ture and most lamented death
the church has failed of receiving that system of doctrine which had
been hoped for at his hands. But the historic spirit which characterized
him has ever since been characteristic of that seminary. It is
illustrative of the changed tone of theologizing that after the death of
Professor Smith, in the reorganization of the faculty of that important
institution, it was manned in the three chief departments, exegetical,
dogmatic, and practical, by men whose eminent distinction was in the
line of church history. The names of Hitchcock, Schaff, and Shedd cannot
be mentioned without bringing to mind some of the most valuable gifts
that America has made to the literature of the universal church. If to
these we add the names of George Park Fisher, of Yale, and Bishop Hurst,
and Alexander V. G. Allen, of Cambridge, author of "The Continuity of
Christian Thought," and Henry Charles Lea, of Philadelphia, we have
already vindicated for American scholarship a high place in this
department of Christian literature.

* * * * *

In practical theology the productiveness of the American church in the
matter of _sermons_ has been so copious that even for the briefest
mention some narrow rule of exclusion must be followed. There is no
doubt that in a multitude of cases the noblest utterances of the
American pulpit, being unwritten, have never come into literature, but
have survived for a time as a glowing memory, and then a fading
tradition. The statement applies to many of the most famous revival
preachers; and in consequence of a prevalent prejudice against the
writing of sermons, it applies especially to the great Methodist and
Baptist preachers, whose representation on the shelves of libraries is
most disproportionate to their influence on the course of the kingdom
of Christ. Of other sermons,--and good sermons,--printed and published,
many have had an influence almost as restricted and as evanescent as the
utterances of the pulpit improvisator. If we confine ourselves to those
sermons that have survived their generation or won attention beyond the
limits of local interest or of sectarian fellowship, the list will not
be unmanageably long.

In the early years of the nineteenth century the Unitarian pulpits of
Boston were adorned with every literary grace known to the rhetoric of
that period. The luster of Channing's fame has outshone and outlasted
that of his associates; and