scheme, as you will see, that God made men on purpose to damn them. . . . . This is done by a change in the affections and life of man. . . . . It is not merely a love of happiness in a new form, it is a love of God and divine things because they are good and amiable in themselves.

These are the leading positions of the New England theology, and Barnes continued to teach them to the end. But his theological activity was largely consumed and his creative faculties permanently lamed by the necessity under which he lay of reconciling all this with the Westminster Confession.

We therefore close this chapter of our history with the remark that the verdict of the history justifies the contention of Princeton in its chief objection to the New England theology, however little justification there may be for the details of the Princeton warfare against everything which New England proposed. The new theology, if consistently carried out, must in the end disrupt the system of Calvinism, and in this sense it was irreconcilable with the Confession. The influence of the Confession, whenever it began really to be felt by a New England thinker, was always for reaction and ultimately for stagnation. Princeton might well say to New Haven what Luther said to Zwingli : Ihr habt einen anderen Geist denn wir.

CHAPTER XVI

THE OBERLIN THEOLOGY

The greatest mind and the regulating force in the development of Oberlin theology was Charles G. Finney. Converted under remarkable experiences in the comparative solitude of a New York village, in his early manhood, and after he had already begun the practice of law, he formed his theology in connection with his early labors as a preacher with but little assistance from human teachers.¹ His thinking was marked from the beginning by strong originality; but he was not so completely independent as he was sometimes thought to be. Various underground currents set from New Haven westward, and some of them bore theological ideas into the region where Finney was. Subsequently he had personal association with the great New Haven theologian.² Influenced by legal analogies, and early adopting the doctrine of the freedom of the will, he had struck into the path which all New England theology was following, and had arrived at its main results before he left the seclusion of his home and became the most famous revivalist of his time. It is not strange, therefore, that he ultimately adopted most of Taylor's positions, and was, among the great leaders of New England, Taylor's true successor.

Finney's earliest studies had given him the governmental theory of the atonement, and the doctrine of general atonement; had taught him the freedom of the will, true human ability, that man is active in regeneration, and that he is converted by the influence of the truth; and had led him to reject imputation, and by implication the remaining artificial elements of the Westminster system. It is an interesting detail that it was the presentation of the old Rellyan arguments for universalism by a traveling Universalist minister that led him, as it had the younger Edwards and his associates, to the formulation of the governmental theory of the atonement.³

When he arrived at Oberlin, he found there three other powerful men--Mahan, Morgan, and Cowles. These four leaders had all been engaged in the remarkable revival movements of those days, and had almost come to feel that the earnestness and warmth of the revival were the proper characteristics of any normal Christian experience. The Oberlin colony was a collection of men and women intensely in earnest in the Christian life, and dissatisfied with anything which fell short of the highest attainable degree of perfection.^{4 The preaching was pungent and searching. There soon arose the inquiry whether complete victory over temptation, by the help of the almighty Savior, was not possible to true Christian believers.}

This question took the strongest hold upon the interest of Mahan, who had been made president of the college. He had been originally educated in the old Calvinism, which had been, with few real improvements in his estimation, taught by Leonard Woods when he was a student at Andover.⁵ Under the influences emanating from New Haven, he had later adopted the doctrine of the true freedom of the will, and was thereby prepared for further changes.⁶ One thing he had long desired, and that was deliverance from the power of sin. When the inquiry was solemnly put, in one of the Oberlin meetings, by a young man, whether he could hope to gain a complete victory over temptation, or must expect to go on stumbling as he had done before; and when at another time a third of the professing Christians present⁷ rose to signify that they saw that their hopes were not well founded, he felt that he had come to a crisis when he must know the secret of such a Christian life as the apostle Paul lived, hid with Christ in God and filled with triumphant power. A remarkable experience of the love of Christ gave him the answer, and from this event he dated a new period in his Christian life.⁸

This answer was expressed by him in a sermon immediately preached, in the following form:

Speaking of his former preaching, he said, "When a sinner had inquired of me what he should do to be saved, I had known perfectly what was needed to be done in his case..... But when a believer had come to me and confessed that he was not living as God requires, and asked me how he should escape the "bondage of corruption," and attain to "the liberty of the sons of God," I had instructed him to confess his sins, put them away, renew his purpose of obedience, and go forward with a fixed resolution to do the entire will of God. Now, here was a fundamental mistake. We are not only to be "justified by the faith of Christ," but to be sanctified also by the faith that is in him. . . . . If you desire a victory over your tempers, your appetites, and all your propensities, take them to Christ, just as you take your sins to him, and he will give you the victory over the former, just as he gives you pardon for the latter.... It is not he that resolves, but "he that abideth in Christ and Christ in him, that bringeth forth much fruit." (1836.)⁹

A little after this (1839) Mahan, in his Scripture Doctrine o f Christian Perfection, defined this perfection as follows:

It is the consecration of our whole being to Christ, and the perpetual employment of all our powers in his service. It is the perfect assimilation of our entire character to that of Christ, having at all times, and under all circumstances, the "same mind that was also in Christ Jesus." It is, in the language of Mr. Wesley, "In one view, purity of intention, dedicating all the life to God. It is the giving God all the heart; it is one desire and design ruling all our tempers. It is devoting, not a part, but all our soul, body and substance to God. In another view, it is all the mind that was in Christ Jesus, enabling us to walk as he walked. It is the circumcision of the heart from all filthiness, from all inward as well as outward pollution. It is the renewal of the heart in the whole image of God, the full likeness of him that created it. In yet another, it is loving God with all our heart, and our neighbor as ourselves."¹⁰

The distinctive thought of this little treatise is that such perfection is attainable, and is to be sought for by prayer and by the exercise of faith in Jesus Christ who, taking up his dwelling in the soul by his Spirit, will bring it into perfect sympathy with himself, stilling its passions and destroying the power of its temptations.

Professor Morgan somewhat later (1845) published in the Oberlin Quarterly an article upon "The Gift of the Holy Ghost." He maintained that this gift, spoken of in the Book of Acts so continually, was not designed for that age alone, was not the gift of working miracles, nor in any other way exceptional, but was designed for all Christians to fit them for the development of holy character and the performance of effective Christian service. He summarizes his view:

The baptism of the Holy Ghost, then, in its Pentecostal fullness was not to be confined to the primitive church; but it is the common privilege of all believers--of believers even of this generation, and of every generation to come. It was at first indispensable to the appropriate happiness and befitting characteristics of the children of God and brethren of Jesus Christ--a happiness and dignity impossible except by becoming one with him, not by an external bond . . . . but an internal union through the indwelling of the same Spirit. We say it was at first indispensable for these ends; and it has not ceased to be indispensable for the same ends by the lapse of time. It was necessary to make Apostles, and Prophets, and Saints, able efficient ministers of the New Testament. Till endued by this baptism with power from on high, they were not prepared to convert the nations to God. The same necessity exists at the present day, and will continue to exist till the last sinner is converted through the gospel preached with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Who without the Holy Ghost is sufficient for these things? And of what other sufficiency from God does the inspired word make mention? Nor will a less effusion of the Spirit, a less degree of the Spirit and power of sonship, answer now, than was found necessary in the apostolic age.¹¹

With these presentations of the matter both Finney and Cowles agreed, though themselves employing somewhat different terms.

The idea was much the same under these varying forms of expression, namely, that there is an experience attainable in the Christian life, subsequent in general to conversion, in which the believer rises to a higher plane, secures new views of Christ and his salvation, obtains victory over weaknesses which had before marred his character, and attains a stability to which he was before a stranger.¹²

Mahan insisted upon a sanctification of the sensibility, and claimed that he had experienced a stilling of passions before which he had previously been impotent, so as to be delivered from their bondage. It sometimes seemed as if he viewed this as essentially mechanical. Finney spoke more of the moral power of the truth upon the heart. None of them noted, so far as I have observed, an interesting point of contact of the new view with President Edwards' view of original sin. Our corruption was traced by him, not to some positive taint implanted in our nature, but to the withdrawal of the Holy Spirit upon the sin of Adam. We were intended to live in communion with the Spirit, and without him we are, of course, unfitted for our environment, and hence liable to sin. If now the Holy Spirit is bestowed upon all believers who will receive him, then the defect which we call original sin is repaired, and sinners are restored to the original elevation of unfallen human nature. That such a consummation has been a dim but ever present ideal of the church's, the Roman doctrine of the removal of all guilt of original sin by baptism may serve as a proof. Here at last the way was opened for a spiritual development of the same idea; but it was never followed out.

