the son (1753-1815) of the German-American Henry Melchior Muhlenberg
(1742-1787). Henry Ernst was sent abroad while a boy, studied at
Halle, returned, became a pastor among the Germans of Pennsylvania,
and finally died at Lancaster in that State. He was endowed with an
exceptional physique, walking with ease from Lancaster to Philadelphia,
a distance of sixty miles. Discursive in his studies--he was an
Oriental scholar and a botanist--he was tolerant in his belief,
clinging to the fundamental truths of Christianity. In his discourses,
he took the familiar attitude of a parent addressing his children.
_Alexander Campbell._--The founder (1788-1866) of the sect known to
the rest of the world as the Campbellites, a man of prodigious energy,
was without question one of the remarkable spirits of his time. His
writings, over fifty volumes, represent but a moiety of his labours: he
built printing-presses in the interests of his movement for religious
reform; he debated in public with all comers--for example, in 1829
with the infidel, Robert Owen. Self-possessed on the platform, he
indulged in little action, and he spared his voice. But his distinct
and beautiful enunciation expected and received attention, his audience
listening, as to a master, in perfect silence.
_William Ellery Channing._--Although “he lacks critical acumen,” “lacks
also the sentiment of great originality,” “lacks that which America
has so far lacked--high intellectual culture, critical knowledge,”
“does not know the general result of what is known to his age,” still
Channing (1780-1842), in the words of Renan, “has been unquestionably
the most complete representative of that exclusively American
experiment--of religion without mystery, of rationalism without
criticism, of intellectual culture without elevated poetry--which seems
to be the ideal to which the religion of the United States aspires.”
An exemplary student at school and college (Harvard), Channing went
to the South as a private tutor. His path being deflected into the
ministry, he returned to New England, and was installed (1803) in the
Federal Street Church at Boston. In this church he was active for
twenty years, and he was at least the nominal head of it for forty. His
health was delicate, and his capacity for continued exertion limited.
Channing’s religion might be described as a form of ethics, allied
to the political doctrines of Rousseau, too simple and theoretical
for common life, and in the main salutary so far as it was a generous
reaction against the harsher tenets of Calvin. The severity of
Calvinism, that “vulgar and frightful theology,” in his eyes inevitably
led to gloomy superstition. “God is good,” he kept repeating, and
human nature in its origin also good. “He ... fell in with those who
consider the human race to be actually degenerated by the abuse of free
will. In Jesus Christ he recognised a sublime being, who had wrought a
crisis in the condition of humanity, had renewed the moral sense, and
touched with saving power the fountains of good that were hidden in
the depths of the human heart.” Channing wrote no books; his literary
remains consist of essays, sermons, and addresses. His “Discourse on
the Fall of Bonaparte” (1814), his lecture on “Self-Culture,” and his
“Address on West India Emancipation” (1842) display various aspects of
a beautiful and courageous personality.
_Horace Bushnell._--“I have never been a great agitator, never
pulled a wire to get the will of men, never did a politic thing,”
said Bushnell (1802-1876). He graduated at Yale in 1827; from 1833
until 1859, when he retired on account of ill-health, he had charge
of the North Church in Hartford, Connecticut. Thereafter he devoted
his time to the preparation of special sermons and addresses and to
researches in American history and the history of his own State. He
took a vital interest in political questions. Bushnell was a clear
and independent thinker, without bias, not given to controversy,
none the less eloquent and persuasive. His sermons were collected and
widely circulated. The problems of religious experience, of suffering
and evil, and of education he attempted to solve in “Nature and the
Supernatural,” “The Vicarious Sacrifice,” and “Christian Nurture.” In
the last-named work he objected to the doctrine of natural depravity,
contending for a gradual development in the child of the religious
sentiment and the higher imagination, as against a sudden and crucial
“conversion.” Among Congregationalists the supposed latitude of his
theological opinions involved him in the charge of a leaning toward
Unitarianism.
