Dr. Hodge Considered as a Teacher, Preacher, Theologian and Christian Man
I have in the preceding chapters given the facts which constitute what remain to us in memory of the earthly hfeofthe subject of this memoir. In this chapter will be presented a reflection of the image he cast in the several offices he filled on the minds of some of the most competent of his pupils and friends.
I. DR. HODGE AS A TEACHER OF EXEGESIS.
BY THE REV. BENJAMIN B. WARFIEI.D, PROFESSOR OF THE WESTERN THEOLO-GICAL SEMINARY, ALLEGHENY CITY, PA.
Rev. A. A. Hodge: — Remembering your request, I shall endeavor to write absolutely impartially the impressions made upon me as a student of your father’s exegetical teaching. This is no easy matter, the danger being that like the skeptics I shall lean over backwards from the very effort not to lean forwards.
He taught exegesis only to the juniors, and although five years have elapsed, the impressions made at that time remain as vivid as though it were yesterday. His very mode of entering the room was characteristic. Infirm as he was, he was not bent by extreme age or infirmity; his carriage was erect and graceful, and his step always firm. The mantle that hung from his shoulders during the cooler months heightened the effect of graceful movement. I well remember that when he stepped into the aisle of the first church to welcome Drs. Dorner and Christlieb on their visit to Princeton, in the autumn of ’73, I thought I had never witnessed a finer spectacle of strength and grace combined. And yet it was but an example of his ordinarybearing; he gave me the same impression every time he entered the recitation room. After his always strikingly appropriate opening prayer had been offered, and we had been settled back into our seats, he would open his well thumbed Greek Testament — on which it was plain that there was not a single marginal note — look at the passage for a second, and then throwing his head back, and closing his eyes, begin his exposition. He scarcely again glanced at the Testament during the hour, the text was evidently before his mind, verbally, and the matter of his exposition thoroughly at his command. In an unbroken stream it flowed from subject to subject, simple, clear, cogent, unfailingly reverent. Now and then he would pause a moment to insert an illustrative anecdote — now and then lean forward suddenly with tearful, wide-open eyes, to press home a quick-risen inference of the love of God to lost sinners. But the web of his discourse — for a discourse it really was — was calm, critical and argumentative. We were expected to take notes upon it and recite on them at our next meeting. This recitation was, however, brief, covering not often more than a quarter of an hour; and we consequently felt that lecturing was the niain thing.
This, then, was how he taught us exegesis. The material of the lectures resembled very much his printed commentaries. I thought then, and I think now, that Dr. Hodge’s sense of the general meaning of a passage was unsurpassed. He had all of Calvin’s sense of the flow and connection of thought. Consequently the analysis of passages was superb. Nothing could surpass the clearness with which he set forth the general argument and the main connections of thought. Neither could anything surpass the analytical subtlety with which he extracted the doctrinal contents of passages. I can never forget how bitingly clear his sentences often were, in which he set forth in few words the gist of a chapter. He seemed to look through a passage, catch its main drift and all its theological bearings, and state the result in crisp sentences, which would have been worthy of Bacon; all at a single movement of mind.
He had, however, no taste for the technicalities of Exegesis. He did not shrink from them in his lectures, indeed; but on such points he was seldom wholly satisfactory. His discussion of disputed grammatical or lexical points had a flavor of second-handcdness about them. He appeared not to care to have a personal opinion upon such matters, but was content to accept another’s without having made it really his own. He would state, in such cases, several views from various critical commentators, and then make choice between them; but 1 could not always feci that his choice was deter-
590 ylS A TEACHER OF EXEGESIS.
mined by sound linguistic principles. He sometimes seemed to be quite as apt to choose an indefensible as a plausible one — guided, apparently, sometimes by weight of name, sometimes by dislike to what seemed to him over-subtlety, and sometimes, it seemed, by theological predilection.
He made no claim, again, to critical acumen; and in questions of textual criticism he constantly went astray. Hence it was that often texts were quoted to support doctrines of which they did not treat; and a meaning was sometimes extracted from a passage which it was far from bearing. But this affected details only, the general flow of thought in a passage he never failed to grasp, and few men could equal him in stating it.
From what I have written you will see that Dr. Hodge commanded my respect and admiration as an exegete, while at the same time I could not fail to recognize that this was not his forte. Even here he was the clear, analytical thinker, rather than a patient collector and weigher of detailed evidence. He was great here, but not at his greatest. Theology was his first love.
I would like to say one word before the closing of my impressions of your father as a teacher, because I fear that in writing to you of other things most of your correspondents may neglect this. I have sat under many noted teachers, and yet am free to say that as an educator I consider Dr. Hodge superior to them all. He was in fact my ideal of a teacher. Best of all men I have ever known, he knew how to make a young man think. All the rote-learning that could be done could not secure a good recitation to him. One must have so learned a chapter of his theology, for instance, as to be able to apply all the principles laid down in it on need, in order to be able to recite to him at all. He had a way too of commencing his questioning away back of these principles, and by skillful interrogation gradually making the student evolve them for himself, so finely managing it that at last they would burst upon him as new and self-discovered facts; educed from his own thoughts. Thus they were made part of the permanent furniture of his mind — they were no longer acquired things borrowed for occasional use, but his own, “bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh.” After that he could as soon part with life as give them up.
I cannot hope either to describe this mode of teaching or express my profound admiration of it. I can only say that in that room of Systematic Theology, I think I had daily before me examples of perfect teaching. The way he managed his own accumulations of learning too — constantly drawing on them for illustration and enforcement, constantly the master of them, and of every detail of them, was marvelous. Wc think that though learning is fuel to the mental fire, yet there is such a thing as smothering the flames with a superabundance of fuel. But “so intense and ardent was the fire of his mind that it was not only not suffocated beneath this weight of fuel, but penetrated the whole superabundant mass with its own heat and radiance.” Every jot of that learning, consecrated to the Master’s cause, was ready to be utilized in the recitation room. Every jot of it was Christianized by its passage through his mind from whatever source it was drawn. Had I never gained another thing at Princeton, I would bless God for permitting me to see this! O si sic emttes! Believe me as ever, yours, etc.
