From the Death of Dr. Archibald Alexander, 1851, to the Commencement of the Civil War, 1861
During these years Dr. Hodge was active in the pubHc counsels of the church. He became a member of the Board of Foreign Missions in 1846; and in 1868 he was elected President of that Board to succeed Dr. Spring, and acted as such until the reconstruction of the Boards, consequent upon the Reunion of the Presbyterian Church in 1870. Dr. Ellinwood writes, “We regard your father as one of the very ablest and most earnest supporters of the cause of Foreign Missions we ever had in the Presbyterian Church.” He preached the sermon before the Board in the Church on yET. TRUSTEE OF PRINCETON COLLEGE. 385
University Place on Sabbath evening, May 7th, 1848, on Matt. 28: 19, 20, on “the teaching office of the Church.” It was afterwards pubHshed in the Report of that year, and was considered as a signal exposition of the fundamental principles on which Christian missions should be conducted. He was a member of the Board of Domestic Missions from about 1840 to 1870.
He also acted as a member of the Board of Education, from 1 86 1, and as President of it from 1862 to the Reconstruction of the Board consequent on Reunion. He was made one of the Vice-Presidents of the Presbyterian Historical Society in May 1852, and a Trustee of Princeton College in the place of the Rev. Dr. Samuel Miller, deceased in 1850.
TRUSTEE OF PRINCETON COLLEGE.
His work as a Trustee in the College, often taxed all the energies of his heart and will. Professor Lyman H. Atwater, D.D., writes of Dr. Hodge that “he took a foremost rank in the Board from the first, and wielded a commanding influence in its proceedings. His efforts were especially directed to filling vacancies in the professors’ chairs with able incumbents and to increasing the corps of instructors as rapidly as funds for the purpose could be procured, and in maintaining a due proportion in the relative strength of the different departments, especially in maintaining the importance of the languages and the humanities in competition with the pressure of the physical sciences.”. His Co-trustee, Dr. Wm. M. Paxton writes, “Consideringthe fact of Dr. Hodge’s antecedents and associations, it is no wonder, that as a Trustee of the College for the long period of twenty-seven years, he should feel his whole life bound up in the interests of that institution. During the last twelve years, it has been my privilege to be associated with him a» a member of that Board, and it was a pleasure to observe the fatherly — I might perhaps say the Patriarchal — interest
386 TR us TEE OF PR IN(^E TON COL L E GE. [ 1 850.
he manifested in everything connected with the prosperity of the College. He understood its history, the questions of policy connected with its management, its dangers and the conditions of its prosperity as the younger members of the Board could not. Hence he was always listened to with the profoundcst attention, and his judgment in many cases of difficulty had great weight in deciding the action of the Board. There were two points about which he’ manifested special solicitude. The ist xvas the maintenance of the religious character of the College. It was founded for religious purposes. It was sustained by the prayers, activities and contributions of God’s people as an institution for Christian education, and especially for the training of young men for the Christian Ministry. It has enjoyed throughout its history the blessing of God, in numerous and powerful revivals, and in the character and influence of the ministers and devout laymen educated in her halls. Dr. Hodge frequently referred to these facts and insisted that they never should be lost sight of in the settlement of any question of policy. He urged it upon the Board that they should make the religious character of the College the first great aim of its admmistration.
“He appeared to apprehend as a definite possibility the operation of causes by which this seat of learning might be perverted from the purpose to which it had been consecrated by so many prayers.
“2d. The other point which interested the mind of Dr. Hodge was the maintenance of a high grade of scholarship in the College. He had a dread of a little as well as of an unsanctified learning. The completion of his own education in Germany furnished him with the standard of the higher culture attained in the European universities. Hence he was anxious to advance prudently, but as rapidly as fjossible the standard of learning in our colleges as a preparation for all the diversified enterprises of American life.
“But he especially desired to provide a remedy for the
^T. 53.] METHODS OF TEACHING. ni
deficient classical culture, which has hitherto been so painfully prevalent among the graduates of our Colleges, who seek to enter the learned professions. His own experience as a theological professor had discovered to him how many of the candidates for our ministry have great difficulty in reading the Greek of the New Testament and the simple Latin of Turretine’s Institutes. I am glad to be able to express his views upon this subject, because it is one of the vital points connected with our present educational systems. If the furor for scientific courses and the study of the modern languages is to displace the study of the classics then we must look for a great change in the mental culture of the coming age. The purpose of education is to develop mental power. I believe that the experience of the past has shown that the best mental development is attained by the study of the classics and mathematics. Each of these studies has its peculiar influence, and it requires the balance of the two to produce the kind of development and culture in which grace, strength and efficiency are conjoined. We ought not to be too ready to forsake the methods of our fathers, for ’ there were giants in those days.’”
METHODS OF TEACHING.
During these years Dr. Hodge matured his methods of instruction. His exegetical exercises with the Junior classes continued throughout his life to be very much what they were before his change of professorship. Through successive years he accomplished the exposition of all the Pauline Epistles, except those to Timothy and Titus, but going most frequently over the doctrinal portions of Romans, i. Corinthians, Galatians and Ephesians. An account of the main characteristics of his exegetical teaching will be given in a subsequent chapter by one of his ablest and most accomplished pupils. At the period at which the present chapter commences, his theological lectures were fully written out, and were habitually read by him in a quiet manner. From
388 METHODS OF TEACHING. [1S53.
year to year they were rewritten, being thoroughly recast, and much enriched and extended, but his method of teaching for many years continued unchanged. The lecture was delivered on a topic on one day, and at another within the same week, the entire hour was devoted to his matchless cross-examination. He soon gave up in despair, his former most excellent method of requiring all to make up systems of theology for themselves in the form of written answers to questions covering the entire course, because by this time each student was possessed of a written copy of the lectures before they were read, and copied to the professor’s questions answers in his own words. Hence often the method became irksome alike to him and to his classes, for they sat reading with their eyes for the most part the same sentences they heard read from the desk. He often proposed to print his lectures that he might use them as a text-book, but was restrained by the counsel of his most trusted advisers among the Directors of the Seminary, who feared that if these lectures were given to the public, they would in ceasing to be the peculiar attribute of this Seminary, cease also to attract students to its classes. But in his last years, when his “Systematic Theology” was the common property of the Church, and it was made the text-book in Princeton, as it was also in several other theological schools, he felt as if set free, and his power as a teacher greatly increased. His great skill as a teacher found its fullest play in the exercise of his gift for questioning, and by that means of compelling the student to think, and to refute himself if wrong, or to develop his own thought into completeness if right. He always maintained that the true method of teaching didactic theology, involves the use of the text-book, the living teacher, practice in writing, and an active drill in verbal questions and debates.
The following paper originating from some of his most intelligent students, and his own letter in response to a request to him by the Rev. Wm. S. Plumer, D.D., for suggestions
MT. 55.] METHODS OF TEACHING. 389
as to the method of conducting the instruction of classes in his branch, will explain themselves in the light of what I have just said.
Princeton Theol. Sem., Feb. 19, 1853.
Prof. Charles Hodge.
Dear Sir: — The dififerent classes of the Seminary, in meetings held during the present week, resolved to request of you a Syllabus of your Lectures on Theology, to be printed for the use of the students; and appointed committees to convey to you their request. We, the members of those committees, would respectfully submit the following as some of the reasons suggested as giving urgency and propriety to such requests.
1. From the amount of matter and the condensed form of your lectures, notes taken in the class-room afford a very inadequate and unsatisfactory guide in the prosecution of our studies in theology. Most of your students, satisfied of this, have been constrained to resort to the use of manuscript copies of your lectures.
2. These manuscript copies present to our minds several objectionable features. Copied by students, the manual labor is injurious to health and eyesight, and consumes important time that should be given to study and investigation. Transcribed by copyists, the expense places them beyond the reach of the great majority of the students. Besides, they are the occasion of various abuses. Professing to be exact copies, they lead to the neglect of investigation and of the study of collateral works, so important in itself and so often recommended by our Professor. Carried by students to different parts of the country, they tend, by their many errors, to create misapprehension as to the doctrines taught in this Seminary, a result which we, in common with our Professors, greatly deprecate.
3. A printed Syllabus, besides promoting original research and compelling more close and vigorous study, seems to us the proper corrective of such evils. Moreover, printed and not published, it can scarcely seem liable to objection, as the premature publication of a System of Theology; but even this objection seems to be met by the consideration that it would avert the danger of a surreptitious publication from imperfect copies already so widely circulated.
Such, sir, are some of the reasons which have induced this expression of a desire presented now with entire unanimity, and (we feel assured) entertained for years by the students and graduates of the Seminary.
Hoping that this communication may not fail of its end, and trust-
290 METHODS OF TEACHING. [1854*
ing that in presenting it we may not appear presumptuous, or as exceeding the propriety of our position, We remain, with very great respect.
Truly yours,
John E. Davidson,
James M. Platt — ist Class.
Thomas R. Markham,
E, D. JuNKiN — 2d Class.
E. Kempshall,
P. A. Studdiford — 3rf Class.
DR. HODGE TO REV. WM. S. PLUMER, D. D.
Princeton, N. J., July 25, 1854, ‘” Rev. and Dear Brother: — I sincerely rejoice that Providence has opened for you a field of labor so congenial to your tastes, and which promises so much for your future usefulness and comfort.
I fear I shall not be able to make any suggestions such as you refer to in your letter of the 20th inst., which will be of much value to you. It may be the best thing I can do simply to recite my experience, or the course which I pursued, when called to teach theology.
For some years after I was assigned to the theological chair. Dr. Alexander continued to give his lectures, and I was simply the catechist. That is, I catechised the class on the several subjects without reference to the Doctor’s lectures. He was often lecturing on one subject while I was examining upon another. The two courses of instruction were therefore independent of each other.
The method I adopted in preparing for these exercises was to read everything I could command on the subject in hand, making notes of each author. From these notes I prepared a logical analysis of the topic under consideration, and that analysis was my guide in examining the class. Of course all such examinations called for explanations and remarks as we went along.
“When the whole department was thrown upon me I endeavored to unite the advantages of the three methods of lectures, catechetical examination ind writing. I lectured regularly on the whole course, spent the next day of meeting the class in questioning them on the subject of the preceding lecture, and gave out a list of questions in writing, to which I urged them to write answers in extenso. I still think this a good plan, if it could be carried out as it was here for several years. The practical difficulties which have gradually accumulated are these, which very much impair its value:
First, The students taking notes of the lectures have come, in a
^T. 56.] METHODS OF TEACHING. 39 1
succession of years, to have almost complete copies of them. I am subjected, therefore, to the embarrassment of reading lectures, copies of which many members of the class hold in their hands. This I find a great bore. How the difficulty is to be avoided I do not know. It is the same in other Seminaries,
Secondly, The students, instead of writing answers to the questions given to them, after studying and reflecting for themselves, in most cases simply transcribe the copies of the lectures which are handed down to them by the preceding classes.
The result is that the interest in the lectures and in the written exercise has greatly decreased, while that in the oral questioning remains. For several years no one has come to the lecture who could help it; whereas the room is commonly crowded at the oral examinations. I am at a loss how to get over this difficulty.
The two defects of my system of instruction of which I am most sensible are, first, that the students are not rendered familiar with proof texts, so as to quote and recite them readily when called upon. I believe they have a real Scriptural foundation for their faith, but this they get rather by reading whole books of Scripture in their connection than by getting proof texts by heart.
The second deficiency I had in mind is the lack of information as to theological works. I frequently lecture on a subject, question the class, and give out written questions and mention no author whatever. It does not, somehow, come in my way, and when done, it is done of set purpose.
Your question as to what books I have found most useful I really know not how to answer. I have read, generally, everything I could on each topic, orthodox and heterodox, and got what good 1 could from each. Turretine’s Institutes I regard as incomparably the best book as a whole on systematic theology, but on the subjects of the attributes of God, Trinity, sin, atonement, grace, etc., the books, you know, are endless, and I have no such estimate of particular treatises as to lead me to point them out as especially important. At least, you need nothing of the kind from me.
With sincere desire for your usefulness, success and happiness, I am, very truly, your friend,
Charles Hodge.
HIS SECOND MARRIAGE. On the eighth of July, 1852, he contracted his second marriage with Mrs. Mary Hunter Stockton, widow of the late Lieutenant Samuel Witham Stockton, of the United
392 HIS SECOND MARRIAGE. [1S52,
States Navy, and sister of Major General David Hunter and of Dr. Lewis B. Hunter, of the United States Army and Navy. This noble Christian lady supported and brightened all his later life, and assiduously attended him with her tender ministrations until his eyes closed in death. She has been an admirable mother to his children, and head of his household, uniting the family and completing the education and training of its younger members in a manner their own mother would not have desired to excel. She survived him for twenty months, presiding in his place in the large family circle, preserving with us the traditions and associations sacred to his memory, the object of the affection and gratitude of all their children. Left by his death as a stricken deer, she had no desire to live. Through much pain, yet with unwavering faith, she went to rejoin him on the early morning of February 28th, 1880.
On the occasion of their marriage Dr. Hodge wrote to his dearest friend. Bishop Johns:
DR. HODGE TO BISHOP JOHNS.
Princeton, August 27, 1852.
My Dear yohns: — You would not have heard of my marriage from others before hearing of it from me had I known where to address you. It was only a month or two before the event that I could bring myself to inform my own children of my purpose. Other friends I intended to inform afterwards. I do not know that you remember Mary Hunter, the constant companion of Caroline Bayard (now Mrs. Dod). I have known her by sight since she was fifteen years old. For the last six or seven years she was a sister to Sarah, and therefore to me. She was familiarly known and greatly loved by all my children, who were almost as much at home in her house as in my own. She has come into my family as an old friend, every heart already her own, and we all feel her presence as a token and assurance ot God’s favor.
I told her what kind of a man you were, and she said, “Well, as I don’t know him, I can’t love him desperately yet; as soon as I see him I’ll do my best.” Her best is very good, indeed; so you may be sure of an affectionate greeting from her, as well as from your old friend, when you pay your promised visit. Dear John, do not let that
^T. 54.] CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS BROTHER. -T^^^i
visit be only for a day. Old friendship deserves more than that, and remember I spent ten days with you in Richmond as meek as a mouse, never answering to all your sharp things out of deference to your wife. It will greatly add to our pleasure if Mrs. Johns will come with you, and the girls also. Hope deferred, &c.
