YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

PROGRESSIVE
RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN
AMERICA

PROGRESSIVE
RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
IN AMERICA
A SURVEY OF THE ENLARGING
PILGRIM FAITH
By
JOHN WRIGHT BUCKHAM
Professor of Christian Theology in Pacific School of Religion
Author of " Personality and the Christian Ideal,'"''
"Mysticism and Modern Life,''' etc.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1919

COPYRIGHT^ I919, BY JOHN WRIGHT BUCKHAM
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

DEDICATED
TO IWY STUDENTS IN
PACIFIC SCHOOL OF RELIGION
IN RECOGNITION
OF THEIR EARNEST AND OPEN-MINDED LOVE
OF TRUTH

PREFACE
This volume aims to do for a movement in
American theology something of that which
Principal Tulloch's Religious Thought in Great
Britain during the Nineteenth Century did for a
better known period in English and Scotch the
ology. The studies which it comprises keep close
to the personalities through whom the move
ment arose and progressed. They are biographi
cal appreciations as well as theological studies.
If in some cases they suggest eulogies, or even
panegyrics, it is because personal contact has
begotten in the author a deep, but he trusts not
unintelligent, admiration for men whose breadth
and earnestness of thought issued from a like
nobility of mind and character. There are times
when estimates, however judicial, become in
evitable tributes. The writer hardly needs to
state that the volume is largely the result of
gratitude to minds that have stimulated and
enriched his own.
While it would be too sanguine to assume that
at the present time there is any marked concen
tration of attention upon religious thought,
there is a certain steady interest in a subject so

viii PREFACE
vital, augmented as the general mind settles
back upon permanent spiritual concerns after
its absorption in the Great War. The inherent
attraction of the history of the growth of relig
ious thought is quickened in this case by the
proximity of the tercentenary of the founding of
Pilgrim New England, with all the deeply sacred
associations that attach to that notable event,
including its fruitage in this development of the
Pilgrim faith.
In entitling this a survey of progress in Ameri
can religious thought the author does not intend
to imply that progress began with the men or
the movement described. On the contrary, it
commenced with some of the earliest members
of the colonial ministry, as a study of New Eng
land theology plainly discloses. There was an
ardent sincerity in the religious life and thought
of New England from the first which lit more
than one lamp of original thought that was not
hid under a bushel. Yet those earlier liberal
thinkers were isolated. The movement here de
scribed won. its way by cooperation. Nor would
the author give the impression that he has no
sense of the place and value of intelligent con
servatism in religious thought, exerting, as it
does, a wise and helpful restraint upon too im-

PREFACE ix
petuous and ill-considered advance. Yet con
servatism, though essential and useful, is not
of the first importance as compared with
thought that wins new ground for coming gen
erations. The chronologies which I have been advised
to Include call for a word of comment. While
they are at best but symbols — often clanging
cymbals — they serve to some extent as indica
tions of the movement of a life, inner as well as
outer, toward its larger ends. In the preparation
of these I have been indebted in large measure
to the several biographies referred to and to
that Invaluable record of contemporary history,
Who's Who in America, as well as to Information
personally acquired.
To my colleagues and others who have lent
encouragement and assistance I extend hearty
thanks. If something of the mental and spiritual
uplift which have come through the preparation
of these studies communicates itself, it will prove
to have been a fruitful task, — yielding a fresh
sense of the depth and scope of Christianity as
it reveals Itself In the enlarging thought of these
progressive Interpreters of the Pilgrim faith.
JOHN WRIGHT BUCKHAM
Berkeley, California

CONTENTS
I. Introduction: Horace Bushnell and
THE Liberators 3
II. Theodore T. Munger: The New The
ology Defined and Related 55
III. George A. Gordon: The New Theology
Universalized 85
IV. William J. Tucker: The New Theol
ogy IN Action 145
V. Egbert C. Smyth and the Andover
Theology 187
VI. Washington Gladden and the Social
Theology 217
VII. Newman Smyth and Later Representa
tives of Theological Progress 261
VIII. Conclusion : The Future of Theology
IN America 307
Index 341

PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
IN AMERICA
CHAPTER I
HORACE BUSHNELL AND THE LIBERATORS

HORACE BUSHNELL
1802. April 14. Birth in Litchfield, Conn.
1821. United with church in New Preston, Conn.
1823. Entered Yale College.
1827-28. Taught school in Norwich, Conn.
1827. Graduated from Yale College.
1828-29. Associate editor of Journal of Commerce, New York.
1829-31. Tutor at Yale College. Pursued law studies.
183 1. Entered Yale Divinity School.
1833. May 23. Ordained pastor of North Church in
Hartford, Conn.
1833. Sept. 13. Married in New Haven, Mary Apthorp.
1841. Received degree of Doctor of Divinity frora Wesleyan
University, Middletown, Conn.
1845. Visited Europe in search of health.
1849. Hartford Central Association discussed the book,
"God in Christ." Errors not found fundamental.
1850. Remonstrances and Complaints of Fairfield West
Association to Hartford Central Association upon
their action in the case of Dr. Bushnell.
1852. North Church of Hartford withdrew from Consocia
tion.
1854. Protest of the Pastoral Union to the pastors and
churches of New England.
1856. Life in California.
1856. Invited to the presidency of the College of California.
Declined in 1861, after rendering valuable service.
1859. Resigned from North Church, Hartford, on account
of continued ill-health, and against unanimous wish
of the people.
1876. February 17. Death in Hartford, Conn.

PROGRESSIVE
RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
IN AMERICA
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
HORACE BUSHNELL AND THE LIBERATORS
History, commencing as a chronicle of events,
has widened into an ampler account of human
life, including not only its outer incidents but
its inner movements. Close to the heart of
history is religion — at first instinctive, in
articulate, unaware of its own content, but
gradually becoming self-conscious and creating,
as do other forms of experience, a science,
theology. Viewed as a dogmatic systemism, theology
has lost Its interest; viewed as a progressive
science, in the light of the principle of develop
ment, it regains its hold upon human interest

4 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
and confidence. Deny the fact, or the possibility,
of progress in theology and its whole area ap
pears only as a field of dry bones. Admit this
principle and the search for ultimate truths
takes on not only life and attractiveness but
large and genuine import. Thanks to the
recognition of its progressive nature theology,'
after a period of due abasement, gives promise
of recovering its true place and mission. If
religion is a vital human interest, theology
cannot be inconsequential. For theology is the
flesh and bones as well as the every-day garment
of religion, without which it cannot preserve its
normal Hfe, much less its self-respect.

The development of religious thought in
America, as elsewhere, is closely bound up with
the wider movement of thought of which it is a
part. Yet it has a certain continuity of its own
which calls for more careful study than it has
received. This becomes Increasingly clear as the
attention given to the history of European
theology is compared to that which American
theology has won.' Whatever the disparity,
' L A. Dorner closed his History of Protestant Theology with
a survey of American theology. It occupies three pages out of
a thousand; but it was written in 1867.

INTRODUCTION 5
American religious thought is by no means
negligible. The construction of our religious and theologi
cal history is going forward steadily. Such recent
histories as F. H. Foster's "History of the New
England Theology," Woodbrldge Riley's "Amer
ican Thought," the King's Chapel lectures on
"The Religious History of New England,"
and such biographies as Allen's "Jonathan
Edwards," Chadwick's "Channing," Hunger's
"Horace Bushnell," and Allen's "Phillips
Brooks" are disclosing something of the direc
tion as well as the resources of American theology.
The present volume is chiefly concerned with
a movement and a group of men as yet but
meagerly estimated, which is in fact but just
passing from the stage, but whose contribution
to theological progress is clear enough to call
for analysis and appreciation. This company of
Christian thinkers entered upon its task upon
soil made ready by the liberators and pioneers
of progressive religious thought In America —
whose work it will be necessary to consider
briefly in order to gain a proper perspective.
Chief among these was Horace Bushnell, to
whom will be given the greater part of this
introductory chapter.

6 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.

II

Bushnell was in some respects almost as
truly the father of the later constructive
development of American theology as was
Jonathan Edwards of the earlier.' Each was an
original, creative mind; and, like every such
mind, each continues creative and potential.
Theirs Is not a single Impact, once exerted, now
withdrawn. We go back constantly to such
minds not only to secure more comprehensive
insights but for fresh Impetus and incentive.
They may not be retired as mere historic and
defunct figures; they are among us still, for
"spirit Is when and where it energizes" and
" the dead live when we think of them." ^
This Is notably true of Bushnell. The last
twenty-five years have witnessed a greatly
' "Other thinkers were moving in the same direction; he
led the movement in New England and wrought out a great de
liverance." (T. T. Munger: Horace Bushnell, p. 413.) "He had
a vast influence upon theology in America." (Williston Walker:
Encyclopedia Britannica, nth ed.; article on "Bushnell.") "I
venture the prediction that posterity will accord Bushnell no
second place among the prophets of these latter days and that
the verdict of history will pronounce him one of the greatest
religious geniuses which Christianity has hitherto produced."
(George B. Stevens, speaking at the New Haven observance of
the Bushnell centenary.)
'C. H. Dickinson: The Christian Reconstruction of Modern
Life, pp. 92, 94.

INTRODUCTION 7
enhanced estimate of his part In theological
advance and a fresh sense of the unexhausted
treasures of his productive personality. He
stood very much alone in his relation to most
American theologians, out of harmony with his
immediate predecessors and contemporaries,
unfamiliar with the deeper mind of the greatest
of his forerunners. There is no Indication that
Bushnell knew Edwards' writings to any extent
at first hand, else possibly he might have gotten
from him something of that sense of the validity
of intuitivism which came to him through Cole
ridge; and thus the line of continuity might
have been a more direct one. Yet that matters
less than the fact that in spite of the deep and
apparently impassable chasm between these
two productive American thinkers, there is,
nevertheless, an unconscious bond. It consists
in that reliance upon spiritual intuition which
characterized them both. But for that, there
would be little in common between them. The
two belong to different theological eras. They
are farther apart than are Augustine and
Edwards or Clement of Alexandria and Bush
nell. Edwards' mysticism and idealism had been
lost to sight in the wastes of his Calvinistic
system and Bushnell knew him only as the

8 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
protagonist of sovereignty and the antagonist
of freedom, the Titan of the old theology.
The legacy of the New England theology
gave to Bushnell a heavy task. It left more to
reject than to aid, more to halt than to help him.
He had to clear away the intricate entanglement
of doctrines alien to pure Christianity that had
grown up in the somber shadows of Edwards'
Calvinism, in order to let in the light. This
mission he fulfilled with signal success, for he
was a typical pioneer, with all the vigor, cour
age, and determination — and detachment frora
the past — of a pioneer. Builder of roads,
theological reconstructor, Bushnell forged his
own way ahead with relatively little dependence
upon others. Ill
The first task that confronted him was to
deliver the religious life of his day from the
bondage of inflexibility and obscurantism that
fettered it and to restore to it naturalness and
reality. This he did in that very humble but
potent initial crusade in behalf of a wider
i Christianity, "Christian Nurture" (1846).'
' Dr. A. C. McGiffert judges of this book that it "did per
haps more than any other single agency to break down the extreme
individualism of the old Puritan theology of America." See
The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas, p. 277, note.

INTRODUCTION 9
There was no point at which the rigidity,
the barrenness, the inertia of the older theology,
as it affected the Christian life, showed itself
more baldly than In its treatment of the reli
gion of child life. It bound the spontaneous
budding of the religious instinct to one inflexible
and extreme pattern. It starved some of the
most normal instincts. This is reflected in the
words of Harriet Beecher Stowe: "With all
New England's earnestness and practical effi
ciency, there is a long withering of the soul's
more ethereal portion, — a crushing out of the
beautiful, — which is horrible." The offense
thus committed was more than against a single
phase in the development of the inner life. It
wronged the organic nature, the unity and
vitality and freedom of religion itself. Bushnell
saw this and arraigned both the theory and the
practice. Our very theory of religion is that men are to
grow up in evil and be dragged into the church of
God by conquest. The world is to lie in halves and
the kingdom of God is to stretch itself side by side
with the kingdom of darkness, making sallies into
it and taking captive those who are sufficiently
hardened and bronzed in guiltiness to be converted.
Thus we assume even the absurdity of all our ex
pectations in regard to the possible advancement
of human society and the universal prevalence of

ID PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
Christian virtue. And thus we throw an air of
extravagance and unreason over all we do.'
He did not make the mistake, however, of
pronouncing human nature wholly pure and
good, so that all that is needed is to let it unfold
of itself.
There is no so unreasonable assumption, none so
wide of all just philosophy as that which proposes
to form a child to virtue by simply educing or
drawing out what is in him. The growth of Christian
virtue is no vegetable process, no" mere onward
development. It involves a struggle with evil, a fall
and rescue.^
Yet in spite of this discipline of the soul by
struggle with an innate "pravity," Bushnell
saw that the life of God is In the life of the race;
that the church, with all its imperfections, is a
"body of believers"; that "the organic unity
of the family" is a reality upon which Chris
tianity can count. The steady current of the
Christian faith flows normally Into the life of
successive generations and forms an organic
spiritual continuum which cannot be ignored
without great loss.
It Is not to be supposed that because Bushnell
thus laid stress upon the, nurture side of Chrls-
' Christian Nurture, Ist ed., pp. 25, 26.
'Ibid., p. 15.

INTRODUCTION ii
tianity, he disputed or ignored its redemptive
mission. To this he had already given full
allegiance In an article in "The Christian
Spectator" entitled "The Spiritual Economy
of Revivals of Religion" (1838), In which he
sought to correct the abuses and misconcep
tions of revivals so that they might " constitute
an ebb and flow measured only by the pulses
of the Spirit." His purpose throughout was not
to limit but to enlarge tjie recognition of the
methods and workings of that Divine Spirit
who Is as varied in his operations as the varia
tions of human temperament and as multiform
as the gifts of the Divine grace.
The clarity and cogency of Bushnell's ap
prehension of the principle of development under
lying "Christian Nurture" appears in a paper
published in "The New Englander" in 1844^
reprinted in "Christian Nurture" — entitled
"Growth, not Conquest, the True Method of
Christian Progress," in the course of which he
affirms: To roll a snowball and to grow an oak are not the
same thing. Enlargement of volume is a result in
both cases; but beyond this they have nothing in
common. In one the result is wrought by external
force; in the other by a vital force within, ... In
the snowball there is at no time any internal power

12 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
of production or self enlargement. Not one of the
particles in its cold body can it quicken or fruc
tify; whereas in the tree there is a vital self-active
power.' From this the writer goes on to show the dis
tinguishing qualities of the "self-activity" of
the mind, manifesting an insight that fore
shadows William T. Harris' ardent and pro
found exposition of the same principle.^
IV
A second deliverance accomplished by Bush
nell lay in undermining the rationalism of the
New England theology and replacing it with a
theology of experience, in which intuition and
unity take the place of dogma and system.
This was a prophetic emancipation. It came
with abundant refreshment and promise of
new life, like the music of raindrops after a
drought, and was followed by verdure, blossom,
and fruitage as of a new and affluent season of
the soul.
The chief means by which this transformation
was effected was drastic. It consisted of his
well-known exposition of the deficiency and
' Christian Nurture, 1st ed., p. 147.
' See, e.g., W. T. Harris: Psychologic Foundations of Educa
tion.

INTRODUCTION 13
incapacity of language to serve as the medium
of religious truth. Here was a simple, under
standable, singularly effective, and yet very
radical critique of theology. So radical was It,
in fact, that for those who accepted It too un
reservedly it came near undermining not only
rationalism itself, but the very foundations of
theology as a science. The famous "Disserta
tion on Language" — which forms the Intro
duction to "God in Christ," — "Christ in
Theology," — consisting of replies to the at
tacks upon his position — the Andover address
"Dogma and Spirit," and "The Gospel a Gift
to the Imagination" constitute a unique and.
original chapter in theological method. The'
sincere and sensitive mind of Bushnell was
repulsed at the very beginning of his study of
theology by the systemism which held even the
virile mind of his teacher, Nathanael W.
Taylor, In Its iron vise. Seeking patiently for
some explanation of the curse of Ineptitude and j
stagnation which rested upon theology he
found It at length — so he thought — In the'
very nature of language, supplemented by its
incompetent aids, grammar and logic.
The long-sanctioned and authoritative theo
logical terms which so brow-beat the inquiring

14 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
mind and awe It into submission; whence are
they and how and why do they exercise so
Imperial an authority? Bushnell looked Into
their real nature and found — what.? Airy
symbols that rise like genii from mere physical
objects and relations. What are these impres
sive terms, he asked, but words, and what are
words but figures whose root is in the common
soil of every-day sensuous life? The revelation
almost overthrew his faith In theology itself.
"Words, words, words," — what Is It all but
this? Are we to be the dupes of these unstable
phantasmagoria, imagining them to be the
very substance of truth itself? But let Bushnell
speak for himself:
Words of thought or spirit are. not only inexact
in their significance, never measuring the truth or
giving its precise equivalent, but they always affirm
something which is false, or contrary to the truth
intended. They impute form to that which is
really out of form. They are related to the truth
only as form to spirit, — earthen vessels in which
the truth is borne, yet always offering their mere
flattery as being the truth itself.'
To this paralogism of language, aggravated
by grammar, there succeeds what seemed to
Bushnell the deception of logic, because of the
' God in Christ, ist ed., p. 48.

INTRODUCTION 15
Imperfections of which "the logical expounder
can make It certain by almost no degree of
caution that he Is not Imposing on himself by
spinning a theory that Is really of some word
or latent form of grammar In his language and
not of the consciousness itself." ' Moreover,
when by a process of elaborate "spinning," a co
herent system of unified thought is constructed,
it Is vitiated by the partiality or prejudice of
the mind, or system of thought, out of which
it Issued: "There is a form element in every
system of thought or doctrine which assimilates
all the words employed, insinuating Into them,
or Imposing upon them, a character partly
from Itself." '
By a process of criticism of which these
citations are hints, Bushnell formulated a brief
against the very Idea of theology which leaves
the too receptive reader wondering If theology
has any claim to reverence or even to respect.
Driven by these exposures of the inadequacy of
theology he falls back upon what he calls "a
Perceptive Power In Spiritual Llfe."^ He sees,
that Is, and does not hesitate to avow, that
as for himself and his spiritual kin, they are
' Christ in Theology, 1st ed., p. 85. » Ibid., p. 46.
' God in Christ, p. 93.

1 6 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
mystics. He concludes that this Is a "mystic
world," that "there Is something of a mystic
quality in almost every writing of the New
Testament." ' Thus he gives In his allegiance
to that attitude toward truth which has been
the resort of so many devout minds alienated
by the barrenness of rationalism.
The result of this critique was in the main
wholesome, for it was just this rationalistic
aspect of truth which was killing the New
England theology. Only, unhappily, Bushnell
carried his conclusions so far that In pruning
the tree of theology he all but killed It for such
minds as followed him easily In his criticism
but not so readily in his construction.
Reflecting upon these theological incompeten
cies and deficiencies, by a fine ascent to higher
level he is led to distinguish between theology
and what he termed "Divinity," — a kind of
truth-discovery that relies upon inspiration and
not upon reflection.
The student then will be a student, not of theology,
but, in a proper sense, of divinity. The knowledge
he gets will be divinity, filling his whole conscious
ness — a Living State and not a scheme of wise
sentences. He will be a man who understands God
as being indoctrinated or inducted into God, by
' God in Christ, p. 95.

INTRODUCTION 17
studies that are themselves inbreathings of the
divine love and power.'
The distinction is a valid and suggestive one,
provided It does not mean that theology as a
science should be relegated to oblivion In favor
of pure Intuition. For if there be not some true
and proper method by which the insights of
"Divinity" may be interpreted and unified a
true-science of theology,; Is impossible.

It is to the honor of Bushnell's catholic mind
1
and to the advantage of American theology that
this undaunted critic of theology, after all,
never got farther in his doubt of it than to ask
the question : " Is It probable that theology . . .
can ever become a science or attain to a fixed
and properly authoritative statement?" ^ For
a time he wavered in his own answer to that
question, but finally. In effect, answered it in
the affirmative. All through his persistently
honest and open-minded balancing of the
Infirmities and aspirations of theology, one may
detect the hesitation and unwillingness with
which he held back from committing himself
to a complete condemnation of theology. He
, " Christ in Theology, p. 67. ' Ibid., p. 86.

1 8 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
sees that it Is well for the mind to theologize,
though he thinks that "the exercise of system
or endeavor after system Is commonly a greater
benefit than the actually resulting systems pre
pared.'" He perceives that "to crucify the
instinct of system is, in one view, to crucify
the Intelligence." "I have a certain conviction,
whether I can show the reasons or not, that we
must have something, somehow held and ex
ercised, that may be called theology." ^ Thus
In spite of his radicalism, he refrains from the
condemnation of theology as a rational science
until at length he virtually not only concedes
its value but contributes to its advance.
There was In fact an Initial Insight of his that
kept Bushnell back from becoming a calumniator
and foe of theology and that formed the prin
ciple which lay at the very basis of his theory of
language, i.e., that this is a logos world, that
reason lies back of symbol. "There is a logos in
the form of things," he declares, "by which they
are prepared to serve as types or Images of what
is inmost in our souls." ^ The best proof, how
ever, that Bushnell transcended his deprecia
tion of theology is that he himself went on in his
' Christ in Theology, p. 8o. ' Ibid., p. 64.
3 God in Christ, p. 30.

INTRODUCTION 19
later books to construct the outlines of a science
of theology of large and organic rationality.
The fact is, he completely outgrew his theory
on the side of Its negations, as appears, for
example, in the preface to "Nature and the
Supernatural" in which he describes the volume
as follows:
Here is a wide hypothesis of the world, and the
great problem of life and sin and supernatural re
demption and Christ and a Christly Providence
and a divinely certified history and of superhuman
gifts entered into the world and finally of God as
related to all, which liquidates these stupendous
facts in issue between Christians and unbelievers
and gives a rational account of them.
Thus critic became constructor, so that we
now term him not only a great "divine," but a
great theologian.'
' Yet even when this is granted, we should not fail to recog
nize that Bushnell dealt theology a sore and unwarranted wound,
too much like those of the philistines, giving encouragement to
many to assume that specious contempt of theology which
to-day controls many minds who confuse theology with the arid
theologism which is its caricature. It was deficient knowledge
of its achievements and an immature exaggeration of its defects
which led Bushnell to his failure to recognize the full office of
reason in religion, to his identification of theology with terminol
ogy, and to the pan-credalism which led him to say, "So far
from suffering even the least consciousness of restraint or op
pression under any creed, I have been readier to accept as great a
number as fell in my way" (God in Christ, p. 82). Not that he
deserves depreciation for these misadventures. It was his
mission, not to explicate and defend theology, but to correct it

20 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
VI
A third great deliverance which Bushnell
effected, or at least greatly furthered, lay in
breaking down the dividing wall between nature
and the supernatural, revealing both as "parts
of one system." This was accomplished in his
"Nature and the Supernatural" (1858) which
was the true sequel and completion of his
"Christian Nurture." In this field of thought,
Bushnell, without being fully aware of it, as
saulted and despoiled that stronghold of scholas
ticism which had withstood the progress of
truth from the mediaeval theology onward, i.e.,
the conception of two separate realms, the
kingdoms of Spirit and Nature with their cor
responding expHcants, Revelation and Reason.
The segregation of the natural from the
spiritual, of Reason from Revelation, cherished
by Protestant as well as Catholic theology,
resulted in giving the supernatural an arbitrary,
unreal character, and in restricting revelation
to the covers of the Bible — interpreted with a
literal unhistorlcal rigidity — and in branding
for its departures from its high calling, to restore that lost
"Divinity," with which it should be "saturated" in order to
become a science at all. But it is irrelevant if not irreverent to
find flaws in so noble a gift of God as this fertile and afiluent
mind and its fruitage.

INTRODUCTION 21
all the ordinary activities and intents of life
as alien from religion. Because of this mis
conception religion had come to seem, too
often, only a sickly and artificial light, playing
like pale moonbeams upon a cold and loveless
world. Under the sway of this scholasticism
New England theology, while esteeming herself
the guardian and nursing mother of religion,
had in reality become estranged from the very
spirit of religion and had grown frigidly and
drearily duallstlc. No one saw this mistake
more clearly than Bushnell, and he had the
courage to expose it. The way in which by a
well-directed assault he pierced this decadent
rationalistic system and brought it to Its fall
was by showing that man himself belongs
primarily and chiefly to the supernatural realm.
Personality, as he saw, is a spiritual reality,
domiciling in nature.
The very idea of our personality is that of a being
not under the law of cause and effect, a being super
natural. This one point, clearly apprehended, all
the difficulties of our subject are at once relieved,
if not absolutely and completely removed.'
Here was a revolutionary principle; as its
proponent very well understood. "If any one is
• Nature and the Supernatural, 2d ed., p. 43.

22 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
startled or shocked [hy what appears to be
the extravagance of this position," Bushnell
reminds him that "we, as powers not In the
line of cause and effect, can set causes in nature
at work in new combinations otherwise never
occurring, and produce, by our action upon
nature, results which she, as nature, could never
produce by her own internal acting." '
With this clear perception of the priority
and worth of personality as a supernatural
reality, It Is not surprising to find Bushnell
molding his whole theory of nature to conform
to the interests and aims of personality. From
this it follows. In his mind, that "the world Is
governed supernaturally In the interest of
Christianity." Viewed from this standpoint
miracles become for him manifestations of a
spiritual order; for a miracle is only "a super
natural act, an act, that Is, which operates on
the chain of cause and effect from without the
chain." "^ Not that he would call every such act
a miracle, reserving the term for such only as
"move our wonder and evince the presence of
a more than human power." ^ This opens the
way for his famous argument for the contlnu-
' Nature and the Supernatural, 2d ed., p. 43.
» Ibid., p. 336. 3 Ihid,, p. 336.

INTRODUCTION 23
ance of miracles' — a contention In which he
strains his principle to the breaking point.
In consistent but mistaken correspondence
with this view of nature, as intended for the
uses of supernatural man, he pictures the dis
orders and deformities of creation antedating
man's arrival, disclosed by geology, as being
antitypes of human sin, foreseen and pre-
provided " antlclpatlve consequences" of man's
lapse into a spiritual deformity and disfigure
ment of which these misshapen forms in nature
should be the rebuking mirror.* So also the
"dark things" In our present contacts with
nature — pain, disease, danger, plague, in
sanity, mutabilities — are the disciplinary dis
pensations adapted for "moral uses." ^ By
trial and testing they aid us in the development
of personal character. Such was the moral
optimism of this courageous and confident
mind. There is a wealth of faith and courage in this
I view of nature. Here was no "Bridgewater
system" vainly striving to conceal the frowns
and wrinkles upon the face of life by well-
' Nature and the Supernatural, 2d ed., chap. XIV.
¦> Ibid., chap. VII.
' See The Moral Uses of Dark Things.

24 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
intentioned falsifications. And yet Bushnell's
eyes were holden from that more inclusive
knowledge of nature by means of which science
was about to help the theologian solve these
difficult problems In a very different manner.
"It is pathetic," as Munger remarks, "to
think of him standing on the borderland of
evolution, but not entering it. Few would have
so fully grasped its central meaning and clearly
traced It to its divine conclusion." ' Had he
had the advantages of that larger knowledge
of nature which has come since his day, without
relinquishing his hold upon the twofoldness of
the universe he might have realized the closer
intimacy between matter and spirit and the
light thrown upon his problem by the law of
development. As a matter of fact, man cannot
act wholly from without the chain of nature but
only as himself both within it and at the same
time transcending it. Had Bushnell perceived
this, he might have caught, as did Paul, indica
tions that nature is not only groaning and
travailing for the sake of man, but for her own
adoption. For she, too, has a part in the pre
liminary process of evolving personality —
though not herself the author of personality.
, ' Horace Bushnell, p. 344.

INTRODUCTION 25
In her are the germs of that freedom that
become conscious and personal in man. Nature
reaches forward. The very flower and tree, in
their own way, aspire.
And willing to be God, the worm
Flees through all the spires of form.'
It was this aspect of nature which Bushnell
failed to appreciate, not having entered the
kingdom of the truth of development where he
that is least Is greater than the greatest in the
realm of the static.
Yet it would be unjust to find fault for that
limitation in Bushnell's vision for which his
age, not he, was responsible. It was his mission
to Introduce a new and larger, if still imperfect,
sense of the unity of the realm of God, and to
emphasize that priority of spirit to nature,
through which alone their true unity Is appre
hensible. VII
The fourth, and on the whole perhaps the
greatest, service of Bushnell to theology lay
in what he did toward the recovery of Christ
as the central light and potency of Christianity.
It Is passing strange how the New England
theology, through Its bondage to Calvinism,
' Emerson: Journal, vol. VII, p. 17.

26 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
had allowed the real Christ to fade out of Chris
tianity, leaving a frame without a picture. It
is true that the theological Christ essential to
the "plan of redemption" was made much of,
but he was but a pale and unreal reflection of
the Christ of the Gospels. Bushnell relllumined
Christianity with the light of the true Christ.
His was the "Gospel of the Face" — a face
which was "as the sun shining in his strength"
and lighting up all the heavy shadows and dark
recesses of an otherwise dismal theological
world. The church of America has not yet
realized to the full the Christ-ward tendency
and outcome of Bushnell's influence, nor the true
greatness of the conception of Christ which'
he has given to her. The superb tenth chap
ter of "Nature and the Supernatural," "The
Character of Jesus Forbidding his Possible
Classification with Men," has been republished
separately and has become widely known and
valued. In spite of the presence in it of meta
physical presuppositions no longer regnant, it
is a masterpiece. But far profounder and more
moving is the noble Interpretation of Christ
buried In the midst of a somewhat barren dis
cussion in "The Vicarious Sacrifice" (1866).'
' Part II of the volume.

INTRODUCTION 27
This, too, might well be given separate form
and circulation. In Its deep feeling, its elevation
and its tenderness, this description of Christ
carries the mind back to that morning vision
when, with glowing face and vibrant voice,
Bushnell exclaimed to his wife, "I have seen the
Gospel." ' It was a mystical vision, similar in
nature to Paul's, that gave Bushnell his gospel.
But other factors enter into his appreciation of
Christ, — searching analysis, intensive reflection,
subtle discernment, large and releasing ideas of
God and life and truth. It would be difficult to
find a nobler presentation than Is here made of
the true nature of moral power as it appears in
Christ — its humility, selflessness, cumulative
character, self-control, tenacity, patience, en
durance. Such a presentation of Christ as this
could come only from one who had known Him
in the Intimacy of such a discipleship as he
himself described when he wrote, "It wants a
Chrlsted man to know who Christ really is and
to show Him forth with a meaning."" Reverence
and affection reach their climax In this picture
of the blended moral majesty and humility of
the Son of Man :
' See Munger's Horace Bushnell, p. 1 14.
" "The Gospel of the Face," Sermons on Living Subjects (1872),

28 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
There was never, we may safely say, any such
instance of self-devotion among men, never so little
of heat and excitement, never such firmness coupled
with such tenderness and gentleness, never such
oblivion of popularity, never such incapacity to be
humbled by ignominy. So that if we speak of heroes,
we are tempted either to say that he is no hero at all,
or else the only hero. And here it is that the moral
power we have seen him obtaining culminates. In
this fact, the almost feminine passivity we are likely
to figure as the total account of his character, reveals
the mighty underwork and robust vigor of a really
immortal confidence and tenacity.'
By the power of Christ, Bushnell means much
the same as that which is now termed his
personality, a power which his resurrection both
attested and released.
It is true that on the metaphysical side
Bushnell's Christology Is far from convincing.
He gives an undue prominence to the Virgin
Birth, based on an uncritical acceptance of the
narratives. He reopens the chasm between the
divine and human, which he had closed by
declaring man himself a supernatural being,
and places Jesus wholly and unreservedly on
the divine side of it. He fails to distinguish the
Jesus of History from the Christ of Faith. It
is true that these defects are characteristic of
' The Vicarious Sacrifice, p. 218.

INTRODUCTION 29
the period in which he wrote but they are
detractive and stand in the way of a fuller ap
preciation of the otherwise unequaled mastery
of his portrait of Jesus Christ in his moral and
personal aspects. Yet there is a freshness and
originality not only In his conception of Christ
but pervading all of his thought that mark him
as one of those creative minds whose mission
is to enkindle others. The presence of such a
mind often means more of gain to the world
than either fullness or flnallty of thought.
VIII
Judged by the standards of system and con
sistency Horace Bushnell cannot be termed a
great theologian. He was rather prophet, or,
as he has often been called, poet, than theologian,
in the accepted sense. He was too impulsive,
too vivid, to hold himself to exactness.
"Finding the air full of wings about me,
buoyant and free, I let them come under and
lift," he writes. As has been said of him, he
thought first and read afterward. It might
be added that he spoke his first thoughts,
without waiting for his second, much less for
his third thoughts; and It is third thoughts that
count for most in any field of truth.

30 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
Though not a systematic theologian, how
ever, Bushnell was much more. He was an
open-minded one; and open-mlndedness Is too
rare a virtue in theology. In bringing out his
second volume on the Atonement, "Forgiveness
and Law" (1874), which was intended not
merely to supplement but in a measure to sub
stitute a belated Idea for the latter part of
"The Vicarious Sacrifice," Bushnell uses these
noble and self-effacing words which might well
be pondered by the whole brotherhood of
theologians :
It seems to be required of me by the unexpected
arrival of fresh light [ John Robinson redevivus\ that
I should make a large revision of my former treatise
entitled The Vicarious Sacrifice. . . . Having under
taken to find the truth on this great subject at
whatever cost I am not willing to be excused from
further obligation because the truth appears to be
outgrowing my published expositions. There is
no reason, personal to myself, why I should be
fastened to my own small measures, when larger
measures are given me. Besides, how shall man ever
get rid of his old sins, when he cannot let go his
little outgrown opinions?
If there is such a thing as the "scientific spirit"
in theology — a spirit not so far from that of
the Kingdom as Jesus defines it — surely it
appears here in one of Its characteristic aspects,

INTRODUCTION 31
the willingness to substitute a later hypothesis
for an earlier.
Bushnell was ever a learner, a growing mind
to the end, a true progressive, in the sense of
steadily making progress on himself, leaving
small measures for larger, deep truth for deeper.
Through all the storms of controversy which
raged about him he remained calm and unem-
blttered and kept the "mind of Christ." The
ethical integrity of his character matched that
of his thought. The men who supported him
and the theology for which he stood, Henry M.
Goodwin,' A. S. Cheseborough, Leonard Bacon,
and others, were conscious that they were
sustaining no reed shaken by the wind but
honoring a sturdy and Independent spirit and
one who was doing for them more than they
could possibly do for him. They and the de
voted company of younger men whom he won
to himself in Hartford and elsewhere — includ
ing Joseph Twitchell, Edwin P. Parker, Theo-
'Dr. Goodwin's contribution to progressive theology de
serves larger recognition. His scholarly and thoughtful volume
Christ and Humanity (1875), inscribed to Horace Bushnell,
"whose profound and sanctified genius has made the world his
debtor," is based upon the doctrine of " the essential unity of the
divine and human as furnishing the ground and possibility of the
indwelling of God in man, and so of forming a true humanity
according to the ideal presented in the man Jesus" (p. 402).

32 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
dore T. Munger, and Washington Gladden — ¦
were drawn as much by his noble and com
panionable personality as by his luminous and
Invigorating thought. They found In him what
thousands have found who never saw his face,
the leadership and comradeship of a free, fear
less, and devoted lover and Interpreter of truth.
IX
Next to Horace Bushnell the greatest liberator
of American theological thought was Henry
Ward Beecher. Like Bushnell a child of the
Pilgrim heritage, his revolt from the Old
Theology was all the more significant In that it
was against doctrines ably taught and defended
by his own father, who, though a battler for a
modified Calvinism, was far too severe In his
theology for his sons.' His theology, like Bush
nell's, grew out of a mystical experience and,
like his, It centered In Christ. He too had his
mystical morning vision "when It pleased God
to reveal to my wandering soul the Idea that
' The high repute gained by Henry Ward should not be al
lowed to obscure the notable service of his talented brothers.
Edward, especially, was a vigorous underminer of theological
ruins and in his Age of Conflict and Age of Concord sought through
his doctrine of pre-existence to restore the conceptions of human
freedom and divine justice which Calvinism had obscured.

INTRODUCTION 33
it was his nature to love a man in his sins for
the sake of helping him out of them" and when
he felt that "nothing could praise Him enough
for the revelation of such a nature as that In
the Lord Jesus Christ." ' From that time on
Beecher, like Paul, had his "glorying In Christ
Jesus In things pertaining to God." ^ Christ
filled his horizon — to Its Infinite enlargement.
He saw God, man, life, nature, history, futurity,
everything, through Christ.
It Is customary to regard Beecher as first and
last a preacher and not at all as a theologian.
Such a view of him Is partial and inadequate.
It is true that his pulpit was his throne. He was
first of all a preacher. And yet there was as
much theology in Beecher's little finger as In
the loins of the average popular preacher. It
was theology of his own stamp, yet by no means
vagrant or erratic or out of touch with "the
faith once delivered to the saints," — and kept
by them only on condition of its being put to
usury. Like Bushnell, he was an intuitive
rather than a reflective or constructive thinker.
He divined his own mission when he said that
for many years he had been "hauling bricks
'Lyman Abbott and others: Henry Ward Beecher, p. 36.
' Rom. IS : 17.

34 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
for the new theology." His bricks have proved
sound and serviceable and have been built as
lively stones Into a spiritual temple.

If one wishes for a characteristic expression
of Beecher's theology, as it flowed pulsing and
harmonic from his soul, let him read his state
ment of bellef^made to the New York and
Brooklyn Association of Ministers upon the
occasion of his withdrawal from that body on
account of suspicions of his orthodoxy. ' Here
is something unique In the history of American
theology. The report of the event states that
Beecher seated himself on the platform and
in a familiar yet eloquent way poured out his
whole soul to his hearers. "Beginning in a
conversational tone and never raising his voice
very high, the speaker soon passed over the
negative side of his subject and began to set
forth his affirmative beliefs. As these gradually
led him to recall his own personal and Inward
experiences, he seemed to lose consciousness of
his audience. . . . He was carried away by one
of those very inspirations which he was describ-
' Reported in The Christian Union; republished in Lyman
Abbott's Henry Ward Beecher, p. 479.

INTRODUCTION 35
ing and when he spoke of the revelation of
Christ to himself as one who loved men because
they needed love, his face underwent a mar
velous change; it seemed transparent with a
radiant light."
"Spiritual Barbarism" was the subject upon
which he had been announced to speak and he
instanced among other forms of it the chapters
in the Westminster Confession concerning de
crees, election, reprobation, as exhibiting "ex
traordinary specimens of spiritual barbarism.^*
From this, after alluding to the suspicions of his
orthodoxy and the reasons for them, he passed
on to present a statement of his positive beliefs.
He prefaced It with a frank comment concerning
the relation of his theology to his own tempera
ment: I am impetuous. I am intense at times on subjects
that deeply move me. I feel as though all the ocean
were not strong enough to be the power behind my
words, nor all the thunders that were in the heavens,
and it is of necessity that such a nature as that
should give such intensity at times to parts of doc
trine as to exaggerate them when you come to bring
them into connection with a more rounded out and
balanced view.
Then came a gleam of light upon his early ex
perience :

36 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
I was sympathetic by nature, I was loving, I was
mercurial, I was versatile, I was imaginative. I was
I not a poet executively, but sympathetically. I was in
union with the whole universal life and beauty of
God's world and with al! human life. My earliest
religious training was at home. My father's public
teaching may be called alleviated Calvinism. Even
under that the iron entered my soul. There were
days and weeks in which the pall of death over the
universe could not have made it darker to my eyes
than those in which I thought, "If you are elected
you will be saved, and if you are not elected you will
be damned, and there is no hope for you."
Following this rehearsal of his early ex
perience, he gave a description of the Impression
of theology which he formed in his student days,
which he described as an "abyss of whirling
controversies that seemed to me to be filled
with all manner of evil things, with everything
but Christ." Then, on that memorable day
"whose high sun and glowing firmament and
waving trees are vivid yet" came his revelation
of Christ "as being God because He knew how
to love a sinner." Christ thus became the center
of his preaching.
I chopped a little of the regular orthodox theology,
that I might sprinkle it with the meal of the Lord
Jesus Christ. But my horizon grew larger and larger
in that one idea of Christ.

INTRODUCTION 37
Emerging upon a more detailed doctrinal
statement he took up the question, "What
doctrines are fundamental to the formation of
Christian character and to its complete de
velopment?" — a test of a sound theology
which the dogmatic theologian has not often
thought to apply. The first of such doctrines
he finds to be that of a Personal God :
Not seeable, not known by the senses, the full
circuit of His being not discerned except by moral
intuition, by the range of susceptibility, when the
down shining of the Holy Ghost comes to me I
know by an evidence within myself that is unspeak
ably more convincing to me than eye or hand or
ear can be, that there is a God and that He is my
God. Other fundamental Christian doctrines as he
outlines them are freshly and vitally conceived
and by no means out of harmony with historic
Christian doctrine. He afl^irms belief in the
Trinity as "not contrary either to reason or
the analogies of nature"; in Christ, as "God
manifest in the flesh"; In the Holy Spirit, "uni
versal, constant, imminent"; in Providence;
Miracles, "possible now" but "real in the times
gone by"; in Regeneration; Inspiration of
the Bible as "the record of the steps of God
in revealing Himself and His will to man";

38 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
in Atonement, as in Christ himself, and not a
philosophy of His nature or work; and In
Future Punishment as involved in "the nature
of the consequences of transgression."
There Is reality here, refreshing freedom from
cant and commonplace. The whole Is consist
ently, intensely, yet not narrowly Christo-
centrlc. This concentration of emphasis upon
Christ appears with peculiar vividness In these
words concerning prayer:
I cannot pray to the Father except through
Christ; I pray to Christ. I must. The way the
Spirit of God works with me makes it necessary
that I should have something I can clasp, and to
me the Father is vague. I believe in a Father but
the definition of Him in my vision is not to me what
the portraiture of Christ is. Though I say Father,
I am thinking of Christ all the time. That is my
feeling, that is my life, and so I have preached, so I
have taught those that came from Unitarian in
struction — never asking them to a technical argu
ment or proof, but simply saying, "You say you
can pray to the Father, but cannot to Christ. You
are praying to Christ; you don't know it. That
which you call Father is that which is interpreted
in Christ."
It would seem impossible that any associa
tion of Christian ministers could accept a
resignation from its membership based upon

INTRODUCTION 39
such a statement as this, especially as It was
made "in the greatest love and sympathy"
and only in order that this magnanimous soul
might not lay upon anyone else the responsi
bility of his views. Nor was the Association
guilty of such action. It asked him to reconsider
and withdraw his resignation. The Incident is
illustrative of the theological situation at the
time, as well as of the extent of Beecher's
service in vitalizing and expanding American
theology. The point at which Beecher did most to
bring the mind of the Church Into line with the
advance of thought was probably that at which
theology seemed to conflict with evolution, —
whose advent he hailed with enthusiastic
hospitality. It would be difiicult to parallel the
opportunity, or the skill with which it was used,
afforded to this teacher of the people when,
ion the 6th of January, 1883, he gave for the
first time his lecture on "Evolution and Revela
tion" In crowded Cooper Union Hall. It was a
sagacious and broad-minded interpretation of
evolution, defined as "the teaching of the divine
method of creation as gradual," In terms of its
religious and theological Implications and values.
Such popular expositions of theology may not

40 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
have done much to convince the scribes and
pharisees, but they helped greatly to save
religion from going down with the sinking of
decadent forms of doctrine, in the minds of
those who were watching to see how Chris
tianity would adjust itself to the new age.
The greatness of Henry Ward Beecher will
not be fully understood until he is recognized
as, in the words of Phillips Brooks, "a great
leader in the theological world, believing in the
Divine Christ and in eternal hope for mankind,"
as well as "a great preacher, a great leader, a
great patriot, a great man." ' The freedom
and force with which he uttered himself upon
subjects held to be dangerous and subversive
by the obscurantists made it easier for every
man in the pulpit to be true to his own convic
tion at a time when much depended upon the
readiness of theology to leave her "low-vaulted
past" and build "more stately mansions" for
the soul. XI
Next to Bushnell and Beecher, the two most
liberalizing and far-reaching voices in American
theology were probably those of William E.
' A. V. G. Allen: Life of Phillips Brooks, vol. II, p. 646.

INTRODUCTION 41
Channing (1780-1842) in an earlier day and
Phillips Brooks (1835-1893) in a later — both
outside of the orthodox ranks, yet both deriving
from its lineage and sharing to the full Its noble
heritage of intellectual and moral strength.
Channing was a great ethical reformer and'
doctrinal purifier. He was like fuller's soap and a
refiner's fire to the orthodox theology of his day.
Yet his mission was that of liberation from the
narrower Into the larger religious truth rather
than a constructive contribution to theology.
There was one great truth of which he was the
outstanding prophet, — the dignity of human
nature. His unrivaled emphasis upon human
worth has now become the recognized bulwark
of his title to a lasting place in American theol
ogy, though it was not, in essence, so unpre
cedented as it is often regarded. Channing's
conception of human nature is indicated in
these words:
Am I asked for my conception of the dignity of a
human being.'' I should say that it consists, first, in
that spiritual principle called sometimes the reason,
sometimes the conscience, which, rising above what
is local and temporary, discovers immutable truth
and eternal right, which in the midst of imperfect
things, conceives of perfection, which is universal
and important, standing in direct opposition to the

42 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
partial, selfish principles of human nature; which
says to me with authority that my neighbor is as
precious as myself and his rights as sacred as my
own; which commands me to receive all truth,
however it may war with my pride, and to do all
justice, however it may conflict with my interest;
and which calls me to rejoice with love in all that is
beautiful, good, holy, happy, in whatever being
these attributes may be found. This principle is a
ray of divinity in man.'
Remote as this Is from the language of Jonathan
Edwards and Samuel Hopkins, It reveals an
underlying union both with them and with
Bushnell and Beecher and their successors.
For these all believed, in some sense, in a "ray
of divinity" imparting eternal worth to human
nature. Edwards and Hopkins called it "the
Holy Spirit," Bushnell and Beecher the "Logos"
or "Word," others "the Eternal Christ," while
Channing left it so unattached and vague as to
be readily confused with man's own nature,
conceived as Isolated and independent. There
from, in the hands of later Unitarians who failed
to link our higher nature with even "a ray of
divinity," Issued a new type of rationalism from
which Unitarianism has found It hard to re
cover. Yet, despite limitations in discriminative
" John W. Chadwick; William Ellery Channing, pp. 248, 249.

