Carson, Alex., LL.D., of Tubbermore, County Londonderry, Ireland, was born not far from Cookstown, County Tyrone, Ireland, in 1776

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10/8/23 13h  · Daily Baptist Encyclopedia Post by Jim Curran

Carson, Alex., LL.D., of Tubbermore, County Londonderry, Ireland, was born not far from Cookstown, County Tyrone, Ireland, in 1776. The family is of Scotch origin, and probably came to the north of Ireland in the time of James I., when the people who have built Belfast and Derry, and who now make linen for the world, first accepted an Irish for their Scottish home. The region around his birthplace has been desolated many times since the Scotch settlement of Ulster by Ivish rebellions and massacres, and by popish treachery and cruelty. Opposition to Rome burns more fiercely over that locality than perhaps in any other section of Eu- rope. Alexander Carson in early life was called into sacred relations with the Redeemer, and from that hour he became a decided Christian. At the Uni- versity of Glasgow he was proverbial for his dili- gence, and for the thoroughness -with which he pursued his studies. And though in his class there were young men of brilliant talents, who attained distinguished positions in subsequent life in Scot- land, Mr. Carson graduated with the first honor. He was settled when a very young man as min- ister of the Presbyterian church of Tubbermore. The place had a population of perhaps 500, and it was surrounded by a large population of Scotch- Irish farmers. Very early in his ministry Mr. Carson was led to see that the Congregational was the Scripture form of church government, and that believers’ immersion was the baptism of the New Testament. When this change of conviction oc- curred Mr, Carson was placed in a situation of great embarrassment. He was receiving £100 per annum from the British government, under the name of Regium Donum, in common with all other Presbyterian ministers of that day. His church gave him probably about £40 a year. This Regiwn Donum had demoralized the benevolent efforts of the Ulster Presbyterians so completely that if Mr. Carson’s entire congregation had become Baptists he could not expect even a moderate support from their unaided liberality. And he well knew that his people were stern men, with all the steady at- tachment to principle which marked their Scottish fathers in times of fierce persecution. There was no Baptist missionary society for Ireland at that period, and the young minister had absolutely nothing to trust for his support except the naked providence of God ; but he was wholly Christ’s, and he came out from a community dear to him by the tenderest associations and cast his burden on the Lord. His favorite hymn at this time was: “ And must I part with all I have, My dearest Lord, for thee? It is but right, since thou hast done Much more than that for me. “Yes, let it go, one look from thee Will more than make amends For all the losses I sustain Of wealth, of credit, friends.” He placed himself upon our Baptist foundation, and gathered a community around him who re- ceived the Saviour’s teachings as he proclaimed them, and he lived to see a church waiting upon his ministrations, of 500 members, with a congre- gation very much larger, the descendants of the grand old Presbyterians who in Scotland and Ire- land often faced death rather than desert their principles, many of whom walked from seven to ten miles to meet with the church at Tubbermore. In a few years his fame spread throughout Eng- land and Scotland. Robert and James Haldune, of Edinburgh, so well known for their great gifts to Christ’s cause, their distinguished position in so- ciety, and their burning zeal as Baptist ministers, were his admiring and lasting friends. He was frequently invited to visit England to preach at mission anniversaries, or to aid in other great de- nominational undertakings ; and in process of time he was recognized as the leading man in the Baptist denomination. Mr. Carson read extensively. He made the Greek language a special study, and it is not too much to say that he was among the first Greek scholars that have lived for centuries. It is well known that if he would sign the “Standards” of the Church of Scotland he could have had the pro- fessorship of Greek in the University of Glasgow, a position requiring fine scholarship and promising a large income, the indirect offer of which to the pastor of a little company of Baptists in an obscure Scotch-Irish village was a strong testimonial to Mr. Carson’s profound knowledge of the Greek tongue. Mr. Carson was one of the clearest reasoners of his day. He had an intellect so piercing that it could see through any sophistry in a moment. He was a logician with whom it was not wise to come in collision, unless one wished to know the confu- sion and mortification of being mercilessly beaten. He was a philosopher of no ordinary grade, as his works clearly exhibit, and we are not surprised that his former Presbyterian friends, years after his connection with them, described him as “the Jonathan Edwards of the nineteenth century.” He preached the word of God in expository lec- tures, pouring out its rich treasures and the wealth of his own sacred learning upon the throngs that united with him in the worship of God. Few ever heard him take a little text and suspend some weighty subject upon it by a slender connecting link. He practiced weekly communion, and his church follows the same custom still. He was in the habit of beginning the service by saying, ‘‘ According to the apostolic example, let us salute one another with an holy kiss.’’ He then kissed one of the dea- cons, and the injunction was observed around. This command of Paul in reference to a local cus- tom is not now observed in Tubbermore. After the sermon was over on the Lord’s day the brethren arose and enforced it, or some other Christian theme, by appropriate exhortations. Nor did they feel backward to stand up, nor abashed to express their views in the presence of one of the greatest thinkers of the age, whose fatherly kindness was as familiar to them all as a household word. Space will not permit us to give a list of Dr. Carson’s works, for they were very numerous. His octavo volume on baptism is a masterpiece of learn- ing and logic; it overthrows quibbles about the Abrahamic covenant, giving authority to baptize children, as old as Augustine of Hippo, and as wide-spread as Pedobaptist Christendom, and alle- gations that baptism might mean sprinkling or pouring, with as much ease as a horse, unaccus- tomed to a rider, hurls to the ground the little boy who has ventured to mount him. A number of men in the Baptist ministry to-day, and very many in the membership of our churches, were drawn, or perhaps driven, to the Baptist fold by “Carson on Baptism.” It was first published in London. It has been republished by the Baptist Publication Society in Philadelphia. His works should be in every Christian’s library: His style to some seems a little dogmatical. He saw things clearly himself; he was wholly for truth and entirely against error, and his distinct perception and whole-heartedness made him impa- tient with the dull, and with those who tried to make the worse appear the better side, with full knowledge of its weakness. Anyhow, truth coming forth like a defiant giant is more attractive. than when it appears making simpering apologies for venturing to show its face, and to disturb the equa- nimity of error and wrong, though sturdy truth, carrying a sharp and needful sword in a sheath of love, pleases us most. Dr. Carson received the degree of LL.D. from Bacon College, Ky., an honor which no living man better deserved than he. In returning from England in 1844, where he had been delivering addresses in various places for the Baptist Missionary Society, he fell into the dock at Liverpool, where the water was twenty-five feet deep; he was immediately rescued, and he sailed for Belfast. During the night he became alarmingly ill, and died the next day after landing, Aug. 24, 1844. He was nearly fifty years in the ministry. His death caused universal grief, and it left a vacancy in the ranks of scholarly Baptists which few men of any community on earth have the learned qualifications to fill. Since James Usher, archbishop of Armagh, was laid in his grave, no native of Ireland of Anglo-Irish or Scotch- Trish origin fully equaled Alexander Carson in learning and logic, and the aboriginal natives of Ireland are out of the question since the days of John Scotus Erigena, the friend of Charles the Bald.