_Theodore Parker._--In his day, Theodore Parker (1810-1860) was
considered the most daring of rationalists, and so “advanced,” as we
now call it, in his beliefs or disbeliefs as to be outside the pale of
Christianity. Present-day rationalists find him a congenial spirit. He
was a man of undoubted genius, caustic, flashing, vehement, incessant
in labour, dying early from sheer exhaustion. His collected works in
fourteen volumes (edited by Cobbe) reveal the nature of his industry.
He was unweariedly accurate in detail, being determined to leave no
pebble unturned in his search for truth. His sermon on “The Transient
and the Permanent in Christianity” (1841) and “A Discourse of Matters
Pertaining to Religion” (1842) gave evidence of his departure from the
accepted form of Unitarianism. In 1845 he openly broke away, regarding
the Church as an unnecessary organisation. In general, his criticism
was destructive, and his attention to detail not balanced by powers
of synthesis. His own convictions like iron and brooking no denial,
he disregarded the tenderest feelings of other men, and in a mistaken
sense of duty would trample underfoot those things which his neighbour
might hold most sacred. His intellect flourished at the expense of
his imagination, and his want of perspective resolves itself into a
defect of taste, all the more injurious through the violence of his
affections. This man, most cordially hated and feared by those whom he
opposed, most ardently loved by his friends, would shed tears like a
child when he met with a trivial act of kindness.
_The Beechers._--Lyman Beecher (1775-1863) represents the other
extreme, of traditional orthodoxy, and the reaction against the trend
of Unitarianism. He was a stern and virile personality, rigorous in
habit, and in his expectation of righteousness in others, withal
friendly and benign. His son, Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), according
to the testimony of the daughter and sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe,
as a child was deficient in verbal memory--a thing which he never
outgrew,--diffident, sensitive, thick and indistinct in his speech.
In the midst of a talented family that was much given to theological
argument, his powers were gradually developed. At Laurenceburg, Ohio,
his first charge, he was sexton as well as preacher. He came before the
public through his defence of the negro in _The Cincinnati Journal_.
At Indianapolis his reputation grew, for his independent spirit and
direct, informal style proved very attractive; and when he had been
called to Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, the people crowded over from
New York to hear him. Beecher studied every-day life in the streets
and shops of the metropolis; his discourses on popular topics, good
government and the like, unconventionally treated, gave his audiences
what they liked. His sympathies were non-sectarian, he had his
finger on the pulse of every gathering, his well of common sense was
overflowing, and he was fearless to the point of audacity, carrying
the art of the mimic into the very pulpit. His preaching, in fact,
sometimes bordered upon dangerous self-assertion. He rose to eminence,
as Bacon might say, by a combination of good with questionable arts.
But the mixture was mainly good. In Beecher’s discussion of slavery,
Calhoun, who was not easily deceived, saw that the preacher knew how
to get to the bottom of his subject. His good-humour, and pluck, and
immense patriotism before hostile crowds in England (1863) greatly
helped to deter that nation from recognising the Southern Confederacy.
=Theorists on Pulpit Eloquence.=--Beecher’s “Yale Lectures on
Preaching” disclose how large an element there was in his oratory of
conscious adaptation of means to ends. They belong to an extensive and
interesting branch of American literature, to which Phillips Brooks,
J. A. Broadus, E. G. Robinson, R. S. Storrs, J. W. Alexander, and many
others have made contributions. James Waddell Alexander (1804-1859),
son of Archibald Alexander of Princeton Seminary, left his “Thoughts on
Preaching” to be published in 1864. “The Preparation and Delivery of
Sermons,” by John Albert Broadus (1827-1895), President of the Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary, represents the theory of a trainer of
preachers, himself a winning orator with a consciously developed
instinct: “Everybody who can speak effectively knows that the power
of speaking depends very largely upon the way it is heard, upon the
sympathy one succeeds in gaining from those he addresses.” To insure
sympathy--his watchword,--Broadus preached without manuscript. In
general, as here, his syntax is not finely moulded. With these might be
mentioned another clergyman, Chauncey Allen Goodrich (1790-1860), for
forty-three years professor at Yale, whose “Select British Eloquence”
set a standard of illuminating scholarship.
