Upon his arrival in America, Philip Schaff (1819–1893), the Swiss-born and German-educated church historian, quickly discovered that only a small number of American scholars were as rigorous as nineteenth-century German scholars in their approach to church historiography. He considered German educated Henry Boynton Smith (1815–1877) one of these noteworthy exceptions.Footnote 1 Indeed, American historian George Bancroft (1800–1891)Footnote 2 described Smith as having “no rival in this hemisphere” in the field of church historiography—an area of study that attracted little interest from any other antebellum scholars or educators.Footnote 3
Henry Boynton Smith's efforts to mediate between Old and New School theology in American Presbyterianism are well known,Footnote 4 but few attempts have been made to fully explore his contributions to nineteenth-century church history scholarship.Footnote 5 In her pioneering account, Founding the Fathers: Early Church History and Protestant Professors in Nineteenth-Century America, Elizabeth Clark reviews the emerging stages of that scholarship at four institutions, as well as the work of six American scholars, including Smith. However, since her primary focus is on Smith's treatment of the early Church Fathers, she inevitably deals less with his reception and the contribution of his chronological tables.Footnote 6 Indeed, in general, Smith's most important work—History of the Church of Christ, in Chronological Tables—has not received the attention it merits.Footnote 7 This is somewhat unusual in light of the large number of historical tables produced by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholars; Benjamin Steiner calls them a separate genre in the history of historiography.Footnote 8
This essay examines Smith's unique contribution to ecclesiastical historiography in the cultural and scientific context and analyzes his chronological tables and their reception.Footnote 9 The historical evidence indicates that Smith not only received respect as a historian among his American peers during his lifetime,Footnote 10 but that he also received international acclaim for his work,Footnote 11 especially from German scholars familiar with chronological tables. Though Smith's production of chronological tables of church history used the same methods as German scholars he was recognized by some as outperforming leading German historians in his work.
I. Henry B. Smith's Reception and Chronological Tables
Smith's work was the result of painstaking research and years of labor. On September 17, 1858 he wrote from New York to George Prentiss noting rather modestly that, “my Tables . . . keep me pretty busy.”Footnote 12 In fact Smith labored for nearly a decade on his greatest accomplishment and most praised work—his comprehensive History of the Church of Christ, in Chronological Tables, first published in 1859 and later revised and reprinted.Footnote 13 The value of the book is underscored by its eight printings. According to nineteenth-century perceptions, the work occupied for church history a similar position as the Oxford Tables in universal history. As one nineteenth-century writer observed: “It is on a scale of about equal magnitude, and even more simple and clear in its arrangement.”Footnote 14 Schaff considered Smith's book the “most complete manual of Church History ever published.”Footnote 15 No other nineteenth-century American volume in this genre achieved the same status as Smith's Tables.Footnote 16
Besides being praised for their “extraordinary merit,” Smith's chronological tables were considered his most original scholarly contribution.Footnote 17 During a period in which systematic efforts to study church history had been rare, Smith helped to achieve “the emancipation of this science” in America.Footnote 18 According to Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton in their recent Cartographies of Time (2010), during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, “American chronographers published a vast and diverse array of diagrams” when discussing American affairs, topics of scientific novelty, and “the apocalyptic visual vocabularies of the great revivals.”Footnote 19 Nevertheless, using “synchronistic tables” to write a sophisticated church history was a remarkable achievement, one that brought a new approach to the practice of creating historical tables in America. Others had attempted to do so with diverse extents of completeness, but a comprehensive “tabular” outlook summarizing the topic was still lacking in America.Footnote 20 It was Smith who took on and completed this important task, synchronistically dealing with all of the various epochs and subjects of church history, addressing them in their respective columns, and providing information for the other columns. The significance of each fact was designated in terms of specific categories and dates.Footnote 21 Smith greatly benefited from “all the standard works” produced by European scholars in creating chronological tables to introduce church history to American learners and his American contemporaries believed that his work was equal in terms of quality “with the foremost rank[s] of European students and writers in the field of ecclesiastical history.”Footnote 22
In the nineteenth century, Smith's Tables was used as both a reference work and a learning resource.Footnote 23 In it Smith not only presented an overview of church history filled with names, dates, and facts, he also offered interpretations of individual historical periods. While his Tables can be viewed as a “chronological resource” in contrast to other nineteenth-century church history tables, Smith also intended them to be used in support of both pedagogy and commentary.Footnote 24 Smith stated his intention that the book be used as a tool for ministers, theological students, and anyone else interested in studying church history.Footnote 25 For the Tables—though created as a didactic mediation of historical facts—were also part of an apologetically and theologically driven effort to illuminate the growth of the church and the effect of the incarnation.Footnote 26
On the other side of the Atlantic, German historians provided synoptic presentations of history that were exemplified by historical charts used as textbooks to systemically convey “historical knowledge” based on “didactic goals.” As Monika Zimmermann has noted, in this period textbooks that served as links between science and education became increasingly important for pedagogical purposes, and the writing and publication of historical charts expanded rapidly in response.Footnote 27 Some believed that the large folio format that Smith used for his book made it “too bulky for easy use” as a pedagogical source, yet in fact it was smaller than many other oversized popular charts being published at that time. Regardless of its size, Smith's biographer asserted that the book “is still a most valuable assistant to the student who knows how to use it.”Footnote 28 Given its positive reception, the book apparently served its pedagogic purpose well, and copies can still be found in today's theological school libraries.
