The Theology of Charles Carroll Everett

It is related that Dr. Everett was once asked by the professor of systematics in another institution what subjects he found it possible to discuss in a non-denominational school of theology. The question was a silly one, for it assumed that in such a school no teacher gives utterance to the particular views which determine his own denominational affiliations, whereas, in Harvard at any rate, each instructor expresses without hesitation or reserve his entire thought, not seeking to present a composite picture but trusting that his instruction will blend with that of his colleagues to impress upon the minds of his students, whatever distinctive features they may finally adopt, the deep common lines of Christian faith. Characteristically, however, Dr. Everett did not point out the false presupposition of the question, but mentioned some of the principal topics considered in his lectures,—the nature of religion, the thought of God as Absolute Spirit, and the like,—to which the inquirer replied in some surprise, Why, we take all those things for granted. Dr. Everett answered mildly, I wish we could. It was a thoroughly characteristic remark not only because of the humor of its gentle rebuke, so gentle that probably the victim did not realize that his head was off, but also on account of its utter fidelity to his own theory and practice. He did not take fundamental things for granted; hence it was that while students in other theological schools were articulating a body of divinity, Dr. Everett's pupils were searching into the deep things of the spirit. For he was, first of all, a philosopher whose religious nature made him a theologian. The twenty-fifth chapter, of the thirty-five which make up the recently published volume upon Theism and the Christian Faith, begins with the words, “It may seem as though we were only now beginning our examination of the content of Christian faith.” Doubtless it would have seemed so to most of his contemporaries in theological chairs, but it was precisely in the relation between the Christian faith, as he conceived it, and the profound metaphysics of the preceding chapters, that Dr. Everett found the supreme worth of Christianity and the assurance of its absoluteness. The heart of a worshipper made the mind of a philosopher that of a Christian theologian.