I have already made the acquaintance of Mr. Peterkin, and have heard him preach. He has made an exceedingly pleasant impression on his church and on the community. Every one speaks well of him, and his people seem disposed to receive him with confidence and affection. There are some High-church persons among them who think he is below the mark in some things; but even they speak highly of him as a man and preacher.
Your affectionate friend,
Charles Hodge.
CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS BROTHER.
During these years he continued to keep up his weekly correspondence with his brother. In the latter years of this period, from about 1856, his letters began sensibly to decrease in frequency and length, until some years before the death of his brother, in February, 1873, they had ceased to be regular, and became occasional. The cause of this was, in part, increasing infirmity, resulting from advancing age on both sides, but especially the increasing defect of his brother’s vision, which resulted in blindness so far entire as to prevent all reading or writing more than ten years before his decease. The following are given as specimens of this correspondence and of his political opinions:
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER.
Princeton, July 8, 1850. My Dear Brother: — j you are a Fillmore man. That is better than going for Buchanan. I am for Fremont. Not for the man, but for the platform. I would not vote for my father if he endorsed the Cincinnati resolutions; and Fillmore has committed himself to worse nullification than South Carolina ever dreamt of. He has drawn a broader line between the North and South than was ever drawn before, and exalted the 300,000 slave-holders into an equivalent of the 20,000,000 of the free men, entitled to an equal share in the government of the country. I think the great danger to the
394 LOUIS NAPOLEON AND KOSSUTH. [1851.
country and to the cause of justice and good government is from the divisions and concessions of the North. If Ohio had done to Kentucky what Missouri has done to Kansas, the South would have risen as one man and redressed the grievance. And if the North had risen as one man and told the South that Kansas should have justice, we should have had no difficulty.
Your brother, C. H.
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER.
Princeton, Dec. 29, 1851. My Dear Brother: — My view of the character of Louis Napoleon is not altered by recent events. He is a name and an instrument which able military men use for their own aggrandizement. The army in all ages has an esprit du corps which makes them a distinct class from the people, and when they are addressed as the elite of the nation, and invited by their official head to become the ruling power, it is rare indeed that they refuse, France seems to me like a great bear led about by a soldier and ridden by a monkey, — if it be not wrong to speak thus of rulers. What is to come of all this God only knows. The choice for Europe just now seems to be military despotism or socialistic anarchy, and, therefore, it is not wonderful that so many are willing to choose the former. Hungary seems to present the only prospect of rational liberty, because the Hungarians are a religious people, and their leaders are professed Christians. I am filled with admiration for Kossuth, and cannot but hope that God means him to be a great instrument for good. So far from regretting his coming to this country, I think his visit to England and America is likely to prove a turning point in the history of the world. He appears to be chosen and fitted to impress certain truths, before indistinctly recognized, as living principles in the minds of the people, which must hereafter control public policy. I think his principle of non-intervention, and the right of all nations to prevent the violation of that principle, is so obviously true, and so beneficent, that it will command universal consent. In our case the question is not as to our right to intervene to prevent the aggression of Russia; nor as to our duty to do so if we can do it effectively, but simply as to our power. A protest would do little, a war not much more. We are too far off”. But if by union with other nations we could so intervene as to make our intervention effectual, then I think the path, both of policy and duty, would be plain.
You affectionate brother, C. H.
^T. 54.] KOSSUTH, AND LOUIS NArOLEON. 395
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER.
Princeton, Feb. 16, 1852.
My Dear Brother: — i feel provoked at the way Z
talks of Kossuth. It is just as absurd and arrogant to call him a humbug, as it would be to call Newton an idiot, or Raphael a dauber.
Z should remember other men have eyes and ears and sense as
well as he. Kossuth is beyond question one of the greatest men of the age, whatever may be thought of his history or of his principles. And as to his principles, I do not believe there is one good and sensible man in a hundred who doubts their soundness. The great mistake is that people do not distinguish between the principles themselves and their application. It may be very unwise for us as a nation to interfere as he would have us do, but the right and duty to interfere in certain cases, when it can be done effectually and safely, is just as plain as that it is the right and duty of one man to interfere to prevent another man murdering his neighbor. There is in the February number of Dr. Van Rensselaer’s “Preshyteriati Magazine an article on ‘Kossuth and his Mission” which I think takes the right ground.
As to Louis Napoleon, I am not prophet enough to say what is to happen. He has on his side four of the six classes into which the French population is divided: — the army, the priesthood, the peasantry (who are governed by the priesthood), and the capitalists or business men. These constitute the vast majority of the people, and by the instinct of self-preservation cling to despotism as the necessary condition of order. The only class against him is that of professional men (lawyers, doctors, politicians) and the mechanics or working men of the towns. It is so clear to me that liberty can exist only on the foundation of intelligence and religion, that I have no hope for France, where the intelligent part of the population have no religion and the religious part no intelligence. It seems, however, almost incredible that such a nation can submit to be so insulted, abused, and down-trodden by such a pretender as Louis Napoleon.
Your brother,
Charles Hodge,
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER.
Princeton, April 14, 1852.
My Dear Brother: — Six weeks does indeed seem a long period of
non-intercourse between you and me. It did not use to be so. But
circumstances, habits, and powers alter even when, as doubtless is
true in our case, the affections remain unchanged. It is painful, how-
396 DANCING AND CARD-PLAYING.. [1854.
ever, that we should thus drift asunder as we grow older. I have been rejoiced several times to hear that you were and looked better than usual this winter, notwithstanding its length and severity.
You see from the papers that Senator Choate has been making a great speech in Trenton on the India rubber case. James Alexander told me that he met Chief Justice Green of Trenton the other day, who told him that Choate was a great Princeton man — that he thought the Princeton Review the greatest quarterly review in the country!!; and Princeton the great conservative influence, &c., &c. What do you think of that? I did not know that our rays penetrated so far into the hyperborean regions.
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER.
Princeton, March 15, 1854.
My Dear Brother: — On Sunday evening I went to Church for the first time in some months.* When near home I struck my foot against a stone and fell with great force on my lame limb. The jar was considerable, and has made the limb tender and painful, very much as it used to be. I rode out yesterday, but found the motion gave me the same kind of pain I used to suffer. I cannot now walk about the house without occasioning more pain than walking two miles occasioned before the fall. I am afraid the socket of the hip joint received a concussion which has made it irritable, though the blow and bruise were presumably below the knee.
I feel somewhat concerned lest this accident may throw me back to my former state of lameness, though I hope it may be only a temporary inconvenience. I am, however, for the present as lame as I was in ’43. I propose keeping as quiet as possible for a while, and to use cold water and rubbing. Last night I pushed the hydropathic system to the extent of wrapping my limb in a wet towel and then in flannel. It did no harm that I could perceive. It made the limb red, the pores of the skin seemed dilated and raised, and a little rubbing was more effective than a good deal before.
I shall be really sorry to be again laid up. I trust this may not be. Dr. Duff has again disappointed us. He is not to come for a month. This makes it doubtful whether we shall see him at all.
DANCING AND CARD-PLAYING.
An old pupil, the Rev. Wm. C ., had consulted him
on a case of discipline likely to come up on appeal to the
* Sabbath morning and afternoon he worshipped in the Seminary, Chapel and Oratory.
^T. 55] DANCING AND CARD PLAYING. 397
General Assembly, involving the question of dancing and worldly amusements. As his former letter to the Rev. Mr.
C. had been misunderstood and hence misrepresented,
Dr. Hodge wrote again and very explicitly:
DR. HODGE TO REV. WM. C-Princeton, April ist, 1853.
Dear Sir: — * * * I very much regret that the matter is coming up. It is a very serious matter to transfer a local difficulty and agitation to the whole Church. If this controversy has done harm in your neighborhood, it will do harm in a much larger theatre. There are the same elements of disagreement in the Assembly that exist in your Presbytery.
Again, it is very doubtful how the Assembly will decide. The question does not come up in the abstract, but in the concrete. It is not a principle to be decided, but a given case with all its circumstances. The Assembly is a very uncertain place for such discussions and decisions.
And once more, if I understand your letter, you are on very different ground from that which I meant to assume in my former letter to you, and from what would be sustained by the general sentiment of the Church in this part of the country. It is one thing to state general principles as to things indifferent and as to the power of the Church in reference to such matters, and a very different thing to decide upon the propriety or impropriety of indulging in such things. Dancing, card-playing and wine-drinking all belong to the same class. They are not in their essential nature sinful. But there may be a kind of dancing, a kind of card-playing and a kind of wine drinking in their nature evil; and when not evil in themselves it may be very wrong for professors of religion to indulge in them. They are all so associated with frivolity and worldliness that no minister or church member in this part of the country can countenance them in any form without injuring his influence and the cause of religion. I have never allowed my children to learn to dance, or to attend dances, or to be present where it was going on. I have directed them to leave the company and return home if it was unexpectedly introduced. But I understand that you have advocated the propriety of Church members dancing, and have even remained present where it was going on. This could not be done with impunity by any minister here any more than his playing cards or countenancing card-playing by his presence.
398 INFANTS OF NONCOMMUNICANTS. [1843.
I think, therefore, if the case comes up before the Assembly, however irregular or unwise may have been the action of the session, the decision will not be in accordance with your wishes.
I hope you will excuse my expressing myself so plainly on this subject, but as my name has been mixed up in this business, and my former letter to you quoted in reference to it, it is proper that you should understand exactly how I regard the whole subject.
Very sincerely your friend,
C. Hodge.
THE BAPTISM OF THE INFANT CHILDREN OF NON-PROFESSORS.
A fellow-citizen and friendly neighbor applied to him to baptize his children in a case in which neither parent was a communicating member of the church, at the time when the Rev. Benjamin H. Rice, D.D., was pastor of the congregation. He refused, and in the following letter fullystated his views of duty in such a case.
DR. HODGE TO MR. B-Princeton, N. J., April 4, 1843.
My Dear Sir: — Your request that I should baptize your children
presented a question of duty which I felt to be so important that I
have delayed longer than would otherwise have been excusable in
giving you an answer. On the one hand, the desire that you and
Mrs. B express, of having your children recognized as members
of the Christian Church, is not only natural but worthy of respect. On the other hand, the obligations which parents assume in presenting their children for baptism are of the most serious nature. From the nature of the case, the parent professes faith in Christ; he professes to believe all the doctrines which Christ taught, especially all those which are particularly brought to view in that ordinance — viz.: the fallen state of man, his need of pardon and sanctification, the suitableness and sufficiency of the provision made in the gospel through the merit and Spirit of Christ for our salvation, and the right which Christ has to our confidence and obedience. Besides this, it results from the nature of the ordinance in question that the parent not only professes his faith in Christ, but promises to live in obedience to all his commands. This is included in professing himself to be a Christian; and the Bible as well as our own reason teaches that all who partake of the ordinances of the Christian Church do thereby profess to be
^T. 45.] INFANTS OF NON-COMMUNICANTS. 399
Christians, just as those who offered a Jewish sacrifice in the temple professed the Jewish reHgion. While, therefore, the desire to have our children baptized is natural and proper, we ought to feel that the profession and promises that we of necessity make when we present them to God are so solemn and comprehensive that they cannot be properly made unless we are sincere in our faith, and determined, by the grace of God, to be faithful to our engagements. I make these remarks not only because I wish you to feel that you, as parents, would incur before God and his Church very serious responsibilities in having your children baptized, but also that no minister could, in this view of the case, conscientiously administer the ordinance unless the parents (or one of them) were prepared intelligently to make the profession and incur the responsibility which it necessarily involves.
What the minister is bound to consider as a profession entitling the parent to have his children baptized is, as you know, a question on which the ministers of our Church are much divided. I doubt not the majority take the same view of the case as Dr. Rice. I feel, however, that I am precluded by a previous consideration from the right of deciding that question for myself, or at least acting on that decision. I do not stand in the relation of pastor to this people; Dr. Rice does; he has been made the overseer of this flock; I have not. He, therefore, is responsible for the administration of the word and ordinances to this people, and other ministers have no right to interfere with his charge. I feel, therefore that I have no right to comply with your request. I am sure, therefore, you will readily excuse me, which you would do the more readily if you knew the pain it has given me to come to this decision.
I cannot conclude this letter without begging you and Mrs. B
not to let this matter rest here. The benefits and blessings connected with infant baptism are so great that no parent has the right to debar his children from them. We are bound to give our children to God in the way which He has appointed, and to secure for them the blessings of that covenant which He has formed with His people. We are therefore bound, as we desire the salvation of our children, to do whatever on our part is necessary to secure for them, according to the rules of His church, the great benefit of being devoted to God by the ordinance of baptism.
May I ask you to show this letter to Mrs. B, for whom I entertain the sincerest respect, that she may see that I decline a compliance with your request only from a sense of duty, and that I consider this a question which neither she nor you can safely allow to rest as it now is. Very sincerely your friend,
Charles Hodge.
400 COMMENTARIES AND ARTICLES. [1851-60.
COMMENTARIES.
In the early part of this decade, Dr. Hodge, together with Dr. Joseph Addison Alexander, formed a plan for the joint production of a critical Commentary of the whole New Testament, based on the Greek Text, in a series of volumes of an approximately uniform size.
Dr. Hodge published his Commentary on Ephesians in 1856, that on First Corinthians in 1857, and that on Second Corinthians in 1859.
ARTICLES IN THE PRINCETON REVIEW. Besides these volumes he wrote during this decade the following articles in the Pnnceton Review.
1852. The General Assembly.
1853. Idea of the Church. — The General Assembly. — Visibility of the Church.
1854. Beecher’s Great Conflict. — Dr. Schaff’s Apostolic Church. — The Church of England on Presbyterian Orders. — The Education Question. — The General Assembly.
1855. Memoir of Dr. Archibald Alexander. — Bishop M’llvaine on the Church. — Presbyterian Liturgies. — The General Assembly.
