CHAPTER XXXVI THE MODERN AGE The history of Christian literature during the nineteenth century is the history of the development of tendencies created by the Enlightenment and by Romanticism. The history becomes crowded with minor issues; books are indefinitely multiplied in number and variety; it is easy to lose all sense of connection between the masses of material that lie to hand. This chapter will attempt to sketch the outline of the story as it relates to four important issues, viz., The Collapse of Calvinism; The Growth of Liberalism; The Oxford Movement; and The Development of New Testament Criticism. The collapse of Calvinism can be followed most easily in the Christian literature of America, where the rapid growth of humanitarian sentiment became a most forceful influence in the disintegration of the old creed. The first outstanding1 protagonist of the change was WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING, 1780-1842, an eminent Unitarian, who won a literary reputation by his discussions of the characters and works of JOHN MILTON, Napoleon Bonaparte, and FRANCOIS FENELON. A minor controversy on the Unitarian position began during 1815, and CHANNING had taken part in it by writing a pamphlet entitled The System of Exclusion and Denunciation in Religion Considered. The question was 1 Cf. F. H. Foster. A Genetic History of the New England Theology, chap. x., pp. 273-281. brought into the very forefront of interest by an ordination Sermon which he preached in 1819, and which he defended in a pamphlet Objections to Unitarian Christianity Considered, 1819. The necessity for this defence was created by the Letters which had been written against the Sermon by MOSES STUART, 1780-1850. CHANNING'S position is made clear in such passages as this: We do, then, with all earnestness, though without reproaching our brethren, protest against the irrational and unscriptural doctrine of the Trinity. 'To us' as to the Apostle and the primitive Christians, 'there is one God, even the Father'. With Jesus, we worship the Father, as the only living and true God. We are astonished that any man can read the New Testament and avoid the conviction that the Father alone is God. Seven years later he returned to the subject in a Sermon upon Unitarian Christianity Most Favorable to Piety, 1826. Unitarianism is a system most favorable to piety, because it presents to the mind one, and only one, Infinite Person, to whom supreme homage is to be paid. It does not weaken the energy of religious sentiment by dividing it among various objects. It collects and concentrates the soul on one Father of unbounded, undivided, unrivalled glory. His fundamental objection to Calvinism was that it contradicts the reasonableness of the divine love; this objection was clearly stated in the Sermon, but he had already expressed it in an earlier work entitled The Moral Argument against Calvinism, 1820. This work was a review of a book compiled from the writings of ROBERT FELLOWES, 1771-1847, entitled A General View of the Doctrines of Christianity, 1809. CHANNING gave the compilation his hearty commendation. The work under review is professedly popular in its style and mode of discussion. . . . It expresses strongly and without circumlocution the abhorrence with which every mind, uncorrupted by false theology, must look on Calvinism. . . . Calvinism, we are persuaded, is giving place to better views. It has passed its meridian, and is sinking to rise no more. It has to contend with foes more formidable than theologians; with foes from whom it cannot shield itself in mystery and metaphysical subtilties-we mean with the progress of the human mind, and with the progress of the spirit of the gospel. Society is going forward in intelligence and charity, and of course is leaving the theology of the sixteenth century behind it. We hail this revolution of opinion as a most auspicious event to the Christian cause. CHANNING gave unquestionable proof that humanitarian motives governed his theology when he turned with ardour to the social implications of Christianity. He wrote Slavery, 1835, in order to show that man cannot be justly held and used as property; that man has sacred rights, the gifts of God and inseparable from human nature, of which slavery is an infraction-to unfold the evils of slavery, and to discuss means of removing it. His Thoughts on the Evils of a Spirit of Conquest and Slavery, 1837, also served to show that the foundation of his thought was a high estimate of human nature; together with his other works it justified the judgment of the Chevalier Bunsen that CHANNING was "the prophet in the United States for the presence of God in mankind." The Unitarian argument was maintained by ANDREWS NORTON, 1786-1852, in his Statement of Reasons for Not Believing the Doctrines of Trinitarians respecting the Nature of God and the Person of Christ, 1819, in which he contended that Trinitarianism is incredible. LEONARD WOODS, 1774-1854, took up the task which MOSES STUART began but left unfinished. His Letters to Unitarians, 1820, contained expositions of the theology commonly held by those who accepted the doctrinal teaching of the Church. He was answered by HENRY WARE, 17641845, who, in Letters to Trinitarians and Calvinists, 1820, insisted that the vital question at issue was the question of the natural character of man, who is: an accountable being, a proper subject to be treated according as he shall make a right or wrong choice, being equally capable of either, and as free to the one as to the other. A more conspicuous advocate of liberal Christianity came to the front in JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE, 18101888, some of whose writings won an international reputation. His books entitled The Peculiar Doctrine of Christianity, 1844, and The History of the Doctrine of the Atonement, 1845, showed the point of his departure from the common creed of Christianity which he discussed in Orthodoxy, 1866. He gave positive expression to his own religious philosophy in Self Culture, 1872, Common Sense in Religion, 1873, and Every-Day Religion, 1886. "Few Americans have done more to broaden the discussions of literature, ethics, and religious thought" than he did by such works as Ten Great Religions, 1871-1883, Memorial and Biographical Sketches, 1878, and Events and Epochs in Religious History, 1881. The poet of the liberal movement in America was JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 1807-1892, the Quaker poet of freedom and faith. His apprenticeship to verse was served with various journals, but his earlier work like the Apos trophe to Lloyd Garrison, and Legends of New England, 1831, was lacking in the inspiration that came later. The emancipation question stirred him deeply with the result that his Poems written during the Progress of the Abolition Question in the United States, 1837, revealed the true quality of his genius. We wage no war,—we lift no arm,-we fling no torch within But for us and for our children, the vow which we have given The numerous later books which came from his pen, Lays of my Home and other Poems, 1843, Songs of Freedom, 1846, Songs of Labour, 1850, The Tent on the Beach, 1867, etc., reveal him as "the most representative of New England's poets, affectionately reminiscent of her lore of superstition and romance, and, most significantly, the poet of religious sympathy and hope and trust. Though he wrote few hymns, many have been detached from his poems and sung in churches of all Protestant denominations, to the great enhancement of his fame." Thus from My Psalm has come the familiar fragment: All as God wills, who wisely heeds To give or to withold, And knoweth more of all my needs And so the shadows fall apart, And so the west-winds play; And all the windows of my heart I open to the day. The poem entitled Our Master which appeared in The Panorama and other Poems, 1856, has been broken up |