INTRODUCTION 43
and constructive power, Channing was un
doubtedly one of the greatest leaders in genuine
theological progress, especially on ethical lines,
whom American Christianity has produced.'
Phillips Brooks coming so much later than
Channing belongs among the liberated as well
as the liberators. He was the consummate
flower of the Pilgrim faith, blooming late, after
It had struck its roots deep Into the harsh New
England soil and had weathered the storms of
trial and controversy and been liberalized by
the slow processes of hard thinking and noble
living. In Its serener years this virile New Eng
land faith, with its asperities and austerities
mellowed but its vitality unimpaired, issued
in this peerless son of Pilgrim seed. The blood
of John Cotton flowed In his veins. His parents
had passed through the icy intellectual
invigoratlon of Unitarianism into the ses-
thetic warmth and symbolism of that church
which his ancestors had renounced for its
tyrannies and "mummeries" but which now,
"The writer regrets that necessary limitations prevent his
including an account of the contribution of American Unitarian
ism as a whole to religious progress. It has, however, received
ample treatment, as, e.g., in George Willis Cooke's Unitarianism
in America, See, also, the present writer's "The Pilgrim Ter
centenary and Theological Progress," Harvard Theological Review,
vol. XI, July, 1918.

44 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
purified and humbled, afforded nourishment
and opportunity to his exuberant genius.
Bishop Brooks, too, was intuitional, mystical,
Christ-centered, in his theology; yet with a
definite, unified, intellectual framework for his
faith. In his Bohlen lectures he summarized the
characteristics of Christianity thus:
A poetic conception of the world we live in, a
willing acceptance of mystery, an expectation of
progress by development, an absence of fastidious
ness that comes from a sense of the possibilities of
all humanity and a perpetual enlargement of thought
from the arbitrary into the essential — these, then,
I think, are the intellectual characteristics which
Christ's disciples gathered from their Master.'
These are the characteristics which this liberal
ized Puritan himself manifested in all the un
assuming splendor and scope of his wide-
reaching Influence.
Many notable liberators of American the
ology, in various Christian communions —
several of them quite early — prepared the way
for the constructive work which was to follow:
liberals like Charles Chauncy, early critic of
revivalism and advocate of Universalism ^
' The Influence of Jesus, p. 258.
' See Williston Walker: Ten New England Leaders.

INTRODUCTION 45
(1705-1787); radicals like Theodore Parker
(1810-60), who crashed through the older
doctrines with ponderous blows, heedless of
who or what suffered, yet who had also his
large and positive convictions; extremists like
Hosea Ballou (1771-1852), aflame with zeal
against the doctrine of endless punishment;
mystics like Emerson, who diffused catholicity
and "nature" so impartially that it became
not a little difficult to tell where faith leaves
off and naturalism begins, yet whose influence
has been a vast spiritualizing force; preachers,
like Leonard Swing, and scholars, like Ezra
Abbott and Joseph H. Thayer who dethroned
the idol of a static, Inerrant scripture that the
voice of the Spirit might again be heard.'

XII
Outside of ecclesiastical circles and contro
versies has been also a company of teachers
and writers whose influence has worked noise
lessly but powerfully to liberate and liberalize
theology: the representatives of philosophy,
science, and literature. It will be Impossible,
'Other leaders of an advancing theology are referred to in
chapter VII.

46 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
manifestly, to do more than touch upon their
contribution here.
Philosophy has had a far greater influence
upon theology than the latter has ever realized.
The philosophical and theological realms lie
very close to one another. Interest in the one
flows over into the other. Theology was the
early pathway to philosophy.' It is worthy of
note that so many American philosophers were
from the ranks of the ministry, among them
Jonathan Edwards, greatest of our philosophers,
Samuel Johnson, the chief representative of
Berkeleyanism in this country, James Marsh,
John WItherspoon, R. W. Emerson, James
McCosh, Noah Porter, Laurens P. HIckok,
Joseph Torrey, Henry A. P. Torrey, Julius H.
Seelye, Charles W. Shields, George T. Ladd.
Mark Hopkins was a licensed preacher, George
H. Howison and George H. Palmer studied
at theological seminaries, and Borden P.
Bowne was both lay preacher and theologian.
These men were almost without exception
idealists and they, and most other American
" "To the interest of the people (of America) in theology
has been due a dominant tendency in thought, as well as in fact,
in large measure, that we have any philosophy at all." A. C.
Armstrong: "Philosophy in the United States," Educational
Review, June, 1895, p. 3.

INTRODUCTION 47
philosophers up to the close of the nineteenth
century, including Josiah Royce and William
James, have been vitally in league with Chris
tianity and have greatly Influenced religious
thought In the direction of intellectual vigor
and breadth. XIII
As an instance of the close relation between
philosophical and religious thought In America
one may cite James Marsh ' (1794-1842), presi
dent and professor of philosophy of the Uni
versity of Vermont, the most idealistic and
stimulating teacher of philosophy of his day In
America. President Marsh was a Platonlst and
Kantian, but above all a most ardent and loyal
disciple of Coleridge. There are few as fine
examples of Intelligent and effective disciple
ship in the history of philosophy as that of
Marsh for the English thinker whom he never
saw and who never gave him the slightest
recognition. He Introduced Coleridge to Ameri
can readers through the "Aids to Reflection"
which he published at Burlington in 1829
(second edition 1 840) accompanied by his well-
" See Memoir and Remains of James Marsh, edited by Joseph
Torrey; also J. W. Buckham: "James Marsh and Coleridge,"
Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1904.

48 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
known "Preliminary Essay."' It was a copy
of Marsh's Coleridge, In all probability, of
which Dr. Munger wrote: "It may almost be
'said that It is to this book we are indebted for
Bushnell";^ and, "This book stood by him to
the end and in old age he confessed greater
indebtedness to it than to any other book save
the Bible." ^ Emerson, too, and the "Tran-
scendentalists " were more indebted to Coleridge
than to any other modern philosopher. An
influence almost as great was exerted by the
"Aids" upon a number of other of the most
thoughtful of American theologians and minis
ters, including such contrasted minds as James
Freeman Clarke and W. G. T. Shedd, and
through Marsh and Bushnell Coleridge spoke to
Washington Gladden and others and through
them to the people; so that Coleridge may be
¦ It would be a mistake to suppose that because Marsh made
Coleridge his persona he has no word of his own. On the con
trary he infused into his students the "spiritual philosophy"
through which the reign of the prevailing Lockean materialism
in America was broken. Marsh also helped to introduce a more
intelligent idea of the Bible by publishing a translation of Herder's
Spirit of Hebrew Poetry. The " Preliminary Essay " is republished
in the new "Bohn" Coleridge.
' Horace Bushnell, p. 46.
'Ibid., p. 47. "It was this work which did most to intro
duce the modified German philosophy into our country" (Wood-
bridge Riley: American Thought, p. 170).

INTRODUCTION 49
said to be the philosopher of the progressive
school of theology In America. This does not
necessarily mean that American philosophy and
theology owe their idealism and Intuitivism to
Coleridge but rather that they found in him
their philosophical exponent and authority.
James Marsh was the type and forerunner of
a succession of philosophical teachers In this
country who linked philosophy and theology
in close kinship. It would be difficult to over
estimate the idealizing and broadening Influence
upon religious thought in America of these men,
occupying the chairs of "moral and Intellectual
philosophy" in the older colleges and univer
sities during the nineteenth century. Many of
the finest and ablest young men entering the
professions, especially the ministry, during those
years were Impelled and governed by the high
ideals of truth and life imparted by such men as
Noah Porter at Yale, James McCosh at Prince
ton, Francis Bowen, Josiah Royce and G. H.
Palmer at Harvard, Mark Hopkins and John
Bascom at Williams, Charles E. Garman at
Amherst, Laurens P. HIckok at Union College,
Joseph and Henry Torrey at Vermont Uni
versity, Borden P. Bowne at Boston Uni
versity, George S. Morris at Johns Hopkins,

50 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
George H. Howison at the University of Cali
fornia. Much of the same philosophical ideahsm
was Infused into the Ideals and methods of the
public schools of the country by that dynamic
educational Idealist, Commissioner William T.
Harris. Students going out from classrooms in
which ethics and theism of a high order were
taught were not disposed to content themselves,
or allow others to be contented, with crude and
contradictory theological ideas. Indeed these
philosophical teachers were theologians as well
as philosophers and while they did not take up
the distinctive Christian doctrines as such, their
discussions were largely concerned with the
same problems as those of theology.'
XIV
To the liberating Influence of philosophy upon
religious thought should be added that of
natural science, as taught by such scientists as
Louis Agasslz, Asa Gray, Joseph Le Conte,
Nathaniel Shaler, J. M. Tyler, and William
North Rice. John Fiske, in his "The Idea of
God," and "The Destiny of Man," contributed
' Studies by the writer of the contributions of two of these
philosophers, Josiah Royce and G. H. Howison, to religious
thought may be found in The Harvard Theological Review, vols.
VIII and IX.

INTRODUCTION 51
largely to this Influence. Such men, of large
mental vision and deep Christian faith, helped
inestimably to avert the threatened conflict
between science and theology. Not yet has the
Church come to realize how much she owes to
men of natural science for what they have
indirectly contributed to the rectification and
enlargement of theology.
Literature, too, has Instilled her humane and
broadening views Into religious thought. Poetry,
especially, has taught the essentials of Christian
doctrine with a subtle and persuasive grace that
has quietly robbed the creeds of their rigors and
inhumanities. One need only instance the
influence of John G. Whittier who, like Tenny
son in England, has done as much If not more
than any theologian to ring out "the ancient
forms of party strife" and to ring in "the
Christ that is to be."
Many of our novelists, too, — one need only
mention, as an example, Hawthorne, lineal but
emancipated son of Puritan ancestry, — have
not only liberated but deepened American
religious thought. So, too, have essayists like
Lowell, Curtis, Holmes, and, in their own way,
certain of those subtle but potent molders of pub
lic opinion, the editors. Onecannotbutthlnkwith

52 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
gratitude of the humanizing of theology, direct
or indirect, exerted by such men as Samuel
Bowles, William Hayes Ward, and Henry
Mills Alden, the latter the author of that rare
work of mystical theology. "God in His
Worid." Although in the following pages attention
is turned chiefly to a definite line of progress
and a single school of American' religious
thought, it should not be forgotten that
through many minds and means, "by diverse
portions and in diverse manners," the larger
revelation comes.

CHAPTER II
THEODORE T. MUNGER

THEODORE THORNTON MUNGER
1830. March 5. Birth in Bainbridge, N.Y.
1847. Entered Yale College.
1 85 1. Graduated from Yale College.
1855. Entered Andover Theological Seminary.
1856. February 6. Ordained pastor of Village Church, Dorches
ter, Mass.
1864. January 6. Installed pastor of Centre Church, Haverhill,
Mass.
1864. October 12. Married in Haverhill, Elizabeth K. Duncan,
who died October 3, 1886.
1871. June 14. Installed pastor of Eliot Church, Lowell, Mass.
1875. Went to California in search of health.
1875. Organized Congregational Church, San Jose, Cal.
1877. December II. Installed pastor of Congregational Church
of North Adams, Mass.
1885. November 19. Installed pastor of United Church, New
Haven, Conn.
1887. Made Fellow of Yale University.
1889. March s. Married Harriet King Osgood of Salem, Mass.
1898. Lecturer at Harvard University.
1901. Made Pastor Emeritus of United Church.
1904. Received degree of Doctor o f Divinity from Harvard Uni
versity.
1905. Elected member of American Institute of Arts and Letters.
1908. Received degree of Doctor of Divinity from Yale Univer
sity.
1910. January II. Death in New Haven.
igio. November i. Dedication of Memorial Tablet in Woolsey
Hall, Yale University.

CHAPTER II
THEODORE T. MUNGER
THE NEW THEOLOGY DEFINED AND RELATED
Following the pioneers of progressive religious
thought in America came a company of con
structive thinkers who built upon their founda
tions, deepened their Insights, and extended
their conclusions, thus constructing what Is
termed, rather loosely, the "New Theology."
Among these none fulfilled a more courageous
and benign service than "the New Haven seer,"
Theodore T. Munger.'

The names of Bushnell and Munger are
closely linked in their service to religious life
and thought. It was Bushnell who prepared
the way for Munger and who gave him his chief
inspiration and guidance; and he in turn repaid
' For a full and sympathetic account of Dr. Munger's life
and work see Theodore Thornton Munger: New England Minister,
by Professor Benjamin W. Bacon. Yale Press, 1903. The title
"seer" was given him by Dr. George A. Gordon in a memorial
sermon at the unveiling of the tablet in his memory in the United
Church, New Haven, January 15, 1911. The sermon is printed in
full in the above biography (pp. 377-398).

56 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
the debt by becoming the sympathetic and
illuminating biographer and Interpreter of
Bushnell. The two thinkers, bound together by a deep
and vital Intellectual and spiritual consanguin
ity, were yet In many respects In marked though
supplemental contrast. Bushnell was original,
rugged, creative; Munger discerning, judicious,
interpretative. Bushnell lacked carefulness and
discrimination In his thinking, Munger was a
master of reflection and discrimination. Bush
nell's thought plunged on like a cataract, swift,
forceful, eloquent; Munger's flowed like a
stately river through cultivated meadows,
ordered, beautiful, satisfying. Bushnell carried
his point by being carried away with It; Munger
by means of a clarifying and convincing modera
tion. Bushnell left his work In rough, half-hewn
blocks whose design, though unfinished, bears
the marks of being struck out by genius;
Munger chiseled these into perfect symmetry
and set them In due and beautiful order.
The disciple's biography of his master is a
rare piece of literary portrait painting, but it
is more than that. It is an explication of the
fundamental meaning and Import of Bushnell's
thought in a proportion and a sequence such as

THEODORE T. MUNGER 57
its originator could hardly himself have shaped.'
Thus the later thinker continued and supple
mented the work of the earlier in a true apostolic
succession. There was much not only in Bushnell's
thought but In the whole theological movement
of the later nineteenth century that was
implicit, undeveloped, unrelated. Dr. Munger,
more quickly and sympathetically than any
other of its exponents, understood and defined
it. If the assertion did not savor too much of
the outworn theology which it was his mission
to help supplant. It might be said that he was
"foreordained" to further the newer religious
thought. Birth, training, disposition, all con
spired to make him both a natural and a
progressive Christian. He was a typical in
stance, a living demonstration, of Bushnell's
"Christian Nurture." On his father's side a
descendant of John Eliot, saintliest of the
early apostles of Massachusetts, and on his
mother's, offspring of a long line of Connecticut
ministers, he was begotten and cradled In New
England piety. /
The home Into which he was born, March 5,
1830, was one of genuine and unpretentious
' Horace Bushnell: Preacher and Theologian (1899).

S8 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
faith, untroubled by overmuch conventional
theology. "As for Eve and wicked children
and sin as a crime of nature," he wrote, "I
was brought up in the midst of it, but never
did I hear or Imbibe from my parents a teach
ing nor a suggestion on the subject." ' As a boy
he loved to be alone on the hills and "lose him
self in the thought of God." ^ Yet, bathed as
were the hills for him at times In the tender
light of mysticism they were as often swept by
the clarifying winds of intellectuallsm.
At Yale College, which he entered In 1847,
he was a reader rather than a close student, —
upright, thoughtful, reverent, but not closely
in touch with the conventional religious ac
tivities of the students. As a theological student
at Yale Divinity School, and afterward for a
brief time at Andover, he was observant and
well-poised. While he had great admiration for
the peerless N. W. Taylor as a logician and
teacher, he could not, as Bushnell before him
could not, accept his ironclad system. During
his theological course he was quietly doing his
own thinking and It carried him farther and
farther from his doctrinal heritage into a
'Bacon: Theodore Thornton Munger, p. iz.
'Ibid,, p. 15.

THEODORE T. MUNGER 59
broader and sunnier faith. In short, here was a
high-minded, free, unfettered son of the church,
of the moral-Intellectual type — if one Insists
upon classifying men by types — who grew up
into the religious life as naturally as a tree
planted In the courts of the Lord. Repelled by
the commonplace and conventional religion
about him, he went deeper and learned in
clear self-reliance "to approve the things that
are excellent" — and those only. The ministry
attracted him because of its double opportunity
of service and self-development. He was not
ambitious. "All I hope," he wrote to his
mother on the threshold of his ministry, "is to
find some small country congregation whose
wants I can supply as a teacher of God's
word"' — yet he was resolved to make the
most of his high calling. The authors to whom,
as his thinking developed, he owed most were
beside Bushnell, Maurice and Frederick Robert
son, to whom he was drawn by an unerring
spiritual instinct. There was nothing con
spicuous in the opening of his ministry. It was
only slowly and by degrees that he came for
ward as one of the clearest and most convincing
representatives of the newer theological think-
°' ¦ Bacon; Theodore Thornton Munger, p. 79.

6o PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
II
When we ask what it was in this quiet un
pretentious minister that gave him his unique
influence as an exponent of the New Theology,
we find that it was due mainly to two causes.
The first was his determination to break through
the chains of theological conservatism with
which the champions of orthodoxy were trying
to bind the pulpit of his denomination in his
day, and the second was the efficacy of the
means which he used for the purpose. In the
crusade In behalf of freer and broader religious
thought he formed one of a group of un
usually able men, among whom were Egbert C.
Smyth, Newman Smyth, Washington Gladden,
William J. Tucker, George A. Gordon, George
Harris, Lyman Abbott, William Hayes Ward,
Alexander McKenzie, James G. Vose, Daniel
Merriman and others, — all of them taking
part in the American Board and Andover con
troversies later to be described. The principle
which Dr. Munger — and all of this group of
men — was most concerned to secure was that
so well expressed In the title of his well-known
volume "The Freedom of Faith" (1883). For
this freedom of thought and utterance he

THEODORE T. MUNGER 6i
contended vigorously before church councils,
in the pulpits of the churches which he served,
and through the press. It cost him dark days
and painful experiences, but he never wavered
in purpose or conviction.
In this battle for doctrinal freedom he was
as outspoken, courageous and aggressive as
he was considerate and magnanimous. In all of
his conduct toward his opponents he was
governed by the first of the "Six Principles"
of Frederick Robertson, which he adopted
early In his ministerial life. I.e., "the establish
ment of positive truth instead of the negative
destruction of error." In conformity to this
principle he made it a rule not to answer attack.
These tactics of construction instead of destruc
tion, of persuasiveness Instead of pugnacity, of
patience instead of retaliation, won him con
stantly increasing regard and influence, and
everywhere opposition melted away before
friendliness and suspicion gave place to con
fidence. It was to his own honor and that of
his cause that he won the battle, not only for
himself but for the New Theology, by a spirit
and a method In harmony with the doctrines
which he advocated and the religion which he
confessed.

62 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
III
The chief means by which Dr. Munger won
his end and accomplished so large service for
the New Theology was his literary art, an art
which he made a sacred instrument of truth.
The separation between literature and theology
had been as wide and painful as the traditional
one between text and sermon. Much worthy
theology had gone a-begging because clothed In
the garments of heaviness Instead of the robes
of praise. In him appeared one of the few
theologians who have mastered the art of using
pure, finished, attractive, persuasive prose.
Because of this finely wrought literary vesture,
clothing his free thought, his deep insight, and
his tender human sympathy In the light and
color with which nature has taught the Chris
tian to adorn his doctrines in all .things, his
volumes of sermons early took their place
among the best productions of American
literature. By virtue of this grace they found
their way into the palace of the Queen of
England,' the libraries of scholars and the
sanctums of editors as well as into humble
"Queen Victoria wrote of the "encouragement" and
"strength" she had received from The Freedom of Faith. See
Bacon, op. cit., p. 258.

THEODORE T. MUNGER 63
homes where the love of beauty is wedded to
the love of truth. Thus truth entered in at
lofty as well as lowly doors, even though
clothed in the suspected garb of the "New
Theology." Of "The Freedom of Faith" the British
"Quarterly Review" said: "The sermons de
serve to rank with the noblest productions of
modern times; they have the large sympathies
of Beecher, the exegetical tact of Robertson,
the literary finish of Vaughan, and the daring
of Maurice." Of "The Appeal to Life" "The
Literary World," of London, said, "For pur
poses of inspiration and of furnishing very
high models of a Divine art, we know of but
few which attain to their lofty pitch of ex
cellence." The literary style of this unassum
ing, unadvertised preacher, who never attracted
crowds yet who through his publications
reached thousands where the popular preacher
reaches hundreds, was in no wise arresting nor
conspicuous. It was neither florid nor sonorous
nor scintillating. It was simply lucid, sober,
well-ordered, expressive English — lit fre
quently by a flash of captivating insight and
beauty — free from extravagance but never
lapsing into commonplace, "fit and fair and

64 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
simple and sufficient." Perhaps its rarest
merit — sorrowfully rare in sermonic literature
— is its resolute sincerity. It possesses that fine
distinction, moral as well as artistic, that
belongs only to the very best literature, of ex
pressing the true Intention of the author both
accurately and aipply.
One of the best evidences of Dr. Munger's
thorough mastery of literary art is the fact
that his sermonic style Is sermonic, cast in the
form — not of the sermon as it is usually
heard, careless. Inchoate, without form and
void (perhaps because the Spirit has not
brooded over It) — but of the true sermon,
possessing these peculiar notes of elevation and
intimacy, of strength and tenderness which
give to the sermon Its own unique place and
possibilities as a form of literature. Dr. Munger
knew well how to use other literary forms,
especially the essay — and it is Instructive to
note how his style varies when he adapts it to
the essay — but it was the sermon which
provided him his chosen and perfected literary
form. One of the minor but marked excellences of
Dr. Munger as a sermonizer is his use of apt,
vivid and luminous imagery. Analogy, illustra-

THEODORE T. MUNGER 65
tion, description, leap to his aid. Take, for
example, the following characterization of the
book of the Acts, In the Introduction of the
sermon on "The Reception of New Truth":
"There is in this book of the Acts, as In Homer
and In all great histories, a wonderful sense of
motion. One feels as if sailing in a great ship,
under a bounding breeze, out of a narrow
harbor, into the wide sea. ... So in reading
this history It Is no longer Judea but the world,
no longer Jerusalem but Rome and Spain
also; no more one chosen people but all nations."
Or turn to the striking picture of the merely
aesthetic life. In the sermon on "God our Shield"
in which he describes the irresponsible type of
living as "reminding one of the curtain of a
theatre whereon is painted a careless youth
touching the strings of a lute for listless girls
amongst flowers and fountains, while behind it
is Hamlet rehearsing his great question, *To be
or not to be,' or Lear struggling with the
tempest and his own heart." That is not
theatrical, but dramatic, as well as sermonic.
Not often does one meet such a description of
the poise of Christ as this in the noble sermon
"The Witness of Experience": "His words
flame with divine indignation, but it is the still

66 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
heat of a sun; his emotions are deep, but their
expression Is like the wheels in Dante's vision
that seem to sleep on their axles from the very
swiftness of their turning."
' Such comparisons and metaphors light up a
sermon with singular charm; yet they are only
the lamps that serve to Illuminate wide vistas
of uplifting thought and deep mines of wisdom
andtruth and timely counsels of perfection.
No one can read such sermons without being
conscious that they must have cost their author
long and patient work — as his biographer
assures us they did. It is easy to believe that
before beginning them the writer was wont to
put himself In touch with the "Christ-con
sciousness " that he might meet his task aright.'

IV
Turning now, after too long delay, to Dr.
Munger's interpretation of the New Theology,
we find ourselves in possession not only of his
sermons as Its vehicle but of a carefully framed
and mature statement of the substance of it as
¦ Mention should also be made of that sane, high-minded;
and helpful book of counsel to youth which has given guidance
to so many young lives. On the Thr.'!shold, and of its companion
volume. Lamps and Paths.

THEODORE T. MUNGER 67
he conceived It, in the extended introduction
to "The Freedom of Faith." This introduc
tion, written so early as 1883, stands In some
respects unparalleled as a summary of the
"New Theology" In America. The first char
acteristic which strikes one in reading It is its
restrained and Irenic tone. It Is no offhand
polemic nor hectic pronunciamento but an un
biased and sincere endeavor to bring out the
real motive and meaning of the movement. He
refuses to admit that the New Theology is
really new, declaring that "it allies itself even
with the older rather than the later theologies
and finds in the early Greek theology/concep
tions more harmonious with Itself than those
In the theology shaped by Augustine." ' He
discerns that the New Theology consists not
so much in a new set of doctrines as in a new
attitude and spirit. It renounces the systemism
of the Old Theology with all its works, espe
cially its over-reliance upon logic. Not that it
"abjures logic" in the sense of a "harmony of
doctrines" but that it recognizes also" mystery"
and "sentiment" and "hope" as all belonging
' In this contention he is clearly indebted to Professor
A. V. G. Allen to whom he refers in a footnote and whose volume.
The Continuity of Christian Thought, was one of the chief con
tributions to the New Theology.

68 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
within the sphere of truth. The New Theology
claims also "a broader use of the reason" than
the Old Theology, meaning by reason "man's
whole inner being," a larger view of revelation,
and a freer "more natural" use of Scripture.
It "seeks to replace an excessive individuality
by a true view of the solidarity of the race." It
"recognizes a new relation to natural science"
and claims for Itself "a wider study of man."
In nothing does the penetration and wisdom
of Dr. Munger's mind show itself more clearly
than In his attitude toward evolution, by whose
almost dramatic emergence many in his day
were being swept away Into an exuberance of
acclamation and others into a paralysis of
doubt. In contrast to both of these attitudes
he recognizes the aid which evolution offers to
theology in helping it "to regain Its forgotten
theory of the divine immanence in creation,"
and yet he sees the danger of pan-evolutionism,
lest matter come to be regarded as "inclusive
of the spiritual," and the need of asserting
"the reality of the spiritual as above the
material, of force that is other than that lodged
in matter."
Of the relation of the New Theology to
specific doctrines. Dr. Munger says little. It

THEODORE T. MUNGER 69
is significant of the abnormal viewpoint of his
day that the only doctrine which he singles out
in this statement for extended discussion is
eschatology. In discussing it he first places
emphasis upon the larger meaning of the word
"eternal" and then raises well sustained objec
tions to the whole conception of "probation,"
whether present or future, placing the emphasis
where it belongs, upon life as education and
only incidentally probation. Perhaps the strong
est and most pertinent criticism of the Old
Theology which he makes is that of Its aliena
tion from human life. "The Old Theology
stands on a structure of logic outside of hu
manity. ... It lifts man out of his manifold
and real relations, out of the wide and rich
complexity of actual life and carries him over
Into a mechanically constructed and Ideal
world — a world made up of five propositions,
like Calvinism or some other such system —
and views him only in the light of that world."
Here speaks the humanist, the lover of truth
and of the life more abundant. The New
Theology, as he conceives it, means the broaden
ing and humanizing of theology so that It may
become a true science of man's relation to God
and his world. Of this freer, larger Christianity

70 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
his sermons and essays form an expansive and
worthy description. The very titles of his lead
ing volumes, "The Freedom of Faith" and
"The Appeal to Life," are an expression of
the large and liberating Christian living —
sane, serene, fruitful, optimistic — into which
Dr. Munger had entered through the narrow
gate that leads to life. Such a life would have
been impossible save as he had reached it
through Him through whom he went "In and
out"; in to the deeper soul of things — and
found it Fatherly — and out into the wide
fields of human culture and fellowship.

In his serene and refiective later years Dr.
Munger gave much thought to two subjects of
great significance to theology: the relation of
theology to the university and the kinship —
"interplay" he termed it — of theology and
literature. The fruit of his insights and reflec
tions upon these and other themes appeared in
articles contributed to "The Atlantic Monthly,"
"The Century Magazine," "The Outlook," and
other periodicals and were later embodied in
"Essays for the Day" (1904), a book whose
colorless title fails to reflect the nature and

THEODORE T. MUNGER 71
value of its contents. The first of these essays,
"The Church: Some Immediate Questions,"
opens with a kindly yet critical explanation of
the existence of the one hundred and forty-seven
denominations of Christians In America — a
phenomenon In which he sees, with extraordi
nary charity, not so much an indication of schism
as of religious freedom and fertility. Various
phases of literature and religion are discussed with
great pertinence in these chapters, none with
greater force and timeliness than the relation
of theological education to the university. He Is
confident that theology cannot thrive apart
from the university. The Theological Seminary
finds no data for a scientific, not to say practical
theism — the question of questions — until It
searches It out and teaches it from evolution.
Thus it finds ground for the truth that man has
always sought for and in higher moments
asserted, the divine Immanence In all things and
the like nature of God and man. If there is to
be a theology In the future it will be found in
this region, in connection with the university,
which Is to play a large part in Its reconstruc
tion; that Is, theology will spring from the whole
circle of human knowledge.'
' Essays for the Day, p. 20.

72 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
These are sagacious words, catholic and far-
sighted. One feels their wisdom, though, Hke
the writer, he may dissent from the final state
ment, holding that the theology of the future as
of the past will spring not from " the whole circle
of human knowledge" but rather from that
Inner experience which we call religious, — an
experience In itself sui generis, but which re
quires for Its interpretation and application all
forms of knowledge. In other words, the indi
vidual experience of the profound realities of
the spiritual world, mediated by the Christian
community, Is the fountainhead of theology;
but for Its explication theology needs contact
with the whole sphere of human knowledge.
For this reason theology needs to resort to the
university, else It will stagnate.
As a matter of fact the university itself was
the creation chiefly of the church. The Uni
versity of Paris, the mother of European and
thus of American universities, began as a school
of theology, and theology long held the leading
place in most of the great universities of
Europe.' Nor was it by any means a mere
dry-as-dust mechanical discipline but "the
» See J. W. Buckham: "The Study of Religion in the Uni
versity," Educational Review (January, 1913).

THEODORE T. MUNGER 73
architectonic science whose office it was to
receive the results of all other sciences and
combine them Into an organic whole In so far
as they had bearings on the supreme questions
of the nature of God and of the universe and
the relation of man to both." '
In our own country the two oldest colleges
of New England, now among our greatest
universities, Harvard and Yale, were founded
chiefly for the education of the ministry.
Theology, however, now holds but a vestige
of her old-time glory in them. Still, there Is a
surviving bond between church and university
in America which means much for both and
which should not be allowed to decay. For the
church to lose touch with the university, as
there is no little danger of its doing to-day,
would be a most serious disaster, and for theol
ogy to go her lonely way unfed and unstimulated
and unsustained by the life of the university
would mean Inevitable deterioration. The
university Is Indispensable to the church. No
one saw this more clearly than did Dr. Munger,
as the following words attest:
It is there the church must continually go to
correct ancient mistakes, to measure the urgency
' Rashdall: Universities of Europe, vol. II, p. 215.

74 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
of new truths, to clear itself of entanglements when
old and new conflict, to shut out the clamor of
the mob howling for a new dogma or decrying an
old one, to keep eye and ear open for fresh visions
of God and new accents of the Holy Ghost, and
above all for seeing to it that great matters are held
in their due proportion, and that all matters worthy
of attention are studied until they are brought into
reasonable harmony with one another and so
conduce to the one end of all study — truth. The
university is thus the refuge of the churches for help
in all those questions that perplex them. Such has
been its function in all ages, and such it will continue
to be. . . . The increasing necessity of the church is
enlightenment, and for this we must look to the
university. Nothing of value is being said to-day on
theology or ecclesiastical usage that does not pro
ceed from it or bear its stamp. But the university
must be of the true Comenius type — based on
nature and crowned with faith in God, balancing
all attainable truth, and thus able to teach har
monious truths and true living. '
In harmony with this conviction of the need
of a closer affiliation of church and university.
Dr. Munger maintained that theological in
struction should be carried on, not at isolated
points, but only at university centers. In an
address given at Yale Divinity School in 1902
and published In "The Outlook" he urged
with great force that all theological education
' Op, cit., pp. 4S-47-

THEODORE T. MUNGER 75
should be brought within the sphere of the
university, " that its relations should be so close
and vital as to fill its spirit, and that it might
learn and adopt those careful and comprehen
sive habits of thought which are fostered by
university life." He recognized the danger of
the loss of moral enthusiasm in such a relation,
but he held that this could be avoided and that
the inner springs of the spiritual life could be
kept filled at the university centers as well as
elsewhere. Those of us who were trained on old Andover
Hill, or at Auburn, or Bangor, or at other sem
inaries similarly situated, will not readily relin
quish the peculiar advantages in the compara
tive quiet and seclusion, the opportunity of
concentration and reflection, afforded by the
rural type of institution. The atmosphere of
the university does not in all respects stimulate
theological studies, as the theological professor
who must hold his students to their especial
subjects In competition with the crowded
lectures of a great university very well knows.
And yet, on the whole, university environment
Is proving the best for the study of theology. It
contributes far more than it detracts. The
scientific spirit and the philosophic outlook

76 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
may prove too expansive for the faith of some
students, but they certainly dispel the odium
theologicum and on the whole, and in the end,
leave the student a better fitted as well as a
broader man.
"Woe be to theology in the future if it holds
back from the scientific method; and a heavier
woe will fall upon the university If it is in
different to that department of truth which is
necessary to complete its circle." ' The warning
of this emphatic word of Dr. Munger is not to
be overlooked. Indifference to the sphere of
truth which theology represents creates a
conspicuous vacuum In the life of many of our
universities which science and philosophy and
the humanities fail to fill, liberalizing as they
are. The university needs the theological
school to complete the circle of the higher
studies by supplying those which have to do
most directly with the ultimates of human
life and destiny. Dr. Munger's plea that the
two be kept in close touch needs strong and
constant reiteration. 'The Outlook, vol. 70, p. 730.

THEODORE T. MUNGER 'J^
VI
One of the most auspicious and progressive
tendencies of modern theology is its increasing
affiliation with literature. Under the influence of
Protestant scholasticism, Puritan impoverish
ment, and its own pride of dominion, theology
became isolated from the genial and life-giving
influences of literature and had grown harsh
and barren and repellent. To Its own serious
detriment it had become blind to the presence
of genuine theological thought in the literature
which the people read and love. In the latter
nineteenth century — that period of spiritual
renascence in English literature — Protestant
theology began to awaken to the folly of its
estrangement from belles-lettres. Such theolo
gians as Samuel Harris, versed in literature as
well as philosophy, and Augustus Strong began
to surmise that literature has stores of wealth
for theology which she was failing to realize,
and the return to literature which they fostered
has brought large gains to theology. It is true
that in some cases the resort to literature has
been too much of the nature of a mere maraud
ing expedition into its rich fields to see what
spoils could be captured to adorn the halls of

78 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
theology. Some theologians have been little
more than spoilsmen. Others, however, have
gone to literature out of pure and unfeigned
love of It, and returned, not so much laden
with spoils as having their own thought bathed
in Its dews, made redolent with its fragrance
and winged with Its persuasive accents. Thus
the ancient kinship of theology and literature
found in Orlgen and Augustine, Bonaventura
and Dante has been, in part at least, reestab
lished. ' Few have done as much to restore to theology
the aids and amenities of literature as Theo
dore T. Munger. He was himself, as we have
seen, the possessor of genuine literary talent
and patiently and sincerely cultivated it. He
was from boyhood a lover of the best literature
and came to see with Increasing clearness the
theological implications and values of the
great masterpieces of literature. In a notable
article In "The Atlantic Monthly," entitled
"The Interplay of Christianity and Literature,"
he showed how rich and ennobling are the
holdings of Christianity in this Incomparable
realm of life and expression.' If it were not so,
'See also M. H. Buckham: The Very Elect; "The Religious
Influence of Literary Studies."

THEODORE T. MUNGER 79
if the great creations of the spirit of literature
were without theological character and impli
cations. It would argue ill for the reality and
worth of religion as well as of theology. As a
matter of fact, many of the noblest and most
vital interpretations of Christianity — and
what are these but theology.'' — lie embedded In
the world's great poems and essays and works
of fiction. That fact Dr. Munger knew right well
and helped others to discover. "The value of
these restatements of Christianity," he wrote,
"especially by the poets, is beyond estimate.
They are the real defenders of the Faith, the
prophets and priests whose succession never
fails." ,i
The unrecognized theological Implications
resident in a work of fiction are strikingly
brought out in "Notes on the Scarlet Letter."'
In Hawthorne's striking story, as he so clearly
shows, there is a sensing of the true nature and
effects of sin such as the customary theological
treatise fails to touch.
Even if such treasures are in vessels, the grace
of whose fashion exhibits no Christian legend or
symbolism, they may be as truly Christian in
character as if they were inscribed within and
' Essays for the Day.

8o PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
without with the name of Christ. Such is Dr.
Munger's reminder. For It Is, as he points out,
by no means merely In the openly and un
qualifiedly Christian authors, like Milton and
Tennyson and Browning, that the realities of
Christian truth are to be found, but In many a
writer not folded with the faithful. "The Chris
tian value of an author Is not to be determined
by the fulness of his Christian assertion. There
is, of course. Immense value In the positive, full-
statured believers like Dante and Bacon and
Milton and Browning. Such men form the court
from which there is no appeal. But Christianity
is all the while in need of two things : correction
of Its mistakes and perversions and develop
ments In the direction of Its universality. None
can do these two things so well as those who
are partially outsiders. ... In order to translate
the natural into the divine, and to find a place
for the divine In the natural, they who know
the natural, and hold it even at some cost to
the divine, must be employed." '
Such words as these fall like music upon
ears that have long been closed, by reason of
the din of theological polemic, to the voice of
the spirit of Christianity as It speaks from the
• Essays for the Day, pp. 82, 83.

THEODORE T. MUNGER 8 1
unordalned lips of "secular" authors. They
reveal something of the length and breadth
and depth and height of Christian faith and
reflect that liberating, expansive interpreta
tion of religion which under the name of the
"New Theology" Theodore Munger did so
much to interpret and further, — to the ad
vantage of all who love the freedom of faith
and the abundance of life.
vii
When a just conception of the pervasive
universality of Christian faith gets full recogni
tion, the Greeks of to-day who are saying
"we would see Jesus" — men and women from
our universities and colleges who cannot be
content with the platitudes and dogmatisms of
a barren form of orthodoxy — will regain their
confidence in Christianity. When they discover
that the literature they have learned to love,
which they had thought alien from Christ, is
often redolent with His spirit, though not
burdened with His name; when they learn that,
as Dr. Munger has said, "for the most part
the greater names in literature have been true
to Christ, and it is the Christ in them that has
corrected theology, redeeming it from dogma-

82 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
tism and making it capable of belief — not
clear, perhaps, but profound," ' they will see
Him where He was before undiscerned. It was
the office of this large-minded thinker, and those
who shared his outlook, to link Christianity
afresh with both the permanent and current
interests of the human mind, thus regaining to
a large extent the sympathies of young men and
women whom a restricted view of life and reli
gion, out of touch with modern education, had
alienated from Christianity.
To portray and Interpret America's greatest
modern theologian; to aid potently in securing
"the freedom of faith"; to discern the spirit
of the "New Theology" and reveal it to itself;
to help to recover to theology contact with the
kindred domains of education and literature;
— this was no common task. It was the high
and rare service that Theodore T. Munger
rendered to the religious life of America.
' Essays for the Day, p. loo.

CHAPTER III
GEORGE A. GORDON

GEORGE ANGIER GORDON
1853. January 2. Birth at Insch, Scotland.
1871. June 22. Sailed for United States.
1874. Entered Bangor Theological Seminary, graduating in
1887.
1 877. June 20. Ordained pastor of Congregational Church,
Temple, Me.
1877. Revisited Scotland.
1878. Entered Harvard University, graduating with
honors in Philosophy, 1881.
l88l. August I. Installed pastor of Second Congre
gational Church, Greenwich, Conn.
1884. April 2. Installed pastor of Old South Church,
Boston, Mass.
1886-90. Preacher to Harvard University; also 1906-09.
1888-1916. Preacher to Yale University.
1890. June 3. Married Susan Huntington Manning of
Boston.
1893. Received degree of Doctor of Divinity from Bowdoin
College and from Yale University; also from
Harvard University in 1895.
1896. First IngersoU lecturer. Harvard University.
1897-1909. Overseer of Harvard University; also 1910-17.
1900. Lowell Institute lecturer, Boston.
1901. Lyman Beecher lecturer, Yale University.
1903 . Received degree of Doctor of Divinity fromColumbia
University.
1908-17. Trustee of Andover Theological Seminary.
1908. Preacher at the Edinburgh Conference, Intema
tional Congregational Council.
1909. Observance of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his
pastorate of Old South Church.
1909. Nathanael W. Taylor lecturer, Yale University.
1915. Addressed National Council of Congregational
Churches, New Haven, Conn., on "Our Conflict
and Our Resources."
1918. President of Harvard Alumni Association.

CHAPTER III
GEORGE A. GORDON
THE NEW THEOLOGY UNIVERSALIZED
It Is not customary to associate romance with
the calling and election of a theologian; but if
entrance, through strange and humble ways
into a large place and a wide and beneficent
service is not romance, it Is something very
like It. A poor lad, leaving his father's croft in
Scotland for the beckoning opportunities of
America, engaging at first in manual toil, then
drawn by the summons of an Imperative call to
seek a training for the ministry, led by the
consuming thirst for an ampler acquaintance
with the master minds of the ages to Harvard
University, thence, after long hesitation, to
one of the leading pulpits of the land, where
opportunity, responsibility. Influence thrust
themselves upon him ; all this Is romance —
and more. It Is the leading of the Divine Spirit.
Hints of the tale, veiled In words of finest garb
of modesty, appear here and there throughout

86 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
the self-revelation which escapes, almost un
awares, from his overflowing cup. The full story
awaits — let us hope — adequate recounting.

A significant fact of this life experience, for
our purpose is that It made of this rarely en
dowed and richly trained mind an American
theologian. George Angler Gordon was, to be
sure, the gift to America primus inter pares of
that fruitful mother of theologians, Scotland,
but he soon became as wholly and whole
heartedly American as If born In the venerated
city of which he has become almost as much a
part as any one of the great succession of Its
ministry from John Cotton to Phillips Brooks.
The consciousness of this closeness of at
tachment to his adopted country, this grafting
into the stock of her native thought, appears
very clearly in the preface to the most im
portant of his earlier volumes.' Consciously
and conscientiously, as he there makes clear,
he began his career as a theologian by con
fronting "questions perplexing the faith of our
churches, — of which only one living In open
communion in the heart of our American
" The Christ of To-day, p. vi.

GEORGE A. GORDON 87
Christianity can fully know." For the resolving
of these questions, as well as the clue to their
emergence, he went back, as he there states, to
Jonathan Edwards and the great heritage of
the New England theology Into which he had
come. This identification with our Pilgrim faith
and the quality and scope of his service as an
interpreter and molder of the religious thought
of the New World have made of George A.
Gordon our third great American theologian.
Jonathan Edwards, Horace Bushnell, George
A. Gordon — this is the true American theolog
ical apostolic succession. This estimate may
seem at present extravagant, but I am con
vinced the future will confirm It. N. W. Taylor
and Edwards A. Park were greater as logicians
and teachers, W. E. Channing was greater as
an ethical reformer and prophet, Charles
Hodge and W. G. T. Shedd were more learned,
William N. Clarke has had wider Influence In
the field of irenlcs, Borden P. Bowne In that
of philosophy, but in Insight and breadth and
total accomplishment none has equaled Dr.
Gordon. His attitude toward the New England theol
ogy began In mingled reverence and revolt;

88 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
reverence for the sinewy seriousness of its
thought and the Intensity of Its realization of
God, revolt — open. Indignant, sustained —
against the Inhumanity and barrenness of its
doctrines, a revolt which burned in his soul
until It incited him to construct a theology
upon which he could preach the unsearchable
riches of Christ, the eternal gospel of the Son
of God, to the modern man. Not, of course,
that he was the pioneer In the construction of
the newer and larger New England theology.
Bushnell had already, as we have seen, laid the
foundations, as a wise master-builder, and
Gordon entered with full appreciation — though
not without knowledge of its limitations — Into
the work of the great Connecticut thinker.'
He came into close touch also with other virile
minds working at the same task of theological
reconstruction. With Dr. Munger especially
he was In warm and helpful friendship and ac
cord.^ Nevertheless the author of "The Christ
of To-day" has a richer endowment, an ampler
equipment, as well as a larger field of influence,
' See e.g., his address at the unveiling of the memorial tablet
to Dr. Munger in Bacon's Theodore Thornton Munger (p. 377),
for his estimate of Bushnell.
' The above address reveals the closeness of the tie between
them.

