Philadelphia's Enlightenment and the Making of Benjamin Rush as an Enlightend Christian

Although Rush accepted advanced medical knowledge, he still thought the power of rationality was insufficient. During the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, Rush applied his infamous combination of mercurial powder and the liberal use of the lancet, but he privately cried out to providence for help and prayed the divine intervention to cope with the diseases in Philadelphia. As a Christian who was cultivated with modern medical knowledge, Rush recognized the limit of the enlightened medical science, although he did not think it was in contradiction with Christianity.

Under the influence of the New Side Presbyterians in Philadelphia, Rush became a typical Christian. Rush was much impressed with the English Evangelist and filled entire pages of his correspondence with enthusiastic descriptions of George Whitefield’s preaching. He once expressed the wish to engage in the “sublime study of divinity,” declaring that “every pursuit of life must dwindle into nought when Divinity appears.” Rush finally made his decision to take medicine as his profession. However, he was always deeply religious and discovered “how full of comfort are the Holy Scriptures to those reconciled to God!” In reminiscing his boyhood training under the New Side Presbyterian Churches, he highly valued their influences on him. On the 27th of May, 1809, in a letter to his cousin Dr. Finley, he mentioned the Divine education he received in Philadelphia:

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church is now in session in Philadelphia. It is composed of many excellent men, some of whom are highly distinguished by talents and learning as well as piety. I have had some pleasant visits from a number of them, and have been amply rewarded for my civilities to them, by their agreeable and edifying conversation. They remind me of the happy times, when their places in the church were filled by your venerable father, and his illustrious cotemporaries and friends, Messrs. Tennent, Blair, Davies and Rodgers.

It was in the New Side Presbyterian Churches that Rush formed a religious sensibility. In his student David Ramsay’s view, Rush’s religious faith promoted him to accept the Enlightened thinking. As Ramsay put it, “Rush’s religious sensibility turned upon both the profound awareness of grace and a good-natured skepticism about humanity’s ability to prepare for it. Both came to guide his concept of scientific Enlightenment.”