CHURCH HISTORY 
 
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 138 
 
 
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 1883 
 
 
 
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 ^^ PRINCETON, N. J. \^ 
 
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 BR 138 .D52 1883 
 De Witt, John, 1842-1923. 
 Church history as a science 
 as a theological 
 
 ■ 
 
CHURCH HISTORY 
 
 AS A SCIENCE, 
 
 AS A THEOLOGICAL DISCIPLINE, 
 
 AND 
 
 AS A MODE OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 AN INAUGURAL DISCOURSE 
 
 DELIVERED liV THE 
 
 REV. JOHN DE WITT, D. D. 
 
 Occasion of His Induciiont into the Chair qf Hisiory in 
 Lane Theological Seminary. 
 
 Cincinnati, Ohio, May 8th, ISSS. 
 
 CINCINNATI: 
 
 Elm Street Printing Company, Nos. 176 and 178 Elm Street. 
 18S3. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/churchhistoryassOOdewi 
 
INAUGURAL DISCOURSE. 
 
 Gentlemen of the Board of Trustees of Lane Theological 
 Seminary: 
 
 The first duty, which the occasion calls me to discharge, is 
 the duty of expressing gratefully my sense of the high honor 
 which you have conferred upon me, in inviting me to the 
 Chair of History in this school of sacred learning. I need 
 not say tiiat my sense of this honor is made livelier by the 
 reflection, that I succeed one so highly and so justly esteemed 
 as was the late Dr. Zephaniah Moore Humphrey.* My life 
 
 '■'Zephaniah Moore Humphrey, the youngest son of President Heman Hum- 
 phrey, of Amherst College, was born August 29, 1824. He was graduated 
 at Amherst College in 1843, ^"f^ ^^ Andover Theological Seminary in 1849. 
 He was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Racine, Wis., 1850- 
 1856; of Plymouth Congregational Church, Milwaukee, 1856-1859 ; of 
 the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, 1859-68; of Calvary Presbyterian 
 Church of Philadelphia, 1868-1875. The degree of Doctor of Divinity was 
 conferred on him in 1865 by Amherst College, Mass., and Knox College, 111. 
 He was Moderator of the General Assembly of 1871. He was Professor of 
 Church History, Lane Theological Seminary, from 1875 until his death, 
 which took place November 13, 1881. The Rev. Dr. R. W. Patterson, in 
 the memorial sermon before the Alumni of Lane Seminary, referring to Dr. 
 Humphrey as a teacher, says: "With facility of illustration and the power 
 of grouping facts in their philosophical relations, he never failed to carry his 
 students with him, in the historical fields which it was needful he should 
 traverse, in drawing comprehensive pictures of God's dispensations toward 
 his people in the earlier and later ages. It will continue a blessing to our 
 churches through long years that so many of our young ministers fell under 
 the influence and guidance of Dr. Humphrey during the six years of his 
 industrious discharge of his duties as Professor of Church History in Lane 
 Seminary." In another connection in the same discourse, Dr. Patterson 
 
4 INAUGURAL DISCOURSE INTRODUCTION. 
 
 as a Pastor in Philadelphia began not long after Dr. Hum- 
 phrey had accepted your invitation to become Professor of 
 Church History. His exceptional ability, his large and varied 
 culture, and the charming grace of character and life with 
 which, in that city, he adorned the office of Christian Pastor, 
 enabled him to exert a large and beneficent influence, both 
 as a citizen and as a Churchman. The universal regret, with 
 which his decision to leave that important field of labor was 
 received, prepared those even who did not know him well, for 
 the far deeper sorrow of many hearts in many States, when 
 your message was received, that God had called him from his 
 earthly labor to his heavenly reward. To the depth of this 
 sorrow you have already testified. To the fact that it was 
 wide-spread no testimony is needed. The event is too recent 
 
 says: " From the first mention of his name in connection with the professor- 
 ship of ecclesiastical History, the suggestion was widely approved in the 
 Church; for his peculiar fitness for the position was immediately recognized 
 by his brethren in all directions. His general learning, his studious habits, 
 his fondness for historical pursuits, his known capacity of grasping facts in 
 their philosophical connections, and, above all, his insight into the working 
 of moral and spiritu«.l influences in the development of Christian doctrine 
 and church life, singled him out as the right man to lead our candid.ites for 
 the ministry in this school of the prophets through the annals of the Hebrew 
 and Christian ages, and imbue them with the spirit of thorough researcli in 
 his chosen department. It is the great value of ecclesiastical history to our 
 ministry to give them a knowledge of God's providence toward his people, to 
 balance and broaden their views of religious opinion, and to enable them to 
 di'stinguish between the transient and the permanent in the doctrines and 
 spiritual forces of the Church. Dr. Humphrey was the very teacher to in- 
 culcate and impress these lessons upon the minds of our theological students. 
 From the beginning onward he traced the streams of influence that have 
 made the Church what she is, and filled the minds of his classes with the true 
 historic spririt far enough to prepare them to pursue the paths of useful in- 
 quiry, into which he had guided them, through aJl the studies of their later 
 lives." 
 
INAUGURAL DISCOURSE — INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 for US to have forgotten it. "We might know," wrote the 
 honored Pastor who succeeds Dr. Humphrey in the pulpit of 
 Calvary Church, "We might know that a Prince has fallen 
 by the universal expression of regret and affectionate regard. 
 The tree indicates its magnitude and weight when the echoes 
 of its fall fill the forest."* The act of God which removes 
 such a man just at the time when his usefulness is the largest, 
 and " when," to quote your own words, "the promise seems 
 o-iven of a long period of successful labor on his part," is 
 deeply afflicting and mysterious. But we are justified in 
 believing — and the belief is our highest consolation — that the 
 powers with which God endowed His servant, and which, by 
 His providence and grace, He nurtured and disciplined for 
 service so effective and distinguished, ai'e not lost to the 
 eternal kingdom of God. "Because thou hast been faithful 
 over a few tilings, I will make thee ruler over many things. 
 Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." May God grant to 
 me his successor, — ^may God grant to us all, — the devotion 
 always manifested by Dr. Humphrey to Him who is the 
 central figure, and whose glory is the final cause of all 
 History ! 
 
 You have invited me to teach Church History ; to teach 
 it as a branch of theological study ; to teach it to those who 
 are to become preachers of the Gospel. In these three 
 elements of the call I have acceptecf, I find a not inappropri- 
 ate theme for an inaugural address. I shall speak of Church 
 FTistoiy — as a science, as a theological discipline, and as a mode 
 of the Gospel. 
 
 *The Rev. Charles A. Dickey, D. D. 
 
6 CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. 
 
 (l.) CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. 
 
 In endeavoring briefly to present the idea of Church His- 
 tory, permit me to recall to your attention some obvious 
 distinctions. As all of us know, there is a general sense and 
 there is a special sense in which this great word. History, is 
 employed in our language.* Sometimes it is used to designate 
 a narrative of events, to whatever class or classes the events 
 may belong. But in a special sense, it designates a narrative 
 of those events alone, of which man is one, at least, of the 
 causes. 
 
 There is good ground for this distinction. For events in 
 whose production man has no active share are, in their nature, 
 wide apart from those to which he sustains the relation of a 
 cause. Below man lie the regions of necessity. The second 
 causes of events which occur in inorganic matter, and even in 
 the brute creation, are absolutely involuntary. The story of 
 the changes even in unorganized matter is, indeed, a profoundly 
 impressive narrative. To the History of the heavenly bodies 
 belongs a majesty, derived from the majesty of the movements 
 of these suns and systems themselves. Although too vast 
 
 *I say "in our language." Primarily, in English, the word History designates 
 p narrative. Only secondarily does it designate the events narrated. Dr. 
 Schaff, in his History of the Apostolic < 'hurch, calls attention to the fact that 
 in German the primary reference is to the events, and only the secondary 
 reference to the narrative; the word Geschichte being derived from geschclien, 
 to happen (p. 2). The difference in the primary meaning of the two words 
 prepares one for the broad difference between the English and the German 
 Church Histories. The English Church Historians have regarded History 
 as primarily a belles lettres product, the product of the art of narrative. The 
 German Church Historians have regarded History as primarily the science 
 of events. Dean Milman's volumes on Christianity and Latin Christianity, 
 and Neander's Church History, well represent the two points of view, and 
 well illustrate the merits and defects of both. 
 
CHURCH HTSTORY AS A SCIF.NCE. 7 
 
 for the senses to apprehend it, yet because the visible uni- 
 verse is reduced to order and unity by means of pervasive 
 law, Emanuel Kant found in the starry heavens the highest 
 example of the material sublime. 
 
 But to him who reads it aright, more impressive than the 
 History of the heavens above us is the History of the vege- 
 table world, in whose awaking from the sleep of winter the 
 hills and valleys now rejoice on every side. For this History 
 is the narrative of the energetic movement of life. We are 
 brought into the presence of a power — not, indeed, so per- 
 vasive as the laws that constitute the inorganic universe a 
 harmonious whole,— but a power immeasurably higher in kind. 
 For life not only employs, but, within the limits of its body, 
 dominates and overrides the laws of matter. If thus effects 
 between itself and the matter which it organizes, a relation 
 far higher than that between matter and laws of matter. 
 Its simplest product thus becomes a nobler product than sun 
 or system. For the laws of matter are but the properties of 
 matter; but life is an active principle. It is enthroned 
 within the matter which it organizes. It gives to matter not 
 only form, but individual character. Working from within 
 outwardly, it constitutes out of heterogeneous elements a 
 ujiity— a unity whose identity is in no mere sameness of form 
 or material, but in the abiding life itself; a unity of which 
 the parts labor each for the other. Moreover, to the product 
 of life belongs a quasi immortality. For it lives in its descend- 
 ants in generation and generation. Thus the History of the 
 humblest and most evanescent flower is the History of a 
 higher movement than the movement of the ancient stars. 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. 
 
