DR. THOMAS’ CRITIQUE ON MR. CAMPBELL’S NOTICE OF THE BANNER.

(Concluded.)

 From the Gospel Banner Extra.

1.      I will submit a few items in relation to the charges against the Banner, as I am implicated in them, and my statement, therefore, seems necessary for the perfection of your own vindication.

I cannot see how you can be charged with sailing under a false flag, seeing that you believe in the gospel preached by Messrs. Campbell and Wallis, and which I regard as not the gospel, but as “another gospel;” and that believing thus, and before I set foot in Britain from America, while you were in full and unquestionable fellowship with “the Reformation,” you hoisted the flag under which you sail. You have no flag of mine to unfurl, and can have none until you believe the gospel of the kingdom, and obey it; the flag you may unfurl then, however, will not be mine, but the Banner of the Gospel indeed.

The charge against you of being the English Judas, as I am alleged to be the American Judas of “this reformation,” is absurd. If you were to republish all that Mr. Campbell has ever penned it would never betray him and his into my hands. He has never demonstrated the Gospel of “the Kingdom of God, and the Name of Jesus Christ” in any of his writings, as I have defined it; or I suppose (though of this I am not certain) he would not now denounce it. I say, “I suppose;” for Mr. C. advocated in his debate with Owen, and elsewhere, the personal return of Christ to the earth, in or about 1847, to reign here, though now he denounces it as a worldly Jewish conceit! This is not the only thing Mr. C. ridicules now that he has advocated before. The somersets he has made are so notorious in America, that some have proposed to collate from his writings what he advocated a few years ago, and what he pleads for now, and to publish it with the title, “Campbell against himself.” It is an honor to a man to change as often as he is convinced; but it is dishonest and hypocritical to change, and yet to pretend that he is still advocating what he always believed. If this be so, as Mr. C. would have us believe, then in former years he was pleading for what he had no faith in at the time, which is indefensible and iniquitous. My views of the word have changed, and I rejoice in the confession. While I believed with Mr. Walter Scott I earnestly contended for the views he had presented, and with them, views of the word I had acquired afterwards by my own scripture reading. I pleaded for those views as truths that might or might not be believed without affecting a man’s position in relation to eternal life; truths that I had not the remotest conception of when immersed by him. In 1847, however, I came to perceive that these truths might not be treated so indifferently, inasmuch as they constituted the Hope of the Gospel, without which any thing called the gospel is not the gospel, or God’s power to salvation. Perceiving this, I was self-condemned; for when immersed the views instilled into my mind were defective of the “one hope of the calling.” Without delay I acknowledged my errors, and was forthwith baptised into the hope of Israel, on account of which Paul was carried a prisoner to Rome in chains. Compare Mr. C’s. conduct with mine, and then say if it be possible to betray him and his into my hands until they be converted—yet not into my hands, but into the power of the truth that has captivated me.

From what I have here stated your readers will discover how impossible it is for a coalition to have been formed between you and me. It is impossible for us to coalesce unless we believe the same things. You do not plant your foot and say, “Here I stand, and from this position I will never be moved;” but you say to me, in effect, “our views of the truth are not the same: I edit a paper to advocate Mr. Campbell’s views, which I regard as the truth; nevertheless, I am willing that my readers should hear what others may have to say, be they Independents, Irvingites, &c., or even yourself.” Here then I, and those who believe with me, meet you. So long as you act upon this principle of impartiality they purchase the Banner; but when you depart from it, and plead only for Mr. C’s views in the Banner, seeing that they know all about them, their interest in the Banner ceases, and they discontinue its support. This is all the coalition that subsists between John Thomas and the Banner, —a coalition which exists as much between you and “churchmen,” as between me and you.

2.      I come now to say a word or two concerning the allegations against myself. Mr. Campbell says I am “erratic.” I admit that I am; but justify my wanderings by the example of the fathers, of Jesus, and the Apostles. They were all an erratic set of men, many of them “having no certain dwelling place.” Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were exceedingly erratic. The Lord Jesus wandered all over his native land, having no place of his own to lay his head, although the whole land belonged to him by virtue of the covenant made with his father Abraham. The Apostles were like their master only that their erraticism was more extensive than his. Their advocacy of the truth made them poor, as it has all who have advocated it to this day. The advocates of error get rich, because they please men; and Paul says, “If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.” Mr. Campbell has become rich by his religious enterprises; Jesus was born rich, being heir to the throne of Israel, and of the world; but “he became poor, that men through his poverty might become rich,”—let Mr. C. go and do likewise, and he will become as “erratic” as he and his Apostles, and their humble imitator whom he loves so well.