Benjamin B. Warfield.
II. Dr. Hodge as a Teacher of Didactic Theology and AS a Preacher, by Dr. Wm. M. Paxton, of New York.
1st. As a Teacher of Theology.
It gives me great pleasure to think of Dr. Charles Hodge, as I remember him when I was a student; and to mingle those early impressions with my riper judgment of his gifts and character, when in after life we were brought into more intimate relations.
I entered the Seminary at the time when he was recovering from a painful illness which confined him to his couch for a long period — during which the grace of God had wrought in him such a matured and happy Christian experience, that his face shone in brightness and beauty as if it had been the “face of an angel.” This was noticed by all the students, and was the frequent occasion of remark. When he came into the class-room, still lame, leaning on a staff, and blushing like a bashful boy, our sympathy was excited — but when he took his seat upon the chair, the glance which he cast upon the class was one of such beaming benevolence mingled with such quiet peace that we all felt he had come in the spirit of the Apostle John, to teach us out of his own deep spiritual intuitions the mystery of the kinrdom of God.
AS A TEACHER OF THEOLOGY.
His characteristics as a teacher of theology were distinctly marked.
The first impression which he made upon the student was, his deep sincerity. It was his custom to introduce each lecture with a short prayer, which was so simple, so humble, and so manifestly the expression of a heart in close fellowship with God, as to impress upon our minds the conviction — This is not a perfunctory professor, but a man of deep experience, who comes to “testify what he knows.” The whole spirit and tone of the lecture was such as to deepen this impression. He did not teach a system which he had wrought out, but truths the power of which he had felt in his own soul.
A second characteristic of his fsreaching was, the perfect clearness with which he presented every subject. His mind was both analytical and synthetical. Sometimes he combined thought with singular power. His resources of knowledge were large, and he often drew together truths and facts from various quarters and built up massive, cumulative arguments that we could see increasing in force and power until they reached an irresistible demonstration. But his chief power was analysis. A subject, as if by magic, seemed to fall in pieces in his hands, in its most lucid, logical, and striking form. The student often looked on with astonishment to see how the light penetrated a subject, and how the most abstruse things seemed reduced to perfect simplicity. This clearness of thought, which, was one of his great elements of power as an educator, arose partly from his comprehensiveness of mind, and his peculiar capacity to balance points of thought and to exhibit them in all their relations and adjustments. We take it to be the attribute of a great mind to make difficult subjects simple and clear. It is just here that Dr. Hodge shows his superiority to other men. His intellect penetrated so far down into the deep well of truth, that the water which he brought up was as clear as crystal.
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Connected with his lucid thinking was his unusual capacity for putting questions. He had no vague generaHties, he left nothing ambiguous, his questions went directly to the heart of the subject. He had the faculty of putting and of following up his questions with such skill as to stimulate the mind of the pupil in the highest degree and to make him detect and correct his own fallacies. In his examination of the class he was always kind and genial, and sometimes his vein of humor came to the surface. On one occasion he asked a student what the Apostle Paul meant by the expression, “I am sold under sin.” “He meant,” replied the student, “that he was taken in, or deceived by sin.” “Oh no,” exclaimed the Doctor, his eyes sparkling with fun, “Paul was not a Yankee.”
Third. Another marked feature of Dr. Hodcfe’s teachinswas its Scripturalness. He taught, not what he thought, but what God said, not what a certain system required, but what the Scriptures reveal; not what the learning or piety of past ages has formulated, but what the sure word of truth has enunciated. With him, the simple question was. What do the Scriptures teach? And when this was ascertained by the light which the study of the original languages and exegetical investigation threw upon it, he did not think that it was our province to stop and inquire whether this was in harmony with our own reason, but to accept it with an humble and trustful spirit. When God speaks, and we understand his meaning, there is nothing left for us but to bow and adore.
From the earliest ages there has been a strong tendency upon the part of theological teachers to strain after novelties. There has been an impression that even in this sense. Theology is a progressive science, and that things old must be constantly giving place to things new. Hence the teacher must show his superiority to all who have ever preceded him by discovering in the Scriptures what no one had ever found before; or if he fails in this, he must exert
AS A TEACHER OF THEOLOGY.
his own ingenuity to invent a new system, and then show his power to twist the interpretation of the Scriptures to its support. Hence the whole track of the Church’s history is strewn with novelties.
From all such tendencies Dr. Hodge was absolutely exempt. From originalities in this sense he shrank with alarm. On the day of his semi-centennial celebration, he turned with a beautiful simplicity to his brethren and said that “Princeton had never been charged with originating a new idea.” To his mind this was a high distinction. It is mind that has made Princeton a synonym for greatness, but it was mind that feared God and never dared to originate what He had not taught.
Another tendency in the history of the Church is to mingle God’s truth with the world’s philosophy, and the admixture is sometimes proudly called a Philosophic Theology. We occasionally hear certain teachers styled Philosophic Theologians. The appellation is designed to be complimentary, but it has always seemed to me that if such men do not stand directly within sweep, their hair at least will be ruffled with the wind of Paul’s tremendous denunciation, “Though I or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you, let him be accursed.”
