Although the intellectual scurrying to protect Christianity from Darwin's theory of evolution qualifies as the central event of nineteenth-century American religious thought, the religious romantics who pre-dated Darwin also attempted to insulate Christianity from outside threats, such as new historical and Biblical criticisms. Historians commonly remember the romantics, such as Horace Bushnell and the Transcendentalists, for their "revolt from reason"(1) and their glorifying of emotion. While evidence certainly supports this viewpoint, it is sometimes over-emphasized and can lead to a portrait of the romantics that does not do justice to the intellectual seriousness of their positions.

During the first quarter of the nineteenth century, both the orthodox and the liberals developed a faith founded upon evidence from the "two books," nature and the Bible.2 This very rational tendency soon led to a dissatisfaction on both ends of the religious spectrum. With strong concerns for the intellectual validity of their positions, Theodore Parker, a Transcendentalist, and Horace Bushnell, an evangelical, developed parallel critiques of the entrenched liberal-ism and orthodoxy, respectively, aiming at the combination of natural theology and Biblicism that dominated contemporary apologetics. But despite the fact that they reacted against similar trends in the theology of the time, they differed greatly in their positive alternatives.

The Context: Orthodox and Liberal Dependence upon the "Two Books"

The intellectual atmosphere common to the both the evangelicals and the liberal Unitarians of early nineteenth-century America contained a complementary blend of Scottish Commonsense Realism and Baconianism. The Scottish Commonsense philosophy made its way to America primarily through John Witherspoon, a Scottish president of Princeton during the late eighteenth centu-
1. George H. Shirer, "Romantic Religion," The Encyclopedia of the American Religious
Experience, ed. Charles H. Lippy and Peter W. Williams (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988), 1103.

2. Herbert Schneider characterized "Religious and academic orthodoxies" as having "shifted [their] interest from speculative inquiry to systematic instruction." The orthodox ambition was "to teach the truth, i.e., to instruct their students in correct doctrine." See A History of American Philosophy (New York: Columbia UP, 1946), 225-6. The Oxford English Dictionary indicates that the word liberal was not applied to religious belief until the 1820s, when the term began to be used to designate those "members of a church . who hold opinions 'broader' or more 'advanced' than those in accordance with its more commonly accepted standard of orthodoxy."
ry. The merit of the Scottish philosophy, which was developed primarily as an antidote to Hume's radical skepticism, was that it provided confidence in the human ability to gain knowledge. This confidence extended into the realm of religious knowledge and shaped religious thought for half of a century.

If, for the sake of explanation, the simplified realism of a later president of Princeton, James McCosh, can be taken as representative, the Scottish philosophy assumed that

reality is composed of physical objects, minds, relations, and God. These exist independently of us and are unaffected by our incidental knowledge of them. Sense perception yields true information; hence we know reality directly. Our knowledge of objects is not inferential; it is not the case (contra Hume) that we know only our ideas.(3)

This confident set of assumptions about the relationship between the knower and the external world led McCosh to his maxim: "By nature man is competently organized for truth, and truth in general is not beyond his reach."(4)

These Commonsense assumptions that informed American religious thought through the mid 1800s had important application in the theological, natural, and moral sciences. The realists believed that theology and philosophy, like physical science, must be inductive: Commonsense realism thus neatly complemented the Baconian method of induction, which was based on studying particulars and then formulating general laws. Through the middle of the century, most evangelicals believed that science, properly pursued, was not only not antagonistic to religion but was often supportive of it.

During this period, the idea of a scientific theology became important to orthodox Protestants, from the Presbyterians to the Congregationalists. The inductive method of Francis Bacon became a symbol for knowledge based upon evidence. The orthodox saw Baconianism as a weapon to use against the speculative atheists of the Enlightenment, such as Thomas Paine and Ethan Allen, whose thinking was viewed as dangerous because it was too abstract and not grounded in evidence.(5) Although the orthodox associated Paine and Allen with atheism, the two actually held deistic ideas: they accepted only the religious principles they gleaned by reason. While they believed in one deity, who would reward the virtuous and punish the evil in an afterlife, they considered many aspects of Christianity, from the divinity of Jesus to miracles, to be mere superstitions. Interestingly, many of the arguments of the deists had been used by

3. Elizabeth Flower and Murray G. Murphey, A History of Philosophy in America, vol.1 (New York: Putnam, 1977), 212-3.

4. Ibid., 212.

(5)Herbert Hovenkamp, Science and Religion in America, 1800-1860 (U of Pennsylvania P, 1978), 28; Theodore Dwight Bozeman, Protestants in an Age of Science: The Bacon ian Ideal and Antebellum American Religious Thought (Chapel Hill: U North Carolina P, 1977), xiii.
Christian natural theologians for centuries, and would continue to be used by those theologians of the nineteenth century who sought to find evidences for Christianity in nature, without relying on revelation.6