 But there is a higher movement than the movement of life. 
 Passing over from the vegetable to the brute creation, we 
 find ourselves in a world of organisms, the activities of which 
 are controlled by new powers. I do not stop to dwell on 
 the more complex organization of the individuals of the brute 
 creation and their positive power of locomotion. These, 
 after all, are not the traits which indicate the impassable 
 gulf between the brute and the vegetable worlds. That gulf 
 is indicated by the presence of consciousness, of instinctive 
 impulses, of understanding* to which the instinctive impulses 
 give the regulating law, and of a faculty by which the judg- 
 ments of the understanding are executed. The story of 
 animal life derives from the presence of these new powers a 
 dignity which can never belong to the story of the vegetable 
 world. 
 
 The movements in each of these worlds become the sub- 
 jects of History. The idea which in each case should organize 
 the History is obvious. In the History of inorganic matter, 
 the organizing idea is /aw ; in the History of the vegetable 
 world it is kye ; in the History of the brute creation it is 
 conscious life, obedient to instinctive impulse and the judgments 
 
 ®Of course the term understanding is here employed in the sense in which 
 it is used when distinguished, on the one hand, from the Reason, the regu- 
 lative faculty in man, and, 'on the other, from Instinct, the regulative faculty 
 in the brute; that is to say, it is used to designate the faculty " which judges 
 according to sense." Such a faculty, as is obvious enough, the brute 
 possesses in common with man. Whether understanding is ideally the best 
 word by which to designate the faculty may be a question. As discursive 
 simply, it is not its own uUin)ate law. This law, it derives in the brute from 
 Instinct, and in man from the faculty of universal and necessary truths, or 
 the Reason. And here is to be found the profound difference between the 
 intellectual life of man and the intelligence of the brute. 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. 9 
 
 of the understanding. For these designate the causes of the 
 historical events in the several kingdoms. 
 
 But, while the Histories of these kingdoms must differ 
 widely among themselves, they have one feature that binds 
 them in a single class. All have impressed upon them the 
 trait of an absolute )iecessity. In every case, interesting 
 and impressive as the History may be, it is the narrative of 
 involuntary action. And, therefore, while we bow before 
 the mysteries of pervasive law or of dominating life, or the 
 higher mystery still of conscious life, we feel that the loftiest 
 dignity and the consummate charm with which History may 
 be invested are wanting. Our own consciousness of freedom 
 in action reveals to us that there must be another History — 
 the History of man — not only immeasurably higher in dignity, 
 but distinct in kind, because the idea that organizes it can 
 not be brought under the category of necessity. Thus it is, 
 that our consciousness of freedofn leads us, and leads us 
 wisely, to employ the term History in a specific sense, — which 
 after all is its proper sense, — as the narrative of that free, that 
 self-determined activity, which can be affirmed of man alone 
 among the creatures on the planet. 
 
 Indeed, so all-compelling is this consciousness of freedom 
 in its demand that voluntary activity shall be the organizing 
 idea of History, that the intellect refuses to contemplate even 
 the Histories of the kingdoms below man as narratives of 
 necessary action alone. It is a true psychology that speaks 
 in the line of poetry : 
 
 "The undevout astronomer is mad. " 
 
lO CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. 
 
 The mind of the race in all ages has failed to find repose in 
 the study of the mere material laws of the stellar world ; and 
 in this failure it has simply been true to its constitution. 
 That constitution forbids the mind, in its search after an 
 ultimate cause, to stop at force or law. It compels the mind 
 to regard all causes as themselves effects until it finds a cause, 
 that is Will and adequate Intelligence. Such a cause the 
 mind, when true to its constitution, always does find. " For 
 the invisible things of God from the creation of the world are 
 clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, 
 even His eternal power and God-head." Thus it is that the 
 heavens have ever been telling to man the glory, the presence 
 and the activity of the living and voluntary Deity. 
 
 We need recall only the most recent philosophical discus- 
 sions, in order to learn that man instinctively looks for freedom 
 in the ultimate cause of even necessary events. What is it that 
 has given an interest so intense and painful to the long debate 
 on Evolution? The cause of the highest intereijt felt in that 
 debate is not in the question, whether this or that species is 
 separated from every other by a boundary so deep and wide 
 that it can not be passed ; but in the deeper question — which, 
 as all of us know, the debate has raised — whether, as we 
 study the world of nature, we must banish from our minds, 
 as without foundation, the world's belief in final cause ; in 
 Intelligence and Will, as the fountain and origin of the teem- 
 ing forms of life about us. 
 
 Man, then, is compelled by the constitution of his mind to 
 regard the History even of necessary action as ultimately the 
 narrative of voluntary causation. But this also is true. He 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. II 
 
 recognizes the voluntary cause as zvithont and distinct from the 
 activity which the History narrates. The Will of God, if I 
 may so say, goes out from Himself in providence, to produce 
 through law and life the changes which, as beheld by us, are 
 involuntary. The student of Natural History does not reach 
 the attributes of freedom and morality until — ceasing to move 
 backward by the long chain of causes which, because neces- 
 sary, are also effects — his mind leaps upward out of the kingdom 
 of nature, and rests in the thought of the living, free and holy 
 Creator and Governor, who, by His providence, is present 
 and powerful at every point of the History. 
 
 Now, it is the distinctive glory of man, that the mind is 
 not compelled, in contemplating his History, to move be- 
 yond man himself in the search after voluntary causation. 
 As I shall hope, at a later point, to make clear, I am by no 
 means endeavoring to banish the thought of God from human 
 History. Rut, at this point, and for the purpose of making 
 more clear hereafter the precise relation of God to human 
 History, it is important to insist, that it is the distinction of 
 the History of man, that it is the narrative of activities whose 
 causes, ivithiu the race, are " unforced and self-moved Will."* 
 In studying this History, we find ourselves not merely in a 
 world of conscious life, of impulses and of understanding, 
 but in the world of spirit and moral relations. Every leaf of 
 this History, however humble the acts it records, belongs to 
 the awful and sublime drama of good and evil, of right and 
 wrong. Let it be but the History of a single soul; there still 
 
 *Will is here used to designate not the mere faculty of volitions, but the 
 whole voluntary nature. 
 
12 CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. 
 
 attaches to it the dignity of the active Hfe of the image of the 
 hving, free and holy God, in the world in which he is not 
 only a cause, but, aside from God, the chief of causes; in 
 which he "has been given dominion;" in which the forms 
 of inorganic matter and the forms both of unconscious and of 
 conscious life are the theater and the instruments of his free 
 activity, as well as the subjects of his rule. The term 
 History is employed in its special and proper sense, only 
 when it is employed to designate the narrative of this free 
 activity of man. It is in this sense that we employ it when 
 we say, that " History became possible only when man began 
 to act." As a science, therefore, the distinctive idea which 
 its narrative must unfold and display is not law or life, or 
 even conscious life, but man as a rational and voluntary and, 
 therefore, a moral cause. 
 
 Since this is the high theme of History, it is obvious that 
 its narrative must move from cause to effect, and not simply 
 from century to century. Primarily it must be determined 
 by the idea of cause, and subordinately only by the idea of 
 time. Its formula is proptei' hoc rather than post hoc. It 
 must be not only a sequacious, but a consequential narrative. 
 A History, therefore, is a far higher and profoundcr literary 
 product than a Chronicle. There is, indeed, a peculiar 
 fascination that belongs to vivid and picturesque Chronicles, 
 like those of Herodotus or Froissart, which we shall look for 
 in vain in Histories like that of Thucydides, who, before he 
 proceeds to the narrative, compels his reader to study a labored 
 dissertation on the historical causes of the Peloponnesian war. 
 On the pages of Herodotus or of the parish priest of Les- 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. I3 
 
 tines, actions follow one upon another just as — to use what, 
 in this connection, is a most expressive phrase — they Jiap- 
 pened, but not just as they were caused. Their places are 
 determined, as the name Chronicle imports, chiefly by time. 
 They recall the current of one's thoughts in the pleasing, but 
 passive, state called reverie ; in which we stand, as it were, apart 
 from our minds, and let the stream of suggestion move on 
 as it may chance to move. In this state of reverie, one 
 image will rise before the mind; and, having vividly pre- 
 sented itself, will disappear and be succeeded by another, 
 and this by a third ; and so varied will the procession be, that 
 often we shall be unable to say by what law of association it 
 was, that the second image succeeded the first, or the third 
 succeeded the second. Such is the order, or rather the 
 historical disorder, of the movement of the Chronicles. For 
 it seldom happens in the life of the world that effects follow 
 their causes with the immediateness and obviousness, with 
 which the conclusion follows the premises of a syllogism in 
 Barbara. The sun rises when the -cock has crowed. So, 
 for the most part, events occur. The statement is true, and 
 may befit the Chronicle. But the rising sun and the crowing 
 cock are not effect and cause; and the statement, though 
 true, is not historic. Reverie is a fascinating employ- 
 ment; and the Chronicles of the Middle Age have all the 
 fascination of reverie. But the student must cast off the spell 
 of delicious and indolent reverie; and, holding himself severely 
 to a course of thought determined by the laws of thought, 
 must seek developed causes in effects and the germs of effects 
 in causes; knowing that to such a worshipper alone, will Truth 
 
14 CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. 
 
 vouchsafe the vision of her awful and majestic form. So, 
 also, the Historian must determine to be more than a Chron- 
 icler. His is a harder and nobler labor, and his is a higher 
 reward. Not time, but cause — and, above all, man, the 
 voluntary cause — must organize his profound and loft}' 
 narrative. 
 