The emphasis laid at Oberlin upon the peculiar character of the experience of sanctification gradually disappeared.¹³ It was gradually felt that it did not differ so much as had been thought from the experience of ordinary Christians. In the realm of doctrine the movement resulted in the proposal of a new psychological principle, that of the "simplicity of moral action."

This doctrine was first propounded in public by William Cochran, a graduate in the year 1839, in an address before the Society of Inquiry, and subsequently the Alumni, in 1841. It "was very generally accepted," says President Fairchild, "as conclusive on the subject." The position it presented was adopted by all the leading teachers in Oberlin,^{14 except Professor Cowles, though with different degrees of earnestness and different success in applying it in the development of other doctrines. It became, however, especially by the consistent and unvarying advocacy of President Fairchild, a characteristic portion of the Oberlin theology.15}

Cochran begins his discussion by defining moral action as "the coincidence or disagreement of the free will with the law of right which Reason reveals and imposes;" or again, as "choosing good for its own sake, and of course as the ultimate end of effort, or, when good is apprehended, refusing thus to choose." Two ideas underlie the discussion which are not definitely mentioned. It could hardly have been thought at that time necessary to mention them, so fully were they presupposed by all the philosophy of the day as self-evident truth. These were that the action of the will was single, making but one volition, or choosing but one object at a time; and that it was entirely a phenomenon of consciousness, for philosophy was confined then to the conscious mind, the main, if not the sole, implement of investigation being introspection. These suppositions are, therefore, passed over without specific mention, but it is thought important to specify, as conditions of this conception of moral action, responsibility and its presupposition, freedom, the latter understood in the Oberlin sense. Cochran also lays down the principles that "intentions or choices alone are moral actions," and that "it is often in choices or intentions alone that there is any essential difference between men who, nevertheless, are in character as opposite as the poles." After a few other preliminary remarks he is ready for his thesis, which he defends in the following words:

The question whether a moral action may be of a mixed character can now be easily answered. From what has been said, the question is simply this: can the will at the same time be coincident with impartial reason and self-centering inclination? Or thus: can a moral agent choose the general good as the ultimate end of his exertions, and at the same instant choose his individual good as the ultimate end of his exertions? Or, less abstractly still: can one supremely prefer the good of being in general, and at the same point of time supremely prefer his own to the general good? If I were to reply affirmatively to the question as at first put, I should say that one could choose partially and impartially; that is, do and not do the same thing at the same time. If to the second form of the question an affirmative answer were given, it would involve the absurdity of saying that at the same time we may have two ultimate ends. To answer the question as last put in the affirmative would be to say that at the same time by the same will two preferences may be supreme. That is, to affirm and deny of each that it is supreme--a contradiction as palpable as saying that a thing may be and not be at the same time. Tertullian, whose rule of faith was, it is absurd, and therefore I believe it, might have answered either of these questions in the affirmative and believed what he said. But I should be loath to expect as much of any man living.

The chief objection which would naturally strike every reader of this address would be that the theory destroys character. Every choice is either wholly sinful or entirely holy, and hence, since all admit that the Christian falls into sin, when he sins he is entirely a sinner and not a Christian at all. Thus there is no abiding or permanent thing about him which can be called character, and what he is at any moment, saint or sinner, no observer can tell. Cochran saw this objection, and in the following paragraph he meets it after the following manner:

There are not wanting those, however, who believe (whether from a thorough investigation or not it is not mine to decide) that our ultimate design to serve God may permanently remain and yet specific volitions from time to time be contrary to it. Let us examine this theory, for it can claim in its support high authority and many great names. When it is said that specific volitions are contrary to the generic purpose, or ultimate design, it must be meant, either that self-gratification is their end, or that it is not. If it is not, as there is no third end, they must be classed among instinctive or irresponsible actions, and moral character must be denied of them. Of course, if this be done, they can with no more propriety be said to be inconsistent with the ultimate end than the beating of the heart. If self-gratification is their ultimate end--that to which they sustain the relation of means, then either the ultimate end of serving God is not existing--and this contradicts the hypothesis; or there are two ultimate ends co-existing, which we have just shown to be absurd. If, notwithstanding this absurdity, the co-existence with wrong volitions of a generic purpose to secure universal good be still contended for, it must at least be conceded that during their existence it retires to the dormitory of the soul and takes on a sleep which is the exact image of death. How this can be conceived of as an existing choice, may well excite our wonder. A choice which chooses nothing! A purpose to promote the general good which results in nothing! Nay, which, somehow or other, results in volitions to promote the opposite! . . . . The doctrine, I apprehend, originates in the mistaken notion that the choice of self-gratification as an ultimate end, is a deliberate determination never again to serve God. Nothing in most cases is farther from the truth. For the present, and it may be for some time to come, the sinner chooses his own gratification, promising himself and others that he will repent before he dies. This he expects to do in his sense of repentance. That there is no virtue in this expectation is true, that it is real is equally true.

The words italicized above contained a suggestion which would have brought Cochran to the contemplation of the sub-conscious mind, if it had been followed out; but the presupposition upon which he was proceeding, that all the acts of the mind take place in consciousness, combined with the further error that all sin is the deliberate choice of selfgratification and involves a perception of the irreconcilability of this with the choice of the general good, shut his eyes to this fruitful suggestion. Upon his psychological basis he was right and his reasoning conclusive; but the basis was not right. [Editor. This is an unfounded assertion.]

The remaining portion of the address dealt with various objections. The subject was handled in an exceedingly thorough manner. The fact that a single volition may be the product of many motives does not give it a mixed character--partly good and partly bad--since it is the subjective motive that determines the character of a choice, and this must be either a supreme choice of good, or of self-gratification. Lack of intensity of choice does not make it partly good and partly evil; for if this is lack of choosing less than the good we ought, it is not choosing that good at all in any proper sense; and if it is merely a failure of the natural powers, it does not involve culpability.

While still answering objections, Cochran advances to positions which constitute the true contribution of this discussion to New England theology. To gain a biblical proof for his proposition, he argues that "the indispensable condition of reconciliation to God is the abandonment of all sin." The act of self-surrender to God must be a perfectly holy act, since it must consist in a choice of the will of God as our supreme good. "Entire conformity to the law of God is a condition indispensable to continuance in his favor." The effect of these positions upon the theory of sanctification, of a "second blessing," and of a peculiar sanctification attained by some Christians and not by others, is at once evident. President Fairchild summed up this result of the theory of the simplicity of moral action in the following form:

One of the most obvious consequences of the doctrine is that conversion is entire consecration; that the earliest obedience of the converted sinner is entire obedience, and that his moral state is entirely approved by God. The very first exercise of faith involves all the faith that under the circumstances is possible, and therefore all that is obligatory. There is no partial faith, in the sense in which faith is a duty, nor, in the same sense, any imperfect love. The sinner in giving his heart to God gives it all, makes no reservation; any holding back corrupts the whole action. . . . . The idea, then, of rising from a partial to a complete obedience, from imperfect to perfect faith and love, in the sense in which these are voluntary and responsible acts or states to be required of men, is incompatible with the idea of simplicity of moral action. . . . . The work required in Christian progress is growth in grace, enlargement of views, experience of Christ's power and of one's own weakness,--all resulting in establishment of Christian character and more and more complete deliverance from these interruptions of obedience,--an obedience more and more constant until it becomes permanent and suffers no interruption. In this view every believer is sanctified, in the sense that he has utterly renounced sin in his acceptance of Christ, and given him his whole heart. This is sanctification in the Scripture sense, and all believers are called saints in the Bible, that is, sanctified ones. We hear nothing in the Bible of justified people that are not sanctified. . . . . The work of edification which follows conversion is of vast consequence; it is growth from infancy to manhood. But it can be accomplished by no one act of the will, no immediate exercise of faith. There is no promise in God's Word upon which a believer can plant himself in present faith and secure his stability in faith and obedience for all the future, so that we can say of him that he is perfectly sanctified. We can say of one that he has grown in the grace of Christ, that he has made attainments in knowledge and experience and stability, We may judge at length that he is perfectly sanctified; but God alone can know. It is not a question of his own consciousness. Consciousness can give the fact of entire consecration, which is the essence of conversion; it cannot give the fact of permanent sanctification; that is in the history of the future, not in present consciousness. . . . . We find, then, no line of division, upon this view of Christian character, between sanctified and unsanctified Christians. All Christians while in the exercise of faith are sanctified, nor is there any clear line between the simply sanctified and the permanently sanctified.¹⁶