Samuel Tyler, in several articles on Baconianism published in The Princeton Review during the early 1840s, helped to popularize Bacon's inductive method in a more rigorous and specific form than was commonly subscribed to earlier in the century. In an article of 1840, Tyler gave a detailed explanation of Bacon's new method of investigation" and compared it to the older Aristotelian method, which "exhibited a total disregard of facts and phenomena."(7) The Baconian method of induction, as described by Tyler, was a method to gain probable knowledge about natural laws by proceeding "from particulars to a class of low degree, and from several classes of low degree to those of a higher, until we arrive at those of the highest degree."s Although Tyler acknowledged that some philosophers (notably those of France) had misused Bacon's methods to arrive at atheism, he believed that the proper method supported natural theology and prevented atheistic speculation by its strict adherence to observed facts.

Edward Hitchcock (1793-1864), a prominent Congregationalist geologist, lecturer, and president of Amherst College, also defended Baconianism from the accusations that it led to infidelity. Hitchcock explicitly linked abstract and deductive thinking, not inductive thinking, with infidelity:

the philosophy which has thus been exalted above revelation so often and so disastrously is not that of induction, but of abstraction; not that of Bacon, and Newton . . . but that of Hobbes, and Home, and Diderot. I know that there has always been, and still is, a strong jealousy of physical science, as if it were hostile to religion; but where is the evidence of such hostility?(9)

Hitchcock's argument was not new: the rationalism of the Enlightenment, not science's demand for evidence, had long been associated with infidelity.

6. Although deism seemed attractive to many American intellectuals of the later eighteenth century, the irreligion associated with the radical stages of the French Revolution made a major impact in America, and deism lost much of its popularity.

(7)Samuel Tyler, "The Baconian Philosophy," Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review XII (July 1840): 357, 359. And "The Influence of the Baconian Philosophy," Princeton Review XV (October 1843). Interestingly, Tyler acknowledged the fact that mathematics, which Bacon had totally neglected, were important in strengthening the conclusions made by induction. See "The Baconian Philosophy," 367-9.

8. Ibid., 365.

9. Edward Hitchcock, "The Philosopher and Theologian," Religions Truth, Illustrated from Science (Boston: Phillips, Sampson, 1857), 78.
Natural theology, the theoTogy that sought the religious truths apparent to reason without revelation, employed the "argument from design" as a rational argument for the existence of an omnipotent, benevolent, and personal God. William Paley, an Anglican bishop, wrote the standard work on Natural Theology which was published in 1802. In this often imitated work, Paley set out to prove several points: the existence of one deity, the personality of the deity, and the goodness of the deity. Paley used the analogy of a person finding a watch to argue (against Hume's skepticism) for the existence of the deity. Just as we know that the watch, with all of its complicated mechanisms working in harmony, must have been constructed by an intelligent designer, we also know that the world must have been created by an intelligent designer.(1)o The existence of the world and the complexity and perfection of its design provides inductive proof for the existence of God. Citing such anatomical structures as the human eye, which was clearly designed for the purpose of vision, he pointed to the absurdity of the belief that such things could exist if there were no intelligent God, and from there he reasoned that intelligence implies personality.

With the intelligence and personality of God established, Paley pointed to pleasure as evidence for the goodness of Cod. Because pleasure was a sensation not necessary to life, it couTd only be explained by the existence of a benevolent deity. Natural theology also attempted a theodicy, an explanation for the presence of suffering and evil in the world. Paley argued that although we cannot understand evil and pain, they are clearly part of design and have a purpose that human beings in many cases cannot grasp.(11) With these characteristics of God proven, Paley had produced many basic aspects of Christianity through the use of reason, without the aid of revelation. His work provided a model for several generations of American theologians.

Edward Hitchcock, popular for his work in geology, provided many examples of the argument from design as used in America. Hitchcock's works contained two common elements, the conviction that science and the Bible can never truly conflict and the belief that natural theology lays a foundation for faith. The findings of science, although they may seem to conflict with the Bible because of a lack of human understanding, could never truly disagree with revelation because "the God of nature is the God of revelation." Hitchcock employed the argument that because the purpose of the Bible was to reveal "a plan of salvation," not to be "a text-book in natural science," some apparent conflicts might

10. This argument, traditionally called the "argument from design," has also aptly been called the "teleological argument" because it holds that the purpose implicit in the design of the universe implies the existence of an intelligent creator.

11. William Paley, Natural Theology, ed. Frederick Ferri (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill,

1963).
appear. (12) But these conflicts were not real and could be accounted for in several ways, such as a mistake in the interpretation of the Bible or a mistaken scientific understanding. Not only did science not conflict with religion, but it was, according to Hitchcock, "favorable to piety": "What is true science but an exhibition of God's plans?"(13) Science thus helped people to understand the scripture and provided a natural theology that laid the ground for faith.

