In May 1866, the librarian at Union reported that the library now had about 25,000 books.261 A few years later, the library received about 4000 volumes of British history and theology from David H. McAlpin, which became a new collection of its own.262 From an unidentified and undated clipping in Schaff’s scrapbooks at Union, we learn that the Seminary had received a gift of nearly 7000 volumes from Dr. Edwin Hatfield’s library and around 250 books on philology (especially Indo-European linguistics) from Professor Benjamin W. Dwight.263 In May 1875, librarian Henry Smith reported that the library had now amassed about 33,500 volumes and was “the most valuable in the country.”264 In 1877–1878, just after Smith’s death, Union tried to raise $5000 by subscription to acquire his personal library. This attempt appears not entirely successful, for the Board finally purchased Smith’s collection—but paid only $2500.265
The professor in charge of the library—Edward Robinson from 1841 to 1850, Henry Smith from 1850/1851 to 1876, and Charles Briggs from 1876 to 1883266—had to solicit the Board every year for funds, apparently not a standard budget item. In October 1851, for example, the library committee asked for $150 to buy “German works on Church History.” Board members hesitated due to the Seminary’s impoverished condition, but “Professor Smith forced [their] hand.” In May 1853, the Board voted to compensate Smith $500 “for general and special services as librarian during the present year.”267
Professors at Union often complained that it was easier to convince the Board of Directors to establish a new professorship than it was to secure adequate funds for books. Throughout the 1850s, the professors decried the state of the library, despite the installation of gas lights in 1853.268 Along the way, New York ministers who favored the Union experiment delivered heart-rending pleas to their congregations to give until it hurt: the man who could give $100,000 for “a theological library worthy of New-York” would build an enduring monument for himself, Reverend George Prentiss claimed.269
Throughout the 1860s, faculty constantly pressed for more library funds. The librarian in his report of May 1863 requested an endowment for the library equal to a professorship, asking the Board to find a benefactor.270 Over the years, Smith besieged Union officials to build a fireproof library, claiming that some parts of the collection could not be replaced at all, and other parts only at great expense.271 Finally, in 1880 ex-Governor Edwin D. Morgan gave $100,000, part of which was designated for a fireproof building.272
THE LIBRARY AT THE YALE THEOLOGICAL DEPARTMENT
In 1829 the theological library at Yale was open once a week for one hour (Thursday afternoons from 2 to 3, except during vacations). Students were allowed to take out two books once every two weeks.273 In 1830, the theological division had increased its holdings to more than 6000 volumes;274 by 1861 to 67,000 volumes plus around 7000 pamphlets, with 1800 more books and pamphlets at the American Oriental Society, headquartered at Yale. Moreover, the library had by 1861 been allotted around $1500 per year for books, then considered a princely sum, and $25,000 has been set up as a permanent fund to increase the college library.275 That George Fisher’s assumption of the Chair of Ecclesiastical History had made an impact is shown by the increase in books by German church historians—Hagenbach, Neander, Mosheim, Gieseler—that students now checked out of the library.276
A new building planned for the Theology Department in 1868–1869 was to have a “large library and reading room,” the latter of which was to be kept open at all hours for the use of seminary students. In 1870 a “Reference Library” was established, modeled after the British Museum reading room, open three hours in the afternoons. A newspaper article announcing the Reference Library exclaimed that it would be almost as if “each [student] had such a library in his own room.”277
Thus from small beginnings, “infrastructural” resources grew along with the seminaries. Nevertheless, it is sobering to recall the scanty resources with which the professors in America worked as they aimed to create theological education for a new age and a new country. The inadequacy of the material conditions under which they taught students and wrote their books and articles renders poignant Henry Adams’s claim in the frontispiece of his book: that Americans of the year 2000 might wonder how their counterparts of the nineteenth century, as childlike, ignorant, and weak in force as men of the fourth, should have done so much.278 How they did, and the intellectual, theological, and philosophical problems they faced, are the subjects of the next chapters.
PART II
History and Historiography
CHAPTER 3
Defending the Faith: European Theories
and American Professors
What a sequel and summing up of the history of Christianity would that be, to say that “God sent his Son into the world,” “that the world through him might be saved,” but the Tübingen School and British “Essays and Reviews” defeated that purpose, and it had to be abandoned?
—Frederic Hedge (1864)
Although nineteenth-century American seminary professors looked to Europe for scholarship, textbooks, and teaching methods, they recognized not only the differences between European universities and American colleges and seminaries, but also the dangers—most keenly felt by the professors at Union and Yale—to which American evangelical piety might be exposed by contact with them.1 These perceived dangers centered on Infidelity (often linked to Pantheism, an offshoot of Hegelian philosophy) and Materialism (largely Comtian Positivism), as well as on a more radical biblical criticism than most American teachers could countenance.2 Although Germany was the site from which the alleged dangers most notably emanated, Britain contributed its share by way of Essays and Reviews and Bishop J. W. Colenso’s books.3 The professors’ approach to early Christian history was decisively shaped by their reaction to these larger critical currents, attempting to appropriate what was “good” in them, while decisively rejecting aspects that might lead American Protestants astray.4
The professors stood at a crossroads: themselves educated under the assumptions of British empiricism and Scottish Common Sense Philosophy—as noted above, Smith taught these subjects—they now encountered German metaphysics and French social theory.5 Whereas (in E. Brooks Holifield’s words) “Scottish philosophy seemed tailor-made for a theology that would show the rationality of faith while preserving the necessity for revelation,”6 Continental approaches might pose more intellectual difficulties. Nineteenth-century evangelicals of an intellectual cast, George Marsden notes, seemed unaware that their theoretical assumptions, often unexamined, would soon be rendered dubious.7 Positioned between “Scotland” and “Germany,” in effect, the Union and Yale professors responded ambiguously both to philosophical challenges and to those regarding the authorship, dating, context, and significance of the New Testament and other early Christian writings. For them, the category of inspiration decisively separated the Church Fathers from the writers of the New Testament books.
In the next sections, I selectively cite examples from those professors who dealt most fully with these issues.
Infidelity, Pantheism, and Materialism
Henry Smith at Union and George Fisher at Yale, in particular, were wary that European Pantheism, Infidelity,