GEORGE A. GORDON 89
than either Bushnell or Munger or any other of
the framers of the New Theology.
II
To understand Dr. Gordon's contribution to
theology it is necessary, before outlining Its
content, to pause for a moment upon his con
ception of the nature and function of theology
itself. The best and most complete statement
of his view of theology Is given In his Lyman
Beecher lectures "Ultimate Conceptions of
Faith" (1903), undoubtedly the noblest sketch
of the function, scope, and relations of theology,
next to Falrbalrn's "Place of Christ in Modern
Theology," in modern theological literature. In
this volume Dr. Gordon makes full recognition
of three sources essential to the formation of an
adequate theology, lacking in almost all treatises
of American theology before his time — and in
most since, as well — history, philosophy, and
experience. In spite of the high purpose, logical acumen
and intense industry of the New England
Theology, this careful student of it perceived
how detached and provincial it was. He saw
clearly that no theology could be complete and
commanding that did not keep faith not only

90 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
with the basal religious Instincts and the
principles of unity and order but also with the
great developmental movement of Christian
doctrine through the ages. Aware of this, he
fitted himself to cope with the fundamental
problems of the science of theology by acquaint
ing himself, as far as possible, with Its history.
In that vast field, comprising centuries of
laborious thought, though by no means a
technical scholar, he early made himself well at
home. With the passion for inclusiveness of
vision that characterizes him, he swept the
whole heavens of historical theology, detecting,
with an insight that Is little short of genius
the truly great and constructive minds that
have made Christian theology what It Is. Very
real and living these elect spirits became to him,
especially Orlgen, Athanaslus, Augustine,
Luther, Calvin, Edwards, N. W. Taylor, Butler,
and Maurice. True, he leaves vast tracts of
theological literature, particularly that of the
mediaeval period, almost unnoticed; but this is
atoned for by the acute discernment with which
he detects the most significant minds and the
movements of largest import In the history of
theology as a whole.
Yet competent as Is his knowledge of historic

GEORGE A. GORDON 91
theology, far richer and more potent in his
thinking Is his knowledge of philosophy. Here
he is not without an American predecessor in
the eminent Yale theologian Samuel Harris;
but the latter's philosophy sits far looser to
his theology than does that of this pulpit
theologian. Rare Indeed Is the theologian who
has so keen a sense as Dr. Gordon of the per
tinence of philosophy to his task. There have
been many theologians who have been diligent
plodders in philosophy but few who, like
Coleridge and Maurice and James Marsh and
Gordon, have so caught its spirit as to carry
its ample air and wide horizons into the too
often provincial realm of theology. He has
the philosophic mind in singularly fruitful
harmony with the theological and homiletlcal.
He has drunk deep at the living fountains of
philosophy, especially those flowing from the
hills of Hellas. Plato is his chief master In the
lore of the mind. If some one would extract
from his writings his references to Plato, they
would make a signal volume of Platoniana. If
Plato is entitled to be regarded, as Edward
Caird has called him, the "father of theology,"
the value of a sympathetic knowledge of one
who has exercised so vast an Influence upon

92 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
Christian thought will be understood.' When
to this is added an almost equal appreciation
of Aristotle the rarity of his philosophical
equipment will be divined. It is a familiar say
ing that every thinker is born either a Platonlst
or an Aristotelian. The saying is falsified, or at
least exceptlonalized, in the case of George A.
Gordon, for he was born both Platonlst and
Aristotelian, or rather reborn, through the
throes of a severe Intellectual discipline.
If his study of the history of philosophy had
been confined to these two masters alone, it
would have been of eminent worth to his work,
but It was not. It embraced a wide outlook over
philosophy as a whole. The systems of Spinoza,
Kant, Fichte, and Hegel are no salt, un-
plumbed, estranging seas to him. Of more
worth, however than his knowledge of the
history of philosophy Is his penetration into its
fundamental problems and their intimate re
lation to religious problems. Few philosophical
idealists have equaled the power of application
with which he has pressed home against every
' This attachment to Plato may be illustrated by the following
incident: A question once arose between Dr. Gordon and a friend
as to a point in the Republic, whereupon he pulled a copy, in
the original, from his pocket and turned at once to the disputed
passage. Those who to-day carry a work of Plato about with
them are few.

GEORGE A. GORDON 93
form of materialism the truth that, take what
ever view of the universe you choose, — call
it matter or force or whatever you like, — you
are still reading it In terms of the mind itself, —
the only pathway by which we can get to nature
being that of our own thought. Why not then
construe our universe through that which Is
highest In us, rather than what Is lower? Ob
serve, too, with what pertinence and illumina
tion he makes use of the logical principle of
identity and difference in relating the humanity
of Jesus to that of other men in his "The
Christ of To-day." '
This is philosophy put to usury, not laid
away in the napkin of ornamental lecture-room
phrases, or burled In recondite treatises, but
coined and put into the common currency of
thinking men and women the world around.
Yet If any one imagines that this student of the
history of theology, this lover of Plato and
Aristotle, rests his theology upon historic
perspective and philosophic principle alone, he
is quite wrong. He goes deeper than that by
his own testimony: "The soul in Christian
experience, resting upon God and open to his
discipline, is the great generative source of the
' The Christ of To-day, p.'94 ff.

94 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
convictions that support the higher work of the
world." ' "It is the heart that makes the theo
logian." ^
Yet experience, he points out. Is not an indi
vidual affair only. It Is also racial, social. In
other words. It Is the Christian consciousness
that gives birth to Christian theology. Nor is It
that alone. Its fountainhead lies deeper still.
"Beneath human experience and filling It is
the Holy Ghost." ^ Gordon, like Munger, con
stantly makes "the appeal to life." This for
him Is the test of truth, — sharp and subtle, —
and not Its test only but its verification. That
which cannot be verified by answering to the
needs of life cannot be known for certainty as
truth. This conviction of the fundamental place of
experience In religion came to him as the deliver
ance from a period of unrest In his own quest
for truth, of which he gives a rapid description
under the transparent veil of the mental history
of " a friend." It was a period, if not of storm
and stress, at least of doubt and questioning.''
It began during his life at Harvard, with the
dawning of the conviction that religious truth,
' Ultimate Conceptions of Faith, p. 92.
' Ibid,, p. 93. 3 Ibid,, p. 95. ¦• Ibid,, p. 82.

GEORGE A. GORDON 95
like that of science, must be amenable to reason
and criticism, and continued until the opening
of his first pastorate. At that time there came to
him the realization of the primacy of experience
as the only fundamental ground of a conviction
that can endure the most severe testing of the
critical reason. Ill
That there was sore need of a reconstructed
theology was clearer to no thinker of his time
than to this man who understood the meaning
and value of the past. His conviction of the
inadequacy of the older theology and his con
ception of the lines upon which reconstruction
should be carried on are admirably stated in
three successive articles of permanent worth
which should be republished in book form:
"The New Orthodoxy and the Old" (1893),
"The Collapse of the New England Theology"
(1908), and "Some Things Worth While In
Theology" (1910).
The first of these, written in an Irenic vein,
is a clear and impressive evaluation of that
which Is permanent and eternal In theology
and an equally clear statement of that which Is
changing and In need of revision. The necessity

96 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
of a true balance between these "two great
determinative Ideas" is strongly urged. Prefer
ence is freely given to "the abiding side of the
Christian faith " ; but due recognition of the per
manent, as Is made clear, demonstrates all the
more surely the necessity of progress, especially
in view of the confusion and the seriousness of
the Issue with the opposing forces of the present
age. "If the church could but know the wilder
ness of unbelief In which she is campaigning,
if she could but guess at the boundless antago
nisms in the centers where she is set, how eager
her sympathies would become toward all sincere
believers, how great her unity of spirit, how
vast her bonds of peace, how completely healthy
and exempt from all compulsions would be the
flow of faith and power within her large and
happy heart." ' It Is noteworthy that the term
"New Orthodoxy" which Dr. Gordon here
employs does not reappear in his writings, nor
does he make use of the phrase "The New
Theology." Neither designation, in fact, was
adequate to the wealth of the larger views
coming into recognition.
"The Collapse of the New England Theol-
" "The Contrast and Agreement between the New Orthodoxy
and the Old," The Andover Review, vol. XIX, no. 109, p. 11.

GEORGE A. GOBDON 97
ogy" is a piece of analytic and synthetic criti
cism which It would be difficult to match In
the entire field of theological literature, brilliant
in analysis, just In appraisal, unsparing In its
exposure of defects, reverent and generous in
appreciation of merits. In its searching flame
the wood, hay, and stubble of the New England
systems go up in a smoke as thick as the ob
scurity they had created ; though the systematl-
clans themselves are saved, yet so as by fire.
Not only so, but there are left also the under
lying foundations upon which they erected
their Inadequate structures. For this critic is
anything but iconoclast and cannot condemn
the old orthodoxy without paying tribute "to
the surviving worth in it, to the eternal soul
that we recognize all the more clearly that the
old formalism In which It lived has passed
away. This precious survival Is both subjective
and objective, a tradition of great men devoted
to the supreme human interest and a cluster of
shining and Imperishable ideas." '
"Some Things Worth While In Theology," a
lecture before the Harvard Summer School of
Theology, In 1910, is a rare epitome of the
'"The Collapse of the New England Theology," Harvard
Theological Review, vol. I, no. 2, p. 154.

98 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
findings obtained by the sense of values in the
sphere of theology. It is full of the swing and
lilt of a strong mind rejoicing like David before
the ark of the Lord. The things which seem to
him worth while are: a just perspective, Insight
into the world of persons, originality, getting
at the interior meaning of traditional Ideas, the
way of salvation, and the demonstration of the
spirit — the principle of unity in the series
being "the living soul of man in fellowship with
other souls and with God." ' The lecture closes
with a noble plea for the Inclusion of both
intellect and sympathy, science and sentiment,
In theology. "Between religion as a mindless
product and religion as the Issue of an ir
reverent mind, there Is little to choose."
We are not shut in, however, to either alternative;
we hear the call of the truly scientific intellect that
loves facts, that lives in them, that seeks for reality
in the suffering and achieving spirit, that finds it
there as the miner discovers gold in the rock, that
digs it and brings it forth, passes it through its
thousand furnace fires, and presents it at last to the
world that cares for reality beyond everything else
in utter purity and splendor.^
' "Some Things Worth While in Theology," Harvard Tho-
logical Review, vol. Ill, no. 4, p. 400.
- ' Ibid., p. 401.

GEORGE A. GORDON 99
IV
The theology which Dr. Gordon constructed
upon the realities of the life of the spirit, but
tressed by reason and grounded in history,
while It has thus the substantial quality of
continuity with the past necessary to save any
system from the Irony of individualism, bears
also the marks of his own genius In abundant
measure. It has individuality, persuasiveness,
power. It rises, by virtue of Its own outstanding
superiority, to take Its place among the few
signal and permanent products of American
theology. Let us endeavor to trace its leading
ideas as far as possible genetically. Its polar
principles are Incarnation and Theodicy, or.
In other terms, the centrality of Christ as "the
creative principle In theology" and the abso
lute "Moralism" or "Humanism" of God.
Either truth alone would be meaningless, in
explicable. Impotent.
The first to appear in the order of his think
ing, or at least In the order of Its presentation,
is the doctrine of the Incarnation as set forth
in the volume "The Christ of To-day" (1895).
The title, though pertinent, is Inadequate, for
the Christ presented is the Christ of "yesterday,

loo PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
to-day, and forever," the "Flying Goal," in
one of his favorite phrases, of humanity. The
intellectual strength and spiritual insight of this
volume, devoted to a great and heretofore
largely neglected theme, give it a place of unique
importance In American theology. While it
lacks the wealth and maturity and poise of its
author's later work, It throbs with religious and
theological passion, directed by a calm and sane
rationality. The discussion opens with an arrest
ing survey of the new world Into which our age
has come with the expansion of Its Ideas and
the enrichment of its life. Then follows the
query whether Christ can fulfill the need of
this larger age. To meet it, the author points
out "the gains manward and Godward In
current thought of Christ." "We are com
pelled to acknowledge that the secret molding
energy of our entire civilization Is the mind of
Christ." ' Through Him we interpret man, God,
and nature. "We baptize the creative Being
behind nature and behind human history and
life into the name of Christ." * In words that
glow with the splendor of his theme, the author
unfolds the half-recognized sway that the
• "Some Things Worth While in Theology," Harvard Theo
logical Review, vol. Ill, no. 4, p. 51. 'Ibid,, p. 91.

GEORGE A. GORDON loi
Christ of to-day exercises over our total world
of Ideals and conduct, far less complete than
It should be, yet far greater than we often
realize. Not content with the mere fact of
Christ's potency he carries It back to Its primal
source and finds In God "the Eternal Prototype
of humanity." "And what is this Eternal
Pattern or Prototype, but the Son of Man of
the synoptic gospels, the Only-begotten of the
Fourth Gospel, the Mediator of the Pauline
epistles, the High Priest without descent of
the letter to the Hebrews, the God of God,
Light of Light, begotten, not made, of the
Nicene creed?" '
Here Is the magna charta of the Chrlstocentric
movement In American theology, " theocentric
in conclusion but Chrlstocentric in Its method
of Interpretation." ^ The author acknowledges
his Indebtedness to Falrbalrn's great work "The
Place of Christ in Modern Theology," yet it
is clearly Impetus rather than direction that
he has gained from It, for the discussion moves
out with superb vigor upon Its own original
lines and with constant reference to the home
' "Some Things Worth While in Theology," Harvard Theo
logical Review, vol. Ill, no. 4, p. IIJ.
' "The Collapse of the New England Theology," Harvard Theo
logical Review, vol. I, no. 2, p. 163.

I02 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
environment created by the originative abso
lutism of Edwards and the critical protest of
American Unitarianism. To the latter movement
he offers frank and searching criticism and
equally generous and discriminating apprecia
tion. His is. Indeed, a two-edged sword, dividing
asunder bone and marrow.
Viewed In the light of the subsequent de
velopment of the Chrlstocentric theology, the
work is lacking In some respects, particularly in
its failure to discriminate clearly between the
Christ of history and the Christ of experience,
a duality in unity that still awaits adequate
Interpretation. Nor does the author realize as
clearly as can be done to-day how drastic and
thoroughgoing must be the application of the
spirit of Christ to modern civilization if it is
to be released from Its evils and defects. But in
its profound sense of the Impact of Christ upon
the modern world and the need of a valuation
of Him, metaphysical and moral, adequate to
account for this effect, It Is of large and per
manent value and Is worthy to be compared
in pertinence and sagacity with Schleiermacher's
epochal "Addresses to the Cultured Despisers
of Religion."

GEORGE A. GORDON 103

Although the subject of the most profound
of the Initial utterances of Dr. Gordon Is the
incarnation, the reality of the Absolute, the
"aboriginal" truth upon which his whole
theology rests, already appears in the back
ground. It had. In fact, disclosed Itself In his
first volume, "The Witness to Immortality"
(1893). It comes out in full radiance In his
brief but significant volume, consisting of the
first IngersoU lecture, "Immortality and the
New Theodicy" (1897).
The term "theodicy" is one which he takes
over from philosophy and domesticates in the
soil of theology. It means, as he employs it,
the Divine direction and destiny of the uni
verse, including both nature and humanity.
How does God guide the ongoing of this mighty
and mysterious cosmos ? And what is to be the
outcome of it all? The Immediate pressure of
this problem upon his mind and heart was
caused Dv the survival of the old Calvlnlstic-
Edwardean particularistic predestinatlonism by
which he found himself confronted. How could
the truth of the Divine absoluteness be sus
tained and yet saved from the paralogism and

I04 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
self-contradiction Into which It had fallen ? The
solution of this problem which he reached
reflects the daring, directness, and outreach
of his own unfettered thought. Whether ac
cepted or not. It constitutes a genuine and
abiding contribution to the speculative theology
of his time and of the future.
The defect In the New England theologians
which most amazed and offended the mind of
this unbiased critic was not merely the In
humanity of their theology but the utter in
consistency of their doctrine of the nature of
God and the doctrine of His decrees. That a
God whose perfection was the theme of their
rapt contemplation and praise should be so
imperfect and undivlne as to sentence the
greater part of mankind to perdition, appeared
to him Inexplicable. His critique of the Old
Theology centers here. With Intense earnestness
he charges home upon the unco' orthodox, the
limitations of a God content with saving a
remnant, unwilling or unable to save all.' To
confine the moral opportunity of man to this
life is surely unworthy of a Perfect Being.'
"The question Is not what men deserve but
' Immortality and the New Theodicy, p. 72.
' Ibid., p. 76.

GEORGE A. GORDON 105
what God's honor demands.'" The issue which
he here lays down he resumes again and again
and always with fresh force and ammunition.
In a later lecture, "Faith and Its Catego
ries," he deals Augustinlanism a telling blow
by exposing Its illogical nature, thus piercing
it at its supposedly strongest point: "The
Absolute Will is absolute In goodness; therefore
the deduction that God Is on the side of some
men and against others Is an Illogical deduction.
The derivation from this will of absolute good
ness of two decrees, one of salvation for a cer
tain portion of mankind, and another of repro
bation for the rest of the race is a supreme
instance of bad logic." *
It is Impossible to refute this charge, put
with the virility and clarity of which Dr.
Gordon is master. All the forces of logic and
life, of reason and sentiment, of Christianity
itself, are with him. But after all, the crucial
question is: What will he substitute for it?
If the salvation of only a part of the race is
unworthy of Its Maker — what then ? He does
not hesitate. He accepts to the full the clear
ilternative. "Either this world Is a moral world
' Immortality and the New Theodicy, p. 77.
' Ultimate Conceptions of Faith, p. 126.

io6 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
or it Is not; If it is a moral world the Creator's
redeeming interest in mankind must continue
forever." ' And this redeeming interest, the
"victorious march of the divine persuasions," *
he leaves us no room to doubt will, in his esti
mation, prove availing. He Is satisfied with no
compromise, such as the doctrine of future pro
bation offered. "Nor are alleviations of this
dismal hypothesis at all sufficient; such as the
provision of a future chance for those who have
had no Christian opportunity upon earth." ^
No; both in Intent and accomplishment the
divine redemption, he holds, is racial.
Is this "Universalism," as has been so often
charged against it? Upon the basis of fair
comparison, as well as In the author's own
mind, It Is by no means Identical with denomina
tional Universalism. "Universalism is bold to
forecast an Issue, to determine a result, to assert
a fact; the position here maintained is that God's
love and endeavor are for all his children and
for them all forever." "• It is singular how httle
appeal, or reference, to Paul, its proponent
makes In presenting this view. I recall but one
allusion to Paul's incomparable universalism,
' Immortality and the New Theodicy, p. 88. ' Ihid., p. lOO.
8 Ibid,, p. 77. 4 The New Epoch for Faith, p. 278.

GEORGE A. GORDON 107
and yet this Gordonlan universalism comes the
nearest to reflecting the spirit and outlook of
the great apostle, in Its scope and motive, of
that of any writer on theology since Orlgen.
This bold, and to many irreverently hopeful,
theodicy Is no mere reaction from the rigid
orthodoxy behind and about him; nor Is it the
easygoing speculation of a loose and careless
liberalism. It is bound up with a conception of
God which Is part of the very fiber of Its pro
ponent's faith and with a belief in humanity
and Its destiny which cannot be detached from
his conception of Christianity. It Is, in other
words. In his mind at least, essential to one
of those "ultimates of faith" — without which
Christianity would be a trifling superficialism —
the goodness of God. It is linked up also with
the very substance of individual and social
salvation. "In order to be able to save souls,"
he declares, "one must believe in the possibility
of saving families, societies, nations, the human
race." ' "Hopeless men," he avers, "are godless
men." ^
' Ultimate Conceptions of Faith, p. 221.
' Through Man to God, p. I.

io8 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
VI
Yet characteristic and highly colored as is
this doctrine, It is only one sector of a consistent
and well-rounded whole. If the conception of
God upon which it rests Is a doctrine of the
Absolute, it Is that of an Absolute whose nature
is wholly and unreservedly personal. Few
theologians. If any, have been more completely
committed to the principle of Personality than
Dr. Gordon. "For many years," to quote from
a letter of his, "personality has been to me the
key of our world and our universe. It is the key,
or there Is none." That true personality inheres
In God as well as In man is his unshaken con
viction. By it he means no mere academic,
depleted wraith of personality. He is not
frightened away from affirming it of God
by any warning cry of "anthropomorphism."
The pathway to the knowledge of God is to
him that indicated by the title of his noblest
volume of sermons, "Through Man to God."
He Is constantly exalting the "humanism
of God." The closing sentences of his great
sermon on "The Humanity of God" succinctly
express his faith in the perfect humanism of
God:

GEORGE A. GORDON 109
The humanity of God is given in the humanity of
man; it is given supremely in the humanity of Jesus.
We ascend to God through man and his sovereign
leader; through man and his sovereign leader we
receive God. This is our faith. Against the mild
indifference of the cosmos, the inscrutable mysteries
of moral wrong, pain and death, and the fearful
inhumanities of man to man; in the presence of the
worthy, in the presence of the Worthiest, we believe
in the dear, eternal humanity of God.'
The meaning and content of personality, as
related to God, Is brought out In various lights
in his volumes. There is not one in which this
doctrine Is not lucidly and forcefully presented.
Especially rich and full Is his conception of It
given in the closing chapter of "Ultimate Con
ceptions of Faith," the volume which, In his
own judgment as well as that of others, repre
sents his best work. The meaning of God for the
entire Inner life of man Is there summarized
as follows:
For the intellect God is the final meaning of the
universe. . . . For the aesthetic sense God is the
significant beauty of the universe. . . . For conscience
God is the final moral meaning of the universe. . . .
For the will God is the doer of righteousness. ...
Finally, for man, God is the person in whom the /
ideal meanings of life are gathered and authenticated.
. . . Our God is the Person whose life is an infinite
' Through Man to God, p. 41.

no PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
content of meanings. These meanings are in man
and in man's world; and he lifts them into an
Eternal Person as their logical issue and assurance.'
This does not mean, however, as the author
goes on to point out, that man In any sense
either creates or independently discovers God.
On the contrary God reveals Himself to the
outreaching mind. Revelation and discovery
are reciprocal.
The fundamental position of faith is that God and
man are implicated each in the other's life, as Jacob
and the angel were implicated. They are interlocked
in a tremendous midnight wrestle. Everything that
God bestows man wins and everything that man
wins God bestows. It is true that the angel came to
the Israelite; the priority therefore belonged to
him. . . . We love God because he first loved us.*
Can the religious mind venture fruitfully
any further than this into the understanding
of the Divine Personality? The answer to that
query Involves the doctrine of the Trinity.
Dr. Gordon is an earnest trinltarlan, one of the
most discerning and original exponents of the
doctrine In the history of American theology,
which, on the whole, has been extremely dull
and muddled in Its perception of the meaning
' Ultimate Conceptions of Faith, pp. 333-3S.
'Ibid., p. 339.

GEORGE A. GORDON iii
and worth of this most profound of Christian
doctrines. Jonathan Edwards saw deeply into
its Inner meaning but the New England theo
logians who followed him, as a rule, held only a
blank, mechanical trithelsm. The New Theology
with Its better understanding and appreciation
of the Greek theology recovered the doctrine
from Its abasement. A. V. G. Allen, Phillips
Brooks, Egbert C. Smyth, James M. Whiton,'
and others developed what may almost be
called a new Athanaslanism.
Dr. Gordon shared this historical understand
ing of the Trinity and added to It an Interpre
tation of his own which is in keeping with its
historical character, yet advances a fresh con
ception that throws genuine light upon the
doctrine out of the deepening social experience
of our time. This interpretation is in brief that, I
as man is a social being and personality a ;
social and not merely an individual reality,
there must be a Source, a Prototype of human
society in the Being from whom humanity has
Issued. In other words, God is in Himself a
"Social Being." But let him speak in his own
words :
"Dr. Whiton 's Gloria Patri is perhaps the best attempt to
clarify the doctrine for the general reader that has been made.

112 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity is the full
statement of the truth at which Greek mythology-
aimed; the discovery of the social nature of God
through the social nature of man at his highest. Put
into the Godhead some reality answering to the
words the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
and one is able to conceive of God's existence as
ineffably blessed, and as containing in itself the
ground of human society.'
The essential nature of the Individual human
person — possessing as he does, within himself.
In the very structure of self-consciousness, the
elements of tri-unity — was used as the key to
the Divine nature even as early as Augustine's
"De Trinltate." This suggestion that the con
ception be broadened to Include the nature of
human society Itself is suggestive and contribu-
tlve, if It be regarded as an auxiliary to, and
not a substitute for, the analogy from Individual
personality. Personality itself, whether In man
or God, Is, by its very constitution, a self-
society, an Intercommunicatlve unity. In man
personal life is limited and requires external
society for its subsistence, but not necessarily
In the Being from whom both the human indi
vidual and human society proceed.
' Op. cit., p. 372.

GEORGE A. GORDON 113
VII
From his profound and suggestive con
ception of God we turn now to the human
world, as It lies In the mind of this capacious
and unfettered thinker. In contrast with the
impoverished, barren, shadowed human world
of the old theology, with Its doctrine of human
depravity and Its suspicion of the Innate In
stincts of the heart, how captivating and ex
pansive Is our human life, as the New Theology
sees it! Nowhere does this hopeful and hospit
able view of human life appear more richly
than in the volume of Lowell lectures delivered
by Dr. Gordon on the threshold of the new
century, "The New Epoch for Faith" (1901).
Its theme Is a survey of the gains of the nine
teenth century as the century of "the advent
of humanity." The mood In which America
entered the portals of the twentieth century,
little foreseeing what was to come, was one of
grateful retrospect and boundless hope. In these
vivid yet serene lectures this mood of gratitude
and anticipation finds unsurpassed expression.
The higher gains of the later nineteenth century,
In scientific and social progress. Its doubts as
well as its return to faith, are here appraised In

114 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
the light of religion and the greater light of
Christianity. It would be difficult to find a
saner, more wholesome, more idealistic view of
life lived In the light of Christian faith. Whether
the "things expected" with which the volume
closes are as certain as the "things assumed"
with which it commences, remains for the future
to determine. The expectation cherished by the
author is at least not one that is easily defeated:
"It Is expected, finally, that all contradictions
of human hope will prove but mightier ful
fillments of It." A prophetic and heartening
word this, In view of the unforeseen devastation
and chaos which have since developed, caused
by the greatest self-apostasy of which this
halting old world has ever been guilty. Three
notably brilliant and suggestive discussions
deserve attention In this volume: action and
reaction In the spiritual life, the place of senti
ment in religion, and the meaning of history,
defined as "the study of reality through the
process of its development." Each of these
might well have been expanded Into a volume.
In Dr. Gordon's vision of human life — its
movement and its ends — very large place is
occupied by the Ideal. Through our ideals God
reveals Himself. In their light we see light

GEORGE A. GORDON 115
"We do not discover our ideals; they discover
us." ' This intimate relation of Revelation and
the Ideal is fully brought out in a volume of
sermons bearing this title, published in 191 3,
the residuum, as he tells us In the preface, of
his "audacious dream," cherished for years, of
a volume on "Revelation." These sermons are
simpler, less taxing and sustained than any
other of his productions, but full of beauty, of
wisdom, of rebuke, and of courage for the
struggle against obstacles. For this keen ob
server of human nature and of the daily con
flicts of the soul knows well how, as he puts it
in an earlier volume, "the dust of the actual
is blown in the clean and shining face of the
ideal" ^ and with what foes the soul has to
contend if It is not disobedient to the heavenly
vision. With gracious sympathy and unfailing
hopefulness he girds the warrior for his task
and points him to the shining heights of victory
beyond. VIII
We have seen something of Dr. Gordon's
conception of Christ, of God and of man. Let
us ask, finally, concerning his conception of
' Immortality and the New Theodicy, p. 120.
' Through Man to God, p. 109.

Ii6 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
nature. Nature Is to his mind, as to many an
other, the great enigma. He Is exceedingly
sensitive to her beauties and especially to her
grandeurs. Sublime nature scenes fill his mind
with a joy and an awe that communicate
themselves with the greatest vividness. Moun
tains loom vast and alluring before his imagina
tion, sunsets paint his memory with undying
glories, rivers flow serene and majestic through
the fields of his thought. He is an ardent nature
lover. He finds God In her. And yet he finds
nature far Inferior to man as a revelation. He
Is conscious, too, of the reverse aspect of
nature, her wildness, her independence, her
power to thwart and stifle the life of the spirit.
He Is sure that she issues from the same divine
Fountainhead as man, yet — how?
His study of philosophy has made clear to
him the fact that the mind impresses its own
forms upon nature. "Without man," he ex
claims, "what a strange ghost nature be
comes." ' Yet he assigns to nature a certain
independent realm and reality of her own.
Nevertheless he Is unwilling to allow that there
is any radical cleavage between the world of
nature and the human world. To him the dis-
" Through Man to God, p. 90.

GEORGE A. GORDON 117
tinction between natural and revealed religion
is an "unholy distinction." '
Nature's values for the spirit life, when
rightly seen and used — her ordered, depend
able uniformity, the majestic movement of her
laws, the silent witness of her beauty — are so
rich and satisfying to the thoughtful soul,
meditating on her laws day and night, that
many a mind finds It difficult to discover any
place for miracle. So Incongruous and burden
some did the weight of miracles come to seem
to Dr. Gordon that It at length aroused him
to open and- deliberate revolt. The occasion
was the Invitation to deliver the Nathanael
W. Taylor lectures at Yale University In 1909.
For this he selected as his theme "Religion and
Miracle." His purpose, which was not to destroy
miracle but to show Its relative unimportance,
was carried out with admirable cogency and in
a catholic and convincing spirit. His thesis is
that miracle is non-essential because unverlfiable
In experience, "and It is clear that the unverl
fiable can never remain an essential part of a
reasonable faith." ^ The discussion Is free from
dogmatism or assertiveness. Belief In the Virgin
¦ Harvard Theological Review, vol. I, no. 2, p. 145.
' Religion and Miracle, p. 38.

ii8 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
Birth is treated with respect but it is declared
to be "immaterial how Jesus began or how he
came into the world." ' "For myself," the lec
turer affirms, "I forget to raise the question,
even in thought, how this child began to be;
with the wise men I can only open my heart in
homage and gifts." ' Concerning the resurrec
tion he states: "The essential thing here Is the
assurance of a risen Lord; we are not supremely
concerned about the manner of the resurrec
tion; what we desire is assurance of the fact."^
And of the fact he finds ample assurance.
The whole presentation Is an Illuminating
study in spiritual emphasis and as such has
permanent value; but as compared with his
other theological enterprises, one cannot help
raising the question whether the game was
worth the candle — Dr. Gordon's candle. The
appearance of the volume brought a consider
able storm of protest and attack during which
the storm-center wrote to a friend: "I am
getting a terrible pounding from all over the
country . . . and some from good men whom I
deeply respect and truly love. Since it Is said
that 'the way of the transgressor is hard' and
' Religion and Miracle, p. 96.
i« Ibid,, p. 105. 5 Ibid., p. 107.

GEORGE A. GORDON 119
that ' the way of the prophet is hard ' I am not
quite sure which way I am on. I think,
however, that I am following the Gleam."
IX
The portrait of George A. Gordon as pri
marily a theologian, here presented, will un
doubtedly occasion surprise, if not dissent, on
the part of not a few who have regarded him
as a preacher rather than a theologian. This
dissociation of the theologian and preacher Is
typical of a very general misconception of the
inner kinship of these allied offices. Theology is
supposed by many intelligent people to be quite
alien, both in matter and spirit, to the pulpit
and the less the latter has to do with it, in their
judgment, the better. It must be confessed that
there Is some ground for this notion. Theology
has been too often dragged Into the pulpit in
skeleton form and the rattle of its bones has
either depressed the pews or emptied them.
But there Is theology and theology; and when
the right kind of theology, clothed In flesh and
blood and vitalized by a living faith, is presented
in the pulpit It wins not only a hearing, but a
heeding. The pulpit of the Old South Church
has given a great congregation theology — pure

I20 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
and wholesome — from the lips of this great
preacher for thirty-five years and they have
fed upon it as upon the finest of the wheat;
and no marvel. It has been, not technical or
classroom theology, but pulpit theology.
Dr. Gordon's sermons differ from his tech
nical lectures and papers In form and manner
and clothing. They are simpler, warmer, closer
to every-day life. Yet for substance of doctrine
they are the same. For example, the conception
of Christ which In "The Christ of To-day" Is
set forth panoplied In philosophical, cosmical,
and doctrinal terms reappears In his sermon
"The Moral Ideal In Christ," thus: "Our
glorious Master, Christ, Is our end; our aim is
to be found, whether present or absent, well
pleasing to Him! We aim at becoming hke Him,
so exalted In Intellect, so purified in heart,
made so great, true, and tender In spirit, that
when we come Into the presence of His soul we
shall be found agreeable to His will. That is
Christianity." ' So with other of the great
theological doctrines, which will be found
throughout his sermons, — not as mere passing
thoughts but as seasoned, tested,, abiding
convictions, offered as nourishment for life
,' Revelation and the Ideal, p. 277.

GEORGE A. GORDON 121
and conduct. This preaching is not open to
the criticism of consisting merely of gleams of
Inspiration and Ideal, playing mockingly upon
the hard surface of actual life. It is full of pity
and sympathy. Nor is It wanting in sternness
when occasion demands. It flames at times into
prophetic and scorching rebuke. At the close of
a severe arraignment of the lotus-eating, pleas
ure-loving, self-indulgent life led to-day by
many In our churches the preacher exclaimed:
"Is this too plain? My answer Is that there Is
no earthly use In preaching if we cannot speak
the truth to one another In love." ' Despite
the wealth and charm of his sermons, with
their appeal to the feelings and the Imagination,
the bulk of their message Is to the Intellect. No
preacher ever honored the Intelligence of his
congregation more highly than the pastor of
the Old South Church and no congregation ever
responded to the confidence more splendidly.
The result has been an abiding witness to the
place and power of doctrinal preaching that
has done much to keep the standard of the
American pulpit from declining.
' Revelation and the Ideal, p. 276.

122 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT

It is not often that a volume crowns an
author's work with such consummate grace
and spiritual fruitage as "Aspects of the In
finite Mystery" (1916) crowns that of Dr.
Gordon. It is to be hoped that he will give us
much hereafter, but, however rare and en
riching, it will be largely in the nature of
aftermath. That he himself regards this volume
as sustaining a pecuhar relationship to his
total work Is evident from the "Personal Word"
with which it opens. "While I am not aware of
any contradiction between the views advanced
here and the views presented in earlier books
of mine," he writes, "I am conscious of new
feelings and a new mood of the spirit toward
the Eternal Wonder that Is the object of all
faith." This new mood is as evident to the
reader as to the author. It Is a book of ex
perience, ripe and rewarding In an extraordi
nary degree. One of the main evidences of its
sincerity and maturity is the great sense of
mystery which envelops it, so suggestively
embodied in its remarkable — one may say Its
moving and majestic — title, "Aspects of the
Infinite Mystery," a title made more signifi-

GEORGE A. GORDON 123
cant by the author's confidence with the reader
as to his choice of it. The title bears In itself, as
a quiet lake at evening, the reflected mind of
the author. It mirrors at once both the sunset
clouds of his mysticism and the steadfast stars
of his rationalism. "Mystery," infinite Mystery,
yes, but not blank mystery; mystery that has
"aspects," values, meanings, meanings brought
out with a deft, experienced touch which leaves
the reader even more deeply impressed with the
meanings than with the mystery. In this harvest
sheaf are garnered all the cardinal doctrines
of the author of "The Christ of To-day" and
"Ultimate Conceptions of Faith"; yet each has
entered a riper stage and is bathed In a warmer
atmosphere. The universe, as it has unfolded
itself to him through years of experience, is less
clearly defined but more meaningful, "its ex
cellence so great that our thoughts are but
shadows upon the hillsides of the Eternal
reality." ' XI
The reality of the Eternal recurs as the su
preme truth — the vast, absorbing, absolute,
underlying Reality, God, — here conceived as
» Aspects of the Infinite Mystery, p. 15.

124 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
"Absolute Worth," the Worth which can in
here only in the Absolute Person. The reality
of this Absolute Person Is assured by the same
"Instinctive reason" that assures men of the
reality of themselves, of nature, and of other
persons. This appeal to "instinctive reason"
as the basis of reality Is a reappearance In
another form of the same truth criterion which
the author has applied throughout his dis
cussions of religious truth, as It is admirably
presented, e.g., in the opening chapter of
"The New Epoch for Faith": "The ukimate
premise of thought Is not proof. It Is Insight or
assumption in accordance with sane reason."
Thus, we find the author's maturer reflec
tion reaffirming the principle with which he
began his ministry: experience the source and
validation of spiritual truth. The assurance with
which this conviction deepened In his mind,
as he watched the movement of religious
thought, is reflected In a letter, written In 1913,
in which he says: "My feeling about philosophy
and theology Is this: Both must become the
intellectual form of a profound religious con
viction, otherwise they are not nearly so useful
as a heap of sawdust. My criticism upon all
departments of the general discipline known

GEORGE A. GORDON 125
under the name of theology is that It Is not
profound enough In Its religious experience."
It is reassuring to find that in this late and
mature meditation upon the ways of God with
men. Dr. Gordon, though no longer buoyed up
by the surging tides that give strength to the
speculative instinct In the earUer years of
reflection, nevertheless holds fast to his great
and daring assurance as to the Divine respon
sibility to man, sure to Issue In the final re
demption of the race; and that with a still
deeper faith and more filial confidence. Hither
to he has attached the doctrine chiefly to God
as Creator of men and Master of their destinies;
now he attaches It still more directly to the
simple and unavoidable responsibility entailed
by Fatherhood.
A parent is the responsible author of the life of
another and therefore under the most sacred obliga
tion to care for that life. We apply this to God. ... I
confess that I stand nowhere more at peace than I
do on this ground. When I implicate the honor of
God and involve his whole character with the tragedy
of time, I am sure that I am rendering him the hom
age of the absolute truth; I thus declare my belief
that he will stand by his infinite obligation to his
rational creatures in this world. If that is not homage
I do not know the meaning of the word.'
' Aspects of the Infinite Mystery, p. 94.

126 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
In all the vast literature of Christian theol
ogy since Paul, the thinker has yet to be found
who has had the Insight and the faith —
should we not say the courage ? — to rest the
conviction of universal redemption so simply,
completely, and yet with so rational a basis,
upon the Fatherhood of God. The tremendous
obstacles In the way of this faith do not escape
him; but they are such as attach to the belief
in Divine Fatherhood Itself. "This Is our faith,"
he declares, "we cannot prove it true beyond
doubt or question." "Every thinker," as he
says elsewhere, "takes his life in his hand, the
denier no less than the alfirmer." ' The only
adequate test Is experience.
A theory of swimming can never be satisfactory
even when it is clearly the best among theories, till
one takes it into the water. ... It is so with faith.
The theory of the Fatherhood in God must be taken
into the deep waters; it must be tested when all
God's waves and billows are gone over us.*
XII
The appeal to faith, ratified in experience, is
conclusive for this deeply religious yet rational
mind, but it indicates, nevertheless, no failure
' Immortality and the New Theodicy, p. 24.
' Aspects of the Infinite Mystery, p. 108.

GEORGE A. GORDON 127
to recognize the necessary and wholesome func
tion of criticism In the field of theology. Yet he
demands of criticism that it be genuine. In
dealing with the second great problem In
reality which he here confronts, the reality of
Jesus, he Institutes a most searching critique
of modern Biblical and historical criticism.
The task of criticism, as he sees it, is twofold,
"to let nothing unreal pass as real, to allow
nothing real to pass as unreal," perhaps the
most penetrating and succinct definition of
criticism ever given.' The first part of this task
he concedes has been well fulfilled by the modern
New Testament critic, but In the second half
of his task he has failed. What is needed to-day,
in the judgment of Dr. Gordon, is a criticism
of criticism. The kind of criticism that dims the
personality of Jesus to shadow and myth, or
that "reduces criticism of great documents to
the play of a puppy with a rag" should be called
to account, he asserts, with a severe challenge
of its sanity. His word to the critic is this :
Son of man, stand upon thy feet; let us have your
mind upon the phenomena in question. Separate
your sure judgments, supported by evidence, from
your guesses; deliver us from the greatest of all
' Aspects of the Infinite Mystery, p. 137.

128 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
humbugs — the spirit of the age — into the spirit
of good sense, careful and weighty opinion, and if
possible into the love of attainable truth.'
Here is the word our generation has been
waiting for, convinced of the need and value
of criticism but dimly conscious that something
has been the trouble with modern historical
and Biblical criticism and not knowing exactly
what it Is. Dr. Gordon has put his finger, kindly
but firmly, on the weak spot. He, above all
others, is the man to have done this, familiar
as he has always been with Biblical scholarship,
untrammeled, progressive and fearless in his
whole mental attitude, yet keenly sensitive to
literary as well as spiritual values. Upon the
strength of what he regards as genuine historical
criteria, he goes on to vindicate the historical
reahty of Jesus, claiming for It such evidence
as "the Impact and power of his life upon the
life of his people and his time," "the image of
his career In literature," and the "survival
of his ideas," of church and kingdom. In close,
patient, sympathetic study of the Gospels one
comes to meet Jesus face to face. But that Is
not the only place one meets him. His face
blends wondrously with the moral Ideal that
' Aspects of the Infinite Mystery, pp. 144, 145.

GEORGE A. GORDON 129
forever haunts the human heart. To follow
Christ and to follow "the Gleam" are, he
conceives, one.
Yet there are foes and pitfalls In the pursuit of
the Christ ideal. The fascinating appeal of the
moral Ideal and the inner desire for it, as the
author depicts them in the chapter "Man and
the Moral Ideal," and the great Inspirations
that come to the soul from nature and the world
of human beings and the presence of the
Infinite and Eternal, as he presents them In the
moving chapter "The Reality of Inspiration,"
are constant; they are our unfailing resources.
Yet we have Immense obstacles to meet and
overcome in the very constitution of the body
itself, as related to the mind. These are honestly
faced In the chapter "The Dualism In Man."
Our nature Is dual. We are caught and held
and buffeted by the diverse, often conflicting
demands of our own nature. To adjust the
physical and the spiritual, ideal and environ
ment. Is a serious, sometimes a tragic task.
Moreover, we are In a world whose life Is
steeped In evil and whose moral Inertia and
stagnation drag us back. The brutality of man
asserts Itself, as In the Great War, with sinister
and awful denial of the good. We are dazed and

I30 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
momentarily overwhelmed by such facts as are
fully recognized In the chapter "Moral Evil
and Racial Hope." In view of these terrible
strains of faith, the movement of this symphonic
portrayal of the Inner life which began In the
allegro of joyous confidence, passes into agita
tion and sorrow. The minor chords of disturb
ance and doubt emerge; but not for long. The
victorious optimism of the author reasserts
itself. The dualism with which we are perplexed
and retarded, may be, will be, he asserts,
resolved in a final unity. The very massing and
advance of evil will defeat Itself. For it is of the
very nature of evil to be self-destructive. Thus
the discord that creeps Into this symphony of
life is overcome and the music moves on in
deepening peace and harmony to the end. The
sense of mystery in which the whole is bathed
does not disappear at the close; but it becomes
more and more mystery in the New Testament
sense "as the publication of hidden wisdom,
as the clear disclosure of the hitherto concealed
purpose of the Eternal." '
The closing chapters set forth "the mystery
of redemption" — the passion to transform the
"mere capacity" of another soul Into a "shining
' Aspects of the Infinite Mystery, p. 305.

GEORGE A. GORDON 131
actuality" — an Impulse which leads to the
assurance that "the Being who gives to one
soul the passion to redeem another soul must
himself be that redeeming passion in its Infinite
strength." "The Mystery of the End" with
which the volume concludes, resuming as It
does the theme of the author's first volume,
"The Witness to Immortality," suggests again
the symphonic nature of his work as a whole. In
that early volume he assembled in an impres
sive manner the witnesses to immortality from
literature and philosophy and Christianity,
closing with the witness from "trust." In this
later volume he sums up the grounds of faith
in immortality in this unique and striking
fashion: "The sea bird has three ways of main
taining life; It swims, it walks, it flies. The soul,
the believing soul, has three ways of maintain
ing its faith in the reality of life after death; It
feels. It reasons. It rises into the heights of
Christian experience and Insight." '
XIII
Surveying Dr. Gordon's thought as a whole,
in the light of the foregoing review of it, how
may we summarize and appraise his service to
^Aspects of the Infinite Mystery, p. 322.

132 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
the science of theology? It is Impossible to
pour so rich and copious a vintage Into scant
vessels, but for the sake of those who know his
work but slightly, let us venture the attempt.
He has. In the first place, fulfilled the task
commenced by Bushnell, of restoring to Ameri
can theology the spirit of comprehensiveness
and unity. The New England theology, as has
been already pointed out, had fallen into
pettiness and bondage to system. It required
nineteenth-century doubt to arouse the church
to the need of a wider and deeper faith. "It
seems as If there were but one sure way,"
Dr. Gordon remarks, "to recall the Christian
church from intellectual pettiness. It appears
as if that one way were to throw Into doubt the
eternal verities." ' Some large and constructive
body of coordinated truth was needed to take
the place of the barren systemism of the old
theology and to turn back the tides of increasing
skepticism. Bushnell outlined such a theology;
Gordon completed it. His theology, as we have
seen. Is held together by no formal logical
system; yet It Is unified by an Invisible principle
of cohesion. It has perspective, harmony,
wholeness. In a word, it is comprehensive. Here
' Ultimate Conceptions of Faith, p. 302.