 But the phrase, a narrative of human activity organized b)' 
 the idea of cause, defines Biography as exactly as it defines 
 History. It becomes us, therefore, to ask in what respects, 
 if any, do Biography and History diiTer? Our answer to 
 this question will depend entirely upon the reality, which we 
 deny or assign to that which is expressed in the term huinaiiity, 
 when set over against the term personality. If the former 
 term is a general name only — a name given to the likenesses 
 between individuals after these likenesses have been ascer- 
 tained by abstraction and generalization ; — if we regard the 
 likenesses as ultimate facts requiring no explanation ; if we 
 hold with the Nominalist that the great term humanity is 
 only a flatus vocis\ we must, of course, deny that there is 
 any profound and natural distinction between Biography and 
 History. But, if the term humanity, or human nature, 
 designates a real existence, and if this existence is to be 
 affirmed of each man; if the common nature so binds 
 together the individuals of the species as to constitute — what 
 is more than an aggregation of likenesses — a real and organic 
 unity; if, to quote the words of another,-'' "side b}' side in 
 one and the same subject, in every particular human person, 
 exist the common humanity with its universal instincts and 
 
 Dr. Shedd ; in his discourse on the Historic Spirit. Theol. Essays, p. 55. 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. 1 5 
 
 tendencies, and the individuality with its particular interests 
 and feelings;" the difference between the idea of Biography 
 and the idea of History is a profound and physiological 
 difference. In this profound difference I am compelled to 
 believe, just as I am compelled to believe the anthropology 
 of Augustine, and to dissent from the anthropology of 
 Pelagius. It is true that there is no sharp division between 
 them in actual literature. Every Biography niust be historical, 
 as every History must be biographical ; for the humanity 
 exists in the individual, and each individual shares the com- 
 mon human life. But, though the two must be united in 
 the literary product, the difference between the two ideas 
 exists. Biography separates a man from his fellow men, 
 sets forth his distinctive traits, and the special circumstances 
 of his life. History associates man with his fellows, and 
 contemplates the society or the race as one. Biography 
 preserves the record of the brief lives of men. History 
 narrates the abiding and developing career of man. In a 
 word. Biography, even when universal, deals with the race as 
 existing in distinct and separate units. History, however 
 special, though dealing with a single man, contemplates him 
 as organically related to all men, as sharing the life and 
 spirit of Humanity. 
 
 In our search for the idea of human History up to this point, 
 we have found, by the contrast of man with Nature, that its 
 organizing idea must be voluntary cause. By the contrast 
 of Chronicle with History, we have found that we do injustice 
 to this organizing idea, when we determine the narrative sim- 
 ply by time ; for the order of events in time is by no means 
 
l6 CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. 
 
 necessarily or always the order of cause and effect. And by 
 the contrast of Biography and History, we have found that 
 History, though it may properly narrate events that are due to 
 the individual and separating spirit, must hold them subor- 
 dinate to those larger and deeper, those ecumenical move- 
 ments, which are the products of the human, as distinct from 
 the merely personal, in man. At this point, therefore, we 
 are entitled to describe History as a narrative of the move- 
 ments of the human race, so con.structed as to exhibit the 
 relations of these movements as causes and effects. 
 
 But we have not yet presented the idea of History in its 
 completeness. For the historian may not leave out of view 
 the obvious truth, that the human will, "self-moved and un- 
 forced " though it be, is conditioned as a cause by its material 
 envirojinient. It was an inspired Apostle who wrote the 
 sentence, "We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being 
 burdened. " Who, that has thought of it at all, does not realize 
 how many and striking are the limitations which this body, 
 the very instrument of its activity, puts upon the efficiency of 
 the human spirit in space and time? At a point only a few 
 thousand feet above the surface of the earth, or at a point only 
 a few thousand feet below its surface, the limitation becomes 
 absolute; death ensues and historical activity ceases. ,The 
 mind and will wait, through how many years of infancy and 
 childhood, until the body is clothed upon with strength; and 
 through how many other years, during the process of the 
 body's decline? I gladly repeat, holding them to embody 
 a sublime truth, the noble lines of Lovelace : 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. 1 7 
 
 " Stone walls do not a prison make, 
 
 Nor iron bars a cage ; 
 Minds innocent and quiet take 
 
 That for a hermitage. 
 If I have freedom in my love, 
 
 And in my soul am free, 
 Angels alone, that soar above, 
 
 Enjoy such liberty. " 
 
 But, though expressing the subhme truth that the spirit may 
 be free while the body is imprisoned, they still confess the 
 iron bars and the prison walls. I have spoken of the king- 
 doms of necessary activity that lie below man. It is not only 
 true that they lie below man; but man is of them, as having 
 a body. In these realms are the conditions of historical 
 activity. These conditions, by force of law and life and 
 instinctive impulse, react upon the will as it moves forth to 
 efficient action in time and space. They meet man, the 
 voluntary cause, sometimes as instruments ready to his hand; 
 sometimes as enemies confronting him with hostile purpose; 
 often as obstacles too formidable to surmount or too vast to 
 destroy. They meet, they aid, they baffle, they woo, they 
 resist the human will in a thousand forms — as climate and 
 soil, as mountain and plain, as river and ocean, as sunshine 
 and storm, as gold and silver, as coal and iron, as steam and 
 electricity, as the fertile prairie, and the desert waste, as the 
 beast of burden and the beast of prey, as instinct and pas- 
 sion, as hunger and thirst. And so formidable to some 
 writers have these conditions appeared, that they have declared 
 it to be their belief, and have written great volumes to defend 
 it, that in thesQ conditWHS — and not, after all, in man — is to be 
 
l8 CHURCH HISTOKY AS A SCIENCE. 
 
 found the central theme of History. " For these," they say, 
 "are the only potent historical causes. Man is their victim 
 and man's activity their effect. " Of course, we shall deny 
 their conclusion, if we are true to our spiritual nature, the 
 image of God in which man was created. But while denying 
 their conclusion, we must still confess the power of these 
 uncounted conditions in which the human will engages in 
 activity beyond itself It is these that give to History its 
 variety and dramatic action; and — what is far more important 
 — it is these that invest the great problem of the Philosophy 
 of History with the difficulties that make it well-nigh impos- 
 sible of solution. 
 
 For what is the problem of the Philosophy of History, but 
 to find the unity underlying this variety ; to discover and 
 formulate the single law, which binds together this uncounted 
 multitude of cause and condition? Though the problem be 
 difficult, it stands before us imperatively demanding solution. 
 For if this unifying law can not be found and stated, if this 
 vast multitude of historical events absolutely refuses to be 
 reduced to a system, upon what possible ground shall History 
 make good its claim to a place among the sciences? 
 
 It may appear presumptuous in a discourse, limited as this 
 must be by the occasion that assembles us, to pursue the 
 unifying law of History through this complex multitude of 
 conditions. And, indeed, the pursuit would be hopeless, 
 even though no limitations were put upon the discourse, 
 except this only: that the law must be sought in the conditions 
 of activity, and not in the "unforced and self-moved" human 
 will. For with the postulate, that the conditions are the 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. 1 9 
 
 causes of the movements of the race, and that man, as he 
 appears in History, is the effect; a profound Philosophy of 
 History becomes an absolute impossibility. A barren posi- 
 tivism becomes the final statement of truth. The historical 
 narrative becomes a table of statistics. The highest labor of 
 the historian becomes the classification, under the law of 
 resemblance, of essentially external phenomena. And the 
 ultimate revelation of History is a doctrine of averages, more 
 or less thoroughly confirmed by observation. 
 
 Doubtless, while I have been speaking, you have recalled 
 the two profoundly interesting volumes of Mr. Buckle's un- 
 finished "History of Civilization in England." That great 
 fragment — for fragment as it is, and radically vicious as it is, 
 it is as strong and massive as a torso of Hercules — derives a 
 pathetic interest from the relation of its author to his work. 
 For twenty years, Mr. Buckle gave himself, with an enthusiasm 
 that never abated, to the severest study, in order to its composi- 
 tion. He brought to the preparation of the work itself, a mind 
 singularly gifted, and an amount and variety of historical 
 knowledge that has rarely been equalled. But he brought 
 also the vicious theory of History, which Mr. Froude* has 
 accurately described in the statement, that "human beings 
 act necessarily from the impulse of outward circumstances 
 upon their mental and bodily condition at any given moment ;" 
 the theory, in short, that the unifying law of History must 
 be found, if at all, in the external conditions of human activ- 
 ity, and not in man himself. When only forty years of age, 
 soon after his second volume had issued from the press, 
 
 " Short Studies on Great Subjects," first series, p. II. 
 
20 CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. 
 
 Mr. Buckle found himself obliged, by broken health, to dis- 
 continue his labors. He travelled in the East in search of a 
 renewed vigor which he was never to find. In a few months 
 he lay on his death bed, in what perhaps is the oldest exist- 
 ing city of the world ; in the Damascus that has had a con- 
 tinuous life, since it gave to Abraham, " Eliezer, the steward 
 of his house." The last words uttered by Mr. Buckle, as he 
 lay dying, were: "My book! my book ! I shall never finish 
 my book." And, regarded as a search for the law of History, 
 his book could never have been finished. Had his life been 
 as long as the career of the city which heard his last mournful 
 regret, he would, at the term of his prolonged labors, have 
 still been as far from the discovery of the law of History, as 
 he was at the close of twoscore years. What could he have 
 done, but continue, through the centuries, to tread his dreary 
 round of averages? The book might have been finished; but 
 the law of History would have been a secret still. 
 
 Whoever would find and formulate the law that gives unity 
 to the movements of human society, must begin by recog- 
 nizing man as both the efficient cause of his own activity, 
 and the constant factor amid the shifting conditions under 
 which he acts. Then only will his search become fruitful. 
 But then it will be fruitful. Before the mind of such a stu-^ 
 dent of man will emerge the two traits, which yield, in gen- 
 eral terms, the law, and, so far forth, solve the problem of the 
 Philosophy of History. 
 
