which this doctrine shows to be “Yea and Amen in Christ Jesus,” encourage us to pursue the paths marked in the New Testament, regardless of the difficulties we may meet with. I will add, the fear of experiencing the frowns of our heavenly Father, and of being left to ourselves, and to mourn in darkness, is a strong inducement to those who have known what it is to have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, to watch, fusses and prayer against temptation. So that these and the like inducements, the children of gospel liberty need not go back to the letter and bondage of the law, to find in its demands and threats that which will excite them to good works.

I have thus sketched the direct tendency of sound doctrine to good works, and the consequent connection between them. But do we at this day see this connection fully manifest in ourselves and others generally, with, we hope, believe the doctrine of Christ? I think we do; though in some it is there as great a deficiency, perhaps, as in myself. How are we to account for this failure? I think briefly answer, from the weakness of our faith, and the prevalency of that sin which so easily besets us, viz: unbelief. But I wish to be indulged in some extended remarks on this point.

In the first place, we are to bear in mind, and we shall be often reminded of it in our sorrows, that whilst we are made partakers, if children of the kingdom, of a life that was created in Christ Jesus and good works, and therefore in the new man delight in holiness, yet the old, the Adamic man is not changed, but is in itself as earthly, sensual, and devilish as ever. Hence the warfare in the believer, between the flesh and the spirit, between Christ and Adam. Here I wish, if I can, to present the subject of the warfare in its different bearings in a true light. For just here it is that the formalist who, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness, bolsters himself up in his own self-importance, and trusting to his own self-taught belief of the doctrine of Christ, he walketh after the flesh without remorse of conscience.—And here it is, that the child of grace finds an abundant source of doubts and fears.

The position I have above laid down, that there is no change of nature, is correct; but still the implanting in us of that life which is the light of men, has given us to know the hidden depravity of our hearts, ins convinced our natural judgement, that these are evil and bad; and that the commandment is holy, just and good, and that a departure from the principle of love to God and love to our neighbor, is evil and sinful. And we know, as men, that an indulgence in sin, and a neglect of our obligations as christians, bring darkness and sorrow, and convinced of the truth and consistency of the doctrine of Christ, our minds and affections participate in the joys and sorrows of the new man. Yet after all this, our passions, appetites, self-love, &c., are left in their natural strength and depraved bias; and not only show themselves as such in the breasts of the believer, but come forward with their demands for gratification. I am led to the conclusion, from this confidence which natural persons have in their power to keep themselves, and from the equanimity of mind and the strict morality that many such are able to maintain, contrasted with the bitter complaints the children of grace make of themselves, that the depravity in believers is frequently stirred up, and made in one shape or another, far more turbulent in their breasts, and impudent in its demands for gratification, than in others, so that if it were not for the opposition of the new man, and its leading them in their draughts to look to God for deliverance, they would be overwhelmed in their corruptions. Not only are their sins reversed, stirred up at first by the demands of the law being set home, but God, as in the case of Israel in the wilderness, (Deut. viii. 2,) will have his people from time to time know what is in their heart, and therefore suffer Satan to stir up their corruptions.


At one time a temptation will be presented for indulgence, under so much disguise, and with so much plausibility, and at another time it will come so suddenly and unexpectedly, that the poor believer is almost swept away by it, and would have been quite, had not the Lord made a way for his escape. At another time some temptation from without will unite with some inward corruption, and make and present its demand for indulgence in such an insinuating manner and with such pertinaciousness, notwithstanding all the remonstrance of the judgement, and all the abhorrence of the spirit of the thing and perhaps at times the spirit and judgement both appear to be asleep, and the affections seem to contemplate with pleasure the indulgence, so that when the mind is again aroused to a sense of the danger, the poor, unarmed, and confounded soul, concludes that he is gone, and carried away he must be by the temptation, and becomes discouraged, and almost arrives at the conclusion that it is of no use any longer to contend against it. Perhaps in this state of the confusion of his mind Satan tempts him with the suggestion that the only way to escape being led into open sin, and from disgracing his profession, is to put an end to his existence.

Thus the believer is at times tossed in his little bark upon the billows of his corruption, raised by the winds of temptation, and his Lord appearing to be asleep, or to care not for him, yet in the end, at the last extremity, he will be made to cry for help, and the Lord will appear to hush the storm and give peace. Hence I conclude that it is not grace, or the Spirit of life, in the believer, that will keep him from being overcome by his corruptions, and the temptations he meets with, but special grace is manifested in calling his faith into exercise; or otherwise encouraging and strengthening him to maintain the conflict, or in some way providing for his escape. Hence the evidences of being a child of grace, though it is ground for hope that the Lord will keep him, is no just ground for the individual to conclude he can keep himself from falling; nor on the other hand, is his being tempted a just reason for him to conclude that he is not a child of grace. Watchfulness and prayer, and enduring hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, are important duties of believers—they are essential to his enjoying the consolations of the gospel, and to his glorifying God in his body and spirit. But still the believer’s strength and security for living thus to God is not in himself, but alone in God, and his having a spirit of prayer is as God is pleased to impart it.

I think I am sustained in my views above expressed, both by the experience of the believer and the language of scripture; thus, for instance, (Rom. viii. 20.) For the creature (the new creature) was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope; and John xv. 5, “For without me ye can do nothing.”

In the second place, if the facts are so as we have endeavored to show from experience, and this sustained by scripture, then the conclusion must be, that the present low state of the churches, and the severe conflicts which many of the children of God are experiencing at this day, with the world, the flesh, and the devil, are of God’s appointment and permission. Whether this be as a chastisement for their ingratitude in being kept from being swept away by the anti-christian flood, and for too great a disposition to yield to the influence of the world, or whether it be for the purifying of the churches, by separating from them all who are not kept by the power of God, and for disciplining the saints to a sense of their own weakness, and of their dependence on God to keep and sustain them, preparatory to the great struggle with the men of sin, which may be shortly approaching, or both, I am not prepared to say.

In conclusion, I would say that I would like to see some of our brethren on this subject, and particularly on the struggle between the flesh and spirit, and of the believer’s being kept not by any power in the new man, but by the power of God through faith, &c. Brother Burton knows something of fighting without old fears within, so does brother Buck, and others, if they would write.


In my former draught, I referred also to brother West, but his pen is laid silently by, being happily for him exchanged for a harp in glory, having passed victoriously through the great tribulation, having washed his robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Though we may miss the wholesome productions of his pen through the columns of the Signs, and many a scattered sheep grieve the loss of his ministerial labors, yet for him we have no ground to mourn. But may such be the case with some of us who are yet in Bochim? Yours, &c.,


S. TROTT.Centreville,
Fairfax Co., Va.,