s are those of Leonard Woods (in five
volumes) and of Enoch Pond; of the two Drs. Hodge, father and son; of
Robert J. Breckinridge and James H. Thornwell and Robert L. Dabney; and
the "Systematic Theology" of a much younger man, Dr. Augustus H. Strong,
of Rochester Seminary, which has won for itself very unusual and wide
respect. Exceptional for ability, as well as for its originality of
conception, is "The Republic of God: An Institute of Theology," by
Elisha Mulford, a disciple of Maurice and of the realist philosophy, the
thought of whose whole life is contained in this and his kindred work on
"The Nation."

* * * * *

How great is the debt which the church owes to its heretics is
frequently illustrated in the progress of Christianity in America. If it
had not been for the Unitarian defection in New England, and for the
attacks from Germany upon the historicity of the gospels, the
theologians of America might to this day have been engrossed in
"threshing old straw" in endless debates on "fixed fate, free will,
foreknowledge absolute." The exigencies of controversy forced the study
of the original documents of the church. From his entrance upon his
professorship at Andover, in 1810, the eager enthusiasm of Moses Stuart
made him the father of exegetical science not only for America, but for
all the English-speaking countries. His not less eminent pupil and
associate, Edward Robinson, later of the Union Seminary, New York,
created out of nothing the study of biblical geography. Associating with
himself the most accomplished living Arabist, Eli Smith, of the American
mission at Beirut, he made those "Biblical Researches in Palestine"
which have been the foundation on which all later explorers have built.
Another American missionary, Dr. W. M. Thomson, has given the most
valuable popular exposition of the same subject in his volumes on "The
Land and the Book." With the exception of Dr. Henry Clay Trumbull in his
determination of the site of Kadesh-barnea, the American successors to
Robinson in the original exploration of the Bible lands have made few
additions to our knowledge. But in the department of biblical archaeology
the work of Drs. Ward, Peters, and Hilprecht in the mounds of Babylonia,
and of Mr. Bliss in Palestine, has added not a little to the credit of
the American church against the heavy balance which we owe to the
scholarship of Europe.

Monumental works in lexicography hav