Troeltsch is reported to have said, during the centenary celebration of the publication of Schleiermacher's chief works, that “Schleiermacher's program remains the great program of all scientific theology and only needs working out, not the substitution of new methods.” My purpose is to discuss, not the theology or the sociology of Troeltsch as the subject of this paper may imply, nor the theology of Schleiermacher, but Troeltsch's pronouncement on Schleiermacher's program and method of all scientific theology.

We Americans have been inclined to over-idealize the frontier period of our history, and have been perhaps too ready to resent any implication of unwonted moral laxity among the pioneers. It is now universally known that the great majority of the people who colonized the Atlantic seaboard came from the lower stratum of European society, and only a comparatively few represented the best in education and culture. Throughout the entire colonial period, at least until the colonial Awakenings, the great mass of the lower classes were little influenced by organized religion, and only a very small proportion of the total population of the thirteen colonies were members of the colonial churches. At the end of the colonial period there were undoubtedly more unchurched people in North America, in proportion to the population, than were to be found in any other land in Christendom.

It has been recognized for some time that nationalism is a factor to be reckoned with in the ecclesiastical history of the later Roman Empire. Certainly the history of the Monophysites after Chalcedon is largely the story of the struggle of Egyptian and Syrian national feeling against the Empire. In all probability the bishops of Alexandria who in the two generations before Chalcedon combatted the rise of the imperial church at Constantinople— Theophilus, Cyril, and Dioscorus—were supported by the patriotism of the Egyptian nation as well as by the pride of the Alexandrian see. But there has not yet been any answer to the question, when did this union of Christianity and nationalism in Egypt begin?

The discussion of this problem involves interrogating our sources on a subject they do not consciously treat and must be a matter of interpretation rather than merely of quotation of evidence. The problem could be stated in two ways; the church historian asks, when did Egyptian Christianity become nationalist? while for Egyptian history the problem is, when did Egyptian nationalism become Christian? The Egyptian nation, with its language, its religion, and some remnants of its literature and culture, had continued to exist through the whole period of Greco-Roman dominance. In the Coptic church it was to find once more the means to vigorous self-expression.

Severe economic depression had the Roman world in its grip during the middle of the third century A. D.; a condition from which the Mediterranean countries never fully recovered. There is much evidence to show that the economic structure of the Empire was crumbling. Very soon the outlying territories of the Empire were overrun by barbarians, trade collapsed, and brigandage and piracy reappeared on a large scale. All of this was accompanied by a rapid rise in the prices of the commodities of life. To-day we look for the causes of economic depressions in intricate and far-reaching social forces. In the third century Romans of the old school had a much more simple and direct explanation. When the Empire fell on hard times and disaster stalked the corners there was only one cause: the gods who had given Rome her power and the Empire its prosperity in the years gone by were being neglected, foreign gods and oriental cults had usurped the religious fervor of the people, and the venerable gods of the Eternal City were angered. The remedy was likewise simple: revive and stimulate the worship of the ancient gods of Rome, thus appeasing their anger, and prosperity would return.

It was long believed that Domine Everhardus Bogardus was the first minister of the colony in New Netherland. This opinion was corrected when in 1857 there was discovered a now famous letter by Domine Jonas Michaëlius, the actual first minister, to Domine Smoutius of Amsterdam.

Apart from the democratized Catholicism of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (July 12, 1790) the French Revolution occasioned four phenomena of novel significance: (a) The so-called “Cult of Reason” established in effect though not in name by decree of the Convention in November, 1793; (b) The nationalist Decadal fêtes, provided for that same autumn, when the church calendar was replaced by the republican; (c) the “Cult of the Supreme Being” originating in legislation of May 1794 and culminating in the Fête of the Supreme Being on June 8 following; (d) the Cult of Theophilanthropism whose prayerbook, called a Manuel at first, was composed in the summer of 1796, printed in the fall, adapted to the needs of public worship as well as domestic in December, and actually used in the former way for the first time on January 15, 1797. Following the precedent of the Abbé Grégoire, whose great History of the Sects of the Revolution appeared in 1814, these four phenomena have been classed together, with the obvious implication that all were tarred with the same stick, the ingredients of the tar consisting of infidel fatuity and political chicanery. Such indeed was the general impression that had already been conveyed by the hostile comments of conservative critics outside France. Consequently it became almost a tradition for decades to consider the four phenomena together as brilliant illustrations of the Deistic philosophy of religion, with the overt or implicit suggestion that they stand as incontrovertible proof of the infatuation of radical doctrinaires and of their folly in supposing that the religious impulse could be suffocated, or that its forms of expression nonchalantly improvised, or its nature changed from that of faith, mystery and revelation to that of reason and morality. Only recently have the researches of Aulard, Mathiez and others served to set before us accurate pictures of the actual ceremonies of these novel cults, as well as careful analyses of the sources and motives of their inception. These researches and revaluations justify a review of the traditional conceptions. Omitting the nationalistic Decadal fêtes as purely secular, our study will be devoted to the Cults of Reason, of the Supreme Being and of Theophilanthropism.

