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Henry Boynton Smith and Church History in Nineteenth-Century America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2016

Abstract

Henry Boynton Smith (1815–1877) was one of the few nineteenth-century American scholars committed to disseminating German methods of ecclesiastical historiography to a country known for its anti-historical tendencies. However, modern scholars have generally overlooked his significant contributions in this area. Hence exploring his scholarly reception and specifically his History of the Church of Christ, in Chronological Tables will fill a niche in the historiography of church history.

Philip Schaff (1819–1893), the renowned church historian and founder of the American Society of Church History, was one of the few contemporaries of Smith who understood that Smith's scholarship was on a par with that being produced in Germany. Schaff specifically praised Smith's chronological tables—evidence of Smith's German education among some of the best German historians of the period, including Leopold von Ranke and August Neander. This essay reviews Smith's History of the Church of Christ, in Chronological Tables in the context of the newly emerging scientific history and describes his contribution to nineteenth-century American scholarship. Smith is worthy of attention for establishing a central position for the history of doctrine and for promoting the field of church history and the use of chronological tables in nineteenth-century America.

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Articles
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Copyright © American Society of Church History 2016 

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References

1 Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 1, Apostolic Christianity, A.D. 1–100 (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1882), 50.

2 George Bancroft was the first American educated as a historian in Germany at the University of Göttingen. See Philipp Löser and Christoph Strupp, “Einleitung” to Universität der Gelehrten-Universität der Experten: Adaptionen deutscher Wissenschaft in den USA des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, ed. Philipp Löser and Christoph Strupp (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2005), 12. For research that deals with Bancroft's historical method, see Eileen Cheng, who explores the work of George Bancroft, revealing his Romantic tendency in his interpretation of history. Eileen K. Cheng, The Plain and Noble Garb of Truth: Nationalism and Impartiality in American Historical Writing, 1784–1860 (Athens: University of Georgia, 2008), 143152.

3 Henry B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy: Discourses and Essays, ed. George L. Prentiss (New York: Scribner, 1877), iv. This essay does not suggest that Philip Schaff, the German-Swiss scholar, was not the leading church historian in nineteenth-century America. For research on Schaff's endeavor as church historian, see for example, Klaus Penzel, ed., Philip Schaff: Historian and Ambassador of the Universal Church (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University, 1991); George H. Shriver, Philip Schaff: Christian Scholar and Ecumenical Prophet (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University, 1987), 3135. For an overview of Schaff's influence on church history in America, see Stephen R. Graham, “Philip Schaff,” in Historians of the Christian Tradition: Their Methodology and Influence on Western Thought, ed. Michael Bauman and Martin I. Klauber (Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman & Holman, 1995), 273303.

4 Bradley J. Longfield, The Presbyterian Controversy: Fundamentalists, Modernists, and Moderates (New York: Oxford University, 1991), 134; cf. George M. Marsden, The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience: A Case Study of Thought and Theology in Nineteenth-Century America (New Haven: Yale University, 1970).

5 Little research has been done on Henry B. Smith in general and on his influence on church history in nineteenth-century America in particular. W. Clark Gilpin in A Preface to Theology comments on Smith and his efforts in church history; W. Clark Gilpin, A Preface to Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1996), 61. George Marsden deals briefly with Smith's ability as a historian in his introductory chapter on Smith and mediating theology; Marsden, The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience, 172175. For a general treatment of Henry B. Smith's theology, besides one thesis that offers an introduction and two articles, hardly any extensive research is available. While Daniel Holcomb offers an introduction to Smith's theology, he also makes reference to Smith's “historical spirit”; Daniel H. Holcomb, “The Theology of Henry B. Smith (1815–1877): With Special Reference to Contemporary Influences” (ThM thesis, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1963), 82. Muller, Richard A., “Henry Boynton Smith: Christocentric Theologian,” Journal of Presbyterian History 61, no. 4 (1983): 429–44Google Scholar; Stoever, William K. B., “Henry Boynton Smith and the German Theology of History,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 24, no. 1 (1968): 6989Google Scholar. Otherwise, there are scattered references to Smith in diverse works in American historical studies; see for example Walter Conser, God and the Natural World: Religion and Science in Antebellum America (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1993), 47–53; Bruce Kuklick, Churchmen and Philosophers: From Jonathan Edwards to John Dewey (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University, 1985), 207–209, 214–215; Mark A. Noll, America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University, 2002), 287–289, 324–325.

