1. For a corroborative chronology and accurate description see Higham, J., Krieger, L. and Gilbert, F. (eds.)History (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965), p. 93.Google Scholar

2. An example of such a venture is Adams, Henry et al, Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co.), 1876.Google Scholar

3. Though this was the consensus, Justin Winsor added a more sober note in 1890: “Historical accuracy is …the most fleeting of vanities. … no historical statement can be final. Views change, and leave credulity and perversion always to be eradicated from the historian's page.” Winsor, Justin, “Perils of Historical Narrative,” The Atlantic Monthly, LXVI, 395 (September, 1890), p. 289.Google Scholar

4. See for example the careful discussion in Adams, Herbert B., “On Methods of Teaching History,” in Hall, G. S. (ed.), Methods of Teaching History (Boston: Ginn, Heath and Co., 1885), p. 176.Google Scholar

5. Herbst, J., The German Historical School in American Scholarship, A Study in the Transfer of Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1965), p. 37.Google Scholar

6. Evidence for this fact is found in a letter from Charles K. Adama to Herbert B. Adams, dated February 9, 1886; quoted in Holt, W. Stull, “Historical Scholarship in the United States, 1876–1901: As Revealed in the Correspondence of Herbert B. Adams,” The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Series LVI, 4, 1938, p. 79.Google Scholar

7. Jones, H. M., The Life of Moses Coit Tyler (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1933), p. 327.Google Scholar This particular piece of evidence derives from an unpublished dissertation written by T. B. Casady, a work that forms a substantial part of Jones' valuable study. The work is particularly relevant because Casady used one of Tyler's commonplace books and directly contradicted accepted notions about Tyler's work at Michigan.

8. Adams was correct in thinking that his seminar was the first offered in history; the first seminar of any kind was given at Harvard in 1831 by Charles Beck, a German classicist. His plans were well-considered, but ill-timed for American education. See Storr, R. J., The Beginnings of Graduate Education in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 25–28.Google Scholar

9. Cf. letters to Adams from J. K. Hosmer (1888) and C. K. Adams (1891) acknowledging him as the “director and superintendent of historical work;” found in Holt, op. cit., pp. 110 and 147.

Another accurate appraisal can be found in Woodburn, J. A., “Promotion of Historical Study in America following the Civil War,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, XV, 1–2 (April-July, 1922), p. 452.Google Scholar

10. The words are Adams’ own; found in his bulletin, “The College of William and Mary,” Circulars of Information of the Bureau of Education, Number I, 1887, pp. 73–74.Google Scholar

11. Today it is hardly necessary to point out the impossibility of equating historical research with scientific experiments. Historical events are always in the past, and there is no way to repeat them. Further, the materials are selected for the historian; he cannot control variables in experimentation.

12. The best statement was made by P. L. Ford, “Bibliography of the American Historical Association,” Papers of the American Historical Association. IV, 1890, p. 425. The obvious flaw in the scientific historian's theory was the simple fact that men like Herbert Adams did have preconceptions, and they read them into the evidence. The most famous example was the “germ theory” which said, sometimes with evidence to the contrary, that English political customs derived from Germanic and Greek prototypes. The Teutonic germ, or seed, flowered in New England soil. See Adams, H. B., “The Germanic Origin of New England Towns,” Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, I, 1883, pp. 45–78.Google Scholar

13. Herbst expressed it this way: “The ‘true’ historians had reason to doubt whether ‘a new messenger from the Infinite Spirit’ could have been discovered by induction; they suspected that its presence had been deduced from some speculative philosophical system, since they themselves had seen no incontestable evidence of either a guiding Providence or a spiritual messenger.” Herbst, . op. cit., p. 102.Google Scholar

14. Higham, , op. cit., p. 93.Google Scholar

15. Adams, Herbert B., “New Methods of Study in History,” Jovrnal of Social Science, XVIII, (May, 1884), p. 213.Google Scholar