A materialist is one who does not believe in “spirit,” in a future state, or a resurrection of the dead. I believe in all these, though not in Mr. C’s sense of them. I need only refer to Elpis Israel and the pamphlet recently published in proof of this. No one who is acquainted with my writings, or understands what he has heard me speak, will give Mr. C. credit for speaking the truth under this head.

As to my “no-soul memory,” this is a reputation Mr. C. has sought to affix to my name. Because I do not believe in the existence of such a soul in man as he, and the old heathens believed in, he jumps to the conclusion that I believe in no soul at all. On the contrary, I believe in “body, soul, and spirit,” as the constituents of a living man; but I say none of these exist as the person when their union is dissolved by death. For man to be immortal, in any sense, he must rise from the dead. In the present life he is a mortal soul; when he stands bodily upon his feet by resurrection, clothed with glory and honor, he is an immortal soul, and not before. For further explanation see Elpis Israel, and pamphlet.

The item, “e,” under No.2, is charged against you and me by Mr. C. He says, “they have no right to garble my writings, and to deceive their readers by seemingly to fraternise in order to delude.” I am charged in this under the supposition of a coalition existing between us. But this is as truthless as all the rest.

It is all news to me about the flock. There is no flock in Virginia of which I am the constituted shepherd. I belong to a small church in Richmond, Virginia, but it is neither dispersed nor withering that I have heard of. I hold no office in it, but contribute with others to edify it. In leaving them for a time I have not therefore deserted my flock; nor the flock of God, for he has sheep in Britain as well as America, I believe. On the supposition that the flock is mine, hereby I cannot be said to have deserted it by an absence of two years and three months, seeing that Jesus the Lord has been bodily absent from his for more than seventeen centuries past. They know enough of me to be assured that I will return, and they know this too, that while I have been labouring here, without fee or present reward, I am secondarily promoting the truth in America. They have written to me and said, “don’t return till your work is finished.” This has made my mind easy about home, though my enemies have been very active with their evil tongues; but my answer to their malevolence will be found in my, by them, unwished for re-appearance among them. Their prediction that I shall never return, that I have deserted my flock, &c., will then be falsified, and themselves, one and all, proved to be “Cretans.”

Mr. C’s extra on Life and Death is too visionary for a serious refutation. A friend of mine, however, thinks that because others who regard Mr. C. as an oracle have a high opinion of it, it is worthy of a refutation; he has therefore written me word that he intends to review it. As to myself, I am tired of refuting the stale arguments it contains, about the rich man and Lazarus, the thief on the cross, Jesus and the Sadducee, &c., which by pen and mouth I have expounded times without number. The key to them all is “the Word of the Kingdom.” This Mr. C. neither understands nor believes, how then can he interpret parables which were given to illustrate the things of the kingdom of God? So long as he regards the throne of David as at the right hand of God, where Jesus is now, he must remain in the dark. A man to talk about writing an unanswerable extra on Life and to treat the prophets as “an old almanac,” and to be ignorant of the doctrine concerning the Land of Promise, and the throne and kingdom of David, as I have proved Mr. C. to be in my last article, and as he displays in his own confessions to the conviction of all who know the prophets, is ludicrous in the extreme! However, for the benefit of his readers, I am ready at any moment to interpret all the knotty points presentable in the case, provided he will allow me to untie them in the Millennial Harbinger. In this way those who have read “the Extra” will be the very persons who will read my reply; but they would not and could not read it were I to publish it in a pamphlet by itself. I have no list of the subscribers to the Millennial Harbinger, and therefore could not send the answer to his readers; but according to the plan proposed justice could be done to both, and the ends of truth would be subserved. I know of no proposition fairer than this.