6 Elizabeth Clark clearly recognizes how Smith's work was influenced by his German education and notes how he was a pioneer in church history in antebellum America. Elizabeth A. Clark, Founding the Fathers: Early Church History and Protestant Professors in Nineteenth-Century America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2011), 38, 146. While Henry Bowden's excellent book references Smith, he does not engage in detail with his views, contributions, and reception. Smith's labors and contributions as a church historian certainly require more research. Henry W. Bowden, Church History in the Age of Science: Historiographical Patterns in the United States, 1876–1918 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1971).

7 Henry B. Smith, History of the church of Christ, in chronological tables: a synchronistic view of the events, characteristics and culture of each period, including the history of polity, worship, literature and doctrines, together with two supplementary tables upon the church in America, and an appendix, containing the series of councils, popes, patriarchs and other bishops, and a full index (New York: Scribner, 1859); hereafter Tables, followed by page numbers.

8 Benjamin Steiner, Die Ordnung der Geschichte: Historische Tabellenwerke in der frühen Neuzeit (Köln: Böhlau, 2008), 2, 42.

9 Just as Thomas Howard observes that Philip Schaff was among the transmitters of German theological science, including the science of church history, so was Smith. Thomas A. Howard, “Deutsche Universitätstheologie in den USA: Edward Robinson und Philip Schaff,” in Universität der Gelehrten, 43.

10 According to the 1857 Princeton Review, Smith accomplished more in the department of church history “than any mere American or English scholar, and immeasurably more than any German of the Germans.” Alexander, Joseph Addison, “A Text-Book of Church History,” Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 29, no. 4 (1857): 660Google Scholar.

11 Stoever, “Henry Boynton Smith,” 80.

12 Elizabeth Lee Smith, ed., Henry Boynton Smith: His Life and Work (New York:  Armstrong & Son, 1881), 199.

13 Smith, Tables.

14 Review of Current Literature,” Christian Examiner 69 (1860): 128Google Scholar.

15 Schaff, Philip, “Recent Publications,” Mercersburg Review 12 (1860): 155Google Scholar. The American nineteenth-century theologian W. G. T. Shedd (1820–1894) wrote: “Smith's Historical Tables are the best that I know of in any language.” John Fletcher Hurst, History of the Christian Church (New York: Eaton & Mains, 1897), 1:733.

16 Lewis F. Stearns, Henry Boynton Smith (New York: Houghton, 1893), 170.

17 Samuel Austin Allibone, A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors Living and Deceased from the Earliest Accounts to the Latter Half of the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1891), 2:2138.

18 Robert Ellis Thompson, A History of the Presbyterian Churches in the United States (New York: Christian Literature, 1895), 217.

19 Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton, Cartographies of Time (New York: Princeton Architectural, 2010), 150.

20 Book Notices: History and Biography,” Christian Review 25 (1860): 163Google Scholar.

21 Literary Notices,” American Congregational Yearbook 6 (January 1859): 80Google Scholar.

22 Stearns, Henry Boynton Smith, 166. Andrew P. Peabody, Review of the Bibliotheca Sacra: And a List of the Publications of the Cornhill Antique Bookstore and Publishing House (Boston: Draper & Halliday, 1867), 3.

23 Its index contains over 20,000 references. Schaff, “Recent Publications,” 156.

24 For a discussion on the use of historical tables, see Arndt Brendecke, “Tabellenwerke in der Praxis der frühneuzeitlichen Geschichtsvermittlung,” in Wissenssicherung, Wissensordnung und Wissensverarbeitung: Das Europäische Modell der Enzyklopädien, ed. Theo Stammen und Wolfgang E. J. Weber (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2004), 157–189.

25 Tables, preface.

26 Steiner, Die Ordnung der Geschichte, 154.

27 Monika Zimmermann, Die Synopse als Mittel universalhistorischer Orientierung: Eine kritische Untersuchung der Geschichtsschreibung (Frankfurt: Musterschmidt, 1977), 71.

28 Stearns, Henry Boynton Smith, 170.

29 “Literary Notices,” 79.