This peril Dr. Hodge avoided with a conscientious honesty, and with the most entire success. He did not teach a philosophy, but a theology. Neither his system, as a whole, or any part of it, was based upon philosophical principles apart from the Word of God. We do not mean to undervalue philosophy, nor do we mean to intimate that Dr. Hodge had any light estimation of its worth. He was a philosopher as well as a theologian. In all his teachings he was abreast of the times. There was nothing in science or philosophy which he did not strive to master, and when such points came up in the course of theological discussion he showed how capable he was of pointing out every- line of agreement, and every point of contrast, and of exhibiting the hollow pretences of every philosophy, falsely so called. It was just because of this mastery that he was able to -keep philosophy in its proper place. He never sought to ally it with Gospel truth. Every student remembers, and his public works now show, with what a simple confidence he rested upon the Word of God for every proof, and that he never asked us to accept any one point of doctrine simply on the ground of a rational demonstration. He was not a rationalist in any sense of the word. His sole authority for eveiything was the teaching of the Scriptures.
Fourthly. Still another feature of Dr. Hodge’s teaching was its spirituality.
The teaching of some great and good Professors is purely intellectual; they develop splendid systems, reason with interest and force, and communicate abundance of instruction, but the impression which they make is purely intellectual. The students listen with a profound attention, just as students in other schools listen to lectures upon law and medicine — and go away, instructed, indeed, but without any spiritual or moral impression upon their minds or hearts. The reverse of all this was true of Dr. Hodge. His was not a dead theology. It was instinct with life. What he gave us was bread from our Father’s table. It was life to his soul, and he dispensed it to us under the deep conviction that it would be life to us, and that we could make it the Word of life to others. His great intellect shone in every discussion, but it was accompanied with spiritual power, and it made upon us a deep practical impression. He created an interest in the study of scientific theology, but his impression on us did not stop there; he made us feel that we were dealing with sacred things, and that these truths were to be to us and to others “savors of life unto life or death unto death.”
A Fifth distinguished feature of Dr. Hodge’s teaching was what may be called its Christocentric character.
Christ was the centre of his whole system. What he taught was “The truth as it is in Jesus.” In this view all truth has its relations to Jesus, and nothing is truth in its highest sense, until it is seen and understood in this relation. There is truth in astronomy and geology, but these truths only attain their full significance when they are seen in their relation to Christ, and it is understood, that the planets and stars and solid granite were made by Him, and that the end of their existence is to subserve his purpose. Separate what are called the truths of science from Christ, and they either lose their significance or become false lights that lure us into error. As in nature all things are luminous by reflecting the light of the sun, so in his theology, all things shine in the light of Christ and his cross. There was no point in his whole system of theology that did not derive its chief meaning from its relation to Christ. Did he speak of God — it was God in Christ. “He is the revelation of the invisible God.” When Professor Albert Dod died at Princeton, he left this message for the students of the College: “Tell them that Jesus Christ is the God whom I worship.” When Dr. Hodge in the funeral address delivered this message to the students which crowded the galleries, he threw into it a meaning that thrilled and penetrated every heart. Did he treat of creation — it was the act of Christ. “All things were created by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” He knew nothing of a God who identified himself with nature, his God was extra-mundane, and creation was not part of himself but the effect of his fiat. He made this world for a purpose, and how grand it now is as the arena of redemption. Did he treat of Providence — it is the moral government of Christ over this world, “sustaining all things by the word of his power,” and directing all things in the interests of his Church. Did he treat of the fall — it was in the light of the cross. The first Adam is best interpreted by the second Adam. Our ruin is best understood by our recovery, the greatness of our loss is demonstrated by the greatness of the price of our redemption. In the same manner, he taught us to look upon every subject as related to Christ. Man is nothing, Christ is everything. We have no worthiness, Christ is altogether worthy: He was so identified with us that he stood for us, we are so united to him that we stand in him; our acceptance with God from beginning to end is “in the beloved.” He is the ground of our Election, the foundation of our Justification, the fontal head of our Regeneration, the means and medium of our Sanctification, and the efficient cause and model of our glorification. He is all in all, and we are complete in Him.
I remember that as students under Dr. Hodge we were deeply impressed with the conviction that the thought most in his mind was Christ, the being nearest his heart Was Christ, the centre of all his theology was Christ. Now that many years have passed, and I have heard other teachers and read other authors, the impression grows upon me as I remember my early instructor, that no teacher, no author, so centralizes all things in Christ, or so uses all things to glorify Christ.
What I have thus far said of Dr. Hodge embodies my estimate of him as he rises upon my memory, sitting in the class-room, and instructing us as students. Since that time, however, his great work upon Theology, in three volumes, has appeared, embodying the matured results of his life of thought and study. The estimate which the Church and the world will form of him as a theologian will be determined by this work. We are willing that he shall be so judged. Our own estimate is deepened and strengthened as we read these wonderful pages. We recognize familiar features in the book, but it is essentially a new work. I took elaborate notes of his lectures, and have them still, in three bound volumes; but there is not a single subject which is not changed both as to matter and
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treatment. The thought is wholly recast, new accumulations of learning are added, and the discussion adapted to the most recent phases of thought and opinion. The impression which it makes upon me is that of massive learning, of profound original investigation, of close, accurate, irresistible logic, and of a comprehensiveness which takes in the vast reach of thought in all its biblical and philosophical connections, and exhibits each point of truth in its relations to the whole.
The spirit of charity which reigns in this book will reflect honor upon its author in all time. Theology and controversy are inseparable, but here is controversy in its most beautiful and attractive form. He has no word of bitterness to utter, every sentence is kind, every difference of opinion is stated with fairness, and every argument is distinguished by candor and courtesy. Such volumes as these will do much to redeem theology from the discredit which the asperities of controversy have thrown upon it.
The system of theology which Dr. Hodge leaves us is the old system which has been precious to the hearts of saints in all ages, and yet in an important sense it is his own system. Many recognize originality in nothing but novelty, but in a far higher sense Dr. Hodge’s system is original — it may be called Augustinian. Upon the day of his semi-centennial, he was called the greatest living Augustinian theologian. The leading features of these systems are alike. The great doctrines of grace which Augustine developed from the Scriptures with so much power, are no less characteristic features of Dr. Hodge’s theology. They both had the unction from the Holy One which teaches all things. They both speak from the depths of a profound spiritual experience. They were both natural logicians, and were prone to formulate their thought in a systematic expression; but the system of Dr. Hodge is far more learned, far more intelligent and complete than that of Augustine. It is founded upon original investigation, and contains points of thought and methods of proof of which Augustine never dreamed.