Smith's Tables was well received on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1859, the Literary Notices stated that with this work Smith provided “a single service to all Christian scholars.”Footnote 29 The New York Observer remarked: “It is decidedly, the best work of the kind in any language.”Footnote 30 Not only American scholars praised Smith's Tables; on the other side of the Atlantic, the German church historian and theologian Justus L. Jacobi (1815–1888) at the University of Halle, a former student of Johann August Wilhelm Neander (1789–1850), noticed and appreciated the outcome of Smith's immense efforts. According to Jacobi,
Its contents are extraordinarily rich. We must especially thank you for the notices of the North American Churches. I have found condensed in them a vast amount of information, which I have sought elsewhere with great labor, and sometimes in vain.Footnote 31
By including American church history in his Tables, Smith provided a service to both American and German readers. Stearns asserts that in the German works of the time, “references to [America] were ludicrously inadequate and incorrect.”Footnote 32 Smith served as an expert guide to American church history, giving his German colleagues “the facts they needed to correct their misstatements about the condition of the church in America.”Footnote 33 Indeed, Smith not only highlighted American church history in his Tables, he also began to revise the important work of Swiss historian Karl Rudolf Hagenbach (1801–1874) entitled A Text-Book of the History of Doctrines.Footnote 34 Smith improved this work substantially, revising the entire Edinburgh translation and even rewriting whole paragraphs.Footnote 35 As the 1862 Boston Review observed, without these corrections, clarifications, and the new sections added by Smith on “British and American theological history,” this work would be “seriously deficient.”Footnote 36
II. The Scientific Nature of Church History and Smith's Tables
Like other nineteenth-century scholars who created detailed tables, Smith emphasized the scientific nature of his chronological charts. What shaped his scientific approach? Smith's perception of scientific church history was informed by his experience with German historical scholarship, and his education by leading German historians equipped him for his work of shaping American ecclesiastical historiography and producing the church history tables. During his first visit to Europe in 1837, Smith was educated by the best German historians, among them the church historian Johann August Wilhelm NeanderFootnote 37 and “the father of modern scientific history” Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886).Footnote 38 Smith had the privilege of hearing Ranke before American students’ grand invasion of Germany.Footnote 39 In Berlin in June 1839, Smith attended Ranke's lecture on “the History of the Reformation.”Footnote 40 Smith regarded Ranke as the “most distinguished of German historians”;Footnote 41 in Smith's opinion, Ranke provided a crystal-clear “picture of everything that he relates” and was genuinely “penetrated with Christian truth.” Because Smith not only attended Ranke's lectures but also read his books, he learned a great deal from him about historical scientific method.Footnote 42 Smith clearly derived his strong confidence in scientific history from his German professors.
The notion of scientific history was common in Europe long before it was accepted in the US.Footnote 43 What Americans considered to be “scientific history” first emerged outside of formal “academic circles” with the publication of works such as Richard Hildreth's History of the United States in 1849. Few, if any, of these authors had any historical training in Europe. John Higham asserts that scientific history in America only became an accepted method when a specialized system and “professional training” supported it.Footnote 44 American scientific historians eventually acknowledged Leopold von Ranke, who strongly promoted the idea of objectivism, as their mentor and model.Footnote 45 Indeed, after 1875, most professional American historians claimed to follow von Ranke's scientific approach.Footnote 46
As someone who received his training in Germany, Smith naturally accepted von Ranke's scientific approach to history, including careful adherence to facts, primary sources, and statistics. Smith in his Tables expanded that approach by identifying prior organic developments and causes of historical events. Smith agreed with Schaff that historical events cannot be observed only as an “inorganic mass of names, dates and facts, but as spirit and life, and therefore as process, motion, development.”Footnote 47 Smith worked during a period in which historiographers considered the significance of causation as self-evident and emphasized organic relations. For Hegelian idealists, interior associations entailed an a priori assumption “that there must be causal connection among all events.”Footnote 48 Though von Ranke rejected the a priori premises of “universal history” promoted by Hegel and other philosophers,Footnote 49 he did believe in “motives of internal movement . . . [that emphasized] historical development.”Footnote 50
During the nineteenth century, the concept of development engaged German and American church historians prior to what became the far more famous ideas of Charles Darwin. However, the idea of organic development was not readily accepted “in early and mid-nineteenth century Protestant America.”Footnote 51 Smith's American contemporaries at Princeton Theological Seminary were particularly resistant to the notion of development.Footnote 52 In contrast, Mercersburg professors, including John W. Nevin and Philip Schaff, accepted German historiographic presuppositions of history, and emphasized the Hegelian concept of development. Elizabeth Clark has observed that starting with “Smith onward . . . American theologians who encountered in Europe a Hegelianized version of early Christian history slowly adjusted their assumptions.”Footnote 53 Smith's presentation of protestantism in his Tables was particularly inspired by the Hegelian concept of progress and development. Organic development, for Smith, implied progress and growth. Development, he wrote, “involves progress, but progress by and through conflicts.”Footnote 54 His analysis reveals that he was not merely interested in offering historical facts, but as a German-educated scholar he was keen to depict progress and organic connections in his analysis and charts of protestantism.