 Of these traits, the first appears in the statement that the 
 unity of the race is an organic unity. The fact of this organic 
 unity would seern to be too obvious for argument. It is al- 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. 21 
 
 most self-evident that the bond of union, between the first 
 human pair and their uncounted descendants, must strikingly 
 contrast that which holds together the molecules of a body 
 of inorganic matter. Whatever may be the power of gravi- 
 tation or of chemical affinity, it constitutes a bond which is 
 weakness itself, when compared with continuous and throb- 
 bing life; for it is a bond which the feeblest life is competent 
 to sunder. The forces, in virtue of which the particles of 
 matter cohere, can organize nothing. But life does organize. 
 And the race of man is one, in virtue of this powerful, con- 
 tinuous and organizing life. If this be true, the movement 
 of humanity in History is an organic movement. Nor because 
 the word has been employed in the interests of an anti-Chris- 
 tian theory without historical evidence to support it, should 
 we hesitate at all to apply to human History the one term by 
 which, alone, organic movement is adequately designated ; I 
 mean, of course, the term evolution."^'- It has more than once 
 
 * The word development or evolution is the term upon which Christian 
 historians have most often seized to designate the movement narrated in 
 History. This is true of both Neander and Gieseler. Among our own 
 writers, the same use of the word is to be found in Schaff ("Apostol. Ch.," 
 pp. 3, II, kt seq.), R. D. Hitchcock ("Am. Theol. Rev.," Feb., i860) and 
 Shedd ("Theol. Essays," p. 121). Dr. Shedd applies the idea of evolution to 
 History in the most severe and thorough manner. Dr. J. Addison Alexander, 
 in his brilliant remarks on Methodology — published in his posthumous work 
 on "New Test. Lit and Eccl. Hist." — treats History as a discipline and not 
 distinctly as a science. Indeed, the strong determination of his remarkable 
 mind towards letters led him prevailingly to regard History as a literary art. 
 Had he continued in this chair, he would probably have produced one of the 
 most vivid, graphic and dramatic of Church Histories. It is not too much 
 to say, that he might, without unduly taxing his powers, have done for any 
 period of the Church's life what Lord Macaulay has done for the English 
 Revolution. Certainly he would have brought to his work a learning as 
 ample, and a rhetoric as charming, as Macaulay's. In view of the need of 
 
2 2 CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. 
 
 been clearly shown that all the elements of development 
 appear in the great movements of the race of which History 
 is the narrative. The evolution of humanity from the first 
 pair is an evolution as really as the evolution of an oak-forest 
 from an acorn. 
 
 But the historical evolution of humanity — and here, we 
 come upon the other trait — is separated from every lower evo- 
 lution by a quality distinctly its own. This quality is, of course, 
 freedom or self-determination. The development of the germ, 
 out of which is evolved the spreading forest, is a movement 
 as necessary as the' movement of the sun in his orbit. But the 
 evolution of humanity has been determined in and through 
 man's voluntary nature. We are started upon the right path, 
 therefore, in our search for the unifying law of History, when 
 we begin with the truth that it is the law of self-determined . 
 human development. 
 
 But we are only started upon the path. For, though this 
 statement brings into clear view both the beginning and the 
 
 such a History of the Church — which even Dean Milman's volumes do not 
 supply — it is to be regretted that Dr. Alexander did not employ his great 
 gifts and learning in the composition of a Church History. But, while the 
 distinctly literary habit of Dr. Alexander's mind was not such as to make him 
 seize strongly upon the word evolution as expressive of the historical move- 
 ment, there is more than one statement in the volume referred to, which sets 
 forth his conviction of the importance of holding clearly before the mind the 
 continuity of History, even when breaking up the narrative of the Church's 
 life into minor histories, for the sake of convenience in study. "Instead," he 
 says, "of assuming certain periods, and then cutting these into strips and 
 slices by a uniform and rubrical division, we may let each topic reach as far 
 as it will, or as we find convenient, using chronological divisions not to cut 
 them up, but simply to mark the surface, like the shadow on a dial. Eccle- 
 siastical History, thus viewed, is a congeries of minor histories, each of which 
 is, in a certain sense, complete within itself; but, in another sense, incom- 
 plete without the rest." — Page 276. 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. 2$ 
 
 nature of the historic movement, it asserts nothing at all as to 
 either the vwral quality of the movement or its conclusion. 
 And no Philosophy of History can be regarded as, in any 
 sense, complete which does not pronounce upon the moral 
 quality of humanity, and, at least, intimate the consumma- 
 tion of all things. These are the two subjects which are 
 invested with the profoundest interest for the historical student. 
 The mind, when brought face to face with a large period of 
 History, or even with the life of a single member of the spe- 
 cies, asks first of all questions upon these great themes. But 
 to such questions, the statement, that the historical movement 
 is a free development, contains no answer. The life of 
 humanity on earth would have been just as free, and just as 
 clearly a development, had our first parents maintained un- 
 sulHed, the hohness in which they were created. 
 
 Still, it is only as we hold before us this voluntariness in the 
 development of the race, that we see clearly the truth that the 
 historic movement must have moral character as its pre- 
 eminent and distinctive quality. It is in virtue of this dis- 
 tinctly spiritual power of self-determination alone, that human 
 History possesses moral character. For the self-determination 
 of man is wide apart from the mere volition of the brute. That 
 the brute creation possess a power of volition, we need not 
 hesitate to admit ; if only we are careful to distinguish it from 
 the voluntary nature of man. In the case of the brute, the 
 outer world acts upon its instinctive impulses. These in- 
 stinctive impulses regulate the judgments of the brute's 
 understanding ; and these judgments, in turn, are necessarily 
 executed by a faculty, which, because it seizes the most 
 
24 CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. 
 
 appropriate out of, perhaps, sev^eral means at hand, may not 
 improperly be denominated a faculty of volition. But in all 
 this movement there is no proper freedom. In all this there 
 is no choice of end. The end of the whole process is fixed ; 
 and fixed as necessarily as it is in inorganic matter. The 
 difference between this mere brute volition and the voluntari- 
 ness of man is as wide as the difference between heaven and 
 earth. For the very end and purpose of life, is, in the case of 
 man, self-determined. 
 
 Just here, then, we begin to grasp the awful import and 
 unity of human History. It is the narrative of man's choice 
 of the purpose of his life, and of human development as fixed 
 by this tremendous act of self-determination. The human 
 History must begin with an all-important and morally-de- 
 termining choice, and must proceed with the exhibition of ' 
 the development which that choice has determined. This is 
 the unifying law of human History. 
 
 And now, to advance from the nature of human History 
 to the terrible objective narrative which, under this law of its 
 unity, constitutes the substance of History —it is, first of all, to 
 be said, that we do not need to read the inspired Book of 
 Origins, in order to learn that the choice, which must determine 
 the moral quality of the development, has already been made. 
 It is the distinction of an organic movement that, its character 
 reappears at every point of the movement, both in space and 
 time. Take up the History of humanity in any zone and in 
 any century; and the revelation will be clear enough that the 
 race has made a sinful choice — a choice against God and 
 against its own spiritual nature— and is, therefore, a fallen and 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. 25 
 
 guilty race. A study of the race, as we find it to-day, will 
 not, indeed, reveal to us when or under what conditions the 
 choice that fixed human character was made. But we shall 
 be compelled to believe that, at some time and under some 
 conditions appointed by the race's Governor, man, by the 
 free and unforced exercise of his supremest power, chose 
 evil, and fixed the moral quality of the development of 
 humanity as fallen and guilty before conscience and in the 
 sight of God. To us, the sad and terrible story of the race's 
 self-determination to evil has been distinctly revealed.* We 
 read the inspired History of the race's creation in the image 
 of God the Creator. We follow the narrative up to the 
 catastrophe, in which all is lost, and which occurs by the 
 united self-determination of our First Parents, who, at this 
 time, constitute the ivJiole hiuiian species. That self-deter- 
 mined fall of the race from God did not put a period to the 
 race's development; but the moral character of the develop- 
 
 *The historical character of the narrative of the Fall in the book of Gene- 
 sis has more than once been attacked by writers who profess to study it from 
 a Theistic point of view, and it has been proposed to interpret it as allegori- 
 cal. But the narrative, regarded as History, is certainly not inherently 
 incredible. If the race was to be tested, there must have been a test. What 
 test more congruous with the simple life of the garden can be conceived than 
 the test of the forbidden tree ? If the narrative is allegorical, it is an allegory 
 of the Fall. But how could our First Parents have fallen in the circum- 
 stances without a positive command to violate? And what command more 
 appropriate could there have been than the one given them? Those who 
 call the narrative an allegory are bound to till up the blank, which they make 
 by allegorizing, with a more credible and congruous narrative, as an hypothe- 
 sis. But, I take it, one such can not be found. It is no harder to believe 
 that refraining from eating the fruit of a particular tree was, at the begin- 
 ning of human probation, made the sacrament of obedience, than it is to be- 
 lieve that eating and drinking the bread and wine were, at the beginning of 
 the Christian dispensation, made the sacrament of remembrance and faith. 
 
2$ CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. 
 
 merit was revolutionized. It became the development of a 
 fallen and guilty race ; and the consummation, which the 
 historical development has intimated at every point in space 
 and time, is absolute spiritual disaster. 
 
 Whatever may be said of the process by which this con- 
 clusion has been reached, the conckision itself is, in substance, 
 the necessary basis of a Christian Philosophy of History. If the 
 movement — apart from the influence of Christianity — which 
 History records is not the development toward deeper evil 
 of a sinful and guilty race; if this is not the profoundest unity 
 of History unmodified by Christianity, upon what possible 
 ground can we assert the absolute need of the Gospel of 
 Christ in order to the salvation of mankind ? I know, indeed 
 — and am by no means disposed to ignore the fact — that 
 not all of the Theologians of our own Church, when formulat- 
 ing the Philosophy of History or systematizing the doctrines 
 of our faith, have given the emphasis and importance, which, in 
 this address, have been accorded to the solidarity of the 
 human species. It must, indeed, be confessed that the sub- 
 ject is among the most mysterious of those on which Theology 
 is employed, and is beset with great difficulties. Many great 
 theologians, partly in order to escape some of these difficul- 
 ties, and partly in order to conform their system to what they 
 believe to be the teaching of the Word of God, have selected, 
 as their point of departure, the representative relation sustained 
 by the first Adam to his posterity, instead of the substantial 
 oneness of the human race. And others, shrinking from the 
 real or supposed ethical implications of both of these solu- 
 tions, have started with the sin, manifested in the active trans- 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. 27 
 
 gression of individual men ; and moving backward to the 
 birth of the individual, and upward through a sinful ancestry 
 to the fall of the first human pair, have maintained that per- 
 sonal guilt succeeds, and yet rests upon the vitiated nature 
 which has been derived as a natural inheritance. The differ- 
 ences between these views are not unimportant. Regarded as 
 theories of original sin, their presence in the same Church is 
 the result of three different, but noble and powerful in- 
 tellectual tendencies. The first theory, that of real oneness, 
 seems to have been conceived in the historical, the rep- 
 resentative theory, in the theological, and the remaining 
 theory in the ethical spirit. Dissimilar, however, as they are, 
 their agreements are far more profound than their differences. 
 Uniting in the confessional declaration, that the descendants, 
 by ordinary generation, of our first parent "sinned in him 
 and fell with him in his first transgression," they unite also 
 in teaching, that just as far as the movement of History is a 
 development at all, just so far, apart from Christ, it is the 
 development of a sinful society, whose end is a merited de- 
 struction. 
 