16. Adams, Herbert B., “Seminar Libraries and University Extension,” Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, 1887, p. 455.Google Scholar In a newspaper article the same year Adams made another classic statement: The second paper read at Cambridge was no less characteristic of the … biological methods which are influencing some of our younger historians. … Dr. Hart traced the course of the late River and Harbor Bill as a biologist would study the life-history of a chick, or a tadpole, or of yellow-fever germs.,Adams, Herbert B., “The American Historical Association,” The Independent, June 2, 1887, p. 5.Google Scholar

17. Borrowing a phrase from British historian, Edward A. Freeman, Adams posted the slogan, “History is Past Politics and Politics is Present History,” in the Hopkins seminar library. His most eloquent tribute to what he thought Ranke practiced is in his essay, “Is History Past Politics!” Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Thirteenth Series, 1894, pp. 77–78.Google Scholar

18. Winsor, J., “The Perils of Historical Narrative,” op. cit., p. 294.Google Scholar

19. Adams, Herbert B., “The Teaching of History,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1897, p. 251.Google Scholar

20. Riley, F. L., “Study of Church History at the Johns Hopkins University,” The Baptist Record, April 19, 1894.Google Scholar Unfortunately, these statements are too cryptic to afford a thorough understanding of Adams’ viewpoint. One supplementary source is the J. C. C. Newton Papers at Duke University, classroom notes entitled “Modern Politics,” pp. 8, 12, 31, 54 and 57; and “Political Eeformers,” pp. 1, 8, 33–36, and 41. Other than these fragments there seem to be no extant sources as to Adams’ thoughts on church history.

21. Schaff's most cogent defense of the importance of history is:

How shall we labor with any effect to build up the Church, if we have no thorough knowledge of her history, or fail to apprehend it from the proper point of observation! History is, and must ever continue to be, next to God's work, the richest foundation of wisdom, and the surest guide to all successful practical activity.

Schaff, Philip, What is Church History: A Vindication of the Idea of Historical Development (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1846), p. 5.Google Scholar

Pertinent sources for understanding the background against which Schaff argued about history are: Nichols, J. H., Romanticism in American Theology, Nevin and Schaff at Mercersburg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961) pp. 108–09.Google Scholar

Bainton, R. H., Yale and the Ministry, A History of Education for the Christian Ministry at Yale from the Founding in 1701 (New York: Harpers, 1957), p. 186.Google ScholarWright, Conrad, “The Early Period (1811–40),”Google Scholar and Ahlstrom, S. E., “The Middle Period 1840–80),” in Williams, G. H. (ed.), The Harvard Divinity School, its Place in Harvard University and in American Culture, (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1954), pp. 53 and 88 respectively.Google Scholar

22. The best example is the three-volume set, Bibliotheca Symbolica Ecclesiae Universalis. The Creeds of Christendom, with a History and Critical Notes (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1877).Google Scholar

23. I use the term, “scientific history,” with due regard for W. S. Holt's valuable essay, “The Idea of Scientific History in America,” Journal of the History of Ideas, I, 3, (June, 1940). pp. 352–62.Google Scholar Holt dealt with secular historians, outlining two basic patterns of thought among them; it is feasible, however, to group these into a “scientific school” because they shared the attitudes outlined in this essay.

24. Schaff, position was that “a right conception of the Church [is] … the conducting genius of the Church historian.” What is Church History …, p. 37.Google Scholar

25. Sehaff, Philip. What is Church History …, pp, 5, 84 and 91.Google Scholar For corroborative analysis, see Klaus Penzel's unpublished dissertation, Church History and the Ecumenical Quest, A Study of the German Background and Thought of Philip Schaff. Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, 1962, pp. 222 and 264.Google Scholar