1856. The Church Review on the Permanency of the Apostolic Office. — The Princeton Review & Cousin’s Philosophy. — The General Assembly of 1856. — The Church, its Perpetuity.
1857. Free Agency. — The General Assembly. — The American Bible Society and its New Standard. — Inspiration.
1858. The Church. — Membership of Infants. — The General Assembly. — Adoption of the Confession of Faith. — The Revised Book of Discipline.
1859. The Unity of Mankind. — Demission of the Ministry. — The General Assembly. — Sunday Laws.
1860. What is Christianity? — The First and Second
Adam. — The General Assembly. — Presbyterianism.
^T. 53-62.] BOARD OF DOMESTIC MISSIONS. 401
This list of bare titles shows that he was now at the very summit of his life, making the most effective demonstration of his powers, and pouring forth the richest fruits of his labors as a student and thinker. The list is so rich in volume and variety that space is available only for a very cursory notice of those articles which possess special or most permanent significance.
I. The Articles on the annual General Assemblies contain matters of various and paramount interest. Dr. Hodge was himself a member of the Assemblies of 1854 in Buffalo and of 1860 in Rochester, and took a prominent part in the debates of both of them. He has left in these articles forcible expression of his opinion on the following among other subjects.
1. In the General Assembly of 1853, there were two questions debated as to the Board of Domestic Missions, [ci) The relation of the Board to the Presbyteries, and {I)) Whether the Board is only a Missionary and not also a Sustentation organization. Dr. Hodge maintained as to the first question, that the Board and not the Presbytery is to be judge in every case as to its own ability to grant the aid asked, and on the other hand the Presbytery and not the Board is the only judge in every case whether the particular church concerned deserves the aid sought. He also maintained as to the second o(yQ^lon that it is anti-scriptural, inexpedient, and contrary to historical fact to hold that the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions is only a missionary organization, that on all these grounds it is proved to be also the organ of the church for sustaining weak churches, and that practically it is the prerogative of the Presbytery and not of the Board to decide whether the particular weak church deserves any longer to receive aid or not.
THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF OUR CHURCH. BOARDS.
2. In the Assemblies of 1854 and 1860. There were great debates on the question whether the Boards as then or-
402 CONSTITUTIONALITY OF OUR “BOARVSr [1851-60.
ganized were consistent with the principles of New Testament Presbyterianism. Dr. Thornwell and others argued the negative, and Dr. Hodge and others the affirmative. The principles maintained on both sides are reported by Dr. Hodge in his Article on ‘Presbyterianism’ in the Princeton Review, July, 1860. “The theory, as propounded by Dr. Thornwell in his first speech, was understood to embrace the following principles: (l). That the form of government for the church, and its modes of action, are prescribed in the word of God, not merely as to its general principles, but in all its details, as completely as the system of faith or the moral law; and therefore everything for which we cannot produce a ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ is unscriptural and unlawful.
“(2). Consequently the church has no more right to create a new office, organ, or organization for the exercise of her prerogatives or the execution of her prescribed work, than she has to create a new article of faith or to add a new command to the Decalogue.
“(3). That the church cannot delegate her powers. She must exercise them herself, and through officers and organs prescribed in the Scriptures. She has no more right to act by a vicar, than Congress has to delegate its legislative power, or a Christian to pray by proxy.
“(4). That all executive, legislative and judicial power in the Church is in the hands of the clergy, that is, of presbyters, who have the same ordination and office, although differing in functions.
“5. That all power in the Church is joint and not several. That is, it can be exercised only by church courts, and not in any case by individual officers.
“In opposition to this general scheme the ‘Brother from Princeton ’ propounded the following general principles.
“(i). That all the attributes and prerogatives of the church arise from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and
^T. 53-62.] CONSTITUTIOAALITY OF OUR “BOARDS.” 403
consequently where He dwells, there are those attributes and prerogatives.
“(2). That as the Spirit dwells not in the clergy only, but in the people of God, all power is in se?tsu prima, in the people.
“(3). That in the exercise of these prerogatives, the church is to be governed by principles laid down in the word of God, which determine, within certain limits, her officers and modes of organization; but that beyond those prescribed principles and in fidelity to them, the church has a wide discretion in the choice of methods, organs and agencies.
“(4). That the fundamental principles of our Presbyterian system are Jirst, the parity of our clergy; second, the right of the people to a substantive part in the government of the church; third, the unity of the church, in such sense that a small part is subject to a larger, and a larger to the whole.”
If every thing relating to the government and action of the church is laid down in detail in the word of God, so that it is unlawful to employ any organs or agencies not therein enjoined; then the Boards are clearly unlawful; if it is not so, the having them or not having them is a matter of expediency.
Dr. Hodge proceeded to prove that their continuance was expedient, because they did not differ in principle, but only in the accident of numbers from Committees, and because they were in fact established, had worked well, and in some form not radically different from that in existence, they were practically essential to the work of a church so large and so circumstanced as our own. The Assembly of 1860, the last one in which the Northern and Southern Old School Church acted together, decided in favor of the ground advocated by Dr. Hodge, by a majority of 234 to 56.
404 COMMISSIONS. [1 854-5.
COMMISSIONS. 3. The question of the constitutional right of our ecclesiastical courts to appoint commissions to try and decide judicial cases was debated in the Assemblies of 1854 and 1855. It was argued against the right that no court, civil or ecclesiastical, can delegate its powers. Dr. Hodge argued earnestly for the right, because: “There is no delegation of powers involved in the appointment of a commission. A quorum of a Presbytery is the Presbytery; a quorum of a Synod is the Synod; and a quorum of the Assembly is the Assembly. In like manner, inasmuch as a commission must embrace at least a quorum of the appointing body, a commission is not of the nature of a committee with powers, but it is the appointing body itself, adjourned to meet at a certain time and place, for the transaction of a specific business — with the understanding expressed or implied that while the whole body may convene, certain members are required to attend. * * * It is well known that our ecclesiastical courts have often appointed such bodies, and that the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland annually appoints a commission, to which all unfinished business is referred. * * * y- jg therefore, a mere question of expediency. Something must be done to relieve the Assembly of the pressure of judicial business. The appointment of a commission is a long tried and approved method of relief, and we hope it will be ultimately adopted, not only by the Assembly, but by Synods and Presbyteries.”
AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY’’. 4. In 1847 it had been brought to the notice of the Board of Managers of the American Bible Society that there existed a great number of “discrepancies between our different editions of the English Bible; also between our editions and those issued by the British and Foreign Bible Society.” Hence the Board of Managers, in 1848, directed the Committee on Versions to collate copies of all the standard
JET. 59.] AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY. 405
editions for the purpose of correcting the discrepancies all leged to exist, relating principally to “orthography, capital letters, words in italics, and punctuation.” The Committee on Versions, however, transcended in practice these perfectly legitimate and wise directions of the Board of Managers, and made changes affecting the sense of the text, and especially sweeping changes in the headings of chapters, on the ground that they were no part of the inspired Word of God. This work of the committee was practically accepted by the Board, and large editions of the altered Bibles were printed and put in circulation. When this was realized by the Christian public, such general alarm and indignation was expressed that the Bible Society receded from their hastily and only half designedly assumed position, and peace and confidence was restored. The General Assemblies of 1857 and ‘8 considered the njatter. A strong condemnatory resolution, presented by Dr. R. J. Breckinridge, was passed unanimously by the General Assembly of 1858. Dr. Hodge argued with great energy on the same side, in his articles on “The General Assembly” in the Princeton Review for July, 1857 and 1858, and on “The American Bible Society and its New Standard Edition of the English Version,” July, 1857. The principles upon which this earnest opposition was urged were (a) The Bible Society, as the agent of the Churches, is the mere publisher and not the editor of the version, with discretionary powers, (b) According to the sense of the contracting parties, the Bible Society was entrusted by the Churches with the duty of publishing the standard edition of King James’ version, as printed in 181 1, as then furnished with headings, marginal notes and references. “The contract, therefore, to circulate the Scriptures, without notes or comments, must be understood to mean without any other notes or comments than those already incorporated in the standard editions of the English Bible.” In this sense it was understood and acquiesced in by all Protestant denominations. Thus, while the Board had the
406 SUBSCRIPTION TO THE CONFESSION. [1858.
right and duty of ascertaining the standard, the assumption of the right to change it in any particular was unwarranted and most dangerous, and must be prevented from exercise at once, without regard to the character of the changes actually proposed. While “the fact that these changes (actually made), in almost all instances, eliminated the evangelical element from these headings, tended greatly to increase dissatisfaction and alarm.”
SUBSCRIPTION TO THE CONFESSION.
5. In the General Assembly of 1858, the Rev. Dr. R. J. Breckinridge offered a resolution directing the Board of Publication to nominate men subsequently to be appointed to work under the direction of future Assemblies in preparing a Church Commentary on the whole Bible, adopting the standard King James version, in the sense of the constant faith of the Word of God, as that is briefly set forth in the standard of the Westminster Assembly. This was referred to the next Assembly, and finally abandoned.
Dr. Hodge exposed the weakness of the scheme very freely. He argued (a) That it was unprecedented, and would be destructive of all liberty for any Church to provide an authoritative explanation of all the Scriptures in detail, (b) That the men do not exist who are competent for such a task, (c) That while the Confession of Faith is the rule controlling among us ministerial communion, it has never been made the rule for the interpretation of Scripture, (d) Even as to the Confession of Faith agreement is not perfect. ‘’ We could not hold together a week if we made the adoption of all its professions a condition of ministerial communion.” “Who is to tell us the Church’s sense of the Confession? It is notorious that as to that point we are not agreed. In the second place, even as to the points in which the sense of the Confession is plain, there is want of entire concurrence in its reception, and what is the main point, there is no such thing as the sense of the West-
^T.6o.] SUBSCRIPTION TO THE CONFESSION. 407
minster Confession as to the true interpretation of thousands of passages of Scripture. The standard is an imaginary one. What does the Confession teach of the dark sayings of Hosea, &c.?”
These paragraphs made a great sensation, and the old school newspapers generally condemned them as teaching the loose view that the standards were subscribed by the intrants to the ministry of the Presbyterian Church only for substance of doctrine. That is, in the sense of evangelical Christianity in general. Dr. Hodge, therefore, published an article on the “Adoption of the Confession of Faith,” in the October number of the Princeton Feviezv, of the same year, in which he defends what he said in July, and fully states his whole position on the subject of creed subscription. The difficulty with the statements just quoted is that they present only that one-half of the subject which was related to the question then in debate. In the October article he maintains (a) That subscription binds in the sense of the animus imponcntis — /. e., not the mind of the moderator, or Presbytery ordaining the candidate, but the mind or intention of the whole denomination, (b) That to the question, What does the Presbyterian Church understand the candidate to profess when he “receives and adopts the Confession of Faith of this Church as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures?” three answers have been given. First — That “system of doctrine” means “substance of doctrine.” Second — That he who affirms it adopts every proposition contained in the Confession as part of his own faith. Each of these answers he discards for different reasons. Third — That the phrase “system of doctrine” is to be intelligently and honestly taken in its fixed historical sense. It presupposes belief in all those truths which are common to all Christians, and those common to all evangelical Protestants, and embraces in addition all those special doctrines by which the Reformed or Calvinistic Churches are distinguished from the Lutherans
4o8 REVISED BOOK OF DISCIPLINE. [1858.
and Arminians and other Protestants. This system is well known, and easily ascertainable; it is clearly taught in the Confession, and is professed by all who adopt this as the standard of their faith.
6. The General Assembly of 1857 appointed a committee, of which Dr. Thornwell was chairman and Dr. Hodge a member, to revise the Book of Discipline. Dr. Hodge attended to all the meetings of this committee, and wrote his views extensively as to the changes proposed, in an article published in the Princeton Review, entitled “The Revised Book of Discipline,” October, 1858. He regarded the changes in general as wisely made, and objected only to the change in the affirmations made with regard to the relation of the baptized members of the Church to its discipline. He accepted the language adopted on that subject as susceptible of a good sense, but preferred the language of the old book. He referred the coldness with which the work of the committee was received to a strong aversion to change on the part of the Church, and expressed his belief that “the time is not distant when a verdict will be rendered with great unanimity in favor of the majority of the alterations proposed by the Committee of Revision.”
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AND THE RELATION OF THE
STATE TO RELIGION.
7. The late admirable Dr. Van Rensselaer, when Secretary of the Board of Education, attempted to introduce a permanent system of parochial and presbyterial schools and synodical academies. This was met by a violent opposition from two opposite quarters. First, Dr. Thornwell and those who agreed with him that the Church’s commission confines it to the preaching of the gospel, in the technical sense of that word, of course objected that the Church had no right to give secular education even to her own children. Secondly, The rationalistic and infidel supporters of a
>F.T. 58.] RELATION OF THE STATE TO RELIGION. 409
purely secular education opposed it as fanatical and as interfering with the system of State schools.
Dr. Hodge earnestly advocated the system in his Articles on the “General Assembly” for 1854 and 1856, and in an Article entitled the “Education Question” July, 1854. He there maintains with great force of conviction the following principles, [a) The absolute necessity of popular education. {I?) That this education should be religious; that religion should be a regular part of the course of instruction in all our non-professional educational institutions. The new doctrine that secular education should be entirely separated from religion he declared to ho first “a virtual renunciation of allegiance to God, as destructive to society, and as certainly involving the final overthrow of the whole system of public education;” and second, absolutely impracticable, since true or false doctrines as to God and his relation to us and the world must go along with all knowledge; and third, destructive, because the attempt to exclude religion must tend to teach atheism either sceptical, virtual, or practical, (r). That the doctrine that our state schools must teach no religion, because the state has no religious character, he pronounces to be false as a fact, and absurd as an opinion. “Christianity is the common and supreme law of the land from the necessity of the case, because it is the religion of those who constitute the country.” “Our real statesmen, our highest judges, our chief magistrates and founders of government and the ornaments of our country, have with one voice and in various forms acknowledged that Christianity is the law of the land.” It is a matter of history, and a matter of fact as to the existing state of the law, of the institutions, customs, and convictions of the vast majority of the people. (^.) That if the people are to be educated, the state must teach; if the state teaches at all, she must teach religion; if she teaches religion, it must under the past and present state of facts teach Protestant Christianity. {e), The responsibility of providing education for the people
41 0 RELATION OF THE STATE TO RELIGION. [1869.
rests, co-ordinately upon parents, the state and the church. As to the right and obHgation of the Church to teach, it evidently springs from its nature. It was originally commissioned “to disciple all nations, baptizing them, teaching them.” This has from the beginning been the uniform faith and practice of the Church of all denominations and ages, and the more conspicuously in the periods of her greatest spiritual enlightenment and faithfulness. (/) “That in the existing state of our country the Church can no more resign the work of education exclusively to the state, than the state can leave it exclusively to parents or the Church. The work cannot be accomplished, in the way she is bound to see it accomplished, without her efficient co-operation.” (^) “That in the performance of this great duty, the Church cannot rely on the separate agency of her members, but is bound to act collectively, or in her organized capacity.” In answer to a letter of inquiry addressed to him by the Rev. Morris Sutphen, D.D., of New York, Dr. Hodge wrote the following letter on this subject, April loth, 1869.
