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 BX 7259 .T78 1903 
 Trumbull, H. Clay 1830-1903 
 My four religious teachers 
 

 
MY FOUR RELIGIOUS 
 TEACHERS 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2009 with funding from 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/myfourreligioustOOtrum 
 
From a daguerreotype of the author, taken in 1855, when he first came under the 
 influence of these teachers 
 
MY FOUR RELIGIOUS 
 TEACHERS 
 
 CHARLES G. FINNEY 
 
 DAVID HAWLEY 
 
 ELIAS R. BEADLE 
 
 HORACE BUSHNELL 
 
 BY H. CLAY TRUMBULL 
 
 Author of "Kadesh-barnea;" "Oriental Social Life; 
 " Friendship the Master-Passion ;" "The Knightly 
 Soldier;" "War Memories of an Army Chap- 
 lain ; " " The Blood Covenant ; " " The 
 Threshold Covenant;" "Yale Lectures 
 on the Sunday-School ; " " Old-Time 
 Student Volunteers," etc. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TIMES CO. 
 
 1903 
 
Copyright, 1903, 
 By H. CLAY TRUMBULL. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In speaking of " my four religious teach- 
 ers," I have not here included my mother 
 nor my Sunday-school teachers. Yet my 
 earliest religious instruction and impres- 
 sions were given by them, and to this 
 day I am grateful for the permanent in- 
 fluence of their words and spirit. Neither 
 have I included my earlier pastors, to whom 
 I am permanently indebted. 
 
 The four religious teachers of whom I 
 write in this book were men of God un- 
 der whose instruction and influence I was 
 providentially brought at the time when 
 I was entering on the Christian life, and 
 whose teachings have largely shaped my 
 religious course and modes of thought. 
 Because they were exceptionally strong 
 and excellent men, their power over me 
 has been felt in a more than ordinary de- 
 gree. And for this leading of God I am 
 profoundly grateful, and am desirous of 
 
vi Preface 
 
 bearing testimony to their shaping and 
 influence on my life in God's service. 
 
 My mother and grandmother, my Sun- 
 day-school teachers, and my early pastors, 
 gave me my primary school teaching and 
 my training in the preparatory school of 
 life. Without this teaching and training 
 I could have profited little from subsequent 
 teachers. The four religious teachers of 
 whom I now tell took me, by God's order- 
 ing, under their instruction and influence 
 when I was entering on my active religious 
 life. My course with them served for a 
 university course, and also for a course 
 in the theological seminary. 
 
 H. CLAY TRUMBULL. 
 
 Philadelphia, June 8, igoj. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 
 WHO THESE FOUR TEACHERS WERE 
 
 Page 
 
 I. Charles G. Finney i 
 
 II. David Hawley 4 
 
 III. Elias R. Beadle 6 
 
 IV. Horace Bushnell 8 
 
 God's Chosen Way for Me . . . . 1 1 
 
 PART II 
 
 REVIVALIST, REFORMER, AND EDU- 
 CATOR : CHARLES G. FINNEY 
 
 His Early Life 16 
 
 His Beginnings as a Lawyer and as a 
 
 Preacher 
 His First Revival Work 
 He Stirs New York City 
 His Work at Oberlin 
 His Work in Hartford . 
 His Vigor in Age . 
 
 A CITY MISSIONARY'S CHRISTLIKE LIFE 
 
 AMONG THE POOR : DAVID HAWLEY 
 His Early Work and Influence in Hartford . 30 
 His Power in Public Address . . .33 
 