GEORGE A. GORDON 133
Is a mind that will neither imprison truth in
formulas nor let It lie In disordered fragments.
His vision of Christianity is exceedingly broad
and inclusive. No essential doctrine is wanting
in his large and inwardly unified theology —
unless it be that of atonement, which is present
indeed, but hardly In its due and ample place.
The significant thing is that these doctrines all
lie in such natural and vital kinship to one
another. Without effort or compulsion he has
woven a seamless robe whose pattern is as
perfect as Its texture.
Characteristic of Dr. Gordon's mind Is its
love of unity. Indeed, if criticism Is to be made
of his theology — and what theology is not
open to criticism ? — it may well be here. The
robe of unity is so ample as to cover many
protruding contradictions in the present order.
For these he makes too littie place. The Pla
tonic cast of his mind dominates the Aristo
telian. He Is the Origen of our age. The "large
discourse of reason, looking before and after"
leads him to Ignore dissonant facts. The sig
nificance of freedom is too often lost In the larger
unity. The Augustinlanism which he thrusts
aside with one hand he comes very near wel
coming back with the other. Nor Is this done

134 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
wholly unconsciously. In his IngersoU lecture
he frankly accepts and defends determinism,
declaring, "The question at issue, so far as it
concerns theology, Is not between determinism
I and indeterminism, but between the moral and
. the Immoral forms of that sovereign con
ception." ' This Is too close a merging of divine
purpose and divine decree to win the full con
sent of present-day thought. The modern mind
calls for the total dispersion of every cloud that
obscures the full fact of human freedom. That
which Dr. Gordon calls "the victorious march
of the divine persuasions In behalf of the highest
good of mankind" ^ Is In full accord with the
largest recognition of the free human will; but
when "persuasion" passes Into "determinism"
Its character Is lost. When the persuading power
of the Divine reason and love is resolved into
the compelling power of Will we are back again
under the old bondage. Clearly this Is not his
intent; yet he fails to clear himself from the
danger of misunderstanding at this point.
A fuller recognition of the reality of freedom,
even though It caused a jar In the movement of
his thought, or left the temple of truth less
' Immortality and the New Theodicy, p. 98.
' Ibid., p. 100.

GEORGE A. GORDON 135
complete — not less of Plato but more of
William James — would have given to this
superb structure of thought a firmer attach
ment to solid earth with Its obstinate plural-
Isms and disunities. It would have made the
fearful rebellions In the human world, perhaps
also In nature herself, less Incomprehensible.
Whether this would involve greater restraint
In the doctrine of universal redemption —
leaving less to God and more to man, less there
fore to assurance and more to hope — Is matter
for difference of judgment.
One aspect of freedom only receives full
recognition In Dr. Gordon's theology; "Free
dom Is insight Into the true order of existence,
susceptibility to that Insight, obedience to It,
and harmonious existence under it." ' This is,
virtually, Edwards' conception of freedom,
good as far as It goes, but Insufficient. Free
dom Is more than Insight and obedience; It is
power of initiation, of genuine creative activity,
exercised. It Is true, under the "great Task
master's eye" and through power imparted by
Him, but nevertheless cooperative in the great
process of cosmic construction. It Is this very
potentiality In freedom which makes the
'Article cited: Harvard Theological Review, p. 139.

136 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
possibility of Its abuse at once so unavoidable
and so full of potential disaster. This kind of
freedom is Implicit In all of Dr. Gordon's
attitudes toward human life, yet It fails of
full recognition in his theology, doubtless be
cause of Its emphasis upon the Godward rather
than the manward side of truth. If, however,
we cannot have In the same mind — as the
history of human thought seems to indicate that
we cannot — an equal recognition of unity and
plurality, God and freedom; let us not fail to
recognize that It Is to the minds that have
grasped most firmly the principle of unity that
we are most indebted. XIV
A second characteristic of Dr. Gordon's
theology Is originality. It is a venturesome claim
to make for a contribution to so ancient and
affluent a science that it Is original. Yet it may
be made without hesitation for this. With all
its close continuity with the past, Its loyalty
to the historic doctrines of the faith, it yet
conceives them, and Christianity itself, in a
fresh, strong, and unique manner. His thought
has In Its very texture and quality the un
mistakable "feel" of orlglnahty. To use his own

GEORGE A. GORDON 137
words In defining originality, "It advances
upon its subject in a great invasion, illuminates
reality like the sun, and while it is Itself hard
to look at, makes the world that lives in Its
light visible and beautiful." ' Let us test the
quality of this work in the light of Its author's
own chosen criteria of originality. These are
three: "Originality means first of all the new;
either absolutely or relatively; In the second
place. It signifies greater depth in the appre
hension of the old and the putting of the old
thus apprehended In new relations; finally, it
stands for immediate contact with reality."
Unconsciously and therefore the more con
clusively, these words define the characteristics
which stamp the work of their writer. It is new,
relatively at least; It has depth In apprehending
and freshness In restating the old; and It gives
clear evidence of immediate contact with
reality. XV
The third and most outstanding character
istic of Dr. Gordon's theology is its ennobling
quality. It restores beauty. Imagination, feeling,
to theology. How largely these had been lost
' "Things Worth While in Theology," Harvard Theological
Review, vol. Ill, no. 4, p. 382.

138 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
to "the queen of the sciences" especially In
America, one has but to look Into one of the
typical treatises of the New England school to
discover. Edwards, despite the rigorism of his
Calvinism, had a certain chaste and mystic
love of beauty which steals through his somber
pages like the perfume of blossoms in the desert,
Hopkins, with all his heavy movement. Is not
oblivious to the Inner light which cannot shine
save In beauty. N. W. Taylor's "Moral Govern
ment of God" Is suffused by a certain grandeur
of Inborn eloquence; but for the most part
American theology shunned the beautiful and
ignored every Impulse of feeling and imagina
tion, as Bunyan's "Pilgrim" turned away
from the wares of Vanity Fair.
The author of "The Christ of To-day,"
"The New Epoch for Faith," and all these
other glowing volumes has rededlcated imagina
tion to the service of theology, claimed for
sentiment a place near the throne of intellect
and made all his productions conform to the
lofty and holy behests of literary art. It is a
high achievement and worthy of note. Bushnell
and Beecher uttered their prophetic messages
with a native force and freedom such as often
rose to the highest eloquence; but neither was

GEORGE A. GORDON 139
a student of literary art. Munger showed how
a sermon can be made a piece of pure and
appropriate literature, but his literary output
was not large. It remained for Gordon to pro
duce a sustained series of volumes which can
not fail to take high rank In American literature;
and this without ceasing to be distinctively the
ological, but rather gaining thereby, both as
literature and as theology. His sermons are, as
Professor George H. Palmer has called them,
"great lyrics." ' The theological treatises fall
little short of being great epics. Consonant with
their lofty themes, they move with an almost
Mlltonic music and statellness. Burdened as
Is the thought at times with an intense and
often necessarily intricate interplay, that frees
itself from Its barriers in swift and leaping
ardor — producing what Bliss Perry has termed
the "athletic quality of his style" ^ — when
these are overcome it sweeps like a great river
from a tumultuous canon into a fruitful plain
and flows with the movement of a stately poem
to the sea of Its large and beneficent ends.^ It is
' Twenty-fifth Anniversary Volume, p. I2I.
' "His own [i.e.. Dr. Gordon's] style, so clean-cut, so athletic,
so rich with humor and pathos, has been formed by reverent
intimacy with the masters of thought and verse." Ibid,, p. 115.
' See e.g.. Aspects of tlie Infinite Mystery, p. 311.

I40 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
no every-day task to keep thought at the level
of these high themes without straining the
bounds of expression. The tides of his thought —
to change the figure — often dash impulsively
against the rocky headlands of reason and
sanity but never break through; they sweep far
up upon the fair fields of sentiment and affec
tion but never inundate them. The discipline of
true ethic and true art has taught him when to
say, "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further:
and here shall thy proud waves be stayed."
Abundance is here but no extravagance, luxuri
ance but no exaggeration. The tenderness of
his favorite poet. Burns, invests his pages, but
restrained by the ethical rigor of a mind that
never parts company vpith Puritan sobriety.
Not only is literary art Inwrought into all
his own noble craftsmanship, literature con
stantly lends its treasures to enrich and further
his thought. He continues that fruitful alliance
of literature and theology which Dr. Munger
initiated. There is constant and abundant
evidence, upon almost every page, of familiarity
not only with historical theology and philos
ophy but also with the best literature, espe
cially the great poetry of the ages. Through his
Lenten lectures he has become a spiritual

GEORGE A. GORDON 141
interpreter of the great Christian poets in a
way which the academic teacher of literature
can hardly hope to equal.'
Yet his literary art is always subordinate to
his great purposes, rational, ethical, and reli
gious. It is an instrument of his strong and
unflagging optimism, — an optimism which
shines out resplendent In the first chapter of
his first publication,' pervades his whole work,
and glows richly in the aftemoon light of
"Aspects of the Infinite Mystery." His Is no
weak and near-sighted optimism, but one that
has looked into the darkest aspects of the
Infinite Mystery and is not dismayed. It Is
much more than a "cheerful optimism"; It is
reverent, rational, sustaining.
It Is for these reasons that I have chosen the
word ennobling as peculiarly expressive of the
thought of this truly Christian theologian. He
touches no theme, no doctrine, no aspect of life,
that he does not ennoble. There is the same true
elevation of mind in a page of his as In a page
of Martlneau, or Carlyle, or of Milton himself.
' For example, instances of his work as a literary critic are to
be found iu articles in The Atlantic Monthly, upon two of his
favorite authors, Milton and Shakespeare.
' For example, "Life in our time is founded upon optimism,"
etc.; The Witness to Immortality, p. 6.

142 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
Everything Is lifted up and set In the light of
the Eternal. It is in this transcendent realm
that all experience takes its due place in his
thought and purpose — all truth and beauty,
all pain and evil, all aspiration and endeavor,
life Itself. Eternity Is set in the heart of his
thinking. "We are all in the presence of the Infinite
Mystery of Godliness; our Increasing sense of
this Reality means the Increasing life of hu
manity; yet this life must ever be in the awe
of the uncomprehended Fulness of truth and
love." ' 'Aspects of the Infinite Mystery, p. 22.

CHAPTER IV
WILLIAM J. TUCKER

WILLIAM JEWETT TUCKER

1839- 1840.1847.1847.1857.1861.
1862-63. 1863.1864.1866. 1866.1867.
1870. 187s.1875.
1878-1909. 1879.1880.

1882.
1884-93. 1886-92. 1887.1891.1891. 1892. 1893-
, 1894.
1895-97- . 1898.
1902.
; 1906.
1907.1909. I9II.

Born in Griswold, Conn., July 13.
Parents removed to Norwich, Conn.
Death of his mother, Sarah White Lester.
Went to live with Rev. William R. Jewett, an uncle,
in Plymouth, N.H.
Entered Dartmouth College.
Graduated from Dartmouth College.
Taught in High School, Columbus, Ohio.
Entered Andover Theological Seminary.
Served in the United States Christian Commission.
Graduated from Andover Seminary.
Made a survey of religious conditions in south
western Missouri and southeastern Kansas.
Ordained to the ministry as pastor of Franklin Street
Church, Manchester, N.H., January 24.
Married Charlotte H. Rogers of Plymouth, N.H.
Installed as pastor of the Madison Square Presbyte
rian Church, New York, May 12.
Degree of Doctor of Divinity conferred by Dart
mouth College; University of Vermont, 1904.
Trustee of Dartmouth College.
Accepted a call to the!chair of Homiletics in Andover
Theological Seminary.
Installed as Bartlet Professor of Sacred Rhetoric
and Lecturer in Pastoral Theology in Andover
Theological Seminary.
Mrs. Tucker died.
Joint founder and editor of The Andover Review.
One of the five defendants in the Andover HeresyTrial.
Married Charlotte, daughter of Rev. Henry T.
Cheever of Worcester, Mass.
Established Andover (now South End) House,
Boston.
Lecturer on Homiletics, Harvard Divinity^ School.
Phi Beta Kappa orator. Harvard University.
Accepted a call to presidency of Dartmouth College,
reconsidering declination of the previous year.
Lowell Institute lecturer.
Andover Theological Seminary lecturer on Stone
Foundation.
Lyman Beecher lecturer, Yale University.
Morse Foundation lecturer. Union Seminary.
Earl lecturer. Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley,
Cal.
Offered resignation of presidency of Dartmouth.
Resignation accepted.
Made President Emeritus.

CHAPTER IV
WILLIAM J. TUCKER
THE NEW THEOLOGY IN ACTION
Much of the Interest and carrying power of the
New Theology movement lay in its personnel,
which was strikingly varied, forceful, attrac
tive. Its representatives have possessed in
an unusual degree Individuality, force, Influ
ence. In no Instance has the personal equation
counted for more than in that of President
Tucker. Something In William Jewett Tucker
recalls the sentence with which Emerson
opens his essay on Character: "I have read
that those who listened to Lord Chatham felt
that there was something finer in the man than
anything which he said." Dr. Tucker has said
exceedingly fine things and said them ex
ceedingly finely. Indeed, that Is one of his most
characteristic habits. Yet there Is something
In the man still finer. It is indefinable, or it
would not be of so great consequence. "Per
sonality" Is the word to which we retreat when

146 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
we can get no further with our halting analyses
and descriptions. It must serve here.
Whatever It may be, this quality pervades
his thinking, giving it "the purple" of which
Stevenson speaks; his speech, clothing it in the
fine raiment of an ordered mind ; all his contacts
and activities. He belongs, indeed, to the
American nobility, the nobility of true de
mocracy, holding Its title from no hand of
royalty but that of self-conquest, guaranteed
by no heritage save that of unstained native
blood. The one thing that this man never has
been, nor can be, is — commonplace. High-
'mindedness Invests him. His whole purpose and
Influence have been to lift life, In all of its
activities, out of the mean and commonplace
into nobility and worth. He will not have men,
or deeds, drop Into the slough of sordidness.
"The great danger which besets us In our esti
mation of human nature Is that of indifference
or contempt," he once said, and against that dan
ger he has ever been on guard and ever putting
others on guard.

Dr. Tucker Is a true New Englander, his
grandfather, "Squire Tucker," being the fifth

WILLIAM J. TUCICER 147
In descent from Robert Tucker who came to
Weymouth, Mass., from England in 1635. His
boyhood embraced the double fascination of
the Connecticut coast, where he spent his early
years In the old town of Norwich, and of the
White Mountains, whither he went at the age
of nine to live with his uncle, the Rev. William
R. Jewett, In the town of Plymouth, N.H.
Dartmouth College naturally became his Alma
Mater and well did she minister to him In
litterisque humanis rebus. At the time of his
graduation his purpose was to enter the legal
profession, for which he had both aptitude and
talent; but serious reflection upon the largest
opportunity for personal service led him to
turn toward the ministry and to the doors of
venerable Andover Seminary. Here he found
intellectual stimulus and spiritual culture In
the classrooms of Park and Phelps and Stowe.
But the touch which awoke him to the deeper
realities of Christian faith came from that
dauntless victor over doubt and dismay, who
being dead yet spake to the young men of his
day and of ours — Frederick Robertson. Re
flecting upon the Influence of Robertson upon
him. Dr. Tucker has written: "His fundamental
conception of Christianity as revealing what is

148 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
otherwise obscure, uncertain, perhaps deniable
namely the fact of human sonship, every man
by nature a son of God, has been the conception
which has most influenced me In my work in
the pulpit and among men. It has given me a
steady working faith in human nature. I have
not been afraid of what may have seemed to
others to be an over estimation of men."
The first pastorate of Mr. Tucker was that
of the Franklin Street Church of Manchester,
N.H., where his spiritual initiative, preaching
power, and high devotion to his task made his
ministry a notable one, and where he estabhshed
a bond of union with the State of New Hamp
shire which was later to be renewed with still
larger results. After a pastorate of seven
years In Manchester he accepted a call to the
Madison Square Presbyterian Church, New
York, where he met a difficult task with courage
and ability.
Fourteen years after his graduation he was
recalled to Andover Seminary as professor of
Homiletics (Sacred Rhetoric) and Pastoral
Theology. Here he speedily became a potent
factor In the conduct and development of the
institution, In the guidance of the students, and
in the religious and educational life of New

WILLL^M J. TUCKER 149
England. As teacher he was intensely alert,
attractive, suggestive; as preacher he was
vibrant, high-minded, challenging; as a molder
of thought he was reverent, intrepid, progres
sive. He went through the Andover controversy
with unflagging faith in the cause and emerged
from it unscathed, a recognized leader in the
progressive movement in the Pilgrim churches
and beyond. Among the members of the Ando
ver faculty he, more than any other. Interpreted
the real Andover movement to the churches.
In a notable sermon before the General Assem
bly of Congregational churches of Massachu
setts, June 25, 1882, he did much to correct the
current misunderstandings of Andover theology
and to bring the real seriousness and signifi
cance of the movement home to the under
standing of the constituency of the Seminary.
There was no man whose vision seemed to
his students to penetrate so discerningly into
the modern movement of life and thought in
Its relation to Christianity and the church as
that of Professor Tucker. In his classroom, his
sermons, his public addresses, his writings, he
was without an equal In seizing upon the aspects
of modern life which call for readj'ustment in
the thought and activity of the church, and

ISO PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
which open into large opportunity. In this dual
service to the seminary and the church he con
tinued for fourteen years until at length the
'educational world laid a constraining hand
upon him and he became president of Dart
mouth College, In which office he remained
until his retirement as president emeritus in
191 1. This larger responsibility, however, by
no means severed his interest from either
church administration or theology.
II
Perhaps the chief service which Dr. Tucker
has done for those who have come witSin his
Influence has been to give them courage. It
would not be true to characterize the period in
which he has lived and worked as one of un-
falth. But it has had its deep unrest, its mood
of world-weariness, its perplexity and ex-
' haustlon in face of problems more numerous, if
I not more urgent, than any previous period has
I had to meet. In the midst of these, and sensitive
to them, he has shown an Indomitable courage,
having In It a certain exhilarating quality, like
that wine of the spirit wherein Is no excess. In
the midst of a perplexed and hard-pressed if not
a crooked and perverse generation he has stood

WILLIAM J. TUCKER 151
as a Puritan of the new age, serious but not
somber, reliant but not combative, challenging
his fellows to face the difficulties and redeem the
opportunities of the present era in the spirit In
which the fathers met their tasks. "I put you
on your guard," are his ringing words, "against
the superficial and faithless Interpretation of
your own times." "
It Is this communicative courage, this mili
tant faith, which drew young men to him and
made him steadily and increasingly their
leader and friend. He appealed to their daring,
their love of high adventure. The words' of
Samuel J. Mills were often on his lips, "We can
if we will." This power to attract young men
doubtless made itself felt in his pastorates but
it first showed Itself In full force at Andover.
The seminary students felt It keenly. There
was about him a certain vibrancy, a spiritual
athleticism, not so much a halo or an aura as
an electric magnetism, which drew them to
him and clothed him with a certain fascination
of authoritative leadership.
This identification of himself with the young
man's cause and viewpoint came out with pe
culiar intensity in the heat of the Andover-
» The Andover Review, vol. XVI, no. 90, p. 461.

152 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
American Board controversy. In this crisis he
became In a special manner the defender and
spokesman of the students who were rejected
by the Board as unfit candidates for missionary
service because they would not subscribe to
"the dogma of a restricted opportunity." All
that was chivalrous and liberty-loving within
him sprang Into action at this attack upon the
freedom and hospitality of Christian faith. The
sermon entitled "The Open Door which None
can Shut," which he preached in Andover
Chapel, October i6, 1887, after the meeting of
the American Board at Springfield (published
the following day In the "Boston Daily Adver
tiser" and later In "The Andover Review") was
full of the fire of Indignation, tempered by a
fine control. It was no partisan championship of
a suppressed cause, but a searching appeal to
meet the emergency with magnanimity and
candor, — as appears in such words as these:
Do not temporize. Do not prevaricate. Do not
magnify or belittle any truth of which you are put
in trust. Let no man compel you to say more than
you believe; let no man compel you to say less than
you believe. Let your yea be yea and your nay, nay;
for in times of distress and excitement and con
tention, what is more than these cometh of evil."
' The Andover Review, vol. VIII, no. 47, p. iio.

WILLIAM J. TUCKER 153
The ties by which Professor Tucker bound
young men to him at Andover, the ambitions
which he kindled, the uplift of his presence, the
radiance of his Ideals, the power of his in
fluence, left a deep impression upon his students.
Whenever his erect form entered chapel or class
room It brought a stir of relnvigoratlon. When a
student went across the ancient, elm-embowered
campus to his home to talk with him about his
plans for the future, he Invariably came away
with a certain glow of elation as if new and
unsuspected resources of power and usefulness
had been discovered to himself. If this lover of
young men overestimated some of his students,
he at least succeeded In calling them to higher
and more potent visions of what they could do
for humanity and the determination to carry
them into realization. Ill
The courage which President Tucker has
Infused Into his generation — the high purpose
and resolution — is the more effectual because
accompanied by another quality which we have
already anticipated, — Christian statesman
ship. He has been one of the spiritual states
men of his time. By spiritual statesmanship I

154 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
mean something akin to prophecy yet more
definite and effective, discernment of the
leading Issues that confront men of the kingdom
and of the way In which they are to be met.
While other men have been more conspicuous
in ecclesiastical and educational leadership and
In popular following, few have equaled him
in clear and far-sighted sagacity. His gift of
statesmanship, developed by constant exercise,
has shown itself, not in one direction only, but
in many. Upon whatever front he has served —
and he has served on not a few — he has had
the faculty to detect the strategic points of
attack and defense.
In his association with the theological renas
cence, which most concerns us here, while he
was In no sense a technical theologian, he per
ceived with rare insight and wisdom the vital
principles of the new movement and the doc
trines which had in them the promise and
potency of the future.
At the center of the movement he saw, as
did others about him who were most sensitive
to the new conception of Christianity, the re
discovered consciousness of Christ. "The rev
elation of God in Christ is rectifying all other
and minor beliefs and bringing them Into

WILLIAM J. TUCKER 155
harmony with this which Is central and
supreme." This revaluation of Christ he con
strued as "the interpretation of a person, not
the solution of a problem." Yet he did not
hesitate before Its metaphysical Implications:
"The revealer of God the Father Is naturally
God the Son. The revelation must hold the
quality and substance of the life revealed."
Without doubt the trend of modern thought and
faith is toward the more perfect identification of
Christ with humanity. We cannot overestimate the
advantage to Christianity of this tendency. The
world must know and feel the humanity of Jesus.
But it makes the greatest difference in result whether
tfie ground of the common humanity is in him or in
us. To borrow the expressive language of Paul, was
he "created" in \is? Or are we "created" in him.''
Grant the right of the affirmation that "there is
no difference in kind between the divine and the
human"; allow the interchange of terms so that one
may speak of the humanity of God and the divinity
of man; appropriate the motive which lies in these
attempts to bring God and man together and thus
to explain the personality of Jesus Christ, it is still
a matter of infinite concern whether his home is in
the higher or the lower regions of divinity. After
all, very little is gained by the transfer of terms.
Humanity is in no way satisfied with its degree of
divinity. We are still as anxious as ever to rise
above ourselves and in this anxiety we want to
know concerning our great helper whether He has
in himself anything more than the possible increase

156 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
of a common humanity. What is his power to lift
and how long may it last.? Shall we ever reach his
level, become as divine as He, or does he have part
in the absolute and infinite.? This question may seem
remote in result but it is everything in principle.
The immanence of Christ has its present meaning
and value because of his transcendence.
These passages, taken from an editorial by
him in "The Andover Review" of January,
1893, entitled "The Satisfaction of Humanity
in Jesus Christ," ' are well supplemented by
the following extracts from a sermon preached
in the First Congregational Church of Cam
bridge, Mass., in 1891, entitled "Life in
Himself":^ I would deny no essential likeness of the human
to the divine; but if we carry the likeness to the pos
sibility of a divine humanity, we are not to overlook
the fact that a difierence in degree may amount to a
difference in kind. I take a drop out of the ocean.
The drop is like the ocean, but it is swayed by no
tides, it bears no ships on its bosom, it does not
unite continents. I take a grain of earth from a
mountain. The grain is like the mountain but I can
dig no quarries out of its bowels, I can cut no forests
on its slopes, I do not see it lifting its summit to the
first light of day. Man may be like God, but I locate
Jesus not in the drop or the grain, but in the ocean
' Republished as a chapter of "The Divinity of Christ," by
the editors of The Review.
' Published in The Andover Review, February, 1892.

WILLLVM J. TUCKER 157
and the mountain. ... I grant the mystery of the
incarnation, but I prefer mystery to insufficiency in
my faith.
At another point Professor Tucker saw very
clearly the true gains accruing to theology
from the newer point of view, i.e., those con
tributed by Biblical criticism. This appears In
an address given by him at the opening of An
dover Seminary, September 16, 1891, en-
tltied "The Authority of the Pulpit In a
Time of Critical Research and Social Con
fusion." ' In this notable address, after recog
nizing to the full the authority that grounds in
religious experience and in the testimony of the
church, he goes on to Inquire Into the real nature
of a third source of authority, the Bible, and
finds It, not in infallibility, but In life and In
the manifest presence of God In Its pages.
If the Reformation had given us as its first and
chief result an infallible Bible, it would never have
delivered us from an infallible church. . . . The power
of the reformation did not consist in confronting one
kind of infallibility with another but in confronting
infallibility with life.^
Historical criticism, as he perceived. Is the
very thing that helps most to realize both the
» See The Andover Review, vol. XVI, p. 384,
'Ibid,, p. 389,

IS8 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
interior values of the Bible and the reality of
the Christ whom it presents. "It has put
reality In place of Infallibility in the chief seat
of authority.'" "Historical criticism has done
away with the dilemma, terrible to many
minds — either the Bible word for word,
from cover to cover, or no Bible at all." " The
spiritual result of historical criticism Is "that
eagerness of delight with which our generation
rejoices in the recovered presence of the
Christ of the Gospels." ^
IV
Perhaps the largest and most statesmanly
contribution which Professor Tucker has made
to the newer religious thought Is the principle,
of which he was one of the foremost of the
earlier heralds In this country, of the spiritual
meaning and value of the unity of humanity.
This is not the same as the "Social Gospel,"
though it underlies It and prepared the way for
it. The chief utterance through which he called
attention to this slowly emerging truth was his
Phi Beta Kappa oration at Harvard Univer
sity In 1892, "The New Movement in Human-
" See The Andover Review, vol. XVI, p. 39°-
» Ibid., p. 391. ' Il>^-) P- 391-

WILLIAM J. TUCKER 159
Ity, from Liberty to Unity." ' As an interpre
tation of the deeper inarticulate outreach of
the mind of his time toward the higher life,
this address was one of the most discerning In
the history of American academic life. It Is
worthy of that high succession which includes
Emerson's address, "The American Scholar."
The address was not primarily religious, much
less theological, yet indefinably and in spirit
It was both — as well as closely allied to
educational and social advance. It was spoken
at the moment when the force of Individualism,
which culminated In Emerson and Thoreau,
had spent itself, or rather had reached the
sense of need of something larger to supplement
Its deficiency, and when the limitation of the
power of mere liberty to recreate society was
beginning to be poignantly felt. Without in
any wise minimizing the place and value of
these essentials of civilization, individualism
and liberty. Dr. Tucker unfolded the wealth
of moral and spiritual value In the deepening
sense of unity which was beginning to pervade
the life and thought of the later years of the
nineteenth century. Perhaps the most sug-
' Originally published in The Harvard Graduates' Magazine, later
in pamphlet form and reprinted in The New Reservation of Time.

i6o PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
gestive part of the address is that In which the
speaker pointed out the values of the new sense
of unity to personality In such words as these:
I must continue to resist with all my nature the
forces from without which are seeking to enslave me,
be they many, be they great, be they of men, or of
institutions or of philosophies and beliefs; but the
personal forces which are seeking to enter in and
become a part of my being, entering through in
heritance, through friendship, through the mutual
toil and struggle and mystery and faith, through
the thousand ways in which I am open to the com
mon humanity, these I must learn to recognize and
understand, to treat with a wise discrimination and
with a generous hospitality, else I shall certainly
be less than I might be; my liberty will bring me
only the narrowness of my own self; my individual
ism will end in isolation.'
The significance of the movement toward
unity to Christianity — which originally
"struck the note of universality" but has had
to struggle through Its entire history "to
maintain Its original scope" — is shown to be
of the greatest consequence, especially in
furthering the tendency toward cooperation'
' The New Reservation of Time, Appendix, p. 200.
'Ibid., p. 26. The course in "Social Economics" which
Professor Tucker conducted in The Andover Review, as a kind of
extension course, helped greatly to open the connection between
sociology and religion which has since become so wide a channel
of expansion to both.

WILLLVM J. TUCKER i6l
and In the recognition of a common Christianity
transcending all the "partlallsms" which have
hindered Its progress. The origin and spring of
the impulse toward unity Dr. Tucker found In
"the sense of the organic in humanity," a
bond which, as he truly said, "Is far more than
the knowledge of social rights and duties" and
"in a very true sense lies below the ethical"
and which he traced to that natural basis in
the physical, which science had so lately un
covered. In locating our "organic union" In
the possession of a common natural organism,
rather than In the sharing of a common divine
Life, or Reason — where Christian philosophy
has commonly placed It — he chose the lesser
rather than the greater bond of union, in
harmony with the prevalent emphasis, though
he would not have denied that It lies in both
realms. The trend away from the individualism of
the older orthodoxy toward the larger principle
of spiritual unity, which t^is address did so
much to further, has been a powerful factor in
shaping religious thought in the last twenty-
five years. Through the Influence of Dr. Tucker
and others, many of whom caught their inspira
tion from him, the emphasis upon human

i62 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
solidarity as a spiritual reality became an In
creasingly marked characteristic of the New
Theology. The power to seize upon essential issues,
which Professor Tucker manifested in his
religious thinking, he brought to bear also in
all his ideas and plans for the advancement
of the life and work of the church. He was
among the first to see how essential it is for
the churches to lay hold of the life of^the
community, especially its young life, and] he
was the originator of the (not altogether for
tunate) term "the Institutional church," as
well as an earnest promoter of the movement
itself. In the recovery and reconstruction of the
missionary motive from the old individualistic
motive of salvation from hell to the larger one
of personal realization and social salvation —
the summoning of nations and races to the
higher life — he was one of the outstanding
leaders. In his presentation of it, the missionary
enterprise took on the aspect of a vast and
splendid divine-human adventure, replete with
racial as well as eternal significance, appealing
to the Imagination as much, or more, as
scientific discovery or great economic enterprise.

WILLLiM J. TUCKER 163
But in many respects his most characteristic
venture was In behalf of a new crusade of
Christian forces Into the wastes of unredeemed
life, which had been forming, almost un
noticed, at the very doors of the church. This
took the form of college settlement work, the
introduction of which in this country was
largely due to him.
The Andover House, later the South End
House, one of the pioneer college settiements
in this country, was founded in Boston in 1891,
chiefiy through his enterprise and effort.' Its
first head, Mr. Robert A. Woods, was trained
under him at Andover Seminary, Investigated
the work of Arnold Toynbee In London under
his supervision, and by the aid of his efforts
was enabled to open the House. The South
End House, by the wisdom and sympathy and
¦In commenting upon the earlier attempts to relate Chris
tianity to the organic life of society. Professor Rauschenbusch, in
his Christianizing the Social Order, wrote: "So far as I know,
Andover Seminary deserves the wreath of the pioneer. In 1879
Professor W. J. Tucker, now president of Dartmouth College,
annexed a perfunctory lectureship in pastoral theology and turned
it into a sociological course. An outline of the course was pub
lished in The Andover Review and stimulated other professors
to undertake a similar work. The Andover House at Boston,
1891, was an outcome of these impulses" (p. 20, note). This
statement needs correction in one particular. Professor Tucker
annexed the sociological course to that in pastoral theology,
which was far from being perfunctory.

i64 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
organizing skill of Mr. Woods, has become the
prototype, in many ways the model, of settle
ment work in America. If Mr. Woods has won
the right to the title of the father of settle
ment work In America, Professor Tucker may
well be called its godfather. v
Dr. Tucker went from Andover Seminary in
1893, reluctantly and only after repeated
solicitation from his Alma Mater, Dartmouth
College, to become Its president, leaving behind
him an accomplished service of inestimable
value. Into this fresh field of work he carried
the same instinct and exercise of statesman
ship, now to be directed more particularly to
educational problems. The ideals and prin
ciples which he set at work and which have
made him so individual a force in the educa
tional world are admirably reflected, alongside
of his ideals of citizenship, in his volume,
' Public-MIndedness," published in 1910.'
One of his most valuable services in the
field of education has been to differentiate,
more clearly and satisfactorily than any other,
the function of the college from that of the
' The Rumford Press, Concord, N.H. ,

WILLLVM J. TUCKER 165
technical school and the university. This was
done In his inaugural address, "The Historic
College: Its Place in the Educational System."
The chief distinction which he there draws Is
in the emphasis which the college traditionally
and normally places upon religion:
There is a clear difference in the method and in
the result of intellectual training, as you strike at
the beginning the religious note, or the note of
utility, or the note of culture. In other words, the
college differs widely from the technical school, and
measurably from the university, in the provision
which it allows and makes for the religious element.
Then follows a striking delineation of the
kind of religion that should characterize the
college :
Religion must not be set to do the menial tasks
of the college, it must not be made an instrument of
discipline; it must not become, through any kind of
indifference, the repository of obsolete opinions
or obsolete customs; it must not fall below the intel
lectual life of the college; it must not be used to
maintain any artificial relation between the college
and its constituency. Religion justifies the tradi
tions which give it place within the college, as it
enforces the spirit of reverence and humility, as
it furnishes the rational element to faith, as it in
forms duty with the sufficient motive and lends
the sufficient inspiration to ideals of service and as

1 66 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
it subdues and consecrates personal ambition to
the interests of the common humanity.'
In the confusing problem of the readjustment
of the college curriculum no one has seen so
clearly as he the fact that the real issue lies In
the spirit In which study is pursued rather than
in the subject. "We have silently abandoned,"
he declared, "the Idea that the chief ethical
value of college Instruction lies in the cur
riculum." "If utility can create the knowing
mind, we want Its aid. I would accept at any
time the moral result of serious thinking on
the Inferior subject In place of less serious
thinking upon the greater subject." ^ In Infusing
high Ideals and the newer religious viewpoint
into the life of his students President Tucker
seized an opportunity of very great moment in
the Sunday vesper services in the college chapel.
The addresses which he gave at these services
made a deep Impression. An example of the
way In which he used this opportunity for the
quickening of personal power is to be found In
the volume "Personal Power: Counsels to
College Men" (1910). These addresses vibrate
with magnetic force. Rugby Chapel and Thomas
' Public-Mindedness, p. 21 1.
'Ibid., p. 314.

WILLM.M J. TUCKER 167
Arnold have had their American counterpart
in Rollins Chapel and William Jewett Tucker.*
VI
It is Indicative of the breadth of Dr. Tucker's
loyalties and the vigor of his sense of ethical
obligation that he has faced all social duties
— moral, religious, educational — In the hght
of citizenship. He has the public mind and his
has been an eloquent advocacy of "publlc-
mlndedness" — one of the words that he has
raised out of obscurity to the peerage by using
it as a title for his collected public addresses.
For ethical Integrity, intellectual alertness, and
spiritual appeal, it would be difficult to match
the addresses upon citizeriship which are re
produced In this volume. In them he shows
himself master of the Ideals and principles of
Christian citizenship and of the power to put
these in a quickening and Inspiring light.
'The influence which President Tucker has had over Dart
mouth students is finely expressed in an address to the Class of
1899 at its fifteenth year reunion, by Professor Kau-Ichi Asakawa,
a member of the class. At the close of this tribute Mr. Asakawa
said: "The source of Dr. Tucker's power was purely spiritual;
it was the surrender of self, reverence and humility, reinforced
by his intense nature. The ultimate results of service born of such
a source must necessarily far exceed the results that are known
to its author. We all carry some of these results. Through us they
shall multiply" (Alumni Magazine, March, 1915).

i68 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
Perhaps he never made a more telling
speech than that In which he addressed himself
to direct combat with a serious evil that
threatened the good name of the State of New
Hampshire. I refer to the speech, "The New
England Breeders' Club," delivered at Man
chester, N.H., January 14, 1906.' Here, In the
person of the president of Dartmouth College,
appeared the scholar in politics at his best,
thoroughly in earnest and as thoroughly in
formed, meeting the narrowness of an acute
and skillful group of designing men with an
exposure of the motives and effects of their
designs upon the people as keen and piercing as
it was fair and above vituperation. There was
no cheap sentiment In the speech, no stage
thunder of moral invective, no puritanic dis
dain of the devotees of sport or of the common
herd who patronize it. The speaker recognized
the legitimacy of clean sport. "Personally I may
go further than some of you," he declared, ' in
my advocacy of out-of-door sports. I beheve
In them. Recreation is not enough. Sport, organ
ized sport, has a legitimate place In our mod
ern life." Having conceded this, he went on
to claim that "there Is a vast difference between
'Public-Mindedness, p. 177.

WILLM.M J. TUCKER 169
an evil like that of betting, which may be In
cidental to any contest (men may bet on an
election), and the same evil organized Into a
sport and made by the majority the sport it
self." ' Such distinctions as this are not com
mon In that academic world which prides Itself
on Its power of making distinctions; but they
tell on the civilian moral sense. They told upon
the minds of President Tucker's hearers. At all
events, the license of the New England Breeders'
Club was repealed; and the State of New
Hampshire will not soon forget this speech.
Not only In this Instance, but In others Dr.
Tucker showed that he was alive and aggres
sive toward any infraction of the rights and
privileges of the people. When benevolent
patronage came forward in the person of
Andrew Carnegie with a definite theory of the
use of wealth and a gift to enforce it that seemed
to him, however generous and beneficent, ¦
inimical to the true spirit of democracy, he was
quick to see the veiled danger and to speak
the word of warning. In a paper published In
"The Andover Review" of June, 1891, en-
titied "The Gospel of Wealth," he analyzed,
in fair but searching fashion, the theory of the
' Public-Mindedness, p. 184.

I70 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
trusteeship of wealth which Mr. Carnegie had
put forth in his article under the above title in
"The North American Review." He challenged
the theory In the name not only of morality
but of religion. "I can conceive of no greater
mistake," he said, "more disastrous In the end
to religion If not to society, than that of trying
to make charity do the work of justice." '
When one pauses to recall that this challenge
came from a man with no grievance and no
ulterior purpose, holding a chair in an in
stitution endowed by men in the same class
with Mr. Carnegie, the courage and significance
of It Is evident. It came from one who clearly
felt It his duty, against his inclination to be
silent, to uphold the religious and ethical
ideals which he was set to teach and defend.
The truth and justice of this challenge has
become more and more evident as time has
made clearer both the unrivaled beneficence of
Mr. Carnegie's princely gifts and the fallacy
of his theory, belonging as It does to the de
cadent conceptions of a passing regime. The
conscience and intelligence of America has
come to endorse the statement of Dr. Tucker
in an "Atlantic Monthly" article, "Notes on
' The Andover Review, vol. XV, no. 90, p. 634.

WILLLIM J. TUCKER 171
the Progress of the Social Conscience": "If the
few can 'administer wealth for the community
far better than it could or would do for Itself,'
then democracy has reached the limit of Its
intelligence and responsibility." '
Such citizenship as this, civic, democratic,
national, could not but prove also International.
When the Great War broke out. President
Tucker, now retired and unhampered by
official responsibility, did not — as did so many
men of a more superficial sort — break out also.
On the contrary, he set himself to the task of
serious and careful reflection. The result ap
peared in two notable articles in "The Atlantic
Monthly": "The Ethical Challenge of the War"
(June, 191 5) and "The Crux of the Peace
Problem" (April, 1916).* In the first of these
articles the deceptlveness of the theory of the
state as power Is depicted and the danger
pointed out that even a democratic state may
fall under the "allurements of power." In the
second article — which Is worthy of becoming
a classic in peace literature — is set forth the
need of an aggressive note, the note of moral
conquest. In the ideal of peace If it is to com-
' See also: The New Reservation of Time, p. 86.
" Both articles are republished in The New Reservation oj Time.

172 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
mand the loyalty and enthusiasm of strong
and heroic minds. The Christian spirit, as Dr.
Tucker makes clear, calls for no "piping
peace" of moral lassitude and passionless
pietism, but one in which the bugles of moral
watchfulness and self-conquest sound the "re-
aflfirmatlon of the great loyalties," a peace that
can be attained and kept only at the cost of
moral sacrifice. VII
Courage and sagacity: these have been char
acteristic traits of Dr. Tucker, ethical valor
and intellectual outlook. But at the root of
these strong qualities there has slept a spring
of Inner refreshment and benignity without
which he could never have won the place he
holds in the affection of his generation nor have
achieved the finer of his accomplished tasks.
We may best describe this trait in one of his
favorite words, interpreted in a characteristic
way, "sympathy." Sympathy, in his inter
pretation of it, is " the Christian term for con
tact." "It is the most concrete and sensitive
expression of both love and justice. The kind of
consideration which It demands of one man in
behalf of another Is expressed In the personal

WILLB^M J. TUCKER 173
words 'Put yourself In his place.'" ' That kind
of sympathy he has cherished, cultivated,
exemplified. It Is the finest fruit of personal
culture, "a hard and reluctant virtue, as any one
can discover for himself," ' but when acquired
it makes its possessor a prince among men.
There are three classes of men for whom Dr.
Tucker has had an especial sympathy —
students, ministers, and workingmen. Of his
sympathy for students we have already spoken.
They were his intellectual and spiritual kin.
He understood their hopes and aims, their
problems and temptations, and he knew how
to help them. His availing sympathy for the
younger members of his own earlier profession
has found expression in a most penetrative, wise,
and sympathetic study of the opportunities and
dangers of personality in a profession wherein
the testing Is severe and subtle — "The Making
and Unmaking of the Preacher." These unique
Lyman Beecher lectures for 1898 present an
analysis, not of preaching but of the preacher.
What will make the young preacher, set as he Is,
in a place of peculiar power and danger.? What
will unmake him? If any one knew the con-
' The Church in Modern Society, p. 64.
' IMd., p. 64.

174 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
stituents of this subtle spiritual alchemy, it was
Dr. Tucker. With a skill as consummate as his
sympathy, he presses home upon the preacher
successively the demands of the truth itself, of
his art, and of the men to whom he brings his
message. Yet he does not leave him alone under
the weight of these responsibilities. The rein
forcements which come to one's aid In meeting
these demands are also richly and humanly
presented. The finest, because the rarest and least to be
expected, of Dr. Tucker's sympathies Is that for
workingmen. There was no especial incentive
for this fellow feeling, in experience or contact
or circumstance. It arose out of pure chivalry,
aroused by an intelligent perception of a field
of human activity where sympathy Is needed
and deserved. Its roots doubtless run back into
his first pastorate In Manchester, where he came
in touch with the industrial population of that
old manufacturing city. But the transfer thence
to Madison Square Presbyterian Church in
New York and thence to the professorship of
Sacred Rhetoric In Andover Theological Semi
nary might easily have broken this contact, had
it not been for his insight into the problem of
the church as related to Industrialism and also

WILLIAM J. TUCKER 175
his deep chivalrous sympathy for the great
masses of his fellow-men engaged in a useful
and honorable service, which appealed to his
Imagination as well as to his sympathy, yet
whose real claims to social consideration were so
little recognized.
The initial impulse of his sympathy for work
ingmen lay not so much in the fact that they
were socially and economically "down" as
that they were bent upon rising and were
rising. Here Is a species of sympathy that es
capes most men, — sympathy for those who are
climbing the social ladder and may come to oc
cupy one of its rungs with them. " Sympathy,"
said Dr. Tucker, "is the appreciation of the
endeavor and ambition to rise to higher levels;
it is, above all, the willingness to make room
for men as they rise and to welcome them to the
places they have earned." '
VIII
This indispensable and to him characteris
tically Christian sympathy Dr. Tucker called
upon the church to exercise, In that remarkably
concise document of Christian leadership, "The
'"The Authority of the Pulpit," The Andover Review, October,
1891, p. 396.

176 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
Church In Modern Society" (1911).^ The two
ministries which he puts forth in this volume
as those through which the church can best
fulfill its function to modern society are
authority and sympathy. To these two min
istries he has summoned the church of to-day.
After a period of uncertainty and theological
reconstruction. It Is time, he asserts, for the
church to regain and to exercise, in all humility,
her spiritual authority. This Is her first duty,
and the second Is like unto it, sympathy:
"The history of the church proves by too
frequent Illustration how empty a thing is
authority without sympathy, and how weak a
thing Is sympathy without authority." ^ It is In
the failure of the church to sympathize that she
has lost her hold on the laboring-man: "The
church lost contact with the worklngman by
failing to understand him, much more to
estimate him, by falling to sympathize with
his ambition and purpose to rise, and by fail
ing to do what it might have done to make a
sufficient place for him In the social order." ^
Dr. Tucker's own sympathy for the men and
women of the industrial world was not only
• A volume in the series "Modem Religious Problems."
" The Church in Modem Society, p. 3. 3 Ibid., p. 80. ,

WILLIAM J. TUCKER 177
thoroughly manly and on the level of a common
humanity. It was confirmed by a careful study
and understanding of the labor problem. As a
result of this understanding he became one of
the earliest and most Intelligent clerical sup
porters of trade-unionism. Without It he saw
that the wage-earner could never have bettered
his condition. "I doubt If one-quarter of the
gain [in the betterment of the condition of labor]
could have been gained In any other way," he
declared In an address, "The Mind of the
Wage-Earner," before the twentieth annual
convention of the Officials of Labor Bureaus of
America in 1904. "Trade-unionism is the
business method of effecting the betterment of
the wage-earner under the highly organized
conditions of the modern Industrial world." '
To further the uplift of labor he was anxious to
see the "mobility" as well as the nobility of
labor maintained, and the channels of Its
communication with other departments of life,
especially education, kept open, so that there
would be no sense of alienation and class
solidarity begotten by the sense of a "griev
ance." "^ Few laboring-men will ever know how
true a friend they have In President Tucker —
'Public-Mindedness, p. 170. 'Ibid., p. 169.