In Smith's scientific approach, as for other German-educated historians, it is evident that science was the basis of historical study.Footnote 55 Indeed, Smith explicitly described church history as the “the science of church history.” When he spoke about the “true nature” of church history, he declared that it must “be exhibited in a scientific form” and be “studied in a scientific method, in accordance with the true scientific principles.”Footnote 56 Smith understood that in addition to presenting facts and progress, historical tables needed to reflect modern scientific management and data arrangement.Footnote 57 He was not alone in this; already a number of eighteenth-century scholars had excelled in “the systematization [of numerous] fields.”Footnote 58 In the natural sciences, especially botany, the Linnaean classification system that was used for taxonomies was modified for purposes of classifying plant life and influenced other fields. As Michel Foucault has observed, late eighteenth-century scholars were greatly concerned with classification systems.Footnote 59 Peter Burke likewise notes that “the eighteenth century was the great age of classification—not just a tool, but as a model of all knowledge.”Footnote 60
Smith's appeal to scientific history was consonant with the teaching he had received in Germany and had several characteristics, including classification, “the objectivity of historical truth,” and “the priority of facts.”Footnote 61 He insisted that history is recreated through the inductive method, and is characterized by “thoroughness and precision.”Footnote 62 Smith therefore suggested that the initial task of a church historian is “to present the facts themselves in the order of their occurrence.”Footnote 63 He added that a scientific history, however, was not only assured by the “nature of research”; the historian must also bear in mind “the outcome of the results” that intended to determine “general laws of development,”Footnote 64 an approach Smith employed in his Tables.
III. History of the Church of Christ, in Chronological Tables
That Smith's strong dedication to scientific church history concurred with the major modern histories as well with German scholarship is evident throughout the text and tables of his History of the Church.Footnote 65 This chart-based methodology of presenting history Karl Rudolf Hagenbach adopted, among other nineteenth-century German church historians, his stated rationale being to collect and present “the most important facts” in the form of synchronistic church history tables.Footnote 66 Smith relied in his own church history charts on the finest “German Tables of Churches.” In his introduction he expressed his indebtedness to key German-speaking church historians such as Johann August Neander, Johann Carl Ludwig Gieseler, Ernst Ferdinand Guericke, Karl von Hase, and Christian Wilhelm Niedner. Smith in particular used an approach found in synchronic tables that was used by German ecclesiastical historians such as Johann Severin Vater.
While Smith cited and referred to the best German scholarship at his disposal, his Tables went beyond that scholarship and included greater detail and a broader focus on cultural concepts, other religions, and doctrinal development and analysis. His tables differed from those of his German counterparts in that they not only provided “dates and facts, but also a digest of the subject matter in accordance with the best recent histories.”Footnote 67 In contrast to the tables created by the Swiss church historian Hagenbach in his Tabellarische Uebersicht der Dogmengeschichte bis auf die Reformation zum Behufe akademischer Vorlesungen (1828),Footnote 68 Smith's synchronistic tables include data for the period between the Reformation and the mid-nineteenth century, including information on dogma, literature, philosophy, and secular history. Smith also included tables for American church history from the time of Columbus to 1858.Footnote 69 At the time of publication, these tables were considered novel in terms of grouping, organization, and links to the topic of American governance.Footnote 70 They made frequent references to important events, individuals, and ideas in American history. In the words of a writer for the North American Review (1861), “Whatever events, characters, and opinions have been thought worth a place in the numberless annals of our land, are brought with easy reach of research by the minutely classified references enriching this part of [Smith's] work.”Footnote 71
A. Organization and Topics of Smith's Chronological Tables
Smith followed a distinct plan in how he presented his Tables. In addition to showing divided historical periods, synchronic tables include many other forms of universal history. Smith's Tables were distinctive in the ways they portrayed “parallel columns” and different “departments of the history in each period.” Each of his tables focused on a major historical event, for which he provided four pages of information on the most important loci differentiating each epoch and chart. In some respects his organization resembled that of spatium historicum (“historical space”), an approach that also highlighted essential historical events during individual periods.Footnote 72 Smith included three lists on the first page of any table, one on general data on an event, another regarding secular history, and the third for literature, philosophy, and culture. On the second page he presented an external history, and on the third and fourth pages related information on the “internal history of the church.”Footnote 73 This meshed with Smith's view that church history relates not only to the “external and internal history of the church,” its growth and decline, but also to “art,” “culture,” and “social and political well-being.”Footnote 74 This is why his charts provide such a wealth of detailed and classified references. Providing such detailed information in a condensed form required a strong command of facts from a large number of sources.Footnote 75 Smith made great effort to include statistics, text, and commentary in his charts, while deliberately excluding visuals.