 vii 
 
viii Contents 
 
 His Tact in Dealing with All 
 
 His Brightness of Mind 
 
 Cost and Worth of Love and Loyalty 
 
 Longing for the Great Day 
 
 His Kind Interest in Me 
 
 Page 
 36 
 41 
 
 43 
 48 
 50 
 
 ONE WHO SPOKE TIMELY AND POTENT 
 WORDS : ELIAS R. BEADLE 
 
 A Memorable Public Funeral . . .55 
 
 Getting Hold of Mission-School Boys . . 60 
 
 Tender Words of Parting . . . .63 
 
 A College Commencement Dinner . . 66 
 
 GOODNESS AND GREATNESS AMONG 
 ALL: HORACE BUSHNELL 
 
 Perceiving the Best in Others . . .70 
 
 His Way of Viewing and Using Bible Words . 73 
 
 His Part in our Civil War . . . .79 
 
 Generous Regard for Views of Others . .85 
 
 His Way of Seeing and Saying Things . . 103 
 
 A World-Wide Sower of Seed-Thoughts . 112 
 
 Winning His Child Hearers . . . .122 
 
 Why God Gave Me These Four Re- 
 ligious Teachers . . . .126 
 
PART I 
 
 WHO THESE FOUR TEACHERS WERE 
 
 I. CHARLES G. FINNEY 
 
 When, in the winter of 1851-52, I was 
 a young clerk in the office of the chief 
 engineer of a railroad office in Hartford, 
 Connecticut, away from my family and 
 home, I was won to Christ by a personal 
 letter from a friend in the village of my boy- 
 hood. In the providence of God there 
 was, just at that time, a series of revival 
 meetings being conducted in Hartford un- 
 der the lead of Charles G. Finney, the 
 eminent evangelist. Although up to the 
 hour of my act of Christian decision I had 
 not heard President Finney, nor even been 
 interested enough in the matter to be 
 present at any of his meetings, I at once 
 began attending them, and, as a result, I 
 
 1 
 
2 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 received my earliest formal instruction in 
 the Christian life from that remarkable 
 man, and from three others, at a time 
 when I greatly needed guidance. 
 
 And I am profoundly grateful to God 
 that I received my first formal religious 
 instruction from this man and in this way. 
 For, in consequence, I was not trained in 
 any recognized school of denominational 
 theology. President Finney had theologi- 
 cal views, but they were his own views. 
 He had been trained a lawyer, but he had 
 never been taught in a theological school, 
 nor would he have been approved by any 
 then existing one. He held positive theo- 
 logical views that are called " Calvinistic," 
 and others that are called distinctively " Ar- 
 minian." Ordinary theologians would say 
 that these two are inconsistent with each 
 other. President Finney had no con- 
 cern about that. He held both, and he 
 declared both — consistent or inconsistent. 
 He held and declared still other theologi- 
 cal views, without asking or thinking how 
 
Who These Four Were 3 
 
 they were to be reconciled with the labels 
 of any recognized school. 
 
 But President Finney won souls to 
 Christ, and was a power for good in this 
 country in his day and generation. Men 
 who heard him were influenced in spirit 
 and in thought. One of the places where 
 his remarkable work was done in his early 
 evangelistic life was in Rome, New York, 
 where Albert Barnes was a young man, 
 and just then preparing for the ministry. 
 Albert Barnes heard Charles G. Finney, 
 and was influenced by him. Because of 
 his preaching some phases of truth to 
 which he was thus influenced, Albert 
 Barnes was called a " heretic " by certain 
 theologians, and the great Presbyterian 
 church in this country was divided over 
 those teachings for a generation. Yet a 
 vast multitude called Albert Barnes a saint, 
 in view of his spirit and his mode of ex- 
 pressing God's truth. 
 
 I have always been grateful that my first 
 religious teaching when I had entered 
 
4 My Four Religions Teachers 
 
 Christ's service was from a teacher who 
 uttered God's truth positively, but in such 
 a way that neither he nor I could be 
 counted of any recognized school of de- 
 nominational theology. And I have never 
 since been obliged to count myself of any 
 one denomination in strict and conven- 
 tional theological views. 
 