178 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
another evidence of the chasms that separate us
— but if they knew, their cause could not but
seem to them higher and larger and less selfish
than they had conceived it to be.
All of these sympathies of Dr. Tucker bear
the marks of their Intellectual and ethical
character. They are the outgoings of a mind
swift to see where sympathy is due and of a will
trained to put Itself In the other's place. Yet the
springs that feed this intellectual and moral
interest lie deep In the heart of the man. As
Dr. George A. Gordon has said of him, "he is
one of the rarest of men, a leader and lover of
men." One of the things which most Impressed
those of us Into whom as professor of Homi
letics, he tried to instill the passion and the
art of preaching was his Insistence that one
must love his people. He was fond of telling his
classes of a man In a certain congregation who
plucked the sleeve of the preacher as he came
down from the pulpit and said to him, "You
love to preach, — do you love men.""' An in
cident In his experience, related In one of his
Yale lectures, lets one far Into the working of
his own mind In this regard:
I may be pardoned if I refer to an experience . .'.
in my own early mimstry. I had prepared a sermon

WILLM.M J. TUCKER 179
which had been, I doubt not, profitable to me, but
which was so utterly ineffective as a sermon that I
took the liberty of asking a very discerning friend
what was the difficulty with it. His reply was the
best criticism I ever received. "You seemed to me,"
1 he said, " to be more concerned about the truth than
about men." Yes, that was the difiiculty. I saw it
in a moment.
Dr. Tucker's love for men Is not of the sen
timental order. It is of the sort he himself de
scribed In his noble address at the Annapolis
Naval Academy, on "The Study of Greatness."
Greatness, as he views It, has three chief traits
— originaHty, authority, and beneficence; and
the greatest of these is beneficence. Without
it the other two lack fruitful issue.
Give the term what range you will, allow the
widest determination, be tolerant of motives and
methods, but never surrender this ingredient or
factor of greatness; do not make greatness a synonym
of force, not even in the shape of intellectuallsm.'
That is a test of greatness which "not many
wise, not many mighty" are able to meet. Yet
only those who can meet It are entitled to be
called great. This "lover of men" is, for many,
among that number. In him his contemporaries
have seen — to make surreptitious use of his
' Public-Mindedness, p. 343.

i8o PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
own words — "one of their own number actu
ally becoming great, by taking up into him
self the material which is common to them all,
but which they cannot assimilate or control.
He sees the things which lie unnoted, perhaps
undiscovered, at their feet. He rules with the
ease of power among the forces which they feel
but cannot master. He Is supremely, almost di
vinely, beneficent, under the very conditions and
before the very difficulties to which they suc
cumb in a complaining or despairing weakness." '

IX

It may seem as if In tracing, somewhat
consecutively, the service and Influence of one
whose work has lain so largely in the educational
field we had gone far beyond the precincts of
theology. Nevertheless Dr. Tucker has not
ceased to be a theologian In whatever form of
service he has engaged. He has been one of the
most watchful and sympathetic interpreters of
the changing religious thought of our time.
While all of the members of the group of
theological reconstructionists to which he be
longed were. In differing manner and degree,
modern. Dr. Tucker was the most Intensely
' Public-Mindedness, p. 339.

WILLIAM J. TUCKER i8i
and actively modern among them. This passion
to understand and to interpret the religious life
of his own time appears in the subject chosen
for his Lowell Institute lectures (1894), "The
Influence of Religion To-day," in the Stone
lectures (1895-97), "The Effect of Democracy
on Religious Progress," in his lectures at Union
Theological Seminary (1902), and at the Pacific
School of Religion (1906), "Modern Chris
tianity," and indeed In all his utterances. Nor
was his interest confined to interpretation. It
led him, as we have seen, to definite and tireless
action in the endeavor to mold society to its
true ends. Those were well-chosen words in
which the successor of President Tucker con
ferred the degree of Doctor of Laws upon
his honored predecessor in the hush of "a
spontaneous thrill of emotion which brought
the entire audience to its feet"; "William
Jewett Tucker, ninth president and second
founder of Dartmouth College, the depth and
richness of your inner life, the activity and
achievement of your outward life, will be a
heritage twice blessed to this college forever
more." * To maintain "depth and richness of
inner life" in the midst of "activity and achieve-
• Dartmouth College: Inauguration of President Nichols, p. 83.

i82 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
ment of outward life" is a rare attainment,
especially as it has meant in his case also
maintaining close contact with the religious and
' social progress of his time.
How closely and sympathetically he has
kept in touch with the social movement is
evidenced in his striking paper In "The Atlantic
Monthly" of September, 1915, "Notes on the
Progress of the Social Conscience," republished
in that genial fruitage of his alert retirement,
"The New Reservation of Time." In this article
he summarizes the progress of the social con
science as follows:
The social conscience has done very much to
refurnish the public mind with ideas and principles
and with conceptions of duty fit and adequate to
the new demands of society. In particular it may be
claimed that it has reinstated the conception of
justice above that of charity in the ethics of philan
thropy; that it has recalled liberty to a service in
behalf of economic freedom similar to that rendered
in behalf of political freedom; that it has awakened
a "sense of the state" corresponding to the increase
of political responsibilities; that it has made society
sensitive to the inhumanities of industrialism, and
is teaching society to estimate the property rights
which are involved in human rights; and that it is
creating an open mind toward the entrance of woman
into civic life.'
' The New Resvraalion of Time, pp. 117, 118.

WILLIAM J. TUCKER 183
The modern spirit of which Dr. Tucker has
been so marked a representative is very different
from that other and more recent type of modern
ity which is cheap, popular, faddish, which Iden
tifies the modern spirit with renunciation of all
indebtedness to the past, which talks only In
to-day's slang, glorifies the latest theory, and
confuses modernity with the passing notion.
Against this tin-pan type of modernity such
seriousness and penetration as his would put
us on guard as earnestly as against "the super
ficial and faithless interpretation of our times."
From heights far above the clamor that
cheapens life by demanding a false leveling down
comes his voice, ringing with the sincerity of a
great challenge, calling for a leveling up:
Let us keep the path for the democracy of toil and
struggle open to the last material reward to which it
is entitled. Let us keep the path of the democracy
of the mind open through every grade of education
to the last training of the university. Let us keep the
path for the democracy of the soul open to every
spiritual privilege, even if in so doing we must needs
reconstruct our churches.'
' Ptdilic-Mindedness,. p. 14.

CHAPTER V
EGBERT C. SMYTH AND THE ANDOVER
THEOLOGY

EGBERT COFFIN SMYTH'
1829. August 24. Born in Brunswick, Me.
1848. Graduated from Bowdoin College.
1849. Taught in Farmington, N.H.
185 1. Entered Bangor Theological Seminary, graduating in
1854.
1854. Resident Licentiate at Andover Seminary.
1856. Ordained at Brunswick, Me. '.
1856. Called to chair of Natural Religion and Revelation,
Bowdoin College.
1857. August 12. Married Elizabeth Bradford Dwight,
daughter of Rev. William Dwight, D.D., of Port
land, Me.
1862-63. Studied in Berlin and Halle Universities.
1863. Became professor of Ecclesiastical History, Andover
Theological Seminary.
1866. Received degree of Doctor of Divinity from Bowdoin
College.
1875. Elected a member of the Prudential Committee of the
American Board.
1877. Elected a trustee of Bowdoin College. Served until his
death.
1884. Became one of the founders of The Andover Review,
1886. Received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from
Harvard University.
1886. Subjected to the charge of heresy.
1887. Condemned for heresy by the Board of Visitors of
Andover Seminary. Appealed to the Supreme
Court of Massachusetts.
1890. Trial before the Supreme Court.
1891. Decision of the Supreme Court declaring the removal
of Professor Smyth by the Board of Visitors illegal
and invalid.
1903. Presentation of a portrait of Professor Smyth to the
Seminary by pupils and friends.
1904. February 4. Death of Mrs. Smyth.
1904. April 12. Died at Andover.
1904. June 8. Commemorative Service at Andover.
' Professor Smyth changed the pronunciation of his family
name to Smith.

CHAPTER V
EGBERT C. SMYTH AND THE ANDOVER
THEOLOGY
A TRUE conservative attacked for liberalism,
a defender of orthodoxy tried for heterodoxy, a
friend of foreign missions accused as its foe, —
Egbert Coffin Smyth was a man whose true
measure has been understood by few. Thirty
years ago he was the unwilling storm-center of
a theological controversy whose receding tide
may seem to have left little trace upon the
religious thought of to-day, yet which, through
his wisdom, courage, and stedfastness, reg
istered a victory for the cause of religious
freedom whose consequences will be felt for
many generations.

Here was an institutional man, in the best
sense, — the product and servant of New
England religious and educational institutions.
An old-style New England academy, Dummer,

1 88 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
a typical New England college, Bowdoin, a
venerable New England theological school,
Bangor, and another still more venerable,
Andover, and above all and through all this,
the Church of the Pilgrims and Puritans, were
the institutions from which he freely received
and to which he freely gave. The son of William
Smyth, professor of Mathematics and Natural
Philosophy in Bowdoin College from 1823 to
1868, he breathed from boyhood the atmosphere
of this high-minded college. To it, he gave his
first academic service, commencing his career
in 1854 as professor of Rhetoric and Oratory.
Two years later he was transferred to the chair
of Natural and Revealed Religion. In 1863,
after a year's theological study In Berlin and
Halle Universities, he became professor of
Ecclesiastical History In Andover Seminary.
He was made president of the Andover faculty
in 1878 and continued in that office eighteen
years. In 1857, while still at Bowdoin, Professor
Smyth married Elizabeth Bradford Dwight, a
lineal descendant of that Sarah Pierpont, wife
of Jonathan Edwards, who "seemed to be
always full of joy and pleasure and no one
knew for what." ' Mrs. Smyth was hke-mlnded
' See J. V. H. Allen: Jonathan Edwards, p. 46.

EGBERT C. SMYTH 189
and like-hearted with her husband, a lover of
the church of the Puritans, deeply devoted to
many good causes, especially that of Christian
missions. Together, these two kindred spirits
made of the venerable and attractive old house
on the edge of the Andover campus a veritable
House Beautiful, "erected by the Lord of the
hill for the relief and refreshment of Pilgrims."
Students, especially, found here a haven and
home never to be forgotten.
In personal bearing as well as in character
Professor Smyth was the soul of simplicity,
sincerity, and quiet dignity. His most striking
feature was his eyes, which were dark, lumi
nous, searching, and unfathomably kind. I can
not forget the first impression they made upon
me as he greeted me, a new student. In his li
brary. They seemed to search out one's inmost
soul and at the same time to give himself In sym
pathetic self-Impartation. That initial meeting
was followed by many kindnesses and hos
pitalities. Including a visit which he made to
my room a few days after my arrival, to see If
the new student had a lamp and stove and the
customary equipment to make one of those
monastic cells in old Bartlet Hall a little less
mortifying to the flesh. A Sunday evening in his

igo PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
home, devoted to Christian hymns, Is a memory
which I recall with peculiar pleasure. The hymns
were not sung, but read by him with rare ex
pression and illuminating comment. The evening
was filled with spirit wings and voices.
There was a rare union of gentleness and
courage In this Christian scholar that made
him at once enviable as a friend and formidable
as a foe. His luminous eyes, the home of con
templation, could flash with fire, and his voice,
customarily calm and gentle, could grow tense
and vibrant with conviction and emotion when
he was aroused. We of the student body knew
well these traits In him, yet what Impressed us
most, I think, was the steadiness and charity
with which he bore himself during his accusa
tion and trial, and the Imperturbability with
which he fulfilled his seminary duties through
out a controversy that sadly disturbed the
serenity of a life devoted to the quiet pursuits
of the Christian scholar. A typical scholar he
was, yet not apart from his kind. "If one were
near him," wrote Dr. Alexander McKenzie,
"It was easy to see how rich and generous his

' Massachusetts Historical Society Reports, Second Series,
vol. XVHI, p. 299,

EGBERT C. SMYTH 191
II
Professor Smyth brought to Andover, at a
time when Its forensic fame outshone its schol
arship, a scholarly spirit and attainment of the
finest quahty. Perhaps no greater, certainly no
profounder, theological scholar has appeared in
America. All of his habits of mind and work
were characterized by insight and thoroughness.
Yet he was not scholar only, but leader. When
the Hght of Professor Park waned, he became
the most vital force in the Seminary and the
center of that group of leaders who founded
"The Andover Review," and who made An
dover the herald and missloner of a forward
movement which has done much to liberate
and expand religious thought. It was a com
pany of men of rare ability and attractive
ness, as the writer found when he entered the
Seminary In 1886: WilUam J. Tucker, alert,
able, magnetic, a genuine leader and one
"who marched breast forward"; John W.
Churchill, a man of genial and gracious per
sonality, master of the art of public speech;
George Harris, theologian of the new day, un
trammeled, unconventional, undogmatic, con
cerned with the ethical rather than the specu-

192 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
lative, at home with the students, and possessed
of a dry humor that was no slight assistant in
purging theology of cant and convention,^ and
Edward Y. Hincks, one of the most earnest of
scholars and thinkers, who put conscience and
judgment Into every position he took and Into
every piece of work he did and who bore with
him to Cambridge the spiritual strength and
integrity of Andover HIU. These were the leaders
of the "Andover Movement." Associated with
them on the faculty, and In hearty sympathy
with them, were John P. Gulliver, trained In the
older thought but hospitable to the new; John
P. Taylor, In whom culture and kindliness
blended; Frank E. Woodruff, able New Testa
ment scholar; and George F. Moore, whose
brilliant, accurate, and extensive scholarship
made his students marvel and who has brought
honor both to Andover and to Harvard Univer
sity. Of this faculty, the first five constituted
the Seminary's theological athletic team, heart
ily supported by the rest; and notable teamwork
they did, each gaining thereby the strength of
the whole and throwing his own Into It with
complete devotion. Without the least assump-
' Dr. Harris has published Moral Evolution (1896); Inequality
and Progress (1897); A Century's Change in Religion (1914).

EGBERT C. SMYTH 193
tion. Professor Smyth, by right of years and
courtesy of prior standing, as well as attain
ment, became the recognized head of the group.
The story of the rise of the "Andover The
ology," the contest of the faculty with the home
secretary of the American Board, and of the
attempt on the part of a company of self-
appointed accusers to remove the five offending
professors from their chairs, may be found In
the current prints and has been more adequately
retold by one of their own number.' These men
were no sinecurlsts. Without In any way neglect
ing their duties as teachers and scholars. In the
midst of their service to the churches and the
annoyances of controversial disturbance, they
established and edited a monthly theological
review, which at once took Its place as the lead
ing religious review of America. The service of
"The Andover Review" (1884-1903) In behalf
of theological and educational advance was
large. It was not only free and intelligent in Its
attitude toward theological and ecclesiastical
questions, but its pages contained fresh discus
sions of educational, philosophical, and literary
topics, always in the temper and spirit of vital
Christianity. Among its contributors were
' See W. J. Tucker: My Generation, pp. 101-221.

194 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
George H. Palmer, George A. Gordon, Francis
H. Johnson, S. W. Dike, Joseph Le Conte
WiUiam T. Harris, A. P. Peabody, C. C. Ever
ett, C. C. Starbuck, B. P. Bowne, Bliss Perry,
John Dewey, W. D. Hyde, and others of like
caliber. The editorials were frankly and freely
devoted In large part to the Issues immediately
at stake with its editors and were largely Instru
mental In clarifying and furthering their cause.
The opening article of the first number, by
Professor Smyth, on "The Theological Purpose
of the Review," was a clear and able statement
of the purposes and aims of a conservatively
progressive theology. It offered as a key-note a
phrase used by a leader of the early church,
Ignatius, "Let us learn to think according to
Christianity"; and the kind of thought which
it advocated was one true both to the past and
to the future of Christianity.

Ill

In estimating Professor Smyth's contribution
to American theology one naturally begins with
his work as a historian. The extent of his knowl
edge and resources in this field cannot be fully
appreciated for the reason that he pubhshed so
little. The note-books of his students, however,

EGBERT C. SMYTH 195
reveal something of his character as scholar and
teacher. In looking over my notes of his course
In Church History, I am struck by the wisdom
and wealth they disclose as I could not be at the
time they were taken, although even then they
kindled my admiration. The course commenced
with an Illuminating discussion of the meaning
and value of history, which was defined as "the
representation of events In the life of man in
their origin, law of succession, place, character,
influence, and end." The discussion of the prin
ciple of development in history Is particularly
noteworthy. The lecturer recognized its per
tinence and value, but pointed out that "history
is not to be Identified with development."
"There is," he asserted, "a radical difference
between the growth of a plant or animal and
that of a soul. . . . Spiritual development pro
ceeds under a law of freedom, and it belongs to
the essence of freedom that there should be a
choice of ends. . . . A process common to Balaam
and his ass cannot give us particular knowledge.
Development clarifies and Intensifies the study
of causes, but leads, after all, to the study of
causes." Next were taken up In turn the sources,
methods, and divisions of church history,
followed by a survey of each of the main epochs.

196 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
eras, and periods. Chief attention was given to
the ancient church and to the history of doctrine.
The history of Christology as related to the
doctrine of the Trinity was especially thorough
and thoughtful. The mediaeval era was briefly
but lucidly outlined. The modern era received
limited but suggestive treatment. It Included a
number of sagacious estimates of men and
movements and closed with an extremely
perspicuous survey of Kant's theology. In
which both the sufficiencies and Insufficiencies
of the Kantian system were pointed out. The
theologian left before the mind at the close of
the course was, most fittingly, Schlelermacher,
the founder of modern theology. The con
cluding word was a pertinent one concerning
the relation of the permanent to the varying
elements in doctrine, as disclosed In its history.
It Is quite possible that these lectures were too
far above the heads of the students. Dr. Alex
ander McKenzie said of them that they were
"the work of a scholar for men who desired to
be scholars." ' But they fostered a cathohc and
comprehensive view of history and left a lasting
impression on the minds of all his pupils.
' Massachusetts Historical Society, Second Series, vol. XVIII,
p. 298.

EGBERT C. SMYTH 197
While the lectures reveal the breadth and
compass of Dr. Smyth's knowledge of church
history as a whole, he had also chosen and
specialized subjects of study and Investigation.
Chief of these was the founder of New England
theology, Jonathan Edwards, many of whose
unpublished manuscripts came Into his hands
through Mrs. Smyth. He published an account
of some of the earlier of these manuscripts and
printed one In full In "The Andover Review"
— the remarkably Interesting paper, "The
Flying Spider," written when Edwards was a
boy.' The address given by him at the exercises
commemorating the two hundredth anniversary
of the birth of Edwards, at Andover, his review
of Allen's life of Edwards,^ and his notable
article on "Jonathan Edwards' Idealism," In
"The American Journal of Theology," ^ consti
tute the most discerning and appreciative inter
pretation of Edwards that has yet been made.
Professor Smyth was not only a historian,
but a systematic theologian. He advanced from
historical study to constructive thought, gain
ing thereby the large advantage of building
I' The Andover Review, vol. XIII, no. 73, pp. 1-19.
' Ibid., no. 75, pp. 285-304.
3 Vol. I, no. 4, pp. 950-64.

198 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
theology upon the foundation of historically
experienced and tested truth. I have termed
him, as have others, a conservative. He was
such, in the sense of one who, in Tennyson's
phrase, "lops the moldering branch away,"
yet conserves all that has true life In it. Yet in
his open-minded attitude toward truth he was
a progressive. From his study of history he came
to realize more fully the need of a "progressive
orthodoxy," of constant advance in the inter
pretation and application of Christianity, and
he had very clear and strong convictions
as to the nature of Christian truth and the di
rection which doctrinal development should
take In the future. In spite of the detached and
occasional character of his writings it Is not
difficult to determine the convictions and Ideas
which were foremost in his thinking. To these
our attention will now be turned.
IV
In his conception of the nature of religious
truth. Professor Smyth was clearly and con-
vlncedly an Intultlonist. This is brought out in
a striking and characteristic manner in the
lecture, "From Lessing to Schlelermacher, or
from Rationalism to Faith," which he gave in

EGBERT C. SMYTH 199
1870, in the course of Boston lectures on "Chris
tianity and Skepticism." In this lecture he first
makes a searching analysis of rationalism, as
exemplified in Lessing, concluding that while
"whatever is erroneous In this higher Rational
ism may be overcome, what Is true and legiti
mate In It must be accepted." With Lesslng's
rationalism he contrasts — clearly to the form
er's disadvantage — faith, as it appears in
Schlelermacher, "whose principle is. In a word,
that of Immedlateness." "More fully stated
it is this: 'The soul is created for religious com
munion, and, in this communion, attains to
religious certainty'"' This immediacy is not,
however, irrational. For, as Dr. Smyth — both
expounding and following Schlelermacher —
goes on to show, immediate knowledge. In the
sphere of religion, is not merely subjective and
individual; it is capable of verification. "Every
intuition of reason, every species of knowledge
founded In Immediate consciousness, every
ultimate principle. Is susceptible of verification.
If genuine, It will stand all the tests of the
understanding, of logic, of experience, of his
tory, of life. The knowledge Is not grounded in
these tests. The certainty is Immediately given.
' The Andover Review, vol. I, no. 4, p. 296.

200 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
Yet the tests guard against mistake." ' Thus
distinctly, fully, and understandingly he adopts
and defends the Intuitive method of religious
knowledge; and this viewpoint governs all of
his thinking.

The dominating — one might almost say
passionate — interest of a mind so devotedly
attached to Christ was, quite naturally, Christ
ology. If the New Theology Is Chrlstocentric,
in Egbert Smyth it is thrice accentuated. He
understood, better perhaps than any American
theologian of his time, the place occupied by
Christ in the history of Christian doctrine.
He was a modern Athanaslan. He valued
very highly the logos doctrine of Clement and
Orlgen, but It was the eternal sonship doctrine
of Athanasius which appealed to him as the
final evaluation of Christ. No one realized bet
ter than he the central place of Christ In the
greatest eras of Christian theology. He knew
how constitutive and controlling was His place
in the sub-apostolic as well as In the apostolic
church.^ He understood how potent and per-
' The Andover Review, vol. I, no. 4, p. 308.
' See The Divinity of our Lord, chaps. IV and V.

EGBERT C. SMYTH 201
sistent was the mystical presence of Christ both
in Catholicism and In Protestantism. He knew
how significant and vitalizing was the reaffir
mation of the Chrlstocentric position by Schlel
ermacher "¦ and later by Dorner and others, and
how essential It Is to maintain and advance this
position. To this historical estimate of the place of
Christ his own personal conviction gave con
firmation. The result was a theology in which
Christ is supreme. "Everything In Christianity
centers in Christ.' The possibility, the unity,
the unification, of a science of divinity are given
in Him and In Him alone." ^ Christian theology
was to him nothing If not Chrlstocentric. By
"Chrlstocentric Theology" he meant, "not a
theology that centers In what is commonly
understood by the words 'historic Christ,'
but one which centers In God as revealed In
Christ."" This, to him, was the essence of the New
Theology. The whole aim and motive of the
protagonists of progressive orthodoxy was, as
' See lecture referred to above.
' Progressive Orthodoxy, p. 7.
3 The Andover Review, vol. I, no. I, p. 2.
4 The Andover Defence, p. 171.

202 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
he viewed it, "under the guidance of a central
and vital principle of Christianity, — namely,
the reality of Christ's personal relation to the
human race as a whole and to every member of
it, — the principle of the universality of Christi
anity." ' By this principle every proposed ad
vance is to be tested. "The point always to be
determined with reference to any alleged im
provement is whether It promotes the knowl
edge of the central principle of Christianity in
itself or in its operations." * "A theology which
is not Chrlstocentric is like a Ptolemaic astron
omy, — It is out of true relation to the earth and
the heavens, to God and his universe." ' In
defining the nature of Christ which warrants
this universalizing, Professor Smyth lays the
strongest emphasis upon the " uniqueness of his
humanity." * From this he passes to the unity of
His Person, — a progressive unity of the human
and divine attained In the act of Incarnation.
This assures the absoluteness of Christ, not
only In redemption but in creation.
This is a more intensive as weU as a more
thoroughly historical Christology than that of
any -other of the members of the New Theology
' Progressive Orthodoxy, p. 3.
» Ibid., p. 13. ' Ibid., p. 36. < Ibid,, p. 18.

EGBERT C. SMYTH 203
group. They caught the significance of Christ
in the Gospels and the breadth and scope of
His impact upon human life and destiny. He,
too, was fully alive to this, but he probed more
deeply Into that which lies behind the influence
of Christ and which led to the origin and devel
opment of the doctrine of His person and its
metaphysical ImpUcations. Perhaps — in line
with his predecessors — he endeavored to go
too far in this direction. Deep things do not
readily yield their secret to the understanding.
But it Is well to let the mind move freely and
fearlessly in this great realm, if It does not
become scholastic, and the intellectual specu
lation of this balanced thinker is never barren
or dogmatic.
Based upon this conception of the Eternal
Sonship of Christ, Professor Smyth's Trinita-
rlanlsm was exceptionally wide and deep,
though it was never concentrated in any single
discussion. Dr. Gordon has said of him that
" he could have written a better book on Nicene
theology than any man of his time, but he did
not write it." Yet he taught and disseminated
it; and American theology is the richer for his
reinterpretatlon of Nicene theology.

204 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT

VI

Superficially associated with the Insistence —
on the part of Dr. Smyth and his colleagues —
upon the universality of Christianity and the
central significance of the Incarnation, was the
famous — or (In the minds of its opponents)
infamous — Andover theory of "Future Pro
bation." The theory, as put forth In the volume
by the editors of "The Andover Review," "Pro
gressive Orthodoxy" (1885), is. In brief, "that
those who do not know of God's love In Christ
while they are In the body will have knowledge
of Christ after death." ' "Our beUef Is that
somewhere and sometime God will reveal
himself to every one In the face of Jesus Christ,
and that the destiny of each and aU Is deter
mined by the relation to Christ. If we did not
believe this, Christianity would no longer be
for us the universal religion, and the teaching
that Christ Is Son of Man, the universal man,
the Head of humanity, would be robbed of its
significance." ^ These words were not written
by Professor Smyth and the hypothesis itself
did not originate at Andover but with Newman
Smyth of New Haven. Still, there is no
' Progressive Orthodoxy, p. 93. ' Ibid,, p. 106.

EGBERT C. SMYTH 205
question but that he shared fully with the other
editors of "The Review" In advancing It as an
alternative to the doctrine of the eternal
punishment of the heathen in the eschatologlcal
controversy into which the Seminary faculty
had been plunged.
The hypothesis, whatever may be said in
behalf of Its adoption as a war measure, was a
weak one, philosophically, ethically, and theo
logically; and while it seemed on the surface to
be In accord with the Chrlstocentric position,
it was In reality fundamentally out of accord
with it. This was shown conclusively in one of
the most searching and effective criticisms In
the history of American theology — the article
in "The Andover Review" entitled "Some
Criticisms of the Andover Movement," ' by
Rev. Frederic Palmer, D.D., at that time rector
of the Episcopal church In Andover, since 191 3
editor of "The Harvard Theological Review."
The article commences with a genuine and
generous tribute to Andover. " I have had from
the first a very hearty sympathy with Andover's
new departure," wrote Mr. Palmer. "It has, in
my opinion, brought more healthy life into the
religious world of New England than any other
' Vol. XIII, p. 181.

206 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
movement of the century." Then, after pointing
out the controversial conditions under which
the Andover theology took shape, the writer
describes its philosophical defects. These con
sist (i) In a failure to make the Chrlstocentric
principle of judgment universal, (2) In retain
ing too much of the hard and fast line between
scriptural revelation and reason, (3) In regarding
human and divine as mutually exclusive terms,
and (4) in falling to recognize completely the
Divine immanence in human life and history,
especially the immanence of Christ.
Its belief in the immanence of God has not been
absorbed into its teachings, while of the immanence
cf Christ it has hardly a conception. ... Its Christol
ogy vacillates between the old forensic view of
Christ's work, caused by the attempt to drop a his
toric event bodily into the domain of the spiritual
and make it do duty as part of an eternal process,
and a perception of St. Paul's use of the terra
"Christ," as not only the title of Jesus, but the
elucidative name of those eternal processes taking
place in his soul, and in the soul of humanity, of
which the historic Jesus was the climactic and
complete revelation.'
' The Andover Review, vol. XIII, p. 200. Without seeking
to segregate Professor Smyth's views from those of his col
leagues, it is worthy of note that the criticisms of Mr. Palmer
were directed against parts of "Progressive Orthodoxy," not
from his pen.

EGBERT C. SMYTH 207
The reply made by the editors of "The Re
view" to this criticism insists that the issue of
a future probation was not of their choosing,
and that it was not their central thought.' They
disclaimed any hostility to the Idea of an es
sential Christ, and declared that their conten
tion was with "the attempt to set up the theory
of a 'potential' or 'essential Christ' in place of
the actual redemptive work of Christianity, as
the basis for the dogma of the universal
decisiveness of this life." * This reply was less
cogent to Mr. Palmer's criticism than to others
less penetrative than his and failed to meet the
objections he raised. From this time on, other
issues came to the front and the theory of
future probation gradually lapsed into com
parative obscurity. VII
The fires and incitements of controversy
were the means of eliciting from Professor
Smyth one of the most valuable services which
he rendered. I.e., his explication of the true
function and interpretation of creeds. This
aspect of his defense, though now hardly more
" The reply is in the form of an editorial, vol. XIII, pp. 434-442.
» Ibid., p. 441.

2o8 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
than a memory, at the time made a deep
impression because of its thoughtful and earnest
presentation of a principle of creed interpre
tation until then but little recognized, namely,
the historical method of interpretation. His
"Defence" as presented to the Board of
Visitors of Andover Seminary in December,
1886, Is an extremely forceful document, unique
in character and quality In the annals of Ameri
can theology.' Its pertinence, astuteness, and
weight made It a formidable factor in the trial.
By means of a lucid history of the origin of the
Andover Creed and the use of ample and con
vincing citations from previous usage, the
defendant showed that the charges of hetero
doxy made by his accusers were wholly without
ground. That the Creed was, for its day, both
concessive and progressive was certainly true.
The fact made a strong argument against
using It as an exclusive and restrictive instru
ment, and In urging it Dr. Smyth did much to
clarify the whole controversy. But that part
of the defense is of the most permanent value
which takes up the nature of creed subscrip
tion as such. Having declared, "I accept the
' The Andover Defence, published by Cupples, Upham & Co.,
Boston, 1887.

EGBERT C. SMYTH 209
Seminary Creed in its historical sense," ' he
went on to state that he meant by this:
(i) That the language of the Creed must be inter
preted historically. Its traditional terms, not other
wise explained, must have their traditional mean
ing. Whatever of strictness, whatever of liberality,
belongs to them when thus understood, enures to
the subscriber now as at the first.
(2) Whenever traditional language is departed
from and new phraseology introduced, we are
brought into special contact with the intention of
the Founders.
(3) There is room for a progressive interpretation
and systematization of the truths of the Creed. . . .
Flistorical interpretation gives us first the Creed as
it proves to be a living fountain for others who
receive it.
(4) The truths of the Seminary Creed may be
adjusted to a larger knowledge and life than were
open to the framers. A historical study and inter
pretation of the Creed shows that these truths came
to these men as living and fruitful principles, and it
is of the very nature of such truths to find new appli
cation and service in new forms. ^
Besides the recognition of these principles,
the defendant asked the visitors to interpret
the Creed "as a whole," "to admit the Im-
possIbUIty of making every article In its obliga
tion complete In itself, or any phrase literally
" The Andover Defence, p. 162. " Ibid., p. 171.

2IO PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
binding which is traditional and contradic
tory to what Is new In the Creed and there
fore controlling." '
Here, surely, is an original and vital concep
tion of creed Interpretation. Over against the
customary habit of taking a creed literally,
just as It stands, without reference to the aims
of its framers or the conditions out of which it
sprang, this contrasted point of view regards
a creed not as something to be "held as an
infant's hands hold, purposeless, whatso is
placed therein," * nor yet "figuratively," but
as "a summary of principles which are to be
applied and developed from generation to
generation." Whether or not one can fully
concur in this interpretation of the Andover
Creed, It may be granted that It throws light
upon the nature of creeds and upon the reason
able understanding and use of them. Through
such discussions as this it Is becoming evident
that, though creeds can never recover the
dominant place they once had, they may not
be treated as worthless.
There was nothing of fetishism or obscurant
ism In Professor Smyth's attitude toward
" The Andover Defence, p. 173.
']. R. Lowell: The Cathedral.

EGBERT C. SMYTH 211
dogma and creed, but rather a sane and reverent
respect.
Men sneer at religious dogmas and rail at their
authority, deny their possibility or rank them with
things that perish. Many dogmas have become ex
tinct. Others must go. Not all is genuine which
wears the garb of orthodoxy. But a genuine Chris
tian dogma is not simply a divine revelation; it is
also the surest and grandest achievement of human
reason. It is enduring as the Eternal Reason. It is
I the mind of Christ formed within the minds of those
who have learned to think in his school and after
Him. It has for us the authority of God, and at the
same time it becomes the believer's personal con
viction and assurance. A brilliant and fascinating
preacher has said that creeds are like birds' nests.
They give a place to rest; but, like birds' nests, they
should be pulled down and built new every year.
Too much occasion and justification have been given
for such a saying. It suggests a caution, but it misses
a fact. The Church has not wholly failed to realize
its calling and prerogative in the domain of religious
doctrine. Amid all that is variable in creed and the
ology, there are constant elements, truths and logical
statements of truths, that abide through the cen
turies. The imperfection of the work should not blind
us to the high valuing of the workmen. "Ye are of
more value than many sparrows." "Ye are my
friends." And this is the privilege of friends, to know
the truth of God. "Henceforth I call you not servants,
for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth;
but I have called you friends; for all things that I
have heard of my Father I have made known unto

212 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
you." There is a kind of depreciation of creed and
dogma which is at bottom a depreciation of reason
and liberty and Christianity. Sparrows produce no
Brunelleschis nor Michael Angelos. They spread no
spacious domes over myriads of worshipers in the
succession of centuries. It is derogatory to human
reason, as well as to the Christian Church and
Christian science, to deny to it the power of building
for all time. "I have ordained you that your fruit
should remain." Birds' nests! If theologians are tom
tits! It is derogatory, also, and hostile to Christian
ity. Through the centuries dogmatic statements
have sprung from Christianity as naturally as trees
from seeds. Christianity will doubtless continue to
produce them to the end of time. The symbol of
Judaism was circumcision. The symbol of Christi
anity is the Apostles' Creed, — Symbolum Apostoli-
cum, — out of which has sprung, and will continue
to grow, a theology centering in Christ, the only
begotten Son of the Father, the Eternal Word.'
VIII
The closing years of Professor Smyth's life
after his virtual acquittal until the death, in
1904, of Mrs. Smyth, were serene and fruitful,
— the more so, perhaps, for the storms through
which he had passed. There was something
deeply catholic and joyous In his nature and in
his attitude toward life, In spite of the earnest
conviction. In which he foUowed both Edwards
' The Andover Review, vol. I, pp. 3> 4-

EGBERT C. SMYTH 213
and Kant, that human nature is radically
diseased by sin. In reviewing Allen's "Jonathan
Edwards," he comments on Edwards' view of
human life as follows:
Man the sinner and man the creature were hope
lessly confused. His responsibility filled the compass
of thought, his fall and corruption darkened the
whole natural horizon. No distinctly conscious
thought appears of the larger and encompassing
reality that man, though sinful, is still the child of
God; that his history is an evolution; that his finite-
ness and weakness and need are as great as his sin;
that there is a divine education of the race and of
the individual as well as a moral probation; and
that the Son of Man is the appointed Head of hu
manity in both relations. But if Edwards was here
narrow in his view, it is not breadth simply to see the
truth he failed to discover. Kant teaches as radical
a doctrine of depravity as Edwards. The latter's
fundamental postulate cannot be shaken, — the uni
versality of sin. Jesus teaches that man's greatest
need is not guidance but recovery, not truth but life.'
But when life has been renewed and Illumined
by Christ It becomes exceedingly large and
attractive. So It appeared to this profound
student of history as he pictures It In a forceful
article which he published In "The Andover
Review" In 1891, "The True Use of the
World: Three Types of the Christian Life." In
' The Andover Review, vol. XIII, p. 290.

214 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
this paper he presents a graphic view of the use
of the world characteristic of the Greek, Latin
and Protestant types of Christianity, as repre
sented respectively by Macrina (sister of
Basil the Great), St. Bernard, and Luther.'
The conclusion Is as follows:
Therefore — so Luther would say, I doubt not,
were he with us now — as Christian men and women,
we must come right in and take possession of this
earthly life in all its interests and possibilities, doing
what we can, and all that we can, to redeem it from
vanity and hopelessness, from lawlessness and self
ishness, that the beautiful order of the heavens may
be reflected in the yet more glorious order of a re
deemed humanity, and of a world recovered to its
divine uses; so that the restrictive precept. Love
not the world, will be no longer needed because men
will have learned in every station and relation of
life to love their fellows, and all that concerns their
well-being, even as God so loved the world as to
give his only Son to die for it. The true use of the
world is, not merely to rise above it, not chiefly to
gain its discipline, but to save it.
In these mature and hopeful words Is re
flected the Inner life of this noble Christian
scholar, true conservative, yet — paradox
though It be — true progressive, living In the
world yet above It, and having In all things
"the mind of Christ."
' The Andover Review, vol. XV, p. Jio-

CHAPTER VI
WASHINGTON GLADDEN

WASHINGTON GLADDEN

1836. February 11. Birth at Pottsgrove, Pa.
1841-42. Spent a year with his grandparents at Bedlam, Mass.
1852. Apprenticed as printer in the office of The Otaego
Gazette, Owego, N.Y.
1856. Entered Williams College, graduating in 1859.
i860. Ordained as pastor of the First Congregational
Methodist Church, Brooklyn, N.Y.
i860. December 5. Married Jennie Cohoon of Brooklyn,
N.Y. (died 1909).
1861-66. Pastor of the Congregational Church, Morrisania, N.Y.
1863. Engaged in hospital work with the Army of the
Potomac.
1865. Delivered Commencement poem "After the War" at
Williamstown, Mass.
1866-71. Pastor of the Congregational Church, North Adams,
Mass.
1871-75. Religious editor of The New York Independent.
1875-82. Pastor of the North Congregational Church, Spring
field, Mass.
1878-81. Editor of Sunday Afternoon.
1881. Received degree of Doctor of Laws from University
of Wisconsin; University of Notre Dame, 1905.
'. 1882. Pastor of the First Congregational Church, Colum
bus, Ohio.
,1882. Received degree of. Doctor of Divinity from Roanoke
College.
1889. Lyman Beecher lecturer, Yale University.
1893. Electedpresidentof IllinoisStateUniversity. Declined.
1893. Preacher to Harvard University.
1900-02. Served as member of City Council, Columbus, Ohio.
1902. Lyman Beecher lecturer, Yale University (second
series).
1904. Moderator of the National Congregational Council,
Des Moines, la.
1905. Addressed the annual meeting of the A. B. C. F. M.
at Seattle, Wash., upon " Shall Ill-gotten Gains be
sought for Christian Purposes?"
1917. Addressed the National Congregational Council at
Columbus, Ohio.
,1918. Death at his home in Columbus, Ohio, July 2.

CHAPTER VI
WASHINGTON GLADDEN AND THE
SOCIAL THEOLOGY
Washington Gladden was a man whom the
people of America, long before he finished his
long career of service, learned to trust and love,
for he gave them both conscience and cheer. It
would be difficult to name one who did more to
disseminate progressive religious and social
ideas. He was typically, unqualifiedly, and de
votedly American, a man of the people: "an
average American," he called himself; ' an
ideal American, many would call him. He
won his hearing honestly, by patience and per
sistence. Grandson of a village shoemaker and
son of a country schoolmaster, he was brought
up in an intelligent community of the then
"West," though having an inheritance of the
best of New England blood. Working In boy
hood on a farm and apprenticed to a printer at
the age of sixteen, he "earned his living" in
true American fashion. Making his own way up
¦ Recollections, p. l.

2i8 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
from the bottom, he was "self-made" In the best
sense, but also home-made, American-made,
Christianity-made. The name "Washington"—
due to a family tradition that his great-grand
father served In Washington's body-guard —
has been not unworthily borne by him. In sev
eral respects he was also Lincoln-like, — simple,
courageous, trustworthy, straightforward. As a
liberator and fashioner of religious thought In
America, especially among those of his own
Pilgrim lineage, he has done signal service.

Dr. Gladden was one of those Americans
whose life, in the span it covered, in the changes
it witnessed, in the compass and wealth of its
achievement and the measure of Its productive
ness, fills one with admiration. In part this re-
pleteness was due to the times In which he
lived. The expansion and enrichment of this
country, cultural as well as physical, from the
middle of the nineteenth century to the present,
has been such that it would be difficult to match
it with a period of equal duration In any age or
land. The boy who read the Bible by the light
of pine-knot and tallow dip, who began his
education in the country school where each

WASHINGTON GLADDEN 219
scholar had a different text-book, who heard
Jacob Knapp describe sinners thrust back into
hell by devils with pitchforks, who trembled
when the afternoon sunshine grew yellow with
smoke, lest the end of the world was at hand,
who saw the anti-slavery movement take root
and the clouds of the Civil War gather and
break, and roll away, who heard the first faint
llspings of the evolution hypothesis and saw the
stars of Tennyson and Browning rise, who wit
nessed labor organized, who looked on as elec
tricity waved her magic wand over Invention
and Industry, who hailed and heralded the New
Theology, and who saw the peace movement
wax and wane as the Great War darkened first
over Europe and then over his own country —
yet detected behind the shadow the radiance of
a new and nobler world order — might well
exclaim, "What hath God wrought!"
The tale is told with zest, clarity, and vivid
ness, and with a certain sense of wonder and
gratitude, in his "Recollections" (1909). It was
inevitable that Dr. Gladden should write this
autobiography. To have failed to do so would
have been disloyalty to his own nature and life-
history. It Is a book of genuine interest and per
manent worth. It takes its place, in spite of his

220 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
disclaimer, among the spiritual romances of
American biography. A sagacious observer and
accurate chronicler, he carries the reader
through the political, social. Industrial, and
religious events of his lifetime with true realism
and yet with the Interpreter's vision. His de
scriptions of the experiences connected with the
Civil War are especially vivid, and his reflec
tions upon It, as upon other events of his life
time, full of a rich sagacity.
"Recollections" portrays a life whose inter
ests and enterprises have been extraordinarily
warm and varied and whose service has flowed
out In many directions. Yet there is no difficulty
in determining Its main mission. Washington
Gladden was an apostle — may we not say the
apostle in this country ? — of Applied Christi
anity. The phrase "AppHed Christianity" is
now as familiar as It was once strange, — due in
large degree to the enterprise of this Indefati
gable exponent of it. How unfamiliar the phrase,
and that for which It stands, was thirty years
ago. Is Indicated by an incident which Dr.
Gladden relates In connection with his use of it
as the title of a proposed volume:
To bring the reason and the conscience of the
community, and especially of the Chnstian com-

WASHINGTON GLADDEN 221
munity, into close contact with this problem was
a large part of my endeavor during the first years of
my life in Columbus. In several Sunday evening
addresses, more or less closely related to this theme,
most of which were afterward printed in the " Cen
tury Magazine" and other periodicals, and which
were finally included in a volume entitled "AppHed
Christianity," I sought to deal with this central ques
tion. The title of the volume indicates the gist of the
discussions. I remember that when I submitted this
volume to the publishers, Mr. Scudder, who was
then the reader for the firm, hesitated over the title.
He could not see the force of the adjective. I tried
to show him that the whole significance of the book
was in that adjective; that the thing which the
world needed most was a direct application of the
Christian law to the business of life. He accepted the
explanation, and I fancy that whatever may have
been the fate of the contents of the book, the title
of it has served to call attention to an important
fact.' Since the publication of "Applied Chris
tianity," in 1887, a great company of earnest
men and women has devoted Itself to the better
ment of social and Industrial conditions. The
agencies and persons working to this end have
been many and their points of view varied.
The outstanding motive of the efforts of
Gladden and of those who caught his Ideal,
has been the emphasis placed upon Christianity
' Recollections, p. 297.

222 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
as offering the only adequate motive and ideal.
Social service has meant for them the applica
tion of Christianity.
Moreover, the Christianity to be applied was
very clearly conceived by Dr. Gladden. Behind
his social mission there has been from the first
not only Christian motive, but a definite,
tangible, clear-cut idea of what Christianity
means. He has been theologian as well as re
former; his has been a distinctly theological
Christianity — a Christianity buttressed, not
burdened, with theology — and all his think
ing has been conscientiously and avowedly
allied with the New Theology. Of this theology
as the true interpretation of Christianity he
has been a tireless champion. II
No man's theology can be understood apart
from his personal history and experience. In
the case of Dr. Gladden we possess an excep
tionally clear and accurate account of these.
As a loyal and devoted child of the Puritan
tradition in which he was brought up, he
endeavored, he tells us, to enter into life by the
strait gate of the then accepted mode of con
version, which consisted of a realization of one's

WASHINGTON GLADDEN 223
lost and sinful estate and a full dedication of
himself to God, to be followed by a joyous
assurance of acceptance. With long and earn
est effort he sought this experience, — but in
vain.
I tried to do just what I was told to do. I was to
"give myself away" in a serious and complete self-
dedication. I suppose that I shall .be far within the
truth if I say that I tried to do that, a thousand
times. But I understood that when I had done
it, properly, I should have an immediate knowledge
of the fact that it had been properly done; some evi
dence in my consciousness that could not be mis
taken; that a light would break in, or a burden roll
off, or that some other emotional or ecstatic expe
rience would supervene; and when nothing of the
kind occurred, the inevitable conclusion was that
my effort had been fruitless; that I had failed to
commend myself to the favor of God, and was still
under his wrath and curse. It is not a good thing for
any well-meaning soul to be left in that predica
ment. To feel that, in spite of your best endeavors,
you are an alien and an outcast from the family of
God is not encouraging to virtue; it tends to care
lessness and irreverence. I have often wondered, in
later years, that my faith did not give way; that I
did not become an atheist. It was the memory of
my father, and the consistent piety of my uncle, I
suppose, which made that impossible. But that
little unplastered room under the rafters in the old
farmhouse, where I lay so many nights, when the
house was still, looking out through the casement

224 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
upon the unpitying stars, has a story to tell of a
soul in great perplexity and trouble because it could
not find God.'
In spite of this lack, he united with the
Presbyterian church and kept in dutiful at
tendance and observance of all his religious
duties until he left his uncle's farm, which had
been his home from his eighth year, to go to the
neighboring village of Owego, N.Y., to learn the
printer's trade. In this more Independent life,
he gradually dropped out of sympathy with
the church. He was brought back by an evan
gelist "whose notion of Christian experience was
simple and sensible" and who quickly cleared
away his doubts and misunderstandings.' It is
evident that he had been blindly reaching out
after an ethical and practical Christianity. He
found it at last in the Congregational church of
Owego, formed by a company of persons who
had withdrawn from the Presbyterian church
and had called to its pulpit the pastor who had
been dismissed from that church for the serious
offense of praying In the pulpit for slaves.
Released from his misconceptions and in this
congenial atmosphere. Gladden threw himself
into church work with heartiness and satis-
» Recollections, p. 35. ' Ibid., p. S7>

WASHINGTON GLADDEN 225
faction. His mind began to turn toward the
ministry as a vocation. Of this Intention he
writes :
Such, then, was the soil in which my purpose to
enter the ministry took root. It was not an individ
ualistic pietism that appealed to me; it was a relig
ion that laid hold upon life with both hands, and
proposed, first and foremost, to realize the Kingdom
of God in this world.'
Out of such a temperament and experience
there might well Issue either no theology at all,
worth taking account of, or a theology that
takes Its rise in the ethical and rational in
stincts. Gladden was wise enough to realize
that he needed a theology and that the way to It
lay through the securing of a thorough, liberal
education. Upon this pathway he speedily set
out. His joy in the opening of the gates of litera
ture and history Is refreshing. Classical studies
especially fascinated him. He prepared for Will
iams College, from which he graduated in 1859.
Rather surprisingly, he stopped short of a theo
logical course and after graduation entered at
once upon the work of the ministry. Still he was
not entirely bereft of theological Instruction, for
he had taken President Mark Hopkins' course
' Recollections, p. 63.

