BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF 1891 A.jip.zJ 3^/g;^,. Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924095646869 eCjiealiotc C fHunstv, SD.D. ON THE THRESHOLD. Lectures to Young People. i6mo, $s.oo. THE FREEDOM OF FAITH. A volume of Sermons, with an Essay on *' The New Theology.*' i6mo, *i.So. LAMPS AND PATHS. Sermons to ChUdren. i6mo, $1.0Q. THE APPEAL TO LIFE. Sermons. i6mo, {1.50. HORACE BUSHNELL. With two Portraits of Dr. Bushnell. x2mo, $2.00. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. Boston and New York. HORACE BUSHNELL PREACHER AND THEOLOGIAN By THEODORE T. HUNGER BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY (C{e Stibec^ibe ^re^^, Last Days 327 CHAPTER XVni ESTQLATES 353 CHAPTER XIX The Wobk of Bushmbll 377 Index 415 CHEONOLOGY 1802. April 14 Birth in Litchfield, Conn. 1805. Removal of family to New Preston, Conn. 1821. United with church in New Preston. 1823. Entered Yale College. 1827. Was graduated from Yale College. 1827-28. Taught school in Norwich, Conn. 1828-29. In New York, as Associate Editor of Journal of Commerce. 1829-31. Tutor at Yale College. Pursued Law studies. 1831. Entered Theological School in New Haven, Conn. 1833. May 22. Ordained Pastor of North Church in Hartford, Conn. 1833. September 13. Married in New Haven to Mary Apthorp. 1840. Invited to become President of Middlebury Col- lege, Vermont. Declined. 1841. Received degree of Doctor of Divinity from Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn. 1842. Lectured at Bridgeport, Brooklyn, New York, and Norwich, and gave Commencement ad- dress at Hudson, Ohio. 1845. Visited Europe in search of health. 1849. Hartford Central Association discussed the book "God in Christ." Errors not found fundamental. 1850. Remonstrances and Complaints of Fairfield West Association to the Hartford Central Association upon their action in the case of Dr. Bushnell. 1852. Fairfield West Association again remonstrated in an appeal to the Associated Ministers of the General Association of Connecticut. X CHRONOLOGY 1852. North Church of Haitford withdrew from Con- Eociatioii. 1852. Journey to the West, because of ill-health. 1853. May 22. Anniversary of twenty years' settle- ment over North Church, Hartford, Conn. 1864. Last measure adopted by Fairfield West Associ- ation addressed to General Association of New Haven, Conn. 1854. Protest of the Pastoral Union to the Pastors and Churches of New England. 1855. Journey to Cuba and the South, because of con- tinued ill-health. 1856. Life in CaUfomia. 1856. Invited to the Presidency of the College of Cal- ifornia. Declined in 1861, after securing loca- tion, and rendering valuable service in other ways. 1859. Resigned from North Church, Hartford, on ac- count of continued ill-health, and against unan- imous wish of people. 1859-60. Life in Minnesota. 1860. Spent in part at Clifton Springs, New York. 1861-75. In Hartford, Conn., writing and occasionally preaching. Visits to the Adirondacks and elsewhere. 1870. Preached sermon at the Installation of the Rev. Washington Gladden, LL. D., in North Adams, Mass. 1876. Received message from Common Council of Hartford, annoimcing name of "Bushnell Park." 1876. February 17. Death in Hartford, Conn. 1876. Funeral sermon preached in Hartford by succes- sor, the Rev. Nathaniel J. Burton, D. D. 1876. March 26. Memorial sermon, preached in Chapel of Yale University by President Noah Porter, D. D.,LL.D. PUBLISHED WEITINGS 1835. Sermon : " Crisis of the Church," delivered at Hartford, Conn. First sermon published. 1836. Article : " Kevivals of Religion," included eleven years later in " Christian Nurture." 1837. Address : " The True Wealth and Weal of Na- tions." Fhi Beta Kappa at Yale University, entitled " Principles of National Greatness " in pamphlet, and earliest of papers in " Work and Play." 1839. Address : " Revelation," before Society of Inquiry at Andover, Mass. 1839. Sermon : " A Discourse on the Slavery Question," at Hartford, Conn. 1840. Sermon : " American Politics." 1842. Address : " Stability of Change," Commence- ment at Hudson, Ohio. 1844. Articles : « The Great Time-keeper," in « The National Preacher." "Taste and Fashion," and " Growth, not Conquest, the True Method of Christian Progress," in the "New Eng- lander." 1844. Sermon : " Politics under the Law of God." 1846. Article : " The Oregon Question," published in London. 1846. Sermon: "The Day of Roads," at Hartford, Conn. 1846. Address : •' Agriculture at the East," delivered before the Hartford County Agricultural So- ciety. Incorporated in " Work and Play " (in first edition only). 1847. Two discourses : " Christian Nurture," published by Massachusetts Sunday School Society. xii PUBLISHED WRITINGS 1847. Article : « The Christian AUianoe," in the " New Englander." 1847. Sermon : " Prosperity our Duty." 1847. Address : " Barbarism the First Danger." Printed by Home Missionary Society. 1848. Oration : " Work and Play," Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard University. 1849. Book : " God in Christ," prefaced by a disserta- tion on Language. 1849. Address : " The Founders Great in their Uncon- sciousness," before the New England Society of New York, on Forefathers' Day. 1851. Book : "Christ in Theology." 1851. Address : " Speech for Connecticut," at New Britain, Conn. 1851. Address : " Age of Homespun," at the Litch- field Centennial Celebration, Incorporated in " Work and Play." 1852. Lecture : "Bevealed Beligion," at Cambridge, 1853. May 22. Commemorative sermon, on the anni- versary of settlement, twenty years previous, over the North Church, Hartford, Conn. 1854. Sermon: "The Northern Iron," at Hartford, Conn. 1856. Sermon : " Society and Beligion, a Sermon for California." 1857. Address : " An Appeal : Movement for a Univer- sity in California." 1857. Sermon : " A Week-day Sermon to the Business Men of Hartford." 1858. Book : " Sermons for the New Life." 1858. Book : " Nature and the Supernatural." 1858. Article : " California, its Characteristics and Prospects," in " New Englander." 1859. July 3. Sermon: " Parting Words," on occasion of leaving North Church, Hartford, Conn. 1860. Book : "Character of Jesus," being the tenth chapter of " Nature and the Supernatural." PUBLISHED WRITINGS xiii 1861. Sermon : " Keverses Needed," a discourse de- livered on the Sunday after the disaster at Bull Kun. 1861. Book: "Christian Nurture," published in present form. 1863. Article : " Loyalty," in " New Englander." 1864. Book: "Work and Play." 1864. Book : " Christ ajid his Salvation." 1865. Oration : " Our Obligations to the Dead," deliv- ered at the Commemorative Celebration held in honor of the Alumni of Yale University who had served their country in the civil war. Incorporated in " Building Eras." 1866. Book : " The Vicarious Sacrifice." 1866. Address : " Training for the Pulpit," delivered at Andover Seminary, published in " Hours at Home," and afterward incorporated in « Building Eras," under title « Pulpit Talent." 1866. Article : " The Natural History of the Yaguey Family," published in " Hours at Home." 1868. Book : « The Moral Uses of Dark Things." 1868. Article : " Science and Religion," published in " Putnam's Magazine." 1868. Article : " Meaning and Use of the Lord's Sup- per," published in the " Advance." 1869. Article : " History of the Hartford Park," pub- lished in " Hearth and Home." 1869. Article : " Progress," published in " Hours at Home." 1869. Book : " The Reform against Nature," on Wo- man's Suffrage. 1869. Sermon : " God's Thoughts fit Bread for Chil- dren," before Connecticut Sunday School Teachers' Convention. 1870. Address : Commencement, Williams College. 1871-72. Series of articles on Prayer, published in the "Advance." 1872. Book : " Sermons on Living Subjects." riv PUBLISHED WRITINGS 1874. Book : " FoTgiveness and Law," afterward in- corporated as second volume of " The Yicari- ons Sacrifice." 1881. Book : « Bmlding Eras." CHAPTER I EARLY LIFE "One comfort ia, that Great Hen, taken up ui any -way, are profitable company. We cannot look, howeyer imperfectly, npon a great man, withont gaming something by him. He is the living light-fountain, which it is good and pleasant to be near. The light -vrhich enlightens, -vhich has enlightened, the darkness of the world : and this not a kindled lamp only, but rather as a natural luminary shining by the gift of Heaven ; a flowing light- fountain, as I say, of native original insight, of manhood and heroic nobleness ; — in whose radiance all souls feel that it is well with them. On any terms whatsoever, you will not grudge to wander in such neighborhood for a while." — Caxltue, Heroes, p. 2. HORACE BUSHNELL CHAPTER I EABLT LIFE Connecticut may be called a mother of theo- logians. Two Puritan divines, born in England, — John Davenport and Thomas Hooker, — laid the foun- dations of the State, and for a generation virtually governed it. In the next century Jonathan Ed- wards brought Davenport's theocracy to a full end, and enforced Hooker's theory of popular gov- ernment. Edwards, the first of that group of theologians known under his name, or as the New England School, was bom in 1703, and was followed by Bellamy, Hopkins, West, Smalley, and Emmons. A generation later came Lyman Beecher and the New Haven divines, — Taylor, Fitch, and Goodrich. Edwards the younger and President Dwight, — a grandson of the elder Ed- wards, — though born in Massachusetts, early be- came residents of Connecticut and prominent mem- bers of the school.^ ^ Bnahnell refers to this group of theologians in his address, " Histoiical Estimate of Connecticut, " Work and Play, p. 215. 4 HORACE BUSHNELL Its unity, if not its existence, was due to Ed- wards, to the fact that all were educated at Yale College, then primarily a school of theology, and, on the part of the later generation, that they were the pupils of President Dwight, whose bril- liant and popular modifications of its theology cap- tivated their minds. Deeper reasons doubtless may be found, reaching back of Edwards and below all personal influences. They represent a phase in the evolution of human thought and the divine progress of the world. The relation of Horace Bushnell to this school wiU become apparent in the following pages. By local associations, by education and ecclesiastical ties, his relations to it were very close ; close also in many ways were his religious habits and sym- pathies. If he is to be classed with it, it must be with wide exceptions and violent contrasts. But whatever his relation, it formed a strong and defi- nite background upon which he stands out a clear- cut figure, not dwarfed by the greatness of the men behind him, and fit in all ways to be classed either with them or against them. My purpose in this volume is not to give a full history of the life of Bushnell, but rather to follow its thread with sufficient care to get at the real character of the man, and more especially to as- certain his place among the religious leaders of America, his relation to the thought of his day, and his influence upon it. He was bom April 14, 1802, in the county and EARLY LIFE 5 town of Litchfield, Connecticut. The exact place where he first saw the light was the small village of Bantam, a mile or two from Litchfield, on the shores of a lake of the same name. His lineage on his father's side is traced to the first settlers of Guilford, Connecticut. Here, apparently, the family remained until the sixth generation from Francis, the first settler, when we find Abraham in New Canaan, near Litchfield, where he married Miss Molly Ensign. The second of their twelve children bore his mother's name, JEnsign, and was the father of Horace Bushnell. The family is probably of Huguenot descent, and is marked by the best qualities of that blood, — mental alert- ness and religious sincerity. Ensign Bushnell and his wife Dotha, whose maiden name was Bishop, removed to New Preston, about fourteen miles from Litchfield, when Horace was three years old. Here he entered upon an inherited pursuit, — wool carding and cloth dressing by machinery, — to which he added that of farming. It was in this way that the more energetic people in the rural districts of New England often supplemented the hard conditions of the soil. It had much to do with the mental development of their son, that he was brought up in the atmosphere and exercise of two distinct occupations ; it was an early lesson in that comprehensiveness which was the charac- teristic of his thought. He remained at home until he was twenty-one years of age. Up to that time he had been a hard worker in the factory 6 HORACE BUSHNELL and on the farm; each was a special school for training eye and hand, mind and heart. The whole environment was the best possible for de- veloping such a man as he was to be. The region is " a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths, springing forth in valleys and hills." The landscape is full of the peculiar charm of western New England scenery, — a tumble of hills, broken by occasional peaks higher than the rest, one of which is now known as Mount Bushnell, a wind- ing lake, brooks rushing down from wooded crests through wild ravines, precipitous heights, dense forests, broad, undulating stretches of field and pasture. It is fortunate that one so open to nature and so receptive of its meaning should have been reared amid such forms of it, for it was inevitable that nature should play a great part in his thought. His deepest impressions did not come from books nor from contact with men, but from nature, and nothing was "quite real to him until it had been submitted to its tests. Other influences — more consciously felt — mingled with these, and left an abiding impress upon his charac- ter. The homestead was on the slope of a broad- backed hill that stretched away for a mile to the summit, on which stood the only church in the town. The house was one of those which marked the best period of rural architecture in New Eng- land, — roomy, cheerful, and with an indefinable air of dignity, simplicity, and comfort, — character, in brief, in the terms of architecture. Just below EARLY LIFE 7 rushed a stream, the outlet of Lake "Waramaug, a beautiful sheet of water, hidden by an intervening hill, but near enough to serve the ends of fishing and boating, sports which Bushnell followed dl his days. The religion of the family is described as " com- posite." The father imbibed from his mother, who seems to have been a woman of remarkable character, Armiaian views, while the mother had been reared in the Episcopal Church. Both, how- ever, became members of the Congregational Church. In such a family this variety of religious training and atmosphere stood for something, and its effect upon the son is beyond measurement, and can be traced through all his history, the two elements blending rather than antagonizing as time went on. It is a fact to be kept in mind that he was not reared under the influence of the strict Calvinism of the day. He was thus saved from an over-violent reaction, and when it came, there were within him places of refuge to which he could flee. The religious atmosphere of this home is well described by a younger brother, the Kev. Dr. George Bushnell : — "He was born in a household where religion was no occasional and nominal thing, no irksome restraint nor unwelcome visitor, but a constant atmosphere, a commanding but genial presence. In owe father it was characterized by eminent evenness, fairness, and conscientiousness; in our mother it was felt as an intense life of love, utterly 8 HORACE BUSHNELL unselfish and untiring in its devotion, yet thought- ful, sagacious, and wise, always stimulating and ennobling, and in special crises leaping out in tender and almost awful fire. If ever there was a child of Christian nurture, he was one ; nurtured, I will not say, in the formulas of theology as sternly as some ; for though he had to learn the Westminster Catechism, its formulas were not held as of equal or superior authority to that of the Scriptures; not nurtured in what might be- called the emotional elements of religion as fer- vently as some, but nurtured in the facts and principles of the Christian faith in their bearing upon the life and character; and if ever a man was true to the fundamental principles and the customs which prevailed in his early home, even to his latest years, he was." The mother was in the communion of the Epis- copal Church when Horace was born, and so he "had it always for his satisfaction, so far as he properly could, that he was Episcopally regener- ated ; " but the removal to New Preston took the family into the Congregational Church, — there being no other, — where a strict Calvinism pre- vailed. The father often protested against the "tough predestinationism, and the rather over- total depravity of the sermon," but was checked by the wife, though in sympathy with her husband, "for the sake of the children." Both entered heartily into the life of the church, accepting what seemed to them good, and getting along as EARLY LIFE 9 well as they could with the rest. Here we have a foreshadowing of the history of the son, — protest of mind and heart agaiast intolerable doctrines, and acceptance of what was iatermingled with them, but was deeper and higher, and refusal to tear them asunder " because of the children " of the Kingdom. He writes of his mother with tender reverence and keen analysis : — " She was the only person I have known in the close intimacy of years who never did an incon- siderate, imprudent, or any way excessive thing that required to be afterwards mended. In this attribute of discretion she rose even to a kind of sublimity. I never knew her give advice that was not perfectly justified by results. Her reli- gious duties and graces were also cast in this mood, — not sinking their flavor in it, but having it raised to an element of superior, almost divine, perception. Thus praying earnestly for and with her children, she was discreet enough never to make it unpleasant to them by too great frequency. She was a good talker, and was often spoken of as the best Bible teacher in the congregation ; but she never fell into the mistake of trying to talk her children into religion. She spoke to them at fit times, but not nearly as frequently as many mothers do that are far less qualified. Whether it was meant or not, there was no atmosphere of artificially pious consciousness in the house. And yet she was preaching all the time by her mater- 10 HORACE BUSHNELL nal sacrifices for us, scarcely to be noted \rithout tears. " Whether she had any theory for it, I do not know ; but it came to pass, somehow, that while she was concerned above all things to make her children Christian, she imdertook little in the way of an immediate divine experience, but let herself down, for the most part, upon the level of habit, and condescended to stay upon matters of habit, as being her humanly allotted field, only keeping visibly an upward look of expectation, that what she may so prepare in righteous habit will be a house builded for the occupancy of the Spirit. Her stress was laid thus on industry, order, time, fidelity, reverence, neatness, truth, intelligence, prayer. And the drill of the house in these was to be the hope, in a great degree, of religion. Thus, in regard to the first, industry, there was always something for the smallest to do, — errands to run, berries to pick, weeds to pull, earnings all for the common property, in which he thus begins to be a stockholder. So for both sexes and all sizes ; and how very close up to the gateway of God is every child brought who is trained to the consenting obe- dience of industry ! Indeed, there is nothing in these early days that I remember with more zest than that I did the full work of a man for at least five years before the manly age ; this, too, under no eight-hour law of protective