 II. DAVID HAWLEY 
 
 Before I had yet connected myself with 
 the church by formal profession, I was led 
 to visit a mission Sunday-school, started 
 only the week before by the Hartford City 
 Missionary Society in one of the rougher 
 portions of the city, at the junction of two 
 of the streets near the river bank. Enter- 
 ing the door of the old building, to find my 
 way through dark passage-ways dimly 
 lighted by candles at noonday, up two 
 flights of rickety stairs to the garret room 
 where the new' little mission school was 
 held, I met at the entrance doorway David 
 
Who These Four Were 5 
 
 Hawley, the city missionary. He was 
 also making his first visit to that Sunday- 
 school, although he had been the means 
 of gathering and starting it. He had 
 not been present the opening Sunday, so 
 he and I first entered the room together. 
 Being unexpectedly chosen superintendent 
 of that new mission school, my first Chris- 
 tian work was done there, under the over- 
 sight of David Hawley. And thus I came 
 under the training of my second teacher in 
 the religious life, and my peculiar teacher 
 in active Christian work for souls. 
 
 David Hawley, like Charles G. Finney, 
 was anything but a formal theological in- 
 structor. He was a layman, but he was 
 a master in applied Christianity. He loved 
 Christ and he loved souls. He knew the 
 souls of sinners, and the Saviour of sinners. 
 From him I learned how to work for souls, 
 and in him I saw the spirit that one should 
 have and manifest in that work. He was a 
 rare man. I know that God meant good 
 to me in bringing me under the example 
 
6 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 and influence of this man of God, and I am 
 grateful accordingly. 
 
 III. ELIAS R. BEADLE 
 
 Just at the time of the great ingather- 
 ing of souls in Hartford under the preach- 
 ing of Charles G. Finney, a new church 
 was organized in that city, and its first pas- 
 tor was one who had remarkable power 
 over young men, and special training to 
 enable him to exercise that power. That 
 pastor was Elias R. Beadle. He also, like 
 Charles G. Finney, had had no training in a 
 theological seminary. He had studied for 
 the ministry under Dr. Edward N. Kirk in 
 Albany. Dr. Kirk had been prominent 
 as an evangelist, especially among college 
 students. After he left Albany, Dr. Kirk 
 was in Boston ; and it was in his church 
 there that Dwight L. Moody first made a 
 confession of his Christian faith. 
 
 Dr. Beadle went for a while to Syria as 
 a missionary, — not a place to incline him 
 
WJio These Four Were 7 
 
 toward preaching systematic denomina- 
 tional theology. After he returned from 
 the East, he labored for a while as a city 
 missionary in New Orleans. When he 
 came to Hartford as pastor over a church 
 including many young people new in the 
 Christian life, he entered with his whole 
 soul into their leading and training. Our 
 new City Mission work was work after his 
 own heart. He was with David Hawley 
 and myself in whatever good service he 
 could render; and I learned much from 
 him as to spirit and method in Christ's 
 service. He gave me added interest in 
 foreign missionary service; at his sugges- 
 tion I thought of going to the then new 
 Micronesian field, and I probably should 
 have gone except that God summoned 
 me just then to another special mission 
 service. 
 
 In his power of speaking timely and im- 
 pressive words to individuals and to audi- 
 ences in the spirit and likeness of Christ, 
 Dr. Beadle exceeded any person whom I 
 
8 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 ever knew. In that work, rather than in 
 his ordinary Sunday sermons, was his 
 power as a pastor year by year. The very 
 tones of his voice, and his chosen words of 
 address, seemed to speak love for Christ 
 and love for souls. In this he was ever an 
 example and an inspiration to others. 
 
 Dr. Beadle was my counselor and helper 
 when the call came to me to go to the 
 Civil War as a chaplain ; and in many ways 
 I still owe him a debt of gratitude. When 
 I came to Philadelphia, in 1875, I found 
 Dr. Beadle a power for good in this city, 
 and to the day of his death he was prized 
 and loved by me as one of the teachers by 
 whom I was taught in Christ's spirit and 
 service in my earliest, and in my later, 
 Christian life. 
 