26. “Romanuecism” is an elusive word with many connotations, some of which are contradictory. Arthur O. Lovejoy has succeeded in isolating one idea about romanticism that is suited to Schaff's viewpoint, viz., “the idea of the Whole,” a concept emerging initially in the 1780's. Whereas most eighteenth century thinkers conceived of the individual as primary, a possessor of intrinsic rights, later thinkers began a new trend with the innovations of Immanuel Kant. In hia Critique of Judgment, Kant stated that every part of an organism depended for its existence on all the other parts; further each part existed for all other parts. Thus primacy was placed, not on the individual component, but on the whole, or das Ganze, which sometimes took precedence over individual whims. Ideaa contained in the organism, the biological or political entity as a whole, determined the future development of every segment comprising it. See Lovejoy, A. O., “The Meaning of Romanticism for the Historian of Ideas,” Journal of the History of Ideas, II, 3 (June, 1941), pp. 272–73.Google Scholar

27. It is interesting to see that Schaff and Adams resembled each other in that they shared variations of the “germ” theory. But, whereas Schaff began with the initial stages (and those theologically defined) and traced historical developments to the present, Adams was primarily interested in beginning with the present situation and going back into history to uncover antecedents.

28. Schaff often alluded to Schleiermacher as the source of his ideas about the church (see his statement in What is Church History …, p. 78). It might have simply been the fashionable thing to do, but Schleiermacher did include in his theology the concept of the church as a holy community centered in Christ. See Mackintosh, H. R. translation of Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1948), pp. 565–566 and 579–80.Google Scholar

29. Schaff, Philip, What is Church History …, pp. 37 and 117.Google Scholar

30. Ibid., p. 115.

31. Ibid., p. 37.

32. Adams, Herbert B., “Is History Past Politics!” op. cit., pp. 77–78.Google Scholar

33. An excellent study of both aspects of Ranke's thought can be found in Iggers, G. G., “The Image of Eanke in American and German Historical Thought,” History and Theory, II, 1, 1962, pp. 18 and 30.Google Scholar God has proposed for his kingdom upon earth a definite end [and] all history must … move [that] way.³⁶

34. Schaff, ideas in What is Church History …Google Scholar were expanded and incorporated into an introduction for his History of the Apostolie Church (1853)Google Scholar; statements similar to those quoted above can be found on pages ii-v, 2, 8, 10–11, 16–17, 34–35 and 46–47. A later set of volumes, History of the Christian Church (1882–92)Google Scholar, contains corresponding ideas in volume I, pages vii-viii, 2–5, 20 and 25–26. Finally, selections of his Theological Propaedeutic (1893)Google Scholar show that Schaff maintained a consistent viewpoint; see pages 234–35, 239–41, 255, 259, 293 and 305–06.

35. Schaff, Philip. What is Church History …, p. 107.Google Scholar In 1846 Schaff criticized several church historians, whom he called “rationalists,” in words singularly appropriate for scientific historians: “Thus was God excluded from history altogether; which was … to thrust out its eyes and tear the living heart from its bosom…. The theatre of the kingdom of God in the world, was degraded into a wild arena of base, unholy passions,” Ibid., p. 71.

36. Ibid., p. 107.

37. Sehaff, Philip, Theological Propaedeutic. A General Introduction to the Study of Theology, Exegetical, Historical, Systematic, and Practical, including Encyclopedia, Methodology, and Bibliography (New York: Christian Literature Co., 1892), pp. 257–58.Google Scholar

38. Schaff, Philip, “The Theology of Our Age and Country,” Christ and Christianity (London: J. Nisbet and Co., 1885), p. 7.Google Scholar

39. Two late examples are in his History of the Christian Church, VI (1892), pp. 2 and 105.Google Scholar

40. Schaff, Philip, Theological Propaedeutic, pp. 239–40.Google Scholar

41. Ibid., p. 236.

42. For an early expression of this self-conscious goal, see What is Church Eistory, pp. 127–28.

43. Schaff, Philip, America, A Sketch of the Political, Social and Religious Character of the United States of North America (New York: C. Scribner, 1855), p. 272.Google Scholar Another edition, more recent but not used in this study, is edited by Perry Miller and issued by Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1961.