delicacy, but hold- ing fast the astronomic ordinance in a service of from thirteen to fourteen hours. So of truth ; I EARLY LIFE 11 do not remember ever hearing any one of the chil- dren accused of untruth. We were not always perfect in our neatness, I confess, but we had abun- dant opportunity to be made aware of it. This habit-discipline, I scarcely need say, came very near being a gate of religion for us all. No child of us ever strayed so far as not to find himself early in a way of probable discipleship. " If it should seem to any, in this little sketch, that our family discipline was too stringent or closely restrictive, they would fall into great mis- take. There was restriction in it, as there ought to be. And yet, when I look back, I scarce know where to find it. No hamper was ever put on our liberty of thought and choice. We were allowed to have our own questions, and had no niggard scruples forced upon us. Only it was given us for a caution that truth is the best thing in the world, and that nobody can afford to part with it, even for an hour. Thus we talked freedom and meant conservatism, and talked conservatism and meant freedom ; and, as we talked, we thought." We have made this long quotation because it reveals the personal equation in " Christian Nur- ture." Powerful influences lay behind and around him. Ancestry, natural scenery, occupation, home, early training, a church life drawn from three sources, — well mingled by faith and good sense, — laid the foundations of his character and career. The mother taught him music, in the simple way it was then learned in a New England village, and so 12 HORACE BUSHNELL put him early upon one of his profoundest studies. She also conceived and carried out for him the plan of a liberal education. This was a common thing in the respectable New England family of the day, but with her it sprang out of a prenatal desire that her firstborn son should be consecrated to the min- istry of the Gospel. His education in its early stages is described in " The Age of Homespun," ^ " a graphic delineation of life of the olden time that has become classic in New England literature." Very early " the sense of power " awoke within him, and it never forsook him. He was good- natured, quiet, over-thoughtful, — qualities that were resented by the bullies of the school, but he resorted to the usual methods of boys to establish supremacy, and, selecting the strongest, in one vig- orous conflict won respect and lasting peace. Later on he disclosed a more unusual trait, that was so characteristic as to be humorously prophetic of his future. When he was sixteen years old, the moni- torial system was introduced into the Academy. On its coming his turn to serve, he declined both the honor and the duty, on the ground that he was there to study and not to watch other pupils. It was so all through. In some autobiographical notes written late in life he says : " I was almost never a president or a vice-president of any society, and almost never on any committee. Take the report of my doings on the platform of the world's business, and it is naught." He was not made to 1 Work and Play, p. 368. EARLY LIFE 13 serve on committees, but to furnish materials for committees, who often found more than they could well handle. In many other ways was the child the father of the man. He not only loved nature and suffered it to kindle his imagination, but he explored it for its meanings and mapped it out for its uses. He was a born engineer, always laying out roads and building parks, and finding the best paths for railways among the hills. The park in Hartford, which bears his name, was the fruit of a hfelong passion. When visiting Dr. Washington Gladden in North Adams, in 1886, he pointed out to him where the park of the growing town should be located.! Prophetic also were his early rehgious experiences. Heayen lay very close about him in his early years. The freshness of the morning moved bim to prayer. His religious impressions came along the path of nature, — in the fields and pastures, — and so coming they were without fear or sense of wrong, but fuU of the divine beauty and majesty. Deeper experiences springing from the same source were to follow. Nature became a permanent factor in his thought as a revelation of divine things, — a feature in which he bears a striking resemblance to Edwards. As he drew near to manhood, he feU away, for a time, from 1 The snggestion, unfortunately, was not followed, but the Congregational Chuich in North Adama is to be credited with the good sense and courage to invite Dr. Bushnell, when few pnlpits in New England were open to him, to preach the sermon at the installation of their young pastor. 14 HOKACE BUSHNELL this natural piety into the dialectic habit of the day. When about seventeen, while tending a carding-machine, he wrote a paper, in which he strove to put Calvinism into logical harmony, and, in the interest of sound reason, to correct St. Paul's willingness to be accursed for the sake of his brethren. It was a natural and wholesome start, — a conforming conscience, which is a good sign in youth, and yet along with it a disposition to resent palpable or seeming absurdity ; he will question and deny enough when older, and he will soon learn how St. Paul used language. When he was nineteen, he united with the church, and a deep flow of religious feeling attended the act. From that time his desire for a liberal education deepened, and he set about it with such zeal that a year later he passed the examinations and en- tered Yale College. He left the home of his early days behind him for the field of a wider education, but the real education had already been gained; for in this home and in the world about it he had learned those lessons that he repeated ia " Christian Nurture," and in aU those pages where nature appears as an " analogon of the spirit." CHAPTEE n COLLEGE AND PROFESSIONAL STUDIES " Feiplezt in faith, bnt pure in deeds, At last he beat his music ont. There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds. " He fought his doubts and gather'd strength, He -would not make his judgment blind, He faced the spectres of the mind And laid them : thus he came at length " To find a stronger faith his own ; And Power was with him in the night. Which makes the darkness and the light, And dwells not in the light alone, " But in the darkness and the cloud, As over Sinaji's peaks of old, Wbile Israel made their gods of gold, Altho' the trumpet blew so loud." In Memoriam, zerL CHAPTER n COLLEGE AND PKOFESSIONAL STUDIES BuSHNELL entered Yale College in 1823, when he was twenty-one years of age, — a full-grown and robust man. The students at Yale enter as boys and graduate as men. This mingling of ages and a imiformity of methods form the chief infelicity of the American college, and cause most of those troubles that afflict both students and teachers. BushneU's career bore the marks of a full-rounded manhood. That he was treated as a boy did not greatly trouble him, save once, when he led a rebellion against a doubtfully prescribed examination, and was sent home for a period, — a somewhat humorous proceeding in the light of bis age and character. His college life was marked by intellectual earnestness and "a wonderful consciousness of power." He led his class in athletic sports, — in the simple way of those days, — led it also on the intellectual side, worked hard, lived rather by him- self, though not a recluse, and left in the college an enduring monument in the Beethoven Society, which he organized in order to lift the standard of the music in the chapel. His religious experience 18 HORACE BUSHNELL was what might have been expected- in such a man and at such a period. He was just in time to feel something of the receding wave of French liberal- ism that had pervaded the country. It did not cease to be felt tmtil some years later, when it died out, not because its criticism was refuted, but chiefly because the Anglo-Saxon will not long live without a religion. Bushnell's experience partook rather of skepticism than of the reaction from it. He says : " I loved a good deal the prudential, cold view of things ; my religious character went down." This was inevitable. It had begun, after the fashion of the day, under the fervors of the revival system, which he attempted to keep alive by a forced defense of Calvinism ; but both fervor and logic disappeared in the cool and calm isolation of college life. The Christian nurture in which he had been reared remained with him and " kept hinn a living soul." The following pen picture by a master in the art — N. P. Willis, a classmate — so well out- lines Bushnell as a college student, and so keenly touches the secret of his method in dealing with opposite truths, that we quote it entire : — " Seniors and classmates at Yale, in 1827 we occupied the third story back, North College, North Entry, — BushneU in the northwest cor- ner. As a student, our classmate and neighbor was a black-haired, earnest-eyed, sturdy, carelessly dressed, athletic, and independent good fellow, popular, in spite of being both blunt and exem- COLLEGE AND PROFESSIONAL STUDIES 19 plary. We have seen him but once since those days, and then we chanced to meet him on the Rhine, in the year 1845, we think, — hoth of. us voyagers for health. But to our story. The chapel bell was ringing us to prayers one summer morning; and BushneU, on his punctual way, chanced to look in at the opposite door, where we were, — with the longitudinal, straight come-and- go which we thought the philosophy of it, — strap- ping our razor. ' Why, man,' said he, rushing in and seizing the instrument without ceremony, ' is that the way you strap a razor ? ' He grasped the strap in his other hand, and we have remem- bered his tone and manner almost three hundred and sixty-five times a year ever since, as he threw out his two elbows and showed us how it should be done. ' By drawing it from heel to point both ways,' said he, 'thus — and thus — you make the two cross frictions correct each other ; ' and drop- ping the razor with this brief lesson, he started on an overtaking trot to the chapel, the bell having stopped ringing as he scanned the improved edge with his equally sharp gray eye. Now, will any one deny that these brief and excellent directions for making the roughness of opposite sides con- tribute to a mutual fine edge seem to have been ' the tune ' of the Doctor's sermon to the Unitari- ans ? Our first hearing of the discourse was pre- cisely as we have narrated it, and we thank the Doctor for most edifying comfort out of the 20 HORACE BUSHNELL doctrine, as we trust his later hearers will after as many years." ^ BushneU was graduated in 1827, and for a few months taught a school in Norwich. He found it uncongenial work, saying that he " would rather lay stone waU any time." He had probably got somewhat away from his childhood, and had not gained that deeper sympathy with it which came later. His address at graduation led to an en- gagement in New York on the editorial staff of the " Journal of Commerce," on which he remained for ten months, working incessantly and laying up stores of experience of utmost value. Finding it "a terrible life," he withdrew from it, though invited to a partnership in the paper, and devoted a half year to study in the Law School at New Haven, where he gained further stores of expe- rience that proved helpful to him, and which appear in several of his ablest essays, — notably in " The Growth of Law." In these varied experi- ences following a solid course of study in college, and preceded by a long youthhood that combined farm labor and a skilled handicraft, Bushnell laid broad foundations for a career which, though in- tensely speculative and spiritual, ran close to daily life and reality. He left the Law School, intend- ing to settle in some Western city, where he would find his way into the practice of the law and also if possible into political life. While at home on a ^ From a letter in The Home Journal, 1848, which refers to a Bermon preached by Dr. Bushnell in Cambridge. COLLEGE AND PROFESSIONAL STUDIES 21 farewell visit, he received an appointmeiLt as tutor in Yale College. We quote his own account of this crisis in his Ufe, both because of its importance and because it sheds further light on that Christian nurture which underlay his life and entered so deeply into his thought. " I was graduated, and then, a year afterwards, when my bUls were paid, and when the question was to be decided whether I should begin the pre- paration of theology, I was thrown upon a most painful struggle by the very evident, quite incon- testable fact that my religious life was utterly gone down. And the pain it cost me was miserably enhanced by the disappointment I must briag on my noble Christian mother by withdrawing myself from the ministry. I had run to no dissipations ; I had been a church-going, thoughtful man. My very difficulty was that I was too thoughtful, sub- stituting thought for everything else, and expect- ing so intently to dig out a religion by my head that I was pushing it all the while practically away. Unbelief, in fact, had come to be my ele- ment. My mother felt the disappointment bitterly, but spoke never a word of complaint or upbraid- ing. Indeed, I have sometimes doubted whether God did not help her to think that she knew bet- ter than I did what my becoming was to be. "At the college vacation two years after my graduation, when I had been engaged in law studies for a year, I was appointed to a tutorship. A 22 HORACE BUSHNELL fortnight after reaching home, I wrote a letter to President Day, declining the appointment. As I was going out of the door, putting the wafer in my letter, I encountered my mother and told her what I was doing. Eemonstrating now very gently, but seriously, she told me that she could not think I was doing my duty. ' You have settled this ques- tion without any consideration at all that I have seen. Now, let me ask it of you to suspend your decision till you have at least put your mind to it. This you certainly ought to do, and my opinion still further is ' — she was not apt to make her decision heavy in this manner — ' that you had best accept the place.' I saw at a glance where her heart was, and I could not refuse the postpone- ment suggested. The result was that I was taken back to New Haven, where, partly by reason of a better atmosphere in religion, I was to think my- self out of my over-thinking, and discover how far above reason is trust." He entered upon his tutorship in the autumn of 1829, and for a year and a half kept up his studies in the law, still holding to his purpose of entering that profession. But great experiences or rather developments awaited him. He might during this time be described as sound in ethics and skeptical in religion. Each is easUy explained. The soundness of his morality was due to his na- ture and training ; his skepticism was chiefly due to the theology in which he was involved. The re- volt had come early ; he resisted it, but as time COLLEGE AND PROFESSIONAL STUDIES 23 went on, his doubts grew into positive unbelief, whicb was held in check by his conscience. The change came — and there was need of it — in one of those revivals which occasionally pervaded col- lege life in those days. This is not the place to discuss their nature or their value. Their roots go deep into theology and the later Puritan move- ment, into BibUcal interpretation, and also, let us not hesitate to say, into the religious needs of men.--^ They are not exempt from the criticism that can be visited on almost any phase or form of church life, nor is there need to draw a line as to the value of their results. They involved violent reactions, but they also drew out and set in motion great and abiding forces. These movements in Yale College were free from the excesses of those in the churches outside. Bush- nell became a critic of the revival system, as we shall see, but he did not include in his thought that movement in college which brought so great a change to himself. It was in the winter of 1831 that this deepening of religious feeling began. We quote an account of it given by his fellow tutor Dr. McEwen, of New London, so far as it relates to Bushnell. " What, then, in this great revival was this man to do, and what was to become of him ? Here he was in the glow of his ambition for the future, tasting keenly of a new success, — his fine passage at arms in the editorial chair of a New York daily, ready to be admitted to the bar, successful 24 HORACE BUSHNELL and popular as a college instructor, — but all at sea in doubt, and default religiously. That baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire compassed him all about. When the work was at its height, he and his division of students, who fairly worshiped him, stood unmoved apparently when all beside were in a glow. The band of tutors had estab- lished a daily meeting of their own, and all were now united in it but BushneU. What days of travail and wondering those were over him I None dare approach him. He stood far more than pri- mus inter pares among all. Only Henry Durant ^ tried carefully and cautiously to hit some joint in the armor. But even he, though free in his confidence, seemed to make no advance, when, all at once, the advance came bodily and volun- tarily from BushneU himself. Said he to Durant, 'I must get out of this woe. Here am I what I am, and these young men hanging to me in their indifference amidst this universal earnest- ness on every side.' And we were told what he said he was going to do, — to invite these young men to meet hinn some evening in the week, when he would lay bare his position and their own, and declare to them his determination and the deci- sion they ought with him to make for themselves. Perhaps there never was pride more lofty laid down voluntarily in the dust than when Horace BushneU thus met those worshipers of his. The result was overwhelming. ^ The founder and president of the first college in California. COLLEGE AND PROFESSIONAL STUDIES 25 "When, then, he came at once into the confi- dences of the daily meeting of his fellow tutors, was it not Pan! that was called Saul, and was there ever such a little child as he was? On one occasion he came in, and, throwing himself with an air of abandonment into a seat, and thrusting both hands through his black, bushy hair, cried out desper- ately, yet half laughingly, ' O men ! what shall I do with these arrant doubts I have been nursing for years ? When the preacher touches the Trin- ity and when logic shatters it all to pieces, I am all at the four winds. But I am glad I have a heart as weU as a head. My heart wants the Fa- ther; my heart wants the Son; my heart wants the Holy Ghost — and one just as much as the other. My heart says the Bible has a Trinity for me, and I mean to hold by my heart. I am glad a man can do it when there is no other mooring, and so I answer my own question. What shall I do ? But that is all I can do yet.' " The most interesting feature of this experience is that it turned on his sense of responsibility for others. He seemed to have no anxiety for him- self, nor did he find his doubts an unendurable burden, though he was sorely perplexed by them. But the sight of his pupils awaiting his action ia a matter of supreme importance overwhelmed him. Here was conscience at its highest, touching self- sacrifice if not one with it. All along his early life we find these forecasts of his later thought. In his solicitude for his pupils we have the germ 26 HORACE BUSHNELL of " The Vicarious Sacrifice," and in his outburst of perplexity over the Trinity we find the discrim- inating principle that runs through all his treat- ment of that subject. In the main lines of his thought he was not an impulsive thinker taking up great subjects because he found them in the air or in books. All his contentions had root, not so much in his thought, as in his nature. He reviewed and recast his superficial opinions, but he never let go of the general principles that underlie his works. Bushnell always regarded this experi- ence as the most important crisis in his life. Later on one equally great came in his thought, but it in no way lessened the significance of the first. It was strikingly like that through which Frederick W. Robertson passed in the Tyrol when tossed by doubt over the same questions.