For Smith, becoming familiar with church history meant learning about its various epochs and finding connections between those epochs for classification purposes.Footnote 76 Smith divided his tables into three epochs of church history: ancient (AD 1–750, “From the birth of Christ to the Conversion of the German Nations”); medieval (AD 750–1517, “From Charlemagne to the Reformation”); and modern (AD 1517–1858, “From the Great Reformation to the Present Time”).Footnote 77 He further divided these epochs into six “General Periods, according to the best classifications; and [notes that] each Table has its limits defined by some signal event.”Footnote 78 Accordingly, Smith's Tables reveal a “picture of the times” arranged in “chronological relations.”Footnote 79 Smith included information on general history alongside church history, yet he made clear that the center of universal history
is found only in Christ and his Church. Ancient Pagan history resulted in the formation of the Roman Empire and the Greek Culture; these the Church subjected to itself in the first stadium of its progress. Yet the Church cannot be explained a mere development out of ancient history; it was founded on the basis of a new and specific Revelation in the Person of Christ.Footnote 80
Thus, while Smith adopted modern scientific approaches, his work was not free of theological presuppositions. As surprising as it may seem to modern historians, Smith's Tables arrangement reminds one of Neander's work in his treatment of the incarnation-redemption nexus as being foundational to church history hermeneutics. Smith resisted the temptation to present human history in the form of a biography, and instead focused on the founder of Christianity.Footnote 81
Smith structured his Tables around various themes and features that were clearly marked by certain premises, which where often theological. One striking feature is that the Tables are centered on Christology. Smith forcefully articulated his belief that the beginnings of Christianity were not based on a system of theology or an organized institution, but “in the Person and Work of Christ.”Footnote 82 In his view, history could only be explicated in terms of “Redemption in an eternal kingdom, through an Incarnate Savior . . . for the history of this kingdom is thus far the centre of universal history.”Footnote 83 Smith came to view Christianity as a transformer of culture (particularly of European culture), and argued that it influenced the “civilized nations in their progress.”Footnote 84
In addition to believing that the church started at Christ's incarnation, Smith also felt that the “Christian religion is a Redemptive System.”Footnote 85 Thus, his understanding and interpretation of facts strongly resemble those of his teacher, Neander, who viewed all historical facts in light of the history of redemption.Footnote 86 For his part, Smith characterized church history in his charts as factual records of “the nature and growth of the Kingdom of God on earth.”Footnote 87 Yet he did not shy away from referring to other religions; some of his tables mention Islamic literature and culture.Footnote 88 While Smith defined Islam as “a commingling of Judaism, Christianity and Heathenism,” unlike other American scholars of the time he did not define it in terms of “religious heresy.”Footnote 89 One might consider Smith's inclusion of Islam in his charts as a way of beginning to introduce Islamic literature and traditions to American students.
Unlike historians who preceded him, Smith started his Tables with the apostolic church rather than with events of ancient history. He stressed the “historical reality of the apostolic church” as opposed to methods that expressed “historical skepticism” by analyzing early church history in terms of myths.Footnote 90 He emphasized that faith was most required during the introduction of a “universal religion” in the first century, noting that none of the existing “heathen religions” were capable of fulfilling the “religious cravings” of individuals, and pointing out that all religious groups “were foreshadowings of an Incarnation and a Sacrifice, [thus] dimly pointing to the central facts of the Christian faith.”Footnote 91
Building on those apostolic beginnings, Smith was at pains to depict church progress and growth during each epoch. For example, in his review of the “Rapid Growth of the Church” during the first century, he borrowed Johannes von Müller's (1752–1809) description of that period as “the Century of Wonders.” Smith believed that the Roman and Greek cultures ultimately served the interests of church growth, and that the persecution of Christians paved the way for an ultimate church victory.Footnote 92 It was characteristic of Smith to describe external events as being tied to church development—for example, he observed that church expansion during the Middle Ages was due to the combination of missionary work and a “force of arms and colonies.”Footnote 93 Once again, Smith cited von Müller, who applied the notion of “providence” to progress in church history.Footnote 94 American historians trained in Germany, as Clark observed, drew on a “mixture” of “notions from German models.” Most essentially, “they absorbed German notions of historical developments, conceived of the analogy of a natural developing organism that is impelled by its own inward structure. This view of history allowed them to argue that Providence (i.e. God) was always with the church.”Footnote 95
Smith purposely applied the providence theme to his Tables without seeing in this any conflict between a scientific approach and a providential one. Indeed, in how he depicted all historical events, Smith revealed and emphasized a providential design. Like other Americans of the time, such as George Bancroft, who articulated the theme of providence, Smith's historiography was dominated by the theme of divine providence.Footnote 96 Indeed, the theme of providence orients his charts.Footnote 97 Smith presupposes in his historical approach that “history is the work of God.” Even though to some people historical events appear “isolated,” Smith considers them to be joined by “divine providence.”Footnote 98 Indeed, just as his teacher Ranke did, so Smith understood the whole “Western world” in light of God's providence.Footnote 99 “Divine Providence,” Smith would agree, moves through “hidden causes.” Like his colleague Schaff, Smith was naively confident about “the historian's ability” to detect the theme of providence in history,Footnote 100 a theme that for Smith is visible in its outcome, an outcome he was keen to display in his charts.Footnote 101 In general, historians in the mid-nineteenth-century were rather intent on discovering the outcome of history—a view quite unacceptable to modern historiographers.
