Authors: William Maxwell
My father’s family—and particularly my Aunt Maybel and her husband and my grandmother—were not like everybody else and I cannot explain what they were like without going into the history of the religious movement that not only shaped them but that possessed them heart and soul. I assumed that five or six pages would dispose of the subject. Because I was familiar with the inside of the Christian Church in Lincoln, I thought I understood the form of worship practiced there. It turned out that I had almost everything wrong. Surprised to find that it was not something that sprang from the mind of some narrow-minded Scottish Calvinist, that it was not even Scottish and certainly not Calvinist, I went on, and then on, and on, drawn by the excitement and pleasure of what I found. If the telescope is focused properly, ideas are caught in it as
well as people. And people do not have sawdust in their heads but, more often than not, passionate convictions, the strangest and most passionate being what they believe the Lord of the Universe expects of them.
At the end of his life Stone wrote a seventy-nine-page autobiography
*
for his children and his friends. The engraved portrait in the front of this book shows a thin-faced man with very fine eyes and very small old-fashioned spectacles, pushed into the curls above a noble forehead. The lips are chiseled and the mouth is slightly askew in relation to the formidable nose. Looked at under a magnifying glass, the face is alive and ready to begin a conversation. Stone’s little book is meant to be a work of pure edification, and for the mid-19th century reader no doubt it was. The 20th century reader is more likely to be struck by the wonderful eye for absurdity, the extreme sensibility, the candor, a literary tone not at all characteristic of religious writing of the period, and the gift for placing people in a scene. For example: “My horse being put away, I went into the house and sat down in silence. The old lady and daughter were busily spinning, and the old gentleman in conversation with another aged man. One of them observed to the other that a discovery had been lately made, that if the logs of the house be cut in the full moon of February, a bed-bug would never molest that house.”
And this: “My colleague, J. Anderson, having preached through the settlements of West Tennessee, determined to visit Kentucky. We had our last apointment in Thomas Craighead’s congregation, in which neighborhood we had often preached. As we expected a large and intelligent
audience, we endeavored to prepare discourses suitable to the occasion. My companion, Anderson, first rose to preach from these words: ‘Without holiness no man shall see the Lord.’ I shall never forget his exordium, which, in fact, was also his peroration. Holiness, said he, is a moral quality—he paused, having forgotten all his studied discourse. Confused, he turned with staring eyes to address the other side of his audience, and repeated with emphasis—Holiness is a moral quality—and after a few incoherent words, he paused again, and sat down. Astonished at the failure of my brother, I arose and preached. He declared to me afterwards, that every idea had forsaken him; that he viewed it as from God, to humble his pride; as he had expected to make a brilliant display of his talent to that assembly. I never remembered a sermon better, and to me it has been very profitable; for from the hint given, I was led to more correct views of the doctrines of original sin, and of regeneration.”
The old bookseller who exclaimed, “Mr. Stone’s books ought all to be put in a pile, and burned, and he in the middle of them,” had never laid eyes on him. He gave off—his temperament gave off—a kind of fragrance. Because of it, everybody around him felt at ease. He saw no reason not to be affectionate with strangers, and he never hesitated to say what was on his mind or heart. “Brother Crihfield,” he exclaimed, “is this
you?
From your writings I had expected to see a little, ugly, black-headed, dark-skinned ill-natured fellow; but if it is you, behold I am mistaken! For I see a genteel looking man.” After sitting through a sermon that was full of ginger and salt, he shook hands with the minister and then said, “Brother Brown, you speak too harshly of people’s errors. Dear brother, when you find a stone across the path of truth, just carefully roll it away, but don’t try to spat the man that laid it there.” When his wife apologized for the skimpy fare at her table, Stone looked around at the
unexpected guests and with his face shining with hospitality said, “What of all these good things shall I help you to?” He was like a house with all the doors and windows thrown wide open; anything and anybody could penetrate to the center of his being. And his words as they came from his mouth had a kind of natural beauty.
