Great Britain, and continued until 1892, when he turned his back on all he had been doing and began again what he termed his "education." The second extended from that change of purpose to his death. The editorship of The North American Review (1869–76) and an assistant-professorship in history at Harvard (1870-77) ushered in the first period. Teaching did not suit him and he resigned because he felt that his efforts were failures. His mind was too original to go through life in the routine of college instruction. He now turned to American history, producing by much industry in fourteen years the following books: Documents Relating to New England Federalism (1877) Life of Albert Gallatin (1879), Writings of Albert Gallatin (1879), John Randolph (1882), History of the United States during the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison (9 vols., 1889-91), and Historical Essays (1891). The best scholarship and excellent literary form characterize all these books. better historical work has been done in this country. Yet the books were little read and the author became discouraged. He concluded that what he had been doing was without value to the world, since it was not noticed by the world.

No

Then began the second period of his literary life. Settling down to a quiet life of study, and following his taste, he delved long and patiently in the Middle Ages. The result appeared in Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904, 1913), probably the best expression of the spirit of the Middle Ages yet published in the English language. It was followed by Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law (1905), The Education of Henry Adams (1906, 1918), A Letter to American Teachers of History (1910), and Life of George Cabot (1911). Two of these books, the Mont Saint Michel and the Education, deserve to rank among the best American books that have yet been written. The first is a model of literary construction and a fine illustration of how a skilled writer may use the history of a small piece of activity as a means of interpreting a great phase of human life. Through the Education runs a note of futility, not entirely counterbalanced by the brilliant character-sketching and wise observations upon the times. But the Mont Saint Michel redeems this fault. It shows us Henry Adams at his best, and under its charm we are prepared to overlook the aloofness which limited his interests while it depressed his spirits.

In the Education Henry Adams defined history in these words: "To historians the single interest is the law of reaction between force and force between mind and nature-the law of progress." He thus announced in his maturity his allegiance to the most modern concept of history. In his early historical writings he dealt with the relations of men with men, as Parkman, Lea, Mahan, and many others dealt. In his revised opinions he conceived that the story of man's progress as affected by natural forces was the true task of the historian. It is a concept to which the best modern thinkers have been slowly moving. Adams grasped it with the greatest boldness and in the Mont Saint Michel gave future historians an example of how to realize it in actual literature.

A

CHAPTER XVI

Later Theology

MERICAN theology since the Civil War represents an

age of transition, of much fortunate silence, of expectant waiting, as on a threshold. But there are one or two sturdy souls, like William G. T. Shedd (1820-94) and Charles Hodge (1797-1878), who gathered up the olden time. with a disdain of the new. Yet perhaps disdain is scarcely the word to associate with Charles Hodge. His three huge volumes on Systematic Theology (1873) are found now mostly in public libraries and in the attic chambers of aging parsons. Theology is out of vogue, and his volumes represent a system which is less and less widely held as the years go by. But Charles Hodge had a genuine religious experience. Disdain certainly fades from the lips of any tolerant modern man as he browses in these books. The table of contents is schematical, wooden. The first volume, after an introduction, deals with "Theology Proper," the second volume is devoted to "Anthropology," and the third is divided between "Soteriology" and "Eschatology." But though "Evolution" is in the air—and indeed in the first volume there is no apologetic explanation of the division. Hodge is not ashamed of the tenets of past ages. He does not write for the public but to the public. But he writes with transparent sincerity. There is no evasion. There is no evasion. There is neither condescension nor cringing. There is nothing left at loose ends. There is no sparing of thought. His weighty opponents are fairly treated and his words are devoid of sarcasm-the weapon of conscious and obtrusive superiority. He does not pretend to understand God nor those who seem to him to claim that they do. He only claims to apprehend the Word of God. In his introduction he reaches, on what he regards as rational

grounds, the conclusion that the Scriptures are the Word of God and therefore that their teachings are infallible. Thereon he stands unmoved. Approaching the profound subject of the decrees of God, for every Calvinist thrilling in its audacity, he says simply:

It must be remembered that theology is not philosophy. It does not assume to discover truth, or to reconcile what it teaches as true with all other truths. Its province is simply to state what God has revealed in His Word and to vindicate those statements, as far as possible, from misconceptions and objections. This limited and humble office of theology it is especially necessary to bear in mind, when we come to speak of the acts and purposes of God. All that is proposed is simply to state what the Spirit has seen fit to reveal on that subject.

So he looks without flinching over the vast unsunned spaces to the place of eternal punishment. On the "Duration of Future Punishment" he writes:

It is obvious that this is a question which can be decided only by divine revelation. No one can reasonably presume to decide how long the wicked are to suffer for their sins upon any general principles of right and wrong. The conditions of the problem are not within our grasp. What the infinitely wise and good God may see fit to do with His creatures, or what the exigencies of a government, embracing the whole universe and continuing throughout eternal ages, may demand, it is not for such worms of the dust, as we are, to determine. If we believe the Bible to be the Word of God, all we have to do is to ascertain what it teaches on this subject, and humbly submit. . . . It should constrain us to humility and to silence on this subject that the most solemn and explicit declarations of the everlasting misery of the wicked recorded in the Scriptures, fell from the lips of Him, who, though equal with God, was found in fashion as a man, and humbled Himself unto death, even the death of the cross, for us men and our salvation.

There is a strange sublimity and extraordinary perspicuity about the style of Charles Hodge. It is not style at all. He is writing a treatise for students. His sentences are constantly interrupted by 1) 2) 3), A) B) C), and the like. Yet, notwithstanding the nature of the doctrine and the ponderous

The Question of Authority

203

character of the subject, there are few books which open the mind on the fields of grandeur more frequently than this systematic theology. Its prose is not unworthy of being associated in one's mind with that of Milton. Out of the depths this man has cried unto God and found Him.

But, undeniably, theology has gone out of fashion. Huge treatises like those of Hodge or Shedd or Augustus Strong never found many readers, but they found their way to many bookshelves. They were treated with reverence. Now they are utterly ignored. The chief reason for this contempt of theology is that men impugn its ancient authority. Hodge rightly declared that theology was to be differentiated from philosophy by its source of authority. It dealt with revelation while philosophy dealt with speculation. Its function was the interpretation of absolute truth, committed to men by the Holy Ghost through the pages of the Scripture. In our period this supposedly infallible book was subjected to the most searching examination. The ordinary canons of historical and literary criticism were applied to it and as a result the awesome phrase "Thus saith the Lord" came to bear diverse connotations. It was in the eighties and nineties that the authority of the Scripture, already long questioned in Europe, became a vital question in American thought. Then a series of heresy trials-five within the Presbyterian Church-concentrated the attention of religious people upon the subject. The most prominent figure in the great controversy in America was Charles Augustus Briggs (1841-1913), professor in Union Theological Seminary in New York from 1874 to 1913. This controversy was preceded by a bitter controversy in the ancient Congregational Seminary at Andover, Massachusetts, on questions of the future state, into which Briggs also entered. But the main question was the nature of Biblical inspiration. After a defence conducted by himself with great skill and acumen, he was acquitted of the charges of heresy by his Presbytery in January, 1893, but upon appeal to the General Assembly was convicted and suspended from the ministry of the Presbyterian Church in March of the same year.

Apart from some minor peculiarities of personal temper, no one could well have been found better able than Briggs to com