B. Doctrine, Development, Decline, and Progress
As noted, Smith insisted that church history be considered in terms of both exterior and interior interactions—not just in chronological order, but in the contexts of “their causes and issues.”Footnote 102 Thus, his Tables refer to a broad range of conflicts and topics in church history. For example, he noted how the modern age was marked by “struggles between Protestantism and Catholicism, between Christianity and philosophy, and the growth of the Protestant civilization in the free nations.”Footnote 103 Throughout his Tables he interpreted history from a Hegelian dialectic viewpoint, openly declaring that “progress must be through conflicts, until right triumphs and the burdens of society are more equally distributed.”Footnote 104 Smith did not shy away from discussing various conflicts, including religious and philosophical conflicts, the nineteenth-century Indian Wars, and the American Revolution.Footnote 105
In addition to philosophical and theological controversies, historical events, and conflicts, Smith discussed doctrines and movements in his Tables, for instance presenting a detailed list of general councils and creeds. Influenced by Neander and other German church historians, Smith wrote that “the Third and Fourth centuries are . . . the most marked periods in the Church (the Sixteenth alone ranking with it) in the development and formal state of Fundamental Christian Doctrines.”Footnote 106 Further, he addressed what nineteenth-century mediating theologians perceived as the central dogmas of the Reformation in both Lutheranism and Calvinism, arguing that in the same manner that the central dogma of Lutheran theology was justification by faith, Calvinist theology was based on the doctrine of God's sovereignty. Though proven incorrect by recent scholarship, nineteenth-century German scholars, especially Karl Hagenbach, inspired Smith's presentation of such central dogmas.Footnote 107
Smith also followed Hagenbach's example in his presentation of key doctrines—a reflection of his desire to convince his readers that “history of doctrine” and dogma should be viewed as elements of church history.Footnote 108 Smith was skillful in integrating and highlighting various historical events, dates, and facts into his discussions on theological dogma. For example, in his table on the Middle Ages he stated that Anselm of Canterbury (1039–1109), with his famous question Cur Deus Homo? (Why did God become a man?), provided “the first scientific attempt” to write a “doctrine of Redemption, on the basis of the idea of law.”Footnote 109 He explained Anselm's belief that through sin, “the honor due to God is withheld, and punishment deserved; this punishment can only be removed by a satisfaction; this satisfaction can only be rendered by one who is both God and man.” But Smith also mentioned the twelfth-century philosopher and theologian Peter Abelard (1079–1142), whose atonement doctrine opposed Anselm's satisfaction theory in denying “any necessary connection between the death of Christ and forgiveness.” There was much that Smith did not include in his charts on the Middle Ages, but he highlighted some of the key doctrines.
While Smith was knowledgeable about Reformation and medieval historiography, unlike some modern historians he saw the Reformation as marking a break from the Middle Ages,Footnote 110 and as signifying “a great change in the course of human history,”Footnote 111 as well as the “revival of biblical learning.”Footnote 112 Faithful to his Christocentric reading of history, Smith described the Reformation as first and foremost “a return to Christ, and to the infallible Scriptures.”Footnote 113 He considered the Reformation as the great turning point, and suggested that a transformation of the church was required if it were to successfully complete its calling to bring the world under the saving power of the gospel.Footnote 114 For Smith, modern church history was directly tied to the “progress of Christ's kingdom, in divided hosts, keeping the pace with the development of nations in their civil and social condition, and extending the Gospel with the progress of maritime discovery.”Footnote 115
Just as Smith was concerned to highlight a Reformation historiography marked by positive change, so too did he draw attention to significant changes brought about by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century thought. The content of Smith's Tables indicate a strong foundation in European theology and philosophy.Footnote 116 Smith clearly explained links between Enlightenment philosophy and religion; for example, when discussing the philosophical systems of Immanuel Kant, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Friedrich Schelling, he capably explained how their systems incorporated religious ideas. However, he was critical of the work of Johann Gottfried von Herder, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, and Auguste Comte, among others, because he believed their systems did not properly consider “the great historic problem in the light of the facts which a valid theory is bound to explain.”Footnote 117 Like his teacher Neander, Smith believed that historians were required to explain history through “the Christian idea of Redemption in an eternal kingdom through an Incarnate Savior.” When Neander wrote about “the right method” in his General History of the Christian Religion and Church (1854), he expressed concern for identifying Christ's incarnation as “the goal and central point of all history.”Footnote 118
Through his charts’ focus on philosophy, Smith also became a significant interpreter of continental European philosophy for an American audience immersed in Scottish common sense philosophy. Yet Smith chose to avoid discussing Scottish philosophy and Baconianism—two topics that were popular among protestant scholars in antebellum America. Despite seeing benefits in Bacon's inductive approach to collecting facts, Smith's interpretations of historical events were characterized by the organic connections he made between them, Christianity, and “the general history of religion.”Footnote 119
Smith was clearly intent on depicting church growth throughout his Tables, but that did not stop him from giving careful consideration to church conflicts and evidence of the church's decline.Footnote 120 For example, according to his Tables, he notes that by 1750 “the productive Calvinistic literature of Europe had begun to die out,” blaming “rationalism” for this decline and arguing that it “undermin[ed] the historical basis of Christianity, as well as denying its central facts and truths.”Footnote 121 He specifically placed blame on the rapid spread of the philosophical texts of David Hume and Edward Gibbon, which he claimed resulted in the deterioration of protestant literature. Smith also criticized Voltaire's and Rousseau's texts for transmitting new philosophical ideas throughout Europe. Smith concluded that “at the close of this period, the prospect of the permanency and growth of the church seemed dark.”