30 Smith, Henry Boynton Smith, 223.

31 Justus Jacobi considered Smith's book as “learned work.” Smith, Henry Boynton Smith: His Life and Work, 222.

32 Stearns, Henry Boynton Smith, 168.

33 Ibid., 169.

34 Karl R. Hagenbach, A Text-Book of the History of Doctrines, 2 vols., trans. Carl W. Buch, rev. and ed. Henry B. Smith (New York: Sheldon, 1862). For a fine study on the reception history of Hagenbach in nineteenth-century America, see Purvis, Zachary, “Transatlantic Textbooks: Karl Hagenbach, Shared Interests, and German Academic Theology in Nineteenth-Century America,” Church History 83, no. 3 (September 2014): 650683CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Henry B. Smith, “Preface by the Editor” to A Text-Book of the History of Doctrines, by Karl R. Hagenbach, trans. Carl W. Buch, rev. and ed. Henry B. Smith (New York: Sheldon, 1862), 1:iii. Smith in his essay “The History of Doctrine” provided a lengthy explanation of why he considered the first English translation of Hagenbach's work to be inadequate and inaccurate, pointing out some of the major weaknesses of Carl Buch's translation. Smith, Henry B., “The History of Doctrines,” Bibliotheca Sacra and Theological Review 4 (1847): 572Google Scholar.

36 Literary Notices,” The Boston Review 2 (1862): 327Google Scholar. In considering American theology, Smith emphasized the vital role of Jonathan Edwards in ushering in “new development of the Reformed faith” in opposition to Arminianism. While Smith wrote about the great disagreements concerning “anthropology and soteriology” and disputes among Congregationalists and Presbyterians in American church history, he also was occupied with some of the minor “sects of Europe” that influenced America. In addition, he paid attention to the German migration to America. Hagenbach, Text-Book of the History of Doctrines, 435, 442–450.

37 For more on Johann August Neander and church history, see Philip Schaff, Saint Augustine, Melanchthon, Neander: Three Biographies (London: James Nisbet, 1886); Justus L. Jacobi, Erinnerungen an D. August Neander (Halle: Eugen Strien, 1882); Neander's Church History,” Christian Review 1 (March 1836): 565581Google Scholar; Richard A. Muller, “Johann Augustus Wilhelm Neander: Historical Objectivity and the ‘Religious’ Element of Church History and the History of Doctrine,” in All Theology Is Christology: Essays in Honor of David P. Scaer, ed. Dean O. Wenthe, William C. Weinrich, and Arthur A. Jurst Jr. (Fort Wayne, Ind.: Concordia Theological Seminary, 2000), 291–312; Frank Kaufmann, Foundations of Modern Church History (New York: Peter Lang, 1992), 28–73.

38 For works on Leopold von Ranke and his historical method, see Leonard Krieger, Ranke: The Meaning of History (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1977); Georg G. Iggers and James H. Powell, Leopold von Ranke and the Shaping of the Historical Discipline (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University, 1990); Leopold von Ranke, The Theory and Practice of History, ed. Georg G. Iggers (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2011).

39 Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (New York: Cambridge University, 1988), 29.

40 In this lecture, in surveying Calvin's influence in America, Ranke considered the Reformer “as the founder of the Free States of North America.” Smith, Henry Boynton Smith: His Life and Work, 70.

41 Ibid., 70–71.

42 Ibid., 71; cf. Marsden, The Evangelical Mind, 172.

43 W. Stull Holt, “Scientific History in America,” in Historical Scholarship in the United States and Other Essays (Seattle: University of Washington, 1967), 22. According to Peter Novick, American historians created a “system of professional norms, and in particular the central norm of objectivity” that was shaped by German scholarship, which he describes as “an unavoidable model . . . Much the same was true of ‘scientific method,’ in an age when scienticity was the hallmark of the modern and the authoritative.” Novick, That Noble Dream, 21. For further discussion on German scientific history, see Georg G. Iggers, New Directions in European Historiography (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University, 1975), 17–25.

44 John Higham, “Scientific History: The American Orthodoxy,” in History, ed. John Higham, Leonard Krieger, and Felix Gilbert (New York: Garland, 1985), 92.

45 Bowden, Church History in the Age of Science, 10–11.

46 Holt, “Scientific History in America,” 24.

47 Philip Schaff, History of the Apostolic Church with a General Introduction to Church History, trans. Edward D. Yeomans (New York: Scribner, 1854), 90; emphasis in original.

48 Wiener, Philip P., “On Methodology in the Philosophy of History,” Journal of Philosophy 38, no. 12 (June 5, 1941): 321CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Tapp, E. J., “Some Aspects of Causation in History,” Journal of Philosophy 49, no. 3 (January 31, 1952): 6779Google Scholar.

