THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
SPELLMEYER, HENRY: Methodist Episcopal bishop; b. in Xew York City Nov. 25, 1847 He was educated at Xew York University (A.B., 1866) and Union Theological Seminary (graduated, 1869). For thirty-five years he held various pastorates of his denomination in and around Newark, N. J., and in 1904 was elected bishop.
SPENCE, JAMES: Synod of United Original Seceders; b. at Evie (20 m. e. of Kirkwall), Orkney Islands, May 22, 1845. He was educated at the University of Aberdeen, and in theology in the Original Secession Hall, Glasgow, and New College, Edinburgh; became minister of the Original Secession church at Auchinleck, Ayrshire, 1870, and so remains. In 1S76 he was appointed professor of systematic theology in the divinity hall of his communion in Glasgow, and was transferred to his present chair of Biblical criticism, 1895.
SPENCE- JONES, HENRY DONALD MAURICE:
Church of England; b. at London Jan. 14, 1836. He was educated at Corpus Christi, Cambridge (B.A., 1864), and was ordered deacon in 1865 and ordained priest in the following year. He was professor of English literature and lecturer in Hebrew at St. David's College, Lampeter, Wales (1865-70); rector of St. Mary-de-Crypt with All Saints and St. Owen, Gloucester (1870-77); and principal of Gloucester Theological College (1875-77) ; vicar and rural dean of St. Pancras, London (1877-86), and since 1886 has been dean of Gloucester of which he had been honorary canon since 1875. He was select preacher at Cambridge in 1883, 1887, 1901, and 1905, and at Oxford in 1892 and 1903. In 1906 he was elected professor of ancient history in the Royal Academy. In theology he is a moderate evangelical. He has contributed the volumes on I Samuel and the Pastoral Epistles to Bishop Ellicott's Commentary (2 vols., London, 1880-84), and on Acts (in collaboration with J. S. Howson) to Schaff's Popular Commentary on the New Testament (New York, 1880). He also edited The Pulpit Commentary (48 vols., London, 1880-97) in collaboration with J. S. Exell, to which he himself contributed the section on Luke (2 vols., 1889), and edited and translated the Didache (1885). As independent works he has written Dreamland and History: The Story of the Norman Dukes (London, 1891); Cloister Life in the Days of Cceur de Lion (1892); Gloucester Cathedral (1897); The Church of England (4 vols., 1897-98) ; The White Robe of Churches of the Eleventh Century; Pages from the Story of Gloucester Cathedral (1900); The History of the English Church (1900); Life and Work of the Redeemer (1901); Early Christianity and Paganism: A History, A.D. 64-320 (1902); The Golden Age of the Church: Studies in the Fourth Century (1906); and The Early Christians in Rome (1910).
SPENCER, HERBERT: Philosopher; b. in Derby, England, Apr. 27, 1820; d. in Brighton Dec. 8, 1903. He was a son of William George and Harriet Holmes Spencer. His father was a schoolmaster and private teacher. His early education was unacademic, partly at home, partly under an uncle. After trials at engineering (1837^6), and journalism (an economist newspaper, 1848-53), he became
contributor to various reviews. He was an early convert to the doctrine of development already formulated by Lamarck. In 1855, four years before the appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species, he published Principles of Psychology, based on the principles of evolution. Evolution is defined as a continuous change from indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to definite, coherent heterogeneity of structure and function, through successive differentiations and integrations. By a law of the persistence of force, the entire universe, inorganic, organic, and superorganic, becomes both more specialized and complex and at the same time more organic and unified. Three laws are appealed to: homogeneity tends to heterogeneity; heterogeneity tends to integration and equilibrium; the equilibrium reached is unstable and tends to dissolution. In his enlarged Principles of Psychology (London, 1870-72) he treats consciousness from a genetic point of view as analogous to developing biological organisms. Certain tendencies of mental reaction are traced to racial heredity and hence the explanation of what appear to be innate or intuitive ideas. Society is an organism and social institutions are the product of development with two opposing tendencies— the State and the individual; with the individual lies the initiative, only he must be prevented from aggressive self-assertion (Principles of Sociology, 1877). In the field of ethics development is also the rule. The moral sense is traced to the experience of the race; conscience originates in social customs, either permissive or restrictive; the moral life is an equilibrium between the claims of altruism and egoism. Pleasure is indeed the summum bonum, but it must be defined by such an ideal adjustment to environment that moral conduct will be seen to be a perfectly natural functioning; this, however, is a condition only possible in a future and final stage of social development when the sense of duty shall wholly disappear (Data of Ethics, 1879; Justice, ib. 1891). His attitude toward ultimate reality is twofold: intellectually, a modified agnosticism; religiously, a feeling of mystery and awe. Agnosticism springs from the irreconcilable contradictions in our assertions concerning the Absolute, and is partly resolved by the necessary affirmations of an " Infinite and Eternal Energy, from Which all things proceed." Even if religions have a history, they are reducible to a sense of awe which is awakened by the ultimate mystery of the universe (cf. First Principles, 1862, rev. ed., 1867). The chief significance of Spencer is found in two directions: first, his explanation of consciousness and all human institutions by reference to a law of functional development; secondly, while he has been denounced as a materialist, yet many parts of his writings are charged with postulates and implications which require only further elucidation to disclose their essential theism. His relations with America, which he visited and where he had a large circle of readers, were from the first reciprocally cordial. C. A. Beckwith.
Bibliography. Spencer's System of Synthetic Philosophy appeared in 10 vols., London, 1860-97, 15 vols., ib. and New York, 1900, new uniform ed. of his Works, 18 vols., New York, 1910. For his life consult: H. Spencer, An Autobiography, 2 vols., London and New York, 1904;