DR. HODGE TO REV. MORRIS SUTPHEN, D. D.
Princeton, N. J., April 10, 1869.
My Dear Sir: — I am not aware that my views have undergone any change on the education question. I still believe that the Church is bound to see to it that all within her influence, especially her own children, have a religious education; to which end parish or church schools are indispensable. 2. What is the duty of Presbyterians is the duty of other denominations or churches. 3. That in such a heterogeneous and liberty-abusing population as we have in this country, church schools cannot reach the masses sufficiently, and therefore State schools are a necessity. 4. That church or denominational schools are entitled to a share of the school fund of the State, proportioned to the number of children they educate; the State having the right to see that its standard of secular education is come up to. And, to finish my creed, 5. I would let none but the educated in the schools established and approved by the State — vote.
I do not remember anything I have written on this subject. I had forgotten the address of 1847, to which you refer.
Your friend, &c., Charles Hodge.
yET. 6i.] RELATIOiV OF THE STATE TO RELIGION. 41 I
When a society was formed and memorials signed in order to move the Houses of Congress to send down the following clause to the States as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States — : “Humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the Ruler among the nations, and His revealed will as of supreme authority, in order to constitute a Christian government, &c., &c.” — : Dr. Hodge, on every proper occasion, signified his approval, and publicly subscribed his name to the following sentence. — : “We cordially approve of the object of the foregoing memorial, and desire to do all that we lawfully can to promote it.”
FREE AGENCY, INSPIRATION, ETC., ETC.
II. His Articles on “Free Agency,” “Inspiration,” “the Church membership of infants” and “Demission of the Ministry” are all in his most effective style of theological discussion, and have been repeated and expanded but hardly excelled in the corresponding chapters of his Systematic Theology. Dr. McGuffey, late professor of metaphysics in the University of Virginia, told the writer that he regarded the former of this list as a most clear and able exposition of its subject, and habitually referred his classes to it. It was written in the first instance as a lecture, and was as such the very first lecture he read to his classes, when commencing to lecture in the department of Didactic Theology.
In his article, “Demission of the Ministry,” he earnestly argued the right and the propriety of providing a way of honorable retreat for the many honest Christian men who have become ministers while destitute of the qualifications for usefulness and success. The growing number of these nominal ministers out of office, and often completely secularized in character and reputation, and their frequent predominance in our church courts, is comintT to be recognised
412 PRESBYTERIAN LITURGIES. [1856.
as the greatest evil and danger in our American Presbyterianism.
PRESBYTERIAN LITURGIES.
III. In the Article on “Presbyterian Liturgies,” July, 1855, he expresses the following opinions, (i). That the use of Liturgies is neither a peculiarity nor a natural adjunct of Episcopacy. “They were introduced into all Protestant Churches at the time of the Reformation, and in the greater number of them they continue to the present day.” (2). He exhibits the reasons which justified Presbyterians in resisting the imposition of the English Prayer Book, which have led in Scotland and America to the general disuse of Liturgies altogether. (3). He declares it to be his opinion, that their total neglect has been injurious, especially in the imperfect and diverse manners in which the sacraments and the special rites of the church, such as marriage, ordination, burial, &c., are performed. (4). ‘’These two conditions being supposed, first that the book should be compiled and not written; and second, that its use should be optional — we are strongly of opinion, that it would answer a most important end.”
IV. The article entitled, “Princeton Review and Cousin’s Philosophy,” April, 1856, should be read by every one desiring to see all the sides of Dr. Hodge’s character. Professors Dod and James W. Alexander had together written the article on Transcendendalism in 1839. It attracted great admiration, and was several times reprinted by parties entirely disconnected with Princeton, both in New England and Great Britain.
In 1856, Caleb S. Henry, D. D., the translator of the Lectures of Cousin on Locke, one of the works reviewed in that article, in the preface to his “Elements of Psychology” fills many pages with coarse vituperation, and imputation of the basest motives against the authors, one of whom. Dr. Hodge’s intimate friend, had been eleven years dead. Dr. H. is often said to have been like the apostle
^T.58.] BISHOP RPILVAINE ON THE CHURCH. 413
John: if any one will read this vindication of the memory of his dead friend, they will nevertheless see that like his Saviour he knew how to address the “Fools and blind” and the “Generation of vipers.”
BISHOP M ILVAINE ON THE CHURCH.
V. In the April number of the Review for 1855 Dr. Hodge had prepared a short article under the title of “Bishop Mcllvaine on the Church,” to show that his old friend and classmate, although a decided Episcopalian, held the same evangelical and Protestant doctrine of the “Church” as he himself had taught, and which many of his Old school and New-school Presbyterian “brethren in the ignorance of their reactionary zeal” denounced as too low-church, and as virtually giving away of everything to the Independents.
In May, 1855, he delivered the first annual address before the Presbyterian Historical Society, in which he laid down the essential general principles of Presbyterian Church organization. In October, of the same year, the Church Review and Register, a high-church quarterly review of New Haven, reviewed that lecture, and set over against it an argument purporting to come from the pen of Bishop Mcllvaine, maintaining the permanency of the Apostolic office. In his January number of the Princeton Review, Dr. Hodge answered and refuted this argument in an article entitled “The Church Review on the Permanency of the Apostolic Office.” In April, 1854, he published an article entitled “The Church of England and Presbyterian Orders” in which he exhibits the historical argument of the Rev. Wm. Goode, in support of the position that the founders and great theologians of the Church of England while maintaining the expediency or even the divine right of Episcopacy, had never considered it essential to the being of the Church.
The following interesting correspondence sprang up on
414 BISHOP M-ILVAINE ON THE CHURCH. [1855.
the occasion of his response to Bishop Mcllvaine’s argument in favor of the perpetuity of the ApostoHc office.
DR. HODGE TO BISHOP m’iLVAINE.
Princeton, Dec. 18, 1855.
Dear Charles: — I address you in this afifectionate college style not only because my heart dictates it, but also because I fear, if I did not do so now, I may not be able to do it at all. It may be that the January number of the Pri7tceton Review may indispose you to recognize me as your old friend, though I hope not.
In May last I was called upon to deliver an address before the Presbyterian Historical Society on the question, What is Presbyterianism? a copy of which I send you. That address was made the subject of criticism in the Church Review, New Haven, Conn. The RevieweriWaX.&’A.di of discussing the argument in the address, republished in extenso your sermon on the permanency of the Apostolic office; which he called upon me to examine. I have made the attempt to examine your argument, and have endeavored to treat you as a friend and advocate of evangelical truth, while I treated your argument as a Presbyterian. I really and honestly think there is nothing in my review of your sermon which ought to lessen our personal friendship. But as things seem so differently when viewed from different positions, you may think otherwise. I should be exceedingly pained should this be the case, for much as I feel pained and aggrieved at the positions assumed in your sermon, I feel nothing but affection and respect towards you. Indeed I cannot but hope you will regard my review as I do, a mere act of self-defence. Granting all I say, you are untouched in your ministerial and even your episcopal standing. But granting what you say, I am no minister, and if a Christian, am in a state of rebellion against one who has a divine right to my submission to him as the bishop of New Jersey. It is not reasonable to expect that Presbyterians can silently submit to these claims of Episcopacy. So long as they emanated only from professed Anglicans or High-Church-men, I, for one, cared little about them. But when I found to my surprise that they had been advocated by one of your high character as an evangelical Christian, I felt bound, when specially by name called upon, to say what I have said in reference to the whole matter.
I hope you will feel toward me while reading my review, as I felt toward you after reading your sermon.
Affectionately your friend,
Charles Hodge.
^T. 58.] BISHOP M IL VAINE ON THE CHURCH 4 1 5
BISHOP M ILVAINE TO DR. HODGE.
Cincinnati, Dec. 22, 1855.
My Dear Charles: — I have just received your kind and affectionate letter of the 18th, and am much obliged to you for such kind desire and pains to prevent any evil influence on our long established friendship from a review of my sermon, which I doubt not your sense of duty has prompted. And by the way, I a little suspect that a part of the animus of the re-print in the Church Review was to bring me into such relations with my Presbyterian brethren and friends as would wean me from my affectionate feelings towards all of them who love Christ as my brethren, and especially towards some of whom I have the superadded regard as dear friends.
I cannot say my dear Charles, what I shall feel when I read the review, but believing you would aim only at the truth and not at me, I will hope and expect so to receive it, that love shall not be the sufferer, however other feelings may be. From what you say I infer that you have not understood my mind in the sermon, but have interpreted the bearing on non-Episcopal ininisters and churches as I do not. I do not perceive that the sermon contains anything in advance of the usual low-church doctrine prevailing in our Church. It teaches Apostolical Succession, just as I understand real Presbyterians to teach it, namely, that a certainpart of the authority committed to the Apostles was intended to continue in the ministry to the end of the world, and, has continued — such for example as the power of ordination. The difference between the Episcopalian and the Presbyterian being that the latter hold the descent to have been in the line of Presbyters, the former in the line of diocesan Bishops. The Apostolical succession is held in my opinion as much in one Church as the other — the difference between the so holding and high-churchmanship in both, being when it is not held in such a sense as to exclude by the inferences drawn from it all other ministers than its own from validity and reality, nor other Churches from being real Churches of Christ whatever it may think of their defective conformity to the Apostolic pattern. Such Apostolic succession is vastly removed from that of Romanism and Puseyism, which not only makes a ministry so descended, essential to the being of the Church, and essential to the reality of all sacraments, but makes the communication of saving grace essentially dependent on the sacraments of that succession — and thus it is the exclusive succession of the gifts of the Spirit as well as of a certain office.
My sermon was written in ’39, some sixteen years ago. How far I should now enter into all its details I cannot say, for it is very long
41 6 BISHOP M’lLVAINE ON THE CHURCH. [1855.
since I have given my mind to that line of subject. But when I preached it, as. ever since, I considered it as a simple maintenance of an alleged fact, with a studied abstinence from all attack or reflection on other churches, and as leaving me at full liberty to believe in and acknowledge other churches as real churches, and their ministers as real ministers of Christ, often greatly blessed of the Spirit. I did not consider, nor do I now, Episcopal ordination essential to the being of the ministry or sacraments, any more than to the Church, though I do consider it essential to the full order and model of the primitive church. So you think of Presbyterian ordination.
While I thus vindicate the position of the sermon, 1 do not mean to intimate that under present feelings I should take such a track of thought again on a similar occasion. It is one thing to maintain certain doctrines, and another to give them a certain relative position. My mind is so off from the externalism of the Church, in the higher estimate of the invisible and eternal, so much more on the everlasting ties of the Church Catholic, than upon the temporary and distinctive (features?) of the Church Episcopal, that I sometimes fear I am too much losing sight of the one in the mountain shadow of the other.
Farewell Charles. Let us be one in Christ. How soon the seen and temporal v’SS. have passed to us and the unseen and eternal be our all. In C/irisf no condemnation. It is faith not orders or ministers that place us in Christ. May that uniting grace abound in us more and more; then we shall have a place in the Father’s house where all in Christ of whatever name or form of religion on earth shall be the one household of love and peace and holiness made perfect. Yours very affectionately,
Charles P. M’Ilvaine.
P. S. — 1 wish you would read my sermon on the “Church of Christ in its essential being,” the third in my volume “The Truth and Life.” As the volume was noticed in the Princeton Review, I suppose it is within your reach. I do not know how much you have seen of the sermon copied in the Church Review, as I do not know how much of it they copied — the merely argumentative part on Episcopacy, or more. I have therefore hunted up an old copy and send it, hoping you will read it enough to see that I preached on that occasion on something else than outward order. Please observe the note on page 15 and the lines marked on page 28.
^T. 58.] BISHOP M’lLVAINE ON THE CHURCH. 417
DR. HODGE TO BISHOP m’iLVAINE.
Princeton, Dec. 29, 1855.
My Dear Charles: — Your letter touched me so, I wished my review in Guinea. The Church Review said, “We give the argument of the sermon, notes and all, without alteration. Even the italics are preserved.” I find they began with page 10 of the pamphlet and ended with page 27, omitting the introduction and conclusion. So far as the argument is concerned they gave all they professed to do, but as far as the impression of the sermon goes, it was of course one-sided.
1 very much regret that it did not occur to me to omit all reference to you as author of the sermon and review it as an argument of the Church Review, as the Editor so fully and strongly adopted it. Still I hope no harm will be done. It has not in the least diminished my affection for you, nor my high estimate of your services in the cause of our common Master. I was taken by surprise to find that you had written in favor of the permanence of the Apostolic office, and had endeavored to prove that bishops are the official successors of the Apostles, i. e. that they are Apostles. I knew that this is the alpha and omega of the Romish system, that no man could hold to the perpetuity of the Apostleship, in the ordinary sense of the term, without destroying the ground under his feet as a Protestant. I think so still. I think there is no hope for us, for you or for me, for Episcopalians or for Presbyterians, if the perpetuity of the Apostleship be conceded. 1 know that some have used that language, meaning that the office of ministry is perpetual, and others, as you have done, meaning that prelacy is perpetual. But this cannot help the matter. Let it once be granted that the Apostleship is permanent, then Rome can prove, what nine-tenths of Christians have always believed, viz: the Apostleship in its essential nature includes infallibility and supreme authority. If you have a perpetual Apostleship, you have according to the common judgment of Christendom an infallible Church.