49 Hajo Holborn, “The Science of History” in The Interpretation of History, ed. Joseph R. Strayer (Princeton: Princeton University, 1943), 78–79.

50 Leopold von Ranke, Universal History: The Oldest Historical Group of Nations and the Greeks, ed. George Walter Prothero (New York: Scribner, 1884), xii.

51 Clark, Founding the Fathers, 175.

52 Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (1871–1872; repr., Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1999), 2:533.

53 Clark, Founding the Fathers, 176.

54 Henry B. Smith, Introduction to Christian Theology: Apologetics, Two Volumes in One, ed. William S. Karr (New York: Armstrong & Son, 1893), 3.

55 John Roney, “Jean Henri Merle D'Aubigné,” in Historians of the Christian Tradition: Their Methodology and Influence on Western Thought, ed. Michael Bauman and Martin I. Klauber (Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman & Holman, 1995), 171.

56 Henry B. Smith, “Nature and Worth of the Science of Church History,” in Faith and Philosophy: Discourses and Essays, ed. George L. Prentiss (New York: Scribner, 1877), 61; hereafter NWS followed by page number.

57 Brendecke, “Tabellenwerke in der Praxis der frühneuzeitlichen Geschichtsvermittlung,” 157–189.

58 Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan, introduction to Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World, ed. Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2007), 3.

59 Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses: une archéologie des sciences humaines (Paris: Gallimard, 1966).

60 Peter Burke, A Social History of Knowledge, vol. 2, From the Encyclopaedia to Wikipedia (Malden, Mass.: Polity, 2012), 52.

61 Krieger, Ranke: The Meaning of History, 4.

62 Henry B. Smith, “The New Latitudinarians of England,” in Faith and Philosophy: Discourses and Essays, ed. George L. Prentiss, D.D. (New York: Scribner, 1877), 186.

63 NWS, 53.

64 Ibid., 54. James E. Bradley and Richard A. Muller, Church History: An Introduction to Research, Reference Works, and Methods (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 20–21.

65 Tables, 1. Smith, like German church historians who created such chronological tables, spent much time and effort on this work. August Hermann Niemeyer, “Introduction” to Synchronistische Tafeln der Kirchengeschichte vom Ursprunge des Christenthums bis auf die gegenwärtige Zeit, zum Gebrauch bei Vorlesungen und bei fortgeseztem Studium, nach den bewährtesten Hilfsmitteln ausgeführt, und mit einer kurzen Uebersicht der Begebenheiten versehen, Johann Vater, 2nd ed. (Halle: Hallisches Waisenhaus, 1809), v.

66 Johann S. Vater, Tables of Ecclesiastical History: From the Origins of Christianity to the Present Time, trans. Francis Cunningham (Boston: Gray & Bowen, 1831), 1.

67 Tables, 1.

68 Hagenbach admitted that his work is very short and incomplete. It consists of seven tables that consider the development of church doctrine from the apostolic age until the Reformation. In general, such works served as an aid for academic lectures, as a memorization aid, and was also prepared for “beginners in the science” of church history. Karl R. Hagenbach, Tabellarische Uebersicht der Dogmengeschichte bis auf die Reformation zum Behufe akademischer Vorlesungen (Basel: Neukirch, 1828), Vorwort. The works by Vater and Danz provide brief information about church events, dates, and names. Vater, Tables of Ecclesiastical History; Johann Traugott Leberecht Danz, Lehrbuch der christlichen Kirchengeschichte: Zum Gebrauch akademischer Vorlesungen (Jena: Crökerschen Buchhandlung, 1818).

69 Tables, 6.

70 Smith's Tables of Ecclesiastical History,” North American Review 92, no. 191 (1861): 324Google Scholar.

71 Ibid.

72 Steiner, Die Ordnung der Geschichte, 143.

73 This above information is from Smith, preface to Tables.

74 NWS, 54.

75 Smith wrote in a letter to George Prentiss in Europe: “Can you get and send to me the statistics of the Swiss Churches, soon, for my Tables.” Smith, Henry Boynton Smith, 201.

76 Such classification procedures were used in other scientific fields. Cf. Daniela Bleichmar, Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2012), 49.

77 Smith differs in this division of church history from Hagenbach, who divides it in five main epochs. Smith, “The History of Doctrines,” 568.

78 Tables, 1.

79 Notices of Books,” The New Englander 18 (1860): 216Google Scholar.

80 Tables, 8.

81 J. Vernon Bartlett, Early Church History: A Sketch of the First Four Centuries (London: Religious Tract Society, 1894), 9.

