RECEPTION OP CHRISTIAN NURTURE
" I do not see how we can rest content with any conception of the system oŁ Providence which does not take in the case of young children. . . . And yet one searches in vain through many an elaborate treatise on both the temporal and spiritual government of God for a single chapter - yea, a single page - in elucidation of this momentous subject. The children, that is, an immense majority of the human race, are virtually left out of account, as if they were not included in the divine plan. . . . Many of the theologians seem to be strangely unconscious that, if really immortal, the problem of their spiritual being, here and hereafter, must needs involve fundamental principles of the divine system. A theodicy that shall meet the claims of Christian thought, and satisfy the cravings of the Christian heart, or charm to silence its doubts and fears, must vindicate the ways of Providence toward little children as well as toward the full-grown men and women."-PROFESSOR GEORGE L. PRENTISS, D. D., "Infant Salvation and its Theological Bearings," Presbiterian Review, July, 1883.
IT is not strange that "Christian Nurture" met with a stout resistance. In its inmost meaning it supplanted a theory of church life which had been slowly elaborated by a process evidently one of improvement and attended with good results. Not to have resisted would have been a surrender of a self-witnessing spiritual life. The later New England theology, especially as elaborated by the New Haven divines, represented not merely a speculative system, but a moral force of unimpeachable value. It stood for most of the good that the churches were doing at the time, Bushnell had no thought of displacing it as a whole, and even found a qualified place for revivalism. Nevertheless, his contention went beyond all such qualifications, and called for a method of church growth and a theology quite unlike that about him. He virtually recurred to the historic churches, and broke with a provincial system which, in aiming to secure certain invaluable truths, had suffered them to grow into proportions so wide as to exclude even greater truths.
From their own standpoint his critics were right, and he had no justification but such as was to be
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drawn from profounder views both of doctrine and method. But from another point of view, it is strange that a book so bathed in household love, a very cradle-song of Christian faith, should have become the occasion of a theological controversy of the proverbial bitterness. It is the redeeming feature of such controversies that time soon extracts their sting, and frowns are exchanged for smiles. Some greater truth or wider generalization comes into the field, and the debate dies out. For a while dignity suffers some discomposure, but it is a merciful arrangement of Providence that in dialectic controversy numerous ways of escape are left open by which the defeated party can retreat with self-respect and even with a show of victory. Few people in New England would now hesitate to say that it is wise to train children into the Christian life very much as Bushnell suggests; and the greater part would wonder where the theological difficulties came in.
The immediate occasion of the book was an article in the "New Englander" which provoked some dissent in the Ministerial Association of which Bushnell was a member, and he was invited to prepare a paper on the subject of Christian training. He brought before it two sermons, which not only provoked no dissent, but led to a request for publication. The manuscript was offered anonymously to the Massachusetts Sunday School Society, and was examined by the committee on publication, who individually approved, but hesi-
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tated over printing it, lest the novelty of its views might stir up controversy. After some revision and a delay of six months, it was published, and seemed about to awaken interest without alarm until a letter, having the sanction of the North Association of Hartford County, appeared, charging that the discourses were full of "dangerous tendencies." This charge without doubt originated in the Theological Institute of Connecticut, an institution that had been organized in 1834, with the distinct purpose of controverting the doctrinal teaching of the Divinity School in New Haven. Its founding reveals the intensity of feeling over the differences in opinion, and scarcely more; the differences themselves were so slight that they hardly admitted of definition. This conflict that raged for twenty or more years between these schools was a repetition of what has always been going on, - bitter debate in one age over questions that die out in the next. The universality of the process seems to indicate a law that should temper our judgment of it; it is, perhaps, the price paid for exact thought.