It may also be called Calvinistic, and yet the idea which arises in the popular mind at the word Calvinism is not realized in the system of Dr. Hodge. There are two ways of presenting the same truth or doctrine; the one is in its hard, severe, repulsive form, and the other in its no less true but attractive garb. The shield of our faith has two sides; the one is a dark iron side, the other is its bright brazen side. To look on either side alone, will convey a false idea. It is only when we see them both in their unity and harmony that we get the true impression. This harmony Dr. Hodge realized with great success. There is not one point of the Calvinistic system that he obscures, but he lets in upon it the full light of God’s love and mercy until the heart melts into submission to His sovereignty.
The system of Dr. Hodge may also be said to be that of the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, but he fills out those statements of doctrine in a much more complete and rounded form. The statements of the Confession are so accurate that we could never consent to the alteration of a single formula, but there can be no doubt that they need to be supplemented by those views of God’s love and mercy and grace under which every doctrine of God’s Word should be made to shine in its practical presentation. To the expounding of these doctrines in this light Dr. Hodge was eminently fitted. His heart was filled with the love of God, and this light he shed over every doctrine, whilst at the same time his logical perception was so clear that he never sacrificed a point of truth out of the mere gush of emotion.
But whilst it is true that in all these respects the theology of Dr. Hodge is the old system that is rendered sacred to us by the faith and experience of ages, it is, nevertheless, in an important sense his own. It is his own conception of what the Scriptures teach. He has reached these same
6oO PREACHER.
conclusions by his own independent line of thought. It is the result of his own original investigation, and of his exegetical examination of the divine record. He has formulated the statement in his own way, articulated the system in his own logical sequences, and established it by his own proofs and modes of reasoning. His book remains to the Church as a precious treasure. As a living theologian he exerted a formative influence upon the theology of this country in the times of controversy and change, and now when he is gone this book will impress itself with great power upon the thought of ages to come,
AS A PREACHER.
2d. As a preacher, Dr. Hodge was distinguished by the same characteristics which marked him as a theologian.
He was not an orator in the common sense of the term. He was too able to be popular. His train of thought was usually above the comprehension of the majority of hearers in an ordinary congregation. It was his habit to use a manuscript, and his reading was not animated. It is true, however, upon the other hand, that he was listened to by people ‘of thought and education with the greatest interest. He always treated great subjects, and his clear thought, to those who would appreciate him, was like water from a crystal spring. I have frequently heard professional men speak with great satisfaction of the way in which their minds had been cleared upon certain subjects by hearing Dr. Hodge preach. Others have quoted sayings which he uttered, and passages from his sermons which had made an impression upon their whole lives. His sermons upon public occasions were always great, because he selected important themes, and bestowed such thought and care upon their preparation. His sermon, for example, upon “the teaching office of the Church,” delivered before the Board of Foreign Missions, will remain as a treatise of permanent value, to instruct all
BY DR. WM. M. PAX TON. 6oi
those who wish to understand the principles which underhe the work of Missions.
The students who heard his preaching in the chapel will also remember a tender and devotional strain which often mingled with his great lines of thought, and produced a deep and lasting influence upon our hearts. Of this character I remember particularly a sermon upon our Lord’s invitation to the “laboring and heavy laden,” which stirred the hearts of the students profoundly. It was just such a sermon as would stimulate a great revival of religion.
As a public speaker, Dr. Hodge was most effective when he did not use a manuscript. On a few occasions, before smaller audiences, he spoke in this way, and always with much impression. This left him free to be influenced by his strong emotional nature, which sometimes rose into ascendency, and invested him with the power of a great orator. No one who was present will ever forget an impromptu address which he delivered in the First Church, in Princeton, about the time his son sailed as a missionary to India. His fatherly affection working in unison with his religious feeling, awoke him to a power of pathos which thrilled the whole assembly with a wonderful impulse. Another instance of a similar kind occurred at the funeral of Professor Dod. They had been intimate friends. They were both great thinkers, and had often talked together upon the greatest themes. Dr. Hodge had been with Professor Dod in his last hours, when his heart had been opened to speak of Christ, and his dying confidence. With these powerful impressions upon his mind, he arose to deliver his funeral address. Professor Dod had left with him a message for the College students. When he came to that point in his discourse, his heart swelled, and lifting his head from the manuscript, he stood erect, and waving his hand to the students who sat in the gallery, whilst the tears poured down his face, he delivered the message with a gust of emotion that went through that audience like the sweep of a storm through the forest. All hearts were broken, and for a moment were held and swayed by a mighty power. The scene stands before my mind this moment as the most powerful effect of oratory which I have ever witnessed.
III. His Social Qualities, and the Main Traits of his
Religious Character, by His Life-long Friend, Rev.
Dr. Henry A. Boardman, of Philadelphia,
1st. His social qualities.
A retired student, in close and habitual communion with the master-minds, ancient and modern, in the realms of Biblical criticism and theology, he was no pent-up recluse who saw nothing and cared for nothing beyond the sphere of his own professional engagements. His sympathies were as broad as our common humanity. And so vigilant an observer was he of events, that nothing of importance escaped his notice as he looked out through the loop-holes of his retreat upon the great Babel.
His visitors were sure to find him as much at home with the questions of the day, scientific or literary, political or financial, domestic, foreign or international, as though these had been his special study. Deep thinkers are apt to be poor talkers. It was pleasant to sit down with a man who, without being like Madame de Stael, simply “admirable in monologue,” could interest and instruct you upon any topic you might propose.
