The Seceders constitute one of the “straitest sects” of the Calvinistic faith, and even to this day they will not affiliate in full fraternal fellowship with other Presbyterians. It was in the matter of the communion that the severe test of fellowship was applied. Thomas Campbell had come to this country with his heart filled with a burning zeal to labor in the Lord’s vineyard, and in largest charity for all communions, while still maintaining sincerely and fully his relations to his particular communion. He believed that in this freest land men’s hearts would necessarily be emancipated from the unyielding sectarian prejudices and animosities of the Old World. While eminently prudent and peace-loving, he was a man of heroic temper. He would not temporize nor bow to the tyrannous dictates of human traditions or human policy. “This grave spirit he had already shown in his early youth, when he decided from conviction not to follow the religion of his father, who was attached to the Church of England, and preferred, as he used to say, ‘to worship God according to act of Parliament.’ ‘The law of the Lord, in the word and spirit of the Gospel, which is ‘the law of liberty,’ was Thomas Campbell’s supreme rule of life.” It is interesting to unfold the events which led to the final crisis that inaugurated actually and in a formal manner the restoration movement. The Seceders were not very numerous within the limits of the Chartiers Presbytery; the power of expansion was not in them. Mr. Campbell at once gained a wide and strong influence. His natural ability, his scholarship and literary culture, made him much superior to the preachers in that region; and his deep religious fervor and zeal and his rare courtesy of manner won the hearts of the people. He did not respect in his labors the narrow spirit and strict, illiberal rules and habits of the Seceder Church. Besides this, he had found near him a number of excellent people who had come over from Ireland, Presbyterians and Independents, some of whom had been his acquaintance and cherished friends in his native land. These gathered around him, and he promptly took them to his heart in his ministrations as brethren. This kind of freedom, however, was not in harmony with “the usages” of the Seceders. Later on he took a step which went even further than this, and thus in a very decided way transgressed the established custom of the Church.