The nineteenth century, Catholic and Protestant: the Victorian pulpit, the Oxford Movement, Old Princeton and Dutch Neo-Calvinism, and the German and Danish theology that answered the Enlightenment. All of it is in the public domain, with the exceptions noted under Kierkegaard, Kuyper and Schleiermacher.
Friedrich Schleiermacher
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), preacher in Berlin and professor at Halle and Berlin, called the father of modern liberal theology: religion is neither knowing nor doing but feeling, “the feeling of absolute dependence”. On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers in John Oman’s translation (1893), and the Selected Sermons translated by Mary F. Wilson (1890); Christmas Eve: A Dialogue on the Celebration of Christmas in W. Hastie’s translation (1890); Soliloquies in Horace Leland Friess’s translation (1926) (public domain in the US only); and The Christian Faith in the translation by H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart (1928). Public domain in the US only; in copyright in the UK until 2060.
Author index: Friedrich Schleiermacher (114 notes)
Charles Hodge
Charles Hodge (1797–1878), for over fifty years professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and the leading voice of Old School Presbyterianism in America. The three-volume Systematic Theology (1871–73), the Commentary on Ephesians, and What is Darwinism? (1874); the Princeton Sermons (1879), the outlines of his Sabbath-afternoon addresses to the seminary’s students, The Church and its Polity (1879), his writing on the doctrine and government of the Church (also published as Discussions in Church Polity, 1878), and the Constitutional History of the Presbyterian Church (1839–40).
Author index: Charles Hodge (670 notes)
John Henry Newman
John Henry Newman (1801–1890), the leader of the Oxford Movement, received into the Catholic Church in 1845, cardinal in 1879, and canonised in 2019. His works are here in the uniform edition: the Parochial and Plain Sermons and the Oxford University Sermons, The Arians of the Fourth Century, the Lectures on Justification, the Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, The Idea of a University, the Apologia pro Vita Sua (both texts), the Grammar of Assent, the two novels, The Dream of Gerontius and the rest of the verse, and the essays, sketches, tracts and controversial writings. Text from the Newman Reader.
Author index: John Henry Newman (1,038 notes)
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), the Danish philosopher and theologian of the single individual before God, and the forerunner of Christian existentialism. Lee M. Hollander’s Selections from the Writings of Kierkegaard (1923), the first Kierkegaard in English; The Crowd is Untruth in a modern translation that its translator, Charles K. Bellinger, has placed in the public domain; and Works of Love in David F. and Lillian Marvin Swenson’s translation (Princeton, 1946), whose copyright was never renewed and which is therefore public domain in the United States — it may still be in copyright elsewhere.
Author index: Søren Kierkegaard (30 notes)
J. C. Ryle
John Charles Ryle (1816–1900), first Bishop of Liverpool and the outstanding evangelical Anglican writer of the Victorian era. He spent thirty-eight years in country parishes in Suffolk before Disraeli sent him to Liverpool at sixty-four, and he wrote as he preached — plainly, directly, and for ordinary people. Holiness, the Expository Thoughts on the Gospels, Practical Religion, Christian Leaders of the Last Century, Coming Events and Present Duties, The Upper Room, and the shorter tracts.
Author index: J. C. Ryle (214 notes)
Albrecht Ritschl
Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889), professor at Bonn and Göttingen, after Schleiermacher the most influential German Protestant theologian of the century and the founder of the Ritschlian school. The first, historical volume, A Critical History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation in John S. Black’s translation (1872), and the third, constructive volume, The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, in the translation edited by H. R. Mackintosh and A. B. Macaulay (1900), both read from the page images.
Author index: Albrecht Ritschl (26 notes)
Charles Spurgeon
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834–1892), the “Prince of Preachers,” was the Reformed Baptist pastor of the New Park Street Chapel and then the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London for thirty-eight years. He left one of the largest bodies of published work of any Christian author: the weekly sermons alone run to 63 volumes and 3,512 sermons, preached between 1855 and 1917. Alongside them are The Treasury of David, Morning and Evening, Lectures to My Students, All of Grace, The Soul Winner, Faith’s Checkbook, John Ploughman’s Talk, Commenting and Commentaries, Till He Come, the Sermons on Proverbs, and A Puritan Catechism. Texts from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library and The Spurgeon Archive.
Author index: Charles Spurgeon (4,633 notes)
Abraham Kuyper
Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920), founder of the Free University of Amsterdam and of Neo-Calvinism, and Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905. The Stone Lectures on Calvinism given at Princeton in 1898, read from the page images of the 1899 edition; The Work of the Holy Spirit (De Vries, 1900, with an introduction by B. B. Warfield) and the meditations To Be Near Unto God (1918), from the CCEL. The meditations for the sick-room In the Shadow of Death (De Vries, 1929), read from the page images of the Eerdmans edition: published in 1929, it is public domain in the United States, but may still be in copyright elsewhere. The same holds for Keep Thy Solemn Feasts (De Vries, Eerdmans, 1928), meditations for Christmas, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost and the new year, also read from the page images: public domain in the United States, but possibly still in copyright elsewhere. So too Asleep in Jesus (De Vries, 1929), fifty-two meditations on the state of the believer who has died, read from the page images: public domain in the United States, but possibly still in copyright elsewhere. And His Decease at Jerusalem (De Vries, 1928), fifty meditations on the sufferings and death of Christ, also read from the page images: public domain in the United States only (published in 1928), but possibly still in copyright elsewhere. His Philadelphia lecture The Antithesis between Symbolism and Revelation (1899), against the drift of English non-conformists to ritualism, is from sources.neocalvinism.org.
Author index: Abraham Kuyper (456 notes)
Benjamin B. Warfield
Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (1851–1921), professor of theology at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1887 until his death, the successor of the Hodges and the last great theologian of Old Princeton. The sermons of The Power of God unto Salvation (1903) and The Saviour of the World (1913), The Lord of Glory (1907), his study of the New Testament’s designations of Christ, The Plan of Salvation (1915) and Counterfeit Miracles (1918), The Westminster Assembly and Its Work (1908), Calvin as a Theologian (1909), Infant Salvation (1891), The Making of the Westminster Confession (1901), Predestination in the Reformed Confessions (1901), Paul on Women Speaking in Church (1919), Is Jesus God? introductory note (1912), The Right of Systematic Theology (1897), The Gospel of the Incarnation (1893), Revelation and Inspiration (1927), Biblical Doctrines (1929), Christology and Criticism (1929), Studies in Tertullian and Augustine (1930), Calvin and Calvinism (1931), Studies in Perfectionism, Part 1 (1931), Studies in Perfectionism, Part 2 (1932) and Critical Reviews (1932). The volumes of 1927–1932 are in the public domain in the United States, but may still be in copyright elsewhere.
Author index: Benjamin B. Warfield (217 notes)