^ Each was re- duced to the almost sole belief that " it must be right to do right ; " each clung to the '*• grand, sim- ple landmarks of morality," and so at last fotmd his way into a fuller faith. Bushnell gives an account of his experience at this time in a sermon on " The Dissolving of Doubts," preached in the chapel of Yale College. This sermon — one of his ablest and most self- revealing — closes with six points, which indicate the path along which he traveled at this time and for years after : — " Be never afraid of doubt. "Be afraid of all sophistries, and tricks, and strifes of disingenuous argument. 1 Life ofF. W. Bobertson, voL i. p. 109. COLLEGE AND PROFESSIONAL STUDIES 27 " Have it a fixed principle, also, that getting into any scornful way is fatal. " Never settle upon anytliing as true because it is safer to hold it than not. " Have it as a law never to put force on the mind, or try to make it believe. "Never be in a hurry to believe; never try to conjure doubts against time." His reconversion, if such it should l)e called, was a conversion to duty rather than to faith, but he made the discovery that faith could wait, but duty could not. Through this simple principle he found his way not only into a full faith, but into the conception of Christianity as a life, — Christ himself rather than beliefs about Christ, a dis- tinction which, if not then seen in its fullness, is implied in all his writings. His law studies were completed, but he turned to the ministry. In the summer of 1831 he took leave of his pupils in an address full of practical wisdom, and indicating that his own habits of thought were fully formed. He left with them "two rules which ought to govern every man." The first is, " Be perfectly honest in forming aU your opinions and principles of action." The other is, " Never to swerve in conduct from your honest convictions." He clinched this advice by saying, " If between them both you go over Ni- agara, go ! " This strenuous advice was probably borrowed from Dr. Taylor, who was soon to become his 28 HORACE BUSHNELL instructor in theology ; it was often heard in his lecture-room, and it well represented the spirit of that stout champion of the " new diTinity." There are few pupils of this great teacher who would not confess their deep indebtedness to him, but the emphasis of their gratitude would fall on the courage and honesty and thorough nobility of the man himself. He was a great teacher because he was a great man ; and he was the teacher fitted for the time because what was needed was not more a new theology than courage and an independent habit of thought. These qualities were abundantly nurtured in the lecture-room of Dr. Taylor, and there was also cherished a breadth of view and a charity not common in those da,ys. As a teacher he was far ahead of his age. In no other school of theology were lectures closed with the imiform remark, "Now, young gentlemen, I will hear you." It was often the preface to another session of an hour or even two, in which teacher and pupils were man to man with all the give and take of close argument, or in the closer contact of a noble and generous nature pouring himself out upon sympathetic and responsive pupils. In argument he always won, though sometimes leaving them unconvinced, but in the spirit he infused into them his victory was total and permanent. BushneU fell into the spirit of the lecture-room ; it fed and fortified his sincerity and courage and independence of thought. But when it came to COLLEGE AND PROFESSIONAL STUDIES 29 the thought itself, he parted company with his teacher, and went his own way. He had begun to read Coleridge's "Aids to Keflection." The theology of the day failed to satisfy him, and he had already learned to look for truth from certain sources and by certain methods that had small re- cognition by his teacher. As the subject wiU come up in the next chapter, we will only say that his theological studies in New Haven chiefly served to furnish a background against which all his thought and work in after years stand out in vivid contrast. It was not a contrast between the two men ; it was between two ways of reasoning and two methods of discovering truth; a contrast between an old world drawing to a close and a new world coming on. When examining for a license to preach, he read a thesis on the methods of natural and moral philosophy, in which he contended that syste- matized knowledge is possible in the former " be- cause nature is a system in which everything fulfills its end," but impossible in the latter " because a great share of the acts of men are in contradiction of those properties of their constitu- tion which fit them for the end proposed in the end of their existence. " Here we find the germ of "Nature and the Supernatural," which appeared thirty years later. CHAPTER III THE THEOLOGICAL SITUATION " TertaUian was a Sophist in the good and bad sense of the term. He yiaa in his element in Aristotelian and Stoic dialectics ; in his syllogisms he is a philosophizing advocate. But in this also he was the pioneer of his Church, whose theologians have always reasoned more than they have philosophized. The man- ner in which he rings the changes on auctoritas and ratio, or com- bines them, and spins lines of thought out of them ; the formal treatment of problems, meant to supply the place of one dealing with the matter, until it ultimately loses sight of aim and ob- ject, and falls a prey to the delusion that the certainty of the conclusion guarantees the certainty of the premises — this whole method, only too well known from mediseval Scholasticism, had its originator in Tertullian. In the classical period of eastern theology men did not stop at auctoritas and ratio ; they sought to reach the inner convincing phases of authority, and under- stood by ratio the reason determined by the conception of the matter in question." — Habxack, History of Dogma, vol. v. p. 17. CHAPTER m THE THEOLOGICAL SITUATION In the year 1833 Bushnell was ordained pastor of the North Church in Hartford. He had lin- gered in New Haven during the autumn and winter until February, when he received an invi- tation to preach for a time with a view to settle- ment. His introduction to the church is graphi- cally described in a sermon preached on the twentieth anniversary of his installation, which shows how he was plunged at once into the sea of New England theology, that never was at rest, and never more turbulent than at that time. " I arrived here late in the afternoon in a furious snowstorm, after floundering all day in the heavy drifts the storm was raising among the hills between here and Litchfield. I went, as invited, directly to the house of the chairman of the committee ; but I had scarcely warmed me, and not at all relieved the hunger of my fast, when he came in and told me that arrangements had been made for me with one of the fathers of the church, and immediately sent me off with my baggage to the quarters assigned. Of course, I had no complaint to make, though the fire seemed very inviting and the house attrac- tive ; but when I came to know the hospitality of 34 HORACE BUSHNELL my friend, as I had abundant opportunity of know- ing it afterwards, it became somewhat of a mys- tery to me that I should have been dispatched in this rather summary fashion. But it came out, three or four years after, that, as there were two parties strongly marked in the church, an Old and a New School party, as related to the New Haven controversy, the committee had made up their mind, very prudently, that it would not do for me to stay even for an hour with the New School brother of the committee ; and for this reason they had made interest with the elder brother referred to, because he was a man of the school simply of Jesus Christ. And here, under cover of his good hospitality, I was put in hospital and kept away from the infected districts preparatory to a settlement in the North Church of Hartford. I mention this fact to show the very delicate con- dition prepared for the young pastor, who is to be thus daintily inserted between an acid and an alkali, having it for his task both to keep them apart and to save himself from being bitten of one or devoured by the other." BushneU so well fulfilled the mediating part in this clever scheme that he avoided criticism from either side, and after preaching six Sundays, was unanimously called to the pastorate. His ordination took place on the 22d of May, no diffi- culties having been encountered in the prelim- inary examination. Evidently the force and char- acter of the man conquered a critical situation. THE THEOLOGICAL SITUATION 35 On the 13th of September, 1833, he was mar- ried in New Haven to Mary Apthorp, a lineal de- scendant of John Davenport, the first minister of New Haven. By nature and by culture she was well fitted to share the life of the young pastor. Her high womanly qualities tempered his somewhat undisciplined force, and her spirituality furnished the atmosphere by which his own was steadily fed. He is never to be regarded apart from the in- fluence that constantly flowed in upon him from her strong personality. They spent a few weeks in New Preston, and then entered upon their imited labors in Hartford. BushneU's theological career began so early in his ministry that it is impossible to imderstand it without taking a view, though necessarily a par- tial one, of the theological situation. In general terms it might be described not as a decadent but as a critical period in the life of the churches. There was intense actiirity, but it was largely the activity of antagonism. A long process had reached a point where it could go no further. The New England theology had worn itseK out by the friction of its OAvn conflicting elements. Edwards was no longer a name to conjure with. The main current of his influence had gone to feed an intellectual idealism, and his specific theology had been " improved " under so many hands and into so many differing forms that it could hardly be recognized. The general criticism to be made upon Edwards' work, as a whole, is that his 36 HORACE BUSHNELL avowed purpose was the overthrow of an alleged heresy. He thus incurred the inevitable weak- ness of the negative method. He assumed that if Arminianism were overthrown, Calvinism would hold the ground. The mistake was a fatal one, because it substituted controversy for investiga- tion. The search was not for the truth, but for the error of the enemy, who in almost any theo- logical controversy holds enough truth to embar- rass the other side. As to the intellectual great- ness of Edwards there can be as little doubt as of his exalted piety, but his life-long contention was for a system that subdued the nobler elements of his nature in order to make room for the logic of his system. One cannot read the Enfield sermon without feeling its moral degradation, however outweighed by the end in view and the nobility of that end. The same may be said of the doctrine of pretention ; it was simply inhuman. It was a Contention that grew weaker under every effort made to uphold it ; that only darkened when it sought to clarify ; that enchanted great minds into following only to lead them into mutual antago- nisms and finally to destruction at each other's hands. This is one of those pages in church history that would puzzle, if its frequency did not indicate that it is along such paths the church pursues its way, and society itself unfolds. But no less does it show that a system which springs out of and reflects a certain phase of society emerges from that phase and enters upon another. THE THEOLOGICAL SITUATION 37 Edwards was not contending against the self- determiaing power of the will, hut against an impersonal force that had hegun to press upon the minds of men ; namely, modem thought. His fol- lowers were in one sense not followers. They stood by his system of slightly modified Calvin- ism as a whole, but shrank from some of its appli- cations and inferences ; and they also criticised his metaphysics. He was great enough to throw ofE any number of satellites as he revolved in his vast orbit, but all of them stayed within the sys- tem. Bellamy, Hopkins, Emmons, the yoimger Edwards, Dwight, Taylor, — all agreed upon Ar- minianism as a common enemy, and strove to mend what they conceived to be defects in their great protagonist. Their writings are a strange mixture of dignity and triviality, of truism and absurdity ; often they are on the threshold of the greatest truths, and then we find them wandering in barren wastes of mere speculation. Metaphysical concep- tions, as in the early Greek Church, came to occupy relatively the same place which conceptions of natural science occupy at the present day ; that is, as being the truth of God instead of one of the ways of reaching it.^ Bellamy contended that the world is more holy and happy than if sin and misery had never en- tered it. This doctrine was popularly known as " Sin the I See Hatch's Influence of Greek Ideas on the Christian Church, p. 13. 38 HORACE BUSHNELL necessary means to the greatest good." The New England diTines struck an undoubted truth in this disposition of moral evil, but they did not know what to do with it. What they saw was a universal and probably fundamental law ; namely, evil, or seeming evil, the condition of all progress. They did not see the universality of the law, and so shut it up to theology, and treated it dialecti- cally, bringing up in confusion, if not blasphemy. Dr. Taylor, in his zeal to save the character of God, said that sin was incidental, not necessary, and thus saved himself from saying that Grod was the author of sin. Hopkins was quite as near right as Taylor ; both had laid hold of the skirts of a great truth, but knew little of its reach and place in the divine economy. It was a subject which Christ waived ; but the New England theo- logians waived nothing. Bellamy was followed by Hopkins, who modified certain features of the system, such as imputation and a covenant with Adam, and made them less obnoxious. Starting with Edwards' unimpeach- able definition of virtue as "love of being in general," Hopkins draws out, by a purely logical process, — as faultless as it is unconvincing, — the doctrine of disinterested benevolence, or, when practically stated, willingness to become a cast- away, if the glory of God should require it. It was held not only as a speculative doctrine, but as a test of character.^ 1 The last appearance of the dootime in public was at a Congre- THE THEOLOGICAL SITUATION 39 The conception indicates a kind of sacred cLiv- alry, but so far as it had acceptance, it worked immeasurable evil, — misery in those who beUeved it, and hypocrisy in those who did not formally assent to it. Emmons held that God, being Uni- versal Cause, is the cause of sin, and that the soul is a series of exercises, — a marvelous lapse into a form of pantheism. The younger Edwards stood stoutly by Divine Sovereignty, but made room for the Grotian theory of the Atonement, and corrected his father's treatment of the Will. President Dwight disagreed with these leaders in theology, not incorrectly finding in them traces of pantheism. He asserted the freedom of the wiU, defined sin as selfishness, rejected imputation, and advocated the use of means, which had been held to be wicked. All these theologians agreed and disagreed with Edwards and with each other, but all were fairly good Calvinists. They called their disagreements "improvements," but while they were thus defending the theology of their great leader with a noble fidelity, they did not see that they were paving the way for Arminian- ism, to the extermination of which he devoted his life. Every step had been a losing process, but gational Council called to ordain the late Dr. Jolin Lord, well known as a lecturer and writer on history. In the course of the examination, which had heen somewhat harassing, a surriving Hopkinsian asked the candidate, — using the rough and popular form of the question, — if he was willing to be damned for the glory of God. The reply was that personally he was not, but he w«8 willing the Council ghonld be. 40 HORACE BUSHNELL not until Dr. N. W. Taylor made his unqualified assertion of the self-determining power of the -will did it become clearly apparent that the Armin- ian postulate had found its way into the citadel of Calvinism. Dr. Taylor resented this conclusion, but whether true or not, it was near enough to the truth to become the occasion of as intense a theo- logical war as the nineteenth century is capable of. It was into such a world as this that Bushnell entered when he began his studies in theology. The careers of Taylor and Bushnell ran side by side for many years. The relation between them was close, but it was not sympathetic. Bushnell entered the Pivinity School at New Haven in 1831. Three years before, Dr. Taylor had preached a concio ad derum, in which he made clear his views on the point to which we have just alluded. It called out a criticism that led to the widest breach within orthodox Unes that New England had ever experienced. It divided churches, and led to the creation of a theological seminary, whose chief vo- cation for years was the defense of previous views of the wiU and cognate doctrines, as against the views of Dr. Taylor, which it stigmatized as Armin- ian. Dr. Taylor stood his ground with splendid courage, quite ready to " go over Niagara," if his logic led in that direction ; for he, too, defended the system by logic, and was the keenest dialectician since Edwards, over whom he claimed superiority by asserting that " a dwarf standing on a giant's shoulders can see further than the giant." He THE THEOLOGICAL SITUATION 41 was siirrounded by men of ability, and his pupils in class-room and pulpit sustained him vdth the enthusiasm of personal admiration and doctrinal sympathy. There are still living some who respond to one if not to the other. It was the noblest period in the history of New England theology. Something of the spirit of the new-found freedom pervaded the region, and the sense of accountabil- ity that sprang from it gave an impidse to Chris- tian Hving that is not yet spent. It might have been expected that Bushnell would fall into this company and march with it. There was much in Dr. Taylor to command his admi- ration. His courage was as fine as that which Bushnell afterward displayed, though drawn from different sources. Each was brave by nature, but Taylor rested with absolute repose on his logic, while Bushnell fell back, with like confidence, on his insight and experience. Dr. Taylor's position also as an independent thinker and a progressive theologian, who had made a positive advance to- ward rational and practical views of religion, must have won the respect of the pupil. Both were men of a generous and chivalric disposition, and of absolute honesty and sincerity. But with all these grounds for sympathy, the teacher failed from the first to get any hold upon the pupil, or even to interest him. A partial explanation is to be found in the fact that the path by which Bushnell had reached his present position was not along the highway of Calvinism. He had sunk 42 HORACE BUSHNELL deep in the slough of skepticism, and when he emerged, he did not return to that which plunged him into it. He had been delivered by his heart, and henceforth he was to be guided by his heart, and not by the logic that filled the air about him. From the first he had been an alien to the school of Edwards. He was not born under its star, nor did he serve in its house except as by chance. Its method was one for which he had no aptitude and felt little interest, — a steady dialectic play upon a theology defended, modified, taught, preached, and applied by formal logic. By logic is not meant that action of the mind which is the reasoning voice of the whole nature, and that agreement of thought with facts which insures consistency ; but rather that use of definition and syllogism upon infinite subjects which enforces assent, — such as led Professor Jowett to say that "it is not a sci- ence, nor an art, but a dodge." Dr. Taylor did not fall short of his predecessors in dialectics, and was as stout a logician as any of them. Some of his later students remember his naive account of a theological bout with Dr. Lyman Beecher, in which he (Taylor) contended that a single sin, however small, deserved everlasting punishment.