The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-10-18
REV. DR.. BROWN SPEAKS
DELIYERS HIS FOURTH OF THE LY-
MAN BEECHER SERIES.
Addresses an Appreoiative and Gull.
tured Audience In Mnrquand Chapel
Yesterday Afternoon.

DR.. Brown of Bedford, England, spoke
yesterday afternoon in Marquand chap.
ell on 1.-THE Cambridge Platonists," the
fourth of the series In his Lyman
Beecher course. The little chapel was
crowded with an especially appreciative
and cultured audience DR.. Brown
spoke in substance as follows:
In the last lecture our thoughts were
turned to the sermons of two eminent
preachers of Puritan time Henry
Smith and Thomas Adams. While this
sermons are notable examples of intel
lectual and oratorical power yet they
can scarcely be accepted as typical IL
Illustrations of the ordinary Puritan dis
course. A better example than either
of these would be found in the person
of DR.. Thomas Goodwin. A student OF
Christ's college, Cambridge, fellow of
Catherine Hall, he became a licensed
preacher. Goodwin appealed to the
spiritual affections reasoning from his
own religious experience and inter-
preting scripture by the insight Of a
renewed heart. The profound sense he
had of the living presence Of God with
him, guiding his steps and shaping his
deeper religious experience led Thomas
Goodwin, as we might expect, to con-
Germ himself in his preaching with the
divine facts of Revelation rather than
with subtleties of human speculation.
Goodwin endowed the Christ of eter-
nifty a living and helpful personality
to men who had not seen Him. Let
me introduce to you body of men
who although living in the same cen
fury with Thomas Goodwin belonged to
a widely different school of thought.
Any study of Puritan preaching In the
seventeenth century would be incom-
plete without some reference to that
small body Of remarkable men known
in the Cambridge Platonists' ae the
Sect of Lititude Men, or the 'Latitu-
Librarians" as they were variously
called, including Benjamin Whichcote.
Ralph Cudworth. Nathaniel Culverwell
John Smith and Henry More. The OBJ
ject of Whichcote and his followers
was to unite philosophy and religion in
their scheme of thought and to con-
firm the union on the indestructible
basis of reason and the essential ele-
ments of our higher humanity Their
admirers claim for them that theirs
was the first elaborate attempt to wed
Christianity and philosophy made by
any Protestant school, and indeed the
first true attempt of the kind since the
days of the great Alexandrine teachers.
They did not succeed. The causes of
failure are not without instruction to
the preachers of to-day. First: 1t APP
pears to me that Wihchcote did not suf-
ficiently discriminate between mans
natural reason and his spiritual facul-
ty. We should all be disposed to ac
cept the central principle which was
the, essential unity of all truth natural
1y revealed and it's affinity to the con-
stituion of man. We should maintain
with him that whatsoever things are
to be found in any of the wise teachers
of the past that are true, We're in God
before they were in them. All preach
ers would do we'll to remember when
he says, I have always found that
such preachings of others hath com
manded my heart which hath most il
Illuminated my head But we pause
and dissent when in the matter of the
religious life he so glorifies the natural
as to say that to go against reason is
to go against God that 1t is the divine
governor of mans life it is the very
voice of Cod that it discovers what
is natural and receives what Is super
natural Then, to, on religious grounds
theory will not stand the
test of facts. He meant by reason
very much what Paul meant by wis
dom, and Paul affirms that after cen
turtles of experiment it was clearly
proved that the world through the wis
dom knew not God.
Another explanation of Whichcote's
failure is to be found in
important truths in order to
secure intellectual unity of expression.
His system of thought was a reaction
from heat of Puritanism, which had
become to rigid or creed bound and the
tendency of all reaction is to go to an
extreme.
Continuing, DR.. Brown said In the
second stage of the Reformation the
of authority in the church had
90 much superseded the principle Of
enquiry; and Whichcote felt that the |
'logy as systematized with logical pre-
,ision in the Westminster Confession |
vas not the final word. 1t did not en- |
irely cover, or completely meet, the !
actual facts of daily experience. 1t |
eemed to him, therefore, that the real |
est of truth of which he was in search |
vas to be found in character and con-
luct, that truth was the soul in action.
Tor the formula, I think therefore l
m,' he would substitute, L act there
ore l am L do therefore / have be-
ng, and affirmed that it Is by action
to knowledge that character
5 slowly shaped according to an inevi-
able law. This being So he would have
aid, Let us not trouble ourselves about
ogma; let us unite in worship. Unity
f religious opinion is evidently impos-
ible; there is the more need, therefore,
f community of religious life. The
rue church is not the church resting
n this creed or that proclaiming this
ype of doctrine or that, but the COM
any Of the faithful owning Christ as
heir Lord. The church subsists in
of spirit, not in coincidence
f doctrine. 1t has a common faith-it |
nay have a common worship; but 1t Is
OF bound to any definite type of the
logy-any argumentative or theoretic
reed, Coleridge said that the Cam
ridge Platonsts were not so much
'latonists as Plotinists, and here is one
e ct of E'Or Man pIo I