Cochran seemed in this discussion to be the originator of a new doctrine, which was soon accepted by the eager laborers in the field of theology at Oberlin as of the highest value. But, in fact, the same position had been presented still earlier by Emmons.¹⁷ In his sermons upon "The True Character of Good Men Delineated" he has the following passages:

Let us inquire whether [the saints'] imperfection can arise from their moral affections being partly holy and partly sinful. If their affections were of such a mixed nature, they certainly would be criminally imperfect. For, if each of their moral affections could be partly holy and partly sinful, then each would have something in it of moral perfection and of moral imperfection. But can we conceive of such a mixture of moral good and evil, in one and the same exercise of heart? Let us pursue the inquiry. Can the affection of love be partly love and partly hatred to God? Can the exercise of repentance be partly love and partly hatred to sin? .... It is absolutely absurd to suppose that any voluntary exercise should be partly holy and partly sinful..... The notion that the imperfection of saints arises from their moral affections being all partly holy and partly sinful, is contrary to reason, Scripture, and their own experience.¹⁸

Emmons further taught that "saints do have some perfectly good affections," and insisted upon their "duty to become absolutely perfect." His greatest difference from Oberlin arose from his theory of human dependence, which was much more strongly accentuated by him than by the later teachers, in accordance with which he taught that

gracious exercises are not necessarily and inseparably connected with each other; and, of consequence, they may at any time be interrupted by totally sinful affections. They have no permanent source or fountain of holiness within themselves, from which a constant stream of holy affections will naturally and necessarily flow. As one holy affection will not produce another, so they are immediately dependent upon God for every holy affection. The moment he withdraws his gracious influence, their gracious exercises cease, and sinful exercises instantly succeed. And in this case they are no more able to renew the train of holy affections than they were to begin it at first. Their sanctification, therefore, is precisely the same as continued regeneration.¹⁹

Finney began the publication of his theology in the form of skeletons of lectures in 1840.²⁰ But one volume of these appeared, for, six years after, he began the publication of more finished lectures, of which two volumes were issued. These later volumes began with the subject of moral government, and had been in part anticipated by the first. It was his intention to prefix a first volume which should begin, as the skeletons had, with the first principles of the science, but this intention was never carried out. The imperfect Skeletons therefore remains our chief source of information as to his views upon natural theology, the Scriptures, the Trinity, and Christology; and deserves, therefore, our first attention in a review of his theology.

The topic may, however, be dispatched very briefly. The existence of God is argued from moral obligation, from design, from the dependent form of man's existence, and from the necessity of a first cause. The divine authority and inspiration of the Bible are then argued from the need and the possibility of a further revelation and from the correspondence of the Bible to the revelation required (as authentic, genuine, and credible). Thus the basis is obtained for the development of the attributes of God, including his moral attributes, and for the proof of such doctrines as the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, etc. The treatment is everywhere strong, logical, rational, and biblical. The inspiration of the Bible implies that the writers were "infallibly secured from all error," and that "they communicated authoritatively the mind and will of God." The argument is from miracle, prophecy, the assertions of the writers and their credibility; and makes no mention of the witness of the Spirit. On the other points mentioned there is no disagreement with the general trend of new school divinity at the time. The same meagerness and defects which we have found elsewhere in the treatment of the Trinity and Christology reoccur here.

As already remarked, the fuller edition of 1846-47 in part repeated the discussions of the earlier. It begins with the moral government of God, nothing being written upon natural theology, or the revealed doctrines of the Trinity and Christology, except what is incidentally brought in in discussing later portions of the system. It was republished in England with some modifications by the author in 1851, and from this edition an abridgment was prepared by President Fairchild and published in Oberlin (1878).