His home was in the empire of the affections. Never did a more kindly, loving heart throb in a human bosom. There were those of old who said to the Master, “Thou hast a devil.” What wonder that some of their successors should charge the disciple with bigotry, intolerance, malignity? All they knew or cared to know was, that he was the accredited defender of a theology they hated. Accustomed as they are to associate with its avowed creed ideas of narrow-mindedness, virulence, and the like, they must needs take it for granted that the Pontifex Maximus of this creed was the very incarnation of these amiable quahties. Had they charged simply that he was resolute in maintaining his opinions; that he would make no compromise with what he believed to be error; that no adverse array of numbers, talent, official station, or personal vituperation, could repress the frankest expression of his sentiments on all fitting occasions; that, in a word, truth was dearer to him than life, and he would have stood for it like Luther at Worms, with an empire or a world in arms against it; had this been the indictment, no one could have traversed it-But when it comes to be a question of tone and temper, it is a different matter. Here he was a very child. Not one of his various eulogists has failed to advert to this feature of his character. Addicted as he was to laborious study in the grandest fields open to our research, and capable, beyond most men, of scaling the heights and sounding the depths which define the limits of human thought, he entered with a lively zest into the current talk of the hour, the amusements of children, the petty news-gather ings of his visitors — nothing, indeed, was too trivial to interest him.
In society, he was no monopolist like Coleridge and Macaulay, but, as already hinted, he was certainly one of the most fascinating of talkers. A very noticeable thing about him was the facility with which he would pass from the lightest to the gravest themes. Abounding as he did in anecdote, no boy enjoyed a good story more. Grim Calvinist as he was said to be, his airy spirit revealed itself in a tide of humor as inexhaustible as it was refreshing. Wit he had, no less; as many a remembered pleasantry, and many a sentence in his polemical essays will attest. But this keener weapon was kept more in reserve. It was wit as refined and sweetened into humor by sympathy, tenderness and affection, that set off to such advantage his massive intellectual powers, and sparkled through his conversation
604 SOCIAL QUALITIES.
like the shimmer of the moonbeams upon the rippHng lake. This beautiful gift — for such it surely is — never degenerated with him into irreverence, coarseness, or buffoonery. It never carried him so far away from the cross and its sublime verities that he could not pass at once, and without violence to his own feelings or those of others, from the sprightliest to the gravest topics; from the commerce of small talk, bristling with amusing reminiscences and brilliant repartee, to the discussion of some subtle question of metaphysics or theology, or the luminous exposition of some controverted scripture. Whatever the company or the theme, he was always natural. He never paraded his learning; never introduced a topic for the sake of “showing off” upon it; never assumed, in his intercourse with his students or others, an air of superiority. His world-wide fame brought to his hospitable door numerous visitors from remote States and foreign countries; and nothing surprised and charmed them more than the perfect simplicity and the quiet, unostentatious manners of the man whom they had been accustomed to look at from a distance with a sort of awe. With that inborn refinement and courtesy which came of his gentle blood, he aimed at drawing out his guests, while he listened; and, it must be said, he added to his many other graces the rare accomplishment of being a good listener, even where there was not much to listen to. If they thwarted his purpose and constrained him to do the talking, it was certain to be in a strain that would run out the hour glass very swiftly, but without one word designed for self-laudation. All the more surely did it win their homage. For it is a law written as well upon the heart as upon the inspired page, “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted;” and when we meet with a person of rare powers or of signal usefulness, who loses sight of himself in his concern for the welfare of others, we instinctively pay him the tribute of our loving admiration. How could Dr. Hodge’s visitors help carrying away this feeling with them?
He was formed for friendship. His nature craved it. He could not do without it, and happily he was not put to the trial. I do not now refer to that home which was blessed and brightened with his presence, and where his loving heart found full scope and verge, and was in turn enriched by the reciprocal in-flow of a love as tender as his own. There was a circle outside of this upon which he lavished his warm affection. No niggard in his generous sympathies, his kindly wishes went out towards all whom he knew; and there were many who shared his love. But with him. as with us all, there were a chosen few whose place came next after his own household. Among the names which were oftenest on his lips were those of Johns and Mcllvaine, Nevins and B. B. Wisner, Dod and James Alexander, and Van Rensselaer. All these preceded him to the better country. The first two were his fellow-students at Nassau Hall, and the first four were his companions in the Seminary. A brilliant constellation in the moral firmament — collectively, with the addition of him who was facile princcps among them, they represented as much of mental power and brilliant imagination, of keen “dialectic and exquisite taste, of racy humor and quick sensibility, of liberal letters and commanding eloquence, of Christian activity and usefulness, and, above all, in all, and through all, of humble, earnest piety, as could be found among any similar group selected from the entire rolls of our Seminaries and Colleges.
The ties which linked Dr. Hodge with these kindred spirits were never severed nor weakened, except as, one by one, they were sundered by death.
2d. The principal traits of his religious character.
‘• If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” The remarkable phraseology here employed by the Saviour, which has no parallel in His other recorded utterances, clothes the promise with a significance beyond our grasp. But here, if anywhere, was one to whom it was given to enjoy the priceless distinction it conferred. Manifest it was to all eyes that the Father and the Son had come to him, not as a wayfaring man, to tarry for a night, but to abide with him; or, translating this unusual language into familiar phrase, that the Holy Spirit was given to him in a very unwonted measure. Rarely, if ever, did any one hear him speak of his own religious exercises but this were as superfluous as to ask the harvest-moon where she gets her splendor. His daily walk betrayed the secret; and the Oratory, beyond all other spheres, showed that the “hiding of his power” lay in that indwelling of the Spirit which made his life an habitual communion with God.