 In the light of this solemn truth and under the law of 
 this terrible unity, must the Christian historian interpret 
 the narrative of the human race. When, turning to the age 
 of Nero, he reads the awful description of society, for which 
 we are indebted to the Stoic Seneca, or gazes in horror upon 
 the still darker picture painted by the Christian Paul, and 
 then searches for the historical cause of this seething mass of 
 evil passion breeding death ; he is compelled to confess that 
 its historical cause finds exact expression in the solemn words 
 
2 8 CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. 
 
 of Inspiration : "By one man sin entered into the world ; and 
 death by sin : and so death passed upon all men, for that all 
 have sinned." This would be the final and terrible Philosophy 
 of History, but for the revelation and bestowment of the 
 grace of God. 
 
 I say but for the grace of God. It is in the grace of God, 
 his sovereign and redeeming grace, that we find the last, but 
 also the regnant element, to be considered in formulating the 
 Philosophy of History; in declaring the law that gives unity 
 to its large and majestic narrative. The time at my command 
 does not justify an endeavor to connect, in any detailed man- 
 ner, this last element with the preceding elements we have 
 considered. This much, however, let me say. We have 
 moved through a series of increasingly potential elements of 
 the historic movement; from law to life, — from life to con- 
 scious life, — from conscious life to man, the voluntary cause — 
 mightier than all the conditions that lie below him. We have 
 found the beginning of History to have been the employment 
 by man of his supremest power in a self-determined act ; 
 which concluded the race in sin and guilt, and fixed the char- 
 acter of the historic movement, as a sinful and guilty develop- 
 ment. But — to the praise of the glory of the grace of God — 
 let it be told with adoring gratitude, that we have reached, in 
 the grace that redeems man, by far the most potent element 
 of the series. For, "where sin abounded, grace did much 
 more abound: that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so 
 might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by 
 Jesus Christ our Lord." 
 
 Doubtless, this address would possess a unity more dis- 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. 29 
 
 tinctly obvious, were I to unfold the radical modification 
 of History, effected by the grace of God, as the creation and 
 development of a new germ, instead of presenting it in the 
 form which I shall adopt. I prefer, however, at this point, even 
 at some peril to rhetorical unity, to employ another conception. 
 For upon occasions like the present, it is fitting, by recalling 
 their services and repeating their words, to honor the illustrious 
 dead. No American student of Church History should forget, 
 in circumstances like those in which I find myself to-night, 
 gratefully to recall the labors and pronounce the name of Henry 
 Boynton Smith. It would remove me too far from the subject 
 before us, were I to mention his abundant toils for the Church 
 of God, or to refer adequately to his noble contributions to 
 this department of sacred learning. But since I am now upon 
 the high theme of the last and dominant element in the histori- 
 cal movement, I think I shall best honor his memory, if I turn 
 from the conception which has prevailed in this address, in 
 order to employ, for the time, the conception which to him 
 seemed most true to the facts, most scriptural and most ma- 
 jestic — the conception of the gracious Kiugdoin of God. 
 "That," said Dr. Smith, in his inaugural address as Professor 
 of Church History in Union Seminary, "that which shapes the 
 whole character and determines the final destiny of a people, 
 that which has always done this, and from the nature of the 
 case must do this, is its religious faith; for here are the highest 
 objects acting on the deepest and most permanent wants of the 
 human heart. And in the whole history of man we can trace the 
 course of one shaping, overmastering and progressive power, 
 before which all others have bowed, and that is the spiritual king- 
 
30 CHURCH HISTORY AS A SCIENCE. 
 
 do7n of God, having for its object the redemption of man from 
 the ruins of apostasy. If we could but reahze the majestic 
 simpHcity of this kingdom, its spiritual nature and sublime in- 
 tent ; if we could make present to us the full idea of it, which 
 is not an idea alone, but also a reality; if we could see that 
 holiness is the great end of our being, and that sin is its very 
 opposite, and that redemption is for the removal of sin and 
 for the establishment of a lioly kingdoin — then were we in the 
 right position for reading, in their highest meaning, all the 
 records of our race." * 
 
 Here, then, at the close of our search for the organiz- 
 ing idea and the philosophy of universal History, have we 
 found the idea of CluuxJi History; for Church History is 
 
 * Dr. Smith has set forth in his Introduction to Christian Theology the 
 grounds upon which he regards the Christian Philosophy of History as the 
 true Philosophy. "It is the only one," he says, "which can be conformed 
 to the four requisitions of a true science of history, (i.) The scheme must 
 be a legitimate generalization from the entire mass of kistoricia.cts. The king- 
 dom of redemption can be historically traced through all the records of the 
 earth. The ' preparations ' for it, direct or indirect ; the receptions and re- 
 actions in regard to it, have run through every historic nation. It has sur- 
 vived all states. (2.) The scheme must be able to state some one adequate 
 law of progress running through all history. The progress of this kingdom 
 has been a perpetual growth through perpetual conflicts. All other cohflicts 
 may be resolved into the conflict between sin and holiness. (3.) The scheme 
 must propose some adequate end or object of the historic course. Christianity 
 sets before the human family a grand and glorious consummation, where the 
 natural interests of man, in their integrity and their full development, are 
 made subservient to spiritual interests, and to the revelation of the highest 
 spiritual glory. (4.) It is necessary to recognize a power adequate to the 
 whole result. The kingdom of redemption is God's own work and plan, 
 projected, upheld, consummated by him. Facts, law, aim and author are 
 bound up into one scheme by this divine agency. 
 
 " Hence, on philosophical grounds, we are forced to seek the solution of the 
 historic problem in the kingdom of redemption. We can connect human his- 
 tory into an organized unity on no other theory or ground." (Pp. 183, 184.) 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A DISCIPLINE. 3 1 
 
 itself the universal History. It is the universal History- 
 organized by the profoundest idea, and governed in all its 
 narrative by the ultimate Philosophy of History. No events 
 are too secular for its regard ; no objects are too unimportant 
 for its serious study ; no distance of time or space is too great 
 for its narrative to traverse. And in the consummation of all 
 things, when prophecy shall be read as History, it will be 
 revealed to all that the tmiversal History is the History of the 
 Church of Christ.'^ "For by Him were all things created 
 that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, 
 whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principahties, or 
 powers ; all things were created by Him and for Him, and 
 He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. And 
 He is the head of the body, the Church." 
 
 (ll.) CHURCH HISTORY AS A DISCIPLINE. 
 
 If I have correctly, however inadequately, unfolded the 
 idea of Church History, we shall be at no loss for grounds 
 on which to justify the practice, uniform in our schools for 
 theological study, of assigning to the science of History a 
 place not second to that assigned to any of the other disci- 
 
 *The difference between secular and religious History is not that the 
 former narrates events which the latter leaves untouched. The difference 
 between them is to be found solely in the point of view from which the same 
 events are regarded. Although Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic nar- 
 rates the History of a religious movement, it is not a religious History ; for it 
 contemplates the movement from a political point of view. On the other 
 hand, a religious History does not lose its character as religious because it 
 deals with political events; for all political events have religious relations, 
 and upon these the mind of the religious historian is fastened. And since 
 these are their profoundest and ultimate relations, religious History, in its 
 idea, is the profoundest and ultimate universal History. 
 
32 CHURCH HISTORY AS A DISCIPLINE. 
 
 pHnes. These grounds I shall not now attempt directly to 
 state. Permit me, however, briefly to set forth the relations 
 sustained by Church History to the other departments, for 
 the purpose of bringing into view the precise influence which 
 it exerts upon the student's mind. 
 
 Setting aside, for the moment, Church History itself, the 
 several departments of the theological course arrange them- 
 selves under the two great divisions of science and art. Not 
 only are Systematic Divinity and Apologetics (the latter a 
 department to which both the skeptical tendencies of the age 
 and the increasing evidences of Christianity have, during late 
 years, given great prominence) entitled to be called theolog- 
 ical sciences. The word science best describes the knowledge 
 derived from what have too often been regarded and classi- 
 fied as mere propadeutic studies — Hebrew and New Testa- 
 ment Greek. For in these departments, the study of language 
 is subsidiary to textual and literary criticism, and this, in turn, 
 to exegesis; each of the departments finding its consumma- 
 tion and final cause only in the Old Testament or the New 
 Testament Theology. The reasons to be urged for giving 
 the name science to Systematic Theolog}'' are quite as forcible 
 when urged for applying it to Biblical Theology. On the 
 other hand, the department of Homiletics and the Pastoral 
 Office may not inaccurately be described as the department of 
 theological art. The methods employed in the other 
 departments are investigation and analysis, and the products 
 yielded are classified or scientific knowledge. The method 
 of this department is synthetic, and synthesis is the charac- 
 teristic of art. Its function is to enable the student to recom- 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A DISCIPLINE. 33 
 
 bine the classified knowledge, which he brings from the study 
 of the theological sciences, in the forms in which, as a 
 preacher and pastor, he can best employ them. 
 
 It is the distinction of History that, more thoroughly than 
 any of the other disciplines, it is both scientific and artistic ; 
 both analytic and synthetic. In one aspect of it, History is 
 a body of knowledge organized by an idea. In another aspect 
 of it, it is a belles Icttrcs product. On this account, it is more 
 largely indebted than any of the others to the departments 
 with which, in the theological course, it is co-ordinated. On 
 the one hand, more distinctly than does any other theological 
 science, it owes its literary form to the art of discourse. 
 Upon the rhetorical excellence of its form, it is even more 
 dependent than is Systematic Theology. On the other hand, 
 it owes its principles of organization to the theological sciences. 
 The facts of History can not be known in their highest and 
 profoundest relations, 'oy the student who is not prepared for 
 their study by the discipHne and culture of the mind, to be 
 obtained only by a careful study of the laws of the Christian 
 evidences, of the doctrinal system, and of the meaning of 
 the words of Revelation. But, if History is thus a debtor, it 
 is also a creditor. In unfolding the benefits by which its 
 obligations to the other studies are discharged, I can speak 
 of the historical discipline, only as it affects the student in the 
 two departments of Systematic and Biblical Theology. 
 