82 Tables, 11.

83 Ibid., 64.

84 Ibid. According to Smith, “This kingdom in its ancient times overcame, and made subservient to itself, the civilization of Greece and at Rome; in its medieval times, it transformed Europe into Christian States; in its modern history, it has led the most civilized nations in their progress, contented with the successive forms of philosophy, whether metaphysical or physical; it is now struggling for emancipation from the State, as yet full effected only in the New World.”

85 Tables, 9–8.

86 August Neander, General History of the Christian Religion and Church, trans. Joseph Torrey (Boston: Crocker & Brewster, 1854), 1:294.

87 Tables, 8.

88 Ibid., 24.

89 Edward E. Curtis IV, “Islam,” in The Blackwell Companion to Religion in America, ed. Philip Goff (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 587.

90 Tables, 8.

91 Ibid.

92 Ibid.

93 Ibid., 34.

94 Ibid., 8. Johannes von Müller, An Universal History (Boston: American Stationers, 1837).

95 Clark, Founding the Fathers, 143.

96 Bowden, Church History in the Age of Science, 51, 56. In America, this pattern was characteristic not only of the church historiography of Schaff and Smith, but also of the leading American historian Bancroft. In writing about the history of the United States, Bancroft integrated the motif of providence. He wrote in his history of America that “the fortunes of a nation are not controlled by blind destiny,” but rather by “a favoring Providence, calling our institutions into being, has conducted the country to its present happiness and glory.” George Bancroft, A History of the United States (Boston: Charles Bowen, 1834), 3:398–399. Bancroft also remarked: “Universal history does but seek to relate ‘the sum of all God's works of providence.’” George Bancroft, A History of the United States: From the Discovery of the American Continent (Boston: Little & Brown, 1852), 3:398. For a recent study on the theme of providence and history in the United States, see Nicholas Guyatt, Providence and the Invention of the United States, 1607–1876 (New York: Cambridge University, 2007).

97 For a helpful discussion on George Bancroft and providential history, see Thomas N. Baker, “National History in the Age of Michelet, Macaulay, and Bancroft,” in A Companion to Western Historical Thought, ed. Lloyd Kramer and Sarah Maza (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 198–201.

98 Henry B. Smith, “The Reformed Churches of Europe and America in Relation to General Church History,” in Faith and Philosophy: Discourses and Essays, ed. George L. Prentiss (New York: Scribner, 1877), 89.

99 Ibid., 109.

100 Bradley and Muller, Church History, 20.

101 Smith, “The Reformed Churches of Europe and America in Relation to General Church History,” 111.

102 Tables, 8.

103 Ibid.

104 Ibid., 64.

105 Ibid., 70, 74.

106 Ibid., 16.

107 For a solid discussion on this topic, see Richard A. Muller, After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition (New York: Oxford University, 2003), 63–72.

108 Clark, Founding the Fathers, 148.

109 Tables, 40.

110 Constantin Fasolt, Past Sense: Studies in Medieval and Early Modern European History (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 546.

111 Tables, 52.

112 Ibid., 54.

113 Ibid., 55.

114 Ibid., 52.

115 Ibid.

116 For a discussion on Smith and the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher, see Annette G. Aubert, The German Roots of Nineteenth-Century American Theology (New York: Oxford University, 2013), 38.

117 Tables, 64.

118 Neander, General History of the Christian Religion and Church, 1:v, 4.

119 Smith, Introduction to Christian Theology, 160.

120 For a helpful discussion, see Peter C. Hodgson, Shapes of Freedom: Hegel's Philosophy of World History in Theological Perspective (New York: Oxford University, 2012), 52–55.

121 Tables, 60.

122 Ibid., 65.

123 Rosenberg and Grafton, Cartographies of Time, 158.

124 George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (New York: Oxford University, 1982), 49.

125 Philip Schaff, America, a Sketch of the Political, Social, and Religious Character of the United States of North America: In Two Lectures, Delivered at Berlin, with a Report Read Before the German Church Diet at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, Sept., 1854 (New York: Scribner, 1855), 97.

126 Tables, 65.

127 For a recent instructive account on dispensational thinking in American protestantism, see B. M. Pietsch, Dispensational Modernism (New York: Oxford University, 2015), 18. See also Ernest R. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1970). James D. Hunter, American Evangelicalism: Conservative Religion and the Quandary of Modernity (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University, 1983), 27.