Following a discussion and presentation of the church's decline in the context of Enlightenment culture, Smith described Christianity's revitalization through its struggle with philosophy—a description supported by the eschatological argument that “the kingdom of Christ is the only progressive empire.”Footnote 122 Unlike nineteenth-century American chronographers of the “millennialist camp,” whose tables depicted “visualizations of eschatology chronology,”Footnote 123 Smith in his work used no such diagrams. Smith's eschatological position in his charts was optimistic, in line with a nineteenth-century American protestant culture that took an optimistic post-millennial view of spiritual improvement.Footnote 124 One example is Philip Schaff's forceful declaration that “the kingdom of Jesus Christ must at last triumph in the New World.”Footnote 125 Within the social context of his time, Smith expressed confidence that “the present historic signs point to [Christianity's] final supremacy”—a statement that confirmed his belief in the revitalization of Christianity that he perceived first in emerging sects and later in the traditional church.Footnote 126
By the time of the first publication of Smith's Tables, just prior to the Civil War, post-millennial views underscoring the idea of progress were already prevalent. However, in American society certain premillennial attitudes enjoyed growing approval and over time became associated with the so-called dispensationalist movement whose eschatological views are frequently attributed to the Irish minister John Nelson Darby (1800–1882).Footnote 127 Smith did not overlook the Plymouth Brethren or so-called Darbyites (followers of Darby) in his Tables and noted that they did believe in a “personal reign of Christ” on earth.Footnote 128 By considering the followers of Darby under a section entitled “Minor and Fanatical Sects” alongside Shakers and Irvingites, Smith offered a succinct but valuable interpretation of the Darbyites to an American culture that was preoccupied with millennial views.
As one might suspect, Smith did not adhere to Darby's notion of dispensationalism. In the context of emerging premillennialist views, Smith declared that the kingdom had “already come”—a view that Darby rejected.Footnote 129 Smith also disagreed with Darby and other premillennialists who challenged the notion of progressive history, promoted the idea that Christ's second coming would be heralded by tragedies, and disliked the notion of “spiritual” and “cultural progress.”Footnote 130 In contrast, Smith's eschatological inclinations were “constructive rather than destructive”; indeed, he was concerned about reconciling “the culture of the age with Christianity.”Footnote 131 While Darby resisted describing the history of humanity with optimistic and progressive language, he preferred to speak of “the progress of evil” in society, thereby discarding hope and progress for human society.Footnote 132 Smith was quick to denounce a pessimistic premillenniast view that undermined progress. He never tired of expressing in his Tables and other writings a notion of an optimistic “progress of the kingdom,” describing it as an everlasting progress.Footnote 133
From this optimistic viewpoint, Smith wrote about the growth of Christianity in Europe and openly expressed support for the protestant cause. By recording Lutheran and Reformed histories, he emphasized their progress and growth in both Prussia and Holland, which he believed offered “strength in Europe.” He added that the conquests of “England over France in the East and the Western world favored the diffusion of the reformed principles.”Footnote 134 This notion of progress in terms of the Reformed principle was not an unfamiliar idea during the nineteenth century, and indeed one that other scholars also affirmed.Footnote 135
C. Chronological Tables and American Church History
The final two charts in Smith's Tables contain detailed information on American church history. With outstanding historical sensitivity, Smith presented American religion, the first time that history had been presented in the form of chronological tables.Footnote 136 Smith included his ideas regarding church growth, and because he covered every well-known denomination, primary literature, novel liturgies, missionary endeavors, and other essential topics, created “a useful book for ministers and students in all branches of the Christian Church.”Footnote 137 As a way of introducing American church history, Smith interpreted American colonial history in terms of “progress,” arguing that the colonies quickly grew in strength according to Reformed principles. This analysis underscores the notion that America's Calvinist foundation supported the country's rapid expansion.Footnote 138 Smith was not alone in this assertion; the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville was one of several who observed that the beliefs and ethics of America's first settlers were Calvinist, and that they were central to the country's initial social history.Footnote 139