 The influence exerted by History on the student of Sys- 
 tematic Theology will be made evident by holding before our 
 minds the difference between a theological judgment and an 
 historical judgment. The former is simple and positive. The 
 
34 
 
 CHURCH HISTORY AS A DISCIPLINE. 
 
 latter is complex and comparative. The one is qualitative ; 
 the other is quantitative. To make this more clear by means 
 of a well-known and interesting example, let us take the case 
 of Arminianism. Both the teacher of Theology and the 
 teacher of History are compelled to pronounce an opinion 
 upon Arminianism. It rises' into most prominent view in 
 both departments. The duty of the theologian is absolute. 
 Arminianism is truth, or it is error. And between truth and 
 error there can be no compromise. To the view of the 
 Calvinistic theologian, the truth is upon the side to which 
 Arminianism is opposed. It is his function to pronounce Ar- 
 minianism an error, and to set forth the grounds of his judg- 
 ment. Here his work as a theologian terminates. But Armin- 
 ianism rises into view, also, in the History of the Church. The 
 historian, however, meets it not as a system pure and simple, ' 
 but as a system in action ; not as an idea simply, but as an 
 idea in its realization. He meets it in the lives of the Wes- 
 leys; in the rise of that great evangelical communion 
 which, during the closing years of the past century and 
 throughout the present century, has so abundantly blessed 
 both England and our own country. It is obvious that 
 the judgment of the historian, however strong his Calvinistic 
 prepossessions may be, must be very different from that 
 of the theologian. It is not that he will disagree with 
 the theologian ; but associated with the system to be 
 judged, will be a congeries of modifying facts ; and the whole 
 will constitute the Arminianism of History as contrasted with 
 the Arminianism of Theology. The judgment pronounced 
 in the one case will be upon the relation of a system to the 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A DISCIPLINE. 35 
 
 truth. The judgment pronounced in the other case will be 
 upon the influence of the system under actual historical 
 conditions. Of course, the judgments will conspicuously 
 differ. And in point of fact, both of them have been 
 pronounced by the ministry of our own Church. Theo- 
 logically, we are compelled, when loyal to our vision of the 
 truth which God has revealed, to assert that Arminianism is 
 not only an error, but an error at the center of Theology, 
 and at the center of Soteriology. But, historically, we 
 welcome the Arminian Wesleyan, as a brother beloved, to our 
 pulpits* and to our meetings for prayer. We acknowledge 
 the validity of his ordination, and of his administration of the 
 sacraments; and we gladly unite with him as one of the host 
 of the elect in labor for the redemption of the world. 
 
 This familiar example will serve to bring vividly before us 
 the exact influence exerted by the study of History upon the 
 student of Systematic Theology. Its influence is to imbue 
 the student with the catholic spirit. Let the History of the 
 Church be studied apart from Theology, and its profound- 
 est truth will never be disclosed. So far as this profound 
 meaning is concerned, the facts of History might as well be 
 a loose and insignificant aggregation. Let the influence of 
 Theology, unmixed with History, be exerted upon the stu- 
 dent, and the result will be that which it has been, in what, 
 let us hope, is the absolutely vanished past — it will be the 
 
 * On the Sabbath immediately preceding the day on which this paragraph 
 was written, the writer had the pleasure of hearing an able discourse deliv- 
 ered in the pulpit of the Presbyterian Church of Walnut Hills, Cincinnati, 
 by the Rev. Dr. Bayliss of the Methodist Episcopal Church, with whom the 
 Rev. Dr. FuUerton of the Presbyterian Church had exchanged. 
 
36 CHURCH HISTORY AS A DISCIPLINE. 
 
 generation of the odium tJieologicmn. That the study of 
 History abates and tends to destroy this baleful passion, 
 which has already done so much to impede the advance of the 
 Church of Christ, and induces a catJiolic temper in the student 
 of Theology, were ground enough on which to justify its 
 presence and eminence as a discipline in a school of sacred 
 learning. 
 
 It is another merit of History, regarded as a branch of 
 theological learning, that it exerts a distinct and beneficent 
 influence on the student, when engaged in those departments, 
 the aim of which is the interpretation of the written Word. 
 If it were proper to institute comparisons between the several 
 disciplines, I would be compelled to assign the most important 
 place to those, which bring the student into most intimate 
 communion with the words of Inspiration, and seek to elicit 
 from the Bible its exact historical significance. It is in these 
 studies, that Protestant scholarship has achieved its noblest 
 victories. It would be difficult to exaggerate the value of the 
 labors of' Biblical scholars, since John Reuchlin, in the face 
 of the narrow Mediaeval prejudice, sought instruction in He- 
 brew from a learned Jew; and Desiderius Erasmus gave to 
 the Church his edition of the New Testament. The twofold 
 department, which enters into and continues their labors, is 
 the chosen home of the spirit of Protestant Christianity. In 
 this, as in no other department, is the right of private judg- 
 ment asserted and exercised ; for here, in its most exact 
 meaning, is the answer sought to the question of questions, 
 "What does God teach in his written Revelation?" 
 
 But the emphasis of the right of private judgment is not 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A DISCIPLINE. 37 
 
 unattended with danger. It is the danger of too highly 
 estimating individual opinion, when it pushes itself against 
 the continuous current of the Church's belief. The reaUty of 
 this danger and the seriousness of the evils that flow from it 
 have not seldom been exemplified in the History of Biblical 
 study. It was from the point of view of Biblical criticism, 
 that Strauss reconstructed the life of Jesus. It was from 
 the same point of view, that Baur wrought out the bold 
 hypothesis, that Christianity owes its existence to-day to the 
 compromise which ended the wars and contradictions be- 
 tween thePetrine and Pauline sects; in whose bitterness, 
 the primitive Church had been well-nigh destroyed. It is a 
 significant fact, that, as against this destructive criticism, 
 the faith of the Church found its ablest defender in a scholar 
 deeply imbued with the historical spirit ; in that great man 
 whom we must still mention, when we would name the 
 Church's greatest historian. I mean, of course, Augustus 
 Neander. 
 
 As all of us know, the close of that controversy left the 
 faith of the Church in the New Testament unimpaired. But 
 though that has closed, another controversy, born also of 
 Biblical criticism, is upon us. Nor can we indulge the hope, 
 that, upon its conclusion, our peace will not be troubled by 
 a third. For the glory of Biblical study— the glory I mean 
 that it brings man face to face with the Word of God— is the 
 source of the danger that attends it ; the danger that undue 
 importance will be attached to individual opinion. It seems, 
 therefore, too plain for argument, that there is needed, in 
 close association with the Biblical course, another discipline, 
 
38 CHUkCH HISTORY AS A DISCIPLINE. 
 
 which, by its emphasis of the value of tj'adition, will moderate 
 the tendency to welcome new hypotheses, as though of neces- 
 sity they are the heralds of new truths. Such a moderating 
 discipline, it is unnecessary to show, is found in History 
 itself The spirit with which it imbues its earnest and candid 
 student, will lead him to meet the brilliant and unhistoric 
 speculations of the individual mind with becoming caution 
 and skepticism. I venture to affirm, that the present discus- 
 sion, touching the religion of Israel, is one in which this his- 
 toric caution and skepticism should be severely exercised. 
 
 However that may be in the view of others, it will be 
 agreed by all, that this perilous tendency is best dimin- 
 ished by the discipline of historical study. I do not 
 forget that the same tendency is powerfully antagonized by 
 Systematic Theology, formed on the Confession of our Church. 
 I trust that I shall never be found disparaging the influence 
 of Systematic Theology i-n forming the mind of our ministry. 
 Our Church has reached its high position and achieved its 
 great work, most of all by its loyalty to revealed truth as 
 expressed in the forms of Systematic Theology. Above all 
 else, our ministers have been theologians; and the greatest 
 and most widely influential literary products of our clergy 
 have been theological products. But I am not disparaging 
 Systematic Theology when I say that at this point it is at a 
 disadvantage. Unworthy as the suspicion is, it is difficult 
 for Theology — just because allied with the symbols which we 
 receive and adopt — to escape the suspicion, that in antagon- 
 izing the conclusions of Biblical criticism, it is fighting schol- 
 arship with the weapons of ecclesiastical authority. That 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A DISCIPLINE. 39 
 
 ecclesiastical authority may be properly invoked against con- 
 clusions, vitally opposed to the standards of the Church, is a 
 proposition of almost axiomatic force. But whoever has 
 observed human nature; whoever, especially, is aware of the 
 sensitiveness, that scholarship has always shown under the 
 restraints of external authority, does not need to be told 
 that the result of invoking authority has often been to fix in the 
 mind the very belief, which it was intended to expel from it. 
 Accordingly, wise men have always counseled that ecclesias- 
 tical authority be invoked against error only as a last resort, 
 and in a desperate crisis. 
 
 While Theology, in relation to the subject before us, suffers, 
 in our own Church, from its peculiarly intimate connection 
 with authority, History is at no such disadvantage. Its influ- 
 ence is quite as conservative as the influence of Theology. But 
 it is influential rather than authoritative. It breathes a spirit; 
 it forms a habit of mind ; it calls out the powers of the mind 
 to genial labor on the very subjects upon which Biblical 
 criticism is engaged ; and all the while its distinct influence 
 is to exalt and to preserve the traditional faith of the Church. 
 
 That the attention of students for the ministry is, for many 
 years to come, specially to be directed to Biblical studies, no 
 one can doubt who regards attentively the signs of the times. 
 The revision of our version of the Scriptures; the attempted 
 reconstruction of the History of Israel; the new interest in 
 the Semitic languages, and the new study of Comparative 
 Religion, all point in this direction. That the influence of 
 these studies, in the atmosphere of modern doubt, must for 
 the time be to unsettle belief, will not be denied. We could 
 
40 CHURCH HISTORY AS A DISCIPLINE. 
 
 not, if we would, check the tendency toward these studies in 
 the Church. We would not if we could. But the influence 
 which, if unmingled with that of a more conservative discip- 
 line, they must exert, it is of the highest importance to pre- 
 vent. On this ground, I plead for a renewed interest in the 
 great conservative discipline of Church History. 
 
