THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
that the freedom necessary to a moral system, unchecked by influences which may be inconsistent with the highest perfection of that system, may lead to that degree of sin which is actually found in the world. " Taylorism " when finally developed might be defined as an attempt, while maintaining the principal doctrines of Calvinism, including the previous certainty of every moral act, to introduce a philosophy into the explanation and defense of the system which should be true to the facts of human consciousness. Its prominent feature, which could never be hid and seemed to most men utterly inconsistent with Calvinism, was the freedom of the will, which was now made for the first time in New England the real working theory of theology and practise. It therefore led to powerful attacks upon the whole New England school, particularly from Princeton, and was the great theological reason for the disruption of the Presbyterian Church in 1838.
Later writers connected more or less intimately with the Divinity School of Yale University carried on the work of theological development in more or less accord with the prevailing line of New England thought. Among these one of the most important was Horace Bushnell(q.v.). In his God
Smith, and inChrist (New York> 1849) he dwelt Finney. uPon the defects of human language and forms of thought, and hence maintained a great degree of reticence as to the nature of the immanent Trinity and of the divinity of Christ, while affirming both. He did much to save the doctrine of Christ's real, consubstantial humanity from the reaction of orthodoxy against Unitarianism by which it might have been lost. He emphasized the method of nurture in religious training whereby a " child was to grow up as a Christian and never know himself as being otherwise." His work upon Nature and the Supernatural (1858) did much to establish the realm of the supernatural as the realm where free will prevails. But perhaps his greatest work was in his contribution to the doctrine of the atonement, where, while neglecting the objective side of it, and formally denying the governmental theory, the substance of which he held, he emphasized as had never been done in theological history the direct work of Christ in saving men, his loving service by which he moves their souls toward holiness. George Park Fisher (q.v.), the great master in church history, was also an active and strong apologist. But he and Samuel Harris, while thoroughly loyal in their own persons to the New England school, had come to base their reasonings and general treatment of the subject so entirely upon foreign, and chiefly German, scholarship, that they constitute the transition from this school to later forms of theology. Among the New School Presbyterians, Henry Boynton Smith (q.v.) was a loyal son of New England, whom extensive studies abroad and wide theological scholarship did not carry out of the precincts of the school. He belonged to the conservative side, having studied with Woods at Andover, and remained to the end a determinist in his doctrine of the will. His effort to form a " Christocentric " theology, and thus promote the development, resulted in little more than a nominal embodiment of this idea. The Oberlin
theologians were very productive, especially in the early years of the institution (1833 sqq.). Charles Grandison Finney (q.v.) had early come to the adoption of the great New England principles in a substantially original manner. In its matured form, his theology was substantially Taylorism. An early discussion in Oberlin upon sanctification and the possibility of perfect holiness in this life led to the formulation of a principle which was long current in Oberlin, to which the name of " the simplicity of moral action " was given. Supposing that there could be at any instant but one moral choice of the will, it was affirmed that that single and indivisible moral act must be either wholly sinful or entirely holy. And, since the will is free, the possibility of an uninterrupted series of perfectly holy choices, and hence of perfect holiness, must be maintained. James Harris Fairchild (q.v.) closed the line of New England theologians at Oberlin with Elements of Theology (1892), which was the summing-up of the previous growth, stated with great simplicity and clearness, a moderate and sensible working theology for the average minister.
The New England system received its fullest, most comprehensive, and most representative expression in the lectures of Professor Edwards Amasa Park (q.v.). There is scarcely a great
_ _„ . thought, and certainly no great con- 3. Edwards , ., °. ' ,, .J P
Amasa tnbution to the growing system in any
Park. °f k^ predecessors, which he did not take up and give its due place and influence in his own theology. He was of that line of theological descent which, beginning with Edwards, flowed through Hopkins, Emmons, and Woods; but he was greatly modified by Taylor, and took up, with one great and fatal exception, all of the results of his study into his own thought. From his system as a point of view the meaning of the whole development becomes plain. As thus constituting the key to the whole school and embracing it all, Park's theology may be considered the culmination of the school. It is, first of all, a " system," a structure in which course is built upon course till all is complete. Adopting the Scotch philosophy, Park began with the doctrine of causation and built upon this the argument for the existence of God. He thus obtains, not a perfect conception of God, but an elemental idea, upon which the rest of the argument may be founded. He then proceeds to the proof of the benevolence of God, and here he discusses the prevention of sin, and, as a lemma to this argument, the immortality of the soul. His argument here is generally the later position of Taylor, that perhaps God can not consistently prevent sin in the best moral system. He did not follow Taylor into indeterminism, but remained more nearly with Edwards, accepting, however, Taylor's discriminations in respect to the moral government of God. Park then proceeds to the positive arguments for the benevolence of God, the greatest of which is man's moral nature, which makes it certain that God can not occupy a lower level than we. The structure of his argument never flinches, and never advances propositions for which a preparation has not been made before. The fact