Hitchcock supported his dual contention that science both supports religion and helps clarify the scripture with his geological findings and with other, more original arguments. In a lecture on "Special Divine Interpositions in Nature," Hitchcock included an easily grasped design argument based on undersea volcanoes:

Let us go once more on the wings of imagination back to that remote period of our world's history, when most of its present continents were beneath the ocean. As we hover over the waters, we see. . . . submarine volcanoes are pouring forth their contents. . . . But what has this to do with special providence? Let the ages roll on and we shall see. By and by that ocean's bed is slowly lifted above the waves. Those waves, during its emergence, cover it with soil adapted to vegetation. Man at length fixes his dwelling upon it. he discovers, among the exposed strata, the gypsum and salt which he so greatly needs. . . . And thereby can he greatly multiply his comforts and numbers.(14).

Thus, what began as underwater explosions finally provided a place fit for, tailored to, human existence. The divine purpose and design apparent in these developments provided for Hitchcock undeniable proof of "special providence," of Cod. Additionally, Hitchcock argued that the findings of science favor Christianity over all other "false" religions. Every other religion had real conflicts, not just apparent conflicts, with the findings of science. Christianity alone, he argued, would always be able to resolve its conflicts with science.(15)

If, to use the common metaphor, nature was one "book" authored by God, and the Bible was the other, the same method of study could be applied to both. As argued by Theodore Dwight Bozeman, author of a book on Baconianism and Protestantism, Protestant clergy of the early nineteenth century believed that the Bible was supported by empirical evidence and provided empirical evidence for Christianity. The miracles and the fulfilled prophecies of the Bible proved the authenticity of the scripture, which likewise proved the truths of Christianity.

12. Edward Hitchcock, The Religion of Geology and its Connected Sciences (Boston:
Crosby, Nichols, Lee, 1860), 1-2. This argument of Hitchcock was by no means original, and had, most famously, been used centuries earlier by Galileo.

13. Ibid., 71.

14.Ibid., 112-3.

15. Hitchcock, Religious Truth, 36
Treating "biblical events and doctrines as facts directed to the senses,"(16) the religious thinkers of the time believed they could gain knowledge as valid as any other scientific knowledge.

The systematic study of the Holy Lands, first attempted during the 1830s, became another means to authenticate the Bible in a scientific way. The most scientific and influential scholar in this field was Edward Robinson, who produced Biblical Researches after several trips to Palestine. Robinson's goal was not only to find the actual locations of biblical occurrences, but to speculate about how certain events, such as the Israelites' crossing of the Red Sea, happened.(17) His research, which won great popularity, displayed the same impulse as exhibited by Hitchcock and other natural theologians. The desire for knowledge about the Holy Land was a desire for empirical confirmation of the Bible.

Tyler, Hitchcock, and Robinson wrote and spoke to an audience of educated Protestants, mostly Congregationalists and Presbyterians. The orthodox mainstream, through the use of natural theology and the Bible, had built a religious structure that depended upon reason for its inteUectual validity. The well-developed argument from design would convince even those prone to skepticism of the existence of God-at least until Darwin.(18) Mthough the above writers directed their research at fellow orthodox Protestants, the religious liberals of the period not only accepted much of what the orthodox wrote but produced many arguments of their own along a similar vein.

The liberal Christians of the period, the Unitarians, built their religion upon a foundation that they believed was both more rational and scriptural than that of the orthodox. The Unitarians had broken away from the New England Congregationalists during the first and second decades of the nineteenth century and had stripped Christianity of much of its mystical content. In addition to rejecting the Trinity (and thus the divinity of Jesus) because of a lack of scriptural evidence, the Unitarians rejected the Calvinistic view of human nature. Instead, they accepted the more optimistic view that human beings were good and could contribute to their own salvation. Thus they emphasized the moral aspects of Christianity over doctrinal questions. For the Unitarians, the truth of Christianity need not be accepted with blind faith; the miracles of Jesus, they believed, legitimized his message and his moral teachings. This position, called

16. Theodore Dwight Bozeman, Protestants in an Age of Science: The Baconian Ideal and Antebellum American Religious Thought (Chapel Hill: U North Carolina P, 1977), 140-1.

17. Edward Robinson, Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai, and Arabia Petraea, vol. I (New York: Arno, 1977). Hovenkamp analyzes Robinson's work and influence in chapter eight of Science and Religion.

18. James Turner, Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1985), 102, 173.
supernatural rationalism, made the liberals' belief in Christianity rest upon reason and the validity of the scripture.