^ ^ Dr. Taylor's contention might seem to have the justification of Socrates' remark, " 6od may forgive sin, but I do not see how He can; " but the remark of the Greek was based on the course of nature in its outward processes, while Dr. Taylor's was based on an implied limitation of the power of God under his own moral government. Socrates felt the possibility of the divine tran- scendence ; Taylor believed it, but made little aUowance for it ; both wandered in " the twilight of the gods." THE THEOLOGICAL SITUATION 43 It is easy to see that a teacher who should even raise such a question could have little influence over such a man as BushneU. They were not within hailing distance, hardly on the same side of the planet. Hence, as often has happened in New England, the theological teacher and his brightest pupil parted company. Taylor could only see in BushneU one who was "always on t' other side ; " though he sufficiently felt the force of his book, — " God in Christ," — to rewrite at great length his lectures on the Trinity, — perhaps the most carefully wrought out and the least valuable of his works. He could not under- stand BushneU, who not only imderstood him, but so reacted from his teachings that he began to think on absolutely opposite lines. The reaction drove him into the region where his chief work was done. In his thesis at graduation we have the germ and not a Uttle of the form of " Nature and the Supernatural ; " and in another essay, written at about the same time, we find the outline of his theory of language. These essays are in- teresting as showing how fundamental was his dissent from the methods of his teacher, and also as pointing the way he was going. They are also ■ prophetic of his own method, — a careful adjust- ment between destruction and construction, with strong emphasis on the latter. It may be said at the outset that BushneU took nothing away from theology without restoring fourfold; he was al- ways and in aU ways a bmlder. But while he 44 HORACE BUSHNELL was out of sympathy -mth his teacher, he was more indebted than he knew. They never in after years actually crossed swords in debate, but each often had the other in mind in many a pungent page and pointed paragraph. If either was lack- ing in respect for the other, it was not Bushnell. Dr. Taylor could not understand this strange fledgeling of his theological nest, and despised its vagrant ways, but the pupil did not forget the few nourishing crumbs he had received from his mas- ter's hands. It was the familiar story, — the old intolerant of the new, and the new out-thinking the old. Several years later (1844) a singular contro- versy was going on, or rather raging, in New Eng- land over a question involving the anti-slavery movement. It was made up of practical politics and theological subtleties of a Jesuitical hue, as that the end justifles the means, — a variation of the HopMnsian doctrine that sin may be the necessary means of the greatest good. The ques- tion at first was whether it is right to vote for either a duelist or an oppressor of the poor for the presidency. It was aimed at a Southern can- didate, who was both a duehst and a slaveholder. Under Dr. Taylor's hand the question was resolved into this form : " If two devils are candidates for the office, and the election of one is inevitable, is it not one's duty to vote for the least, in order to secure the greater good ? " He contended that if this is not done, one becomes responsible for the THE THEOLOGICAL SITUATION 45 evil wrought by the greater devil. BushneU con- troverted this position ia " The Christian Free- man " (December 12, 1844), in an article of four columns, lifting the question out of the region of temporary expediency into that of morals. His main point was that to vote for bad men under the stress of such a principle would be to organ- ize immdrality into the life of the nation, and so fail of the greater good. The question was a weak one, but full of mischief. BushneU's treat- ment of it was masterly. It is not contained in his collected writings, but nothing that he said on political subjects was more timely and effective. Taking a petty question for a text, he wrote a paper on the nature and authority of civil gov- ernment. The point he made underlay the anti- slavery movement, the resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law, the outcry of the North against Web- ster's 7th of March speech, and entered into the thought that issued in the Free Soil party. He taught the people that the only way to secure the greatest good was along the path of absolute righteousness, and not in vain attempts to measure consequences. Dr. Taylor maintained that conse- quences create duty, a principle that determined political action in the country for twenty years. Bushnell contended that righteousness secures the only consequences worth having. It was this prin- ciple that carried the nation through the war and brought slavery to an end. We have dwelt thus at length on the seminary 46 HORACE BUSHNELL life of Bushnell because it shows how radically he broke away from the prevailiiig habit of thought, and also how early he outlined the chief features of his later studies. He quickly discovered and adopted as a ruling idea the fact that moral action cannot be determined by a hard and fast logic. He also discovered for himself — and it was his first discovery — the truth of Melanchthon and Schleiermacher, that " the heart makes the theo- logian." It was from such a world as this, where he had heard so much he did not believe and so little he did, that he entered the ministry. He had the advantages of a thorough education in col- lege and two professional schools ; a year of very close contact with the world as an editor in New York; an illuminating experience as a teacher of young men, and above all the memory and in- wrought influence of a home in which the Chris- tian nurture was like that which he afterward described. To this should be added an intimate knowledge of Coleridge's "Aids to Reflection." It may almost be said that it is to this book we are indebted for BushneU. He began to read it in coUege, but it seemed "foggy and unintelligi- ble," and was put aside for " a long time." He took it up later with this result : — "For a whole half year I was buried under his ' Aids to Reflection,' and trying vainly to look up through. I was quite sure that I saw a star glimmer, but I could not quite see the stars. My habit was only landscape before ; but now I saw THE THEOLOGICAL SITUATION 47 enough to convince me of a whole other world somewhere overhead, a range of realities in higher tier, that I must climb after, and, if possible, ap- prehend." This book stood by him to the end, and in old age he confessed greater indebtedness to it than to any other book save the Bible. We have only to quote one passage, taken almost at random, to show what a fountain of light was unsealed to him in this volume. It was an epoch-makiug book, but BushneU was one of the first to turn its Ught upon the theology of New England.^ " Too soon did the Doctors of the Church for- get that the heart, the moral nature, was the be- ginning and the end ; and that truth, knowledge, and insight were comprehended in its expansion. This was the true and first apostasy, — when in council and synod the Divine Humanities of the Gospel gave way to speculative Systems, and Re- ligion became a Science of Shadows imder the name of Theology, or at best a bare Skeleton of Truth, without life or interest, alike inaccessible and unintelligible to the majority of Christians. For these, therefore, there remained only rites and ceremonies and spectacles, shows and semblances. Thus among the learned the Substance of things ^ It 'would be interesting to ascertain, were it possible, if the lines on the original title-page, 1825, struck fire on a natore that was all ready to be set aflame : — " This xuakeB, that whatBOever here hefalla. You In the region of yourself remain, Neighboring on Heaven : anil that no foreign land." 48 HORACE BUSHNELL hoped for passed off into Notions; and for the unlearned the Surfaces of things became Sub- stance. The Christian world was for centuries divided into the Many that did not think at all, and the Few who did nothing but think, — both alike unreflecting, the one from defect of the act, the other from the absence of an object." CHAPTEE IV MINISTRY FROM 1833 TO 1846 " It is the tendency of some theorists at present to pnt Jesns and his life into the background ; to imagine that we can have a religion which will contlnnonsly move the world of men with- out a human master, whose life not only kindles human emotion round human life, but also fills the aspirations of our soul with the belief that they haye been accomplished by one of ouzselves, in humanity. There are those who think that the vast con- ception of the Father is enough for life without the conception of a human life in which all that the Father conceived for man was realized on earth to claim our love. I do not believe it. Were it so, God himself would have thought so. But He did not. When man was educated by God to the point where he could see greater truths, God gave the world Jesns of Nazareth, the Son of Man, that we might know what love was in human- ity; and might love Him for that love, from which neither death nor life shall part us. Thus aU that men feel for divinity in God the Father was, in the religions life, doubled by all that men feel for humanity. Take Jesus, then, to your heart. Love of him is necessary for our religion, if it is to have a full power of redemption among men. It is needed to give our causes move- ment, our ideas personality, our life tenderness, our human soul its full expansion in love over all the children of God." — SrOF- FOBD A. Bbooke, The Goapd of Joy, p. 95. CHAPTER IV MINISTKT FROM 1833 TO 1845 It was in December, 1833, that Bushnell took possession of a house which had been built during the summer from his own plans. It is described as "a simple, square, two-story building, with small green yard, graced by a noble oak in the rear." In selecting the lot, he had provided for two things, — a garden, and an open view of the cotmtiy ending in distant hills. Each was a neces- sity to him, — the manifold life of growing things, and a distant horizon. Thrifty habits and a prac- tical talent that rose almost to genius so swelled his moderate stipend that it furnished the means for a life of comfort and refinement. From be- ginning to end he avoided debt, as in itseK poor economy and bad morality; he would have re-w sented the imputation of it more quickly than that of heresy. There was an ethical cleanness in the man in all things that played back and forth between his life and his thought, lending reality to each. We have but scant records of the first four or five years of his ministry. His first published sermon was under the title, "The Crisis of the Church." The manuscript still exists, labeled 52 HORACE BUSHNELL "firstborn child," intimating tliat others might follow. The occasion of the sermon was the mob- bing of Garrison in the streets of Boston. Its chief thought was that Protestantism in religion produces republicanism in government ; that the principal dangers to the coimtry were " slavery, infidelity, Eomamsm, and the current of our politi- cal tendencies." He clearly saw the inflammable nature of slavery, and the probability that it might at " any hour explode the foundations of the Be- public." The cast of the sermon is large, and, if mistaken in some respects, it measured with great accuracy the political dangers. It was not an easy subject on which to preach at that time. In many pulpits it was tabooed; churches were divided, and the intolerance of the parties toward each other was intense. BushneU was quite ready for criticism, but he escaped it by a high flight among the principles of his subject. During this period he began to produce those sermons which are among the clearest signs of his greatness both as a preacher and a theologian. In the first year of his ministry he wrote a sermon on " Duty not Measured by our own Ability" that would have sustained his reputation twenty years later. The subject was a firebrand in the pulpits about him, and it is easy to imagine how the congregation anxiously settled themselves in their pews and waited to hear on which side of the general con- troversy the young pastor would put himself in his discussion of the " important principle, — that MINISTRY FROM 1833 TO 1845 53 men are often, and properly, put under obligation to do that for which they have, in themselves, no present abihty." But neither side heard what it ex- pected. Old School and New School were ignored, or gently set aside to make room for a discussion that had nothing to do with their differences except to supersede or rather to absorb them in a more comprehensive Ariew of the subject. Nothing was said of natural ability, or moral ability, or gracious ability, except that "they raise a false issue which can never be settled." To thus dismiss a controversy which had raged since Edwards, and was now embodied in the neighboring divinity schools, would have been regarded as a jest if his treatment of it had not been so serious. Instead of sinking himself and his hearers in " the abys- mal depths of theology," he carried them into the world of human life and Christian experi- ence, where all was so much a matter of fact that there was small room for question. Arminius and Edwards, Taylor and Tyler, would have listened without dissent, — bating a phrase or two, — and for the time would have forgotten their differ- ences; or possibly, as often happens with con- testants when a greater truth is forced upon them, they might have said, " "We always thought so." For, in truth, BushneU thus early was "passing into the vein of comprehensiveness," of which he afterward spoke, — a phrase that defines better than any other the method and spirit of the man. His own words in a sermon preached on the 54 HORACE BUSHNELL twentieth aimiversary of his ordination describe the theological situation and his relation to it : — " I was just then passing into the vein of com- prehensiveness, questioning whether all parties were not in reality standing for some one side or article of the truth ; prepared in that manner to be at once independent of your two parties and the more cordial to both, that I was beginning to hold, under a different resolution of the subjects, all that both parties were contending for. My position among you kept me always in living con- tact with the opposite poles to be comprehended, and assisted me, by an external pressure, in real- izing more and more distinctly what I was faintly conceiving or trying to elaborate within; tiU, finally, my question became a truth experimen- tally proved, and I rested in the conviction that the comprehensive method is, in general, a pos- sible, and, so far, the only Christian method of adjusting theologic differences. . . . " Accordingly, the effect of my preaching never was to overthrow one school and set up the other ; neither was it to find a position of neutrality mid- way between them ; but, as far as theology is con- cerned, it was to comprehend, if possible, the truth contended for in both ; in which I had, of course, abundant practice in the subtleties of speculative language, but had the Scriptures always with me, bolting out their free, incautious oppositions, re- gardless of all subtleties." He was unlike most preachers who represent MINISTRY FROM 1833 TO 1845 53 transitions. He did not begin on the level of those about him, but started out with a habit of thought and a set of principles which separated him from his brethren even more than he knew. He could no more be classed with them than " Aids to Keflection " could be classed with Dwight's " Theology." There were no breaks in his ministry, as in the case of Newman and Chan- ning and Robertson ; his revolt came prior to his settlement, and was so thorough both on the destructive and constructive side that he began his career without need of any radical change either in theology or method. His first volume — " Sermons for the New Life " — covers a quarter of a century, but so far as style, thought, and doctrine go, it would be difficidt to assign a date to any one of them. That on " Living to God in Small Things " was preached in the fifth year of his ministry, and it might have been preached in the last, for he produced none more mature and effective. That on " Every Man's Life a Plan of God " — an early sermon — made an impression as deep and wide as any preached in the country, with two or three exceptions. Not many years ago the New York " Tribtme " spoke of this sermon as one of the three greatest ever preached, and named as the other two Canon Mozley's on the " Reversal of Human Judgments " and Bishop Phillips Brooks' "Gold and the Calf." With- out containing a controversial word, it swept away the dismal thoughts engendered by a perverted 56 HORACE BUSHNELL doctrine of decrees, and brought Grod down into the lives of men in such a way as to make them feel that instead of being the objects of sovereign election, they were co-workers with God in his eternal plans. It had all of Old School and New School that was of value, but without anything to justify either as they then existed. It was in 1835 — only two years after his set- tlement — that he began that series of papers which involved him in question and suspicion. The first was an article in the " Christian Spec- tator" on "Revivals of Religion," which was incorporated eleven years later into " Christian Nurture," — a book which had its genesis and its raison d'etre in this essay. Fuller mention of it will be made in the next chapter. In 1837 he began to be taught in the school of domestic sor- row. An infant daughter died, and the severe illness of an older child kept him long in the region of suffering and death. These experi- ences, and heavier ones that came later, took fuU possession of him, but they bore fruit in his thought, and formed the material out of which he constructed what might seem to be the mere product of speculation. All his greater conten- tions had for their basis some personal experience. In the spring of 1839 a trouble of the throat, abeady felt, began to show itself more decidedly, and from that time on his life was overshadowed by disease. It was, however, long before he could be called an invalid, and still longer before he MINISTRY FROM 1833 TO 1845 57 relaxed in his work, but the fatal mark was on him. He spent July in Saratoga, and with bene- fit, if we may judge by his work in September. He had been engaged to deKver an address in Andover, but a mistake of a week in the date so shortened his time