Professor Becker has said “The migrations of the Teutonic tribes and the expansion of the Saracens together form the basis of the history of the Middle Ages.” The Muslim conquests of Persia, Egypt, North Africa and Spain from 634 to 713 wiped out the ancient sees of Ephesus, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. Only Rome remained. The Saracens continued their advance over the Pyrenees and did not receive their first severe check until Charles Martel met and defeated them at Tours in 732. It was several more years however before Charles was able to regain Provence and secure Aquitaine against invasion.

The first dozen years of the nineteenth century were momentous ones in the history of our country. Thomas Jefferson was elected President in 1800, and his inaugural in March of the next year marked the republicanization of the government. John Adams in 1801 signed the treaty with France that prevented another European war and led to the purchase of the Louisiana Territory in 1803. Late in the same year Meriwether Lewis went into camp with his subordinates at St. Louis preparatory to starting westward the following spring on the famous Lewis and Clark expedition. Events leading to the War of 1812 followed and the conflict settled disputed points that allowed this country to feel comparatively safe from European interference.

The impression which is likely to be derived from the reading of a history of biblical interpretation is that modern criticism is a goal which has been attained by an evolution in which the curve of progress is fairly steady and constant. There seems to be a tacit assumption that such adjectives as “modern,” “critical,” and “scientific” as applied to biblical studies are synonymous and equally deserved. The occasional appearance of a critical judgment in the work of ancient worthies is regarded as an “anticipation” of modern views. In most histories of interpretation the beginnings of modern criticism are found in the Renaissance and the Reformation, so that Luther and Calvin are regarded as biblical scholars; the importance of New Testament studies in the work of Erasmus is exaggerated, and processes of scientific criticism are pictured as in effect before the impact of discovery brought a new world-view into being.

The early American frontier imported all of its basic religious ideas, yet was not slow in taking very significant liberties with them. The carriers of these various concepts represented a number of rather distinct cultural groups with antecedents reaching back to the British Isles and to the continent of Europe. A common background of Christian tradition existed, most of it Protestant; and English was the prevailing tongue. As in the case of every great movement of population, there came about of necessity a continuous exposure to new environmental influences which, in turn, placed their mark upon the attitudes, ideas and institutions making up the religious and general cultural life of the migrating people. It is natural, therefore, that our interest should be attracted not only to such ideas and attitudes as may appear to have been more or less indigenous to the very soil of the frontier, but more perhaps to such traditional religious concepts as may have assumed new forms or taken on new emphasis in the process of becoming acceptable to the frontiersman who again and again found himself confronted by entirely unlooked-for problems.

Cardinal Bellarmine, the chief controversialist who has written against Protestantism, has within less than fifteen months been elevated to the two highest ecclesiastical dignities conferred within the Roman communion upon the dead. He was declared to be a saint on June 29, 1930, and a Doctor of the Church—doctor ecclesiae—on September 17, 1931. Five years before, the same dignities had been conferred on Peter Canisius, likewise a member of the Society of Jesus and in the latter half of the sixteenth century next to Bellarmine the leading literary opponent of the “Lutheran rebellion”,—words used by Pius XI in his bulls of canonization.

It was on the question of Caesar worship that Christianity and Paganism joined battle. They were radically opposed, but the conflict broke out on this definite issue; and its real nature has commonly been misunderstood.

There is no occasion, in this brief paper, to discuss the origin and history of the imperial cult. Enough to say that its motive was at once political and religious. On the one hand it was nothing but a civic ritual, by means of which the diverse races could express their common loyalty to the empire. It did not seek to displace any existing religion. It was not so much a mode of worship as a patriotic gesture, like the salutation of the flag. Yet it did, in some measure, answer to a religious need. The old religions were all associated with the tribes or cities which practised them, and had lost their purpose when these were absorbed in the composite empire. What was to be the religion of the empire itself, which was now being organised as a single corporate state? To the ancient mind a political system was unthinkable apart from a religious sanction, and since there was no traditional cult on which all the races could unite, a new one had to be devised. It found its object of worship in the state itself, as represented by its supreme ruler.

On a little hillside that rises abruptly from the Baltimore Pike, an old highway from Philadelphia to Baltimore, some fifty miles south of Philadelphia, stands a little old meeting-house a-round which gather many interesting historical incidents. It is the home of the Brandywine Baptist Church, on the edge of the famous Brandywine battle field where Washington, joined for the first time by Lafayette, met defeat by the British under Howe and Cornwallis and was forced to abandon Philadelphia, September 11, 1777. Giant oak trees tower high on the hillside to-day and members of the church will point out the one against which, according to tradition, the young French general leaned, severely wounded.

It is a commonplace that young radicals become old conservatives. Not only does this principle apply in modern life but it also finds illustrations in the history of party movements in earlier times. The English Puritans, who were the progressive group of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in their country, experienced this regular defection of some of their most promising young adherents. The two famous bishops of the English Church in Ireland, James Ussher and William Bedell, were strongly inclined towards Puritanism in their early years. Samuel Ward, the great Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and delegate of the English Church to the Synod of Dort, was another who became more moderate with the years. In the tributes which have been written to the memory of Lancelot Andrewes as a great High Churchman, court preacher, stylist and Anglican devotional writer, the fact that he also passed through such a stage in his development has been generally neglected. Nevertheless such was the case, and during his early years, Andrewes made an important contribution to the development of one of the most characteristic Puritan doctrines, that of the Sabbath.