THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
merits " in theology, the New England theology was essentially defensive, conservative, immovably Calvinistic. Edwards had no thought of innovation. He did innovate, but it was by the internal necessity of his own thinking, a fact which was largely hidden from himself. To the end, the leaders in general supposed themselves to be saying substantially what had been said, only in better ways, with the removal of this or that error, supposed in every case to be incidental rather than central and vital. And at the end the main features of the Calvinistic view of the world, the sovereignty of God, determinism, and human helplessness, remained unaffected so as to give to the whole system, in the eyes of a world where humanity had begun to find itself, an air of abstractness and unreality which could not be suited to the actual needs of men. The world had passed on into another atmosphere in the three hundred years since Calvin's death, and his great doctrines seemed to have no reality to men now living. (2) But the difficulty was more specific than this. The new philosophy of the day was evolutionistic. Professor Park had done his best to be just to Darwin, but it may be said that the Darwinian idea never once entered his mind, was never comprehended by him. Evolution magnifies law, it rejects miracles. It consequently rejects the idea of a miraculous revelation of religion from God to man. It explains even the Bible as a development. Hence it is the foe of authority in the sphere of religion, and acknowledges only such an authority as the evident truth has, however discovered and in whatever department of human thought. New England theology did nothing essential to meet this condition. It yielded the point of verbal inspiration, it admitted a modified development in the Old Testament, it retired within the very citadel of theology by concentrating the inspiration of the Bible upon its religious message alone; but it did not consider the facts about the Biblical miracles, it contented itself with an untenable apology, and it did not once raise the question of any such necessity of revelation as it had always assumed. With all this it preserved the authority of the Bible, and when it was faced, as in the Unitarian controversy, with a demand for a rationale or a surrender of its doctrine, it took shelter behind this authority, which the age no longer acknowledged, and refused a rationale. A new conception of revelation was what the new age demanded; and when New England theology showed itself unable even to comprehend the question, it pronounced its own sentence. (3) And then the system, by the exigencies of a rational defense of the several doctrines, which it was not willing to modify, had depotentiated the old system which it sought to replace, and had become at many points lean and meager. Its Trinity was a Trinity of " distinctions " which lent itself little to the worship of the Church which had long been addressed to " the Father of an infinite majesty, his adorable, true, and only Son, also the Holy Ghost." Its Christ was too entirely a God and not a man in any conceivable way. Even its work of atonement had become so abstract as to seem superfluous, and yet it was not
recognized as superfluous. In no place was it full, warm, living, palpitating with life, except in its purely ethical and psychological portions, where it dealt at first hand with accessible facts. No wonder that men educated by it, who felt the breath of the new life of the new age, accepted its silent lesson, more powerful than its open one, rejected what it had minified, and took its ethics for its true message, thus superseding it. It is so full of the most valuable instruction on every point that no man can master it without becoming a theologian; and no man can become a theologian in this day, even by its help, without finally rejecting it for something simpler, more in touch with realities, and sounder in its rational processes.
Frank Hugh Foster.
Bibliography: The school should be studied in the Works of its several great leaders, Hopkins, the two Edwards, Bellamy, Emmons, Woods, Dwight, etc., and in their numerous monographs. There has been no general genetic history of the school until that of the present writer, A Genetic History of the New England Theology, Chicago, 1907; but the Bibliolheca Sacra is full of valuable articles upon it, and Professor Park wrote Memoirs of Hopkins (Boston, 1852) and Emmons (1861) of the first rank. A Life of Edwards is promised by Rev. Wm. E. Park, which will be of great value. The reader should also consult the literature under the articles on the men named in the text; G. P. Fisher, Discussions in History and Theology, New York, 1880; G. N. Boardman, A Hist, of New England Theology, ib., 1899; W. Walker, Ten New England Leaders, ib., 1901; H. G. Goddard, Studies in New England Transcendentalism, ib., 1907; I. W. Riley, American Philosophy; the early Schools, ib., 1907.
NEW ICARIA. See Communism, II., 7.