Mr. Campbell thinks “Elpis Israel” a somewhat whimsical title for a book and a theory. I am sorry that even here I am obliged to differ from him. The book recently published by me undertakes to show God’s “theory” as revealed in his word. The testimony every one can read for himself, but what the system, or scheme of things to be developed as taught by that testimony is, every one or rather few are able to discover by their own efforts, owing to the bias their minds have received from the false theories into which they have been indoctrinated from their cradles. The divine “theory” exhibited in the oracles of God, is demonstrated in my book to have constituted the faith and hope of the Twelve Tribes—a hope implanted in the Jewish heart and mind by the Spirit of God himself. This Hope of Israel was the hope of Jesus and his Apostles. Israel was to realise it through a renowned Jew, who was to be at once Son of Abraham, Son of David, and Son of God; and because he was to be “Jehovah’s Anointed,” He was called the Christ or Messiah. This was a “political” question, or “Elpis,” with the nation; for the Jew who could prove that he was the true Messiah, proved also that he had a right to be “the King of the Jews”—“the King of Israel’’—Sovereign of the united Twelve Tribes of the nation; and consequently, to sit upon the throne of David for ever according to the covenant made with him, and on record in 2 Samuel 7: 12-16; 1 Chronicles 17: 11-15; Psalm 89: 3-4; 19-29; 34-37; 132: 1-18; Acts 2: 29-31; Hebrews 1: 5. The appearance of Jesus originated a controversy, not as to the National Hope, but as to whether he was the Jew through whom that hope was to be realised. The party in power rejected the claims of Jesus to the Messiahship; but the Apostles advocated it, and God attested it by the miracles which accompanied their word, and the personal ministry of their Lord. The appearance of Jesus did not alter the nature of the hope; but only the conditions of attaining to it. Before he came it was attainable “by faith” in it; but afterwards “through the faith,” or belief of it with a recognition of Jesus as the Messiah. Hence, the proclamation of the Apostles on and after Pentecost was the Hope of Israel in the name of Jesus; so that many years after Pentecost, when Paul was a prisoner in Rome, he said, “For the hope of Israel I am bound with this chain.” Now, with all deference to Mr. C., I submit that a book unfolding such matters as these is not whimsically, but most appropriately, entitled Israel’s Hope, or “Elpis Israel.”

Instead of proving the Apostles all wrong, I have proved them to be wholly and only right; and all divines, college systems, and denominations wrong. I advocate “the hope and the resurrection of the dead;” and have not substituted “the hope of a terrestrial paradise” for any thing they teach. Elpis Israel is a triumphant refutation of such unfounded and malicious calumnies with which it is a sort of fashion to bespatter me on both sides of the Atlantic.

3.      Mr. Campbell disgraces himself; for “he that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.” Mr. C. declares he has never read Elpis Israel; and yet he has the unblushing effrontery to affirm what I do not teach. Shame, shame upon the man, who sitting in judgment upon others, has no more good conscience than this! What moral right has Mr. C. to pretend to state an author’s views while he avers that he has not read his book? Is not this “the exceedingly oblique morality of an exceedingly oblique theory?” Has such a man who commits such things, to say nothing of his “faith,” any right to style himself a “christian,” as opposed even to “worldly Jews?” I trow not.

But if Mr. C. have not read Elpis Israel, it is not because it has not been sent to him. I sent six copies to the United States which have all arrived there safely. Among these was one for Mr. Campbell; and I venture to affirm from the wording of the article before me, that it was within reach while he was writing it, if he were at Bethany at the time. “True,” says he, “I have never read the new book, or the newly-discovered ‘Elpis Israel,’ but am informed that it is that maintained by some Jews of the present day, as a substitute for the resurrection of the just.” Will he say he has not received it, and might have read it if he pleased? Who informed him falsely that it maintained such a substitute? Did Mr. James Wallis, who bought the book only “for reference,” and in the first quotation he made from it, stopped short before the passage was concluded? There are only six copies in America, and I know that the five others did not inform him any such thing, for they very much approved the work, which they could not do if it contained any such substitution. Was it not some evil genius at Mr. C’s right hand who pretended to have read it, and imposed upon Mr. C’s credulity by the misrepresentation quoted? This probably is the case.