for preparation that he had but one day for it. He wrote through one day, took the stage at sundown, rode all night to Worcester, and the next day to Andover, and gave his address in the afternoon. It was not only an achievement in physical vigor, but a turning-point in his career as a theologian. The hastily prepared address had been a subject of thought since college days, and contained the germ which was afterward fully de- veloped in his theory of language. In discussing the use of figures and methods of interpretation and their application to Biblical statements bear- ing on the Trinity, he entered the world of sus- picion and accusation from which he never wholly emerged. He knew that he was taking the first step, and that others must follow. It induced a state of mind which, coupled with impaired health, is best indicated by a letter to his wife written a few days later : — "I cannot but feel a degree of anxiety about myself in regard to my future health, which is constantly acting on my love to my family. This disease hangs about me, and I am afraid is get- ting a deeper hold of me. Not that I seem to have been specially injured by my late task in the Andover matter, for I was borne through it quite 58 HORACE BUSHNELL above my expectations ; but the ndscMef clings to me, and will not let me go. In the hasty scratch I sent you in the turmoil of the anniversary, I told you generally how I succeeded. ... I said some things very cautiously in regard to the Trinity ■which, perhaps, wUl make a little breeze. If so, I shall not feel much upset. I have been think- ing lately that I must write and publish the whole truth on these subjects as God has permitted me to see it. I have withheld tiU my views are weU matured ; and to withhold longer, I fear, is a want of that moral courage which animated Luther and every other man who has been a true soldier of Christ. Then, thinking of such men lately, I have often had self-reproaches which were very unpleasant. Has my dear wife any of Luther's spirit ? Will she enter into the hazards and reproaches, and perhaps privations, which lie in this encounter for the truth? Strange, you will say, that I should be talking, in the same let- ter, of doing more for my family and of endanger- ing all their worldly comforts. But I am under just these contending impulses. However, in what way shall I do more for my family than to con- nect their history with the truth of Christ ? How more, for example, for our dear boy than to give him the name and example of a father who left him his fortunes, rough and hard as they were, in the field of truth ? But will not God take care of us ? These are thoughts which have been urging me for the last few months, or since the shock that MINISTRY FROM 1833 TO 1845 59 has befallen my health. And I have sometimes felt afraid that I should be obliged to leave the world before my work was done. Shall we go forward ? " The criticism that began to be heard outside showed itself at last in his parish, though it never reached the point of accusation. A letter which time has spared reveals a feature of the chvirches on their theological side which still survives, though in lessening degree. It was an arraignment by a parishioner of his pastor for his position on pro- found questions of theology, such as regeneration and original sin, which he debated as a prof essional, and with the emphasis of having held his own views for thirty years. It did not occur to him, nor ap- parently to any one else at that time, to inquire if the views of his pastor might not be true ; his only concern was lest he had departed from the accepted standards of belief. Such a state of mind, whenever it prevails, shows a decadence of faith and a readi- ness to stone the prophets. Bushnell answered the letter in a patient spirit, and with explanation except on the point of total depravity, a question on which he would not prematurely cast away the pearls he had been gathering. The arraignment came to no issue in the church. Meanwhile he went on his way not much troubled and wholly unmoved by criticism, from whatever source it came, bearing witness to the truth as he saw it. In 1840 he preached a notable sermon on " American Politics," in which he protested against eO HORACE BUSHNELL giving the suffrage to women on the ground that it would destroy the peace and unity of domestic life, — "the grand sacrament of creation." In the discussion of this subject, as of all others, he struck straight for the natural principle underlying it, and found it in the family. He spoke also of the spoils system in a way that classes him with the civil service reformers of to-day. In the same year he was asked to become the president of Middlebury College, in Vermont. The Coleridgian atmosphere of the institution was con- genial to him, but after a journey thither and mature deliberation, he declined the invitation. The degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon him about this time by Wesleyan University. He cared little for the honor, but accepted it rather than seem to reject the courtesy of a young and neighboring college. He afterward received the same degree from Harvard, and that of Doctor of Laws from Yale. The years from this time to 1845 were crowded with various forms of work. He seemed to celebrate the full development of his powers by reaching out in all directions for com- mensurate fields. His biographer says that " there were years all through his life when a high tide seemed to set into every mental inlet." It could at no time be said of him that he neglected his parish, but his conception of it was not territorial. If he preached politics, his sermons became ethical treatises on the nature and function of government. He held to the Puritan conception of the State as MINISTRY FROM 1833 TO 1845 61 moral, and did not hesitate to use his pulpit to en- force this conception, and to denounce any depar- ture from it. The anti-slavery movement was so distinctly Christian that Bushnell would not keep it out of his pulpit, even if his sermons were re- garded and used as pampaign documents, as hap- pened with a Fast Day discourse preached in 1844, during the presidential campaign when Henry Clay was the candidate. Bushnell denounced the Missouri Compromise, of which Clay was the au- thor, as " bringing moral desolation on the fairest portion of the globe." When criticised, he claimed that he was not assailing Mr. Clay as a candidate, but as the leader in " a national sin." In 1842 we find him going about on lecturing tours, though he was rather too serious and weighty a speaker to win popidar applause. In August he delivered a Commencement address at Hudson, Ohio, before Western Eeserve College, the Yale of the West, on the " Stability of Change." In this year a great sorrow befell him in the death of his only son, a child of four years and of great promise. His disappointment and grief were keen, but the event drove him farther into the world of the spirit, and served to fit him for receiving those deeper revelations of Christian life which are seen in his later work. It also gave reality to his thoughts of the heavenly world. " Have not I a harper there ? " he said in an evening sermon soon after his loss. In 1843 he became interested in the Protestant 62 HORACE BUSHNELL League, which later was merged in the Christian AUiance, a movement antagonistic to the Church of Kome. During the next three years he devoted much time and strength to this object, wasting his forces on questions which time and Providence are settling in ways far different from those he contemplated. But his interest was a Puritan in- heritance, and the questions were such as easily en- listed one whose religion and patriotism were almost interchangeable terms. Perhaps nothing that came from his pen is to be more lightly passed over than his letter to the Pope, written while in London in 1846. Fortunately for Bushnell and his future career, the Christian Alliance merged itself in the Evangelical Alliance, which, in lowering its name, logically dropped into a doctrinal narrowness that led him to give it up. When the new society began its campaign for church unity on the basis of an exclusive doctrinal creed, he withdrew, leaving behind him a protest full of wise words, equally appropriate to later proposals for union on ecclesiastical terms proceeding from one party. " Unity in itself, especially unity conditioned upon a common catechism, is not an object. Neither is it a thing to be compassed by any direct effort. It is an incident, not a principle, or a good by itself. It has its value in the valuable activities it unites, and the conjoining of beneficent powers. The more we seek it, the less we have it. Besides, most of what we call division in the Church of God is only distribution. The distribution of the MINISTRY FROM 1833 TO 1845 63 church, like that of human society, is one of the great problems of divine wisdom ; and the more we study it, observing how the personal tastes, wants, and capacities of men in all ages and climes are provided for, and how the parts are made to act as stimulants to each other, the less disposed shall we be to think that the work of distribu- tion is done badly. It is not the same thing with Christian unity, either to be huddled into a small inclosure, or to show the world how small a plat of ground we can all stand on. Unity is a grace broad as the universe, embracing in its ample bosom aU right minds that live, and outreaching the nar- row contents of all words and dogmas." ^ In 1843 Bushnell gave an address before the Alumni of Yale College on " The Growth of Law," to which reference will be made farther on. It is named here in order to call attention to the criti- cism which increasingly followed him whenever he spoke. An anonymous pamphlet by " Catholicus " discovered in the address " Kationalistic, Soci- nian, and infidel tendencies." Such attacks were not lost, and served as fuel for the fires soon to be kindled. " The Puritan " (Orthodox) indorsed the pamphlet, and " The Christian Register " (Unita- rian) stretched out its hand for possible fellowship. In the same year he attended the Bunker HUl cele- bration, walking arm in arm with George Eipley of Brook Farm, and heard Webster, whom he always admired, deliver one of his famous orations. More * New JEnglander, January, 1847. 64 HORACE BUSHNELL important was an evening spent with Rev. Theo- dore Parker, when they "went over the whole ground of theology together." It is safe to say that neither appealed to the " standards." Five publications, the care of his pulpit, and the excite- ment of a presidential campaign rendered the year 1844 a hard one, and paved the way for a thor- ough breakdown in health the following year. His more than ordinary strength yielded under great and exhausting labors, and in February he was prostrated by a fever which left him with weak- ened lungs. His salary was increased by his sym- pathetic parish, and in April he went to North Carolina, where rest and the "warmer sun and sweeter clitnate " restored him in a measure, but not sufficiently for his duties. A year in Europe was determined on, and he sailed by the ship Vic- toria in July, 1845. CHAPTER V CHRISTIAN NURTUEE " It is significant of every great new birth in the world that it turns its face toward childhood, and looks into that image for the profoundest realization of its hopes and dreams. In the at- titude of men toward childhood we may discover the near or far realization of that supreme hope and confidence with which the great head of the human family saw, in the vision of a child, the new heaven and the new earth. It was when his disciples were reasoning among themselves which of them should he the great- est, that Jesus took a child, and set him by him, and said unto them, ' Whosoever shall receive this child in my name receiveth me.' The reception of the Christ by men, from that day to this, has been marked by sncoessive throes of humanity, and in each great movement there has been a new apprehension of childhood, a new recognition of the meaning involved in the preg- nant words of the Saviour." — ^Hokace B. Scuddee, Childhood in Idterature and Art, p. 102, "The theological substratum of Piiritan morality denied to childhood any freedom, and kept the life of man in waiting upon the conscious turning of the Soul to God. Hence childhood was a time of probation and suspense. It was wrong, to begin with, and was repressed in its nature until maturity should bring an active and conscious allegiance to God. Hence, also, parental anxiety was forever earnestly seeking to anticipate the maturity of age, and to secure for childhood that reasonable intellectual belief which it held to be essential to salvation ; there followed often a replacement of free childhood by an abnormal develop- ment. In any event, the tendency of the system was to ignore childhood, to get rid of it as quickly aa possible, and to make the State contain only self-conscious, determined citizens of the kingdom of heaven. There was, unwittingly, a reversal of the divine message, and it was said in efFeot to children, Except ye become as grown men and be converted, ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven." — Ibid., p. 128. CHAPTER V CHRISTIAN NURTUBE We pass over the journey to Europe and other incidents of Bushnell's Kfe in order to speak con- secutively of the theological treatises which came one after another from his busy pen. The most important of all, "Christian Nurture," was pub- lished in 1846. It had been, however, ten years in preparation, having had its genesis in an article on " Eevivals of Eeligion," published in 1836 in the " Christian Spectator." Its specific aim was to es- tablish the proposition, " That the child is to grow up a Christian, and never know himself as being otherwise." A very simple statement, but it shook New England theology to its foundations. The phrase, by its very form, challenged the extreme individualism into which the churches had lapsed, and recalled them to those organic relations be- tween parents and children which are recognized in the historic churches, and which also had been recognized to a certain extent by the churches of New England before Edwards. As has hap- pened before in theological controversy, the heresy with which Bushnell was charged in connection with this subject was in fact a return to an older orthodoxy. It is also a fact that those who were 68 HORACE BUSHNELL loudest in making the charge regarded themselves as upholders of this older orthodoxy. They iden- tified BushneU with the " New Light " party, but his book in the main fell within the lines of the older school to which the critics supposed that they belonged. The critics were deceived by the modern tone in which BushneU discussed the ancient thesis, and by the free use made of nature and social laws and relations. In this respect they were jus- tified in their criticism. BushneU was working in a world of which they had little knowledge and great suspicion. The fact that his thesis coincided with an older orthodoxy was a matter of chance ; in reaUty it sprang out of the heart of nature. Christian experience had become non-natural. BushneU, without excluding the agency of divine grace, brought it within the play of the natural re- lations of the family. It was here that he always took his first look at any subject, — the nature of the matter in hand, — not waiting to ask what is the accepted view. It is this first-hand investigar tion that lends to aU his work the charm of nature itself. It is also at times an occasion of suspicion, for the direct study of nature is the most difficult work men ever undertake. Nature is so fuU of Ught that it dazzles and of shadows that it hides ; it is so near that its proportions cannot easily be measured; it is elusive and runs quickly into mystery ; it is so one with us that to see it is hke the eye trying to see itself ; its processes are long CHRISTIAN NURTURE 69 and its phases are many ; it is the part of an im- measurable whole. BushneU did not always escape these snares, yet few writers have looked on nature with a more single eye and more careful reflec- tion. It is not wholly unfortunate that in the study of Christian nurture he came to it without a thor- ough knowledge of its place in the history of the church. Whatever technical knowledge of it he had was pushed aside by his own necessary mental habit, and by the circumstances in which he found himself as a pastor. He was confronted by a sit- uation, and at first did not trouble himself about the past. Hence, it was with half surprise that he foimd himself unfolding a more ancient or- thodoxy. The fact became convenient as a de- fense against criticism, but it had slight weight in the elaboration of his thesis. The book was a crit- icism of revivalism, and incidentally of the pre- valent theology which gave rise to it. Bushnell seldom attacked this theology as a whole, but only in detail and as it came in his way. He wrote as a pastor in conflict with a system which hindered him in his work. He could not correlate the teach- ing of his pulpit with the prevailing method of propagating the life of the church. The "im- provements " in theology had subordinated the " older orthodoxy " of the subject to a view of the wiU which led to those special features of revivals that BushneU most disliked. The wiU had not only been declared free, but was made to cover 70 HORACE BUSHNELL nearly the whole matter of becoming a Chris- tian.^ The revival was an active epitome of the newer doctrine of the wiU. The emphasis laid upon it and the intense individualism it developed, while it favored strength of character, tended to obscure that field where character has its roots and is mainly determined ; namely, the child. The peo- ple of New England have never been wanting in logic. It was this mental honesty in conforming the revival to the theology that at last weakened each, but the revival was the first to lose ground. The question may arise why " the more ancient orthodoxy " with which Bushnell found himself in partial accord did not conflict with the practical treatment of children in the same way as did the orthodoxy of his own day. The Puritan move- ment, in its early days, was chiefly a protest against corruptions. The place of children in the historic church was not in itself an offense in the eye of the Puritan, and it was protected by a doc- trine of the covenants which brought the Abra- hamic and Jewish institutions that pertained to ^ Mrs. Stowe, who ought to be classed as both an apologist and a critic of the New England theology, for few have nnderstood and none have described it so well, in Oldtown Folks (vol. ii. p. 48, and many succeeding pages) has put this point in its best light : " The keynote of Mr. Avery's mind was ' the free agency of man.' Free agency was with liim the universal solvent, the philosopher's stone in theology ; every line in his sermons said to every human being, ' You are free, and you are able.' And the great object was to intensify to its highest point, in every human being, the sense of individual, personal responsibility." CHRISTIAN NURTURE 71 them over into the Christian Church, — a relation that was sustained by ineradicable common sense. The covenants may have been made in Holland, as Professor Park said, but the covenant that em- braces Abraham and his seed was true before the dikes of Holland were bmlt. Baptism made the child a member of the church, and Christian train- ing was expected to fulfill and perfect the relation so far as it could under the limitations of the theology.