Against this, Sandeman put the doctrine that God had not only revealed his truth in terms intelligible to man and provided the means of salvation through Christ, but had also furnished in Scripture adequate evidence of the truth of his revelation, so that the natural man, just as he is, with all his sins, can weigh the evidence and accept the truth. That acceptance is faith. Saving faith, said Sandeman, is an act of man's reason, and it differs from any other act of belief only in being belief of a saving fact.
This view of faith came to have immense importance in the history of the Disciples. They developed from it, as Sandeman did not, the method of a very successful evangelism. There were other influences besides that of Sandeman which led Alexander Campbell to this view, especially the philosophy of John Locke and, above all, his own study of the New Testament. But it is known that he had read Sandeman's writings carefully in his youth and regarded them highly, and the similarity of his view to Sandeman's on this point cannot be regarded as purely coincidental. A Baptist writer later tried to prove that the Disciples were "an offshoot of Sandemanianism." (Whitsitt: _The Origin of the Disciples of Christ_, 1888.) "Offshoot" is the wrong word; a mighty river is not an offshoot from a tiny trickle. But there was undoubtedly an influence: first, in the emphasis upon restoring the procedure of the primitive church; second, in the conception of faith as intelligent belief based on evidence.
Two wealthy brothers, Robert and James Alexander Haldane, laymen of the Church of Scotland, became alarmed at the state of religion in their country. It seemed to them that the church had become merely a respectable institution enjoying the patronage of the state, supporting a clergy chiefly concerned about their own professional dignity and privileges, and doing little to carry a vital gospel to those who needed it most. At their own expense, while still members of the Church of Scotland, they attempted to start a mission to India (which was frustrated by the East India Company), brought twenty-four native children from Africa to be educated in England and sent back to evangelize their own people (but the Anglican Church took them over), built tabernacles for evangelistic meetings, sent agents through Scotland to organize Sunday schools, and established institutes for the training of lay preachers. Beginning with no very definite theology or theory about the church, they gradually came to the belief that the chief trouble with the church was its departure from the primitive pattern as described in the New Testament.