226 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
for the seniors In the Westminster Catechism,
which he pronounces "a good equivalent for a
seminary course In systematic theology."'
His studies with Professor John Bascom, who
greatly helped him, were also not unallied with
theology. Ill
Slowly and thoughtfully he worked out his
own doctrinal beliefs, through the teaching of
his deepening experience, the Bible, and his
continuous and ever-enlarging reading. The
authors by whom his mind was first set free and
started on its own unfettered course were
Frederick Robertson and Horace Bushnell.
The latter's "God in Christ" aroused him to a
larger and more vital conception of Chris
tianity.' His first publication in the field of
religion, the well-known little book "Being a
Christian" (1876), reflects his own experience
and has been a help to many passing through a
similar experience.
The intellectual stimulus of his work and as
sociations steadily strengthened and deepened
his thinking. The early years of his ministry
were great "growing years" and the growdi
» Recollections, p. 73- ' ^*"^-' P" "9-

WASHINGTON GLADDEN 227
never stopped. The thoroughness and candor
with which he faced the fundamental issues of
religion — the existence of God, the possibility
of knowing Him, the nature of Christ — appear
in his first strictly theological volume, "Burn
ing Questions" (1889). It consists of a series of
lectures originally given to the students of
Ohio State University in 1886. A report of
these found its way into the "Christian World"
of London and was afterwards published In
book form in that city, and later in this country.
Several other volumes of a doctrinal character
followed, the two best known being "How
Much is Left of the Old Doctrines.?" (1899)
and "Present-Day Theology" (1913). "Not for
the scholar but for the people" ' are these,
as are all his books. The former is a very
clear and cogent though unpretentious ex
amination of the leading Christian doctrines,
showing not only that all that Is truly vital
and essential In each Is "left," but that a great
deal more of their true meaning and rela
tion to life is understood than ever before.
The force and skill with which Dr. Gladden
succeeds in lopping off doctrinal deadwood — ¦
such as the doctrine of a personal devil, original
'Preface of Hem Much is Left of the Old Doctrines?

228 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
sin, the governmental theories of atonement,
and others — Is only equaled by the "efficient
grace" with which he succeeds in proving that
at the heart of the old doctrines Is abiding
truth that only needs reinterpretatlon In the
light of enlarging knowledge. He Is very
adept also in showing the assistance which
science and Biblical criticism afford In bringing
out the larger spiritual values of fundamental
doctrines. The Interest and assent with which these
straightforward discussions of Christian doc
trine, like those upon "Who Wrote the Bible?"
were received indicated the need of just this
kind of popular yet thorough and scholarly
treatment. The same Interest showed Itself
when, fifteen years later, he delivered his ad
dresses "Present-Day Theology" to an audi
ence filling his church on week-day evenings.
It Is no slight service to thus prove to a non-
theological age that theology Is still indispen
sable. Dr. Gladden's theology was frankly and
fully a theology for to-day and to-morrow. He
was as far as possible from being a "theological
troglodyte" — to use a descriptive phrase of
his — and yet he was never radical, destructive,
or self-assertive.

WASHINGTON GLADDEN' 229
A characteristic and strategic method of his
is his large and free use of quotation from repre
sentative and reliable authorities on the subject
discussed. "These are part of the argument,
generally the best part," he puts it In one of his
prefaces. No one could be wiser or more just in
the use of this art. He presents his sifted and
selected material in neither a servile nor a
superior manner, but in such a way as to
strengthen his argument; as If he would say:
"You see, friends, these are not my views only;
they are those of the best writers upon these
subjects." The Inference sank In. Where two or
three witnessed together every word was
established. He was a tireless yet discerning reader. The
success with which so busy a pastor and public
servant kept pace with the most worth-while
publications of the day, not only in theology
but In sociology and in general literature. Is
almost incredible. One could determine for prac
tical certainty what were the leading books
Influencing intelligent opinion at any given
period by noting those to which Dr. Gladden
made reference. If a man ever kept step with
the progress of his generation it was he, and the
number of laggards whom he pulled up into line

230 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
is legion. This habit continued as long as he
could read and preach. His eighty-third year
found him discussing In his pulpit, with a vigor
which must have perpetually astonished his
congregation, the truths and errors of H. G.
Wells' conception of God, Josiah Royce's theory
of Interpretation, the merits and defects of Sir
Oliver Lodge's investigation of the phenomena
of spiritism, and other topics of the theological
day. The doctrines upon which Dr. Gladden laid
chief stress are the Divine Presence and Father
hood ; human sonship — heredity he character
ized as "God working in us," and environment,
" God working round about us,"^ — ; Christ, "the
ideal man, the consummation and the crown of
humanity, and therefore the manifestation of
God"^; Atonement, "the reconciliation through
suffering of holiness with love"'; Grace as
"help"''; repentance as "changing one's
mind " ^; the kingdom of God as "the whole
social organism, so far as It is affected by
Divine influences"*; the Church as "the
' How Much is Left of the Old Doctrines .? p. 131.
' Ibid., p. 173. ' Ibid., p. 194. ^Ibid., p. ZI7-
s Ruling Ideas of the Present Age, p. i.
' The Church and the Kingdom, p. 6.

WASHINGTON GLADDEN 231
central organ of the social organism"'; the
Bible as the inspired, but not Infallible, book
of righteousness * made glorious by the "Divine
Life shining out of the pages" ';''the Life Ever
lasting a reasonable hope, based upon belief in
the everlasting lovC* IV
Such was, in brief. Dr. Gladden's theology.
New? Yes, to be sure, in the sense that truth
newly discovered Is ever fresh and fair, — but
not novel. All that Is novel about his theology
was his determination that it should be applied,
utilized, set to work to save not only individ
uals but society. This demand that Christianity
save society was singularly new, but still more
singular was it that it should be new. God being
such as Christianity has always taught Him to
be — our Father — why not make all our
human relationships such as a righteous and
loving Father requires ? Brotherhood ? Why not,
then, live as brothers? Christ the Redeemer of
men? Why not, then, let Him redeem all our
deeds and relationships? Immortality? Why
' The Church and the Kingdom, p. 24.
' Who Wrote the Bible? p. 360. 3 Ibid,, p. 372.
< Present-Day Theology, p. 209.

232 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
not, then, begin to practice Immortality and
make our present life rich with its vast poten
tialities ? ' Such were his questions. It was
straight and pointed reasoning, direct from the
premises of Christianity to a plain conclusion.
It had often been made before; but not quite
in the way Dr. Gladden presented it. For he
held a strangely painful heresy as to the direct
relation between creed and deed.
Quite as clear as his theological exposition of
Christianity and his principle that It must be
applied, was his demonstration of the spirit and
manner In which it should be applied. In those
two admirable volumes "Tools and the Man"
(1893) and "Ruling Ideas of the Present Age"
(1895) — the former a course of lectures first
delivered on the Lyman Beecher Foundation at
Yale in 1889, and later at Mansfield College,
Oxford, and Meadvllle Theological School,
and the latter the Fletcher prize essay of Dart
mouth College — this instigator of Applied
Christianity opened a new door of duty and
opportunity to American Christianity; or If it
had already been opened he opened It wider
and showed more of what lay within.
Starting with a summary statement of the
' The Practice of Immortality (1901).

WASHINGTON GLADDEN 233
underlying truth of Christianity he proceeded
to apply It fearlessly and cogently to existing
Industrial and social conditions, to the vexed
problems of property, economics, politics, so
ciety. With unsparing and practiced hand, he
laid his well-tempered axe at the root of that
upas tree of economic falsehood — planted
by Adam Smith and watered by Ricardo,
Malthus, and others — the theory that It Is
natural and right for the individual to seek his
own good, and if he only seeks it hard enough
the result will be the general good of society.'
That Is neither good economics nor good Chris
tianity, according to Washington Gladden.
But is not Christianity a religion of in
dividualism? Is not its emphasis almost wholly
upon the individual? No; answers Dr. Gladden.
"The end of Christianity is twofold, a perfect
man In a perfect society. These purposes are
never separated; they cannot be separated.
No man can be redeemed and saved alone; no
community can be redeemed and elevated save
as the individuals of which it Is composed are
regenerated." This principle, with which the first of the Ly
man Beecher lectures opens, is developed, re-
' Tools and the Man, p. 31.

234 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
inforced, and exemplified so fully that no one
need be longer confused by the fatuous way
in which these two principles have been so
persistently set In opposition to one another.
The complementary character of the two —
the independence of the individual, the soli
darity of society — Is conclusively stated In a
classic chapter, "The One and the Many," In
"Ruling Ideas of the Present Age." If an
explanatory supplement Is ever added to the
New Testament, this chapter might well be a
candidate for admission.
The most daringly theological, not to say
mystical, doctrine In this thoroughly practical,
social philosophy Is the definition of property,
which the author adopted from the American
Roman Catholic communist and mystic Dr.
Brownson (who, it may be recalled, belonged
to Alcott's Fruitlands Colony), "Property is
communion with God through the material
world." ' This from an advocate of Christian
communism, adopted and applied by a friend
and defender of Christian socialism! Yet the
definition Is well sustained, especially when the
author returns to its defense In "Ruling Ideas
of the Present Age." ' Admirable are the
« Tools and the Man, p. 86. ' Ibid,, pp. I47-I49'

WASHINGTON GLADDEN 235
chapters "The Labor Question," "The Col
lapse of Competition," "Cooperation the Logic
of Christianity," "The Reorganization of In
dustry," and "Socialism" in "Tools and the
Man"; and the chapters "The Sacred and the
Secular," "Religion and Politics," and "One
but Twain" In "Ruling Ideas of the Present
Age."

Dr. Gladden's lifelong fellow-feeling for the
laboring-man Is well known. It goes back, he
hints, to that sorrowful day when as a boy of
eight he tolled In a rye-field all day and received
at night the munificent wage of half-a-cent (a
coin then In circulation). Perhaps this left, he
adds In recounting the incident, "an incipient
sensitiveness respecting the conduct of those
'who oppress the hireling In his wages.' " '
At all events, the rapidly festering labor prob
lem which became acute in the eighties found In
Dr. Gladden a wise and sympathetic diagnos
tician and physician. In the Ryder lectures,
given in Stelnway Hall, Chicago, in the winter
of 1895-96, published under the title "Social
Facts and Forces," he goes with considerable
' Recollections, p. 20.

236 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
detail Into some of the factors of the labor
problem. He discusses "The Factory," plead
ing for the reduction of hours of labor and scor
ing the Iniquities of child labor; "The Labor
Union," whose right to exist he defends with
unanswerable logic; "The Corporation," "that
gigantic Immoral person," the dangers of whose
"soulless" acts he exposes with keen discern
ment; "The Railway," whose predative rob
beries he ascribes to "the futile attempt to
govern a business which Is Inevitably and
properly a monopoly by the law of competi
tion";' "The City," whose "Inefficient" and
"corrupt" government he deplores; and "The
Church," which he charges with "the chief
blame for the strife of classes and the social dis
location and divisions." *
Here is a series of Indictments of appalling
magnitude. Washington Gladden never minced
matters. His courage was as Imperial as his out
spokenness was democratic. Yet he was singu
larly free from bitterness and pessimism. He
painted dark things In their true color, without
fear or favor, but he never failed to show how
they came to be so black and how the murk
could be removed and another color put on. He
' Recollections, p. 147. " Ibid,, p. 213.

WASHINGTON GLADDEN 237
did not "wait to strike until the iron should be
hot; he heated it by striking," as he wrote of
the men who overthrew the Tweed ring.'
VI
How far is this task of social regeneration
committed to the church; how far to the pulpit?
Dr. Gladden took a very positive position on
this question:
To my own mind, the conclusive evidences of the
truth of Christianity are found in the social move
ments of the world about me. I know that Christ is
king of men, that his kingdom is the kingdom of the
truth, because I see that he has laid down laws to
which men must conform in every relation of life if
they would be happy and prosperous and free. To
make plain this truth to men, to show them that
Christ is actually establishing his kingdom in this
world, is one way — it seems to me a very effective
way — of preaching Christ. Yet there are persons
who will listen to such a presentation, and then
lament that Christ is not preached. A man who had
never seen any light save one feeble ray that came
through a keyhole into the dungeon where he, was
confined might lament, if you took him out of doors
at noonday, because you had deprived him of his
vision of the light. So a man who knows nothing of
Christ except the glimmering beams of his beauty
that find their way through the cracks and orifices
of some theological system may feel himself bereft
' Recollections, p. 200.

238 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
if you show him the Light of the world shining with
noonday splendor all over the field of modern his
tory. But men who are in the habit of living out of
doors can hardly be expected to adjust their vision
to the optical infirmities of theological troglodytes.'
This Is clear and convincing as a general prin
ciple, but it left many difficulties unsolved.
Many weak men made the pulpit a place for
pohtical bluster or buried It under sociological
sawdust. Dr. Gladden, like many others, felt the
need of a further utterance upon the subject.
Consequently he made use, with care and thor
oughness, of the opportunity of a second series
of lectures on the Lyman Beecher Foundation,
entitled "Social Salvation" (1902). The pur
pose of this course Is thus stated In the Preface:
"If Society were articulate. Its cry would be,
'What must I do to be saved?' That Is the so
cial question which this volume tries to answer."
In dealing with the problem of the pulpit and
the social message. In the first chapter, the lec
turer displays the spirit of fairness and modera
tion with which he' was accustomed to meet
every issue. He selects two of the strongest pos
sible critics of the social message. Dr. Robert
Dale and J. Brierly, and allows them to state
' Tools and the Man, pp. 177, 178.

WASHINGTON GLADDEN 239
their case in their own words. After quoting the
latter's statement, "When the minister has
become merely political, It is because he has
lost grip on religion," he continues. "That
proposition ought to require no argument. The
minister who has become merely or mainly
political, or sociological, or scientific has aban
doned his vocation. The minister to whom relig
ion Is not the central and culminating power
in all his teaching has no right to any Christian
pulpit." Having granted this, he goes on to say:
"It Is the religion of politics, of economics, of
sociology that we are to teach, nothing else.
We are to bring the truths and powers of the
spiritual world, the eternal world, to bear upon
all these themes. This is what we have to do
with these social questions, and we have noth
ing else to do with them." '
VII
The fearlessness of Dr. Gladden in Insisting
that the application of ethical principles should
begin at the house of God Is well evidenced in
his attack upon "tainted money." In this fa
mous episode he Invaded the sacred precincts
of the oldest and most honored missionary
' Social Salvation, p. 26.

240 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
society in the country, which he revered and
loved, and charged Its chief officials with seek
ing the Ill-gotten gains of "predatory wealth."
Carrying the battle into the open and laying his
case before the public, as well as before the
American Board, he forced the conscience of
the church and the nation to face the issue.
Other men would have pressed the matter less
urgently, more privately and quietly. That was
not Washington Gladden's way. He always took
the public into his confidence, with perfect
naturalness and conscientiousness. Was not
this a matter that concerned the honor of the
whole family? Well, then, let the family con
sider It and rectify the wrong! Whatever may
be said as to the ethics involved In this until-
then-dormant Issue, it must be said that Dr.
Gladden conducted the prosecution In an ad
mirable spirit. He was blunt, but not belliger
ent; persistent, but not personal.
His ethical crusades were singularly dis
interested. If he lacked tact, he had something
infinitely greater than tact — unbounded good
will. Without hesitation or caution he struck
at existing evil wherever It showed its head,
even in the ranks of his friends and brethren;
but his frankness and sincerity took the sting

WASHINGTON GLADDEN 241
out of his assaults. Did he win a verdict against
the use of "tainted money"? Decision has not
yet been handed down — either by the Ameri
can Board or by the public. One fact emerges.
Things have been different, measurably so at
least, since. The money conscience is a little
more sensitive. The "New Idolatry" of ancient
mammon Is not so obtrusive.
With all his downrlghtness — Indeed, this Is
one indication of the fact — Dr. Gladden was
a lover of men. He loved them singly. In their
homes and In the church. How deep and
unwearied was the pastoral Instinct In him!
fervent as that of the old-time family pastor and
spiritual father. He loved men also In masses.
He had faith in that caldron of good and evil,
beauty and ugliness, the modern city. His own
city was dear to him. He did much for its in
stitutions, its government. Its higher life. For
two years he served on the City Council —
where he was Influential In securing a lower
street-car fare and other civic improvements —
furnishing an object lesson In civic fidelity to
the whole nation. One of his volumes, "The
Cosmopolis Club," is a study of the city.' It
' The Cosmopolis Club (1893). See also the chapter "The
Redemption of the City," in the volume Social Salvation.

242 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
appeared first as a most timely and influential
series of articles In "The Century Magazine."
He was not afraid of being soiled by the filth of
politics. He had a great respect for the sacred
ness and power of the ballot. "The powers that
be" of to-day, he pointed out, are the voters.
It is they who are ordained of God, and worthy
of respect. By their means — if they would
exercise their prerogative — he saw that govern
ment, both civic and national, could be purified.
"To them all the power is committed. They
are the sole depositories of the sovereignty.
They are responsible, jointly and severally, for
good government." ' VIII
These pressing concerns would seem to be
enough for any one man to carry on his heart
and his shoulders. Yet they did not exhaust his
devotions. It was as Impossible for him to re
main cold to any great moral or spiritual enter
prise of his day, or to keep out of any fight for
truth and righteousness, as for Hercules to leave
any of his labors unfulfilled.
Two great moral crusades which sprang up
afresh in the later years of his life enlisted his
' Ruling Ideas of the Present Age, p. 176.

WASHINGTON GLADDEN 243
earnest support. One is that of church unity
and the other that of world peace. Of the former
he was an early and earnest advocate. At the
very outset of his career he prepared for "The
Century Magazine" a series of articles which
attracted much attention and were afterward
published as a book entitled "The Christian
League of Connecticut" (1883). In this well-
executed assault on denomlnatlonalism an
imaginary group of Christian men and women
in a New England town cooperate in paying
the debt of one of the churches, instituting a
Young Men's Club, handling the problem of
pauperism, starting a free kindergarten, and
other similar enterprises. It was something that
never had been done, and yet something in it
self so feasible and reasonable, and It was
presented In so vivacious and attractive a way,
that it captured the imagination of thousands.
Some readers thought that it was a veritable
history, and others resolved that It should be.
The league, togetherness, cooperation — that
was a passion of Dr. Gladden's, whether it In
volved Individuals, churches, states, or nations.
When the Great War came, he saw that the
nations had reached the "fork of the roads."
What would be the outcome, — militarism or

244 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
internationalism? In the Church Union prize
essay on peace, "The Fork of the Roads"
(1916), Dr. Gladden sent out one of his clarion
calls to the nation and the church in behalf of
the Christian law of cooperation. It Is a vigor
ous appeal for national brotherhood. As ever
with him, the Christian motive is at the front.
"If anything Is central In Christianity, It Is the
obliteration of the lines of division between
races and nationalities, and the inclusion of the
world in one brotherhood. Whatever other
truths might be made subordinate or secondary,
this truth of the Divine Fatherhood and the
human brotherhood Is to be lifted Into the
light and held before the thought of the world. "'
When our nation, after long hesitation, declared
war, he sought to have it keep the same high
aims and Ideals as the lodestar of the struggle.
When one considers the number of forward-
looking enterprises and cooperations In which
he engaged, each clearly grasped and loyally
maintained, he wonders at the kindred flames
that burned so high and so long in this catholic
and ardent mind. He wonders, too, at the sleep
less zest of this man in his watch-tower, scan
ning every horizon for signs portentous of the
' Ruling Ideas of the Present Age, p. 124.

WASHINGTON GLADDEN 245
uprisings of evil and for indications of the com
ing of the kingdom. Yet his watch-tower has
not been for observation simply. As soon as
he noted well what action was most needed he
descended to the field and took a yeoman's part.
Very strategic, too, as well as prophetic, was
his warfare, as is indicated in his wise saying in
connection with his editorials In "The Inde
pendent" In condemnation of the Tweed Ring,
"It Is often well to assume that what ought to
be will be." '
There was a remarkable timeliness in all of
his knight errantries. When the young man of
modern training, alienated from the church by
a hidebound theology, was searching for a
larger faith, Dr. Gladden was one of the first
and wisest to come to his aid. When the labor
ing-man was struggling for his share of life and
liberty In the face of an Indifferent or hostile
church, it was this large-minded pastor who
took his place at his side. When the honest citi
zen of limited powers was despairing of ever
seeing his city rescued from the political mire
In which it was wallowing, he heard this voice
of good cheer bidding him take his spade and
follow him In. When there was no one to rebuke
' Recollections, p. 206.

246 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
the encroachments of mammon upon the sacred
precincts of the church, it was he who stood
forth to do it, fearless and alone. As emblematic
of the man as if it were his motto is his revi
sion of the familiar saying, so as to read, "What
is everybody's business must be my business." '
IX
All of these tasks were performed con amore.
He came as near putting his arms around the
whole of America as a man well can. Yet he
could detach them, too, to become one of the
"knights of the long arms" ^ to battle for the
causes and the people he loved.
_He could be severe, also, with those whom
he loved, as we have already discovered. More
than once he rebuked the churches with ringing
words, as In the annual sermon before the Con
gregational Home Missionary Society in 1905,
when he said: "The church has so far forgotten
its essential character that It has lost no small
measure of Its power. Its alliance Is mainly with
the prosperous. Its hopes are centered upon the
strong and the Influential." ^ In keeping with
this was his New Year message for 1918:
' Ruling Ideas, p. 208. ' Tools and the Man, p. 276.
s The New Idolatry, p. 148.

WASHINGTON GLADDEN 247
If after the war the church keeps on with the same
old religion, there will be the same old hell on earth
that religious leaders have been preparing for cen
turies, the full fruit of which we are gathering now.
The Church must cease to sanction those principles
of militaristic and atheistic nationalism by which
the rulers of the earth have so long kept the world
at war. We must not wait till after war. That may
be too late. Is not now the accepted time? '
Beside these warning notes should be placed
these more hopeful words in his chapter
"October Sunshine":
I am far enough from thinking that the church
is perfect, or from imagining that all the work of
the Kingdom is done by the church. But the church
has been, and in increasing measure will be, the
vitalizing and inspiring agency in the social move
ment. Unless the ideas and forces which the church
stands for are at the heart of this movement, it will
come to naught; and it will not come to naught.
There is no place in which a man can get nearer to
the heart of that movement than in the Christian
ipulpit. It is sometimes supposed to be a narrow
Iplace, but, as a rule, it is as wide as the man who
iStands in it chooses to make it. And I know of no
-'other position in which a man has so many chances
to serve the community; in which he is brought into
such close and helpful relations with so many kinds
of people. The field of the church, under the right
kind of leadership, is as wide as the world, and the
force of the church is more responsive to-day than
' The Pacific, January 17, 1918.

248 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
ever before to the right kind of leadership. There
are, it is true, too many churches which are sponges
rather than springs of influence, — which devote
their energies to building themselves up out of the
community instead of pouring themselves into the
community in streams of service; which have not
learned that it is as true of churches as of men, that
they who would save their lives lose them. But it is
quite possible for a brave and warm-hearted leader
to put a new spirit into such a church as this, and a
conversion of that sort makes joy among the
angels.'

Those who knew and loved Dr. Gladden In
his later years must have been struck by his
tenderness, — the kind of tenderness that blos
soms on the sturdy stock of strength. It showed
itself in his voice, in his bearing, In all the
gracious atmosphere of his autumnal years.
There was a great reverence In him which came
out In his ripe yet vigorous age. Radical — or
rather, one should say, progressive — as he
remained In his viewpoint, whenever a question
came up concerning doctrine or the Bible (so
say his parishioners), he always sweetened his
liberalism with a deeply reverent spirit. Free and
fearless as he was, he was no iconoclast. Like
," Recollections, pp. 420, 421.

WASHINGTON GLADDEN 249
his Master, the bruised reed he would not break,
nor quench the smoking flax.
Not unallied with this tenderness was an
appreciation of beauty which was his from
youth, but which grew with the years, making
him a lover of poetry and of all noble literature
and prompting him to express himself in well-
knit verse as well as In telling prose, — lest
there should be one avenue of self-expression
closed, one garden of his soul uncultured, one
of his ten talents that he failed to use. His
literary output has been prolific. He began to
write for a local paper almost as soon as he had
learned to set type. He was a frequent con
tributor to periodicals all his life. For four
years, 1871-75, he was religious editor of
"The Independent," and left It only for con
science' sake. ' At least thirty-eight volumes
besides numerous periodical contributions — ¦
none of them mediocre — have come from his
fertile mind.
His books are, to be sure, not treatises but
tracts, — tracts for the people, but tracts of the
highest excellence, no ephemera, but as serious
and full of appeal. In their way, as Newman's
or Milton's. Through them, as well as by means
' See Recollections, chap. XVI.

2SO PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
of pulpit and platform, he became a trusted and
widely known teacher of the people.
The grace and power of his work as a preacher
are best Illustrated In two outstanding volumes
of sermons, "Where Does the Day Begin?"
and his last ripe, wise, winsome volume, "The
Interpreter." Though not the possessor of a
conspicuous style, he made himself master of
pure, terse, compact, and forceful English.
There is not an ambiguous, Involved, or in
sincere sentence in anything he has written.
Nothing Is here to puzzle or confuse, — as
nothing to regret or extenuate.
Hidden, though by no means negligible, in
this luxuriant leafage Is his one volume of
poetry, "Ultima Veritas." In this the bright
particular star Is that Immortal hymn, long
ago discovered and adopted by the Christian
consciousness and now Illuminating every
modern hymn-book worthy of the name, "Oh,
Master, let me walk with thee." This hymn,
first published in "Sunday Afternoon," was
written under the sense of loneliness caused by
the author's theological Isolation. It is a
heretic's hymn — a "heretic of yesterday"
and a saint of to-day.
Is the latter too exalted a title to fit this

WASHINGTON GLADDEN 251
rugged, every-day man, companionable servant
of righteousness and teacher of the people?
Not if sainthood means devotion to God and
man, the holiness of a life dedicated to great
ends. Such a saint, vigorous In Intellect, pro
gressive In thought, fearless In spirit, strong In
action, reverent and tender as a child, apostle
of Applied Christianity, America may well be
proud to add to her calendar, — a saint after
the order of the Pilgrim fathers.
XI
The large part which Dr. Gladden had in
fashioning what Is coming to be termed the
"Social Theology" makes it desirable to present
in closing this chapter a brief survey of the rise
of this theology and of his relation to It.
If one looks for the factors that have entered
into the development of the Christian social
consciousness In this country In the last twenty-
five years, he will have to take Into account
many conspiring causes, such as the English
"Christian Socialism" of Maurice and Kingsley
and Thomas Hughes, the German socialism of
Karl Marx and Lasalle, the growth of the demo
cratic Ideal and the progress of the historical
study of the Bible — bringing out, as It has, the

252 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
social Ideal of the prophets In the Old Testament
and the social meaning of the Kingdom of God
in the New Testament. Stimulated by such In
fluences and Incentives as these there sprang
up in this country In the last quarter of last
century. In sympathy with — one might al
most say about — Washington Gladden, a
company of Christian thinkers and leaders. In
cluding such men as Josiah Strong, Edward
Everett Hale, Francis G. Peabody, William J.
Tucker, William D. Hyde, Henry C. King,
Charles R. Brown, Graham Taylor, Charles R.
Henderson, Shailer Mathews, George Hodges,
and Walter Rauschenbusch, who bent their
energies to the defining and propagating of
social Christianity.
How vital a part Washington Gladden played
in this movement Is indicated by the following
words of Professor Rauschenbusch in his
"Christianizing the Social Order" ': "I want to
pay the tribute of honor to three men who
were pioneers of Christian social thought in
America twenty-five years ago, — Washington
Gladden, Josiah Strong, and Richard T. Ely.
These men had matured their thought when the
rest of us were young men and they had a spirit
1 Page 9.

WASHINGTON GLADDEN 253
in them which kindled and compelled us." Of
this entire group of men. Gladden was the one
who from the very first laid greatest stress upon
the theological side of the movement. His
emphasis upon the part played by theological
Ideas seems almost extravagant. In "Ruling
Ideas of the Present Age," ' he writes:
The belief in the Divine Fatherhood has under
mined feudalism and destroyed slavery and led in
democracy. The power of this great idea it is, more
than any or all other agencies, which has compelled
the emancipation of the laboring classes, and the es
tablishment in so many nations of political equality.
Divine Fatherhood, human brotherhood —
these, as taught by Jesus, were to Dr. Gladden
the two great Inseparable truths upon which the
social gospel rests. Very simple theology Is this,
but theology nevertheless. Into the psychologi
cal and metaphysical implications of these doc
trines he did not go far, but he was well aware,
as we have seen, that not only they but their
great Teacher himself have metaphysical impli
cations which should be followed out in order
to get a complete and well-grounded philosophy
of Christianity. Nevertheless the simple truths
themselves are, as he saw, the essential dynam-
' Page 33.

254 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
ics of Social Christianity. "Ideas," Dr. Gladden
terms these dynamic truths, and such they are.
Yet they are also far more and greater than
ideas. Behind their nature as idea lies their
potency as consciousness, experience. Ideas of
this sort could not come Into existence except
through a greater reality beneath them, requir
ing Intellectual apprehension and interpreta
tion. The study of this underlying social con
sciousness, psychologically and metaphysically,
involves a deep probing of the very roots of our
being. It takes us Inevitably into the realm of
personality, human and divine, where we have
to face the problem — with which In Its practi
cal aspect Dr. Gladden dealt so wisely — of
the nature of society. Including the relation of
the Individual person to other persons. In this
rearlm It Is becoming clearer that — as he pointed
out — the individual person is not to be set
over against society, as If their nature and in
terests conflicted. Rather does each involve the
other as the very condition of its existence.
XII
Out of this deepening social consciousness
there have emerged a Social Gospel and a Social
Theology. The Social Theology Is not so much

VVASHINGTON GLADDEN 255
a new set of doctrines as a new emphasis and a
deeper Interpretation of original Christian doc
trines — such as the Divine Fatherhood, human
brotherhood. Incarnation, sin, atonement — In
the light of an Intensified social consciousness.
The movement Into the social theology may
be made from either of two points of approach.
The first is that which, as it relates to the indi
vidual, the Greek theology seized, — the kin
ship of God and man, leading to a quickened
realization of the Divine Life In social relations.
The other Is that which governed the Latin
theology, — the alienation of man from God, or
the fact of sin, the consciousness which leads to
the penitential return of man to the right, and
the recovery of righteousness In his dealings
with his fellows. Both of these truths are implicit
in Jesus' individual-social message, "Repent,
for the kingdom of God is at hand." Repent.
Why? Because the kingdom is at hand; because
the Ideal Life, individual and social. Is Immi
nent. Here are both Incentives. Yet theology
finds It difficult to hold the two In just balance.
One or the other is apt to take precedence in
the construction of a theology. With Washing
ton Gladden, as also with Francis G. Peabody,'
' See Jesus Christ and the Social Question. .

256 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
Henry C. King,' and most others of the Ameri
can school of Social Christianity, the ictus has
fallen upon the kinship of God with men as
taught by Christ, the presence of the Ideal in
the human soul, the conviction that society
itself Is instituted by God and will respond to
the appeal of the social Idea. On the other hand,
the approach from the consciousness of sin,
from the manifest prevalence of injustice and
iniquity In human relations and the consequent
need of social redemption. Is that which that
great and noble prophet of a new social order,
Professor Rauschenbusch, adopted in his very
searching and significant volume "A Theology
for the Social Gospel." *
Reflection shows that both of these comple
mentary truths are urgently needed In a social
theology, as in an individual theology. Out of
our consciousness of the Divine and of the ties
that bind us to one another flow those realiza
tions of Divine Fatherhood and human brother
hood which, as they arouse faith and hope and
love, work mighty changes in the social order;
and out of the consciousness of sin and social
' See Theology and the Social Consciousness.
' An admirable tribute to the memory of Dr. Rauschenbusch
has been published by the Rochester Theological Seminary
(Rochester Theological Seminary Bulletin, November, 1918).

WASHINGTON GLADDEN 257
injustice comes the conviction of wrong-doing,
producing a repentance which leads to the cor
rection of social abuses and the establishment
of a new and better social order.
The social theology works for the purifica
tion and reconstruction of theology as a whole.
In the deepened sense of social solidarity, the
artificial, unhuman, merely formal doctrines
fade — sovereignty, decrees, election, static
revelation, substitutionary atonement, salva
tion as escape from punishment, special provi
dence; while the great humanizing doctrines —
Fatherhood, brotherhood, racial solidarity, in
carnation, love — suffering, universal providence,
the kingdom of God — stand out In nobler out
line and assume a more vital meaning. Theology
moves Into a deeper as well as a broader inter
pretation of "the life of God In the soul of man,"
when man is understood In the light not only of
his individual but of his social nature.

CHAPTER VII
NEWMAN SMYTH AND LATER REPRESENTA
TIVES OF THEOLOGICAL PROGRESS

NEWMAN SMYTH
1843. June 25. Birth at Brunswick, Me.
1859. Entered Bowdoin College, graduating in 1863.
1864. Enlisted in l6th Maine Volunteers.
1865. Entered Andover Theological Seminary, graduat
ing in 1867.
; 1867. Pastor of Mission Chapel, Providence, R.I.
1868. Ordained to the Congregational Ministry.
1870-75. Pastor of the First Congregational Church,
Bangor, Me.
1871. June 20. Married Anna M. Ayer of Bangor, Me.
1876-82. Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Quincy, 111.
1881. Received degree of Doctor of Divinity from New
York University.
1882-1907. Pastor of the First Congregational Church, New
Haven, Conn.
1895. Received degree of Doctor of Divinity from Yale
University.
1899. Fellow of Yale University.
1908. Became Pastor Emeritus of the First Congre
gational Church, New Haven.
1913. Nathanael W. Taylor lecturer, Yale University.
1914. Chairman of a deputation which visited Non-
Anglican Churches of Great Britain in the
interest of a World Conference of Christian Faith
and Order.
1915-. Member of the Commission of Comity, Federation,
and Unity, National Council Congregational
Churches.

CHAPTER VII
NEWMAN SMYTH AND LATER REPRESENT
ATIVES OF THEOLOGICAL PROGRESS
Closely associated with the Andover leaders,
and sharing their cause as If one of them, was a
theologian author and preacher who, having
seen the Andover controversy through, has
continued to exercise large Influence In the ex
pansion of religious thought both In this coun
try and In England, — Newman Smyth. Al
though, being a younger brother of Egbert C.
Smyth, he enjoyed the same scholarly and spir
itual environment, he found his entrance into
the problems of theology and his place of ser
vice by a somewhat different pathway. A brief
narrative of the progress of his thought and
experience as he has generously given it to the
writer, at his request, follows in his own words : ^

Early in my college life I arrived at the problems
of modern philosophy. Without such adequate
instruction as is now given in academic courses, I
» Written under date of March 6, 1918.

262 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
read for myself and became, perhaps, a premature
philosopher. Consequently I soon found myself
foundering beyond my depth. I began with Scottish
philosophy, reading the Lectures of Sir Wilham
Hamilton, and becoming familiar with the theories
of knowledge of Stewart and Reid. I was intent on
finding what is real. Indeed one of my earliest recol
lections as a boy is that I was lying one day under a
tree, watching the great white clouds passing across
the sky, and wondering what there could be if after
all there was nothing. I think this desire to seek and
to find reality never has left me. Then I met with
Hamilton's theory of the relativity of knowledge,
his essay on the "Unconditioned," and found myself
resisting it, but utterly unable to escape from it. In
the senior year an important part of the regular
course of studies carried me into Paley's "Evi
dences," and, most important, to Butler's "Anal
ogy." The former opened the way for me into the
scientific studies which I have been interested in
ever since; but the study of Butler's "Analogy" was
for me a formative and permanent influence. It
became to me a unifying method of thought to be
followed in all directions so far as possible. It seemed
to reach down towards the fundamental principles,
the final reality which I would know. I recovered
enough from Hamilton and Mansel's religious appli
cation of his view of the Unconditioned, to write as
my graduating essay something on the ambitious
title of the Absolute. I regret that I have lost that
early contribution to philosophy, as I wonder how
wise or otherwise it might seem now; but I remem
ber that it held fast to the reality of knowledge. At
the same time Darwinism was in the early stage of

NEWMAN SMYTH 263
its controversy with a theology that comprehended it
not; and Herbert Spencer's "First Principles" led
me somewhat further towards the Ultimate Reality,
and then left it as the unknown.
From these college studies and philosophical be
ginnings I soon passed into service in the army.
There one stood face to face with realities. Men
showed what they really were. I think my year of
service in the army was one of the best years of
preparation for my ministry, — and of theological
preparation for it. It formed the habit of thinking
in contact with the realities of life. I came to doubt
any thinking that was not thought out in the midst
of men, in daily and close contact with human life.
It was probably this instinct that made me adverse
to accepting any academic chair, and choosing, al
though seemingly contrary to natural professorial
tendencies, to decline offers in which I might have
had more opportunity for leisurely and scholarly
pursuit of the philosophical and theological inqui
ries for which I had a natural inclination. Notwith
standing these advantages I preferred to think my
thought out in the pastorate. I suppose I had come
instinctively to feel that only by being compelled by
my daily work to keep in contact with the human,
could I come into touch with Reality.
I graduated from the army into the Theological
Seminary. It was certainly a sudden transition from
Appomattox Court House, where I heard the last
guns fired by the Army of the Potomac, to a stu
dent's room in Andover Seminary. The two teachers
of influence then were Professor Park in theology
and Professor Phelps in homiletics. To the latter I
owe much. His lectures, whatever their subject, were,

264 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
always a lesson in literary style. It was a pleasure
to listen to his perfect use of English. No student
could come from his class room without despising a
meretricious or cheap use of language for the sake
of popularizing the truth. His lectures were a course
in English literature as well as in homiletics, and
while the sermon was to him always a vital thing,
it was well that he made it so clear to his classes, by
his own mastery of style as well as his instructions,
that to be a good sermon even for common people
it need not be an imperfect literary composition or
offensive to good taste. The cheapness of conde
scension and adoption of vulgarities of speech,
which are sometimes regarded as necessary to pop
ular effect, were to him worthy of pointed sarcasm.
His own sermons, which I listened to when a boy
at Phillips Academy and later, had a quickening and
spiritual interest which I have remembered grate
fully through the years.
Professor Park was generally regarded as a great
public orator, and it was customary to consider a
sermon from him as an event. But less and less did
his influence over my thinking prevail. His lectures
were like an exercise in theological gymnastics, and
never dull. But very soon, among a few of us, his
dialectics aroused a spirit of criticism. He was master
of dialectical skill not only in presenting his own
propositions, but also in quick and often appar
ently crushing reply when we ventured objections.
One of his favorite methods with us was to maintain
that we agreed with him but did not know how to
express ourselves. He seemed to me at times to re
semble one of the Greek sophists; but we were not
sufficient adepts in the Socratic method to put him

NEWMAN SMYTH 265
to confusion. Nevertheless our reason was less and
less satisfied with his method of reasoning. It seemed
to us that he shaped Edwards to conform to his
system of New England theology rather than lead
ing us to understand Edwards' thought. We often
thought that he first insinuated his conclusion into
his definitions and then with triumphant logic de
duced them from them. To those of the class, how
ever, who were satisfied with being sent out equipped
with a complete system of theology and Biblical
proof-texts, for which a net had been dragged
through the whole Bible, his lectures were all that
could be desired and they had furnished them a
system of theology from which sermons could be
drawn without any too anxious thought for the
morrow on which they should have to preach. It
seemed to be Professor Park's ambition to become
the final exponent of the New England theology.
As a formal system it may almost be said that he
did finish it; and it was buried with him. His lectures
have never been published, his life of Edwards upon
which he was said to have been engaged was never
written; and the pupils who once went forth as his
favorite disciples have now almost all been gathered
to the fathers. But Edwards' intellectual honesty,
his profound searching for truth abides in our
theological schools.
I suppose that it was my early and instinctive
longing to know what is real that led me at first
to criticise and then to abandon Professor Park's
complete system of theological definitions and
reasonings. As a consequence I found myself going
back to Augustine in his searching of truth and to
Plato in his ultimate idea.s. The mystics attracted

266 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
me, and Neo-Platonism opened interesting though
disappointing inquiries. But the prevalent New
England theology, although in many of its funda
mental ideas appearing to me to be valid, as a whole
seemed to me (especially as taught by Professor Park)
to be an orthodox rationalism; and rationalism of any
kind did not satisfy me. My brother's lectures on the
Ante-Nicene development of the doctrine of Christ,
led me into a truer conception of the possible devel
opment of theology — a growing, living, expanding
development — which has since then become more
scientifically apprehended in my own thinking.
After preaching for two years in a mission chapel
in Providence, R.I., declining offers for permanent
settlement, I went to Europe and spent a winter in
Germany for the sake of a period of further study
and reconsideration of my theological preparation.
I count it as one of the marked points in my theo
logical education when Professor Tholuck called my
attention to a small volume of lectures by a German
scholar on " Biblical Theology." I had never before
heard of any such title or method of investigation
throughout my proof-text period of education and
revolt at Andover. I had been taught how New
England theology, versus the Princeton theology,
was regarded by the prophets and apostles. I had
heard nothing of Biblical theology. It opened to me
a new lead, which I hastened to follow. The guide-
posts along the way were then marked by German
signs, and for a few years my theological education
had to be entrusted to German scholarship and
leadership. Now, one need not go abroad to find out
what critical BibHcal studies and Biblical theology
may mean.

