Hence the Edwardses, the Hopkinses, the Emmonses, with all their various
schools and followers, who, leviathan-like, have made the theological
deep of New England to boil like a pot, and the agitation of whose
course remains to this day.
It is a mark of a shallow mind to scorn these theological wrestlings and
surgings; they have had in them something even sublime. They were always
bounded and steadied by the most profound reverence for God and his
word; and they have constituted in New England the strong mental
discipline needed by a people who were an absolute democracy. The
Sabbath teaching of New England has been a regular intellectual drill as
well as a devotional exercise; and if one does not see the advantage of
this, let him live awhile in France or Italy, and see the reason why,
with all their aspirations after liberty, there is no capability of
self-government in the masses; put the tiller of the Campagna, or
the vine-dresser of France, beside the theologically trained, keen,
thoughtful New England farmer, and see which is best fitted to
administer a government.
Another leading characteristic of the New England clergy was their great
freedom of original development. The volumes before us are full of
indications of the most racy individuality.
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