Finney begins with a remark which exhibits the foundation and indicates the trend and probable value of his work:

The truths of the blessed gospel have been hidden under a false philosophy. Of this I have long been convinced. Nearly all the practical doctrines of Christianity have been embarrassed and perverted by assuming as true the dogma of a Necessitated Will. This has been a leaven of error that, as we shall see, has 'leavened nearly the whole lump' of gospel truth. In the present work I have attempted to prove, and have every where assumed the freedom of the will.²¹

A little below he adds: "What I have said on the Foundation of Moral Obligation is the key to the whole subject." He might have added that his whole theology was controlled by two fundamental purposes--to make men Christians and to keep them; so--and was hence a theology of conversion and sanctification.

The first volume (second of the proposed complete system, which was never finished) is entitled "Moral Government," as was the main portion of N. W. Taylor's. Moral law is defined as "a rule of moral action with sanctions."²² It is the "law of liberty, as opposed to the law of necessity-of motive and free choice, as opposed to force of every kind that renders action necessary or unavoidable." His conception of freedom, and his argument from consciousness, already developed, need not be repeated.

Finney's position as to moral obligation has often been thought to be original; but it does not seem to differ in any degree from Edwards'. He differs only in his conception of freedom, which affects the moral action of men, but not the specific point of the foundation of moral action. The whole matter is comprehended in his statement: "It is a first truth of reason that we ought to will the valuable for its own sake."²³ This is the same as Edwards' "love to being in general," being simply considered, viewed as possessing worth. Historically the formulation of the principle originated in Oberlin in a discussion of the year 1839, as Professor W. E. C. Wright has shown.²⁴ Mahan had advocated intuitive rightarianism, and Cowles a rational utilitarianism. Finney presided at the discussion, and finally summed up the truth of the two conflicting views in the statement that "I ought to love my neighbor because his welfare is valuable." The Oberlin audience saw in this result, which was generally accepted, and became the foundation of the Oberlin theology in this division, a new illustration of the genius of their great leader, and a new point of progress made then and there; but the historian will refer it to the Taylorism into which Finney had long before been initiated. In his Theology he later put it: "The well-being of God and the Universe is the absolute and ultimate good, and therefore it should be chosen by every moral agent."

It will be the less important for us to dwell further upon Finney's system because it may be dismissed in the one word "Taylorism," independent as it was, and vigorously as its author had impressed upon it the marks of his own pronounced individuality. As an illustration of the often minute correspondence between the two thinkers, the following explanation of the rise of moral depravity may be cited:

The impulses of the sensibility are developed at birth. The first acts of will are in obedience to these. Self-gratification is the rule of action previous to the development of reason. No resistance is offered to the will's indulging appetite until a habit of self-indulgence is formed. When reason affirms moral obligation, it finds the will in a state of habitual and constant committal to the impulses of the sensibility. The demands of the sensibility have become more and more despotic every hour of indulgence. In this state of things, unless the Holy Spirit interpose, the idea of moral obligation will be but dimly developed. The will, of course, rejects the bidding of reason and cleaves to self-indulgence. This is the settling of a fundamental question. It is deciding in favor of appetite against the claims of conscience and of God. Light once rejected can be thereafter more easily resisted. Selfishness confirms and strengthens and perpetuates itself by a natural process. It grows with the sinner's growth and strengthens with his strength, and will do so forever unless overcome by the Holy Spirit through the truth.

This connection with Taylor is fully recognized by Professor G. Frederick Wright in his Finney in many places.²⁵ At one point, in the very valuable and detailed review of Finney as a theologian and a philosopher, which constitutes the principal chapter of his book, he criticizes Taylor as maintaining that "all the goodness of an action pertains to its adaptation to produce results." He continues: "Finney clearly maintains that the obligation to use any particular means to do good must be conditioned upon the supposed 'tendency of those means to secure the end.' But this is the obligation to put forth a proximate rather than an ultimate choice. Ultimate intention has no such condition."²⁶ But even here, however much disagreement there may be in forms of speech, the final meaning of the two thinkers seems to be the same. Taylor defines benevolence as "an elective preference of the highest well-being of all other sentient beings as his supreme object."²⁷ That choice is founded upon the ultimate "worth" of such beings; and this worth is defined as consisting in the "capacity of happiness."²⁸ Such is the implication of the whole context. And that would seem to be Finney's doctrine precisely.