 Though the subject is by no means exhausted, I must turn 
 away from the relations of History to the individual disci- 
 plines, in order to consider briefly its relations to the theo- 
 logical course regarded as a unit. And here the word, which 
 perhaps best describes its special influence, is the word culture. 
 A marked tendency has, within a few years, been manifest to 
 contrast the discipline of the intimate and detailed knowledge 
 gained by the student in a single department, with the disci- 
 pline of the broader knowledge that constitutes the substance 
 of a liberal education. Though the word does not describe 
 it with absolute accuracy, we may well adopt, for the purpose 
 of this discourse, the word scientific to designate the new train- 
 ing, as contrasted with the older or liberal training. This 
 scientific training we must regard as one result of the wide em- 
 ployment of the inductive method. The employment of in- 
 duction has given to the modern world a strong impulse to- 
 ward the observation and classification of the visible universe ; 
 and this, in turn, has resulted in the extension and multipli- 
 cation of the material sciences and the useful arts. It is the 
 growing strength of this great impulse, communicated to 
 modern Europe and America largely by the powerful mind 
 of Francis Bacon, which has finally succeeded in founding, in 
 connection with our American colleges, special schools of the 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A DISCIPLINE. 4 1 
 
 material sciences, in which students are trained for special 
 scientific occupations. As the subjection of the visible world 
 to the use of man becomes more nearly thorough, — as, in 
 other words, the material sciences are multiplied and the range 
 of each is extended, — these schools of science may be ex- 
 pected to multiply, and education to become still more 
 special. The great value of this special training it were as 
 idle to deny as it would be to deny the strength of the modern 
 tendency to promote it. 
 
 But valuable and even necessary as it is, the training of the 
 specialist is obviously attended by the danger, that its imperi- 
 ous demands will prove an effectual bar to a large and gen- 
 erous culture. The fact of this danger is already forcing 
 itself upon the attention of conspicuous and influential writers ; 
 and unless we are mere pessimists, we shall easily believe 
 that the demand will at no distant day be general and power- 
 ful, that our scientific schools positively borrow a larger 
 liberalizing element from the collegiate course (of which 
 the main design is culture) with which at present they are 
 only crudely affiliated. 
 
 The main design of the collegiate course, I say, is culture. 
 That this is its design is obvious from the terms "the human- 
 ities" and "the liberal arts," which are associated with its 
 honors and degrees. The educated man, whom the college 
 seeks to send forth into the world, is a man disciplined in all 
 his faculties, and receptive upon every side ; a man of the 
 widest intellectual sympathies; a man of the humanities; a 
 man, in short, glowing not so much with the special enthu- 
 siasm of a special, though scientific occupation, but glowing 
 
42 CHURCH HISTORY AS A DISCIPLINE. 
 
 with "the enthusiasm of humanity," imbued with the spirit, 
 and aHve to the possibiHties of the entire race. 
 
 In these days, in view of the strong tendency both to 
 specialize and to secularize education, it is well to recall the 
 noble history, in the modern world, of this system of liberal 
 training. It is well to reinform ourselves of that continuous 
 movement through the centuries, which, under the conduct of 
 the largest minds and loftiest spirits, has, in our own land, 
 culminated in the colleges which have so largely blessed and 
 honored both the Church and State. We owe much indeed 
 to the growth of material science under the nurture of the in- 
 ductive philosophy. But the debt of the world to the educa- 
 tion which survives in our colleges, is far larger and far more 
 profound. . Let us mention, always with becoming gratitude, 
 the trivium and quadnviuin, which Alcuin taught in the palace 
 school of Charles the Great; and which Scotus Erigena taught 
 in the Court of Charles the Bald in France, and in the new 
 school founded by Alfred, at Oxford, in England. It was the 
 trivium and qiiadj^iviwn, that enabled the European mind, in 
 the scholastic age, to assimilate and to employ on the great 
 problems of Theology, the Greek philosophy; and, in the age 
 of the Renaissance, to assimilate and employ the Greek and 
 the Latin literatures. And it was the same culture, his- 
 torically developed, that made the revival of letters the 
 chief providential agency in the great Reformation of religion. 
 The Churches of the Reformation were not slow in learn- 
 ing the great lesson thus clearly taught by History. Aside 
 from the body of the Christian truth, this training in the 
 liberal arts, — snatched by Charles in Italy from the wreck 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A DISCIPLINE. 43 
 
 of the Lombard wars then ah-eady past, and saved by Alcuin 
 in England from the wreck of the Danish invasions then still 
 in the future,— was believed by the Reformed Churches to 
 be the largest gift of the Mediaeval clergy to the clergy of 
 modern Christendom. Nor, in their judgment, was its 
 highest value to be sought so much in the positive knowledge 
 which it imparts, as in the catholic sympathies and the large 
 and many-sided intellectual life, of which it is the parent. 
 
 Thus it was, that when the Reformed Churches began their 
 conflict — which may God prosper— for the Christian conquest 
 of a new continent, the college of the liberal arts was, at once 
 and by unspeakable self-sacrifice, established. It is thus a 
 historical fact of the first importance, that the colleges of the 
 land owe their existence, more than to any other single cause, 
 to the absolute need felt by the Reformed Churches of a min- 
 istry broadly educated, catholic in sympathy, and widely re- 
 ceptive in intellectual habit. The need of such a ministry was 
 at no period greater than it is to-day ; and in no place has it 
 been more imperative than it is in our own country. For, if 
 the tendency to specialized and scientific education is the 
 strong and general tendency which I have asserted it to be, 
 the life of the nation will rapidly degenerate unless there is 
 also in the state a large and influential class, formed by a 
 culture broader and more humane than that of the scientific 
 school. When, to this consideration, is added the materializ- 
 ing influence exerted by our swift conquest of nature, 
 by the resulting unparalleled acquisition of wealth, and 
 by the growing stream of immigration, the impulse of which 
 is simply a sense of material want and a hope of material 
 
44 CHURCH HISTORY AS A DISCIPLINE. 
 
 gain — how clear it is, that, if our civilization is to be rescued 
 from the destruction which must follow an unduly materialistic 
 habit of life, the intellectual life of the Christian ministry of 
 the land must be no less wide and catholic than was that of 
 the Fathers. I do not say, for I do not believe, that that 
 depth has yet been reached^; but I do say that there are power- 
 ful tendencies in our America which, if unchecked by 
 the influence of a broad, spiritual, and Christian culture, 
 will carry us downward with frightful speed to the condition 
 of Roman society in its decline — a condition in the modern 
 world, which is well portrayed in the most mournful and most 
 bitter of all the sonnets of Wordsworth : 
 
 " We must run glittering like a brook 
 In the open sunshine, or we are unblest; 
 The wealthiest man among us is the best. 
 No grandeur now in nature or in book 
 Delights us. Ripine, avarice, expense — 
 This is idolatry ; and these we adore. 
 Plain living and high thinking are no more. 
 The homely beauty of the good old cause 
 Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence. 
 And pure religion breathing household laws." 
 
 Great, therefore, is the debt of the nation and of the 
 Church to the Christian college, for that broad and humane 
 culture, which, just because it awakens the "enthusiasm of 
 humanity," is the choicest intellectual endowment of our 
 ministry. 
 
 The spirit of this culture, I need n6t say, must be manifest 
 not only in the college, but in the professional school, if 
 its fruit is to be revealed in the professional life of the 
 the minister. It must not only survive the college course, 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A DISCIPLINE. 45 
 
 but, as it reappears in the school of Divinity, must be instinct 
 with a stronger Hfe. If a theological disciphne can be 
 found which will reinvigorate this spirit, that discipline must 
 be given no subordinate place in the theological course. Such 
 a discipline is the History, whose organizing idea I have tried 
 to unfold, and whose claim to a place among the sciences I 
 have tried to defend. It is the highest merit of History as a 
 discipline that it is the least special of all the departments. 
 As a science, it is scientia scientiarum ; as an art, it is ars artiuni. 
 "If it were desirable," it has well been said, "to bring the 
 whole encyclopaedia of human knowledge under a single term, 
 certainly History would be chosen as the most comprehen- 
 sive and elastic." It subjects the student to a training the 
 largest and most humane. The spirit of History is the spirit 
 which breathes from, perhaps, the noblest line of Latin literature: 
 Hiimamis sum; Jmmani nihil a me alienwnputo, and which finds 
 a far loftier expression in the words of Paul: "There is 
 neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there 
 is neither male nor female ; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." 
 It is, above all, as a student of History that the student of 
 Theology becomes most profoundly conscious of the unity 
 of the race. More distinctly than any other discipline, it 
 brings the student into sympathetic converse with the whole 
 family of man. Its theme is the Hte of humanity, and its 
 literature is the libraries of the world. The culture which it 
 legitimates and the sympathy which it breathes are no sub- 
 ordinate elements of the training and the spirit, needed by 
 the preacher of the one universal and ultimate gospel. They 
 are a culture and a spirit which, on the one hand, will permit 
 
46 CHURCH HISTORY AS A MODE OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 him to "call no man abandoned;" and which, on the other 
 hand, will permit him, with the deepest reverence, and divest- 
 ing them of all pantheistic significance, to repeat as his own 
 the words : 
 
 " I am owner of the sphere, 
 
 Of the seven stars and the solar year. 
 
 Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain, 
 
 Of Lord Christ's heart and Shakespeare's strain." 
 
 (ill.) CHURCH HISTORY AS A MODE OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 But History is not only a science, and a science entitled by 
 its peculiar culture of the student to a lofty position among 
 the theological disciplines. Its highest claim upon the can- 
 didate for the sacred ministry will come into view, only as we 
 follow him into the distinctive work of his sacred calling. I 
 compelled to treat this last and, practically, most impor- 
 tant of the related subjects of this discourse, in a summary 
 manner. I state, however, the exact relation of Church 
 History to the work of the preacher, when I say that Church 
 History is a mode of the gospd, and add that it is inferior 
 to no other mode as a Jwuiiletical mode of the gospel. 
 
