An Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since KantMoore, Edward Caldwell
Philosophy
An Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant
Moore, Edward Caldwell
Church history -- 19th century; Philosophy and religion; Philosophy, Modern -- History
In no life are reflected more perfectly the spiritual conflicts of the
fifth decade of the nineteenth century than in that of Frederick W.
Robertson. No mind worked itself more triumphantly out of these
difficulties. Descended from a family of Scottish soldiers, evangelical
in piety, a student in Oxford in 1837, repelled by the Oxford Movement,
he undertook his ministry under a morbid sense of responsibility. He
reacted violently against his evangelicalism. He travelled abroad, read
enormously, was plunged into an agony which threatened mentally to undo
him. He took his charge at Brighton in 1847, still only thirty-one years
old, and at once shone forth in the splendour of his genius. A martyr to
disease and petty persecution, dying at thirty-seven, he yet left the
impress of one of the greatest preachers whom the Church of England has
produced. He left no formal literary work such as he had designed. Of
his sermons we have almost none from his own manuscripts. Yet his
influence is to-day almost as intense as when the sermons were
delivered. It is, before all, the wealth and depth of his thought, the
reality of the content of the sermons, which commands admiration. They
are a classic refutation of the remark that one cannot preach theology.
Out of them, even in their fragmentary state, a well-articulated system
might be made. He brought to his age the living message of a man upon
whom the best light of his age had shone.
PHILLIPS BROOKS
Something of the same sort may be said concerning Phillips Brooks. He
inherited on his father's side the sober rationalism and the humane and
secular interest of the earlier Unitarianism, on his mother's side the
intensity of evangelical pietism with the Calvinistic form of thought.
The conflict of these opposing tendencies in New England was at that
time so great that Brooks's parents sought refuge with the low-church
element in the Episcopal Church. Brooks's education at Harvard College,
where he took his degree in 1855, as also at Alexandria, and still more,
his reading and experience, made him sympathetic with that which, in
England in those years, was called the Broad Church party. He was deeply
influenced by Campbell and Maurice. Later well known in England, he was
the compeer of the best spirits of his generation there. Deepened by the
experience of the great war, he held in succession two pulpits of large
influence, dying as Bishop of Massachusetts in 1893. There is a
theological note about his preaching, as in the case of Robertson. Often
it is the same note. Brooks had passed through no such crisis as had
Robertson. He had flowered into the greatness of rational belief. His
sermons are a contribution to the thinking of his age. We have much
finished material of this kind from his own hand, and a book or two
besides. His service through many years as preacher to his university
was of inestimable worth. The presentation of ever-advancing thought to
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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