Epochs in church history and other essays

Front matter

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Preface

The discourses of the late Edward A. Washburn, D.D., which form the contents of the present volume, were not all prepared by him for publication. The three essays on topics relating to Biblical interpretation were printed during his life, and the article on a Personal Resurrection was published in the Princeton Review, in the May number of 1878. These seemed to the Editor so valuable and of such interest at the present time, that their preservation in the volume now issued appeared to be a duty, especially as so few of the manuscripts left by Dr. Washburn were in a condition in which he would have consented to have them published. The discourses on Epochs of Church History, which form the bulk of this book, were originally delivered to the Students of the Berkeley Divinity School, where Dr. Washburn was Professor of Church Polity, while holding the Rectorship of St. John's Church, Hartford, Ct., from 1854 to 1863. They were afterwards changed in form, and iv Preface.

preached to his congregation in Calvary Church, New- York, and were also, at least in part, delivered in Philadelphia, before the Faculty and Students of the Divinity School, about the year 1878. Dr. Washburn had intended to revise them for publication, but before he could accomplish the task, his hand was stilled from earthly labor. They were left incomplete in treatment, and lacking in that finished style which his artistic nature demanded as the fit vehicle for the expression of his thought. But the fact that Dr. Washburn meant to publish these discourses in a more finished form, determined the Editor to print them, though incomplete. They contain the substance of his thought, by which he wished to inform and influence others; and though doubtless he might have made them more full and elaborate, more artistically worthy of himself, he would not have changed in an iota his principles of historical criticism, nor have altered the course of his argument. The papers in the volume have been printed just as he left them. Whatever they may be, they are Dr. Washburn's thoughts in Dr. Washburn's words. No one who knew him as well as the Editor could hesitate a moment to print whatever was printed exactly as it was left. No one true to him would venture to make changes for the mere sake of improving the elegance of the expression. He would be himself, even if in undress. Doubtless had he been able to prepare

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these papers for the press, he would have changed the form of some statements, and have avoided some repetitions, now obvious enough. But the Editor has felt that the reader would wish the Author's own expression, though it might perhaps be better suited to a spoken lecture than to a printed discourse.

In selecting the contents of the present volume from the large mass of manuscript placed in his hands, the Editor had to take that which was in itself most complete, and that which treated of subjects which Dr. Washburn especially valued, History and Biblical criticism were, above all others, the chosen themes on which he loved to dwell. He believed they were the most fruitful and most healthful of all topics in their influence on the problems of our own time, and he believed equally that they were in great danger of being treated on false principles and by wrong methods. He had no sympathy with that view of Church history which kept it apart from the history of the civilization in which the Church lived and acted, which it influenced, and by which it was influenced in turn. It was as a vital factor in the life of men and of nations, that he found its value, not as a storehouse of ecclesiastical traditions or the manufactory of theological propositions. It was the growth of a kingdom which he saw in the rising walls of the city of God ; a kingdom destined to elevate and purify the whole life of mankind, individual, social and political. In his view the kingvi Preface.

doms of this world were to become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ, not by the consolidation of an ecclesiastical hierarchy, or the elaboration of theological subtleties, but by the purification of all life through the application of the righteousness and truth of the Gospel to every department of living. The Church in its truth and fellowship was the leaven, but the whole mass of human society, permeated and restored, was the completed kingdom. Hence came his appreciation of forms of Church life and action in other days, which he nevertheless believed had passed, and ought to have passed, forever. Hence his interest in all the practical social problems of his own time, which he felt could only be solved by the application to them of the eternal principles of God's revelation in his Son. His belief in Christ, as the Revealer of God's life to human life, was so reverent and so intense, that he was, above all, earnest to study the record of that life and word by all the light which Christian history and Christian scholarship could bring to bear upon it. That word and life were to him so truly Divine that he believed they must find fuller vindication and ampler application as the mind of the Church was ripened in wisdom by the discipline of its history. Hence, he held to the modern Church as the truly ancient Church; and hence true criticism, both of the Bible and of history, was, in his view, no resting in the dicta of the early Fathers, nor acceptance of the disci-

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pline of earlier ages differently circumstanced from ours, but a reverent study in the light of all modern discoveries in every branch of literature or science which could elucidate the truth and bring it to bear on the life of the present day.

Dr. Washburn thus, in all his studies and writings, was both conservative and progressive. He held to the present both as the fruit of the past and as the seed of the future. To him " every scribe instructed unto the kingdom of heaven must be like an householder which bringeth forth out of his treasury things new and old;" things old, eternal in their principle ; new in their application. Therefore search diligently for the old, the veritable, untarnished truth, he would say, by the most thorough criticism of the Gospel, and learn how to make it new in its force by the enlightened study of the victories and the failures, the achievements and the errors of the long-developing life of the Church.

The following discourses illustrate, though in brief, his thought upon the true method of Biblical and Ecclesiastical study. Brief as they are, they are full of his keenness of conception and vigor of treatment. Whether one agrees with the opinions expressed in them or not, the Editor has felt that they must prove a healthful stimulus to a living study of the two most vital problems of our time, Biblical criticism and historical investigation. They are therefore given to viii Preface.

the public as sketches rather than finished pictures ; but sketches in which we detect the movement of a master hand and the conception of a master mind.

C. C. TIFFANY.

Easter-Tide, 1883.