^ These were stringent and perplexing enough; ' The relation of baptized children to the chnrch has never been clearly defined by the Congregational churches of New England. The system, as embracing a theology and an ecclesi- astical order, is at war with itself. The Cambridge Platform in 1648, under the still fresh reaction from the state church, al- lowed none to be members of the Church but such as gave evi- dence of spiritually renewed character. But as baptism was a requisite to citizenship in most of the colonies, it was found that the State was limiting its citizens beyond the bounds of safety. Hence the Synod of 1662 created the Salf-way Covenant, which provided for the baptism of the children of those who held only a speculative faith ; it was purely a measure of State. This device induced a reaction and a debate which may be traced throughout the pages of Cotton Mather's Magnolia. It reveals the fact that children were regarded as sustaining some organic relation to the church by virtue of baptism. Anabaptism also had begun to cast its shadow on the churches, inducing the ne- cessity of making a contrast with it as to the relation of children to the church. The confusion of the subject was plainly recog- nized by Hopkins, who took what might be called a high church view of baptism, as Bushnell shows in his Argument far Christian Nurture, pp. 70, 71, a book now out of print. But the confusion lingers still, and will linger until the theory of the nature and growth of the church taught by this treatise is accepted. It is needless to say that it will be a return to the historic view and practice. 72 HORACE BUSHNELL but as in the Ptolemaic astronomy an epicycle was added whenever a difficulty was encountered, so provisions were created out of the assumed purposes of God for relieving children from the full stress of absolute and unconditional election. Moreover, magical conceptions of the ordinance lingered long and overbore logic. Consistent Cal- vinism allows no place in the church for children. Whether it be old or new, it breaks down over them, as Dr. Prentiss showed long ago.^ It can- not dispose of them in such a way as to preserve its consistency and command the assent of the human heart. As the heart makes the theolo- gian, so it makes and unmakes theologies. Any system must at last go under that gives color even to an inference of the non-election of infants. If it endeavors to escape its inhumanity, it sinks imder the weakness of its subterfuges. The later theology, by the very force of its logic, could not allow children to lie in the bosom of its church, as in the historical churches. Its inwrought indi- vidualism and the freedom which more and more it put into the will were carried into the domain of childhood. The revivalism known as the " Great Awakening " invaded the precincts of the church where the young reposed in the security of baptism and the parental pledge, and brought them forward as candidates for its process. In attacking revivalism, Bushnell stormed the weakest point of the theological citadel. It should not be ^ See page prefatory to next chapter. CHRISTIAN NURTURE 73 forgotten, however, that the moderate Calvinism, especially as taught at New Haven, in which the full freedom of the will was hrought to the front and made the chief factor in the first experiences of the Christian life, was the source of great reli- gious activity and usefulness. Upon the whole it was an advance, and almost a reform. But the emphasis it laid upon the will, taken in connec- tion with other parts of the system, necessarily favored the revival, and, incidentally, its excesses. The groimd of BushneU's contention lay first in the system itseH, then in the form it had assumed, and lastly in the methods to which it gave rise. More than he himself was aware of, he departed from the Calvinistic standards, and pur- sued his way in a region where the heart and com- mon sense prescribed both path and bounds. The fact which he first encountered ia his survey of the current revival was that the experience of con- version presupposed adult years ; and even the adult was called to pass through waters too deep for him. He must begin, not with a sense of per- sonal sin, but of a lost condition through original sin in Adam ; he must feel a guUt not first his own, but of the race ; he is not a sinful child of the Father, but a child of wrath lying under the righteous condemnation of God ; he is totally de- praved, and already doomed to everlasting punish- ment. The whole matter was complicated by a doctrine of sovereign decrees, election and repro- bation, ability or inability to repent, — often a ter- 74 HORACE BUSHNELL ritorial distinction, held here and denied there; the inefficacy, or, as Hopkins and Emmons de- clared, the wickedness of prayer by the imregen- erate ; different kinds- of grace and of love ; the use or uselessness of means, and the order of the human and the divine activity in the process of conversion. Child and adult alike were, in one way or another, involved in this network of doc- trine. Much of it was necessarily waived in the actual revival ; some regard was paid to the per- sonal equation ; common sense could not be wholly expelled from people who were fuU of it. But sel- dom has an ideal been more fully carried out, and never was a pulpit truer to itself. The result was that the people were saturated with the doctrines as they happened to be held at the time and in the region. Under such conceptions of religion the child had little place. Nature was fairly driven off from the field of its life, and it was made the battle-ground where ponderous doctrines marched up and down, trampling under foot its native growths, and using its eternal destiny as a factor in working out the glory of God. The child filled a passive part in the system ; the adult was both passive and active. His experience was expected to tally with the sys- tem and run the round of its several members in a fixed order. First came the question of the pos- sibility of non-election, by which aU efforts were left to turn on chance. Then came the question of ability under a doctrine of total depravity, start- CHRISTIAN NURTURE 75 ing the puzzle of, " You can and you can't ; " then the horrible question of the possibility of having grieved away the Holy Spirit, for two centuries the nightmare of the piety of New England ; then the beclouded subtilties of the relation of the atone- ment to personal character, — all chiefly forensic. StUl the experience was sharply individual. Each soul was isolated from every other, and almost from God, and left to wrestle alone for salvation. The chief feature of this phase of religious experience was its unnatuxalness. Great truths were involved in the system, and great results sprang out of them, but they were so defined and used that iihey almost lost the fe,atures of a gospel and wore the cast of a doom. It dealt with hu- man nature only as depraved, and hence took little account of its varying characteristics or special needs, but loaded it with burdens that did not belong to it, and then required it to throw them off by processes that were drawn out of metaphy- sical subtilties buttressed by random quotations from Scripture. Bushnell writes of it as follows : — "It is a religion that begins explosively, raises high frames, carries little or no expansion, and, after the campaign is over, subsides into a torpor. Considered as a distinct era, introduced by Ed- wards, and extended and caricatured by his con- temporaries, it has one great merit, and one great defect. The merit is that it displaced an era of dead formality, and brought in the demand of 76 HORACE BUSHNELL a truly supernatural experience. The defect is that it has cast a type of religious individualism, intense beyond any former example. It makes nothing of the family, and the church, and the organic powers God has constituted as vehicles of grace. It takes every man as if he had existed alone; presumes that he is unreconciled to God until he has undergone some sudden and explosive experience in adult years, or after the age of rea- son ; demands that experience, and only when it is reached, allows the subject to be an heir of life. Then, on the other side, or that of the Spirit of God, the very act or ictus by which the change is wrought is isolated or individualized, so as to stand in no connection with any other of God's means or causes, — an epiphany, in which God leaps from the stars, or some place above, to do a work apart from all system, or connection with his other works. Religion is thus a kind of tran- scendental matter, which belongs on the outside of life, and has no part in the laws by which life is organized, — a miraculous epidemic, a fireball shot from the moon, something holy, because it is from God, but so extraordinary, so out of place, that it cannot suffer any vital connection with the ties, and causes, and forms, and habits, which consti- tute the frame of our history. Hence the desul- tory, hard, violent, and often extravagant or erratic character it manifests. Hence, in part, the dreary years of decay and darkness that interspace our months of excitement and victory." (Christian Nurture, p. 187.) CHRISTIAN NURTURE 77 The full purpose of the treatise was to discuss the divine constitution of the family as the means of securing Christian character. It maintained that the unit of the church as well as of society is the family, and that in both it is organic ; that character can be transmitted, and thus Christianity can be organized into the race and the trend of nature be made to set in that direction. The pre- sumption should be that children may be trained into piety, and that it is not necessary that con- Tersion should be awaited and secured under a system of revivalism that is without order as to time and cause. The book consists of two parts, — " The Doc- trine" and "The Mode." The first defines the nature of Christian nurture ; the second refers to practical methods of securing it. He introduces his thesis and debates it as follows : -^ " That the child is to grow up a Christian, and never know himself as being otherwise. " In other words, the aim, effort, and expectation shoidd be, not, as is commonly assumed, that the child is to grow up in sin, to be converted after he comes to a mature age ; but that he is to open on the world as one that is spiritually renewed, not re- membering the time when he went through a tech- nical experience, but seeming rather to have loved what is good from his earliest years " (p. 10). After asserting the possibility of " seeds of holy principle " and its signs ia children, and of possible fault and mistake in parents, he says : — 78 HORACE BUSHNELL " You must not assume that we, in this age, are the best Christians that have ever lived, or most likely to produce all the fruits of piety. . . . We have some good points, in which we compare favor- ably with other Christians, and Christians of other times, but our style of piety is sadly deficient, in many respects, and that to such a degree that we have little cause for self-congratulation. With all our activity and boldness of movement, there is a certain hardness and rudeness, a want of sensibility to things that do not lie in action, which cannot be too much deplored, or too soon rectified. We hold a piety of conquest rather than of love, — a kind of public piety, that is strenuous and fiery on great occasions, but wants the beauty of holi- ness, wants constancy, singleness of aim, loveli- ness, purity, richness, blamelessness, and — if I may add another term not so immediately religious, but one that carries, by association, a thousand reli- gious qualities — wants domesticity of character ; wants them, I mean, not as compared with the per- fect standard of Christ, but as compared with other examples of piety that have been given in former times, and others that are given now. " For some reason, we do not make a Christian atmosphere about us, — do not produce the convic- tion that we are living unto God " (pp. 11-14). " This is the very idea of Christian education, that it begins with nurture or cultivation. And the intention is that the Christian life and spirit of the parents, which are in and by the Spirit of God, CHRISTIAN NURTURE 79 shall flow into the mind of the child, to blend with his incipient and half-formed exercises ; that they shall thus beget their own good within him, — their thoughts, opinions, faith, and love, which are to become a little more, and yet a little more, his own separate exercise, but still the same in char- acter. The contrary assumption, that virtue must be the product of separate and absolutely inde- pendent choice, is pure assumption. As regards the measure of personal merit and demerit, it is doubtless true that every subject of God is to be responsible only for what is his own. But virtue still is rather a. Mate of being than an act or series of acts ; and if we look at the causes which in- duce or prepare such a state, the will of the per- son himself may have a part among these causes more or less important, and it works no absurdity to suppose that one may be even prepared to such a state, by causes prior to his own will ; so that, when he sets o£E to act for himself, his struggle and duty may be rather to sustain and perfect the state begun, than to produce a new one. Certain it is that we are never, at any age, so independent as to be wholly out of the reach of organic laws which affect our character. " All society is organic, — the church, the state, the school, the family ; and there is a spirit in each of these organisms, peculiar to itself, and more or less hostile, more or less favorable to religious character, and to some extent, at least, sovereign over the individual man. . . . The child is only 80 HORACE BUSHNELL more within the power of organic laws than we all are. We possess only a mixed individuality all our life long. A pure, separate, individual man, living wJiolly within, and from himself, is a mere fiction. I need not say that this view of an organic con- nection of character subsisting between parent and child lays a basis for notions of Christian education, far different from those which now pre- vail, under the cover of a merely fictitious and mischievous individualism " (p. 30). " Something has undoubtedly been gained to mod- ern theology, as a human science, by fixing the atten- tion strongly upon the individual man, as a moral agent, immediately related to God, and responsible only for his own actions ; at the same time there was a truth, an important truth, underlying the old doctrine of federal headship and original or im- puted sin, though strangely misconceived, which we seem, in our one-sided speculations, to have quite lost sight of. And how can we ever attain to any right conception of organic duties, until we dis- cover the reality of organic powers and relations ? And how can we hope to set ourselves in harmony with the Scriptures, in regard to family nurture, or household baptism, or any other kindred sub- ject, while our theories exclude, or overlook, pre- cisely that which is the base of their teachings and appointments?" (p. 39). His criticism of revivals, though close and searching, stiU has charity and breadth, for which we must refer the reader to pages 59 and onward. CHRISTIAN NURTURE 81 In chapter third, under a significant title, — " The Ostrich Nurture," — the prevailing methods of religious education are discussed, and especially the claim that children should be left to grow up in a spontaneous way, and to " generate their own principles." He also criticises an over-use of " free moral agency, by which the distinction be- tween manhood and childhood is slurred over," and parents are led to say, " Must not our children answer for themselves ? " He protests also against "notions of conversion that are mechanical," and against drilling children " into all the constraints, separated from all the hopes and liberties of religion," thus making " their nurture a nurture of despair," and a source of "fixed aversion to religion." He again protests against bringing up children in expectation of revival seasons, and on the other hand against " a mere ethical nurture " that neglects the God-ward side. This strenuous chapter closes trith a tender vindication of the claim that as Christ is the Saviour of children, they have an inherent right to a place in his church, which is to give character to their nurture. In the fourth chapter — perhaps the weightiest — the " organic unity " of the family is discussed. He repudiates again the excessive individualism of the day: — " The state, the church, the family, have ceased to be regarded as such, according to their proper idea, and become mere collections of units. A national life, a church life, a family life, is no 82 HORACE BUSHNELL longer conceived, or perhaps conceivable, by many. Instead of being wrought in together and pene- trated, to some extent, by historic laws and forces common to all the members, we only seem to lie as seeds piled together, without any terms of con- nection, save the accident of proximity, or the fact that we all belong to the heap. And thus the three great forms of organic existence, which God has appointed for the race, are in fact lost out of mental recognition" (p. 91). He claims for the family a power that is more than influence, springing from " organic causes," which act unconsciously prior "to the age of rational choice," yet formatively on character. He defends his position by a series of arguments which now need no defense, but deserve attention on account of their practical value. In these pages he anticipates much that is being said on heredity as an element in evolution, and on sub- consciousness as treated by the new psychology. The questions of original sin and federal headship are inevitably involved, and are accepted as con- taining truths, but rather on natural than on theological grounds.