Stone was born in 1772, in the Tidewater district of Maryland. He was a lineal descendant of William Stone, the first Protestant governor of Maryland, during whose term of office the Maryland Toleration Act of 1649 was enacted, granting protection to all Christians who believed in the Trinity. When Barton Stone was still a child, his father died and his mother moved her large family of children and servants to the backwoods of Virginia, about eighty miles below the Blue Mountain. The Revolutionary War was sometimes remote and sometimes not. On the day Nathaniel Greene met Cornwallis at Guilford Courthouse, when the whole countryside was in a great anxiety and bustle, Stone’s mother sent him with his two older brothers to conceal the horses in a brush thicket, lest they be taken by scouting parties. Hiding in the woods, the boys heard the roar of the artillery thirty miles away and “awfully feared the results.”
After the war was over, the soldiers brought back with them to this quiet backwater many vices almost unknown there before—“as profane swearing, debauchery, drunkenness, gambling, quarreling and fighting. For having been soldiers, and having fought for liberty, they were respected and caressed by all.… Their influence in demoralizing society was very great.” Many of the parsons had gone back to England when their salaries were discontinued, and the churches stood empty, until Baptist preachers turned up and began to preach. They preached in a tuneful or singing voice, and huge crowds came to hear them, and to see people immersed, for the practice was novel in those parts.
“I was a constant attendant,” Stone says, “and was particularly interested to hear the converts giving in their experience. Of their conviction and great distress for sin, they were very particular in giving an account, and how and when they obtained deliverance from their burdons. Some were delivered by a dream, a vision, or some uncommon appearance of light—some by a voice spoken to them, ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’—and others by seeing the Saviour with their natural eyes.”
Stone prayed in secret, morning and evening, hoping for a voice or a vision. But then Methodist preachers came, their conduct grave, holy, meek, plain, and humble, and their preaching quite as electrifying as the Baptists’. The Baptists said that the Methodists were the locusts of the Apocalypse. Unable to decide between them and feeling sorry for the Methodists, who were few in number and persecuted, Stone quit praying and went back to playing hopscotch or the colonial equivalent.
The village schoolmaster pronounced him a finished scholar, after four or five years of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and he left home, at eighteen, to attend an academy in Guilford. It was his intention to become a barrister. In order to get on more rapidly with the study of Latin grammar, he lived chiefly on milk and vegetables, and never allowed himself more than six or seven hours’ sleep, and so lowered his resistance to the religiosity that was working its way through the school. Thirty of the students had recently been converted by the popular Presbyterian revivalist, James McGready, and each morning before classes they assembled in a private room and engaged in singing and praying. In their general behavior they evinced a piety and happiness that made Stone uneasy, for he believed that religion would impede his progress in learning and be frowned on by his family and companions. He therefore associated with the students who made light of
divine things and joined in with them in their jokes at the expense of the pious. For this his conscience upbraided him when he was alone, with the result that he could not enjoy the company of the devout or the ungodly. He decided to pack his things and move on to a new school, and was prevented from doing this by the weather. Remaining in his room all day, he came to the conclusion that he should pursue the study of Latin grammar and let others go their own way. But then his roommate persuaded him to walk out into the country to hear McGready, who had returned to the neighborhood. His appearance was not prepossessing, his gestures were the reverse of elegance, he had small piercing eyes and a coarse tremulous voice. But he so powerfully propounded the doctrine that mankind, being totally depraved, could not believe, or repent, or obey the gospel except through the immediate intervention of the Holy Spirit that for a solid year Stone was “tossed on the waves of uncertainty—laboring, praying, and striving to obtain saving faith—sometimes desponding, and almost despairing, of ever getting it.”
He went to a meeting on Sandy River and the president of Hampden-Sidney College described a broken and contrite heart. Stone felt that it was so like his own that he could allow himself a gleam of hope, and for the first time took communion. But that evening McGready spoke. He took as his text “
Tekel,
thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting,” and went through all the legal works of the sinner, all the hiding places of the hypocrite, all the resting places of the deceived. Before he finished, Stone had descended into an indescribable apathy. McGready paid him a visit and labored to arouse him from his torpor by a further description of the terrors of God and the horrors of Hell. Stone told him that it was useless, that he was entirely callous, and McGready left him in this despairing state without one encouraging word.
