An Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant | Page 9

in later days he found requisite to the maintenance of his scientific
freedom and conscientiousness. Both of these men represent the effort to construe the
world, including man, from the point of view of the natural and also of the social sciences,
and to define the place of religion in that view of the world which is thus set forth. The
fact that there had been no such philosophical readjustment in Great Britain as in
Germany, made the acceptance of the evolutionary theory of the universe, which more
and more the sciences enforced, slower and more difficult. The period of resistance on

the part of those interested in religion extended far into the decade of the seventies.
A word may be added concerning America. The early settlers had been proud of their
connection with the English universities. An extraordinary number of them, in
Massachusetts at least, had been Cambridge men. Yet a tradition of learning was later
developed, which was not without the traits of isolation natural in the circumstances. The
residence, for a time, even of a man like Berkeley in this country, altered that but little.
The clergy remained in singular degree the educated and highly influential class. The
churches had developed, in consonance with their Puritan character, a theology and
philosophy so portentous in their conclusions, that we can without difficulty understand
the reaction which was brought about. Wesleyanism had modified it in some portions of
the country, but intensified it in others. Deism apparently had had no great influence.
When the rationalist movement of the old world began to make itself felt, it was at first
largely through the influence of France. The religious life of the country at the beginning
of the nineteenth century was at a low ebb. Men like Belaham and Priestley were known
as apostles of a freer spirit in the treatment of the problem of religion. Priestley came to
Pennsylvania in his exile. In the large, however, one may say that the New England
liberal movement, which came by and by to be called Unitarian, was as truly American as
was the orthodoxy to which it was opposed. Channing reminds one often of
Schleiermacher. There is no evidence that he had learned from Schleiermacher. The
liberal movement by its very impetuosity gave a new lease of life to an orthodoxy which,
without that antagonism, would sooner have waned. The great revivals, which were a
benediction to the life of the country, were thought to have closer relation to the theology
of those who participated in them than they had. The breach between the liberal and
conservative tendencies of religious thought in this country came at a time when the
philosophical reconstruction was already well under way in Europe. The debate
continued until long after the biblical-critical movement was in progress. The controversy
was conducted upon both sides in practically total ignorance of these facts. There are
traces upon both sides of that insight which makes the mystic a discoverer in religion,
before the logic known to him will sustain the conclusion which he draws. There will
always be interest in the literature of a discussion conducted by reverent and, in their own
way, learned and original men. Yet there is a pathos about the sturdy originality of good
men expended upon a problem which had been already solved. The men in either camp
proceeded from assumptions which are now impossible to the men of both. It was not
until after the Civil War that American students of theology began in numbers to study in
Germany. It is a much more recent thing that one may assume the immediate reading of
foreign books, or boast of current contribution from American scholars to the labour of
the world's thought upon these themes.
We should make a great mistake if we supposed that the progress has been an unceasing
forward movement. Quite the contrary, in every aspect of it the life of the early part of
the nineteenth century presents the spectacle of a great reaction. The resurgence of old
ideas and forces seems almost incredible. In the political world we are wont to attribute
this fact to the disillusionment which the French Revolution had wrought, and the
suffering which the Napoleonic Empire had entailed. The reaction in the world of thought,
and particularly of religious thought, was, moreover, as marked as that in the world of
deeds. The Roman Church profited by this swing of the pendulum in the minds of men as

much as did the absolute State. Almost the first act of Pius VII. after his return to Rome
in 1814, was the revival of the Society of Jesus, which had been after long agony in 1773
dissolved by the papacy itself. 'Altar and throne' became the watchword of an ardent
attempt at