Not only did Smith believe that “the New World was destined to be the Refuge of Protestantism,” he also viewed America as representing a “new sphere of development” for the church, with the period of 1492–1776 best interpreted as “the planting of the seed for the future and real growth.”Footnote 140 He argued that the American church needed to free itself from secular government, and suggested that “the history of the Church to the American Revolution is a history of its preparation for the decisive change—for this new era in the general progress of Christianity.” He felt that America was the location of the “the largest growth and greatest triumph of Christianity in the nineteenth century,” and he argued that the growth in the number of American churches was in step “with the population.”Footnote 141 Among his many statistics, Smith noted that in 1855 American evangelical churches had a membership of over 5,000,000 members. He added that the Roman Catholic Church grew mainly through “immigration from 55,000 to more than 2,000,000.”Footnote 142
His interest in church growth is evidenced by his references to the protestant Indian and other missionary movements.Footnote 143 When Smith wrote of the nineteenth-century American zeal for missionary work,Footnote 144 he paid particular attention to missions involving Native Americans. He argued, “Roman Catholic missionaries planted a rude Christianity in Central and South America with the progress of Spanish arms . . . Spanish missionaries coerced the natives . . . [whereas] the French left them more free.”Footnote 145 Smith faulted some initial Catholic missionary attempts to accommodate what he called “Indian superstitions,” noting that “even Marquette allowed the Ojibways to retain human sacrifices.”Footnote 146 While nineteenth-century Catholic textbooks such as those written by John Hassard (1836–1888)Footnote 147 evidently took a positive approach to the topic of Catholic missions,Footnote 148 Smith's less sympathetic descriptions in his charts were likely influenced by the general hostility that American protestants expressed toward Catholicism.Footnote 149
By providing an account of missionary work, Smith gave a more positive analysis of protestant missionary work with Indians, for example citing the first baptism of a Native American (Manteno) by an English minister in 1587, and recording the 1648 “Plymouth laws of the conversion of the natives.” He also mentioned John Eliot, known as “the apostle of the Indians,” as well as lesser-known protestant missionaries in different parts of North America. One example is John Campanus, who was associated with a Swedish Indian mission in Delaware.Footnote 150
In keeping with an age of missionary endeavors, Smith seemed to be especially interested in documenting Indian churches established by protestant divines, noting twenty-eight locations for Indian worship that had two thousand adult members in Plymouth Colony alone. He also included the Indian church at Sandwich on Cape Cod that was led by Richard Bourne, one of the first British immigrants to settle among the Indians at Mashpee (a few miles from Sandwich), as well as the Indian church on Martha's Vineyard led by Thomas Mayhew, who claimed to have made at least two hundred conversions. Smith paid particular attention to missionary enterprises that involved native pastors; he mentioned a Native American named Hiacoomes, who became a pastor after his conversion at the Indian church on Martha's Vineyard.Footnote 151
Smith's primary motive in presenting missions was not only to advance knowledge on mission in North America, but also to introduce students of church history to missions in Central and South America. Yet in doing so, Smith adduced various critiques to Christian mission. The form of mission practiced in South America he considered to be a “degradation.” He noted that it barely “elevated the natives” and “it debased the colonists.” Smith was quick to identify how the church was being employed “as a means of coercion.”Footnote 152
Smith's Tables are of course not completely free of partiality in his interpretation of American missionary work. Although he criticized Catholic missionaries for accommodating indigenous customs, he did not criticize the protestant missionary Thomas Mayhew for not discouraging Indians rituals.Footnote 153 Another example is his failure to highlight the work of women involved in American missions.Footnote 154
His partiality can be seen elsewhere in the Tables. For example, though Smith did not limit his focus to church-related events or topics, and his Tables encouraged an awareness of American social issues, when he wrote on the slave issue, he differed from nationalist historians of his day by not expressing a personal opinion on the topic in his Tables; at the same time, he failed to sufficiently deal with the causes of slavery.Footnote 155 He observed that, “with the colonization of the New World, the System of Slavery was introduced; and has ever since modified the political character and influenced the religious history of the country.”Footnote 156 Throughout his chronological tables he sprinkled facts such as the transfer of 70,000 slaves in 1771. While he primarily addressed the issue of African slavery in the United States, he also observed that New England Indians had been forced into slavery. Smith's mentions of the slavery issue included the 1646 Massachusetts law against “man-stealing,” the German Quakers’ stated opposition to slavery in 1688, and the 1770 Richard Lechmere case in Massachusetts, which alluded to “freedom as a natural right.”Footnote 157 Smith's work directly addressed the tension between pro- and anti-slavery forces in America.