NEWMAN SMYTH 267
On my return, taking up my ministry in the new
light and with the restored assurance of faith, which
had come to me from these further studies, and
especially from the lectures and tutelage of Profes
sor Dorner, I wrote my first book on "Religious
Feeling." It was the first attempt to formulate what
from childhood had been my instinctive desire and
later my dominating conviction: that in some way
we are in touch with realities. A similar attempt in
the same direction was made in an article, published
in "The New Englander," on what I caUed "The
Dynamic Theory of the Intuitions." Then followed
my book on "Old Faiths in New Light." Biblical
criticism has advanced far beyond the beginnings
which were then available to me; but the volume
looked for the reassurance of faith in that direction.
It would need to be re-written to bring it up to the
present advanced state of Biblical and historical
knowledge, and I have preferred consequently to
let it go out of print.
At the time when it was published there were
many among the younger students of divinity, both
in this country and in England, who, like myself,
had found no resting place for their faith in the cur
rent scholastic teachings of the theological schools
then generally prevalent, who however had not had
the opportunity given to me to feel the reinvigorat-
ing breath of the new time already beginning.
Among the most grateful recollections of the years
that are past, are letters of appreciation for that
volume which I received from many who have said
that it came to them at a crisis in their own religious
development, who since then have become able
thinkers and leaders in the reconstruction of Chris-

268 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
tian teaching in freer and fruitful adaptations to the
knowledge and the needs of the present age.
After this the same thirst for the real led me
away somewhat from the field of theological studies
in the endeavor to find what could be known, how
near towards ultimates we might come through
scientific researches. The early fruits of these in
quiries in what has now become the voluminous
department of physiological psychology, were then
accessible and a better understanding of Darwinism
was becoming prevalent in Christian apologetics.
These recent investigations and every advance of
science towards the origin of things, every ascertained
fact far out on the border line between the known
and the unknown, had for me a fascinating attrac
tion, as indeed pursuit of spiritual truth in this
direction has been to me since — much more than
dogmatic theology — my chief study and delight.
But in this way one cannot make haste. Faith must
follow the will to know. Enough that from what is
known it may follow fearlessly whatever advance
science may make into the unknown.
The point where a conflict between conflicting
forces comes to an issue may be quite accidental.
The fact that they meet and that the new tendencies
of thought or life contend for the mastery is the
important event. Such a conflict, threatening with
division the Congregational church, arose in the
Andover issue and the conduct of the American
Board. It was entirely accidental so far as at the
beginning my own responsibility for the initiation
of it was concerned. Without previous intimation or
desire, I found myself chosen by the Andover Trus
tees to the chair of theology which Professor Park

NEWMAN SMYTH 269
had left vacant. Nothing could have been more for
eign to my own purpose or expectation. The contro
versy which arose over it centered upon a point
which to my own thinking was quite secondary and
merely incidental in its presentation by me. I had
been challenged by a club of unbelievers, and in
response had invited them to hear me speak con
cerning some of our chief Christian doctrines. They
constituted the audience primarily to whom a series
of sermons was addressed, taken down by a stenogra
pher and subsequently published under the title,
"The Orthodox Theology of To-day."
The action of the Andover Trustees had met, so
far as I am aware, with no opposition until it so
happened that Dr. Alden, a Secretary of the Ameri
can Board, having been led by some inscrutable
providence to read such a book as mine, had his
attention arrested and fixed upon a passage of some
two pages, in which I had suggested the possibility
of some redemptive grace for those after death who
had never known Jesus Christ in their earthly life.
Together with Professor Park, he and some others
made that a decisive issue between the old ortho
doxy and the oncoming new thought. "The Congre
gationalist" opposed the confirmation by the Vis
itors of the Trustees' election.
The passage thus lifted into a controversial issue
was not a doctrinal position, put by myself in sys
tematic relations with an exposition of dogmatic
teaching; it was an incidental suggestion offered as
a possible answer to objections of a company of
unbelievers. As such, whether justifiable or not, it
should have been weighed as matter belonging to
Christian apologetics rather than as a doctrine in

270 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
a system of beliefs. No science can advance without
preliminary working theories, which later may or
may not become part of accepted scientific deter
minations. To deny to theology the same liberty of
inquiry and advance would be to take from it the
very life of the Spirit of truth. At this time my own
mind was preoccupied with questions that were
much more fundamental and far-reaching. The
v/hole field of critical and Biblical investigation had
then been opened for scholarly research; I was look
ing forward to the questions which would need re
statement in that direction. Moreover, the philo
sophical and scientific conceptions and assumptions
underlying the received theology were being shaken
or swept away. The work of constructive theology
seemed to me to lie open, inviting Christian thinkers
and leaders in that field, and the laborers were then
few. The controversy which had thus incidentally and
accidentally arisen, so far as I was concerned, soon
developed into a wider issue, and became a conflict
for the liberty of young men especially who had
applied for missionary service under the American
Board, and indeed for the right of some of our most
approved missionaries, such as Mr. Robert Hume,
to continue in their Christian devotion. Behold how
little matter was enough to kindle so great a fire —
but there was enough dry timber and dead wood in
theology then to make a great conflagration. In this
controversy for liberty of thought I took deep inter
est and did my part. But the conception of the pos
sibilities of grace after death I was quite content to
leave to take care of itself in the field of religious
thought. The Andover professors, themselves tak-

NEWMAN, SMYTH 271
ing up the cause of liberty of thought, did whatever
was necessary to set that possibility in the light of
a Christian conception of God and His grace through
Christ. The larger inquiry, so far as the New England
theology was concerned, which seemed to me to be
necessary for the adaptation of Christian theology
to the knowledge and thought of the coming day, I
endeavored to present in an article published by
me shortly after the question of my Andover elec
tion was settled, in "The Princeton Review" for
May, 1882. It was entitled "Orthodox Rationalism."
No mention was made in it of the subordinate con
troversial question concerning future probation. But
I took issue with the entire method, philosophical
and religious, underlying the theological systems,
from confinement within whose dogmatic defini
tions I had happily escaped with my faith. It was
my only answer to all the attacks which my own
efforts had brought down upon me; and it was con
structive in its aim, and as I then believed conserva
tive of the very vitalities and spiritual power of the
faith of the Church. Upon re-reading it, after the
passage of all these years, I would subscribe to it,
perhaps more than to any one thing which I have
written of the method and spirit and essential vital
ity of my faith and lifelong search after the realities
human and divine of this universe in which our day
here on earth is spent. Later efforts have served to
deepen, to enlarge, to render more dynamic the
principles then stated. I have learned to appreciate
and to value more what I now call Scientific Spir
ituality.' ' See the last lecture of Constructive Natural Theology.

272 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
Of late years my studies have led me to appreciate
the need of a more scientific and constructive nat
ural theology as a condition and means for further
reconstruction of dogmatic theology. My later books
have consequently been devoted to this task. The
older New England theology made at least this
contribution to religious thought; it demanded sys
tematic construction of the existing material of
knowledge and faith. Edwards was a great con
structor of the materials given to his thought and
he was a lifelong searcher after truth as his observa
tions from time to time written down on scattered
pieces of paper show. In his treatise also on the
" Spiritual Affections " a principle of vitalizing power
may be felt, which has never been lost even in the
logical system-building of New England theologians.

II
The article to which Dr. Smyth refers Is a
luminous exposition of the New Theology and
stands beside the Introduction of "The Freedom
of Faith" and the Introduction of "Progressive
Orthodoxy" as one of the best statements
of the purpose and methods of the movement.'
It opens with the same pertinent contrast
between Lessing and Schlelermacher already
employed by his brother and emphasizes,
though in an entirely Independent manner, the
' See also "The Old Theology and the New," by William
Adams Brown, Harvard Theological Review, vol. IX, no. I.

NEWMAN SMYTH 273
superiority of Intuition to reliance upon mere
reason, — the latter being the method which,
with telling effect, is shown to be that of ortho
doxy as certainly as that of skepticism. The
appeal away from a barren rationalism Is, how
ever, not to a one-sided mysticism but to an
apprehension of spiritual truth on the part of
the whole man as contrasted with an exclusive
dependence upon the Intellect. This requires a
new psychological method, one which recog
nizes that "man is a spiritual unity, one living
whole, to be known and understood In relation
to the totality of his environment." * This is
Bushnell's contention, and Munger's as well,
reasserted and amplified. Such a method calls,
also, for the full recognition of the law of devel
opment. "We need for Christian theology a
psychology which shall be true to the actual
processes of man's life, which shall seek to under
stand consciousness, not by verbal dissection
of it, but by following its living development.'"
The knowledge of God gained thus is not
that of a God whose existence Is proved by the
rationalizing intellect. "A God proved by us
would be a God made by us." "God must first
'"Orthodox Rationalism," The Princeton Review (May,
1882), p. 296. 'Ibid., p. 299.

274 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
lay hold of us before we can lay hold of him," '
Such a God is apprehended not by any one
faculty but by the whole man. In an exercise of
faith. "Unbehef Is IncHned to regard faith as a
certain relation of mind to Christian Ideas
rather than as a relation of the whole man
through the person of Christ to the whole God."'
Christianity Is defined as "love entering Into
the life of the world and redeeming It from Its
own undoing." "The Incarnation Is the final
and perfect relation of the whole God to the
whole universe." ^
The true method in theology Is further de
scribed, In this article, as "dynamical rather
than statical." "It seeks to Interpret results
in mind and history by following with patient
investigation the processes of life through
which they have come to be what they are." ''
It is also "thoroughly ethical." "Being thus
dynamical and ethical, it must also be In the
truest sense spiritual." ^ Theology, that Is,
springs from life, the life of faith. "Faith Is the
true life manifesting itself, and bearing witness
that It Is true. In the life of man." ^
' The Princeton Review (May, 1882), p. 299.
' Ibid., p. 304. > Ibid., p. 308. * Ibid,, p. 309.
i Ibid,, p, ill, '/iii., p. 312.

NEWMAN SMYTH 275
III
The principles and methods thus laid down
have been consistently followed in all of Dr.
Smyth's publications, of which the best known
are "Old Faiths In New Light" (1879) and
"The Orthodox Theology of To-day" (1881).
The intuitional character of his thought Is
embodied In his first volume, "The Religious
Feeling" (1877), in his volume of sermons "The
Reality of Faith" (1884), opening as it does
with the sermon "Faith a Preparation for
Sight," and In a later volume, "Personal
Creeds" (1890). It Is significant to find him, in
the statement above, going back, as did Egbert
Smyth, to the intuitional and affectional ele
ment in Jonathan Edwards as the most essen
tial and attractive factor in his theology. Simi
lar emphasis upon intuition and experience
characterizes most of the New Theology lead
ers from Bushnell on, as we have found. The
ethical emphasis appears throughout his work
and is brought to a focus in "Christian Ethics"
(1892), a volume in the International Theologi
cal Library which has long taken rank as one
of the leading works on the subject. Thorough
ness, insight, balance, and wide acquaintance

276 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
with the literature of the subject characterize
this treatise. It Is surprising that amid the
duties of a large parish so ample and careful a
discussion of this difficult subject could have
been prepared.
The psychological aspects and implications of
theology are discussed with great thoroughness
in the volume "The Meaning of Personal Life"
(19 1 6). Here emerges again the concentration
of Interest upon personahty that characterizes
the New Theology school. Great progress has
been made In the last twenty years in the study
both of psychology and of personality, but the
gulf left between the two has been wide. No vol
ume has so far succeeded in bridging it as this.
Dr. Smyth Is hampered by no theological in
hibitions. He has made himself Intimately ac
quainted with the problems not only of psy
chology but of physiology as they bear upon the
question of the origin and nature of personal
life. It Is therefore with no theologically cramped
hand that he traces "the natural history of
personality from the behavior of lowest organ
isms along the lines of life's struggle and
ascent up to the self-conscious conduct of man."
Nor is It by mere predisposition that he finds
"an energy active In every moment of our

NEWMAN SMYTH 277
consciousness, and known most Intimately and
ultimately In the exercise of our will, which
nevertheless eludes definition, yet abides as
Indestructible reality and affirmation of our
selves." '
No chapter In the volume is more contributive
than that upon "Personal Identity." In it the
relation of personality to nature is thus discern
ingly described :
Herein appears the unique marvel of personality;
it becomes conscious of itself as individual and it
individualizes its world; it is the one discovering
itself among the many. In the midst of uniformities
of nature moving at will on the plane of natural
necessities, weaving the pattern of its ideas through
the warp of natural laws, runs the personal life. On
the same plane and amid these uniformities, yet
itself a sphere of being of another order; in it, yet
disentangled from it, and having its center in itself,
it lives and moves and has its being, breaking no
thread of nature's weaving, subject to its own law
and manifesting a dynamic of its own.^
Analyzing the nature of personal individuality,
the author finds In It these distinctive elements :
(i) "It asserts Its worth to Itself," (2) it pos
sesses "conscious solitariness of personal being,"
(3) It manifests "Incalculablllty," (4) it "evinces
' The Meaning of Personal Life, p. l68.
'Ibid., p. 173.

278 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
its unique character by its selective formation
of Its own proper environment," (5) it exhibits
"increase of psychical energy In personal life."
Man, the incomprehensible yet interpretative
interloper In nature, "is become actor and
spectator of his own life, the final judge of all
things from which he came forth, himself
nature at her best, yet holding himself the heir
of a realm of higher worth." '
Thus distinctly and unqualifiedly Dr. Smyth
recognizes the duality as well as the unity of
existence, constituted as it is of both nature
and spirit. "We have then, directly confronting
us, the dualism between the physiological
system and the psychical constant In the unity
of personal life." ^ The relation between them
he regards as that of Interaction. They are not
in essential conflict but capable of true harmony.
The nature of both matter and spirit "may
admit of sympathetic rapport or effective adapta
tions to each other that we cannot clearly
apprehend, but which we recognize as actual in
experience." ' Upon this Intimacy, implying
unity, he dwells with especial earnestness:
"Not the denial of evolution but unbelief In the
' The Meaning of Personal Life, p. 191.
' Ibid., p. 116. 3 Ibid., p. 124.

NEWMAN SMYTH 279
unity of the natural and the spiritual is the
vitiating falsehood alike of science and of faith.
It were indeed a betrayal of personality to
doubt the existence of either in the reality of
the whole. Let either vanish and the other
goes." ' This Is both true discrimination and true
catholicity. In this direction and this alone,
apparently, lies the real understanding of the
Intrinsic character and true development of
personality in its relation to and use of the
environment in which it wins its way to au
tonomy. In delineating the rise and progress of
the personal life, he attempts to trace only the
natural factors, leaving the spiritual almost
untouched, but he at least recognizes that both
concur in the process.' IV
It Is well that emphasis was thus laid by Dr!
Smyth upon the physical and psychical con
comitants of personality. It was desirable that
a mind thoroughly grounded in metaphysical
and theological science should make full rec-
' The Meaning of Personal Life, p. 192.
' See my Personality and the Christian Ideal, chap. XIV,
and "The Pathway of Personality," The InterpreUr, October,
1912, for an attempt to trace the rise and growth of personality
on the ethical and spiritual side.

28o PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
ognltlon of the empirical factors Involved In
personality and hence in religion. While not
himself a scientist — possessing as he did the
discursive rather than the concentratlve mind
¦ — it may be doubted If any American theo
logian has entered so sympathetically and fully
into the scientific spirit and point of view as
has Newman Smyth. It has been a pecuharly
needed and timely service. While the artificial
"conflict" between science and theology has
long since been recognized as having no roots
In reality, there Is still an unhappy lack of full
rapport between the tw<? complementary pur
suits of truth. This being the case it was for
tunate that a man so thoroughly grounded In
philosophy and theology should take pains to
understand the scientific viewpoint and enter
sympathetically Into it. He was one of the first
to catch the significance of the science of biology
to the spiritual order. His chivalrous apprentice
ship In a biological laboratory, at an age when
most theologians settle»down into dogmatic ruts.
Is an evidence that it Is not so much theology
that produces dogmatlclans as dogmaticians
who produce theology. Here Is as fine a piece
of vicarious at-one-ment as any science can
exhibit In Its relation to other sciences. The

NEWMAN SMYTH 281
fruit of this laboratory work and of his wide
and careful scientific reading and reflection is
evidenced in three volumes of distinctive
worth: "The Place of Death In Evolution"
(1897), "Through Science to Faith," and
"Constructive Natural Theology." The second
of these volumes constituted the Lowell lectures
of 1902 and the third the Nathanael W. Taylor
lectures of the year 1913.

"The Place of Death in Evolution" presents
an hypothesis which, whatever place may have
been accorded It by scientists, offers a suggestive
contribution to teleology. It Is that death ap
pears In the light of evolution not as an enemy
but as an ally of life, disposing of outworn organ
isms in order that they may be replaced with
others more numerous and more highly de
veloped. Death works — as the thesis Is re
stated by him In a later volume — "for the
further differentiation and enrichment of life.
Subsequently and obviously throughout evolu
tion death balances the book of account between
life's ratio of fertility and its means of living.
We owe our human birth to death. We are the
living children of a world that has died for us.

282 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
If, then, we may win from nature any assurance
that death itself has its place as a servant In the
work of life, that It has Its reason for being here
in a principle of utility, we may then conceive
that death may also be discharged from
service when no longer useful; that death may
be atrophied In the highest embodiment of
spiritual personality." '
"Through Science to Faith" Is one of the best
spiritual interpretations of evolution that has
appeared and admirably supplements the irenic
influence of Joseph LeConte's "Evolution and
its Relation to Religious Thought" (1887), The
discussion Includes such themes as "Evolution
as Revelation," "The Fact of Direction in
Nature," "Moral Character of Direction in
Nature," "Retrogression in Evolution and
Man's Fall," "Restoration in Evolution," and
"The Prophetic Value of Unfinished Nature"
— all treated with originality and insight.
The Taylor lectures, "Constructive Natural
Theology," form a brief but very stimulating
volume. The title is much too heavy, if not too
broad, for the contents, which consist of il
luminating comments upon the mutual rela
tions and services of the scientific mind and the
» Constructive Natural Theology, p. 20..

NEWMAN SMYTH 283
spiritual mind. After the complete discomfiture
of the earlier presuppositions and methods of
"Natural Theology" It Is doubtful If this term
— so closely wedded with the erection of reason
into a substitute for revelation — can be
rescued for the further use of modern theology.
Yet, however It be christened, Dr. Smyth has
drawn the outline of a new natural theology,
reborn into both the spirit of science and the
spirit of Christ. The especial value of the dis
cussion lies in its interpretation of the spiritual
values of science to the religious mind. These
values are strikingly summarized in the final
chapter, entitled "Scientific Spirituality." The
chapter opens with a discerning contrast of the
scientific and mystical temperaments and
habits. After drawing the contrast between
them, the lecturer points out how the two
"coexist and cowork in one's thinking and liv
ing, however they may be dissected in our analy
sis of consciousness." ' Not only do they coexist
and cowork but they supplement each other.
"To be true ahke to the natural and the spiritual
is to keep to the end our personal integrity;
nothing less is perfect simplicity." ^ This con
clusion Is followed by a description of the service
'Constructive Natural Theology, p. Ul. . * Ibid., p. iii.,^

284 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
which the scientific type of religious experience
— for Dr. Smyth claims that the scientific
spirit is a form of religion — can render to
"other recognized varieties of religious ex
perience." This it does In Imparting "a unifying
sense of life," In guarding against the "par-
tlalness and excluslveness " of other types of
religious experience, In promoting "natural
ness" and"unworldliness" — the latter in the
sense of unselfishness — "and In renewing our
faith In man's survival value." The character
ization Is open to criticism, as lacking in close
discrimination as well as In completeness, but
it is exceedingly suggestive; and no one could
have done it on the whole so well as this
sympathetic and synthetic student of both
theology and science. VI
This rapid survey of Newman Smyth's con
tribution to religious thought Indicates but par
tially how penetrative and varied his service
has been. So quick and sensitive Is his mind to
the opening of new fields of theological expan
sion that he has seen and made use of oppor
tunity of advance where others saw only threat
ened disaster and retrenchment. His readiness

NEWMAN SMYTH 285
in seizing and occupying these new fields might
have exposed him to the charge of being a theo
logical opportunist; but a more careful judg
ment shows how unjustifiable such a judgment
would be. His has been, rather, the alertness of
one whose devotion to his cause gives him the
courage and sagacity to preempt at once new
territory in behalf of the higher life and Its
Lord. This prescience of mind, rather than any
shifting of Interest or activity, explains the
earnestness with which he has given himself of
late years to a spiritual enterprise where the
fields are white to the harvest and the laborers
few, — church unity. Here he has selected a line
of action, by no means easy, which he has made
almost uniquely his own, — that of bringing
together the New England aristocratic ecclesi
astical democracy, Congregationalism, and the
Southern democratic aristocracy, Eplscopa-
lianlsm, — realizing that if these two can be
harmonized, much will follow. He has suffered
many repulses and much misunderstanding In
this crusade, but with a charity and persistence
and skill worthy of a great cause he has pressed
his purpose untiringly and not without effect
upon the future of church unity. Underlying

286 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
this endeavor in behalf of church unity there is
evident the mental and spiritual urgency and
zeal of a true catholicity, the patient devotion
of one whose sense of the value of continuity In
organized spiritual life will not permit him to
take easily the perpetuation of the spirit of
schism which has for four hundred years divided
Western Christendom. This appears In his
striking volume "Passing Protestantism and
Coming Catholicism" (1908), In which, while
he overestimates the influence of Modernism,
he succeeds in making clear the possibilities of
the approach toward one another of the two
great Christian bodies, — provided they were as
disinterested as he would have them to be.
The tireless and intelligent devotion to the
reunion of the church which has animated
Newman Smyth in his later years reveals anew
the outstanding trait which has characterized
his entire life and thought, the union of the syn
thetic and constructive spirit with the free and,
forward-reaching spirit. Such a union, as rich as
it Is rare, has made of him a tireless awakener
and leader in theological advance — undaunted
and undeterred — with "the rays of morn on
his white shield of expectation."

LATER REPRESENTATIVES 287
VII
With so large a company of forward-looking
minds In the ranks of the Pilgrim heritage co
operating in constructing a freer and larger the
ology. It is impossible to include all in this
study. For the sake of completeness it would
have been desirable to present a number of
other progressive thinkers, to a few of whom
only I will briefly refer in bringing this survey
to a conclusion.
One of the most outstanding of the builders
of the newer religious thought in America, to
whose work some allusion at least should be
made, is that Intrepid herald and clarlfier of
the new viewpoint. Dr. Lyman Abbott. The
story of his service. In season and out of season,
for the cause of advancing thought has been
graphically told in his "Reminiscences" (1915).
His mission — a vital and valuable one — has
been, above that of any other American writer
perhaps, that of interpreter, popularlzer (In the
best sense), and promulgator of the newer the
ology. For this he has shown rare gifts and the
most Indefatigable zeal. His unusual tutelage in
the law, journalism, and the pulpit has given
him a singular clarity of thought and of expres-

288 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
sion and a consequently wide hearing. From
his earlier volumes upon the Bible and upon
evolution to his "Letters to Unknown Friends"
and his "Knoll Papers" in "The Outlook" he
has been a helper of the perplexed and has
cleared the pathway of difficulties for thousands
of unsettled minds. v
Associated with Dr. Abbott on the staff of
"The Outlook" have been such rare progres
sives as Hamilton W. Mable, Amory H. Brad
ford, and James M. Whiton. Of Mr. Mable's
discerning literary criticism, theological en
lightenment was a notable accompaniment.
Dr. Bradford, through his pulpit, his books,
and his wide personal influence, exercised a
large and liberalizing effect upon religious
thought. Dr. Whiton, ever since the publica
tion of his arresting volume "The Gospel of
the Resurrection" (1881), has been one of the
recognized leaders of freer religious thinking.
He has directed his thought In later years more
particularly to the cosmical and biological as
pects of theology, and in the chapters contrib
uted by him to the volume of theological essays
which he edited, entitled "Getting Together"
(1913), he has made suggestive studies in the
interpretation of the divine immanence. In his

LATER REPRESENTATIVES 289
little volume "The Life of God In the Life of
His World" (1918) he has supplemented his
earlier elucidating discussion of the doctrine of
the Trinity, "Gloria Patri," with a vitalizing
interpretation of the same doctrine in the light
of biology. Another of the most intrepid and
clear-visioned leaders of advancing religious
thought was President William DeWitt Hyde
(d. 1917) too early withdrawn — author of books
of stirring quality In ethical and social theology.
Other contributors to an expanding theology
are James M. Campbell, author of "The In
dwelling Christ," "Paul the Mystic," and other
books of unusual spiritual Insight; Albert J.
Lyman (d. 191 5), author of "Preaching in the
New Age," and shining exponent of the same;
Charles A. DInsmore, whose "Atonement in
Literature and Life" is an original and valuable
contribution to the subject; E. Ellsworth Shu-
maker, author of "God and Man"; Clarence A.
Beckwith, author of "Realities of Christian
Theology"; Charles E. Jefferson, vigorous ex
ponent of a conservatively liberal theology
through pulpit and press; William F. Bade,
author of "The Old Testament in the Light of
To-day"; Eugene W. Lyman, author of "The
ology and Human Problems" and "The Expe-

390 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
rience of God In Modern Life"; Herbert A.
Youtz, author of "The Enlarging Conception
of God"; and S. P. Cadman, author of "Charies
Darwin and Other English Thinkers."

VIII
Besides the theologians already referred to
and beyond the boundaries of the direct Pil-
grini heritage, a complete account of the prog
ress of American theology would require a sur
vey of the work of Elisha Mulford, author of
those wide-vlsloned volumes "The Republic of
God" and "The Nation"; of A. V. G. Allen, to
whose invaluable work reference has been
made; of Henry S. Nash, a thinker and writer
of rare suggestiveness ; of that profoundly
thoughtful theologian, William P. Du Bose; of
Paul MIcou, the publication of whose lectures
at the Theological Seminary in Virginia, "Basic
Ideas of Religion" (1916), formed a marked
contribution to theological literature; and of
that resourceful and radiating author Dean
George Hodges, — these among the Episcopa
lians.' Among the Presbyterians who have con-
" One feels like apologizing for attaching these denominational
labels; it is a concession to the passing order, for the sake of
location.

LATER REPRESENTATIVES 291
tributed to theological advance one would need
to Include that unflinching and successful leader
of "New School" Presbyterianism, Albert
Barnes; also Henry B. Smith, Charles Cuth-
bert Hall, and later William Adams Brown and
Henry Van Dyke, whose "Gospel for an Age
of Doubt" has fulfilled a large mediating ser
vice. Among the Baptists who have led the way
into a broader theology have been Francis
Wayland and Ezekiel G. Robinson, in the earlier
days, and Presidents Harper and Faunce, Henry
C. Mable and Harry E. Fosdick in later years.
The Methodists of the vanguard include the
late Milton S. Terry, W. F. Tillett, W. W.
Guth, Bishops Henry M. Du Bose and F. J.
McConnell. The Disciples body has from its
inception stood for a simplified theology, but
its earlier doctrinal positions, though earnest
and vital, were of a limited nature, and it is
only within recent years that some of its lead
ers, including Peter Ainslee, H. L. Willett,
Edward S. Ames, Charles C. Morrison, editor
of "The Christian Century," have come to
have a conception of the true meaning of theo
logical progress.
The writings of Swedenborg, as interpreted
In America by the Worcesters and others and

292 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
by "The New Church Review," have exercised,
somewhat subtly, a liberalizing and spiritual
izing Influence, at first aided but now hampered
by the allegorical doctrine of Scripture. As for
Unitarianism, the story of Its emancipating
though sometimes disintegrating work has been
well rehearsed by its own historians and pane
gyrists. "No body of Hke size," Leonard W.
Bacon has said, "was ever so resplendent with
talents and accomplishments." ' It has at times
diverted but on the whole advanced as ad
vanced religious thought in America.
While the Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light
does not seem to have been regarded as intended
to lead forward Into new truth. It offered an
early asylum In this country, as In England, for
those who could not endure the shackles of Cal
vinism, and Quakerism has given us the practi
cal mystic John Woolman, the poet-theologian
Whittier, and In late years has produced two
fruitful leaders in religious thought, George A.
Barton and Rufus M. Jones.^
The New Thought-Christian Science move
ment has. In a way, promoted theological ad-
' See L. W. Bacon's History of American Christianity, p.
387. ' See especially the latter's Social Law in the Spiritual World
(1904) and Studies in Mystical Religion (1909).

LATER REPRESENTATIVES 293
vance by substituting a mystical attitude to
ward truth for the older rationalizing and
dogmatic attitude, but it has within It no
adequate intellectual understanding of the
truths it presents and no conception whatever
of the meaning of progress in religious truth.
IX
It is greatly to the advantage of theological
progress in this country that the chief Ameri
can religious encyclopedias, McClintock and
Strong's "Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological,
and Ecclesiastical Literature" (1867) and the
Schaff-Herzog "Encyclopedia" based on the
"Real-Encyclopedia" of Hauck and edited by
Philip Schaff (1882, revised 1889), have on the
whole stood for modern scholarship. The re
vised edition of the latter (1905) under the able
editorship of S. M. Jackson, assisted by Charles
Colebrook Sherman and George W. Gllmore, is
in accord with well-established advance along
Biblical and theological lines and has helped to
give American theology self-confidence and to
keep it in touch with that of Europe. It is not to
be overlooked, too, that the religious dictionaries
of which British theological scholarship has so
good a right to be proud, especially Dr. Hast-

294 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
ings' "Dictionary of Religion and Ethics," have
a good proportion of articles by Americans.
Nor should account fail to be made of the enter
prise and breadth of outlook of American ec
clesiastical scholarship evidenced In the fact of
the appearance as well as the character of the
"Catholic Encyclopedia" (New York, 1907).
When a church begins to make encyclopedias
it will find itself borne forward by the very
procession which It has joined.
The American religious periodical press, too,
has been steadily advancing in breadth and
abihty. While "The Independent" and "The
Outlook" (formerly "The Christian Union")
were distinctively religious organs, they did
an incalculable service In promoting fresh
religious thought, and even now an occasional
editorial or article on a religious theme gives
tone to their varied and picturesque pages.
Their defection, if it be such, from the field of
distinctively religious journalism Is, however,
more than atoned for by the Increasingly broad
and Intelligent discussion of religious problems
by such periodicals as "The Nation" and "The
New Republic." The old-line denominational
papers are becoming broader In their scope and
outlook, though with less genuine interest in

LATER REPRESENTATIVES 295
theology, and their editors and contributors
look across the lowering fences with no little of
friendly appreciation of what is going on in other
fields. X
The theological schools, as collective custo
dians and dispensers of theology, have some of
them already entered incidentally into our
purview of theological progress. It remains to
add a few further words concerning those which
have contributed most to theological progress,
through that cooperative service which ac
complishes much.
If Andover Seminary played a large part in
theological advance in America, Yale Divinity
School (founded In 1822), in a less conspicuous
and controversial fashion, performed a hardly
less important service. Unhampered, in the
main, by suspicion and attack, Yale theologians
have worked constructively and effectively to
reconcile "old faiths and doctrine new" in the
Interest of a genuine advance. Samuel Harris
made a contribution to the philosophy of
theism so careful, so catholic, and so progressive
as to raise the whole body of American theology
to a higher level. The notable work of his col
league, George P. Fisher, embraced not only his

296 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
scholarly and widely circulated histories of the
church and of Christian doctrine but such liber
ating volumes as "The Grounds of Theistic and
Christian Belief" (1883) and "Nature and
Revelation" (1890). Dr. Fisher's work In
church history has been carried forward by
his successor, Williston Walker, with a breadth
and accuracy of judgment that have made his
contributions to the subject an informing and
Irenic influence among all bodies of Christians.
In the field of Christology, George B. Stevens,
whose early death In 1906 was a great loss to
the School, left a work of scholarly progres-
sivlsm in his "The Christian Doctrine of
Salvation" (1905).'

' New Testament study at New Haven has been given a
liberalizing character by Professors Frank C. Porter and Benja
min W. Bacon. The latter's brilliant and untiring work in
criticism has been supplemented by a volume of unusual acumen
and value in the interpretation of Christianity, Christianity Old
and New (Earl Lectures, 191 1). The present Dean of Yale School
of Religion, Charles R. Brown, brought from his magnetic
pulpit in Oakland, California, a power of clear thought which
has crystallized in a group of books which have done much to
further moderately progressive Christian thinking, especially
among young men. Of these volumes. The Main Points carries
an unusual measure of clarity, sanity, and force into the state
ment of the cardinal Christian doctrines. In the University
Faculty, Charles F. Kent's Biblical textbooks have been the
harbingers of a larger outlook to thousands of students. Charles
C. Torrey's studies are contributing much to the advance of
critical scholarship.

LATER REPRESENTATIVES 297
Oberlln College, "a cutting from Lane Semi
nary," was from the first a leading force In
exorcising certain of the abnormalities of
Calvinism and has continued to nourish a vital
spiritual type of Christian thinking and living.'
No theologian of to-day in the Pilgrim succes
sion has done more for the genuine progress of
theology than President Henry Churchill King.
When his "Reconstruction In Theology" ap
peared in 1901, it at once summarized and
stimulated theological advance and the vol
umes which have followed, especially "Theol
ogy and the Social Consciousness" (1902), have
held theology to its high calling and done much
to adjust it more Intimately to the best thought
of the time.'' In this work Dr. King has been
finely sustained and furthered by Edward I.
Bosworth and other members of the Oberlln
faculty. Other seminaries, founded by the de
scendants of the Pilgrims, Bangor, Hartford,
Chicago, Pacific, and Atlanta, while in their
' For a survey of Oberlin theology see F. H. Foster's History
0/ New England Theology.
' President King has had the great advantage of approaching
theology from the chair of Philosophy. Like Hermann Lotze,
whose Microcosmus he long used as a textbook in his classes, he
has taught a philosophy and a theology in which natural science
and psychology have had large emphasis. Personality also occupies
a leading place in his writings.

298 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
earlier history In the main conservative, have
had upon their faculties men of independent
and progressive views.'
Union Seminary (founded in 1835), released
from the fetters of denominational control
though constantly subjected to charges of
heresy, has vied with Andover and Yale in fur
thering, in its own way, the progress of theology.
Its faculty has stood for the finest achievements
in advancing scholarship. Henry B. Smith was
one of the pioneers of the Chrlstocentric theol
ogy in America, although, as Foster has shown,
he did not break with the New England theol
ogy.* In Biblical and historical scholarship, the
well-known names of Briggs, Brown, and McGif
fert are representative of the best and sanest
advance. In the field of apologetics the late
George W. Knox was a proven leader, as was
also President Charles Cuthbert Hall. In sys
tematic theology no present writer Is accom-
' See Professor C. M. Clark's History of Bangor Seminary
(1915); Recent Christian Progress, Studies in Christian Thought
and Work During the Last Seventy-five Years in Celebration of the
Seventy-fifth Anniversary of Hartford Seminary (1909); Religious
Progress on the Pacific Slope, Addresses and Papers at the Semi
centennial Anniversary of Pacific School of Religion (1916).
Atlanta Seminary founded in 1901, is proving a source of liberating
religious thought in the South. Pacific Seminary, now Pacific
School of Religion, has become undenominational.
" History of New England Theology, p. 43S.

LATER REPRESENTATIVES 299
pllshing more constructive and permanent work
than William Adams Brown, whose strong, wise,
and winning textbook "Christian Theology in
Outline" (1906) has, hke William Newton
Clarke's Irenic "Outline of Christian Theology"
(1894), been the guide of many minds In the
transition from the older to the newer point of
view. A school of theology of the German Reformed
Church, which took its rise In Mercersburg,
Pa., about 1836, accompHshed an important
service for theological progress through that
group of exceptionally able and progressive
men, F. A. Rauch, John W. Nevin, and Philip
Schaff.' To rehearse the service In behalf of theologi
cal progress of Harvard Divinity School (es
tablished in 181 5), next to Andover Seminary
the oldest of American theological schools and
for a long time Andover's theological foe, would
require a chapter, or rather volume, by Itself.
At first and for some time a partisan and dis
trusted Institution, It gradually steadied Into
unbiased and effective leadership, numbering
at different periods among Its Influential teach-
'See "Mercersburg Theology" in the Schaff-Herzog Cyclo
pedia.

300 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
ers Frederick Hedge, Ephraim Peabody, Charles
Carroll Everett, one of our most profound con
tributors to Theism, Joseph Henry Thayer, the
brilliant and chlvalric soldier-scholar, Crawford
H. Toy, Francis G. Peabody, who by his sane
and vital Interpretation of the social nature of
Christianity has made all denominations of
American Christians his debtors, Dean W. W.
Fenn, James Hardy Ropes, and the Moores —
George F. Moore, whose work in the Old Testa
ment and in the history of religion forms one of
the notable contributions to American scholar
ship,' and Edward C. Moore, who, like Charles
Cuthbert Hall, has presented an exceptionally
broad view of Christianity as the missionary
faith * and who In his little volume "Protestant
Thought since Kant" has etched the progress
of modern philosophy and theology with a
rarely skilled hand. ProfessorW. E. Hocking,
of the Harvard Philosophical Department, In
his "The Meaning of God In Human Experi
ence" has made an original and stimulating

' Dr. Moore's History of Religions — a history of theologies as
well as religions — incomparable in wealth and scope, has been
followed by a volume treating of Mohammedanism, Judaism,
and Christianity.
' See, e.g., "The Liberal Movement and Missions," American
Journal of Theology, vol. XVH, p. 22.'.

LATER REPRESENTATIVES 301
contribution to philosophical theology on the
same high level as that of Professor Royce.'
"The New World," published under the au
spices of the Harvard Divinity School from
1892 to 1900, carried on the spirit and work of
"The Andover Review." Its successor, "The
Harvard Theological Review," has reached a
still higher level in breadth of outlook, thor
ough scholarship and productive theological
thought. American theology has cause for grat
itude in the establishment (1912) of another
review, not associated with any institution, of
unique value and world-wide service, "The
Constructive Quarterly" (New York), — edited
by Mr. Silas McBee — undoubtedly the most
inclusive representative of all sections of the
Christian church ever published, able, judicious,
progressive." _ XI
Other schools of theology have taken vital
part in furthering and making intelligible the
modern viewpoint, notably the Divinity School
'A later volume. Human Nature and its Remaking (1918),
helps still further to bridge the gap between psychological and
philosophical and theological thought.
» For some years past. The Homiletic Review (New York) has
been increasingly broad and inclusive in its viewpoint.

302 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
of Chicago University,' Rochester Theological
Seminary,^ Boston University School of Theol
ogy,^ and the Episcopal Theological School of
Massachusetts.'' The Divinity School of Chicago
University, started so auspiciously on its mis
sion by President Harper, through its publica
tions as well as Its instruction, is accomplishing
an exceptionally extensive liberalizing and
' See especially George B. Foster's radical The Finality of the
Christian Religion, Ernest De Witt Burton's Biblical Ideas of
Atonement (with J. M. P. Smith and G. B. Smith), Shailer
Mathews' The Church and the Changing Order and The Gospel
and the Modern Man, Shirley J. Case's The Evolution of Early
Christianity, J. M. P. Smith's Social Idealism and the Changing
Order, Edward S. Ames' Psychology of Religious Experience, and
A Guide io the Study of the Christian Religion, edited by Gerald
B. Smith. A careful critical review of this last important volume,
by Professor William Adams Brown, may be found in the Ameri
can Journal of Theology, July, 1918.
' While President Augustus H. Strong has been by no means a
progressive, he has broadened and enriched Baptist theology.
Professor Rauschenbusch was a world leader in social theology.
Other members of the Rochester Faculty have contributed to
theological advance.
3 H. G. Mitchell by his Ethics of the Old Testament and other
volumes won the condemnation of the Methodist bishops.
Henry C. Sheldon's System of Christian Doctrine is a great advance
over the systems of Wiley and Watson, and Borden P. Bowne
was the bearer of Methodism's most advanced standard. Pro
fessor Olin S. Curtis, of Drew Seminary, in his The Christian
Faith, has produced a work largely imbued with the modern spirit,
especially in its emphasis upon personality.
< Professors A. V. G. Allen and H. S. Nash, already alluded
to, were members of the faculty of this school, and the lamented
Dr. George Hodges since 1894 was its Dean.

LATER REPRESENTATIVES 303
educating work. Its two virile periodicals, the
broad and scholarly "American Journal of
Theology" and the vigorous and incisive
"Biblical World," are doing a work of educa
tion and advance that Is too well founded to
be resisted and that has no aim but the further
ance of truth.'
It Is evident from this incomplete enumera
tion of untrammeled and forward-looking Prot
estant theologians and theological institutions
of yesterday and to-day that American theology
is moving forward as well as outward, with a
freedom and an Impetus that promise much for
the future. It is true that there Is more of pro
mulgating than of probing. There is a dearth
of original and productive thinking upon the
larger problems of theology. But the way lies
open and the incentives increase constantly.
Hospitality to voices from all quarters — not
to say eagerness to listen — was never so great
as now. This fact Is encouraging for the future,
— toward which we turn in concluding with a
hopefulness begotten on the road we have
traversed. ' Criticism may be offered, however, of the confinement of the
Chicago School to the historical method in theology, thus limit
ing both its intellectual and spiritual range, ,

CHAPTER VIII
CONCLUSION
THE FUTURE OF THEOLOGY IN AMERICA

CHAPTER VIII
CONCLUSION
FUTURE OF THEOLOGY IN AMERICA
Nothing Is more characteristic of the present
period of American theology, as contrasted
with the past, than the calm which has fallen
upon It after three centuries of conflict and con
troversy. The question cannot but arise whether
It is the calm of death or of life, of shallow
ness or of depth, of stagnation or of movement.

From Its Inception theology has been a storm-
tossed science, largely because its Issues have
been so close to human hopes and fears. American
theology has had Its full share of upheaval and
tempest. Storm after storm has risen "dark
o'er Its way." The first Invasion of heterodoxy
that troubled the New England faith was that
of Arminlanism, against which Jonathan Ed
wards hurled all the thunderbolts of his dra
matic and forceful genius. Then came, in

3o8 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
rapid succession, Liberalism, Universalism, Uni
tarianism, Denomlnationalism, followed by the
New Theology, Biblical Criticism, Evolution,
Progresslvlsm. The period of denominational controversy
in which the leading denominations were pitted
against each other, running through the second
and third quarters of the nineteenth century,
was followed by a period of intra-denomina-
tlonal controversy in which many of the
leading Christian bodies were rent by inter
necine theological conflict. This period passed
without causing much permanent schism al
though the fires still smolder in some of the
more conservative camps.'
The conflict between the conservative and
progressive wings In the Pilgrim heritage, which
has been described, has been paralleled, with
differing phases, in all the leading Christian
bodies. In almost every case the progressive
cause, while tempered and restrained by con
servative resistance, has made distinct and
permanent headway. Not seldom, it is true,
the newer viewpoint has been presented in a
' The divisions upon the slavery issue were primarily political
but were given a doctrinal color, also, by appeal to creedal as well
as scriptural standards.

CONCLUSION 309
spirit and with a method so negative and cyni
cal that it has carried no religious values and
has alienated many whose chief concern is for
such values. But this controversial and critical
spirit is giving place to one that is more reverent,
considerate, and constructive.
In this theological advance the leadership
has passed not so much away from the original
Pilgrim lineage as into the larger fellowship
which has grown up about it. American theology
Is increasingly becoming that which theology as
a science must be in order to be true to itself,
— interdenominational, or rather undenomina
tional, unsectarlan, devoted to truth for Its own
sake and not to the furthering of the interests
of any particular sect or denomination. This out
come Is happily fulfilling the prediction with
which I. A. Dorner closed his "History of Prot
estant Theology." After referring to the disrup
tion of parties — by which he meant denom
inations — in America, as standing in the way
of theological advance, he concluded as follows :
But the more a feeling for theological science in
creases and with it that power of reasoning in which
a unifying power is inherent because its aim is the
universally and absolutely true, the more will many
of the existing denominations necessarily disappear,
and others enter upon such a process of mutual

3IO PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
understanding as will secure a common history of
their intellectual and religious life, which, like that
of Great Britain, may vie, on equal terms and with
fruitful results with German theology.'
II
The removal of the Incubus of sectarianism
from theology gives it an unlimited field for
progress. If only it could come to be recognized
universally among Christians that progress is
the true and normal life of theology, much might
be hoped for. Progress does not mean that
spiritual truth is shifting and unstable, con
tinually changing its nature. Unhappily this is
the notion of theological progress which pre
vails among conservatives, and it is against
this — and rightly — that they raise their
protest. But progress means something very
different from fluctuation, or the renunciation
of convictions once firmly and clearly grasped.
To abandon a conviction once formed is one
thing; to reinterpret and enlarge It Is another.
Progress means, not the former, but the latter.
It means the recognition of the law of develop
ment — whose counterpart in the sphere of
nature Is evolution — as of the very nature
of the spiritual life.
' History of Protestant Theology, vol. II, p. 501.

CONCLUSION 311
True development is never a destructive but
always a conserving process. It holds fast and
carries forward all the real gains of experience
and reflection — tested, purified, refined, re
lated — and out of them constructs further and
larger gains. Nor does the principle of develop
ment in spiritual truth disturb its character as
revelation. It simply recognizes the method of
revelation as continuous, accretlonary, cumula
tive, and thus at once saves theology from the
curse of becoming static and makes revelation
a far more vital and normal reality.
So far, then, from testifying to Its weakness,
the movement to transcend Its past shows that
theology has its greatest glory, Its very life. In
Its power of advance. No sooner does a theology
win the title "new" than it must needs yield to
a newer. Thus it was with the "New Divinity"
of Jonathan Edwards and his followers, with
the novelties of the New Haven theology, the
new departure of Edwards Park, with the
"New Theology" of Munger and Gordon and
the Andover faculty and thus it Is coming to be
with the newest theology of our day. It would
be a reflection upon theology, upon truth, upon
God, if it were not so. This ceaseless movement,
in the light of the principle of development.

312 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
means no mere shifting of ground but actual
advance, however slow and indirect. Such
plausible judgments of the nature of theological
changes as that which reduces them all to mere
"winds of doctrine" — as when Emerson wrote,
"Calvinism rushes toward Unitarianism as
Unitarianism toward naturalism" — are as
easy as they are superficial. They do not get
below the surface. Emerson, though a catholic
and aggressive thinker, was not a discriminat
ing one; epigrammatists seldom are. The direc
tion of religious thought is too subtle and com
plex to be read by the weathervane. There are,
to be sure, winds of doctrine, but there are also,
apart from and unaffected by these, accumu
lating and expanding movements which set
theology genuinely forward. Constant change
in religious thought does not conflict with abid
ing truth at the core of it.
Ill
There are those who would have us believe
that this process of change is due entirely to a
constant adjustment on the part of Christianity,
in order to adapt itself to the changing needs
and ideals of society rather than to an Inner
impulsion in its own unfolding norm. While

CONCLUSION 313
there Is a measure of truth In this contention, — ¦
for environment offers a needed stimulant and
nourishment to development, — still, adaptation
is secondary to the principle of Inner develop
ment of truth Itself. Christianity, like the earth,
"bringeth forth fruit of itself, first the blade,
then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." ' \
This is not saying that development has been
uniform and harmonious. The kingdom which
Is "as a grain of mustard seed" as it grows mani
fests not only the truth enwrapped within it,
but the effect upon It — evil as well as good —
of Its environment. Though congruous In Itself,
yet owing to defects in soil and climate and to
parasitic growths which attach themselves to
it, some leaves wither and fall, some unshapely
growths disturb its proportions, and some fruit
comes to naught. Nevertheless the plant is
true to the seed. In other words, such an
impasse as the Harnack-Loisy controversy
¦ Such a statement as that of Dr. Galloway in his The Philoso
phy of Religion, "The speculative impulse did not proceed from
within the Christian religion itself; it was due to its contact
with an independent body of philosophical conceptions" (p. 4),
fails to do justice to the inherent speculative impulse which alone
accounts for the freedom and range of speculation in Christian
theology. There is reason to believe that the new spiritual life
introduced by Christianity would have itself produced a specula
tive theology even without external stimulus. The wide-ranging
speculation of Paul may be cited as evidence.