The first and perhaps the most serious challenge to the religious security of both the liberals and the orthodox came from the new biblical criticism spawned by the liberals themselves. Joseph Steven Buckminster, a young Unitarian minister, founded the new method of biblical criticism in America during the second decade of the century. Buckminster's goals were twofeld, to prove that the Bible could not support the dogmatism of the orthodox, and to illuminate the pure and simple Christianity. According to Jerry w. Brown, author of The Rise of Biblical Criticism in America, Buckminster employed two major tools in his study of the Bible: "a careful examination of the canon and inspiration of the Bible in terms of its history, and study of the text of the Scriptures."(19) These historical and textual tools led Buckminster to several positions that were destructive of orthodoxy.

After studying the works of the eighteenth-century German biblical scholar, J. D Michaelis, Buckminster redefined the meaning of revelation: the Bible, he argued, was not verbally inspired, but was merely written by inspired writers; because not all Biblical authors were equally inspired, not all books of the Bible were equally valid. Further weakening the reliability of the scriptures, he recognized, was the fact that the Church had not canonized the scriptures in a scientific and systematic way. But despite this criticism of the verbal inspiration and the canon, Buckminster did not doubt the authority of the Gospels. According to Brown, he believed that the Gospels were "substantiated by miracle, by fulfilled prophecy, and by their internal consistency."(2)o But for those liberals who accepted Buckminster's Biblical criticism, many of the orthodox doctrines, from the verbal inspiration of the scripture to the Trinitarian view of God, could no longer be held. Nevertheless, the truth of Christianity was safely supported by the New Testament, especially by the Gospels, which were authenticated by miracles.

To most of the orthodox and liberals of this period, Christianity seemed securely founded upon reason, science, and scripture. Only a few evangelicals were beginning to distrust science, particularly geology. For those who were aware of it, the Biblical criticism of Germany was a clear attack on the scriptures, but to most people this criticism seemed too distant and radical to be threatening. Despite this common feeling of security, some voices from among the orthodox and the liberals began to dissent, suggesting alternatives to the rationalized theology that was popular among the intellectuals of the period. Theodore Parker and Horace Bushnell challenged the absolute authority of the traditional rational evidences for Christianity and proposed in their place a new intellectual justification for Christianity, based on internal and personal evidence rather than on evidence from the "two books."

19. Jerry Wayne Brown, The Rise of Biblical Criticism in America (Middletown, CN:
Wesleyan UP, 1969), 19.

20. Ibid., 22.
Theodore Parker and Horace Bushnell

Although the Unitarians began as a group criticizing and departing from orthodoxy, they soon developed an orthodoxy of their own. During the 1830s, within less than a decade after the firm establishment of the Unitarians as a denomination, the Transcendentalists began a criticism from within the movement. Herbert Schneider, historian of American philosophy, described the causes of the disaffection of the Transcendentalists:

Unitarian orthodoxy . . . with its emphasis on rational theology, its antipathy for revelation and lesser miracles, its cool enthusiasm for higher [Biblical] criticism, and its increasingly smug use of reason at the expense of liberality, became too sectarian to hold the philosophical interests and practical devotion of those liberals in whom the love of freedom was both a political heritage and a transcendental passion.(21)

Admittedly, Transcendentalism was a small movement, but its disproportional influence suggests that it attracted some of the most capable thinkers from amongst the Unitarians, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker.

Although the Transcendentalist movement was by nature informal, it is possible to form a general description of their beliefs.(2)(2) Important here are two characteristics shared by the Transcendentalists, their emphasis on the intuitive and non-rational aspects of religion and their rejection of the Unitarians' supernatural rationalism. An anonymous article of 1841 published in the Transcendentalist magazine, The Dial, concisely addresses these two issues. The author defined Transcendentalism against the sensationalism of John Locke:
"Transcendentalism, then, is the recognition in man of the capacity of knowing truth intuitively, or of attaining a scientific knowledge of an order of existence transcending the reach of the senses, and of which we can have no sensible experience."'(23) The philosophy of sensation, argued the author,

disrobes earth and nature of their chief splendor, and so does it deprive Christianity of its highest evidence. . . . Denying to man the intuition of the infinite and true, it compels us to scrutinize the claims of religion with the poor and

21. Schneider, A History of American Philosophy, 227-8.

22. For a brief outline of the Transcendentalist movement see Catherine L. Albanese, "Transcendentalism" in The Encyclopedia of the American Religious Experience, vol. II.

23. "Prophecy--Transcendentalism-Progress," The Dial, vol.II, ed. George Willis Cooke (New York: Russell & Russell, 1961), 90. This article was published in July of 1841. According to Cooke, Jonathan Ashley Saxton authored the article; see Cooke's An Historical and Biographical Introduction to Accompany The Dial (New York: Russell & Russell, 1961) for a biographical sketch of Saxton. It is very interesting that Saxton used the word scientific to describe a form of knowledge that transcended the senses and was thus both anti-empirical and anti-scientific; he probably used the word scientific to emphasize that the Transcendentalists were seeking a legitimate form of knowledge.