Alexander,

of its presidents or professors became influential by reason of their commentaries, or doctrinal treatises, or articles in the Princeton Review; but from the names of the many, two stand out in specially clear Archibald light those of Archibald Alexander, in the 1772-1851. first part of the nineteenth century, and Charles Hodge, in the middle of the century. Dr. Alexander was the first professor in the theological seminary at Princeton, which is not connected with the college in corporate bonds, but of course works on parallel lines. Archibald Alexander shaped and gave tone to his seminary, and to " Princeton theology," with its austerity of doctrine and its benignity of life, -a type in several ways different from the Puritan. Alexander's" Outlines of the Evidences of Christianity," the first of his several works, was long a favorite and a force. He and his fellows, however, were pioneers rather than creators in their theological work, so far as the ultimate crystallization of Princeton theology was concerned. They wrote much, and sometimes strongly; they taught patiently, and affected American thought, particularly in the Middle States. But it was left to Charles Hodge to produce the one American theo1797-1878. logical treatise which can be called monumental, and which, by its ability, dignity, thoroughness, and extent, worthily states an entire system of religious faith, as believed and taught by its author, and by the church or school of thought to which he belonged. No other religious work produced in this country seriously rivals it in these particulars. Other faiths have been believed as sincerely and urged as

Charles

Hodge,

ably, but none has received a similarly full, systematic statement. Certainly the New England Congregationalists, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, earnestly believed in the religion which was their all-in-all, but none of them, save Samuel Willard and Samuel Hopkins, attempted to put forth a complete theological system, such as is presented in Hodge's "Systematic Theology." "Edwardsianism" and "Hopkinsianism" were names of doctrinal influences, not limited to the writings of Edwards or Hopkins. To frame a systematic theology demanded a thoroughness of theological scholarship which neither Willard, Edwards, nor Hopkins possessed. As for the Mathers, they dissipated their powers in a hundred directions, and so left no adequate support for their once great renown. Other old churches in the United States-the Protestant Episcopal, the Reformed, the Lutheran, the Moravian, the Roman Catholic-have depended upon foreign authorities in this line of work, while such great Arminian bodies as the Methodists and the Disciples of Christ have seemed to feel unwilling or unable to map out the whole "scheme of salvation," and to draw up a constitution for the government of this world and the next. Similar considerations would appear to have unconsciously influenced the Unitarians, whose doctrinal differences are almost as great as those in the Anglican churches, and who certainly have failed as completely in systematic theology, or in the whole department of the religious treatise, as they have succeeded in their influence exerted upon and through literature in general.

Horace

Bushnell,

The better Congregational literature of the nineteenth century, since the Unitarian controversy, has differed materially from that which, on the Trinitarian side, preceded or accompanied that controversy. To the already formidable list of American isms and ologies was added, a generation ago, "Bushnellism." To most modern readers this new influence seems wholesome and sufficiently conservative; to Dr. Bushnell's neighbors on East Windsor Hill it appeared little better than the secessions of 1800-1820. Dr. Bushnell's "moral influence" theory of 1802-1876. the Atonement was nothing new; it was, and is, held in substance by the great Broad Church school in the Church of England; but it did differ, undoubtedly and materially, from that formerly prevalent and still extant-in parts of New England. Dr. Bushnell was born in Lyman Beecher's old county of Litchfield, Connecticut, but Litchfield theology was changed by his potent words. His "Vicarious Sacrifice" (1855), carefully setting forth the views which might fairly be called those of "liberal orthodoxy," powerfully affected later Congregationalism; while in this and other books he displayed a strength and freshness of thought, and a characteristic and original style, which he often applied to other than religious themes. Sometimes obscure, often quaint, and now and then unrhetorical or even ungrammatical, he always has something to say. His "Moral Uses of Dark Things" is probably to be reckoned, on the whole, his principal book, notwithstanding the interest once aroused by his "God in Christ"; "Christ in Theology"

(a defence of the previous book, made to the Hartford Central Association of Ministers, in 1849); "Views of Christian Nurture" (on revivalism); "Work and Play" (essays and addresses); "Sermons for the New Life " ; "Nature and the Supernatural"; or the elaborate "Vicarious Sacrifice" treatise, previously mentioned. Bushnell the theologian was, like Robertson, Maurice, or Kingsley, in England, a genuine stimulating force upon many of the younger Congregationalists of New England; and Bushnell the essayist-now reminding one of Carlyle, now of Ruskin, but ever original-resembled Emerson, though, of course, in a small degree, in his broadcast spreading of seeds of thought. The title of "The Moral Uses of Dark Things" is a promise of the character of the chapters contained in the book. Let us take a single extract, at random, from these essays, illustrating his general style and his apt use of simple words, and also showing how he turns the very pessimism of all past history to the service of optimism:

God, for some reason, scrutable or inscrutable, has determined to let large tracts of past events be "The Moral always passing into oblivion; and though it dis- Uses of Dark Things." appoints, to a certain extent, that filial instinct which unites us to the past, and puts us on the search to find, if possible, who are gone before us and what they have done, I think we shall discover uses enough, and those which are sufficiently beneficent, to comfort us in the loss.

And, first of all, it will be seen that we do not lose our benefit in the past ages, because we love the remembrance of their acts and persons. Do the vegetable growths repine or sicken because they cannot remember the growths

of the previous centuries? Is it not enough that the very soil that feeds them is fertilized by the waste of so many generations mouldering in it? The principal and best fruits of the past ages come down to us, even when their names do not. If they wrought out great inventions, these will live without a history. If they unfolded great principles of society and duty, great principles do not die. If they brought their nation forward into power and a better civilization, the advances made are none the less real that their authors are forgotten. Their family spirit passed into their family, and passes down with it. Their manners and maxims and ideas flavored their children; then, after them, their children's children, and so more truly live than they would in a book. About every thing valuable in a good and great past is garnered in oblivion; not to be lost, but to be kept and made fruitful. For it is not true that we have our advantage in the past ages mainly in what we draw from their example, or gather from the mistakes of their experience. We have our benefit in what they transmit, not in what we go after and seek to copy. And passing into causes, they transmit about every thing they are; and, to a great extent, their corrections for what they are not; producing emendations probably in us, that are better than they could find how to make in themselves.

But we do not really strike the stern moral key of Providence in this general sentence of oblivion passed upon the race, till we make full account of the fact that the major part of our human history is bad in the matter of it. This, to some, will seem uncharitable, or unduly severe; but if they feel it necessary to be offended, they have only to run over the general bill of written history, and see what makes the staple matter of the record, to perceive how faithfully the stricture holds. Very few good men, and very few really great deeds figure in the record. Great wrongs, oppressions, usurpations, enmities, desolations of unholy war, persecutions of righteousness