In addition to slavery, Smith was not reluctant to address the relationship between church and state—an essential topic in the nineteenth century on both sides of the Atlantic. He dealt with this complex relationship throughout his Tables, and made an effort to explain the relationship first in terms of colonial era thinking, then in the context of the first years of the new nation. According to Smith, the Old World protestant church was still confined by Church-State unity, and “only in the United States of America has the experiment been tried of applying Christianity directly to man and to society without the intervention of the state.”Footnote 158 He observed that in North America, “separation of the Church and State was gradually affected,” exemplified by the 1791 revision of the U.S. Constitution to ensure that freedom of religion “would not be violated by the federal government.”Footnote 159
Yet in these discussions, Smith limited his comments to the practical implications of the separation of church and state. In spite of new perspectives regarding the church-state relationship, Smith viewed the state as religious and as promoting Christianity. In his discussions of his version of civil religion Smith enthusiastically described what he felt was the Christian character of the American nation—for example, pointing out that “the Constitutions of the different States recognize the obligation and necessity of religious worship . . . the governors issue proclamations for days of Thanksgiving and Prayer (twenty-seven States in 1858) . . . [and] the Sabbath is protected by law.” He believed that in America, “Christianity, in its general principles, is a part of the common law of the land” and American society was made up of “Christian people.”Footnote 160 It appears that by noting the various aspects of religion supported by the State, Smith wanted to show that the separation of church and state did not make the State “unchristian.” He wrote: “In no other country is the general sentiment of the people more emphatically and resolutely enlisted in [Christianity's] favor.”Footnote 161 He clearly concurred with Schaff's observation that the “American nation is as religious and as Christian as any nation on earth.”Footnote 162
More clearly than anyone else of his period, Smith presented American religious issues in the context of the historical spirit that he felt was awakening in the United States. Smith (and Schaff) did for church history and doctrine what Bancroft did for the direction of historical studies in America. Smith attended to “doctrinal history” and addressed several American church controversies,Footnote 163 including New Haven, Old and New Lights, Calvinists, and Arminians. Smith gave special attention to christological controversies and disagreements within and among groups, including the Unitarians, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, and individuals who promoted the nineteenth-century idea of perfectionism. Smith also documented how christological controversies emerged regarding atonement and Christ's deity, as well as Adam's imputation of original sin.
The topic of imputation was among the most hotly debated topics among nineteenth-century American scholars. In his Tables, Smith mentioned interpretations of the period regarding Jonathan Edwards's refusal of the so-called “immediate imputation,” and thus incorrectly presented Edwards's view of the imputation of Adam's sin as “mediate imputation”—the position that Smith preferred.Footnote 164 Smith was clearly interested in Edwards; we see this in the extent to which he paid attention to topics such as the “New Divinity” that were based on Edwards's theology, and likewise his attention to Edwards's emphasis on “immediate repentance” which was an “imperative duty” and “natural and moral ability.”Footnote 165 According to Smith, “John Smalley's Sermons on Natural and Moral Inability, 1760, reflect most faithfully the views of the original Edwardean School on this point.”Footnote 166
In addition to these controversies, Smith also addressed the importance of integrating American denominations via theological seminaries, literature, and society in general.Footnote 167 Since reform was such a strong theme in nineteenth-century America, Smith included important American religious societies in his tables. This inclusion is not surprising given the strong reform interest in all kinds of societies in the 1840s.Footnote 168 The charts presented some novel views and sources for the time. Smith felt that knowledge of church history required becoming acquainted with the current literature, and he therefore included the most recent theological reviews and journals associated with various academic institutions.
V. Conclusion
Henry B. Smith has been described as a hero of the reunion of Old and New School theology in American Presbyterianism. However, “this was not his only glory.”Footnote 169 Unlike German historians, in general antebellum American scholars of history expressed little interest in scientific church historiography. Smith was a notable exception, and he eventually received national and international recognition alongside Philip Schaff. He also played an important role in the nineteenth-century transmission of historiographic practices from Germany.Footnote 170 As an American-born and German-educated church historian, Smith understood and enthusiastically brought the most up-to-date European trends to a country that had few resources in support of church history scholarship. Smith became familiar with German historiography through his first-hand encounters with Johann August Neander and Leopold von Ranke in Berlin, as well as through his reading, editing, and translating of the works of Karl Hagenbach and others. Schaff described Smith as a brilliant “German scholar,” and as being “at home in Church history.”Footnote 171 Smith has given nineteenth-century Americans interested in church historiography the most significant charts in this field. His method in his Tables was inspired by the themes of divine providence, Hegelian dialectics, organic development, and the kingdom of God. While not always free of bias, Smith's work is considered a particularly important addition to the field of ecclesiastical history because of its strong focus on American church history.
Because of his German education and American scholarly efforts, Smith became part of the transatlantic historical academic network that was active during that period. His familiarity with the chronological tables created by German church historians allowed Smith to create synchronic tables that were superior in many ways. Through his chronological tables and his translation work, Smith gave doctrinal history a central position in the study of church history in nineteenth-century American divinity schools. American church historians are indebted to Smith for the path he blazed.