In these exercises, as in his prayers — above all, his prayers at the family-altar — the Christological type of his piety constantly appeared. Not Rutherford himself was more absorbed with the love of Christ. Around this central sun, and so near to it as to be always aglow with its beams, his whole being revolved. Christ was not only the ground of his hope, but the acknowledged sovereign of his intellect, the soul of his theology, the unfailing spring of his joy, the one all-pervading, all glorifying theme and end of his life. His very presence was felt by his students as a benediction — a means of grace, carrying with it a silent rebuke, an encouragement, a stimulus to watchfulness and fidelity — according to their individual needs. A personality like this has a power all its own. It is something different from talent, learning, eloquence, dialectic skill, affable manners, or all these combined. You cannot see it. You cannot define it. But you can and must feel it. No one could sit down with Dr. Hodge without feeling it — perhaps more sensibly than with almost any one they will have known. And these young men felt it, not only in “his opening prayers, which seemed to constitute his class-room a Bethel, and the savor of which was as the incense of morn to the soul, wooing it upward to communion with God,”* but through the entire routine of the daily lecture or recitation, and, no less, in their familiar visits to his study.
If one were called upon to specify the most conspicuous feature of Dr. Hodge’s religious character, next to that pure love with which his whole nature was transfused, it would be his hiunility — perhaps the most distinctively Christian grace in the whole garniture of the believer. Here was a man clothed with brilliant intellectual gifts, an accomplished scholar, laden with generous stores of the choicest learning, his utterances on all ecclesiastical and dogmatic questions listened to by a great church with a deference accorded to no other living teacher, lauded by eminent theologians in Europe and America as “the theologian of the age,” and the constant object of undisguised and loving reverence to all around him, yet modest and unassuming as a child — never asserting his consequence: never obtruding his opinions; never courting a compliment; never saying or doing anything for effect; never challenging attention to himself in any way. Of course he could not be blind to the homage which was paid him from every quarter; but his own estimate of himself was framed by quite another standard. His vast learning taught him that he had barely crossed the border of that boundless domain of truth which stretches off in every direction into the infinite; and his habitual feeling was that of La Place, who, being complimented, when near his end, on the splendor of his attainments, replied: “What we know is very little; what we do not know is immense.” So in respect to his personal piety. To all eyes but his own he had approached as near to “the stature of a perfect man in Christ Jesus” as any, the most favored, of those saints whose names the church has embalmed. But so clear was his apprehension
* Article in the British and Foreign Evangelical Review, by his distinguished Pupil Professor, Robert Watts, D. D., of Assembly’s College, Belfast. of the spotless holiness of God, so transcendent his views of the love of Christ and the debt we owe Him, and so inwrought his sense of the turpitude of sin, that he could only think of himself as a poor, miserable sinner saved by grace ineffable, whose best services were utterly unfit to be presented to God, whose purest aspirations were too impure to be accepted save through the ever-prevalent intercession of our great High Priest. Here, indeed, was a clear intimation that the path he was treading lay close along the suburbs of the heavenly city. For the inevitable effect of a near discovery of the divine glory must always be what it was with Isaiah and the beloved apostle — to overwhelm the soul with a sense of its own vileness. Therefore it was that our dear Professor was ever “clothed with humility” — clothed — with it: it covered him like “a raiment of needlework” — covered all the powers of his mind, all the treasures of his learning, all the wealth of his affections, all that made him great and good, loving and beloved, all that moved us to look upon him as one given to the church (may it be allowed me to say) to show how much a Christian may, even in this world, become like Christ. *
The topics with which we have now been engaged, have brought into view the gentler side of Dr. Hodge’s character. There are those who will regard the qualities indicated, as revealing a certain sort of weakness — pardonable indeed, but still a weakness; and an impeachment, so far, of the title asserted for him by his friends to have his place assigned him among the really “great” men of this age. It
* May I illustrate this point by an incident not related at the delivery of the discourse.
I was saying, “You ought to be a very happy man. Consider what you have accomplished, and the universal feeling towards you —” ‘’Now, stop!” said he, with a wave of the hand. “All that can be said is, that God has been pleased to take up a poor little stick and do something with it. What I have done is as nothing compared with what is done by a man who goes to Africa, and labors among a heathen tribe, and reduces their language to writing. I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose the shoes of such a man.’’ is simply a question as to what constitutes true greatness. In the common judgment of the learned world, this distinction belongs by pre-eminence to pure intellect in its loftiest manifestations, as, e. g., in the case of Thomas Aquinas or Kant. Others would enthrone in their Pantheon the men who combine with rare intellectual gifts, rich stores of knowledge, a wide range of literary accomplishment, and a voice or pen that can instruct and fascinate whole nations — like Cicero or Goethe. Others still, taught in a better school, would have an intellectual Colossus, not only decorated with the triumphs and trophies of genius, but animated by a spirit of genuine piety — devout and conscientious — “walking uprightly, working righteousness, and speaking the truth,” meeting all the claims of justice and equity, and really kind at heart, albeit stern, phlegmatic, unsympathizing. No one would refuse to accord the epithet “great” to the choice spirits who make up any one of these classes; but do they, singly or united, supply all the attributes essential to constitute the highest type of greatness? Can it be necessary to answer this question, with the New Testament open before us? This world has seen, since the fall, but one perfect man. If you deify intellectual force, vast erudition, philosophic penetration, here is one upon all whose faculties is the stamp of infinitude; whose mind holds in its grasp all time and all space; who guides alike the stars in their orbits, and the pollen that floats through the summer air; and in comparison with whom the magnates of your eulogy are but nursery-striplings. Yet where will you find such meekness, such humility, such affcctionateness? What language have you to describe His ineffable tenderness, His gentle bearing towards the erring, His ready sympathy with every form of sorrow and suffering, His overflowing love towards friends and foes. His delight in little children — in a word, that whole life which was in truth a child-life? No one, standing in the presence of Jesus of Nazareth, will have the presumption to deny that we have here the very highest style of humanity; and that these milder graces are just as indispensable to its completeness, as that array of grand intellectual endowments to which the world pays willing homage.