 IV. HORACE BUSHNELL 
 
 Fourth among the remarkable and God- 
 given teachers of my early Christian life, 
 for whom I have reason to be grateful, and 
 
Who These Four Were 9 
 
 whose impress and influence I shall feel so 
 long as I have life, was Horace Bushnell. 
 And he, like all the other three, was any- 
 thing but a strict theologian of any known 
 school or type or special denomination. 
 Yet he was truly a theologian ; but he was 
 one of his own sort, more likely to in- 
 fluence others by his thinking and teach- 
 ing than to be specially influenced by 
 them. He was one of the pastors in Hart- 
 ford who cordially co-worked with Charles 
 G. Finney at the time of his series of evan- 
 gelistic labors there. He was recognized 
 as a man of remarkable intellectual power, 
 but he was by many thought to be not a 
 safe guide theologically. 
 
 It was at a meeting of friends of the 
 Hartford City Missionary Society, in the 
 social parlors of the Pearl Street Congre- 
 gational Church, of which Dr. Beadle was 
 the new pastor, that my first acquaintance 
 was made with good Dr. Bushnell. And 
 that was indeed a new starting-point in my 
 religious life, to which I ever look back 
 
IO My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 gratefully. As the young superintendent of 
 the Morgan Street mission school, — where 
 Dr. Bushnell's eldest daughter, the poet- 
 saint, was my valued helper as a teacher, 
 — I was at this meeting, following Father 
 Hawley with a statement of the possibili- 
 ties and needs of the city mission field. 
 Dr. Bushnell sat in a chair just before me, 
 showing a kind interest in my words. At 
 the close of the service he stepped up 
 and gave me greeting, and expressed an 
 interest in me and my work. He said he 
 should be glad to aid me at any time and 
 in any way in his power. That was his 
 first helpful work as my personal teacher. 
 
 Dr. Bushnell meant what he said at that 
 time. From that hour he did aid me in 
 my religious thinking and in my Christian 
 living and doing ; and because he was not 
 a theologian of any recognized school he 
 gave me more aid than he could have 
 given had he been so. His greatest ser- 
 vice to me, as it has been to many another, 
 was in bringing me to see that God's mes- 
 
Who These Four Were II 
 
 sage or gift to us in the Scriptures is a 
 gift to our " imagination," rather than to 
 our positive knowledge; that Bible truth, 
 at the best, suggests to us far more than it 
 can define. To gain this truth is to have 
 more than can be given by the explicit and 
 exact tenets of any one school of theology, 
 or of all schools of theology put together. 
 Dr. Bushnell had his opinion as to what 
 would be for me the best sphere of religious 
 activity ; but he was sure that God knew 
 best, and he wanted me to be thus led. 
 
 GODS CHOSEN WAY FOR ME 
 
 It will be seen that, in the providence of 
 God, I was from the first privileged to be 
 under the influence and instruction of four 
 religious teachers of remarkable and ex- 
 ceptional power, apart from, and not as a 
 follower of, any one theological school. 
 As a result of this I have been helped in 
 my personal life work as a non-denomina- 
 tional worker and writer for Christ and 
 
12 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 for souls. While not saying or suggesting 
 that this is the better way for all, I can and 
 do say that I am glad and grateful that this 
 was God's way for me. Therefore it is that 
 I now speak particularly and with feelings 
 of peculiar gratitude of these four religious 
 teachers whom God let me have when 
 starting in his service in the Christian life. 
 No one of these four men was trained 
 in and bound by the tenets of any dis- 
 tinctive and recognized school of denomi- 
 national theology. In consequence, for 
 them the word of God was not bound by 
 ordinary restrictions. All these teachers 
 were earnest, devoted, evangelistic soul- 
 lovers in God's service. Providentially I 
 was summoned to labor, from the begin- 
 ning of my Christian life, in fields for which 
 ordinary denominational religious training 
 would not have specially fitted or helped 
 me, but which the training of just such 
 men as these would. My work in God's 
 plan came to be city-mission service and 
 the non - denominational Sunday - school 
 
Who These Four Were 13 
 
 work, afterwards the army chaplaincy, and 
 still later a non-denominational religious 
 editorial work. God knows, as man does 
 not, the special work he has for every one 
 of his children to do, and how to help him 
 for and in that work. And to this truth I 
 bear fresh, glad, grateful testimony out of 
 my varied life experiences. 
 
