That brings us, then, to Barton W. Stone. He was born on December 24^th, 1772, in a place called Port Tobacco, Maryland. (Hummm, I wonder what they did there? Probably grew cotton, do you suppose? No, probably not.) He, of course, would eventually become a very prominent figure in the restoration of New Testament Christianity. Looking at the time frame there, 1772, he was born before the Revolution. Thus, the Church of England, as we have pointed out, was the “mother” church, was the established church, the accepted church, in many of the colonies here in America. And so, Barton W. Stone would be christened, would be sprinkled, as an infant, in the Church of England.

Growing up during the Revolutionary War, he was anti-war. That was caused because of his experience. After his father’s death, his mother moved from Port Tobacco, Maryland, to near the border of North Carolina, which was the site of several major battles. And so, he heard the gun fire; he saw the results of battles, and of war, and, thus, throughout the remainder of his life he was affected by that.

But, actually, in his early life, he became somewhat un-infatuated, uninterested, in religious things. What brought that about, primarily, was because, as a youth, he had opportunity to listen to, to hear, a number of discussions—not really debates—but discussions and disagreements over religion. And, of course, he would have grown up during the time of the Revolutionary War. And, you remember what happened just a very short time after we won our independence from England—the Church of England was eliminated, and the Anglican Church took its place here in America. When the clergy of the Church of England left America, there was sort of a vacuum there, and Stone saw people sort of wandering around, not knowing what to do, and Sunday, the Lord’s Day, became sort of a common day. And then, he saw the influence of other denominational groups, as they would come in, and there would be bickering and fighting, and he just didn’t really want any part of that. And so, he was not really involved in those discussions and disagreements, but he heard many of them, and they left him rather cold, actually, toward religion.

But, his father died when he was just a young man, and with his portion of the inheritance, he decided that he would go to school, that he would pursue his education. He went to a Presbyterian school called “David Caldwell’s School” in North Carolina, although he was not aware that it was Presbyterian when he went. Now, don’t ask me how he didn’t know before he went that a great deal of religion was part of the curriculum. I’ve not uncovered that information yet. He had in his mind that he would rather be a statesman. He was influenced for his interest in life, even in vocation, that he would be a statesman, by such individuals as Patrick Henry, who was not really a neighbor of Barton W. Stone, but he knew of him, and he lived nearby.

David Caldwell’s School was the place where he had the opportunity to hear a well-known, fairly renowned Presbyterian minister named James McGready. Now, there’s an interesting story behind that: After hearing James McGready and being impressed with him, young Barton’s interest in spiritual things, the Bible, etc. was rekindled. What had gone cold was able to be rekindled. BUT, here is the interesting part of it. After being at David Caldwell’s School in North Carolina for a period of time, he realized that it was centered on, based on, religious instruction. He was not too happy about that. He, really, wasn’t too interested in the course of study, and so, he made up his mind that he was going to leave that school and go to another school where he felt as though he could better pursue his desire to be a “statesman.” He had his bags packed; he had already made that decision; had apparently already made the announcement, etc. that this was what he was going to do. But, the day he was going to leave, there came a huge downpour. He didn’t want to travel in such conditions. And so, he decided he would stay over another day. Well, it was at the insistence of one of his classmates that he went that very night and heard this very powerful Presbyterian preacher named James McGready. That really changed his life. He decided, after all, to stay there at David Caldwell’s School, and he would eventually become a Presbyterian minister. Now, providence of God? I don’t know, but had he left that day and gone to another school where the curriculum was centered on secular things, we may have lost one of the real leaders in the Restoration Movement. Well, I thought that was an interesting sidelight there.

In our last lesson, we had left Barton at Cane Ridge at the Cane Ridge Meeting in Cane Ridge, Kentucky, where he would get himself in trouble with the leaders of the Presbyterian Church. We want to talk a little bit more about that and the establishing of what was called the Springfield Presbytery, and so on.

Barton would have problems with the Presbyterian doctrine. There were a couple of influential periods in his life, both during his schooling, as well as during the time following the end of his schooling and his waiting to be “ordained”—there was an ordination process that was part of the Presbyterian denomination—that he would struggle with the things that he had learned, things that were presented as Presbyterian doctrine and their creedal system, and the Bible. He spent a lot of time reading and studying the Bible. One of the things that gave him the most difficulty was the Presbyterian doctrine, based upon Calvinism, of “total depravity.” That, of course, basically is a doctrine that says that man is born in sin; man has a sinful nature; and there’s virtually nothing that man can do to overcome that; and it’s only through the grace of God, the call of God, that one can overcome that. And his problem was fairly obvious, and one would have to wonder why more people don’t come to the same conclusion, or have the problem that he did, and that is: Why preach a Gospel of repentance when the doctrine says a person can’t help themselves? And so, Stone struggles with that, as well as a number of other things.

It would be at the Cane Ridge Meeting near Paris, Kentucky, in August of 1801, when he would actually preach a sermon and taught that the Gospel was universal, and that faith in it would save. Well, that got him crossways with [in trouble with] the Washington Presbytery, and he would, along with several colleagues—by the way, there were a number of his associates and colleagues who would join with him—leave the Washington Presbytery and they would begin their own. It was called the Springfield Presbytery.

Now, interestingly enough, Stone did not have, if you will, “restoration” on his mind. He had reform on his mind, to reform the Presbyterian Church—not unlike Luther and others whom we have studied along the way, trying to reform and not trying to restore. And so, they formed the Springfield Presbytery to work within the Presbyterian “system,” so to speak, to make some changes.