Now why do I introduce our blessed Saviour upon this scene? Is it that we may challenge for our friend whom we to-day commemorate, the first place among the great men of our race? Is it that we may exalt him above this or that illustrious philosopher or theologian in or out of the church? Far from it. It is simply to show that his true position is among the very foremost of a class never large, and augmented by only a few names in the course of a century, who illustrate the supreme type of greatness — a type which demands the union of the rarest mental power, with self-abnegation, patience, kindliness, and a feminine tenderness of disposition. The combination of strength and gentleness in his character was not merely conspicuous; it was transcendent: as among the men whom we may, any of us, have known, it was unequalled — unapproached. It was the admiration of all who met him. It was the charm that captivated his friends. It was the secret of that magnetic power which he exerted over so many hearts. It was at once the fruit and the evidence of his close assimilation to that loving Saviour in whose love he rejoiced with a joy unspeakable and full of glory. The mind struggles in vain to conceive what must be the rapture of such a soul on being received into a world whose very atmosphere is love — into the immediate presence of that adored Redeemer, whose nature is the same as when He zvept with the sisters of Bethany, at the very moment He was about to command the grave to give back its dead.
Here, then, we have the true criterion of Dr. Hodge’s greatness. It is not questioned that there have been men of still loftier intellectual culture, nor that there are names still more suggestive of universal knowledge. But no example is recalled in which an imperial intellect, mature scholarship, a creative imagination, acute sensibihty, taste, affectionateness, sterhng humor, a soldier’s courage and a woman’s gentleness, the freshness of youthful feeling unimpaired at fourscore, and all the graces of the Spirit, were more exquisitely blended. In the perfect harmony of his mental and moral powers, the purity and benevolence of his life, the wisdom and felicity of his doctrine, and the charm of his conversation, we recognize the completeness of a character, the like of which we do not expect to see this side of heaven. From our heart of hearts we render thanks to that God who made him what he was, and blessed the church with his presence for eighty years.
IV, General Estimate of Dr. Hodge’s Systematic Theology. By Charles P. Krautii, D.D., Professor OF Theology in the Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia.
The work opens with an Introduction, which treats of Method; Theology; Rationalism; Mysticism; the Rule of Faith in the Roman Catholic and Protestant view.
The First Part embraces Theology proper; under which are treated: Origin of the idea of God; Theism; Antitheistic Theories; Knowledge of God; His Nature and Attributes; the Trinity; Divinity of Christ; the Holy Spirit; the Decree of God; Creation; Providence; Miracles; Angels.
The Second Part is occupied with Anthropology; Man, his Origin and Nature; Origin of the Soul; Unity of the Human Race; Original State of Man; Covenant of Works; the Fall; Sin; Free Agency.
The Third Part presents Soteriology: the Plan of Salvation; Covenant of Grace; the Person of Christ; His Mediatorial Work; Prophetic and Priestly Offices; Satisfaction; for Whom did Christ Die? Theories of the Atonement; Christ’s Intercession; Kingly Ofce; Humiliation; Exaltation; Vocation; Regeneration; Faith; Justification; Sanctification; the Law, with a Particular Commentary on each Commandment; the Means of Grace; the Word of God; the Sacraments; Baptism; the Lord’s Supper; Prayer.
The Fourth Part is Eschatology: the State of the Soul after Death; Resurrection; Second Advent; Concomitants of the Second Advent.
Of the general fullnesss and logical order of this arrangement there can be no question. The discussion of the Divinity of Christ as distinct from the Trinity might perhaps better have been given under Soteriology, so as not to separate the “Divinity of Christ” from the “Person of Christ” The most important defect in the plan is that it does not embrace a distinct and full treatment of the doctrine concerning the Church. The omission has been made for some reason which satisfies Dr. Hodge. We hope that it means that he proposes to give to the Church a monograph on this subject, one of the most vitally important and interesting doctrines of all times, but especially in our own day. We know of no man more competent than Dr. Hodge to rebuke, with the effectual weapons of fact and logic, the insane pretences of the rampant pseudoecclesiasticism of our time, and the yet insaner radicalism, which frightens many into the ecclesiasticism.
The first thing which strikes us in reading Dr. Hodge’s book is the style. Whether we shall accept or reject what he maintains may sometimes involve a question, or a pause; but his simple, luminous mode of statement rarely leaves us in any embarrassment as to zvliat it is on which we are to decide. The sentences are never involved. The language is a model of clearness. There is a plain solid sense, the result of a sound judgment thoroughly matured, which is delightful beyond expression in this day and land of fine writing. This, of course, will expose Dr. Hodge to the charge of shallowness, from those who think that nothing is deep but what is unintelligible, and that the art of good writing is the art of putting words to things in the proportion of Falstaft’s sack to FalstafTs bread, and that the measure of words is like the measure of Falstaff in the “-irth.
Another great feature of Dr. Hodge’s book is, its value to our common Christianity — nay, in a wide sense, to religion on that broader definition in which the believing Jew has a common interest with the Christian. To the gratitude of Jev, and Christian, Dr. Hodge is entitled by the able vindication of Revelation against the assaults which would bring the faith of Jew and Christian alike to the dust. To Roman Catholic and Protestant, Dr. Hodge comes with a defense of the common creeds of Christendom; to Calvinist and Lutheran, with the able argument on the distinctive elements of Protestantism and the precious truths reasserted by the original Churches of the Reformation. Even in its relative isolation as distinctively Calvinistic, Dr. Hodge’s book is invaluable. It is the gauge of the type of Calvinism which is considered by its ablest living representatives as tenable; a Calvinism so gentle in its spirit toward other forms of evangelical Christianity, and so full of the disposition to mitigate its own harder points, as to furnish irenical elements of the most hopeful kind.