PART II 
 
 REVIVALIST, REFORMER, AND 
 EDUCATOR : CHARLES G. 
 
 FINNEY 
 
 Young people of to-day can have no 
 idea of the place occupied in the minds of 
 the community half a century ago, and a 
 score of years before then, by Charles G. 
 Finney, as a revivalist, a reformer, and an 
 educator. He was loved and he was hated, 
 he was respected and he was feared, as 
 were few men of his time, and as no or- 
 dinary man can be at any time. 
 
 Charles G. Finney stood quite by himself 
 in thought and in action, and he was willing 
 to stand there as long as he could feel that 
 God would have him in that position. He 
 drew a fresh line in theological thinking, — 
 or, rather, his theology, while positive, was 
 outside of all lines. He was all by himself 
 
 15 
 
1 6 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 in methods of evangelistic work and in 
 practical ideas of reform in the customs 
 and ways of thinking in the American 
 community of then. Along his newly 
 drawn line of thought and practice his 
 friends and his enemies ranged themselves, 
 and their views of the leader naturally 
 shaped their views of one another. 
 
 HIS EARLY LIFE 
 
 Although of the best New England 
 stock in his family descent, and born in 
 famous Litchfield County, Connecticut, Fin- 
 ney was, in his early years, under no such 
 influences as would promote his moral and 
 religious welfare. Yet he enjoyed reading, 
 and was inclined to study. So far was he, 
 as a young man, however, from giving 
 any promise of being a religious leader, 
 that, while he was the choir leader in a 
 Presbyterian church in New York State, 
 members of the church proposed among 
 themselves to make him a subject of spe- 
 cial prayer. But his pastor objected, re- 
 
Charles G. Finney ly 
 
 marking, as one of his biographers states, 
 " that it was of no use ; that he did not 
 believe that Finney would ever be con- 
 verted, since he had already sinned against 
 so much light that his heart was hope- 
 lessly hardened." 
 
 HIS BEGINNINGS AS A LAWYER AND 
 AS A PREACHER 
 
 Finney worked his way into the study 
 and practice of law. He was nearly thirty 
 years old when he first owned a Bible. 
 He saw so many references to it in law 
 books that he bought one to examine, and 
 he became deeply interested in it. His 
 conversion was like Paul's, remarkable and 
 complete. God seems to have seen, or 
 to have made, possibilities in him that his 
 pastor had deemed out of the question. 
 From the beginning of his Christian life 
 he felt it to be his mission to preach the 
 Christ whose service he had now entered. 
 Leaving a case before the courts in which 
 he was employed, he said to his client, " I 
 
1 8 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 have received a retainer from the Lord 
 Jesus to plead his cause, and I cannot 
 plead yours." This so impressed the 
 client, who was a deacon of the church, 
 that he at once settled the lawsuit, and 
 became a truer child of God. From that 
 time Charles G. Finney was an earnest 
 worker for Christ and for souls. Yet 
 his preaching ever showed in its method 
 and manner the training and habits of 
 the lawyer-advocate, as did Henry F. 
 Durant's. 
 