^ But he puts these doctrines that spring out of ^ In the nnmerons criticisms which followed this treatise, none is ahler and moie generous than that of Professor C. Hodge, in the Princeton Beview, 1847. He agrees, with hut slight dissent, in Bnshnell's treatment of the organic nature of the church and the practical inferences drawn from it, but disagrees with his views of conversion as leaning towards mere naturalism. They were both farther apart and nearer than either knew ; the next half century might have brought them to see eye to eye. CHRISTIAN NURTURE 83 " organic unity " to a new use, making them tribu- tary to grace as well as to evil. " That an engiue of so great power should be passed by, when every other law and object in the universe is appropriated and wielded as an in- strument of grace, and that in a movement for the redemption of the race, is inconceivable. The conclusion thus reached does not carry us, indeed, to the certain inference that the organic unity of the family will avail to set forth every child of Christian parents in a Christian life. But if we consider the tremendous power it has, as an instru- ment of evil, how far short of such an opinion does it leave us, when computing the reach of its power as an instrument of grace?" (p. 111). After taJdng pains to avoid what he deems the superstition of baptismal regeneration, he finds the reason for the ceremony in the " organic unity " of the parents with the child, who "is taken to be regenerate, presumptively on the ground of his known connection with the parents' character, and the divine or church life, which is the life of that character." This undoubtedly is the interpretation that reason and charity require us to put on the rite as it exists in the historical churches. Bush- nell cherished an invincible dislike to the Church of Eome, and it is a sign of his mental honesty that he could come so near to one of its central features without stronger aversion. In the last chapter of the first part he brings his plea for Christian nurture to a conclusion by 84 HORACE BUSHNELL striving to show that the church is to possess the world through "the out-populating power of the C5hristian stock." The chapter is a characteristic mingUng of spirituality and naturalism, each run- ning into the other even as they coexisted in his thought. Wherever else he looked, he always had an eye open to nature. His argument is keen, comprehepsive, and well buttressed by Scripture, but there is an excess of a priori speculation, and a somewhat too easy dealing with questions about which little was known at that time and hardly more at present. But within certain limits his contention has weight, and there is no doubt that it has enough of unquestioned truth to render it of immense importance, both speculatively and practically. It is along such lines that thought now runs. In the second part, which pertains to mode of Christian nurture, the treatise loses its theological and disputative character, and wears a psychologi- cal cast. But these characteristics sink out of sight under its overwhelming practicalness. With some slight editing, it might again be made a hand- book on Christian training. When first published, it was needed to correct false methods of Christian nurture ; to-day, it is needed to supply a lack, and to stimulate thought in right directions. The first chapter of part second discusses the question, " When and where, at what point, and how early, does the office of a genuine nurture begin?" Little could be added to-day to the force of his CHRISTIAN NURTURE 85 discussion except stronger emphasis. Starting with "a kind of ante-natal nurture," he asserts that " the nurture of the soul and character is to begin just where the nurture of the body begins," and then makes the distinction, now so prominent in pedagogic studies, between " the age of impres- sions and the age of tuitional influences." He sharpens the distinction by connecting the former with " the win of the parent," and so proposes the way for a fuU examination of the reach and power of " early impressions ; " and concludes by saying that " more is done, or lost by neglect of doing, on a child's immortality in the first three years of his life than in all his years of discipline after- ward." The remaining chapters refer to " Parental Qualifications," " Family Government," " Holidays and Sundays," "Family Prayers," and kindred topics, with a mingled breadth, subtilty, strenu- ousness, common sense, and spirituality that put it at the head of all treatises of the kind. Now and then it may be slightly out of date in respect to scientific accuracy, but even here it is oftener prophetic than incorrect. The heavy belaboring of the revival system is no longer much needed, but the main body of the book is one of the richest treasures in religious pedagogics which this cen- tury can offer to the next. Whatever theology prevails in the future, this treatise represents a standing need of humanity, and its lessons are so grounded in eternal principles and imalterable facts that they will always be timely, while its 86 HORACE BUSHNELL form should make it a classic. In its theological significance it is a rejection of an individualistic theory of the church, and, incidentally, of its method of growth, and a return to the corporate theory of growth by nurture. We cannot better close this chapter than by quoting from a letter written to one of his children, as showing how his thought and the yearning love of his heart sustained each other. His treatise carried in it the life of his life : — " You have been religiously educated, and you are come now to an age when you must begin to be more responsible to yourself. Our prayer for you is, every day, that God. would impart his grace to you and draw you on to a full choice of himself, and perform the good work which we trust He has begun in you. This would complete our happiness in you. I would recommend to you now that you set before you, as a distinct object, the preparing yourself to make a profession of the Saviour. Make this a distinct object of thought and of prayer every day. And do not inquire so much what you are, whether truly a Christian in heart or not, as how you may come into the full Chris- tian spirit, to become unselfish, to have a distinct and abiding love to Christ. Unite yourself to Christ for life, and try to receive his beautiful and loving spirit. You will find much darkness in you, but Christ will give you light. Your sins win trouble you, but Christ will take away your sins and give you peace. Pray God, also, to give CHRISTIAN NURTURE 87 you Ms spirit, and do not doubt that liis spirit will help you through all difficulties. In all your duties and studies, endeavor to do them for God, and so as to please Him. Make this, too, your pleasure, for assuredly it will be the highest plea- sure. It may not so appear at first, but it will be so very soon. Nothing, you will see in a moment, can yield so sweet a pleasure as the love and pur- suit of excellence, especially that excellence which consists in a good and right heart before God. And you wiU be more likely to love this work and have success in it, if you set before you some fixed object, such as I have proposed. " We gave you to God in your childhood, and now it belongs to you to thank God for the good we have sought to do for you, and try to fulfill our kindness by assuming for yourself what we pro- mised for you." CHAPTER VI RECEPTION OF CHRISTIAN NURTURE " I do not see how we can rest content with any conception of the system of Providence which does not take in the case of yonng children. . . . And yet one searches in vain through many an elaborate treatise on hoth the temporal and spiritual goyem- ment of God for a single chapter — yea, a single page — in elu- cidation of this momentons subject. The children, that is, an inmiense majority of the human race, are virtually left out of account, as if they were not included in the divine plan. , . . Many of the theologians seem to be strangely unconscious that, if really immortal, the problem of their spiritual being, here and hereafter, must needs involve fundamental principles of the divine system. A theodicy that shall meet the claims of Chris- tian thought, and satisfy the cravings of the Christian heart, or charm to silence its doubts and fears, must vindicate the ways of Providence toward little children as well aa toward the full- grown men and women." — Pbofessob Geobge L. Pbentiss, D. D., "Infant Salvation and its Theological Bearings," Presby- terian Beview, July, 1883. CHAPTER VI EECEPTION OP CHEISTIAN NURTURE It is not strange that " Christian Nurture " met with a stout resistance. In its inmost meaning it supplanted a theory of church life which had been slowly elaborated by a process evidently one of improvement and attended with good results. Not to have resisted would have been a surrender of a self-witnessing spiritual life. The later New England theology, especially as elaborated by the New Haven divines, represented not merely a speculative system, but a moral force of unimpeach- able value. It stood for most of the good that the churches were doing at the time. Bushnell had no thought of displacing it as a whole, and even found a qualified place for revivalism. Neverthe- less, his contention went beyond aU such qualifi- cations, and called for a method of church growth and a theology quite unlike that about him. He virtually recurred to the historic churches, and broke with a provincial system which, in aiming to secure certain invaluable truths, had suffered them to grow into proportions so wide as to exclude even greater truths. From their own standpoint his critics were right, and he had no justification but such as was to be 92 HORACE BUSHNELL drawn from profounder views both of doctrine and method. But from another point of view, it is strange that a book so bathed in household love, a very cradle-song of Christian faith, should have become the occasion of a theological controversy of the proverbial bitterness. It is the redeeming feature of such controversies that time soon ex- tracts their sting, and frowns are exchanged for smiles. Some greater truth or wider generaliza- tion comes into the field, and the debate dies out. For a while dignity suffers some discomposure, but it is a merciful arrangement of Providence that in dialectic controversy ntunerous ways of escape are left open by which the defeated party can retreat with seU-respect and even with a show of victory. Few people in New England would now hesitate to say that it is wise to train children into the Chris- tian life very much as BushneU suggests ; and the greater part would wonder where the theological difficulties came in. The immediate occasion of the book was an article in the " New Englander " which provoked some dissent in the Ministerial Association of which Bushnell was a member, and he was invited to prepare a paper on the subject of Christian training. He brought before it two sermons, which not only provoked no dissent, but led to a request for publication. The manuscript was offered anonymously to the Massachusetts Sunday School Society, and was examined by the committee on publication, who individually approved, but hesi- RECEPTION OF CHRISTIAN NURTURE 93 tated over printing it, lest the novelty of its views might stir up controversy. After some revision and a delay of six months, it was published, and seemed about to awaken interest without alarm until a letter, having the sanction of the North Association of Hartford County-, appeared, charg- ing that the discourses were full of " dangerous tendencies." This charge without doubt origi- nated in the Theological Institute of Connecticut, an institution that had been organized in 1834, with the distinct purpose of controvertiug the doctrinal teaching of the Divinity School in New Haven. Its foimding reveals the intensity of feel- ing over the differences in opinion, and scarcely more; the differences themselves were so slight that they hardly admitted of definition. This conflict that raged for t\iirenty or more years be- tween these schools was a repetition of what has always been going on, — bitter debate in one age over questions that die out in the next. The uni- versality of the process seems to indicate a law that should temper our judgment of it ; it is, per- haps, the price paid for exact thought. BushneU from the first awoke suspicion; he struck an unfamiliar note, and the East Windsor brethren not only were quick to detect it, but to identify it with the New Haven School. No mis- take could have been greater. So far as theology was concerned, " Christian Nurture " was far enough from either; but if a comparison were made, it leaned quite as much toward East Windsor as 94 HORACE BUSHNELL toward New Haven. In fact, had the former been true to the earlier school which it championed, it might have claimed the treatise as against New Haven, appropriating its "older orthodoxy," and condoning its departure from it. But at heart the hook was with neither, and each opened fire on it, — the pamphlet, " What does Dr. Bushnell Mean?" having come from New Haven. Dr. Tyler's criticism was followed by a juster and far abler review by Dr. Charles Hodge, of Princeton, whose chief objection was that " he has not rested them (the facts of conversion by means of Chris- tian nurture) upon the covenant and promise of God, but resolved the whole matter into organic laws, explaining away both depravity and grace," and presented the whole subject " in a naturalistic attitude." ^ That is, BushneU struck the modern note which it was the boast of Princeton at that time not to have heard. A still abler review came from Dr. J. W. Nevin, of the German Beformed Church,^ more sympathetic, but still critical at the same point; namely, the tone of naturalism running through the book. Both reviews, however, were one with him as to the corporate nature of the church, and furnished a contrast with his New England critics, who had so whoUy surrendered to individualism that the other seemed hardly less than heretical in itself. These and other criti- cisms, many of them personal and hectoring in 1 Biblical Repertory and Princeton Beview, p. 27, 1847. " Weekly Messenger, ChaxaheTfAnag, Pa., 1847. Fonz articles. RECEPTION OF CHRISTIAN NURTURE 95 tone, betrayed Bushnell into a reply which he styled " An Argument for Discourses on Christian Nurture," and published under the title, " Views of Christian Nurture and of Subjects Adjacent Thereto."^ The wisdom of this reply has been doubted, and in fact it was regretted by Bushnell himself, not because he did not consider the de- fense sound, but because of his relentless severity in dealing with his theological neighbors. His attack was just, but it was a descent. An able defense of his positions was mingled with expos- ures of personal animosity and intellectual weak- ness in his critics such as aU strong men are liable to encounter, but which wise men generally pass by. But if measured by a lower standard, it was magnificent fighting, spirited but good-tempered, and leaving nothing more to be said on the subject. It cleared a long-standing score that had been grow- ing for years, and brought both sides fully into the light. Whether wise or not, if it did not lessen attacks in the future, it kept his critics to the proper subject of criticism. We cannot pass by " Christian Nurture " as it appears in the later full edition without once more calling attention to it as an achievement in the world of New England theology. In point of influence, it is second only to that of Edwards in which he ended the union of Church and State by reassertion of man's individual relations to God, an achievement that required another of an 1 Edwaid Hunt, Eartfoid, 1847. (Out of print.) 96 HORACE BUSHNELL opposite nature to mark the time of religious progress. The individual and the corporate wiU. always call for each other, as deep calls unto deep. The greatness of the book as an intellectual achievement has not had full recognition, chiefly because its theological surroundings have not been understood. It is not in its essence a discovery, for its main idea lies at the bottom of all the historic religions. It is doubtful if Bushnell at first clearly recognized it as a return to former methods except in some general way. It is weU that he did not, for a formal return was neither needed nor possible. Nor was it a conscious prophecy of the method of religious culture that was about to come in ; he worked at closer hand. The book sprang out of an imperative sense of what needed to be done; and the fact that it turned out to be, in effect, a semi-repudiation of the environing theology, was an incident and not due to purpose. It was not an attack, but it imdermined and displaced, and prepared the way for that which was to come. For it cannot be denied that the conception of spiritual regeneration, and of its means and meth- ods, which prevailed at the time has largely passed away, and that everything except the simple need of it has yielded to a conception based upon and composed chiefly of religious nurture. The vari- ous theories of depravity, of the wiU, of divine grace, of the action of the Holy Spirit, of sanctifi- cation, have either disappeared, or been so altered as hardly to be recognized. In its place are con- RECEPTION OF CHRISTIAN NURTURE 97 ceptions of human nature and its moral condition, of heredity and environment, of sin, of the will, of moral culture and religious experience, which are most unlike those they have displaced. Biblical interpretation, psychology, and the closer study of life in aU its departments are forcing theology to recognize the fact that Christian character is chiefly a matter of Christian nurture. A uni- versal truth, supported by universal analogies, is coming into view, and is already in process of realization, — an ancient truth, but reappearing in the light of modem thought and exact science. CHAPTEE VII THEORY OF LANGUAGE " There can be no exercise in the 'whole business of instmcdon more useful to the mind than the analysis of sentences in the concentrated light of grammar and logic. It brings one into the sanctuary of human thought. All else is but standing in the outer court. He who is -without may indeed offer incense, but he who penetrates within, worships and adores. It is here that the man of science, trained to dose thought and clear vision, sur- veys the various objects of his study with a more expanded view, and a more discriminating mind. It is here that the interpreter, accustomed to the force and freshness of natural language, is prepared to explain God's revealed word with more power and accuracy. It is here that the orator learns to wield with a heavier arm the weapons of his warfare. It is here that every one who loves to think beholds the deep things of the human spirit, and leams to regard with holy reverence the sacred symbols of human thought." — Professor Josiah WhiIiARD Oibbs, Christian Spectator, 1837, vol. ix. p. 120. CHAPTEE VII THEORY OF LANGUAGE Nearly every undertaking of Buslmell in the- ology was an effort to escape some sort of restric- tion. He found himself in a very narrow world, — strong and intense in its piety, not without considerable learning, seeing far on certain lines but blind on others. It was shut off from the larger currents of thought by its wide separation from the old world. Its great men were solitary thinkers, who spun their systems with but little mutual criticism or consultation, dominated by one great master. The dialectic habit with such men necessarily led to a hard and rigid use of language. Their strength lay in definition and logic, which were often used in such a way as to suggest a cor- ral rather than a teaching.^ The thing insisted on in their frequent contro- versies was definition. The closer it was made the sharper grew the debate, since one or the other 1 The pupils of Dr. N. W. Taylor remember nothing' in his lectures more clearly than his scorn of those imters on theology who were " too lazy to mate definitions," which he declared to he " the severest labor of the human mind." This is undoubtedly the case if the definitions are expected to compass the truths of theology. It was chiefly at this point that Bushnell revolted against this master in dialectics. 102 HORACE BUSHNELL of the combatants was sure to discover, through some imguarded loophole, truth lying outside of the definition that called for re-definition. Thus an endless process was established, consisting in efforts to bring the infinite within the finite. It was given to BushneU to have a clear sight of the truth beyond the finite boundaries. He saw that the greater part of theology lay in that region, and that it could not be reached or expressed except by breaking through or overleaping these verbal limitations. In his opinion there could be no justification of definition without first entering into an analysis of language itself, with a view of finding out its function and scope as a medium between the mind and the world of sense. He could not advance one step in the discussion of theological themes with the expectation of being understood, unless he could in some way break up or get over this hard literalism and make his read- ers feel the meaning that really lies in and behind the words. Had he lived a half century later, he would have had comparatively little need to ex- plain himseK. Language is regarded to-day very much as he conceived it, while Biblical criticism and a more rational theory of inspiration have removed from the field of debate certain parts of Scripture that were then chief factors in it. But BushneU did not have the advantage of the later criticism, and himself needed a personal deliver- ance from interpretations that were intolerable to him. He chose what seemed to him the only thor- THEORY OF LANGUAGE 103 ough method ; namely, an examination of the na- ture of language itself.