_Richard Salter Storrs._--Dr. Storrs (1821-1900), descended from a
line of clergymen, was from 1846 on in high repute as a preacher in
the Church of the Pilgrims, Brooklyn. He was also in demand as a
lecturer, and contributed freely to the _Bibliotheca Sacra_ and other
periodicals. His “Conditions of Success in Preaching without Notes”
partly tells the secret of his own eminence; his rich voice, distinct
utterance, and stately bearing further explain it. In youth a student
of the law, he caught something of his eloquence from Rufus Choate. But
the moral elevation of character in Storrs was the ultimate support of
all his art.
_T. De Witt Talmage._--In Brooklyn, where he preached from 1869 to
1894, Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832-1902) had a “Tabernacle,” as it
was called, to which everyone was welcome, and which commonly was
filled by an audience of four thousand. In 1894 he removed to New
York. For twenty-nine years the sermons of Talmage were published
every week, latterly in countless journals; they have had an immense
circulation, not alone in his own country, being translated into
many foreign, even Asiatic languages. It is possible that no other
preacher in the world has during life enjoyed so extensive and regular
a following. His physical activity was unbounded; his utterance clear,
though his voice was not pleasing, and his message simple, violent,
and undiscriminatingly conservative. In espousing what he took to
be orthodox, he was hasty and inaccurate; he was utterly careless,
too, what means he used to work upon his hearers. To the cultured his
writings have little worth. His value to the state and the great world
is not so easily decided.
_Phillips Brooks._--Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), after Henry Ward
Beecher the greatest pulpit orator in America since the Civil War, was
a native of Boston, nurtured in the best traditions of New England. A
brilliant and popular undergraduate at Harvard, he strangely enough
failed in his subsequent brief experience in teaching. He then
studied for the ministry, at the Episcopal Seminary in Alexandria,
Virginia. As a young rector in Philadelphia, he showed his power and
fearlessness in his patriotic sermons during the Rebellion. “In their
relation to the politics of the land,” he contended, “the great vice
of our people ... is cowardice.” He himself dared openly to lay the
crime of Lincoln’s martyrdom, not alone upon the assassin, but upon
the supporters of slavery in the South. From Philadelphia, he went
to Trinity Church, Boston, in 1869. Two years prior to his death he
was made Bishop of Massachusetts. “The Yale Lectures on Preaching,”
delivered in 1877, “constitute,” says Allen, his best interpreter, “the
autobiography of Phillips Brooks.... It is a book which owes nothing
to predecessors in the same field.... He confines himself to preaching
as he had experienced its workings, or studied its method, or observed
its power.... The book captivates the reader, simply for this reason
alone,--the transparency of the soul of its writer, between whom and
the reader there intervenes no barrier.” This was the quality also of
his sermons.
He stands in the pulpit [reported an observer] smooth-faced,
full-voiced, as self-reliant a man as ever occupied such a station.
He indulges in few gestures; he has no mannerisms. If, under any
circumstances, he might realise the popular conception of an
orator, he does not betray the possibilities here. He provokes
no attention to predominant spirituality by inferior vitality.
There is a splendid harmony of strength, bodily and mental, which
prevents the measurement of either. It is only when he is out of
his desk and level with his audience that you realise his stature.
In the lecture-room or crowded street, he stands like Saul among
the people. The well-balanced head and strong shoulders draw
your eyes at once. He dresses well, lives well, and holds his
own decidedly in social circles.... His power is not limited to
his church ministrations, nor is he making himself known by some
brilliant special development. It is the whole man--mentally,
morally, and spiritually, leader, helper, friend--which is
attaining such pre-eminence. But when he preaches, you are carried
away to the need of men and of your own shortcomings, and have
no present consciousness of the personality of the speaker. A
transparent medium is the purest. You do not think of Phillips
Brooks till Phillips Brooks gets through with his subject.