128 Tables, 66.

129 Henry B. Smith, System of Christian Theology, ed. William S. Karr, 2nd ed. (New York: A.C. Armstrong & Son, 1884), 609.

130 Amanda Porterfield, The Transformation of American Religion: The Story of a Late-Twentieth-Century Awakening (New York: Oxford University, 2001), 51. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 49.

131 Stearns, Henry Boynton Smith, 179.

132 John N. Darby, Studies on the Book of Daniel: A Course of Lectures (London: J. B. Bateman, 1864), 112.

133 Smith, Introduction to Christian Theology, 184.

134 Tables, 60.

135 For example the French historian Jean-Henri Merle d'Aubigné (1794–1872) believed that “all kinds of human progress date from the Reformation.” Jean-Henri Merle d'Aubigné, History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin (London: Longmans Green, 1876), 595. The German scholar Adolf Zahn wrote on The Influence of the Reformed Church on the Greatness of Prussia. See also Adolph Zahn, Der Einfluss der reformierten Kirche auf Preussens Grösse (Halle: Richard Mühlmann, 1871). J. G. von Herder had already described the Reformation as “the force that truly unleashed the European nations’ potential for greatness.” Patrick Manning, Navigating World History: Historians Create a Global Past (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 23.

136 Schaff, “Recent Publications,” 154.

137 Ibid., 155–56.

138 Tables, 60.

139 Alexis Tocqueville, American Institutions and Their Influence (New York: Barnes, 1873), 294–295. See also Steven J. Overman, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Sport: How Calvinism and Capitalism Shaped America's Games (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University, 2011), 95.

140 Tables, 70.

141 Ibid., 74.

142 Ibid.

143 Ibid., 73.

144 Ibid., 65.

145 Ibid., 73.

146 Ibid.

147 John R. G. Hassard, A History of the United States of America: For the Use of Schools (New York: Catholic Publication Society, 1878), 29, 69, 298.

148 Weber, Carolyn A., “Caught Between Catholic and Government Traditions: Americanization and Assimilation at St. Joseph's Indian Normal School,” American Education History Journal 40, no. 1–2 (2013): 86Google Scholar.

149 For more on this topic see, Daniel W. Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University, 2007), 320; Porterfield, The Transformation of American Religion, 62. Horace Bushnell, Barbarism the First Danger: A Discourse for Home Missions (New York: William Osborn, 1847), 24.

150 Tables, 73.

151 Daniel R. Mandell, Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2000), 18.

152 Tables, 72.

153 Ibid., 73.

154 For example, Smith did not mention Mary Webb (1779–1861), who established the Boston Female Society for Missionary Purposes and arranged the first mission endeavors amongst Baptists. Albert L. Vail, Mary Webb and the Mother Society (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1914), 16, 17, 91.

155 For research on nationalist historians, see for example, John D. Smith, An Old Creed for the New South: Proslavery Ideology and Historiography, 1865–1918 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 2008), 108.

156 Tables, 70.

157 Ibid.

158 Ibid., 74.

159 Edwin S. Gaustad, Church and State in America (New York: Oxford University, 2003), 44–45.

160 Tables, 74.

161 Ibid.

162 Philip Schaff, Church and State in the United States: Or, the American Idea of Religious Liberty and Its Practical Effects, with Official Documents (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1838), 55.

163 Stearns, Henry Boynton Smith, 169.

164 Tables, 73. Smith's Chronological Tables,” Bibliotheca Sacra 17 (1860): 232Google Scholar. See Clark, Founding the Fathers, 327.

165 Tables, 73.

166 Ibid.

167 Ibid., 1, 77.

168 Stearns, Henry Boynton Smith, 24.

169 George L. Prentiss, The Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York: Historical and Biographical Sketches of Its First Fifty Years (New York: Randolph, 1889), 264.

170 George H. Callcott, in his fine study on historians in antebellum America, suggests that the historians of this period might be categorized into four distinctive groups. The fourth group comprised the “professional archivists, editors, and collectors” who provided material that surfaced in this period. Smith might correspond well to the last group of Callcott's description; not only was he an editor, translator, and writer of church history, but with his tables of church history he also made a significant contribution to American church history. Callcott, George H., “Historians in Early Nineteenth-Century America,” New England Quarterly 32, no. 4 (1959): 519CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

171 Schaff, Philip, “Recent Publications,” Reformed Church Review 10 (April 1858): 328Google Scholar.