The Enlightenment of Benjamin Rush at Edinburgh

So how did Rush accept the scientific Enlightenment and became an enlightened Christian? In order to answer this question, let’s consider his travel in Edinburgh and its importance to him. In Rush’s life, his sojourn at Edinburgh was a key factor for him to be an Enlightened Christian. When he journeyed to Edinburgh in 1766 to study medicine, Rush’s friends there were “chiefly those who are governed by the principles of virtue and religion.” He was only twenty-one years old when he embarked for Edinburgh. At that time, he was occupied with his religious and educational experiences and his apprenticeship to Dr. John Redman in Philadelphia. However, during his visit in Edinburgh, he was greatly enlightened. As a visitor there, Rush made various new friends who were distinguished for their learning, taste, or piety. Among them, there were the Reverend Dr. John Erskine, an evangelical divine and friend of Jonathan Edwards; Mr. Thomas Hogg, the banker; Sir Alexander Dick, a prominent and wealthy physician, in whose house he dined with the philosopher and historian, David Hume; and he was received in the home of Professor Gregory, where he met Dr. William Robertson, author of History of Scotland, and later of a History of America, and at that time the principal of the University of Edinburgh. Rush mentioned that he was frequently made happy by the company of the blind poet, Thomas Blacklock, whose store of literary information and pleasant manners impressed him greatly. Rush reminisced his life at Edinburgh, “The two years I spent in Edinburgh,” he wrote in the summer of 1800, “I consider as the most important in their influence upon my character and conduct of any period of my life.” When Rush returned to Philadelphia, he transmitted the Enlightenment thinking and medical knowledge to young Philadelphians. Then Rush recognized that “their culture of science was no longer considered a provincial echo of Enlightenment in Europe. Rather, they found themselves and their enlightened Christianity now firmly established at the center of the divine plan for human salvation.” Obviously, Rush’s visit in Edinburgh helped him to be an enlightened Christian.

Rush’s early religious training, as well as the Scottish Enlightenment thinking he received greatly shaped his views on slavery. Rush not only received well religious education in the New Side Presbyterian Churches, but was greatly enlightened by the Scottish Enlightenment, as well as the continental Enlightenment. During his time in Europe, he visited Paris, London, Leiden and other cities and met several abolitionists and Enlightened thinkers, like Granville Sharp, Anthony Benezet, Montesquieu, Voltaire and so on, whom greatly shaped his rationalized attitudes towards the world. Unlike those radical abolitionists in the Great Britain who defended their views of abolitionism based on Enlightenment thinking and those who advocated the antislavery movement for the African slaves in terms of Christianity, Rush argued for the abolition of the slavery in terms of Enlightened Christianity.