IV. AFTERGLOW
An inquisitive historian may detect scattered vestiges
of philosophical pietism in America after it had lapsed
into unenlightened theology and evangelical revival-
ism. The most direct vestige is to be found in the Rev.
William Ellery Channing, leader of the New England
Unitarians. He rediscovered “likeness to God” in the
human soul. Two New Light influences on him were
the theory of benevolence in the works of Francis
Hutcheson, and the personal benevolence of Samuel
Hopkins, whose character seemed to be in striking
contrast to his theology. These suggested to him that
there is an element of holiness in the human soul which
enables man to achieve self-culture. He appealed to
this aspect of the self as motivation for “social regener-
ation” by “diffusive charity.” He used the Edwardean
terminology: perfect love, rebirth, supernatural light,
mediatorial system, and Holy Spirit.
Similar vestiges appear in Channing's Boston neigh-
bor, Theodore Parker. He preached that all theologies
are transient, but that “affectional piety” and the “ab-
solute love of God” are “permanent” in man. This
doctrine he used as a basis for promoting social reforms.
He conceived “transcendentalism” to mean that life,
love, and piety transcend knowledge. Though he ap-
propriated the concepts of enlightened pietism, he
devoted much of his time and energy to rational criti-
cism of scriptures and traditions.
The most influential vestige is to be found in James
Marsh, a Presbyterian New Light and President of the
University of Vermont. Deeply concerned over the
growing gap between philosophy and theology, seeking
a new ground for “experimental religion,” he found
in Coleridge's Aids to Reflection a conception of
“spirit” that met his needs. In his long essay prefacing
his edition of this volume, he applied Coleridge's idea
of spirituality as a way of life, not of doctrine, to
philosophical reflection, to theology, and to piety. This
was a fresh enlightenment to him and rapidly became
one of the major sources of New England transcen-
dentalism. The blending of the religious enlightenment
with the new transcendentalism is evident in typical
passages like the following:
The world of spirit enters into the life of nature.... In
its own essence, and in its proper right, it is supernatural,
and paramount to all the powers of nature.
It is only by freeing the spiritual principle from the
limitations of that narrow and individual end which the
individual nature prescribes, and placing it under that
spiritual law which is congenial to its own essence, that
it can be truly free. When brought into the liberty with
which the Spirit of God clothes it, it freely strives after
those noble and glorious ends which reason and the Spirit
of God prescribe
(Marsh, Remains..., pp. 383, 389).
Such adaptation of religious enlightenment to the
“newness” of romantic idealism became a common
feature of transcendentalism; it is also in the immediate
background of Josiah Royce's contrast between “the
world of appreciation” and “the world of description.”
From 1835 to 1855 Oberlin College in Ohio was
a center of Christian Perfectionism or the philosophy
of “sanctification,” which, though critical of Edwards'
identification of “will” and “inclination,” was a direct
descendant of the New Light theology and of its em-
phasis on disinterested benevolence. The combined
influence of Charles Finney (New Light evangelist) and
Asa Mahan (author of Christian Perfectionism, 1839),
who were the first Presidents of Oberlin College, made
this institution well-known as a center of sanctification
doctrine and anti-slavery reform. Their intuitionist or
illuminist theory of benevolence, in opposition to
utilitarian ethics, served as a sanction for a vigorous
reform movement and for civil disobedience to the
fugitive slave laws.
A curious vestige of Edwards' psychology of the will
is found in the development of psychology in America
during the nineteenth century. The terms “will” and
“inclination” were used by Edwards as technical syno-
nyms for “heart” as over against “head.” The
Edwardeans in their theological polemics used the term
“propensities” in place of Edwards' “inclinations,” and
distinguished these from both “will” and “under-
standing,” thus creating a “three-faculty psychology.”
When Nathanael Emmons began to use the term “ex-
ercises” to refer to the “strivings” of seekers for Grace,
others, referred back to Edwards' use of the term
“taste” to describe the affectional faculty of the mind.
The first psychologist to embody this “three-faculty”
doctrine in his text of 1824 was the Rev. Asa Burton
of Thetford, Vermont and Dartmouth College. This led
to a long controversy about the relation between taste
and will. Burton identified “taste” with “heart” and
called it “the principle of action” as well as of “pleas-
ure and pain.” Subsequently “taste” became “con-
sciousness” in addition to volition and cognition. Thus,
at least indirectly, the theory of the affections which
developed during the Great Awakening led to the
preoccupation of William James with the emotions,
especially in his Varieties of Religious Experience.
