SOURCE: An introduction to Henry James, Senior: A Selection of His Writings, American Library Association, 1974, pp. 3-29.

In the following essay, Gunn provides an overview of James's life and philosophy, discussing his theology, his relationship to prevailing nineteenth-century views, and his influences on his sons William and Henry.

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On May 30, 1850, Edwards Amasa Park of Andover Theological Seminary preached an important sermon in Boston's Brattle Street Meeting House before the Convention of the Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts on "The Theology of the Intellect and That of the Feelings." Though his subject may have been suggested to him two years before when his theological colleague from Hartford, the more famous Horace Bushneil, made use of a similar distinction in an address also delivered at Andover on the relation between "Dogma and Spirit," Park's title reflected an opposition which, in the American tradition, had found its chief exponent a century earlier...