Bushnell from the first awoke suspicion; he struck an unfamiliar note, and the East Windsor brethren not only were quick to detect it, but to identify it with the New Haven School. No mistake could have been greater. So far as theology was concerned, "Christian Nurture" was far enough from either; but if a comparison were made, it leaned quite as much toward East Windsor as
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toward New Haven. In fact, had the former been true to the earlier school which it championed, it might have claimed the treatise as against New Haven, appropriating its "older orthodoxy," and condoning its departure from it. But at heart the book was with neither, and each opened fire on it, - the pamphlet, " What does Dr. Bushnell Mean?" having come from New Haven. Dr. Tyler's criticism was followed by a juster and far abler review by Dr. Charles Hodge, of Princeton, whose chief objection was that "he has not rested them (the facts of conversion by means of Christian nurture) upon the covenant and promise of God, but resolved the whole matter into organic laws, explaining away both depravity and grace," and presented the whole subject "in a naturalistic attitude."1 That is, Bushnell struck the modern note which it was the boast of Princeton at that time not to have heard. A still abler review came from Dr. J. W. Nevin, of the German Reformed Church,2 more sympathetic, but still critical at the same point; namely, the tone of naturalism running through the book. Both reviews, however, were one with him as to the corporate nature of the church, and furnished a contrast with his New England critics, who had so wholly surrendered to individualism that the other seemed hardly less than heretical in itself. These and other criticisms, many of them personal and hectoring in
1 Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, p. 27,1847.
2 Weekly Messenger, Chambersburg, Pa., 1847. Four articles.
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tone, betrayed Bushnell into a reply which he styled "An Argument for Discourses on Christian Nurture," and published under the title, "Views of Christian Nurture and of Subjects Adjacent Thereto."1 The wisdom of this reply has been doubted, and in fact it was regretted by Bushnell himself, not because he did not consider the defense sound, but because of his relentless severity in dealing with his theological neighbors. His attack was just, but it was a descent. An able defense of his positions was mingled with exposures of personal animosity and intellectual weak-ness in his critics such as all strong men are liable to encounter, but which wise men generally pass by. But if measured by a lower standard, it was magnificent fighting, spirited but good-tempered, and leaving nothing more to be said on the subject. It cleared a long-standing score that had been growing for years, and brought both sides fully into the light. Whether wise or not, if it did not lessen attacks in the future, it kept his critics to the proper subject of criticism.
We cannot pass by "Christian Nurture" as it appears in the later full edition without once more calling attention to it as an achievement in the world of New England theology. In point of influence, it is second only to that of Edwards in which he ended the union of Church and State by reassertion of man's individual relations to God, an achievement that required another of an
1 Edward Hunt, Hartford, 1847. (Out of print.)
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opposite nature to mark the time of religious progress. The individual and the corporate will always call for each other, as deep calls unto deep. The greatness of the book as an intellectual achievement has not had full recognition, chiefly because its theological surroundings have not been understood. It is not in its essence a discovery, for its main idea lies at the bottom of all the historic religions. It is doubtful if Bushnell at first clearly recognized it as a return to former methods except in some general way. It is well that he did not, for a formal return was neither needed nor possible. Nor was it a conscious prophecy of the method of religious culture that was about to come in; he worked at closer hand. The book sprang out of an imperative sense of what needed to be done; and the fact that it turned out to be, in effect, a semi-repudiation of the environing theology, was an incident and not due to purpose. It was not an attack, but it undermined and displaced, and prepared the way for that which was to come. For it cannot be denied that the conception of spiritual regeneration, and of its means and methods, which prevailed at the time has largely passed away, and that everything except the simple need of it has yielded to a conception based upon and composed chiefly of religious nurture. The various theories of depravity, of the will, of divine grace, of the action of the Holy Spirit, of sanctification, have either disappeared, or been so altered as hardly to be recognized. In its place are con-
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ceptions of human nature and its moral condition, of heredity and environment, of sin, of the will, of moral culture and religious experience, which are most unlike those they have displaced. Biblical interpretation, psychology, and the closer study of life in all its departments are forcing theology to recognize the fact that Christian character is chiefly a matter of Christian nurture. A universal truth, supported by universal analogies, is coming into view, and is already in process of realization, an ancient truth, but reappearing in the light of modern thought and exact science.