Aside from this, however, so sharp-sighted a thinker as Professor Wright, and one so well acquainted with Finney's theology, with which he has been familiar from his youth, can find no substantial disagreement with Taylor upon the great doctrines of the system.

Finney's immediate successor in the teaching of theology at Oberlin was James Harris Fairchild,²⁹ whose Elements of Theology, Natural and Revealed,³⁰ continue the Oberlin tradition and brings its work in New England theology to a close. The connection of this work with the Theology of Finney is evident at once, but its differences are still more noticeable. It is less formal, seeks less constantly for cogent proof, treats each subject as largely independent rather than as dependent upon all that has preceded for its evidence, pursues the objector less uncompromisingly, and relies more upon general rationality and the utterances of simple common-sense, than had its predecessor. But it maintains the same great principles with Finney--the freedom of the will and the simplicity of moral action, the foundation of moral obligation in the essential worth of sentient being; teaches the great central doctrines of the evangelical system in the sense in which Finney and other New England divines taught them, minimizes the Calvinistic element, though not eliminating it, and maintains the divinity of Christ, the atonement (governmental theory), and the endless future punishment of the incorrigibly wicked. In apologetics it shows a distinct tendency to waive the unimportant and to concentrate the argument upon the central and decisive elements of the question in hand. Its strength lies in its adaptation to the needs of plain men in search of a workable system of thought, in the simplicity and clearness of its anthropology, in the prominence with which the great essentials of Christian doctrine stand out above the controverted and uncertain. Its defects are those of the school at this time: its philosophical shallowness, its failure to supply the omissions of its predecessors in the treatment of such themes as the unity of the person of Christ, the two natures, human and divine, and in unfolding the meaning and application of the doctrine of the Trinity in the system. It was not fertilized by the new thought of its day, and had little to say to the times in which it was finally published; but its place as a plain and untechnical statement, in a moderate and sensible way, of the general results at which New England theology had arrived, will never be challenged.

CHAPTER XVII

EDWARDS A. PARK

We have now arrived in the progress of our history at the close of the New England development, having considered all the great productive minds which contributed to the erection of this system of thought. The impression made upon the mind of the reader must still be somewhat discordant, for the history has been one of many differing tendencies, which have as yet been brought into complete and comprehensive expression by no one theologian. If the history had to close here, it would appear like a broken column in the great edifice of human thought. So far as it is a history of printed systems, it must close here; but there is a system which, though it does not exist yet in printed form, and may never do so, is still in existence in so many students' notebooks, and in so complete and careful reports, that it may be included among the materials of this history, and will serve the essential purpose of representing New England theology in its most perfect systematic form. Professor Edwards Amasa Park, of Andover,1 was himself the ripest fruit of New England, and was one of her most loyal sons. His theology summed up in the most perfect form the long line of her theological

¹ Born at Providence, R. I., December 29, 1808; died at Andover, Mass., June 4, :g00; graduated at Brown University, Providence, 1826, and at Andover 1831; pastor at Braintree, Mass., 1831-33; professor 0f intellectual philos- ophy at Amherst, 1835^-36; professor 0f sacred rhetoric at Andover, 1836^-47; professor of systematic theology there, 1847-81; professor emeritus till his death. He was one 0f the founders of the Bibliotheca Sacra in 1844, which he continued to edit till its transfer to Oberlin in 1883; published largely in this and other periodical issues; wrote a number 0f valuable memoirs, 0f which the most important theologically are those 0f Hopkins and Emmons, and one still (1906) expected from the press, of Jonathan Edwards; conducted a most trenchant controversy with Professor Charles Hodge (The Theology of the Intellect and That of the Feelings, 1850, etc.); issued a volume of Discourses; and this list has been increased by a posthumous Memorial Collection of Sermons.