Brooks was a wide reader and a careful and original student of church
history and theological discussion; he was not the profound and
searching scholar that Renan vainly sought in America. He had a roomy
mind, a teeming imagination, and a heart full of generosity, energy,
and optimism. He lived by admiration, hope, and love. His ideas, which
were large and luminous, although they did not have the final tempering
that comes from passage through the slow fire of a rigorous critical
method, became vital from sharing in his warmth and purity of sentiment.
In regard to his intellectual habits and methods [remarks Allen]
one thing is clear, that Phillips Brooks worked through the
poetic imagination rather than by the process of dialectics,
although he could show great dialectic subtlety when occasion
demanded. When we conjoin this power of the poetic imagination and
his other gifts, the “unparalleled combination of intensity of
feeling with comprehensiveness of view and balance of judgment,”
we can understand how he could quickly penetrate to the heart of
intellectual systems, how a hint to his mind was like a volume to
others, and he preferred to work out the hint in his own way.
VI. THE SCIENTISTS.
=General Remarks.=--The beginnings of science in America date from
colonial days and have been touched upon by Professor Tyler. The
interest of Americans in science has never abated. Readers of standard
scientific literature are numerous. _The Scientific American_, founded
in 1845, _The Popular Science Monthly_, founded in 1872, _Science_,
dating from 1883, and several other journals of science are read by
many non-professional persons. The various sciences have, in the
last quarter-century at least, won a place of prominence in our
college curricula. The number of disinterested scientific observers
and investigators has always been large. The largest scientific
organisation in the United States, the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, which developed from the old Association of
American Geologists and Naturalists in 1847, now has a membership
of over five thousand; and in addition to this and other general
scientific bodies there is for workers in nearly every individual
science a national organisation, meeting regularly and publishing the
results of investigations. In almost every science America has produced
scholars of note; in some she has furnished leaders of the world.
This is not, of course, the place, even if the writer were competent
to furnish it, for a narrative of American scientific achievement. We
can only touch upon a few of the greater names in mental and moral,
political and legal, ethnological and linguistic, and natural and
physical science.
=Mental and Moral Science.=--It cannot be said that America has
taken a place of pre-eminence in the philosophical thought of the
nineteenth century. English, French, and German savants still lead
in this realm of thought. Yet American philosophy has made enormous
strides in the last half-century and many of its exponents have won
universal recognition. Porter and McCosh have expounded the views of
the Scottish School; German thought has been elucidated and criticised
by Harris, Bowne, and Royce; the writings of Draper, Fiske, and
Schurman on the evolutionary theories of Darwin and Spencer are well
known. The psychologists Ladd, Stanley Hall, Baldwin, Titchener, and
James have international reputations. In the number and equipment of
her psychological laboratories America leads the world. The number
of periodicals devoted to psychology, ethics, and cognate sciences
is considerable. Philosophical studies enjoy great favour at our
universities, both as electives and as required subjects. Some of the
men briefly considered below are perhaps more famous as teachers than
as writers; yet all have left their mark on the philosophical thought
of their day.
_Francis Wayland._--Francis Wayland (1796-1865), a Baptist clergyman
and for twenty-eight years (1827-1855) president of Brown University,
wrote several well-known works on moral and political science. After
graduating from Union College in 1813, he studied medicine and began
practice at Troy, New York; but from 1816 on devoted himself to the
ministry. His “Elements of Moral Science” (1835), his greatest work,
was long a standard text-book. “The Elements of Political Economy”
appeared in 1837; “Limitations of Human Reason,” in 1840; “Thoughts
on the Present Collegiate System of the United States,” in 1842;
and “Elements of Intellectual Philosophy,” in 1854. Wayland is most
important as a teacher of morals. For him education and religion went
hand in hand. Although he was not a thinker of the highest order, his
treatises were lucid, exact, and attractive. He was one of the great
educational and religious leaders of his day.
