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 restoration
of all of that which millions had given their lives
to do away. All too easily, one who writes in
sympathy with that which is conventionally called