Remarks on the Princeton Review [pp. 306-347]

340 Prof. Park's Remarks on the Princeton Revfew. [APRIL
style of remark, which, for sober prose, would be unbecoming, or even, when associated in certain ways irreverent."*
Being poetical in its nature, the theology of feeling is better
adapted to the hymn-book than to creeds. He ascribes a
great deal of mischief to the introduction of the language of
poetry into doctrinal symbols. Men, he says, will never find
peace " until they confine their intellect to its - rightful sphere,
and understand it according to what it says, and their feeling to
its province, and interpret its language according to what it
means, rendering to poetry the things which are designed for
poetry, and unto prose what belotgs to prose."t "Our theme"
i. e. the theme discussed in the sermon, he says, "grieves us by
disclosing the ease with which we may slide into grave errors.
Such errors have arisen from so simple a cause as that of confounding poetry with prose."t The emotive theology, as appears from these statements, is poetry. It is the poetic exhibition of doctrines. The conflicts of theologians arise, in a
measure, from their not recognizing this fact. They interpret
these poetic forms as though they were the sober and wary language of prose. He sustains the doctrine of the sermon, in this
view of it, by quotations from Blair, Campbell, Burke, and even
a certain commmentary on the Epistle to the Romans. "In
accordance with these simple principles," he says, "not dug out
of the depths of German metaphysics, but taken from the surface of Blair's Rhetoric, the sermon under review describes the
theology of feeling as introducing obscure images, vague and
indefinite representations."II The doctrine of the discourse,
therefore, is the perfectly harmless truism that poetry is not
prose, and therefore is not to be interpreted as though it were.
Accordingly he asks the commentator referred to, how it
happens, that when he "comes to criticise a New England sermon, he should forget the rhetorical principles with which he
was once familiar."~ These representations present the author's theory as a simple rhetorical principle, which no one
denies.
A large class of the illustrations of the doctrine of the ser
* Sermon, p. 538.
11 Reply p. 158.
t Sermon p. 554.
~ Reply p. 160.
$ Sermon p. 558S