314 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
reached can be overcome only in a synthesis
which includes and transcends both conten
tions.' The New Theology exhibited a far higher
stage of development of American Christian
ity than the gnarled and twisted trunk of
Edwardeanism from which it sprang. Never
theless It was but a partial and Imperfect inter
pretation of Christian truth. In the world of
spirit the law of development is far more com
plex and Imponderable than in that of nature,
just as the Inner life of a person transcends in
freedom and Intricacy that of a plant or animal
organism. There are lapses and recoveries,
straight progressions and oblique and one
sided movements in the development of Chris
tianity as a whole, just as there are in the de
velopment of the thought and character of
individual Christians. The whole process goes
on In the realm of freedom in which all sorts of
experiments and failures occur. Nevertheless, in
spite of these indirections and including them,
there is a progressive unfolding of the inner
nature of Christianity Itself. If this Is true of the
' See Harnack: What is Christianity? Loisy: The Gospel and the
Church; William Adams Brown: The Essence of Christianity;
J. W. Buckham: "The Vital Issues of the Harnack Controversy"
(Appendix to Christ and the Eternal Order).

CONCLUSION 315
life of Christianity as experience, as It works
out Its own nature, much more Is it true of
theology, which Is Its imperfect expression In
the realm of Ideas. To look for anything like
finality In the New Theology, would be as short
sighted as to fail to see Its advance over previ
ous theologies. Our task, then, will be Incom
plete unless In closing we Indicate something of
the limitations and Imperfections of the New
Theology and seek to discover the outlines of
the newer and completer theology which is
even now taking shape in the crucible of Chris
tian life and thought.

IV

One pardonable, though serious, fault of the
New Theology stands out with especial vivid
ness in the light of the Great War. It was too
optimistic. It failed to see how far many of the
facts and forces of modern life are from being
consonant with Christianity. Its doctrines were
extensive enough In their scope but not intensive
enough In their application. They did not take
account of all the facts. This excess of opti
mism in the New Theology was due In part to its
ignoring the Chrlstless elements and conditions
in modern life, — forces leading not to that

3i6 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
progressive coming of the kingdom which it
pictured but straight to the awful cataclysm
which befell the world in 1914. There was a
disposition on the part of the New Theology
to be content with the centralization of Christ
in theory rather than to press It home to the
heart of life. Its advocates were so enamored
with the vision of what life would be with
Christ Informing and Infilling its every institu
tion and activity that they — and we who
caught their vision — forgot how far our
civilization is from such a goal. It would not be
true to say that the New Theology ignored
evil or belittled sin, but It failed to take full
' account of their flinty factuality.
The optimistic outlook of the New Theology
is not, however, to be wondered at. For the
first time In American Christianity the incarna
tion had been restored to Its true place In
theology and shed Its incomparable light over
the whole area of human life. The effect upon
the more eager spirits In the ministry, especially
upon the younger men, was electrical. It seemed
to many of us who were studying theology and
beginning our ministry in the eighties and
nineties as if humanity were on the eve of the
golden age. Those were days when "to be alive

CONCLUSION 317
was bliss, and to be young was very heaven."
The fresh revelation of the character and
mission of Jesus in all the puissance and charm
of his sacrificial, victorious personality ir
radiated nature and humanity. The kingdom
of God appeared to be at hand. We were en
tranced by the "vision splendid." As the dawn
of the twentieth century approached we felt
sure that it meant the ushering in of the reign
of universal brotherhood. The intimations
seemed to be everywhere, — In a growing social
Idealism, In deepening missionary enterprise,
in broadening Christian thought and sympathy.
In increasing internationalism. The vision of
Dr. Hosmer's hymn was ours:
And lo! already on the hills
The flags of dawn appear.
The expectation, like that of the early Chris
tians, was premature. We had still to learn:
But the slow watches of the night .
Not less to God belong.
And for the everlasting right
The silent stars are strong.
It has been a harsh awakening, calling for that
reinforcement of faith which other generations
beside our own have had to learn to make.
Yet the vision that arises afresh from the ruins

3i8 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
of the old order is better and larger, and the
theology which It Is stimulating Is nobler and
fairer, though less iridescent, than that attend
ing the advent of the twentieth century.
Not only did the New Theology allow its
optimism to obscure the enormity of existing
evils but It did not recognize to the full the
patient effort and suffering necessary for their
eradication. Failing to recognize the full mean
ing and power of sin, It failed to give sufficient
emphasis to atonement as a law of the spiritual
world. Not that It denied atonement but that
it allowed It to be too far absorbed Into the
doctrine of Incarnation. To show the unity be
tween these two doctrines, incarnation and
atonement, was a valuable service which It
rendered; but atonement hardly received its
proportional place In the relationship.

In addition to these deficiencies, which were
more or less Its own, there were certain limi
tations of knowledge In the period in which
the New Theology grew up which stood In Its
way. Since the Incoming of the twentieth
century there has been a great enlargement of
outlook in several directions, opening fields for

CONCLUSION 319
religious and theological advance. We have,
in fact, already entered upon the construction
of a new New Theology and It is not difiicult to
discover the general direction It Is to take and
something of Its spirit and tasks.
In the first place, theology In the future will
make far larger account and far more intimate
study of religion as a whole, in Its essential
nature and Its varied forms. The New^Theology
was not indifferent to, or unacquainted with,
the history of religion, but it failed to take it
up in any such large way Into Its structure as
to realize its implications and values. If It had
done so it is evident that no such theory as
future probation, with Its ignoring of the relig
ious — one may say Christian — values of
other faiths, could have held the place it did in
the minds of some at least of the representatives
of the New Theology. To make this enlarged
place for the study of the nature of religion as
such does not mean the restriction of the scope
and significance of Christianity, but rather an
augmented sense of its ability to justify the
consciousness which it has always had — but
without sufiiclent estimate of Its impHcations —
of being the universal religion. Those pregnant
words of Jesus are coming home to the present-

320 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
day student of religion with vastly greatened
meaning, "I am not come to destroy but to
fulfill." It has long been a common claim of
Christianity to fulfill the Jewish faith. How
much greater is it to fulfill the faith of all the
aspiring religions of the race ! ' Such an office
of fulfillment carries with It, at the same time,
the function of correction. To fulfill other faiths
means also to disclose their defects. It must be
a sifting process In order to be a fulfilling one.
To exercise such an office toward other faiths
cannot fail to bring out truths and potencies in
Christianity which now lie dormarit within it.
To put Christianity into closer touch with the
whole range and content of religion thus means
the unlimited enrichment of Christian theology,
both extensively and intensively. VI
The intensified study of religion as a whole
involves also a scrutiny of the nature and con
tent of religious experience, such as theology has
not yet undertaken. What is religious experi
ence? What are Its earliest and most funda
mental manifestations? What Is its relation to
'See J. W. Buckham: "Christianity among the Religions,"
Hibbert Journal, April, 1909.

CONCLUSION 321
sensation, feeling, volition, and Ideas? These
are problems Into which we have just begun to
penetrate.' It would not be true to say that
nothing had been done In this direction prior
to the present century. A study of religious
experience of genuine value was made, for
example, by Professor Lewis F. Stearns of
Bangor Seminary, In his Ely Lectures "The
Evidence of Christian Experience," as early as
1893. Yet no sufficient Investigation of the
nature of religious experience could be made
without the ampler knowledge of primitive
religion and of religious psychology which has
been acquired In the last twenty-five years.
VII
This suggests a third advance which Is called
for, — the interpretation of the results of Religious
Psychology. The appearance of psychology in
the field of theology is no ordinary occurrence.
It seems to have come as an intruder which has
abruptly thrust Itself Into the serenity and se
clusion of theological thought with little of
"by-your-leave." The intrusion. If it be such,
'See e.g., William James: Varieties of Religious Experience;
J.B.Fratt: Psychology of Religious Belief; Anna L. Sears: The
Drama of the Religious Life; E. S. Ames: Psychology of Religious
Experience, etc.

322 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
may mean much to theology, either In the way
of advantage or of disaster. We have hardly
as yet begun to realize what it means to have
these lofty experiences, which for millenniums
have been regarded as having a certain sacred
authority and validity in themselves, suddenly
presented as the functlonlngs of a life organism
in which, in spite of their apparently transcen
dental character, physical and nervous factors
are seen to play so large a part. Clearly enough,
the rise and rapid development of the psycho
logical investigation of religion, whose progress,
especially in America, has attracted wide at
tention, involve consequences which are by no
means confined to the educational and scien
tific realms. If the experiences of regeneration
and sanctification, of faith and prayer, of strug
gle and victory, are so closely related to the
stages of physical growth, to health and dis
ease, and to nervous states, what may not this
involve as to the necessity of modification In
Christian doctrine? The religious psycholo
gists themselves have not thus far done much
in working out the theological Implications of
their Investigations; nor have the "old-time"
theologians been forward In venturing Into this
field. The task Is neither easy nor inviting. But

CONCLUSION 323
this hesitation cannot continue; the conse
quences Involved are too vital.
The more far-sighted religious psychologists,
while they are immediately concerned with the
pedagogical and ethical bearings of their work,
are not unaware also of its philosophical and
theological Issues.' They realize that under
neath the education of the child in reverence,
honesty, social justice, altruism, lie fundamen
tal presuppositions as to the objective reality
of God, moral law, sin, personality, Immor
tality. If these are made Insecure or ignored,
there are no sufficient foundations upon which
to build an ethical social order. And yet, If
psychology alone were asked to answer the
questions that arise concerning the nature of
these presuppositions they would remain un
answered; for it Is "not the province of psychol
ogy to deal with ultimates. It is the office of
theology to wrestle with these problems and It
Is her duty to face them In whatever new forms
— psychological or other — they may appear.
Are religious beliefs and feelings and experi
ences simply modes of behavior of our mental
makeup, having no origin or objective validity
whatever apart from their passing effect? Or
• See e.g., George A. Coe's Psychology of Religion,

324 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
are these experiences the wavering and imper
fect but trustworthy manifestations of a great
Reality behind our fleeting mental states?
Manifestly this Is a problem which leads both
upward into the realm of metaphysics, where
these experiences eventuate, and downward
Into that of biology, where lie their empirical
roots. Theology must follow in both these direc
tions. She must determine upon what meta
physical bases. If any, the psychological phe
nomena of religion rest. If there are no such
bases, then is not only theology itself, as a
science, robbed of significance, but the postu
late upon which the validity and worth of relig
ion in every soul which cherishes it rests — i.e.,
that there are spiritual realities corresponding
to religious beliefs and feelings — Is gone.
Yet for theology to confine herself to the
metaphysical factors of the problem would be
one-sided and Ineffectual. She needs to recog
nize also Its biological elements and implica
tions. If the inceptions of religion are "deep-
seated In; our mystic frame" and If tbis mystic
frame goes back in its origin to the potential
ities of the simple cell, then there must be some
congenital organic kinship between religion and
life itself in its germinal capacities and in its

CONCLUSION 32s
very origin. Can this kinship be traced, to any
appreciable extent? If so, the elemental har
mony of nature and spirit, in which lies the
justification of the religious life, will have been
so far assured that we shall have fresh faith In
the "phenomena" of religion and fresh sugges
tions for their theological Interpretation. .

VIII

Religious psychology opens a new door, also.
Into the penetralium where psychology, ethics,
and theology meet — personality. Emphasis
upon personality, as we have noted, character
ized the work of the New Theology through
out. "Personality," wrote Dr. Munger, "is the
secret both of the Christian and Judaic sys
tems — revelation by a person." ' All of the
representatives of the movement laid great
stress upon it. It emerges with ever greater
Insistence and with ever larger promise in recent
religious as well as ethical and philosophical
thought. By none of the writers of this school,
however, with the single exception of Newman
Smyth, is personality followed in its psycho
logical and biological bearings. Yet for its com
plete vindication and a fuller understanding of
' Freedom of Faith, p. 116.

326 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
Its relation to our total life and environment
this field may not be neglected. We cannot treat
personality simply as a separate entity de
tached from the empirical order. If we would
understand and evaluate It, any more than we
can treat It as a mere phenomenon In the order
of nature. It Is both nuomenon and phenome
non. At least It "functions" In the world of
phenomena and should be considered In this
relation as well as in relation to the purely
personal world.
There Is needed, too, a deeper understand
ing of the social or community nature of per
sonality as It affects theology. The nature of
the relation of the person to the community
and the problem of what sort of personality the
community, especially the church, possesses — a
problem bequeathed to us chiefly by the out-
reaching mind of Professor Royce — cannot but
have an Important bearing upon theology. The
subject of the relation of the person to the com
munity Is a much larger one than has thus far
come within the purview of the Social Theology.
Social theology has occupied Itself — and that
most cogently — with the problems of social sin
and social righteousness and the elemental
utterances of the social consciousness. But here

CONCLUSION 327
are questions that go to the root of the nature
of the personal order, — the character and ex-^
tent of our dependence and our independence,
the relation of the community to the "Spirit
of the Community" ' and of the "Spirit of the
Community" to the Spirit above the community
— all of them questions theological as well as
social, ethical, and psychological. ¦ IX
Such adventures Into the deeper meaning of
personality manifestly involve inquiring fur
ther into the nature and meaning of mysticism.
Here is another door — open and effectual —
for theology to enter. The New Theology paid
little attention to the subject of mysticism.
Until of late, mystical experiences were re
garded with prejudice, or at least with Indif
ference, as outside the bounds of rational in
quiry. But all this has changed. Mysticism has
now assumed a leading place In the study of
the history, psychology, and philosophy of
religion on the part of non-theological writers,
and theologians themselves are becoming aware
of its Importance. Distinctions are being drawn
between personal and impersonal. Christian and
' See Royce: Tlie Problem of Christianity.

328 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
oriental, normal and abnormal, practical and
speculative, mysticism, which throw a great
deal of light upon the nature of religion Itself
and upon the distinctive truths of different
religions. Including Christianity.' Manifestly
theology cannot be content to let mysticism
usurp its field and task, for that would leave
religion once more inchoate and unintelligent.
Theology is bound to search out the meta
physical implications of mysticism — the objec
tive realities within the subjective experiences.

* Another manifestation of the spirit of modern
life is replete with theological values as they
relate to personality, — the trend toward de
mocracy. The outreaching after a larger democ
racy which came with the upheaval of the
Great War relates itself closely to the true
evaluation of personality and calls both for
the socializing and the personalizing of theol
ogy.^ True democracy is that social and political
' In this connection, see Von Hiigel: The Mystical Element in
Religion; R. M. Jones: Studies in Mystical Religion; H. C. King:
Theology and the Social Consciousness ; E. Hermann: The Meaning
and Value of Mysticism; J. W. Buckham : Mysticism and Modern
Life, ' See the well-known books of Professors Rauschenbusch
(especially A Theology for tbe Social Gospel), Peabody, and Dr.

CONCLUSION 329
order in which the Individual person Is most
highly valued and is brought to his highest
development and capacity, for his own sake
and for the sake of the whole. In other words,
democracy honors the person. Such evaluation
and development of personality is impossible
without religion, and religion is incompetent
without a theology. Unless Christian theology
recognizes and interprets both personal and
social realities and values, it fails to be true to
the religion It seeks to represent.
So far as relates to the ethical nature of
personality, considerable advance has been
made. Much was done, and ably done, by the
New Theology toward ethlclzing Christian doc
trines. Indeed that was part of its personalizing
instinct and tendency; but it is not enough.
The personalizing of theology means the ethl
clzing of theology, but it means much more. It
means going deeper, into that in personality
which at once underlies and transcends — though
It does not override — the ethical. There has
always been a tendency in ethics toward ab
straction, toward the mechanical detachment
Gladden; also C. H. Dickinson: "The Christian Reconstruction
of Social Life"; and Shailer Mathews: "The Social Gospel," and
"The Spiritual Challenge to Democracy," Constructive Quarterly,
September, 1917.

330 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
of a moral quality from its possessor which is
manifestly to a certain extent depersonalizing.
Duty, virtue, goodness, — these have been
erected into abstract entities, though they could
not exist apart from persons. A truer under
standing of personality requires that ethics as
well as theology be, so to speak, repersonalized.
XI
The resolving of the quick and vital realities
of character into attachable and detachable
qualities for a long time stood in the way of a
true understanding of Jesus Christ, especially
as it encouraged the severing of His human and
divine attributes. We have seen how the New
Theology came to revolt against this arbitrary
separation of the human and divine in Christ.
Yet it did not come to a full realization of how
incomparable a key personality affords to the
understanding of the unique place and power
of Jesus Christ. The New Theology, In its
Chrlstocentric character, threw great emphasis
¦upon the Christ in His aspect as World Re
deemer. The Incarnation was its major doctrine.
It caught the inestimable significance of the
union of God and man In the God-man, "him
self man"; but it did not fully realize the po-

CONCLUSION 331
tency of personality as a concept through which
to interpret and realize this union. For it did
not clearly recognize how, at the very heart of
personality Itself, wherever it exists, and what
ever Its stage of development, the Divine Is
implicit — Its very "seed" and "spark," as the
Christian mystics saw. Nor did It understand
as clearly as we are now able to do, how Jesus
Christ, as the Supreme Ideal of personality,.
stirs and summons and invigorates the nascent
personality In others.'
Moreover, while the New Theology caught
very clearly the sense of the union of history and
experience, of the temporal and the eternal, in
Christ, it did not press on in this direction far
enough to develop a philosophy of history in
which Christ — the Christ of the Spirit — so
blends and unites with Jesus of Nazareth as to
reveal the "mystery," as Paul called It, of the
whole vast unfolding drama of the ages. The
high task of writing a history of redemption
which haunted the mind of Jonathan Edwards
in his later years, which in fact he attempted,
' See e.g., W. E. Orchard: The Necessity of Christ; H. M. Du
Bose: The Consciousness of Jesus; W. P. Du Bose: "Christ, the
Solution of Human Life," Constructive Quarterly, vol. V, p. 201;
J. W. Buckham: "The Enlarging Place of Christ in Modern
Thought," Constructive Quarterly, vol. VI, p. SZZ-

332 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
but which, with his provincial knowledge of
history, he could not adequately accomplish,
has yet to be fulfilled.' XII
The doctrine of God as well as that of Christ
needs release from scholastic and conventional
conceptions and completer personalizing; No
where has the scholastic habit of mind worked
more confusion than in the doctrine of the
Divine attributes. The erection of the attri
butes into separate and sometimes conflicting
entitles replaced the warm and convincing
truth of the Divine Fatherhood as taught by
Jesus with a Deity who was little more than a
mechanical bundle of attributes. In this process
not only personal but semi-personal and some
times impersonal attributes were attached
without discrimination to the Divine Being.
The result was an Intellectual Construct
rather than a Living God. The times of this
ignorance God "winked at" — as at many an
other form of ignorance that has passed for
wisdom — but now there is urgent need for a
' Probably no modern theologians have perceived so compre-
hendingly the scope and movement of such an interpretation of
history as Principal Fairbairn in England and George A. Gordon in
America.

CONCLUSION 333
rational and reverent attempt to understand
something of what Divine Personality means,
, This Involves a final break with the doctrine
of autocratic Sovereignty which has been so
long dominant both in Roman Cathohc and
Protestant theology. A Sovereign Ruler, arbi
trarily determining events and destinies, "ac
cording to his own pleasure" is an unethical
and hence an impersonal Being. He lacks the
essential nature of the Father of Spirits which
makes the Christian doctrine of God what it is.
It might appear, at first thought, as if a su
preme Sovereign, an arbitrarily active Will,
constituted a peculiarly personal God; but as a
matter of fact, such a one-sided, arbitrary,
irresponsible Being falls short of true person
ality in just that degree that He is autocratic,
unethical, non-amenable to obligation to His
subjects. Such a God is, indeed, not a Person at
all, but a Logical Construct, a depersonalized
Monarch, robbed of His true character by the
requirements of a mechanical, unethical con
ception. The movement of the New Theology toward
a wholly personal doctrine of God needs to be
carried forward toward completion. The way
lies through a deeper and fuller understanding

334 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
of our own human personality — "Through
Man to God," as Dr, Gordon phrased It, To
apprehend the Supreme Personality we have to
ask. What are the limitations attaching to
human personality, — conditioned by its very
nature as "finite" and developmental, and
hedged in by an environment that is not only
imperfect but evolutionary? What is the differ
ence between individuality and pure personal
ity ? ' When the limitations, which are, by the
testimony of our own deeper consciousness, not
essential to pure personality, are conceived as
removed, the finite self confronts — God, its
ultimate Source and End, without whom Its
own existence as personal is a complete riddle.
From human personality to Divine Personality,
from the incomplete self to the Complete Self,
Is no novel pathway. It is implicit In the
structure of mind itself and it has been trodden
for centuries by unconscious feet.
XIII
Granted that Pure Personality is the concep
tion of God toward which theology Is tending,
what does this involve as to His relation to
nature? Is God, then, wholly apart from the
' See Personality and the Christian Ideal, ch. III.

CONCLUSION 335
outer world? Must we conclude that nature
neither proceeds from nor reveals Him? Does
the doctrine of God as Spiritual Person oblige
us to detach Him wholly from nature and thus
leave the external world either an Illusion or an
independent and alien reality?
This Is a conclusion which Christian theology
has never been willing to adopt, even in its
utmost perplexity. The first article of Its oldest
creed affirms the contrary, — "I believe in God
the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and
earth," — and theology has persistently main
tained this conviction in the face both of inner
questioning and outer opposition. To be sure,
belief in a Perfect God who is the author of an
imperfect world appears to Involve a contra
diction, or at least a paradox. Yet It Is one of
those paradoxes in which hides a profound
truth; at least, so Christian faith has always
felt, Christianity has, indeed, never seen any suf
ficient reason why Perfect Personality should
not give rise to an Imperfect material universe
provided it serves its end. Human personality is
embodied In a physical Investiture which Is at
once a marvelous yet an Imperfect medium and
expression of itself. Is it otherwise with the

336 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
Divine Person? Goethe called the physical
world the garment of God, If so, it Is a beautiful
garment, but an Imperfect one. Why? That is
a puzzling question, yet not wholly dark when
one considers that the universe must serve at
the same time as the medium of the Perfect
Personality and of our own striving, imperfect,
developing personalities, as well as the home
and theater of action of millions of lives lower
than ours that are pressing toward their own
types of self-fulfillment. Both they and we —
so far as our physical lives are concerned — are
parts of the cosmos, life of Its life, and flesh of
its flesh; and yet we all must use it — as does
God Himself — as our means of self-expression
and self-communication. What could we expect
of such a universal medium of personal and
sub-personal life except that which we flnd In
the world about us, — imperfection shot through
with perfection, limitation lying in the bosom
of the Unlimited, freedom held in the hand of
law, death swallowed up of life? In other words,
a universe of divine order and of free personal
initiative and progress could hardly be other
than correspondingly paradoxical, malleable,
many-sided, — responsive at the same time to
the Perfect Person, disclosing Himself in reve-

CONCLUSION 337
latlons of Immanent beauty and sublimity, and
also mirroring the struggles and aspirations, yes,
and the lapses and failures, of multitudes of
Imperfect natures moving toward their myriad
self-willed yet divinely-embraced ends.
XIV
As a solution for the problem of the imper
fections of the world, the now somewhat famil
iar and apparently growing notion, popularized
by H. G. Wells, of a finite and developing God
producing a blundering but improving universe
as He gains skill and direction by experiment
and conquest, escapes some difficulties but
raises more.' The fatal defect of this theory Is
that it fails to account for the idea, or rather
the intuition, of perfection. The ontological
argument, or that which undergirds it, will not
down. If you say the idea of perfection is only
a regulative principle of the mind, like time
and space, you have not disposed of the ques
tion whence and why it arises.
' See e.g., H. G. Wells: God the Invisible King; H. A. Over-
street; "The Democratic Conception of God," Hibbert Journal,
vol. XI, p. 394; F. H. Foster: "Some Theistic Implications of
Bergson's Philosophy," American Journal of Theology, vol.
XXII, p. 2; R. H. Doterer: "The Argument for a Finite Theology"
and "The Doctrine of a Finite God in War Time Thought,"
Hibbert Journal, vol. XVI, p. 415-

338 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
Can perfection be a fugitive notion without
source, content, or reality? Or does It originate
In an All-Perfect from whom the Imperfect
selves receive origin and Ideal, not in order
that they may remain imperfect but that they
may approximate perfection in the only way
that gives their striving meaning and worth —
free self-realization ? ' Whether the origin of
ourselves and of our world In a Perfect Person
be demonstrable or not. It Is a conviction that
burns at the heart of Christianity and, so long
as theology continues Christian, it Is likely In
some form to burn on. The problem which It
leaves — of how an Imperfect world can have
its origin in Perfect Person — will continue to
exercise Christian thought; but the more we
learn of the relation of personality to its me
dium of expression, the less difficulty will there
be, perhaps, in understanding something of the
strange contradictions of the cosmos In which
we find ourselves. The concept "God" is ex
ceedingly Inclusive. If at its center lies person
ahty — "Oh, heart I made, a Heart beats here!"
' That the Perfect Self originates the imperfect selves, not
that they may return and be absorbed into Itself, but that they
may strive toward perfection for themselves, is at least the faith
that best conserves personality, human and divine. See T. R.
Glover: "Progress in Religion," Constructive Quarterly, June,
1918, p. 311.

.CONCLUSION 339
— at its circumference It may well harbor forms
of revelation which we term impersonal and
sometimes brand as pantheistic, but which
appear otherwise when Irradiated by the cen
tral light of Perfect Personality.

XV

Such are some of the Issues and problems
that await a progressive theology. They are
both profound and strenuous, yet attractive to
the spirit of Christianity, In coping with them
American theology will have a large and in
creasing share, _ I
So far from being a decadent science. Chris
tian theology is yet in its youth. It will not be
permanently set aside by any other Interest,
however Immediate or absorbing. Holding fast
to the conviction that the universe has meaning
and unity, that there are ultimate and eternal
truths, and that It Is possible to know some
thing of them, abandoning the Idea of finality
but not that of progress, with a deeper sense of
personal and social values. It will press forward
more humbly but more hopefully than before
its deserved humiliation toward the goal of its
high calHng in Christ Jesus, For of all the sci-

340 PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
ences theology is essentially the freshest as well
as the oldest, the most progressive as well as
the most permanent.

THE END

INDEXES

INDEX OF NAMES

Abbott, Ezra, 45.
Abbott, Lyman, 60, 287.
Agassiz, Louis, 50.
Ainslee, P., 291.
Allen, A. V. G., s, 40, m, 188,
197, 290, 302.
Ames, E. S., 291.
Aristotle, 92, 93.
Arnold, Thomas, 167.
Athanasius, 90, 200.
Augustine, 7, 78, 90, 112, 265.
Bacon, B. W., 55, 296.
Bacon, Leonard, 31.
Bacon, L. W., 292.
Bade, W. F., 289.
Ballou, Hosea, 45.
Barnes, Albert, 291.
Barton, G. A., 292.
Bascom, John, 49, 226.
Beckwith, C. A., aSg.
Beecher, Edward, 32.
Beecher, H. W., 32* 63, 138.
Bernard, 214.
Bonaventura, 78.
Bosworth, E. I., 297.
Bowen, Francis, 49.
Bowne, B. P., 46, 49, 87, 194,
302.
Bradford, A. H., 288.
Brierly, J., 238.
Briggs, C. A., 298.
Brooks, Phillips, J, 40, 41, 43,
44, 86, III.
Brown, Charles R., 252, 296.
Brown, Francis, 298.
Brown, William A., 272, 291, 299,
302, 314.
Browning, Robert, 80, 219.
Brownson, O. A., 234.

Burns, Robert, 140.
Burton, E. D., 302.
Bushnell, Horace, 4*, 55, 56, 57,
59, 87, 88, 132, 226, 273,
275.
Butler, Joseph, 90, 262.
Cadman, S. P., 290.
Calvin, John, 90.
Campbell, J. M., 298.
Carlyle, Thomas, 141.
Carnegie, Andrew, 169, 170.
Case, S. J., 302.
Chadwick, J. W., S.
Channing, W. E., 5, 41, 43, 87.
Chauncy, Charles, 44.
Cheseborough, A. S., 31.
Christ, 25, 29, 33, 35, 36, 38, 40,
42, 65, 80, 82, 86, 99, 102, 129,
154, 156, 200-03, 207.
Churchill, J. W., 191.
Clarke, J. F., 48.
Clarke, Wm. N., 87.
Clement, 7, 200.
Coe, George A., 323.
Coleridge, S. T., 7, 47, 48, 91.
Cotton, John, 43, 86.
Curtis, G. W., 51.
Curtis, O. S., 302.
Dale, Robert, 238.
Dante, 78, 80.
Dewey, John, 194.
Dickinson, C. H., 6, 329.
Dike, S. W., 194.
Dinsmore, C. A., 289.
Dorner, I. A., 4, 267, 309.
Doterer, R. H., 337.
Du Bose, H. M., 33 1^'^'^'
Du Bose, W. P., 290.

344

INDEX OF NAMES

Edwards, Jonathan, 6, 7, 42, 87,
102, III, 13s, 138, 188, 197,
212, 265, 272, 275, 307, 311,
331.
Eliot, John, 57.
Ely, Richard T., 252.
Emerson, R. W., 46, 48, 145,
IS9> 312-
Everett, C. C, 194, 300.
Fairbairn, A. M., loi, 332.
Faunce, W. H. P., 291.
Fenn, W. W., 300.
Fichte, 92.
Fisher, George P., 295, 296.
Fiske, John, 50.
Fosdick, H. E., 291.
Foster, F. H., ;, 297, 337.
Foster, G. B., 302.
Garman, C. E., 49.
Gilmore, G. W., 293.
Gladden, Washington, 48, 60,
217*, 329.
Glover, T.R., 338.
Goodwin, H. M., 31.
Gordon, George A., 60, 80*, 194,
203, 311, 332.
Gray, Asa, 50.
Gulliver, J. P., 192.
Guth, W. W., 29.
Hale, E. E., 252.
Hall, C. C, 291, 298, 300.
Hamilton, Sir William, 262.
Harnack, Adolf, 313, 314.
Harper, W. R., 291, 302.
Harris, George, 60, 191.
Harris, Samuel, 77.
Harris, W. T., 12, 50, 194.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 51, 79.
Hedge, Frederic, 300.
Hegel, 92.
Henderson, C. R., 252.
Hermann, E., 328.
Hickok, L. P., 46, 49,
Hincks, E. Y., 192.

Hocking, W. E., 300.
Hodge, Charles, 87.
Hodges, George, 252, 290, 302.
Holmes, J., i.
Hopkins, Mark, 46, 49, 225.
Hopkins, Samuel, 42, 138.
Hosmer, F. L., 317.
Howison, G. H., 46, 50.
Hughes, Thomas, 215.
Hume, Robert, 270.
Hyde, W. D., 194, 252, 289.
Jackson, S. M., 293.
James, William, 47, 135, 321.
Jefferson, C. E., 289.
Johnson, F. H., 194.
Johnson, Samuel, 46.
Jones, R. M., 292, 328.
Kant, 92, 196, 213, 300.
Kent, C. F., 296.
King, H. C, 252, 256, 297, 328.
Kingsley, Charles, 251.
Knapp, Jacob, 219.
Knox, G. W., 298.
Ladd, G. T., 46.
Lasselle, F., 251.
Le Conte, Joseph, 194.
Lessing, 198, 199, 272.
Lodge, Sir Oliver, 230.
Lotze, 297.
Lowell, J. R., 51.
Luther, Martin, 90, 214.
Lyman, A. J., 289.
Lyman, E. W., 289.
Mabie, H. C, 291.
Mabie, H. W., 288.
Macrine, 214.
Mansel, H. L., 262.
Marsh, James, 46, 47, 48, 91.
Martineau, James, 141.
Marx, Karl, 251.
Mathews, Shailer, 252, 329.
Maurice, F. D., 59, 63, 90, 251.
McBee, S., 301.

INDEX OF NAMES

345

McConnell, F. J., 291.
McCosh, James, n6.
McGiffert, A. C, 8, 298.
McKenzie, Alexander, 60, 190,
196.
Merriman, Daniel, 60.
Micou, Paul, 290.
Mills, Samuel J., 151.
Moore, E. C, 300.
Moore, G. F., 192, 300.
Morrison, C. C, 291.
Mulford, E., 290.
Munger, T. T., 5, 6, 24, 32, 55*,
88, 140, 273, 311, 325.
Nash, H. S., 301.
Nevin, J. W., 299.
Newman, J. H., 249.
Orchard, W. E., 331.
Origen, 78, 107, 133, 200.
Overstreet, H. A., 337.
Paley, William, 262.
Palmer, Frederic, 205, 207.
Palmer, G. H., 46, 49, 139, 194.
Park, Edwards, 87, 147, 191,
263, 264, 265, 268, 269, 311.
Parker, E. P., 31.
Paul, 24, 27, 33, 126, 206, 313,
331-
Peabody, A. P., 194.
Peabody, F. G., 252, 255, 300,
328.
Perry, Bliss, 139, 194.
Phelps, Austin, 147, 263.
Plato, 91, 93, 135, 265.
Porter, F. C, 296.
Porter, Noah, 46, 49.
Pratt, J. B., 231.
Rausch, F. A., 299.
Rauschenbusch, Walter, 163,
2;2, 256, 302, 328.
Reid, Thomas, 262.
Ricardo, David, 233.
Rice, W. N., so.

Riley, Woodbridge, ;, 48.
Robertson, F. W., 59, 61, 147,
226.
Robinson, E. G., 291.
Ropes, J. H., 300.
Royce, Josiah, 47, 49, 230, 301,
326, 327.
Schaff, Philip, 293.
Schlelermacher, 102, 196, 198,
199, 272.
Sears, A. L., 321.
Seelye, J. H., 46.
Shedd, W. G. T., 48, 87.
Sheldon, H. C, 302.
Sherman, C. C, 293.
Shields, C. W., 46.
Shumaker, E. E., 289.
Smith, Adam, 233.
Smith, G. B., 302.
Smith, H. B., 291, 298.
Smith, J. M. P., 302.
Smyth, E. C, 60, in, 186*, 275.
Smyth, Newman, 60, 204, 260*,
325-
Spencer, Herbert, 263.
Starbuck, C. C, 194.
Stearns, L. F., 321.
Stevens, George B., 6, 296.
Stevenson, R. L., 146.
Stewart, Dugald, 262.
Stowe, C. E., 147.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 9.
Strong, Augustus, 77, 302.
Strong, Josiah, 252.
Swedenborg, 291.
Swing, Leonard, 45.
Taylor, Graham, 252.
Taylor, J. P., 192.
Taylor, N. W., 13, $8, 90, 138.
Tennyson, Alfred, 31, 80, 198,
219.
Terry, M. S., 291.
Thayer, J. H., 45, 300.
Tholuck, F. A. G., 266.
Thoreau, H. D., 139.

346

INDEX OF NAMES

Tillett, W. F., 291.
Torrey, C. C, 296.
Torrey, H. A. P., 46, 49.
Torrey, Joseph, 46.
Toy, C. H., 300.
Toynbee, A., 163.
Tucker,W. J., 60, 145*, 192, 252.
Twitchell, Joseph, 31.
Tyler, J. M., 50.
Van Dyke, Henry, 291.
Von Hiigel, 328.
Vose, J. G., 60.

Walker, Williston, 6, 296.
Ward, W. H., 52, 60.
Wayland, Francis, 291.
Wells, H. G., 230, 337.
Whiton, James, in, 288.
Whittier, J. G., 51, 292.
Willett, H. L., 291.
Witherspoon, John, 46.
Woodruff, F. E., 192.
Woods, Robert A., 163,
Woolman, John, 292.
Youtz, H. A., 290.

164.

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Absolute, 103, 108, 124, 262.
American Board Controversy,
152, 193, 268, 270.
American Theology, 41, 100, 194,
290, 301, 303, 307, 309, 339.
Andover Creed, 208-10.
Anthropomorphism, 108.
Applied Christianity, 220-22,
232, 251.
Apostles' Creed, 212.
Arminianism, 307.
Atonement, 30, 38, 228, 230, 257,
,318.. . .
Augustinlanism, 105, 133.
Authority, 157, 158, 176.
Bible, 20, 37, 158, 218, 231, 248,
263, 288.
Biblical Criticism, 127, 157, 228,
267.
Biblical Theology, 266.
Biology, 280, 324.
Brotherhood, 231, 244, 253, 256,
257.
Calvinism, 8, 25, 32, 36, 69, 138,
312.
Christianity, 8, 10, 26, 44, 8i,
82, 105, 107, 114, 120, 136,
149, 154, 160, 194, 207, 274,
312, 313, 314, 315, 320, 328,
339-
Christocentric, 38, loi, 102,
200-02, 206, 298, 330.
Christology, 28, 196, 200, 202,
296.
Church, 71, 72, 73, 74, 132, 149,
162, 176, 188, 230, 236, 246,
247, 248.
Church Unity, 285, 286.

Citizenship, 167, 171.
College, 164, 165, 166, 188.
Courage, 150, 151, 170, 172,
236, 285.
Creeds, 41, 207-12, 232, 275.
Criticism, 127, 128.
Critique of Theology, 13-16.
Darwinism, 268.
Death, 270, 281, 282, 336.
Decrees, 35, 104, lo;.
Democracy, 169, 171, 181, 328,
329- .
Depravity, 113.
Determinism, 134.
Development, 11, 24, 25, 44, 195,
310-14.
Divinity, 16, 17, 311.
Doctrine of God, 109, 332-36.
Dualism, 129, 130.
Duality, 130, 270.
Education, 69, 82, 213, 323.
Eschatology, 69.
Eternal, 123, 142.
Eternity, 142.
Ethics, 69, 27;, 329, 330.
Evil, 10, 129, 130, 240.
Evolution, 39, 68, 171, 278, 281,
308, 310.
Experience, 12, 32, 93, 94, 124,
131,222-24,273, 284,320, 321.
Faith, 20, 70, 81, 105, 124, 125,
126, 199, 274, 275, 279, 282,
322.
Fatherhood, 125, 126, 230, 253,
256, 257, 332.
Feeling, 137, 267.
Finality, 315, 339-

348

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Freedom, 9, 23, 60, 61, 134-36,
187, 195, 336.
Future Probation, 204-07.
Future Punishment, 38, 45.
Greatness, 179.
Greek theology, (>l, 255.
History, 3, 89, 90, 114, 193, 196,
206.
Holy Spirit, 37, 94.
Humanity, 109, 113, 155, 158,
204, 214.
Human Nature, 10, 41, 42, 113,
148.
Ideal, 114, lis, 120, 121, 129,
222, 331.
Imagination, 13, 137, 138, 139.
Immanence, 68, 71, 206, 288.
Immediacy, 199.
Immortality, 103, 131, 231,
232.
Incarnation, 99, 103, 137, 274,
318,330.
Internationalism, 244, 317.
Intuition, 7, 12, 17, 37, 199, 275,
33.7-. .
Intuitivism, 7, 49.
Kingdom of God, 30, 223, 230,
2SS. 313, 317-
Labor Problem, 177, 235, 236.
Language, 13, 14, 13.
Literature, 51, 62, 64, 81, 139-
41, 264.
Logic, 13, 14, 67, 69, 105, 265.
Logos, 20, 42.
Miracle, 22, 37, 117.
Missionary Motive, 162.
Modern Spirit, 161, 183.
Mystery, 44, 122, 123, 130, 131,
141, 142, 157, 331.
Mysticism, 7, 16, 58, 123, 327,
328.

Natural Theology, 117, 281, 283.
Nature, 20, 25, 116, 117, 135,
282, 323.
Neo-Platonism, 266.
New England Theology, 16, 21,
25. 95. 97. i°4. 132, 266, 272.
New Orthodoxy, 93, 96.
New Testament, 126, 234, 232,
300.
New Theology, 34, 55, 60, 62,
63, 66, 69, 81, 82, 89, 96, III,
113, 14s, 200, 201, 202, 219,
272, 276, 308, 311, 314, 319,
325, 330-
New Thought, 292.
Nicene Theology, 203.
Nurture, Christian, 9.
Old Theology, 68, 69, 104, 252.
Optimism, 141, 231, 313-18.
Originality, 29, 98, 136, 137.
Orthodoxy, 33, 60, 161, 187.
Peace, 171, 172, 243, 244.
Perfection, 41, 337, 338.
Personality, 21, 22, 24, 108-10,
145, 276-80, 323-30, 331, 334-
36, 339-
Philosophy, 10, 43-30, 89, 91, 93,
124, 262.
Poetry, 51, 140, 249.
Prayer, 38, 322.
Preaching, 121, 173, 174.
Probation, 69, 213.
Progress, 4 , 44, 293 , 295 , 298, 3 10.
Progressive Orthodoxy, 198, 201,
206.
Providence, 19, 37.
Psychology, 273, 276, 321-24.
Public-mindedness, 164, 167.
Pulpit, 33, 60, 119, 120, 121,
157, 239. 338.
Quakerism, 292.
Rationalism, 12, 14, 16, 42, 123,
199, 271, 273.

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

349

Reality, 8, 114, 123, 127, 142,
138, 262, 263, 324.
Reason, 20, 68, 103, 161, 206,
283.
Redemption, 19, 106, 135, 236,
331-
Religion, 4, 9, 71, 98, 114, 165,
239, 319, 321.
Religious Encyclopedias, 293.
Religious Periodicals, 294.
Resurrection, 118, 288.
Revelation, 20, no, 115, 206,
283, 311, 339.
Science, 24, 30, 51, 93, 228, 268,
280-84.
Scripture, 43, 292.
Sermon, 62, 64, 63, 66, 120, 139,
230, 264.
Settlement Work, 163, 164.
Social Gospel, 137, 254.
Social Theology, 251, 237, 326.
Solidarity, 160, 162, 237.
Sovereignty, 333.
Spirit, II, 20, 99, 327, 331.
Statesmanship, 133, 164.
Supernatural, 20-23.
Sympathy, 172, 174, 176, 178.
System, 12, 15, 18, 20, 58, 132.
Systemism, 3, 13, 67, 132.

Tainted Money, 239-41.
Teleology, 281.
Theodicy, 99, 103, 107.
Theological Reviews, 193, 194,
301, 303-
Theological Schools, 71, 293-
302.
Theology, 3, 4, 9, 12-18, 31, 62,
72, 77, 82, 89, 98, 119, 120,
124, 132, 133, 228, 294, 324,
34.°-
Trinitarianism, 203.
Trinity, 37, no-12, 196.
Tritheism, 113.
Truth, 13, 16, 20, 42, 198, 270.
Unconditioned, 263.
Unitarianism, 42, 43, 102, 292,
308, 312.
Unitarians, 38, 42.
Unity, 9, 12, 23, 112, 130, 133,
136, 138-62, 278, 279.
Universalism, 44, 106, 107,
-508.
University, 70-76, 160, 163.
Voters, 242.
Westminster Confession, 33.
Will, 103, 134.

INDEX OF VOLUMES

Containing the cited volumes of the authors chiefly discussed.

Horace Bushnell:
Christ in Theology, 13, 13, 17,
18.
Christian Nurture, 8-12.
Forgiveness and Law, 30.
God in Christ, 13, 14, 13, 16,
18, 19.
Moral Uses of Dark Things,
23-
Nature and the Supernatural,
19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26.
Sermons on Living Subjects,
27- . .
The Vicarious Sacrifice, 26,
28, 30.
Washington Gladden:
Being a Christian, 226.
Burning Questions, 227.
How much is Left of the Old
Doctrines? 227, 230.
Present Day Theology, 227,
228, 231.
Recollections, 217, 221, 224,
225, 226, 233, 236, 237, 243,
248, 249, 252, 233.
Ruling Ideas of the Present
Age, 230, 232,234,233.
Social Facts and Forces, 235,
236.
Social Salvation, 239.
The Christian League of Con
necticut, 243.
The Church and the King
dom, 230, 231.
The Cosmopolis Club, 241.
The Forks of the Road, 244.
The Interpreter, 230.
The New Idolatry, 246.

The Practice of Immortality,
232.
Tools and the Man, 232, 233,
2.34- 233, 238, 246.
Ultima Veritas, 230.
Where does the Sky Begin.''
230.
Who Wrote the Bible? 228,
231.
George A. Gordon:
Aspects of the Infinite Mys
tery, 123, 123, 131, 139,
142.
Immortality and the New
Theodicy, 103, 106, 113,
127, 134.
Religion and Miracle, 117,
118.
Revelation and the Ideal,
115.
The Christ of To-day, 86, 93,
99, 102, 120.
The New Epoch for Faith,
106, 113, 114, 124.
The Witness to Immortality,
103, 141.
Through Man to God, 107,
109, 115, 116.
Ultimate Conceptions of
Faith, 89, 94, 103, 107, no,
112, 132.
Theodore T. Monger:
Essays for the Day, 70, 71, 74,
79, 80, 82.
Horace Bushnell, 24, 37.
Lamps and Paths, 66.
On the Threshold, 66.

352

INDEX OF VOLUMES

The Appeal to Life, 63, 70.
The Freedom of Faith, 60, 62,
63, 63, 70.
Newman Smyth:
Christian Ethics, 273.
Constructive Natural Theol
ogy, 281, 282, 284.
Old Faiths in New Light, 267,
273.
Passing Protestantism and
Coming Catholicism, 286.
Personal Creeds, 273.
Religious Feeling, 267, 273.
The Meaning of Personal Life,
276-79.
The Orthodox Theology of
To-day, 275.
The Place of Death in Ev
olution, 281.
Through Science to Faith, 281,
282.

Egbert C. Smyth (in collabo
ration) :
Progressive Orthodoxy, 201,
202, 204.
The Andover Defence, 2or,
208, 209, 210.
The Divinity of our Lord, 200.
William J. Tucker:
Modern Christianity, 181.
Personal Power: Counsels to
College Men, 166.
Public-Mindedness, 164, 163,
169, 177, 179, 180.
The Church in Modern Soci
ety, 173, 176.
The Effect of Democracy on
Religious Progress, 181.
The Influence of Religion To
day, 181.
The New Reservation of Time,
IS9, 160, 171, 182, 183.

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