By his own words, then, Mr. C. is condemned as in a state of foolishness and shame; and such is the man who avers of himself and his co-believers—“we christians,” “ours is the veritable hope.” A christian is one who believes “the things of the Kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ;” whose disposition is that of a little child, one of an honest and good heart; and who upon this faith, hope and love, has been immersed into the name of the Holy Ones. If this definition be scriptural, how can Mr. C. and such as he, claim to be christians when instead of believing the “things of the kingdom” as testified in the prophets and Apostles they ridicule them: instead of love, they persecute those they call their enemies, (and they say I am their greatest) and try to destroy their characters: and instead of baptism into the hope of Israel they treat it with contempt. Mr. Wallis’ agent in New York, a friend of mine, stood up in the church there after one of my visits, to call their attention to the Hope of Israel. The “elders” said nothing at the time, but when he rose the next Lord’s day he was forbidden to speak unless he apologised for what he had said the week before, and promised in future to say no more about the Hope of Israel! Yet such men profess to be christians, believers of the Ancient Gospel, and friends of the liberty of speech, and an untrammelled investigation of the word of God! These are the “elders” who denounced me in the British Millennial Harbinger about two years ago.

Lastly, in words, Mr. C. and myself would after all seem to agree. He says, he and his co-religionists hope for the resurrection of the just, and the New Heavens, &c. So do I. I hope for the resurrection of the just, and of the unjust. Of the just, because they can have no part in the New Heavens until they rise from the dead incorruptible; of the unjust, that they who have killed the prophets, put to death the Lord Jesus, slain the Apostles and persecuted the saints, may receive according to their cruel and evil deeds. But “the just” hope to attain to the resurrection, not as the end of their hope, but as the means to the end: for many will rise from the dead who will never possess eternal life and the Kingdom. They hope to rise that they may become “equal to the angels,” and inherit the kingdom. This is the hope which is the end of their faith, even the salvation of their souls in the Kingdom of God.

The New Heavens and the New Earth is a divine constitution of society upon the earth, in which “Jerusalem shall be created a rejoicing and her people a joy.” Mr. C’s New Heavens have no place within the bounds even of the solar system! Somewhere then, probably, in the Milky Way! But of such New Heavens there is no testimony within the lids of the Bible. I advocate a theocracy on earth in which the kingdoms of the world will become the kingdoms of Jehovah and of his Anointed; when, the thrones being cast down, “the saints of the Most High will take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom,” even “the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven,” “for ever, even for ever and ever,” “reigning with Christ a thousand years upon the earth.” See Daniel 7: 9, 18, 27; Revelation 11: 15; 5: 10; 20: 4. These are the New Heavens and New Earth I advocate; an imperial constitution of things under a law from heaven, which, testified by the prophets, compels the faith of all whose minds are not spoiled through “the philosophy of vain deceit” taught by presidents and professors, divines and academicians, in their pulpits, colleges, and schools. Mr. Campbell, who belongs to this perverse, stiff-necked, and infidel fraternity, unhesitatingly declares that he does not believe it! Daniel, the prince of prophets, is to him a mere “worldly Jew;” and John the beloved Apostle, but a somewhat “plausible sophist!” They both testify that a theocracy shall be established within the limits of the solar system, yes, and upon our planet too. What has been may be again. A theocracy has existed among the nations of the earth for many centuries; and though suppressed for the present, Jehovah and his Anointed have both declared that it shall be re-established in the Land of Israel, under a covenant based upon “better promises” than the old. Glad tidings, or gospel, have been proclaimed in the name of Jesus, its sovereign Lord and King, to the nations concerning it; informing them of God’s purpose, and inviting them, both Jews and Gentiles, to its glory and honor upon condition of believing what he has testified concerning it; that is, believing the gracious and, “the exceeding great and precious promises” he has made, —acknowledging Jesus, his anointed Son, and heir of the world, as its chief in his several relations of prophet, sacrifice, priest, and king; of being immersed into the Holy Name; and of a subsequent patient continuance in well doing. Thus “he that believes the Gospel, and is baptised, shall be saved.” These are “the wholesome words of the Lord Jesus Christ” himself. This Gospel is concerning the Kingdom of God and the Name of Jesus. Mr. Campbell proclaims his infidelity in this Kingdom, not as it is expounded by me, for not having read Elpis Israel, he knows not how I expound it, but as testified by the prophets, as every one who runs may see. To redeem if possible his reputation for literary and moral honesty, I pray him to read the book he has denounced unread. Let him read it dispassionately; and comparing my exposition with the testimonies referred to, let him correct his own iniquitous misrepresentations, and refute it if he can.