July 26, 2020 Acts 20:17-21 “Stone’s Own” Cane Ridge Meeting House David A. Shirey It was 177 years ago this summer (August 21, 1843 to be exact) that Barton Warren Stone (1772-1844) stood in this pulpit and preached what would be his last sermon here. Seven years earlier, in 1836, he had moved to Jacksonville, Illinois, where in 1841 he suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed and greatly affected his speech. But with great determination, he learned to walk with a cane and speak so that people could understand him. In 1843, he made a final tour of his beloved KY and gave in to his many friends’ request to preach one last time at Cane Ridge. As you might imagine, his last sermon here at Cane Ridge was quite an emotional occasion. This old church was packed. People stood outside the windows to be a part of the farewell to the man they affectionately called “Elder Stone.” A man by the name of John Rogers was there and in his biography of Barton Stone he wrote: While memory lives, I can never forget that day. The circumstances of that parting scene are indelibly engraved on the tablets of my heart. With staff in hand, the venerable man limps into the pulpit, which he had so often filled for near 47 years! … The silence of death pervades the audience; and all are leaning forward with intense interest to hear the last instructions, admonitions and exhortations of their father in the gospel1 So it was 177 years ago when Barton Stone delivered his final sermon here. It’s amazing that day ever came to pass. In his autobiography, Stone tells of how he set off for school near Greensboro, NC at the age of 18 set on being a lawyer. Many of his friends were attending religious services, a practice Stone wanted nothing to do with to the point he decided to transfer to another school to “get away from the constant sight of religion,”2 but bad weather prevented his leaving. Shortly thereafter, he attended a worship service where he heard a preacher named James McGready preach a ‘hellfire and damnation’ message that scared the wits out of Stone. For a full year, he wrote, “I was tossed on the waves of uncertainty... sometimes desponding, almost despairing.”3 But in 1791 he mustered the courage to go back to church and heard a William Hodge preach “God is love” and he was converted. In May of 1793, he became a candidate for the ministry in the Presbyterian Church and in 1796 he was called to be the pastor here at Cane Ridge. +Mark that as Barton Warren Stone’s heirs, “Stone’s Own” if you will, we’re the spiritual descendants of a man who was repulsed by fearmongering religion, but won over and transformed for life by the proclamation of God’s love for all. What did he do during his years of ministry that began at Cane Ridge, continued in Lexington and Georgetown, and ultimately led him to Jacksonville, IL? Above all else, he sought to bring about the unity of Christians long divided. He said “he hoped to die pleading the cause of union.”4 He was raised Episcopalian, ordained by 1 “The Biography of Barton Warren Stone,” College Press Publishing Co., 1986, p. 84. 2 ibid., 7. 3 ibid., p. 9. 4 Biography, p. 89 the Presbyterians, taught at a Methodist school, became best friends with many a Baptist. The thing that delighted him most about the Cane Ridge Revival was that Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian preachers were laboring side-by-side, laying their differences for the sake of proclaiming the Gospel. Some 3,000-5,000 people made confessions of faith during the week of the Cane Ridge Revival-- that during an era when maybe 10% of the population had a connection with a church and more like 5% out here on the western frontier. Barton Stone could never understand why one group of folks who claimed Christ as Lord and Savior couldn’t bring themselves to have communion with another group who claimed Christ as well. Just because one group of folks saw something one way and another saw it another way, he couldn't see why both couldn’t find their way to the Lord’s Table together. His mantra was “Let the unity of Christians be our polar star.”5 The high point of Barton Stone’s life came on New Year’s Day, 1832, in Lexington on the front steps of the Hill St. Christian Church (Central’s predecessor). That day, Stone’s Christian Church united with representatives from Alexander Campbell’s Disciples of Christ marking one of the rare times in the 2,000 year history of the Church that two different Christian denominations had united. Until then, the history of the church had been one of division, splintering again and again over acrimonious arguments about beliefs, doctrines, interpretation of Scripture and practices. Of that occasion in Lexington, Stone wrote, “This union … I view as the noblest act of my life.”6 Until the day he died, Barton Stone never desisted from the work of reconciliation and reunion. After Stone moved from Cane Ridge to Jacksonville at the end of his life, he found when he got there that the Christian Church and Disciples of Christ churches had not yet united. He refused to join either one of them until they did. He wrote: In the fall of 1834, I moved my family to Jacksonville, IL. Here I found two churches: a Christian and a (Disciples) Church. They worshipped in separate places. I refused to unite with either one until they united together, and labored to effect it. It was effected.7 +Mark that as Stone’s own we’re the spiritual descendants of a man who gave his life to the hard work of reconciliation. Speaking of which, he was ahead of his time in matters of racial reconciliation and justice. He wrote in his autobiography, “My soul sickened at the sight of slavery”8 From the time of its construction in 1791, slaves attended worship in this Meeting House, though they sat in a “slave’s gallery” in the balcony that was only accessed through a window by way of a ladder propped against the outside of the building. In 1801, large numbers of blacks were among the thousands of worshippers at the Revival and that same year Barton Stone freed two slaves he had inherited from his mother’s estate. Cane Ridge curator James H. Trader II, in an address on Cane Ridge Day 2010 told how Stone’s attitude toward slavery evolved over time from first advocating for freeing slaves only after they were educated and trained in marketable skills, to becoming an active supporter of the American Colonization Society which promoted sending freed slaves to what is today Liberia. But by 1833 he had become disillusioned with that effort and supported the immediate abolition of slavery. When his children were 5 The Christian Messenger, 2 September, 1832, p. 266 6 Biography, p. 79. 7 Biography, p. 79 8 ibid, p. 27. willed slaves from his mother-in-law’s estate in TN, he moved from Kentucky to Illinois in 1834 so as to live in a free state and give those slaves their freedom. +Mark that as Stone’s own, we’re the spiritual descendants of a man who strove for racial justice and equality. Barton Stone was a good man. Albert Pennybacker summed up Disciples of Christ’s two founders, Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell, by saying, “Alexander Campbell wanted you to think right. Barton Warren Stone wanted you to live right.” When you read what others wrote about him, you can’t help but to come away with the impression that Barton Stone lived right-- was a good human being. In the obituary that appeared after his death it was written, “It is seldom we are called upon to record the death of one so much beloved, so highly gifted, or so eminently pious.”9 Another man wrote, “His entire life was little else than a practical commentary on the pure faith and morality of the gospel he professed…. He is now in Heaven…and if brother Stone is not prepared for the plaudit, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant,’ I question whether there lives a being on earth who is.”10 Even his harshest critics were moved by the way he lived his life. As one of them wrote, “His life was sound, even though his doctrine was not.”11 +Mark that as Stone’s own, we’re the spiritual descendants of a genuinely good man. It’s no wonder that on that August day in 1843 when he preached his final sermon in this Church, the place was packed. What did he speak of? He urged his followers to continue the quest for Christian unity. He urged them to be humble and benevolent always. He urged them to be righteous in all they said and did. And then, according to his biographer, he read these words from Paul’s final address to the elders in Ephesus: “And now, behold, I know that all you among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God will see my face no more.” (Acts 20:25). His biographer then writes: The closing scene which followed, cannot be described. Never while reason holds its empire can this biographer forget that hour. Memory lingers about it with a mournful pleasure. A parting hymn is sung….