You are therefore just as much interested as I am in proving that the Apostleship is not permanent. Dear Charles, I beg you to forgive me in advance if there is anything in my review which wounds your feelings. Of you I have spoken in the terms which you would expect. Of the arguments for the perpetuity of the Apostolic office, I have spoken as you would yourself speak of the divine right of the patriarchs and popes. I believe the argument for the latter is much stronger from Scripture than for the former, and I believe further that if the doctrines of your sermon can be established it is all over with Protestantism and Evangelical religion. You say beautifully and
41 8 ARTICLES ON THE CHURCH AND ELDERSHIP. [1S43-60.
truly in your letter that you are far more interested in what is spiritual and internal than in what is external. This question, however, touches the very heart of the gospel, and therefore I am sure you will excuse the zeal with which I have written.
Your sermon on the “Being of the Church,” I have not only read, but made the subject of review, and the occasion of setting myself right with some of my Presbyterian brethren, who thought that the articles which I had printed on the Idea of the Church were unsound because they made too little of the external Church. I hope you will receive the copy of my address sent with my former letter, for it will enable you to understand the ground I occupy. With all my old confidence and affection.
Very truly yours, Charles Hodge.
LECTURES AND ARTICLES ON THE CHURCH AND
ELDERSHIP.
VI. In 1845 and ‘6, in consequence of the declining health of his venerable colleague, Dr. Miller, Dr. Hodge began to prepare his lectures on the nature and constitution and officers of the Christian Church. Some of the most important of these were published as articles, from time to time, in the Princeton Review. His whole mind on these subjects has been fully set forth in the articles on the General Assemblies of different years, on the “Rights of Ruling Elders,” 1843; “Theories of the Church,” 1846; “Idea of the Church,” and “Visibility of the Church,” 1853; “The Church its Perpetuity,” 1856; and “Presbyterianism,” 1860. These articles attracted a vast deal of attention and hostile criticism both in this country and Scotland, with respect to the positions assumed on two points. These are, first, as to the extent and minuteness of the binding directions for church organization and government set down in the Word of God and second, as to the nature of the office of Ruling Elder.
As to the ^fr/ point, he taught the following principles: 1st — The Church of Christ, to which all the promises of Scripture belong is, in its essential nature not a visible organized society of men, but the whole body of the elect,
^T. 45-62.] THE CHURCH. ^ig
who exist either in heaven or on earth, or who are to come into existence in the future. 2d — That the visible church which exists as an organized society on earth is not a different body from the above, but is the same body as far as at any part of the world’s history its members may be recognized as such by one another. And that the marks by which the members of this body are to be recognised, and on the ground of which they and their children are to be presumed to be members, and treated as such by all other Christians, are competent knowledge and credible profession of the true faith, and a corresponding life. 3d — That it is the duty of all communities of such mutually recognised members of the true spiritual church to form organized societies, with constitutions, officers, laws and sacraments. 4th — That the New Testament does not prescribe in detail any precise form of church organization, nor can any existing ecclesiastical organization claim divine authority for the particular form or elements of its constitution. 5th — But the New Testament does teach by precept and example certain general principles of church organization, and these are universally and perpetually binding on all Christian communities ywr cj?i!W«^. These are: (i) “The right of the people to take part in the government of the church. Hence the divine right of the office of Ruling Elders, who appear in all church courts as representatives of the people. (2) The appointment and perpetual continuance of Presbyters as ministers of the Word and sacraments, with authority to rule, teach and ordain, as the highest permanent officers of the Church. (3) The unity of the Church, or the subjection of a smaller to a larger part, and of a larger part to the whole.” — Presbyterian, April 21, 1855. That within the limits of these principles Christ had left his Church free to do His work under the guidance of His providence and Spirit, in the manner found to be most effective under the changing conditions of time and place. The second point of his doctrine ‘which was criticised re-
420 THE OFFICE OF RULING ELDER. [1843-60.
lated to the nature of the office of RuHng Elders. He taught in this respect (i) That Christ committed the government of the Church to the people or communicants themselves, in connection with the Presbyters or preachers and pastors. (2) That the people generally exercised their power through representatives chosen by themselves, and that these “representatives of the people” are our Ruling Elders. (3) This view of the office establishes it as jure divino, and exalts its honor and usefulness. (4) That it is everywhere asserted and assumed in our standards and in those of the Mother Church of Scotland. (5) That the rival theory of the nature of the office, which made the ministers and elders one order, is subversive of Presbyterianism. It provides for no representation of the lay element. The right of a minister to preach and rule is inherent in his office. In all ages of the world the clergy have formed a class by themselves. The rival view is latent Episcopacy, making one presbyter the permanent president over his colleagues of the session, endowed with the supreme power of administering the sacraments. Our form of government groups elders and deacons together, provides for the ordination of the minister by the laying on of hands of the Presbytery, and on the other hand directs that a single minister shall set apart an elder or deacon indifferently to either office, by the proposition of a list of questions, by the vote of the people to be represented, and by prayer.
These views, as they were gradually unfolded, were, doubtless, misapprehended by many, and were certainly violently attacked and misrepresented in the newspapers and some of the church courts of that time. It would, however, seem that they have been substantially accepted as sound by the church at large, from the overwhelming vote on his side on occasion of his great debate with Dr. Thornwell on the Boards of the Church, in the General Assembly, in Rochester, 1 860; from the publication and continued circulation by thfe Presbyterian Board of Publication
^T. 57-] RULING ELDERS. 42 1
of his address on “What is Presbyterianism?” of 1855, and its republication with emphatic approbation by the strictest Presbyterians of Scotland; and from the reception recently given to the volume on “Church Polity.”
DR. HODGE TO DR. JOHN HALL.
Princeton, June 20, 1851.
My Dear Sir: — I do not know that I can point you to the law in the book which contemplates just such a case as that presented in your letter, but I think the principles which regulate it are perfectly plain.
An elder is a representative of the people of some particular congregation, selected and appointed by them to act in their behalf in some judicatory of the church. He can act as such representative only when duly elected for that purpose. He has no power over any congregation except in virtue of their delegation of it to him. If he is divested of it by resignation, deposition, or dismission, he cannot resume it again any more than a Governor of a State could resume his office, after resignation or dismissal. If Governor Fort should resign his office to go to England and become a subject of Queen Victoria, not even a Philadelphia lawyer would have the face to maintain he could on his return (before his term would have expired) resume the chair again.
The sense in which the office of ruling elder is said to be perpetual is, that after the church has once ascertained to her satisfaction that a man possesses the requisite gifts for that office, and has solemnly testified to that fact by his ordination, there is no need of ever repeating that service. The man is declared to belong to the class of elders, /. e. of those to whom the Spirit has given the gift of ruling, and from whom any congregation may select their rulers. The reason why this public sanction to the possession of the necessary gift is required, is because the whole church is one. A congregational church may select whom it pleases for deacons or elders, because their functions do not extend beyond the limits of the congregation. But with us an elder in a particular church may be a member of Presbytery, Synod or General Assembly, rule over the whole church, and therefore the whole has the right to prescribe the qualifications for the office, and the mode in which their possession in any case shall be ascertained and authenticated; and when this has once been done, the church is satisfied, the man is always an elder; any congregation may call him to exercise that office over them. But he cannot exercise it without such call, any more than a minister can
A 22 PRESBYTERIAN PRINCIPLES. [1855.
act as pastor of a given congregation without a call. If you’were to resio”n your present post, turn Episcopalian, and then come back to Trenton, who would say you could without re-election have a right to resume your office? I suspect if your head was not so full of law* before the gospel had a chance to enter it, you never could have had any doubt upon such a case. You see the advantage of having only one profession. You men of two trainings always see double.
Your friend,
Charles Hodge.
DR. HODGE TO H. A. BOARDMAN.
Princeton, April 13, 1855.
My Dear Sir: — The only objections which I ever heard against the doctrine of the Church as presented in the Repertory are: i. That it left the visible church without authority, its organization being altogether discretionary, so that we had no Jus divinum ground for any part of our system. In other words, that we held Stillingfleet’s doctrine — “Government of God, the form of man.” This was the idea
presented in ’s published letter; this is the objection I heard from
here, and from other quarters. And Profesfsor Green has just
told me that this was the only form in which he had ever heard the objection. To this, therefore, I directed my explanation, and showed that our doctrine as to the nature of the Church did not suppose its organization to be undetermined or indifferent, and that for myself I fully believed that the discretion of the Church as to its organization was limited to details, the essential principles relating to it being preceptively enjoyed. I did not go further because I was not aware that the objection went further, and because there is not the least shadow of ground for the objection in any other form.
In my lectures I endeavored to prove: i. That there is no form of church organization laid down in Scripture as essential to the being of the Church — against Papists and the High-Church party of England.
2. There is no plan of church organization prescribed in all its details, so as to leave the church no discretion in the matter — against the Seceders and Brownists and some High-Church Presbyterians.
3. That there are certain principles relating to the organization of the church which were obligatory as matters of divine precept, as e. g. ( I ) The right of the people to take part in the government of the church, and hence the divine right of the office of ruling elders as the representatives of the people. (2) The appointment of Presby-
* Dr. Hall was in the first instance trained for the bar.
/ET.S7-] PRESBYTERIAN PRINCIPLES. 423
ters as rulers, teachers and ordainers, as the highest permanent office in the church — against the claims of prelacy, asserting the parity of the ministry. (3) That the church is one, and therefore each part is subject to the larger part and to the whole. Hence the right of review and control, the right of appeal and the authority of church courts as laid down in the Westminster Confession. This is against the Brownists and Independents and Congregationalists.
It would have been very easy to include this statement in the article just published (” Bishop McIIvaine on the Church “) had I been aware of the nature of the objections made to the former articles. This only shows the impropriety of attacking a man in the dark, making general charges of error without letting him know what the errors are. These principles, however, have been so often and in so many ways presented in the Repertory, and some of them in the pamphlet signed “Geneva,” which you had such a hand in getting printed, that I cannot feel called on to assert them anew. I do not think it would be becoming in me to come out with them now. It seems like answering publicly charges unnecessarily as they have never been publicly made.
2. The only other objection is the one referring to the relation of infants to the church, which I hope has been sufficiently met.
Thanking you for your kindness in this whole matter, I am
Affectionately yours,
Charles Hodge.
P. S. — Since writing the above letter, it has occurred to me that the accompanying paper might be printed as a note to the paragraph on p. 355, in the event of the republication of the article.
I perhaps know less about the state of feeling on this subject than others. I have heard of objections from various quarters, but on the other hand I have received such strong expressions of approbation of the articles from many unexpected sources, that I have not been led to suppose that there were any extensive misgivings on the subject. If there are it might be well to reprint the article in the last number as a pamphlet with the note.
THE SAME TO THE SAME.
Princeton, April 20, 1858. My Dear Sir: — I see the Presbyterian contains your note and my answer. I think I am done now. I have said all 1 have to say, and those who are not satisfied must seek satisfaction from other sources. * * * It is humiliating to find that doctrines and views which are presented in almost every system of Protestant theology and in every
424 CORRESrONDENCE OF DR. CUNNINGHAM. [1860.
work against Popery should through sheer ignorance, and a kind of instinct of High-Churchism — the working of what Bunyan calls “the Pope in the belly” — be denied by Presbyterians — and they think they are thereby serving the truth! Your friend,
Charles Hodge.
CORRESPONDENCE OF DR. WM. CUNNINGHAM.
- In the Witness, of Edinburgh, February 29th, 1860, in the absence and without the knowledge of the editor, an article entitled the “True Idea of the Church,” in which J. A. Wylie expresses his contempt for the articles on the church by Charles Hodge, republished in Scotland, with a preface by Dr. Wm. Hanna.
The same paper, on the 3d of March, contained a letter from Principal William Cunningham.
To the Editor of the Witness.
Edinburgh, 29th Feb., 186o.
Dear Sir: — I hope you will allow me to record in your columns a protest against the style and tone exhibited in an article in to-day’s Witness, with reference to Dr. Hodge, of Princeton. Most people, I presume, are aware that he is one of the ablest and most influential expounders and defenders of Calvinism in the present day, and admirably accomplished in almost every department of theological literature. There is no living man entitled to treat him in the very peculiar style in which the author of the article referred to has thought proper to indulge. When he alleges that Dr. Hodge “wanders in darkness, and never for five minutes on end keeps clear of contradiction,” that “in his pamphlet the contradictions are more numerous than the pages,” &c., &c., he is propounding what is simply absurd — so absurd, indeed, as to be incredible. I indicate no opinion as to the subject of controversy which the article discusses.
I remain yours truly, *
Wm. Cunningham
In his letter dated Edinburgh July, 1844, a part of which has been already given, Dr. Cunningham had said,” I received the pamphlet on the Eldership, and am much obliged
* Extracted from the Witness by Alex. M. Sutherland, Student, New College, Edinburgh.
^T. 54] CORRESPONDENCE OF DR. CUNNINGHAM. 425
to you for it. I have never been able to make up my mind fully as to the precise grounds on which the office and functions of the ruling elder ought to be maintained and defended. For some time before I went to America I had come to lean pretty strongly to the view that all ecclesiastical office-bearers were presbyters, and that there were sufficiently clear indications in Scripture that there were two distinct classes of those presbyters, viz. ministers and ruling elders; though not insensible to the difficulty attaching to this theory from the consideration that it fairly implies that wherever presbyters or bishops are spoken of in Scripture ruling elders are included. I have been a good deal shaken in my attachment to this theory by the views I have heard from you, but I have not yet been able to abandon it entirely. If I am spared till next summer I must examine it with more care.”
DR. CUNNINGHAM TO DR. HODGE.
Edinburgh, Oct. 16, 1852, My Dear Dr. Hodge: — * * * i have noticed with much interest what you have been doing and suffering of late years in domestic, official and literary matters. The removal of your two venerable colleagues was well fitted to produce solemn reflection, and must have occasioned to you no little anxiety. I am glad to think that the arrangements ultimately made in the Seminary in consequence of Dr. Miller’s death, were such as you approved and desired, and I would fain hope that those which have resulted from Dr. Alexander’s death may turn out equally satisfactory.