_Mark Hopkins._--Another great educator was Mark Hopkins (1802-1887),
whose birthplace was Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and who graduated from
Williams College in 1824. Like Wayland, he first practised medicine,
then became a minister and teacher of moral philosophy. He was
professor of moral philosophy at Williams for fifty-seven years, and
president from 1836 till 1872. He wrote “The Influence of the Gospel in
Liberalising the Mind” (1831), “The Connexion between Taste and Morals”
(1841), “The Evidences of Christianity” (Lowell Institute lectures,
1844), “Miscellaneous Essays and Reviews” (1847), “Moral Science” (also
Lowell lectures, 1862), “The Law of Love and Love as a Law” (1869),
“An Outline Study of Man” (1873), “Strength and Beauty” (1874), and
“The Scriptural Idea of Man” (1883). Few men in America have been
more potent as intellectual and moral forces than was Mark Hopkins.
President Garfield used to say that a student on one end of a log and
Mark Hopkins on the other would make a university anywhere. Great as an
original thinker and expounder, he was greater as a teacher; “he built
himself into the mental fabric of two generations of men.”
_Laurens P. Hickok._--Laurens P. Hickok (1798-1888), a Congregational
clergyman, and professor successively in Western Reserve College,
Auburn Theological Seminary, and Union College (of which he was
virtually president 1860-1868), wrote a number of philosophical and
theological works, among which are “Rational Psychology” (1848),
“Moral Science” (1853), “Mental Science” (1854), “Rational Cosmology”
(1858), “Humanity Immortal” (1872), “Creator and Creation” (1872), and
“The Logic of Reason” (1875). He also contributed to theological and
philosophical reviews.
_Francis Bowen._--A conservative resolutely opposed to the teachings
of Fichte, Kant, and Mill on the one hand and of Darwin on the other,
Francis Bowen (1811-1890) is remembered as a strong and clear writer
and an enthusiastic teacher. Nine years after his graduation from
Harvard (in 1833), we find him editing Virgil and publishing “Critical
Essays on Speculative Philosophy.” He edited _The North American
Review_ from 1843 till 1854, then became Alford professor of natural
religion, moral philosophy, and civil polity in Harvard College. Of
his voluminous writings we can mention only a few: “Lectures on the
Application of Metaphysical and Ethical Science to the Evidences
of Religion” (1849), “Lectures on Political Economy” (1850), “The
Principles of Political Economy” (1856), an edition of “The Metaphysics
of Sir William Hamilton” (1862), “Modern Philosophy from Descartes to
Schopenhauer and Hartmann” (1877), and “A Layman’s Study of the English
Bible” (1885).
_Noah Porter._--Professor of moral philosophy and metaphysics at Yale
College for forty-six years, and president of Yale University for
fifteen years, Noah Porter (1811-1892) made a strong impression in both
the philosophical, and the educational world. He was the son of the
Rev. Noah Porter, for fifty years minister of the Congregational Church
in Farmington, Connecticut, and graduated at Yale in 1831. He was a
minister at New Milford, Connecticut, and Springfield, Massachusetts,
for ten years; then he assumed his chair at Yale. His chief work,
“The Human Intellect” (1868), ably champions the theistic view of
the universe, and has had wide use as a text-book, as has also his
“Elements of Intellectual Science” (1871). He wrote also “The Elements
of Moral Science” (1885) and “A Critical Exposition of Kant’s Ethics”
(1886); besides several books on education, of which we may mention
“American Colleges and the American Public” (1870) and “Books and
Reading” (1870). He also edited the revised editions (1864, 1890) of
Webster’s Dictionary.