44. Ibid., p. 263. A similar statement can be found on p. 97.

45. For a full description of that theological synthesis, see Schaff, book, Germany, Its Universities, Theology and Religion…. (Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1857) pp. 8–9.Google Scholar It is significant that ecumenism was the most explicit reason given for organizing the American Society of Church History, a group founded and led by Schaff from 1888 to 1893. See the Papers of the American Society of Church History (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1889, Vol. I), pp. vi–vii.Google Scholar

46. Emerton, Ephraim, “History,” in Morison, A. E. (ed.), The Development of Harvard University, since the Inauguration of President Eliot 1869–1929 (Cambridge, 1930), pp. 158–59.Google Scholar Jonathan Bowers Winn made his bequest in 1877; the fact that it came independent of Emerton's influence shows that several individuals during this period denied church history a special position in scholarly circles. Emerton has been chosen simply as a representative proponent of that view.

47. Emerton, , “The Practical Method in Higher Historical Instruction,” in Hall, G. S. (ed.). Methods of Teaching History (Boston, 1885), p. 200.Google Scholar

48. Emerton, , “The Study of Church History,” Unitarian, Review and Religious Magazine. XIX, 1, (January, 1883), p. 6.Google Scholar

49. Ibid., pp. 6–7. He went as far as to say that theological commitment “affected the judgment” of most church historians.

50. Emerton, , “A Definition of Church History,” Papers of the American Society of Church History. Second Series, Vol. VII, 1923, p. 59.Google Scholar

51. Emerton, , “Study of Church History,” p. 8.Google Scholar

52. Ibid., pp. 7–8.

53. Emerton, , “Definition of Church History,” pp. 57–58.Google Scholar

54. Emerton, , “The Place of History in Theological Study,” Learning and Living, Academic Essays (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1921), p. 319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55. It is important to notice that there were probably theological reasons in addition to methodological ones in Emerton's position. Williams, G. H. essay, “A Century of Church History at Harvard 1857–1957,” Harvard Divinity School Bulletin, LV, 7, (April 25, 1958), p. 232Google Scholar, summarized it this way: “Emerton's facile distinction between objective, corporately validated science and subjective, personally experienced and personally articulated theology … presupposed a pietistic and individualistic conception of religion.” Schaff could never share that view.

56. Emerton, , “Definition of Church History,” p. 62.Google Scholar

57. Emerton, , “Study of Church History,” p. 18.Google Scholar

58. Ibid.

59. Schaff, Philip, History of the Christian Church, (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1885), Vol. IV, p. 281.Google Scholar

60. Ibid., p. 283.

61. Emerton, . Mediaeval Europe (814–1300) (Boston: Ginn & Co., 1894), pp. 116–17.Google Scholar

62. Ibid., p. 145.

63. Schaff, , History of the Christian Church, IV, p. 289.Google Scholar

64. Ibid., pp. 297–98. See Isaiah iii: 1–4.

65. Emerton, , Medieval Europe, p. 185.Google Scholar

66. Sehaff, , History of the Christian Church, VI, pp. 1–2 and 15.Google Scholar

67. Ibid., p. 105.

68. Ibid., p. 12.

69. Emerton, E., Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1899), p. 288.Google Scholar

70. Emerton, E., Unitarian Thought (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1911), p. 208.Google Scholar

71. Emerton, , Erasmus…, p. 279.Google Scholar

72. Emerton, , Unitarian Thought, pp. 208–09.Google Scholar

73. Emerton, , “The Place of History in Theological Study,” op. cit., p. 321.Google Scholar The best discussion of Emerton's ideas about historical certainty is in his careful essay, “Chronology of the Erasmus Letters,” Annual Beport of the American Historical Association for the Year 1901, Vol. I, p. 186.Google Scholar

74. There were many contemporary critics, mostly British, of pretensions to strict scientific objectivity, but the point has had a certain attraction for many thinkers. One final formulation and telling criticism was produced by Beard, Charles A., “Written History as an Act of Faith,” The American Historical Review, XXXIX, 2 (January, 1934), pp. 219–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

75. An explicit repudiation of Schaff's historiographical perspective can be found in the resolution to disband the early Society (Papers of the American Society of Church History, Vol. VIII, 1897, pp. xxviii–xxix).Google Scholar