We have been much interested in and pleased with the way in which you have been fighting the battles of the faith against Drs. Bushnell and Park. It seems to be still as necessary now as ever to be contending for the great tniths, that the Bible is fitted and intended to be a rule of faith, and that it really means what it says; for it is really at bottom against these fundamental principles, these principia thcologica, that the views of Bushnell and Park are directed. I have been a good deal struck of late with the importance of giving prominence in the training of candidates for the ministry, especially under the head of the History of Dogma, to the illustration of the fairness and rationality of the process by which the right use of the
426 CORRESPONDENCE OF DR. CUNNINGHAM. [1852.
Bible has produced, and of course still sanctions, the substance of the common orthodox formula employed in the statement of the fundamental doctrines of Christian theology. This appears to me of much importance for guarding young men against some of the influences which are in this present day most apt to mislead them.
We continue to enjoy in the Free church a large measure of outward prosperity, and we are improving, I think, to some extent, the opportunities of usefulness which the Lord has set before us. The chief difficulties that have sprung up among us, and that still threaten somewhat our peace and usefulness, are connected with our arrangements about theological education. There had grown up among many of our brethren, through the latent influence, I fear, of a class of motives of a somewhat low and unworthy description, a desire to multiply theological seminaries beyond what, as it seemed to me, our circumstances and means require or admit’ of, and to the manifest detriment of theological education. This has led to some very unpleasant and somewhat dangerous discussions, and is likely, I fear, to lead to more. I sometimes feel perplexed as to the course I ought to pursue in the matter. I have hitherto been able to prevent any actual step being taken in the way of college extension, as we call it, but I do not see very clearly how long and how far the opposition to it ought to be carried. One painful and dangerous feature of the case is that while many of the ministers are in favor of college extension, the eldership, except where mere local feelings come into operation, are generally opposed to it.
We had some fear that we should be called upon to preach, as Dr. Erskine, who succeeded Dr. Witherspoon as leader of the evangelical party of the Church of Scotland, did about eighty years ago, upon the question, “Shall we go to war with our American brethren?” But it is to be hoped that all danger of a result so disastrous as a war between the United States and Britain is overpast. There are not a few amongst us who have serious apprehensions of a continental crusade against Protestantism and freedom. And if Britain should be compelled in self-defence to fight against Popery and arbitrary power, we would confidently expect the sympathy and assistance of the United States. It has been alleged that Lord Palmerston had resolved, if he had continued in office, that in the event of the foreign troops not being soon withdrawn from the States of the Church, he would have taken possession of Sicily and established a constitutional government there. And I do not regard it as a thing very unlikely, or very much to be deprecated, that we may see a combined British and American fleet sweeping the Mediterranean, protecting Sardinia and liberating all the rest of Italy.
I made a tour, lately, of a month on the Continent, visiting the principal towns of Holland and Belgium, the Rhine as far as Strasburgh, and Paris. My colleague, Dr. Buchanan, was with me, and we enjoyed it vastly. But on my return I found my youngest child — a girl of 18 months — dead, though not buried, and another child — a boy of 6 years — dying. The boy lived five days after my return, and his whole deportment was of a kind fitted to encourage the hope that the Lord was graciously dealing with his soul to prepare him for heaven. It has been a very painful trial, but I trust we have been enabled to say, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
I am glad to see that your vacation has been extended to sixteen weeks. Would you not think of visiting the Old World agam, and giving a few weeks to Scotland? There are many here who would rejoice to see your face in the flesh. There are few things that would afford me more pleasure. I hope you will forgive my negligence and procrastination and write to me soon.
Present my kindest regards to the members of your family, to your colleagues in the Seminary and College, so far as I know them, and believe me to be, my dear Dr. Hodge,
Your affectionate friend,
Wm. Cunningham.
In July, 1857, Dr. Cunningham published in the British and Foreign Evangelical Review an elaborate review of the volume entitled “Essays and Reviews,” by Charles Hodge, published that year by Robert Carter & Brothers. In connection with an analysis and estimate of the contents of the volume, Dr. Cunningham says:” Our readers are well aware that Dr. Hodge is the senior Professor at Princeton, the oldest and most important theological seminary of the Old-School Presbyterian Church in the United States — a Church which constitutes the most numerous and the most influential Presbyterian body in the world. He was chiefly known in this country by his Commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, until some of his articles in the Princeton Reviezv were republished among us. The recent publication of his Commentaries on the Epistle to the Ephesians and on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, and the collection into one volume of his leading Essays and Reviews,
428 DR. CU.VNIAGHAArS EEVIEPV. [1857.
have made him well known in this country, and have done much to promote the diffusion of sound theology. He is now recognized by general consent as one of the very first theologians of the present day. He has a very fine combination of the different qualities that go to constitute a great theologian, both as to mental capacities and endowments, and as to acquired knowledge and habits. His talents and attainments seem to fit him equally for the critical and exact interpretation of Scriptural statements, and for the didactic and polemic exposition of leading doctrines. He seems to be about equally at home in the writings of the great systematic divines of the seventeenth century and in those of the most distinguished continental divines of the present day. While solid ability and extensive erudition are the most obvious and fundamental characteristics of his writings, he exhibits also a play of fancy and a power of sarcasm, which, though rarely indulged, and kept much under restraint, do contribute not a little to make them more interesting and more effective.
“But it is more important to advert to the place which Dr. Hodge occupies, and the services which he has rendered as an expounder and defender of theological doctrine. And here the substance of what we have to say is, that he has rendered invaluable services to the cause of sound Christian doctrine by the talent and erudition, the manliness and the effectiveness, the moderation and the firmness, with which he has maintained and defended the Calvinistic system of theology against the assaults of every description of opponents.
“* * * lyg regret that we have not space to quote any portion of the article upon the question, * Is the Church of Rome a part of the Visible Church?” About ten or twelve years ago, the General Assembly of the Old-School Presbyterian Church decided that the Church of Rome is not a part of the visible Church; that consequently Romish baptism is invalid, and that converts from the Church of Rome ought to be rebaptized. Dr. Hodge and his colleagues at Princeton did not approve of this decision, but adhered to the opposite view, which had been held by the Reformers, and by the great body of Protestant divines ever since the Reformation. The grounds of their opposition to the deliverance of the General Assembly are set forth in this article. It is characterized by its author’s usual ability and thorough knowledge of the subject, and, we are persuaded, fully establishes its leading position. It is to be regretted that the General Assembly of so respectable and influential a body should have ventured to give such a deliverance, in opposition to the whole Protestant Churches, and to their own most distinguished divines.
“We have room now only to express our profound respect and admiration for Dr. Hodge as a theologian, cur deep sense of the magnitude of the services he has rendered to the Church of Christ and the cause of sound doctrine, and our earnest desire and hope that he may be long spared to discharge the important public duties to which in providence he has been called, and for the efficient performance of which he has been so richly furnished by the Head of the Church.”
Dr. Wm. Walker, of Dysart, Scotland, sends me the following through my good friend. Dr. Robt. Watts, of Belfast:
“‘By the way, I can give you an anecdote, whose authenticity I can vouch for, because the man himself told me.
“One of our students, an accomplished fellow, took it into his head that he would like to go to Princeton. But he was anxious not on that account to lose a year. So he consulted Cunningham, putting to him the question, whether he thought a session there would count.
“‘Count!’ said Cunningham, taking a snuff and speaking in that curious falsetto voice which he sometimes used when he wanted to be emphatic. ‘Of course it would. My only difficulty is this: whether a session there under Hodge should not count two.’”
430 DR. HODGE’S RESrOiXSE. [1857.
DR. HODGE TO DR. CUNNINGHAM.
Princeton, August 24, 1857.
J^Iy Dear Sir: — I am very much in your debt for your letter, your address and your review. I have no means of payment, and must compound and pay only a shilling in the pound. I rejoice very much in the success with which you have opposed the course of the North British Review. Mr. Isaac Taylor has evidently got out of his depth. It is often the case that a man of genius and general learning makes shipwreck when he enters on purely professipnal subjects, the logical relations of which he has never studied. He never could have written as he did had he seen how entirely subversive of the authority of the Bible his views on inspiration and other matters necessarily were. Dr. Chalmers’ fame is part of the heritage of Presbyterianism, and your vindication of his memory is a service for which all Presbyterians must feel grateful.
The degree of Doctor in Divinity was conferred in June last by the College of New Jersey on Professor Lorimer, and announced in our papers. I presume President MacLean communicated officially with Dr. Lorimer on the subject. He promised to do so, and therefore I did not think it necessary to trouble either him or Dr. McCrie with a separate letter. It was owing to an oversight on my part that the degree was not conferred at a previous meeting of the Board in December.
I do not know what to say, my dear sir, in reference to your friendly exaggeration of the merits of my essays. If your review shall have the effect of cominending the views which they advocate to the favorable regard of our younger theologians, I shall rejoice. I have had but one object in my professional career and as a writer, and that is to state and to vindicate the doctrines of the Reformed Church. I have never advanced a new idea, and have never aimed to improve on the doctrines of our fathers. Having become satisfied that the system of doctrines taught in the symbols of the Reformed Churches is taught in the Bible, I have endeavored to sustain it, and am willing to believe even where I cannot understand. I wish to express the special gratification I have derived from your approbation of the views expressed in the articles on the Church. I feel this the more because many of our brethren in this country have expressed great dissatisfaction with those articles. I am persuaded, however, that they contain nothing more than the common Protestant doctrine on the subject. I have a course of lectures in the rough on the nature, attributes, prerogatives and organization of the church, and it has been a favorite object with me to prepare them for the press. But
^T. 56.J CORRESPOA’DENCE WITH BISHOP JOHNS. 431
I do not see any immediate prospect of my being able to do so, as they must be entirely rewritten and enlarged.
I am ashamed to send you a letter all about myself; but if you will pay me by writing me one equally egotistical 1 will forgive myself. My summer vacation, which I hoped to turn to good account in writing, has been broken up by my having to leave home repeatedly to attend a sick daughter-in-law, with whom Mrs. Hodge has been obliged to spend the whole summer.
With great respect and affection, your friend,
Charles Hodge.
BISHOP JOHNS TO DR. HODGE.
Richmond, Jan. 23, 1849.
Dear Charles: — But that notice of the “Apostolical Constitutions”!* Part of it is too funny. Have you read it? I thought I would have shaken out of my chair as I ran my eyes over the writer’s demonstration that of all others Presbyterianisni comes nearest the platform exhibited in said Constitutions! Well if the honest soul finds the model up there, it would be a pity to deprive him of the satisfaction, and indeed the process is so amusingly downright, that I could hardly help slapping the good fellow on the back, and exclaiming ‘Well done, my hearty! ‘I hope for my sake “he has a few more of the same sort left.”
I have not cut the leaves of the VI article,! and don’t think I shall. They say I am too favorably inclined toward that kind already, and I have no idea of coming under further suspicion. I shall read no more on that side till I get hold of your book, J which if the duration of pregnancy be any indication of the bulk of the thing to be born, will certainly be as much as I can stagger under for the rest of my days. Yours truly,
J. Johns.
DR. HODGE TO BISHOP JOHNS.
Princeton, Jan. 17, 1854. My Dear John: — I knew an excellent man, a pastor of a Presbyterian Church, who, whenever he was conscious of having neglected
* An article entitled “Apostolical Constitutions.” — Princeton Review.
f Review of Dr. Miller’s “Manual of Presbytery.” January, 1849.
X A book on” The Church’’ which Dr. Hodge began but never completed. his duty and gone into the pulpit without preparation, took to scolding the people. You are one of the same sort. Your conscience has been upbraiding you all this time for your shameful neglect of me last fall, when you were weeks and months within two hours ride, and never came near me; and now you relieve yourself by a good scold. I hope you feel better; and as it is very unpleasant, as you know, to be mad at oneself, I trust you will behave better another time. I inquired of you when that sham trial was going on from every stray Episcopalian I could meet, sent messages to you, provided the messenger should fall in with you, but I did not know where to address you. I knew you did not stay in Camden, and I knew not where you staid in New York. And when I heard you had at last gone home without stopping, I was so mad I could hardly have spoken to you in the street.
I am glad you are going to resign the Presidency.* One office is enough. You will never find relief, however, until you get back to primitive episcopacy, when a diocese was no larger than a parish. An ancient province, half as large as Virginia, then had 300 bishops. I wish they could make you bishop of Alexandria, (Va)., and be done with it; and then you could stay at home like an honest man,
I am glad, too, to hear that your boys are settled to their own and your satisfaction. Give my love to Nancy and ask her to come and make us a visit, and try the effect of a northern winter. I do not believe in Williamsburg, and rejoice you are going to leave it.
What a dreadful scene of protracted suffering the wreck of the San Francisco must have exhibited. The Doctor’s (his brother) brother-in-law, Mr. Woolsey Aspinwall, was one of the passengers. He is threatened with a pulmonary complaint and was going to Valparaiso for his health. He was one of those taken off by the Kilby, and was for two weeks aboard that vessel, crowded beyond measure, without a change of clothes, with scarcely anything to eat, and little water, and all the time in imminent peril. He is now in New York dreadfully exhausted, but likely to do well.
I sympathize with you in your building troubles. Get a good book
(as I am told it is) written by a very foolish man, Prof. F, the
phrenologist, on octagon houses. I have seen some plans of his which were striking, not only from their effect, but for the wonderful facilities and roominess, which that form allows of, at a moderate expense. Nutman of Philadelphia furnished R. S., my next neighbor, a plan of a Gothic cottage, which cost some $14000, and has literally two parlors and two chambers, and no more, except a square
* Of William and Mary’s College, Va.
^T. 57.] CORRESPONDENCE WITH BISHOP JOHNS. 433
room of eight by ten feet over the entry. This house, where I live, has four rooms on the first floor and five on the second, three finished rooms in the attic, besides three finished rooms in the basement, and cost less than $5000 thirty years ago. Build either an octagon or a square house, and eschew anything pointed unless you mean to build a palace.