The general mildness, fairness, and clearness of the book are far beyond dispute. It treats Polemics in the spirit of Irenics, for the most part, but with here and there a delightful little dash of merited sarcasm, a suspicion of irony, a playful contempt for small presumption, and a quiet smile at the absurd, which humanize the argument, and, with those touches which make the whole world kin, bring the author nearer to the reader. Nor are there wanting earnest and eloquent passages, which deal with sin in a manner in keeping with its exceeding sinfulness, and with conscious perversions after their evil deserts. There is no amiable inanity in the book. It is not done in water-colors, as some people would think it must be, because it is not executed with a red-hot poker on an oak-board. Yet its prevailing character is mild, quiet, firm, judicial. If it is often pleading, it is still more frequently the decision of a judge, who sums up evidence, interprets the law, and pronounces the sentence.
The evidences of enormous, yet reflective reading, everywhere present themselves, reading of the most varied kind, among the best books and the worst books. There is a gathering of honey for stores, and of poisons for the study of antidotes. The range stretches over the ages, takes in largely the German theology, and reaches apparently almost to the days in which the volumes have come from the press. The result of this anxiety to bring things down to the hour has necessarily been that some of the latest reading has been hasty and has involved Dr. Hodge in mistakes. But the Doctor’s greatest weakness, in this immensity of reading, is where it might least have been suspected — it is in Calvinistic theology. He seems to have neglected a part of the Calvinistic theologians of no inconsiderable number and bulk. On his own confession, so far as his memory can recall, he has failed to have seen a single one of a very large and influential portion of those divines, so large in fact that for some two centuries it is hard to find one who does not belong to it. But we account for this on the principles of a latent elective affinity. Like seeks only its like and holds it. There rise up in history the grim and grisly features of those old divines who liked election but who loved reprobation; who conceived of the human race as created chiefly as fuel for Tophet, — divines who would have thought nothing of the perdition of a universe or two, and, if necessary, of throwing themselves in, if their logic proved that it was all for God’s greater glory — those inexorable Jonahs on whom a wilderness of gourds would have been lost in the attempt to reconcile them to the sparing of Nineveh. If Dr. Hodge long ago encountered these divines, he quietly turned away into his own brighter path, with other visions of the divine glory. He did not plunge into the Sahara, in the possibility of finding an oasis. Penetrated, as all his works show, with the completest recognition which is possible to Calvinism, that God is love, Calvinism itself is hardly in sharper contrast with Lutheranism than, within
Cilvinism, Dr. Hodge himself is with Gomarus and his pitiless school. The only apology which can be made for that school is that which they constantly make for themselves — that the logic of the system is with them, and that they are with the logic of the system. They did not create the horrors, they only told of them.
The general tone of the book is profoundly devout. Though Dr. Hodge has moved largely and freely in the living world, his most marked affinities are yet with the old. He saith “the old is better.” He has not put enough of the new wine into the old bottles to rend them — except perhaps in a spot or two. In spite of recent reading, and of the space devoted to the callow heresies of the hour, the conception and organism of the book is prevailingly scholastic, of the old Protestant type. It is old-fashioned theology in the main; and, like the best old-fashioned theology, it has the heart of living piety beating through it. It is not satisfied with teaching abo2it theology: it teaches theology, it is theology — a true” thcologia rcgoiitorumj’ Its solid judgment and learning will mark it to scholars as one of the classics of Calvinistic Dogmatics, the ablest work in its specific department in English literature. But it is more than this, better than this. The graces of Christian life are not repressed in it, as they have often been in the arid formulating of systems. Moliere’s Mock Doctor claimed no more than that the medical profession had changed the place of the heart from the left side to the right; some of the doctors in theology have left the heart out altogether. But in Dr. Hodge’s Body of Divinity there is a heart whose beat is that of the fullest health — and you can touch the system nowhere without feeling a pulse. It is a book for the affections. No man could obtrude himself less in his books than Dr. Hodge does; yet all the more for this very reason do we see the man himself in his books. His life has been shaped upon the advice of old Sir John Davies:
6l6 GENERAL ESTIMATE OF DR. HJOGES THEOLOGY.
“Study the best and highest things that are,
But of thyself, an humble thought retain.”
Dr. Hodge’s system furnishes a general landmark for Christian thinking in one of its most influential shapes; it also furnishes a revelation of the spirit of Christian science, a picture of the Christian scholar, a miniature of the Christian life. Dr. Hodge constitutes in himself a distinct evidence of Christianity, and alike in what he writes and what he is, vindicates the supremacy of Protestant culture.
It is a marked feature in Dr. Hodge’s book that it does unusual justice to the relative importance of Lutheran theology. There are but two developed systems in the world that claim with any show of probability to be purely Biblical. These systems are the Lutheran and the Calvinistic. They possess a common basis in their recognition of the same rule of faith; their profession of the Old Catholic faith as set forth in the three General Creeds; in their acknowledgment of the doctrine of justification by faith and of its great associated doctrines; and they have vast interests, great stakes, mighty bonds of sympathy in common. No two bodies of Christians have more reason for thoroughly understanding each other than Calvinists and Lutherans have, and no two parts of Christendom are closer together in some vital respects than consistent Calvinism and consistent Lutheranism. It is well worth their while to compare views.
But Dr. Hodge is not only full in his notices of Lutheran theology — he is also fair. Mistakes he has made, and very important ones; but designed misrepresentations he has never made. Next to having Dr. Hodge on one’s side is the pleasure of having him as an antagonist; for where conscientious men must discuss a subject, who can express the comfort of honorable, magnanimous dealing on both sides — the feeling that in battling with each other they are also battling for each other, in that grand warfare whose final issue will be what all good men desire, the establishment of truth?