Stone’s mother got wind of what was going on and sent for him, was distressed at his altered appearance, and wept when he told her all he had been through. Shortly afterward, being awakened to a sense of her own dangerous condition, she left the Church of England and united with the Methodists.
Stone went back to the academy, and at another meeting—for he could not keep away from them—heard a strange young preacher, William Hodge, speak with much animation and with many tears of the love of God to sinners and what that love had done for them. “The discourse being ended, I immediately retired to the woods alone with my Bible. Here I read and prayed, with various feelings, between hope and fear. But the truth I had just heard, ‘God is love,’ prevailed. Jesus came to seek and save the lost—‘Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out.’ I yielded and sunk at his feet a willing subject. I loved him—I adored him—I praised him aloud in the silent night,—in the echoing grove around. I confessed to the Lord my sin and folly in disbelieving his word so long—and in following so long the devices of men. I now saw that a poor sinner was as much authorized to believe in Jesus at first, as at last—that
now
was the accepted time, and the day of salvation.”
It was a turning point in his spiritual life, but it did not solve his other problems. His expenses for board, clothes, tuition, and books were greater than he had anticipated, he had used up his small patrimony, and it was with great difficulty that he finished his course of study. Also, he had lost all interest in the study of law. He revealed to the headmaster of the school his great desire to preach the gospel, and that he had no assurance of being divinely called and sent. When this did not prove an insurmountable obstacle, he began to study theology, and soon ran afoul of the doctrine of the Trinity. “Witsius would first prove that there was
but one God, and then that there were three persons in this one God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—that the Father was unbegotten—the Son eternally begotten, and the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son—that it was idolatry to worship more Gods than one, and yet equal worship must be given to the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost. He wound up all in uncomprehensible mystery. My mind became confused, so much confused that I knew not how to pray. Till now, secret prayer and meditation had been my delightful employ. It was a heaven on earth to approach my God and Saviour; but now this heavenly exercise was checked, and gloominess and fear filled my mind.” Fortunately he heard of a treatise by Dr. Watts on the same subject, read it, and found his mind at rest. For the time being. The subject was to plague him all his life.
With other candidates, Stone was examined before the Presbytery. The examiner was very short and indefinite on the subject of the Trinity, and didn’t go into the peculiarities of the system—“Doubtless,” Stone says, “to prevent debate on the subject in Presbytery, and to maintain peace among its members.”
Before the next session, at which time Stone would be licensed to preach, he was again in a depressed state. He had totally run out of money, and none of his relatives was willing to help him. His mind was “embarrassed by many abstruse doctrines, which I admitted as true; yet could not satisfactorily reconcile with others which were plainly taught in the Bible.” He decided to give up the idea of preaching, and collected his last resources of money—amounting to fifteen dollars—and started alone for the state of Georgia, where he had a brother. Halfway in his journey he was seized with a violent fever. Being scarce of money and among strangers, he decided to keep on. The fever rose so high that he became delirious and was found by a philanthropist—that is to say, a kind man—sitting on his horse,
which was feeding by the side of the road. The philanthropist took him home and put him to bed, and the next morning Stone resumed his journey, and arrived at his brother’s house in Oglethorpe County, where he was sick for several months.
Through the influence of his brother he got a job as professor of languages in a Methodist school. “Men of letters were few at that time, especially in that part of the world, and were regarded with more than common respect. The marked attention paid me by the most respectable part of the community was nearly my ruin”—meaning that he went to parties and so enjoyed himself that he found suddenly that his religious devotion was cold and his communion with God much interrupted. So he took up, instead, with a Mr. Springer, a very zealous Presbyterian preacher, whose discourses made Stone begin to feel a strong desire again to preach the gospel. A great many Frenchmen who had fled from the Reign of Terror landed in Georgia and one of them was teaching in the school. Stone resumed his study of French. It was characteristic of him that while the passionate side of his nature was attempting to deal with his religious uncertainty, another side proceeded quietly along, learning because he liked to. Later on, when a similar opportunity presented itself, he picked up a reading knowledge of Hebrew.