Mrs. Hodge and myself will (D. V.) return your and Mrs. Johns’ visit right off when we get it. How can we do it before we get it? Answer that!
With much love to all about you, yours as young as ever while writing to you. God bless you, dear John.
Charles Hodge.
BISHOP JOHNS TO DR. HODGE.
Malvern, August 31st, 1855. Dear Charles: — I did not recognize the hand-writing on the envelope. Perhaps this was owing to the diminution of visual discernment which comes with the infirmities of age, or from want of practice arising from lack of opportunity, which I deprecate. When I stripped the pamphlet, Nannie was sitting by me, and as soon as she saw the title on its cover, “What is Presbyterianism? “* she exclaimed, “How uninteresting!” We both supposed it to be a new issue from the Protestant Episcopal Sunday School Union, and probably like the “Presbyterian in search of the Church,” the parthian production from some deserter from your own ranks. Under this impression it was very near going unread, and unopened to add to the pile reserved for the fire. Happily it was rescued by the curling of the cover, as I held it in my hand disclosing the entry on the blank leaf, a line more precious to me than all the valuable publications of the Presbyterian Board, this pamphlet itself included. I cannot describe to you the sudden revulsion produced by this discovery. I will not say that I read the essay through without taking breath, but certainly I allowed nothing to interfere till I finished its perusal, for I was prepared to find that under your skilful showing the subject of the treatise could present attractions not commonly apprehended. And now if we were only together, how I should like to hold the picture in my hand and answer you by my simple comments. As the great gratification of being with you is denied me, I must briefly report my impressions, just to indicate how far an honest Prelatist and a conscientious Presbyterian may agree. And to begin at the end: —
* Delivered before the Presbyterian Historical Society, and published by the Board of Publication.
1. Your condemnation of Congregationalist is quite to our mind.
2. Your advocacy of the “rights of the people with subjection to legitimate authority,” is our doctrine out and out, though in the arrangements for the exercise of the popular element, we differ, yet that element pervades our ecclesiastical system from the appointment of parish officers and ministers, up to canonical enactments, and to the consecration of bishops. Nothing is done without the concurrence of the Laity. On this point we adopt your great principle, but cannot acquiesce in your exclusive claims.
3. In your opinion with regard to the limitations of the Apostolic office to the Apostles themselves, that it was not to be perpetual in the Church, this as you are aware was the view of the leading divines of the Church of England down to the days of Laud, and in the standards of that Church there is not a line to sustain what you controvert so ably. Those who maintain the contrary are alone responsible for their error.
4. I do not think you have distinguished as clearly as I wished you had done between the Church of England and the Anglican party in that Church. Common readers would be apt to regard them as one and the same, and to impute to the body, the sentiments of a faction. Have you made the faction the body, and the Church a scarcely observable caudal appendage?
5. With regard to exclusive claims you will not forget that as far as Protestants are concerned, Cartwright & Co., are entitled to the discovery. It was expressly combated by Hooker and others, see “Goode’s Vindication.”
6. That the Apostolic office was not permanent does not prove that they did not appoint an order in the Church properly Episcopal. For although it would not be easy to prove that they did so from Scripture alone, yet connected with ancient authors, on whose testimony as to facts we all rely, and which it seems impossible to dispose of on any other theory, the fact was so, see “Litton on the Church.”
7. It strikes me that our Presbyterian brethren have fallen into the Romish error of suppressing what was an Apostolic order, then splitting another to supply its place; abolishing the Episcopate proper, and then dividing the office of Presbyter. On this point of the Ruling-Eldership, I was struck with the adroitness of the essay.
8. What have you done with the office usually styled the Deaconate?
But you are tired, and my paper only leaves room to say that my daughters join me in most affectionate regards to your family and self. With unchanged and unchangeable love, your brother,
J. Johns.
yET, 6i.] DEATH OF DR. J, W.ALEXANDER. 435
THE DEATHS OF DR. JAMES AND JOSEPH A. ALEXANDER.
He suffered the great sorrow, in which a wide public sympathized, occasioned by the quickly succeeding deaths of his hfe-longand intimate friends, the illustrious brothers, Drs. James W. and Joseph Addison Alexander. The elder brother died on the 31st of July, 1859, at the Red Sweet Springs in the mountains of his native Virginia. His biographical memorial is principally the two volumes of letters, the record of his correspondence of forty years with his bosom friend, the Rev. John Hall, D. D., of Trenton, N. J. With reference to the publication of these remarkable volumes the following letters of Dr. Hodge to Dr. John Hall remain.
Princeton, Sept. 28, 1859.
My Dear Sir: — There is, I presume, no difiference of opinion among the friends of our beloved friend, Dr. J. W. Alexander, that some work commemorative of the man and his character should be prepared. There is, I think, just as Uttle difiference in judgment that you and you only are the proper person to perform this sacred duty. I need not state the reasons of this judgment. Your life-long intimate association with him, and your possession of the fullest record of his thought and feelings, are enough to determine this point. His brother Addison tells me that you have written to urge him to undertake this task. I sincerely believe that he cannot do it. You know as well as I do that what is painful to him in the way of mental or literary effort, becomes impossible. His feelings are in such a state that I am persuaded he could not turn his mind to this work. It would be like busying himself for months about the funeral of his brother. It is best for him and his usefulness to have his mind occupied with other things. I do trust, therefore, that you will yield to the judgment and wishes of those most interested and best qualified to judge, and consent to begin the work without delay. This is a point I think of much importance. Whatever is done should be done at once. The interest, the usefulness and success of any book which may be written would be the greater the sooner it is in the hands of the public.
The only real question in this matter, is, what kind of work should be prepared? As to this point Dr. Addison Alexander and myself fully agree. It ought not to be a memoir of his life; not a biography.
436 DEATH OF DR. J. W. ALEXANDER. [1860.
The materials for such a work are too few; and to make a biography in name while the letters are relied upon to give interest and importance to the work, is, I think, sure to fail; for it will be neither one thing nor the other. What would be most interesting, most instructive, most useful and most truly an exhibition of the man, would be a volume or volumes containing your correspondence with him from beginning to end, your letters and his. This would be a unique work. It would be a literary, a theological, a religious and a conversational history of the past forty years. Your letters are as important in such a work as his, and needed for the explanation of his. You could give your name or not. I would give it. But you might entitle the book “The correspondence of Dr. J. W. A. and one of
his Friends from 18 ‘to 18.” These letters are yours. You
only can revise them. You only can say what should and what should not be published. Do give this suggestion a favorable hearing. It is entitled to serious consideration. No mere feeling of reluctance to bringing your own letters before the public should lead you to deprive the world of a work which would be of such peculiar interest and value. Your affectionate friend,
Charles Hodge.
THE SAME TO THE SAME.
Princeton, Jan. 17th, 1860.
My Dear Sir: — I had entirely lost sight of the fact that Dr. James Alexander was ever the Editor of the Princeton Review, or that after 1 829 it ever had an Editor. It was conducted by an association of gentlemen in Princeton and its vicinity from 1829 until after the death of Dr. Archibald Alexander. That imprint continued to be used until 1840, when, although the association continued, reference to it was not made on the title page. Dr Addison tells me he knows that his brother acted as editor in 1830, and thinks he continued to do so when he went to Philadelphia.
The sixty page article on Transcendentalism was written by Drs. James and Dod — the former writing the first thirty pages, a survey of the German aspect of the case, and the latter the critique on Cousin. The article on the Modern Form of Infidelity, relating to the discussion between Ripley and Norton, was written by me. The whole of the Transcendental article and a good part of the other were printed in a pamphlet, under the auspices of Professor Norton. I have seen the pamphlet but have not now a copy of it.
Why do you strike out the playful parts of his letters?
Your friend, Charles Hodge.
You are too free with your stamps. Does Uncle Sam supply you?
/ET. 62.] DEATH OF DR. J. A. ALEXANDER. 437
On Saturday afternoon, the 28th of January, 1860, his hfe-long friend and most eminent colleague. Dr. Joseph Addison Alexander, died. In consideration of Dr. Alexander’s unparalleled learning and genius, of the fact that he was cut off in the flower of his days — in his 5 2d year, — at the very beginning of what promised to be a harvest proportionate to his extraordinary season of preparatory cultivation, and the fact that the event was, to the apprehension of his friends, very sudden, his death was the most disastrous blow the institutions of Princeton ever experienced. In a letter to the writer. Dr. Hodge declared that, with the exception of the death of his wife, the death of Professor Alexander was the greatest sorrow of his life.
On the afternoon of the Sabbath which succeeded, he broke down from excess of emotion while attempting to read the words, “Let not your heart be troubled,” and transferred the reading to Dr. Green. Afterwards he spoke at length of his friend, concluding thus: “In all my intercourse with men, though it has been limited, both in this country and Europe, I never met with one having such a combination of wonderful gifts. The grace of God most to be admired was that, though of necessity perfectly familiar with all the forms of error held by the enemies of the truth, and especially the most insidious one of criticism, he had a most simple, child-like faith in the Scriptures, and the deepest reverence for the Word of God. Above all, his crowning glory was his spirituality and devoted piety. We cannot properly estimate our loss till we think of what he was, and what he would have been, for he was only fifty-two years old, and the next ten years is the best period of such a man’s life.”
He wrote to Dr. John C. Backus, of Baltimore, January 30, 1860:
“The public papers will have informed you of the dreadful blow which has fallen on us, by which we are almost overwhelmed. You cannot tell how we feel. It is awful.
438 DEATH OF DR. J. A. ALEXANDER. [1860.
All our treasure seems suddenly sunk in the bosom of the sea. Do pray for us, and for the Seminary. We have lost the greatest and one of the best men I ever knew.”
DR. THORNWELL TO DR. HODGE.
Theol. Seminary, Feb. 16, 1860.
My Dear Brother: — I cannot describe to you the interest with which I have read your letter, nor the thoroughness of the sympathy with which I have entered into your case. My heart bled for you from the very beginning, for I knew precisely how you felt under the severe bereavement. My own mind was so greatly shocked that for successive days and nights I could think of nothing but the irreparable loss which the church had sustained. It was not my good fortune to be personally known to the deceased; but I admired his genius, his learning, his piety and eloquence. I was proud of him as a product of the Presbyterian Church in America, and he had not a friend on earth who felt a heartier satisfaction in the growing brilliancy of his name. His commentaries on Acts and Mark I regarded as models, as nearly perfection in their kind as human skill could make them, and I have been in the habit, not only of recommending them, but of insisting on my classes procuring and studying them. Then his modesty was equal to his worth. So free from vanity, from ostentation, from parade and pretensions.
But my dear brother, God reigns. Let us rejoice that we have this bright and beautiful light so long among us. It was given in grace, and it was removed not without wisdom and mercy. We must all soon follow. I feel the ties constantly snapping which bind me to earth. Many of the friends and companions of my youth are going; darling objects of domestic affection have been, one by one, removed; cherished schemes have been blasted, fond hopes crushed, the world has lost its charms, and I stand like a pilgrim with my staff in my hand ready to depart when the Master shall give the word. I feel that all is vanity but Christ and His Kingdom, The dead are the blessed ones. We are the ones to be pitied. My brother, pray for me that I may be faithful. To be found in Christ a loving, thriving member, that is all I ask, all that I desire.
I have written currente calamo just as I feel. Excuse my freedom. Make my kindest regards to Dr. McGill. The Lord bless you all!
Most truly,
J. H. Thornwell.
^T. 62.] CHOICE OF PROFESSORS. 439
CHOICE OF A NEW PROFESSOR.
This supreme loss occasioned the necessity for a considerable change in the faculty. No one man could fill Dr. Alexander’s place. The different plans discussed by the Directors, and proposed for reference to the impending General Assembly, are stated in the following letter:
DR. HODGE TO DR. JOHN C. BACKUS.
Princeton, March 5, 1860.
My Dear Sir: — I have had it in mind to write to you respecting our affairs in the Seminary, but have been too much occupied. I ought to begin by stating that the transfer of the department of Ecclesiastical History from Dr. Alexander to Dr. McGill was submitted to most reluctantly by all concerned. It was necessary because the former had got into such a state of mind that he could no longer lecture on that subject. It was foreseen that it would overburden Dr. McGill or necessitate neglect of some of his other duties. One of the conditions therefore to be answered in our future arrangements is to relieve him. He has now Pastoral Theology, Homiletics and Church Government and Ecclesiastical History. This is altogether too much especially considering two things, (i) That from disposition and necessity he is led to devote much time to our external affairs. In doing this he is of very great service to the institution. It, however, is a great burden. He tells me that often he has not two hours of the day to himself. (2) From the bent of his mind he devotes his strength very much to the students in preaching and writing sermons. Here again his services are of great value, but this leaves little time or effort comparatively for the other departments.
Another condition to be met in our plans, is to provide for the full development of the New Testament department. This Dr. Alexander had chosen for the field on which to bestow his immense talents and resources. It almost breaks my heart to think that he is lost to the Church just as he was beginning with new vigor to consecrate himself to that work. It cannot be left neglected. That department must be filled. Dr. Green cannot touch it. He is fully occupied with the Old Testament, its language, literature, history, criticism, introduction and interpretation. Surely this is enough for any man. I cannot enter on that work. I have much in my own field which I am obliged to neglect.
The question is, how are these two great objects to be provided for?
(i.) The first plan proposed was to get a man of established reputation, capable of filling the New Testament chair, and at the same time of taking ecclesiastical history off of Dr. McGill’s hands. To this it was objected that no such man disengaged or available could be found.
(2.) The second plan was that proposed by Dr. Murray, to let the New Testament department go and to allow Dr. McGill to keep Ecclesiastical History and the Church, and to get an experienced pastor to take the practical department. To this there are two great objections. First of leaving N. T. chair, one of the most important, unprovided for, and, secondly, it takes Dr. McGill from that field in which he is evidently doing most good.
(3.) The third plan was to get a young man, not less than thirty, however, or at least old enough to have his character well tested, and put him in Dr. Addison’s place to grow up to it, as Dr. Green was placed at 27 or 28 in the Old Testament department; and as I was taken still younger and brought along. To this Dr. McGill decidedly objected; first, because we need “a celebrity” at once to hold us up, and, secondly, because it would not afford him the desired relief.