 It is a distinction of Christianity, among the religions of 
 the world, that, while its substance is one, its largeness and 
 vitality enable it to exist in many literary forms. To assure 
 ourselves that this is true, we need go no further than to 
 the written Word itself. It is the one gospel of the grace of 
 God that is present in the lyrics of the Psalter, in the recorded 
 visions of the prophets, in the life of Jesus Christ, in the 
 History of the Apostolic Church, in the familiar and horta- 
 tory letters and addresses of the Apostles to the several 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A MODE OF THE GOSPEL. 4? 
 
 churches, and in the profound theological and ethical treatise 
 addressed by the Apostle Paul to the Church at Rome. 
 These are consubstantial, in that the truth which all embody 
 and express is the one truth revealed by God for the salvation 
 of men. But, in each case, the truth reveals itself in a new 
 literary mode. I do not stop to inquire whether it was the 
 recognition of this fact that gave form to the theological sem- 
 inaries of our Church ; but content myself with the statement, 
 that the course of study in these seminaries would not have 
 been different, had this been made the principle of its organi- 
 zation. For the several departments of the course do not differ 
 in the subjects brought under review, but in the point of view 
 from which the subjects are regarded, and, as a consequence, 
 in the modes in which they are presented. The subject, in- 
 deed, is one. It is the truth, as I have said, which has been 
 revealed by God for man's salvation. This truth, it is the 
 function of the Chairs of Sacred Literature, by means of textual 
 and literary criticism and exegesis, to unfold. The truth thus 
 unfolded. Systematic Theology, after associating it with the 
 a priori elements which the revealed truth itself implies, 
 classifies and re-presents in an articulated body of Divinity. 
 I should do injustice to the important department of Apolo- 
 getics were I to say that it deals only with the defense of 
 Christianity as distinct from Christianity itself. Apologetics, 
 to employ the fine statement of Dr. Henry B. Smith, "arrays 
 the whole contents and substance of the Christian faith for 
 defense and for defensive assault." The department of 
 Church Polity exhibits this same, truth, as it organizes into a 
 visible society those whom it calls out from the race. Church 
 
48 CHURCH HISTORY AS A MODE OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 History is an exhibition of this same truth, in its predestined 
 activity, determining the life of the Church and modifying the 
 hfe of the world. And the department of Sacred Rhetoric 
 seizes the truth, in all the forms into which it has been wrought 
 by the other disciplines, and reorganizes them in order to 
 form the ultimate literary product of the pulpit — the sacred 
 discourse. 
 
 If I have correctly described the Theological course, it 
 follows that Church History is the gospel itself ; the gospel 
 in a historical as distinguished from a theological, or apolo- 
 getic, or Biblical mode. It is the gospel as it exhibits itself 
 in the life of the Church and the world. If this is tr;ie, it 
 is no less a proper subject of pulpit discourse than is Christian 
 doctrine. If the preacher is in the line of his duty when, 
 under the guidance of the art of sacred discourse, he con- 
 structs the doctrinal, or expository, or ecclesiastical sermon, 
 he does not step beyond the line when he constructs and 
 delivers the historical sermon. Indeed, the historical sermon 
 possesses the great merit of presenting the gospel as it is 
 revealed in actual life ; and it possesses the further merit of a 
 most striking congruity with Revelation itself. For the Word 
 of God is predominantly History, even when Prophecy is not 
 regarded as History; and Prophecy is properly regarded as 
 the divinely inspired History of the future. 
 
 I limit my remarks, touching the relations of Church His- 
 tory to the work of the preacher, to this single subject, be- 
 cause I believe that the pulpit of our Church has denied 
 itself the exercise of an important power by its failure to 
 employ largely this mode of gospel discourse. I plead, 
 therefore, not only in behalf of a larger infusion of the his- 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A MODE OF THE GOSPEL. 49 
 
 torical element in the doctrinal and expository sermon ; but 
 in behalf, also, of the sermon of which the Historical is the 
 dominant element; of the sermon in which the gospel 
 is held forth, as it appears in the lives of men and women, 
 whose biographies are History. Did time permit me tO 
 make this plea in detail, I would not content myself with the 
 mere justification of the historical discourse, on the ground 
 that it is a preaching of the Gospel. For it possesses many 
 special and important elements of homiletical value, some of 
 which I can indicate only in single sentences. Of these, 
 perhaps the most obvious is the catholic and irenic character 
 which the element of History gives to the sermon. More- 
 over, it is a well-recognized law of discourse, that the impact 
 of truth concretely stated is far more powerful than tlie impact 
 of the same truth when stated in abstract terms ; and if this 
 is true of every form of discourse, it is true especially of the 
 Christian sermon, of which the end is to arouse the will to 
 vigorous evangelical action. Nor is this all. A study of the 
 sermon as a literary product will reveal the fact that it is not 
 merely a lecture and not merely an oration. It combines in 
 itself both the didactic and the oratorical elements. The 
 preacher must not only present the truth clearly ; he must 
 present it also dynamically. The sermon is a didactic oration : 
 and a moment's reflection will convince us that History, just 
 because it exhibits the living and dramatic movement of the 
 truth, is the mode of the gospel, which most naturally yields 
 itself to the construction of such a discourse. It is also true, 
 that the doctrines, both of Biblical and of Systematic Theol- 
 ogy, derive, from their careers in the life of the Church as 
 narrated by Church History, their m.ost striking confirmation; 
 
50 CHURCH HISTORY AS A MODE OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 confirmation, indeed, of the very kind which the sacred orator 
 can most favorably employ. And, finally, an individual doc- 
 trine can not be expounded more forcibly in an oratorical 
 manner, than in closest association with the historical per- 
 sonage who illustrated or defended it; so that even when the 
 sermon is substantially theological, it may well be formally 
 historical. The mystery of the Trinity can not be presented 
 in a form more profoundly interesting than in association with 
 the heroic life of Athanasius the Great. And what is true 
 of the doctrine of the Trinity, as associated with Athanasius, 
 is true of the doctrines of the sovereignty of God and of justi- 
 fication by faith, as associated with the lives and work of John 
 Calvin and of Martin Luther. 
 
 The time is not distant, let us hope, when, in the pulpits of 
 our Church, the sermon of History will be given a place side 
 by side with the sermon of Theology and the sermon of Expo- 
 sition. It is true, that History can never displace, or be sub- 
 stituted for School Divinity. Whoever has attentively read the 
 History of the development of Systematic Theology, from 
 John of Damascus onward, through the labors of the noble 
 succession of great minds and lofty spirits of the Mediaeval 
 Church, the Master of the Sentences, Anselm of Canter- 
 bury, the Angel of the Schools, and John Wessel; through 
 the Loci Connimncs of Melancthon and the Institutes of Cal- 
 vin at the Reformation; and, finally, through the abundant 
 discussions and systems and symbols from the Reformation 
 to our own day — must have reached the conclusion, that Chris- 
 tianity being what it is, and the human mind being what it 
 is, the system of Christian Doctrine, organized by the laws of 
 thought, is an inevitable product. The confessions of the 
 
CHURCH HISTORY AS A MODE OF THE GOSPEL. $1 
 
 Christian Church are, without exception, theological confes- 
 sions; and it is safe to predict that, whatever may be the 
 Christian confessions of the future, they will be no less sys- 
 tematic in form than those of the past have been. Whenever 
 Christian faith has jbeen strong, the tendency to systematize 
 Christian truth has been correspondingly powerful. I am not agi- 
 tated by the fear, therefore, which has of late been expressed, 
 that the discipline of Systematic Theology will, in any degree, 
 lose its power to awaken the interest, or its influence in giving 
 form, to the preaching of the ministry. Such a loss would 
 be a calamity, indeed; for it would be the result and 
 token of a diminished faith in Christianity itself. But 
 History is a mode of the gospel as really as is Systematic 
 Theology. For that reason History should be given a place; 
 as, on the ground of its special homiletical value, it should be 
 given a prominent place in Christian preaching. Were this 
 place given to History in the pulpits of our churches— were 
 the preaching of the Gospel, as it reveals itself in the recorded 
 life of the Church, to become frequent and general — the power 
 which the Church derives from the labors of the pulpit would 
 be greatly multiplied. For the History of Christianity is, 
 after all, both its most moving presentation and its most con- 
 vincing argument. I indulge the hope that the students of 
 this Seminary will not regard History as a science and a 
 discipline only; as, therefore, only distantly related to the 
 great work of preaching the Gospel. Remembering the lofty 
 passage in the inspired Epistle to the Hebrews, in which the 
 gospel of faith is proclaimed in the lives of those who, in a 
 less favored age, lived and died in trust of God, they will 
 need no further justification, as they find and preach the 
 
52 CHURCH HISTORY AS A MODE OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 gospel of God's redeeming grace in the History of the fathers, 
 and martyrs, and confessors, and reformers of the Church of 
 Christ; who, through faith, "subdued kingdoms and wrought 
 righteousness, and of whom the world was not worthy." 
 
 I have thus endeavored to unfold the idea of Church His- 
 tory, and so to justify its claim to a high place among the 
 theological sciences ; to defend it in claiming a chair second 
 to that of no other discipline of the theological school ; and 
 finally, by presenting it as a mode of the gospel, to state the 
 intimate relation which it sustains to the work of the sacred 
 ministry. Profoundly convinced of the truth of the views 
 which it has been the design of this address to explain and 
 defend, I regard the work to which you have summoned me 
 as a work of the highest dignity and of the first importance. 
 It is fitting, therefore, that I close as I began ; with a grateful 
 expression- of my sense of the high honor you have done me, 
 in making the discipline of Church History my special trust. 
 But the work is no less difficult than it is honorable and im- 
 portant. The difficulty of the work never appeared so great 
 to me as it appears to-day, at the close of a year of laborious 
 but delightful service. But, having obeyed what I believe to 
 have been the call of God to engage in labor, the end of 
 which is to display the power and glory of his kingdom of 
 grace, it is my duty and privilege confidently to invoke his 
 sufficient aid. I invoke it, in faith of the truth — revealed in 
 his Word and confirmed by the History of his Church — that 
 when He calls his servants to work too great to be performed 
 in their unaided strength and wisdom, He supplements their 
 activity by his own, to the end that no labor in Him may be 
 in vain. 
 
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