^ But there were stiU stronger reasons, which will appear in the following quotations : — "We find, then, that every language contains two distinct departments : the physical depart- ment, — that which provides names for things; and the inteUeotual department, — that which provides names for thought and spirit. In the former, names are simple representatives of things, which even the animals may learn. In the latter, ^ " It is remarkable that Dr. Bushnell, whose stadias kept him wholly ignorant of Kant, is nevertheless dealing with Kant's problem in his rather diffuse Dissertation on Language, and in his fax clearer, compaeter, and finer production, Our Gospd a Gift to the Imagination. He saw, and it is a remarkable witness to his genius, that thonght is inseparable from sense-forms, and so- called abstract thinking is but thought with the sensuous accom- paniment attenuated to the last degree." (Dr. Qeorge A. Gordon, The Christ of To-day, p. 287.) Kant says the difficulty in reaching a purely non-sensuous theory of the nniverse lies in the constitation of the human mind as compounded of sense and intellect. Bnshnell says the diffi- culty lies in language, — the instrument of the mind. They face the sam.e problem, but Bushnell escapes from it by contending that the constitution of the mind is given in language as no- where else, and that though it is a sense-form, it represents a spiritual meaning to which it is essentially allied. The usual criticism of Bnshnell is that he puts the limitation in language rather than in the power of the mind to conceive the infinite realities of religion, — in utterance rather than in conception. Had the point occurred to him, it is possible that he would have hesitated to place the limitation in the unchanging nature of mind, when it could justly be put upon the instrument of expres- sion that can be made fuller and more exact, as the world, which is but a syinbol of thought, becomes more clearly understood. One seems like a barring of the gate ; the other only some diffi- culty in getting to it. 104 HORACE BUSHNELL the names of things are used as representatives of thought, and cannot, therefore, be learned save by beings of intelligence — (intus lego) — that is, beings who can read the inner sense, or receive the inner contents of words ; beings in whom the Logos of the creation finds a correspondent logos, or reason, to receive and employ the types it offers in their true power (p. 24). ... In this view, which it is not rash to believe will some time be fully estabHshed, the outer world is seen to be a vast menstruum of thought or intelligence. There is a logos in the forms of things, by which they are prepared to serve as types or images of what is inmost in our souls ; and then there is a logos of construction in the relations of space, the position, qualities, connections, and predicates of things, by which they are framed into grammar. In one word, the outer world, which envelops our being, is itself language, the power of all language." ^ ..." Since all words, but such as relate to necessary truths, are inexact representations of thought, mere types or analogies, or, where the types are lost beyond recovery, only proximate expressions of the thoughts named; it follows that language will be ever trying to mend its own deficiencies, by multiplying its forms of re- 1 Bnslmell is thronghout this essay gieaUy indebted to Fro- fessoT Josiali W. Gibbs, the instructor in Biblical literature in the Tale Divinity School while he was a student. He recognizes the indebtedness in a tone of gratitnde and reverence shown to no other writer except Coleridge. The article from which he quotes is in The Christian Spectator, vol. ix. THEORY OF LANGUAGE 105 presentation. As, too, the words made use of generally carry sometliing false with them, as well as something true, associating form with the truths represented, when really there is no form ; it win also be necessary, on this account, to multi- ply words or figures, and thus to present the sub- ject on opposite sides or many sides. Thus, as form battles form, and one form neutralizes an- other, all the insufQciencies of words are filled out, the contrarieties liquidated, and the mind settles into a fuU. and just apprehension of the pure spir- itual truth. Accordingly we never come so near to a truly well-rounded view of any truth as when it is offered paradoxically ; that is, under contra- dictions; that is, under two or more dictions, which, taken as dictions, are contrary one to the other" (p. 55). " The views of language and interpretation I have here offered suggest the very great difficulty, if not impossibility, of mental science and religious dogmatism. In all such uses, or attempted uses, the effort is to make language answer a purpose that is against its nature. The 'winged words' are required to serve as beasts of burden ; or, what is no better, to forget their poetic life as messengers of the air, and stand still, fixed upon the ground, as wooden statues of truths. • . . "Can there be produced, in human language, a complete and proper Christian theology; can the Christian truth be offered in the moulds of any dogmatic statement ? "What is the Christian 106 HORACE BUSHNELL truth? Preeminently and principally, it is the expression of God, — God coming into expression through histories and rites, through an incarnation, and through language, — in one syllable, by the WoED. The endeavor is, by means of expression, and under the laws of expression, to set forth God, — his providence and his government, and what is more and higher than all, God's own feel- iag, his truth, love, justice, compassion. . . . "There is, however, one hope for mental and religious truth and their final settlement, which I confess I see but dimly, and can but faintly express or indicate. It is that physical science, leading the way, setting outward things in their true proportions, opening up their true contents, revealing their genesis and final causes and laws, and weaving all into the unity of a real universe, will so perfect our knowledges and conceptions of them that we can use them, in the second de- partment of language, with more exactness. . • . And then language wiU be as much more full and intelligent, as it has more of God's intelligence, in the system of nature, imparted to its symbols. For undoubtedly the whole universe of nature is a perfect analogon of the whole universe of thought or spirit. Therefore, as nature becomes truly a universe only through science revealing its univer- sal laws, the true universe of thought and spirit cannot sooner be conceived " ^ (p. 78). ^ Bnahnell here anticipates with striking accnracy the fonrth chapter of Mr. John Fiske's Through Nature to God, on "The Dramatic Unity of Nature." THEORY OF LANGUAGE 107 We have made this quotation not only because it illustrates BushneU's range in a high realm of thought, but because it is, as his biographer says, " the key to Horace BushneU." It was not a theory brought from without and adopted as best suited to his purpose, but was a reflection of the natural play of his mind. It is not only the key, but it shows in what a natural way he fell in with the Greek use of the Logos, from which he never wholly departed, however heavy the stress of criticism. His theory seems fatal to theology as an exact science, and he presses it to that conclusion. We shall let him make his explanation in his own words. His friend, Dr. William W. Patton, gives this account of a conversation with him, at the time when he was imder heavy criticism for the theological opinions of the book " God in Christ : " " Dr. BushneU and myself were riding together to a meeting of the Hartford Central Association, and the conversation turned on theological discussions. ' Why is it,' said I, ' that you complain that you are so generally misunderstood? Where you are criticised you say that the critics misapprehend your positions ; and they reply that you ought to express yourself more clearly. Why can you not do so?' His answer was substantially this: 'It is because of the different views which they and I take of the human soul and of the relation of language to spiritual truth. They succeed easily in so expressing their ideas as to be understood by 108 HORACE BUSHNELL their readers; but it is because they deal with subjects mechanically, and not according to nature. There, for instance, is Dr. , my customary assaiiaiit. He writes about the human spirit as if it were a machine under the laws of mechanics ; and, of course, what he says is perfectly intelli- gible, Hke any other treatise on matter ; only what he says is not true ! But I conceive of the soul ia its living nature, — as free, and intelligent, and sensitive ; as under vital and not mechanical laws. Ijanguage, too, for that reason, is not so much descriptive as suggestive, being figurative throughout, even where it deals with spiritual truth. Therefore, an experience is needed to inter- pret words.' " It was by this gate that he went out from the world about him into the world of spiritual reality and freedom where his work lay. It must not be supposed that he abjured theology as a science because he refused to be bound by definition, nor that he slighted reason because he set aside the forms of logic. He simply refused to put infinite things into finite forms as wholly containing them. He protested against treating thought and spirit as measurable by sense ; he asserted that spiritual and moral realities lie behind language, and that words have their origin in these realities, though they do not define them, but only suggest their scope and significance. It is under such a con- ception of language that he explains his use of creeds. He likes them so well that he says he is THEORY OF LANGUAGE 109 " ready to accept as great a number as fall in my way." If a fundamental criticism were to be made of his entire work in theology, it would be made at the point of this theory, for it covers the whole of it. He may at times disagree with himself, and he often goes far afield, but he always comes back to this conception of language for explanation or defense. Whether true or false, it runs through- out his theology, and makes it substantially a unit. Stated briefly, it was an exchange of defini- tion for expression. His entrance into the com- pany of New England theologians with such a theory was like Copernicus appearing among the Ftolemaists. CHAPTEE Vni "GOD IN CHRIST" " But even less than liteTatnre and the Chorch and criticism can theology remain nnafEected by this return, as it were, into His very piesence. We all feel the distance placed by fifty years of the most radical and penetrating critical discussions between us and the older theology, and as the distance widens, the theology that then reigned grows less credible, because less rele-vant to li-ving mind. Does this mean that the days of definite theological beliefs are over, or not, rather, that the attempt ought to be made to restate them in more living and relevant terms ? One thing seems clear : if a Christian theology means a theology of Christ, at once concerning Him and derived from Him, then to construct one ought, because of our greater knowledge of Him and His history, to be more possible to-day than at any previous moment. And if this is clear, then the most provisional attempt at per- forming the possible is more dutiful than the selfish and idle acquiescence that would simply leave the old theology and the new criticism standing side by side, unrelated and unreconciled." — Professor A. M. Faibbaibn, D. D., The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, p. 296. CHAPTER VIII "GOD m CHRIST " " The year 1848 was thd central point in the life of Horace Bushnell. It was a year of great experiences, great thougMs, great labors." So his wife writes in his " Biography." The outcome was the volume " God in Christ." The order in this category is rightly given. Whatever came from him was first the result of experience. He was not chiefly a specidator in the world of thought, nor a dreamer in a world of visions, but a practical man . in a real world. The death of his child five years before had not ceased to bear fruit in revela- tions of the fatherhood of God. " He took my son to his own more fatherly bosom, and revealed in my bosom the same expectation and faith of his own eternal Son." He read the Life of Madame Guyon, and Upham's " Interior Life," and Fene- lon, and yielded somewhat to a mystical wave of thought that was then passing over New England. He touched "quietism," but quickly and by a necessity of his nature reacted from it, yet not without retaining something of its value in the practical world where he belonged and worked. A crisis seems to have been reached in an experi- ence described as follows : — 114 HOBACE BUSHNELL "On an early morning of February, Ms wife awoke, to hear that the light they had waited for, more than they that watch for the morning, had risen indeed. She asked, ' What have you seen ? ' He replied, ' The gospel.' It came to him at last, after all his thought and study, not as something reasoned out, but as an inspiration, — a revelation from the mind of God himself. The full meaning of his answer he embodied at once in a sermon on ' Christ the Form of the Soul,' from the text, ' Until Christ be formed in you.' The very title of this sermon expresses his spiritually illuminated conception of Christ as the indwelling, formative life of the soul, the new creating power of right- eousness for humanity. And this conception was soon after more adequately set forth in his book, ' God in Christ.' That he regarded this as a crisis in his spiritual life is evident from his not infre- quent reference to it among his Christian friends." He regarded this experience as a "personal discovery of Christ, and of God as represented in Him." To those about him he seemed " a new man, or, rather, the same man with a heavenly investiture." Or, as he himself explained it : "I seemed to pass a boimdary. I had never been very legal in my Christian life, but now I passed from those partial seeings, glimpses, and doubts, into a clearer knowledge of God and into his inspirations, which I have never whoUy lost. The change was into faith, — a sense of the freeness of God, and the ease of approach to Him." "GOD IN CHRIST" 115 He at once moved toward expression. The vision must be translated into form, its implica- tions detected, and its reasonableness made clear. The reality and intensity of this experience must not be overlooked as one reads the book to which it gave rise and the criticism that followed. More weight must be attached to his conclusions than if they had been the mere fruit of reflection ; he had felt and he had seen, and the force of life was behind his contentions. It was then that he began to define Christian doctrine as " formulated Chris- tian experience." By a conjunction of events that seem providen- tial, the amplest opportunity was offered for speak- ing on the subject which had been thus opened to him. Almost simultaneously invitations came from the Divinity School in Cambridge, then unquali- fiedly Unitarian ; from the Theological Seminary at Andover, where the battle with Unitarianism had been fought, and from the Divinity School in New Haven, to give the addresses at their grad- uating exercises. BushneU promptly accepted these invitations, and thus reopened the question that had indeed not ceased to be discussed. But he will not enter into the wide arena as a debater of the old fashion; he will go as a mediator, if at all. He cannot be understood at this period without keeping in mind the spiritual elevation and intensity that possessed him. He had seen a heavenly vision, and his obedience to it was full and imperative. This experience subdued the 116 HORACE BUSHNELL polemic and revived the " veia of comprehensive- ness," which was more congenial to him. He un- derstood the relation to the two parties into which " Christian Nurture " had brought him, and stood between them, hoping to vnn the blessing of the peacemaker. In a letter to Dr. Bartol, written in 1847, when under accusation of heresy, he said: " I consider myself to be an orthodox man, and yet I think I can state < my orthodox faith in such a way that no serious Unitarian will conflict with me, or feel that I am beyond the terms of reason." ^ The first of the sermons forming this book was preached as a concio ad clerum, in the North now the United Church in New Haven, before the Gen- eral Association of Connecticut, which had sug- gested to him as a subject the " Divinity of Christ." ^ As this discussion became the ground for a large part of the criticism he afterward encountered, we give its main points. * This was before Rev. Theodore Parker had preached the sermon at West Roxbury, on " The Transient and the Permanent in Religion," which wonld have led BushneU to speak less hope- fully. ^ The writer, then a student in college, heard the sermon, but recalls little except the appearance of the preacher and the rhythmic mnsio of his voice. His delivery was without stress or passion, but full of quiet dignity, and serions to the last degree, — Etlmost a solitary meditation on his absorbing theme. But the writer remembers two remarks made at the close of the ser- vice ; one from a saintly woman, — " They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him." Her plaint found an echo soon after in ^the pamphlet, "What does Dr. Bushnell Mean ? " The other remark came from a theological student, — "I could kiss the soul of Dr. Bushnell." What was darkness to one was light to the other. "GOD IN CHRIST" 117 Taking as a text 1 John i. 2, he states that his purpose is to show that " the reality of Christ is God," and that the term " was manifested " covers and contains this fact. , He defines the divinity of Christ as follows : " He is in such a sense God, or God manifested, that the unknown term of his nature, that which we are most in doubt of, and about which we are least capable of any positive information, is the hmnan " (p. 123). It should be stated at the outset that this definition, which has been and is still more criticised than any other made by BushneU in connection with the trinity, was due in part to the fact that his chief per- plexity as to the person of Christ grew out of the orthodox doctrine of two distinct or distinctly active natures. The tritheism implied in three metaphysical per- sonalities in the essential Godhead was equally perplexing. In order to escape from both, he merged the personaliiy of Christ in the Father, and so escaped the first difficulty. By refusing to penetrate the interior nature of God he escaped the other. His method may not be correct, and the vagueness of his treatment of the himianity of Christ raises the suspicion that it is not, but it is easy to see why he followed it : he saw at the time no other way of escape. After quoting the classical texts on the subject, he infers that the sinlessness of Jesus " must be because the divine is so far uppermost in him as to suspend the proper manhood of his person. He 118 HORACE BUSHNELL does not any longer act the man ; practically speak- ing, the man sleeps in him. He acts the divine, not the human, and the only true reality in him, as far as moral conduct is concerned, is the divine" (p. 126), He insists with passionate reiteration that " We nrant Jesus as divine, not as htmian. . . . God is what we want, not a man ; God revealed through man, that we may see his heart, and hide our guilty nature in the bosom of his love ; God so identified with our race, as to signify the possible union and eternal identification of our nature with his " (p. 127). He sees no difficulty in maintaining the essen- tial divinity of Christ " till we begin to speculate or dogmatize about the hmnanity, or find ourselves in contact with the more commonly accepted doc- trine of trinity " (p. 129). This a