(4.) The fourth plan is to try and get two men, one to fill the New Testament chair, who may be a young man, and the other a man of established reputation to take Ecclesiastical History and Ecclesiology, In this fourth plan all the Professors cordially acquiesce, and so do our friends as far as consulted.
The two objections to it are, (i), That other Seminaries have only four Professors. This I do not think will have any weight with the Assembly seeing our necessities demand the increase. (2). The great objection is the expense. This would be fatal unless it could be obviated. Our friends in New York assure us this shall not stand in the way of the plan. Now my dear sir, do you, one of our wisest and best friends, do you approve of this plan? And if so, who do you think would be the desirable man. The names of Dr. Dabney and Dr. Palmer have both been named for the chair of Church History, &c. I suppose the latter would not and perhaps ought not to leave New Orleans. The former may also be beyond our reach.
Perhaps I ought to mention that Wistar (his son) has been named for the N. T. chair as the young man, provided we can get a man of established notoriety for the other. This suggestion you will readily believe did not come from me. I do not know who first made it. It has received favor from several independent sources. I should greatly deprecate it, if he is not in fact, and in the estimation of those who have an opportunity of judging, the proper person. Wistar himself, I know, would greatly object, first because he regards himself as unfit, and, secondly because he would prefer to get along without being called upon to make so much exertion.
I hope you will write me soon on this subject, and aid us by your prayers and counsel.
Your affectionate friend,
Charles Hodge.
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER.
Princeton, April 4, 1860.
My Dear Brother: — 1 am driven almost to death by demands on my pen; letters remain unanswered and correspondents neglected.
The plan on which the friends of the Seminary have decided to propose to the Assembly, is to have two new professors, one a man of established reputation for the historical department, the other a younger man for the New Testament department. The Directors will probably recommend, either officially or indirectly (they doubt their right to nominate). Dr. Dabney, of Virginia, for the former, and Wistar for the latter post. It is doubtful whether the Assembly will consent to our having five professors. It is feared that the friends of the other Seminaries will oppose it. Provision, however, is made for the salary of the fifth professor, so that no demand for the increased expense will be made on the churches. Should the plan be adopted, there is still, of course, the uncertainty of an election in a body of 200 members. The principle, however, is so generally recognized to allow the friends of the several Seminaries to select their own professors, that the probability is that anybody will be elected whom our Board of Directors recommend.
Wistar is dreadfully mad about it, and hates the whole thing. I have had nothing to do with the matter except to express the opinion when asked that he had the talents and learning which the post demanded to as promising a degree as any young man I know. Dr. Leighton Wilson, Drs. Boardman, Jones, Backus, McElroy, Mr. Lenox, and others, had their minds turned to Wistar, and they have brought the matter to its present position. I have heard of no dissent among the Directors.
The bell is ringing. Love to all.
Your brother,
Charles Hodge.
The eyes of all the friends of Princeton were now eagerly turned to Dr. Robert L. Dabney, of Prince Edward, Virginia, who had already acquired the well-deserved reputation of being one of the very ablest teachers of theology which the American church had ever produced. It was the earnest desire of Dr. Hodge that Princeton should be strengthened by so powerful a reinforcement, and he did his best to present the claims of the position before Dr. Dabney in the most favorable light. The latter, however, after giving the proposition a candid and prayerful consideration, decided in the negative.
DR. DABNEY TO DR. HODGE.
Union Sem., Va., April loth, 1860. Rev. a7id Dear Sir: — * * * Let me say, then, that I am led to it (his negative decision) by no affectionate clamor against my removal on the part of good brethren here. * * * The true question you have correctly stated. It is: In which position shall I be likely to effect most for Christ and his church? And I cannot avoid the conviction, that so far as my fallible judgment can decide, the post of superior usefulness y”^r me is here. My reasons for this conclusion are briefly summed up in this statement, that by going away I shall inflict an almost fatal injury upon a minor interest of the church, in order to render a very non-essential assistance to a major interest of the same church. * * *.
“I would request you to communicate to your friends so much of the above as may be necessary to clear me from the appearance of inattention or discourtesy towards their request. That request I feel to be kind and flattering to me far above my deserts. I, therefore, beg that you will communicate to your friends and accept for yourself my gratitude for your favorable opinion, and for the generous manner of its expression.
I remain, with affectionate respect,
Your friend and brother,
R. L. Dabney.
Dr. Dabney, therefore, being inaccessible, the Assembly of that year, at the instance of the Directors of Princeton Seminary, assigned Dr. McGill to the chair of Ecclesiastical History, and elected Rev. Dr. B. M. Palmer, of New Orleans, to the chair of Practical Theology, and Rev. Caspar Wistar Hodge to the chair of New Testament Literature and Exegesis. As Dr. Palmer declined, the General AsjKT. 62.] CHOICE OF PROFESSORS. 443
sembly of the next year assigned Dr. McGill to the chair of Church Government and the Composition and Dehvery of Sermons, and elected Dr. James C. Moffat Professor of Church History.
When the matter of granting Princeton a fifth professor was before the Assembly, Dr. Hodge spoke as follows:
“Mr. Moderator, there is no indelicacy in my addressing the Assembly on this subject. We are seeking no personal object. We have full confidence in the members of this house. As this is a court of Jesus Christ, it must be assumed to be governed by His Spirit. Its members, I doubt not, will act not from personal or sectional motives, but from considerations they can present before the eyes of their Divine Master.
“Princeton claims no superiority. We cheerfully admit that all our Seminaries stand on the same level, and should be treated on precisely the same principles. And, therefore, whenever any Seminary appears here by its authorized representatives, and says that it cannot discharge its duties to the church without additional aid, not a friend of Princeton will hesitate to vote that it should be granted.
“There are two things, indeed, which give Princeton a special hold on the feelings of the Church. The one is that she is Alma Mater of some two thousand five hundred preachers of the gospel. That is her crown. As it is impossible that a son should fail to look with tenderness and respect on the face of his mother, so it is impossible that the Alumni of Princeton should not regard that institution with peculiar affection. A matron surrounded by her children grown to maturity, and filling stations of usefulness, must be the object of feelings which a blooming maiden cannot excite. The maiden may be more attractive and more promising, but she is not the mother of children. The other thing is that Princeton is on the frontier of our church. Our other Seminaries are safe in the interior. We stand on the borders in near proximity to the great institutions, Andover and Union Seminary in New York. Unless Princeton is able to stand erect by the side of these Seminaries, and present equal facilities for a thorough theological training, we shall lose our young men; our most promising students will be educated outside of our church. This would be a calamity not to Princeton only but to the church at large.
“But, Mr. Moderator, this is not the main ground on which we rest her application for a fifth professor. We are unable without additional assistance properly to cultivate the field assigned to us. Princeton has been prostrated in the dust. We come to you to beg you to raise us up. In the death of Joseph Addison Alexander we have lost our great glory and defense.
“Permit me, Mr. Moderator, to express my own individual convictions. I regard Dr. Joseph Addison Alexander as incomparably the greatest man I ever knew — as incomparably the greatest man our church has ever produced. His intellect was majestic not only in its greatness but in its harmonious proportions. No faculty was in excess, and none was in defect. His understanding, imagination and memory were alike wonderful. Everything was equally easy to him. Nothing he ever did seemed to reveal half his power. His attainments in classical, oriental and modern languages and literature were almost unexampled. His stores of biblical, historical and antiquarian knowledge seemed inexhaustible. To all these talents and attainments were added great force of character, power over the minds of men, and a peculiar facility in imparting knowledge. His thorough orthodoxy, his fervent piety, humility, faithfulness in the discharge of his duties, and reverence for the Word of God, consecrated all his other gifts. His complete mastery of every form of modern infidelity enabled him to vindicate the Scriptures as with authority. He glorified the Word of God in the sight of his pupils beyond what any man I ever saw had the power of doing. Princeton is not what it was, and can never expect to be what it has been. You cannot fill his place. The only compensation for such a loss is the presence of the Spirit of God.
“The department of N. T. Literature and Biblical Greek, to which this extraordinary man consecrated his life, and which he felt called for all his time and efforts, is vacant. You must put some one into it, to do what he can.
“But when you have done that, Dr. McGill remains burdened with the duties of two complete departments, the Pastoral and Historical. This is more than the most robust man can bear. Justice to him and to the Institution therefore requires that a fifth professor should be appointed to share his duties.”
DR. HODGE TO HIS BROTHER.
Rochester, May 30, 1860.
My Dear Brother: — We have a very pleasant meeting of the Assembly, and if we may believe all we hear the meeting has made a very salutary impression on this community. There has been no agitation. North and South have mingled without a jar. Southern men here say that they could not believe that in the heart of fanatical Western New York they should be so received and treated, and that the doings of the Assembly will do more to harmonize and quiet the country than anything which has occurred for five years. They say they intend to publish this sentiment in the papers when they get home. On the other hand, strong anti-slavery men residing here say they had purposely attended the preaching of the Southern members, and that they all preached one thing, and only one, Christ and him crucified. They say these Southern preachers are the best they ever heard.
Mary came with me. We have had a very pleasant time in this hotel — the Osburn House — with Dr. Boardman and wife. Dr. Thornwell, Dr. Adger and family. Dr. Spring, and several other members of the Assembly. The weather has been delightful, and the climate as good as it is in Princeton.
The election for Professors in Princeton was made yesterday afternoon. Dr. Palmer was chosen Professor in the new chair (part of Dr. McGill’s), that of Pastoral Theology and Rhetoric, and Wistar Professor of the New Testament Literature and Biblical Greek. Each had all the votes cast. The most gratifying testimony was born to Wistar by his old classmates and co-presbyters and from other sources. The number of votes (244) cast show that the election was cordial; for had the members been indifferent or opposed they would not have voted as they did.
We are of course very thankful, and hope God means it all for good. Wistar is older than I was, and than Dr. Addison was or than Dr. Green was, at the time of our respective elections.
Love to Margaret and the boys.
Your brother,
Charles Hodge.
HIS GREAT DEBATE ON THE BOARDS OF THE CHURCH.
This Debate on the subject of the Boards of the Church, and virtually upon the fundamental question of the liberty of the Church to adjust herself to providentially determined conditions, in response to Dr. Thornwell, was probably the most signal forensic effort of his life. Though very prominent as a writer on ecclesiastical principles, he never could be regarded as a practical ecclesiastic. His powers were those of the thinker, and writer, and speaker, not those of executive tact and skill. Clear and far-seeing, as he was in thought, he was not adroit in management, nor subtile in his combinations. He produced whatever effects he did, simply by the clearness of his views, the frankness of his statements, the earnestness of his appeals, and the weight of his character.
A writer styling himself “a looker-on in Vienna,” gives this account of that debate in the Presbyterian for May 23d, 1860.” Messrs. Editors. — I write you not from the shadow of the Vatican, but from the bosom of the great, perhaps the greatest General Assembly ever held in these United States.* * Here I see laymen who have graced the Halls of our National Legislature.* * * Here I find Dr. Thornwell, a representative man from the South, a person of small stature, eagle-eyed — a John Randolph head in more senses than one. He has a well-earned and distinguished reputation as a writer, debater and preacher. He laid out his
^T. 62.] DEBATE ON THE BOARDS OF THE CHURCH. 447
strength this morning in a powerful exhibition of his theory for a change in the organization of our Boards. He is clear, earnest, impassioned. He held his audience enchained. His voice is deep and guttural, mellow and impressive, — his gestures natural and forcible. The spirit he evinced was so kind, so gentlemanly and Christian, that all his opponents praised him.
“Dr. Hodge appeared on the stage immediately after the conclusion of Dr. Thornwell’s speech. As he looked over the Assembly, he saw perhaps more than half of the ministry of this great body who once had sat at his feet as learners. Such heard, with an interest and emotion, you may readily imagine, this one remaining representative of that cherished and honored band of Professors in Princeton Seminary, whose names and praises too, are so widely known in all our churches. If any man is posted in the history of our church, in the nature of its polity, and in the teachings of the Holy Spirit in relation to its duties and prerogatives, it is Dr. Charles Hodge, His speech of forty minutes told on the General Assembly with tremendous power — so much so that after Dr. Krebs had gained the floor, Dr. Spring moved that the question should then be taken. But Dr. Adger and others protested.”
The position assumed by Dr. Thornwell is stated above, page 402. The argument of Dr. Hodge, as stated by himself Princeton Reviezv, 1860, p. 566, concludes as follows.” The grand objection urged against this new theory, the one which showed it to be not only inconsistent and impracticable but intolerable, was, that it is, in plain English, nothing more than a device for clothing human opinions with divine authority. The law of God was made to forbid not only what it says, but what may be inferred from it. Ve grant that what a man infers from the words of God binds his own conscience. But the trouble is that he insists that it shall bind mine also. We begged to be excused. One man infers one thing, another a different thing from the Bible.
The same man infers one thing to-day, and another thing to-morrow. Must the Church bow her neck to all these burdens? She would soon be more trammeled than the church in the wilderness, with this infinite difference, the church of old was measurably restricted by fetters which God himself imposed; the plan now is to bind with fetters which human logic forges. This she will never submit to,
“Dr. Thornwell told us that the Puritans rebelled against the doctrine that what is not forbidden in Scripture is allowable. It was against the theory of liberty of discretion, he said, our fathers raised their voices and their arms. We always had a different idea of the matter. We supposed that it was in resistance to this very doctrine of inferences they poured out their blood like water. In their time, men inferred from Romans, xiii. i, (‘Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. Whosoever resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God; and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation’), the doctrine of passive submission. From the declaration and command of Christ * The Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat; all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do,’ they inferred the right of the Church to make laws to bind the conscience-On this ground tories and high-churchmen sought to impose on the church their trumpery vestments and their equally frivolous logical deductions. It was fetters forged from inferences our fathers broke, and we, their children, will never suffer them to be rewelded.
“There is as much difference between the extreme doctrine of divine right, this idea that every thing is forbidden which is not commanded, and the doctrine of the Puritans, as there is between this free exultant Church of ours, and the mummied mediaeval forms of Christianity. We have no fear on this subject. The doctrine need only be clearly propounded to be rejected.”