 His first Christian work was wholly 
 with individuals, and that work he loved 
 to the last. Indeed, one of the criticisms 
 of him as a preacher was that he was not a 
 conventional sermonizer, but that even in 
 the pulpit he seemed to be talking to in- 
 dividuals, instead of preaching a sermon 
 to a general audience after the ordinary 
 method. But he did win souls to a re- 
 markable extent. He was sent for, or he 
 went unsought, from place to place, and 
 everywhere a rich blessing seemed to ac- 
 
Charles G. Finney 19 
 
 company his labors. Of course, such a 
 preacher aroused opposition by what he 
 said, and by the way he said it. His early 
 labors were at a time when excitement was 
 great on the subject of slavery. As Finney 
 was outspoken in his views on that subject, 
 as well as on others, he made enemies in 
 that way. Opposition gave him more 
 friends and added power. 
 
 HIS FIRST REVIVAL WORK 
 
 Mr. Finney's early revival labors were in 
 villages and towns in northern New York 
 state, where he resided when he was won 
 to Christ. Wherever he went he was blest 
 in winning souls to Christ. Even those 
 who disagreed with him in his theological 
 views recognized the fact that God was 
 with him in his activities in God's service. 
 A remarkable revival accompanied his 
 labors in Rome, New York. Mr. Finney 
 was ever unfavorable to anything like ex- 
 citement in his preaching or in its effects. 
 He was quiet in his style of speaking, and 
 
20 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 he sought to have those quiet who were 
 interested in the truth he pressed on them. 
 At Rome all classes were reached by him, 
 and the religious tone of the whole com- 
 munity was changed. Among those under 
 his influence at that time in that place were 
 Thomas Brainerd, afterwards pastor of the 
 Pine Street Presbyterian Church in Phila- 
 delphia, and Albert Barnes, the leader of 
 the New School portion of the Presbyte- 
 rian Church in the United States. 
 
 Young Brainerd was won to Christ 
 under Finney's preaching. Albert Barnes, 
 although already intending to be a clergy- 
 man, was greatly influenced in his thinking 
 and in his course by Finney. Mr. Barnes 
 wrote of Mr. Finney about this time: "Few 
 men in our country have been as well fitted 
 to act on the higher order of minds, or to 
 bring men, proud in their philosophy or 
 their own righteousness, to the foot of the 
 cross. As a result of this great revival of 
 religion [in Rome], more than one hun- 
 dred and eighty persons were added to the 
 
Charles G. Finney 21 
 
 church on one occasion. Among these 
 were all the merchants and all the lawyers. 
 Since the fall of man was such a thing 
 known before, that all the lawyers in any- 
 place were converted to the faith of the 
 Saviour ? " 
 
 HE STIRS NEW YORK CITY 
 
 New York City was a great center in the 
 early thirties, as it is to-day. Finney be- 
 came a Presbyterian pastor, and a revival- 
 ist, there. He won so many converts that 
 he filled many churches with young work- 
 ers. Indeed, it was said long afterwards 
 that no man in this country was ever the 
 means of starting so many new churches 
 formed out of his converts as Finney. 
 Friends hired the Chatham Street Theater 
 in which he could preach. Later, the long 
 famous "Broadway Tabernacle " was built 
 as a place for him to be heard in. While it 
 was building, the story was started that it 
 was to be an abolition and amalgamation 
 hive, and it was set on fire. New York fire- 
 
22 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 men would not attempt to save it, and the 
 roof was burned off. But the building was 
 finished, according to Finney's plans, as an 
 auditorium. A Congregational church was 
 formed there, with Finney as its pastor. 
 
 HIS WORK AT OBERLIN 
 
 Because there was no religious paper in 
 the city to give place to his views and 
 work, the New York Evangelist was 
 started primarily for that purpose. As no 
 theological seminary taught the views he 
 held, Oberlin College was organized and 
 its plans were broadened, on the foundation 
 of the " Oberlin Collegiate Institute," which 
 had, before this time, been started by two 
 enterprising Vermont Christian workers, 
 Messrs. John Shipherd of Pawlet and T. P. 
 Stewart of Pittsford. This new movement 
 was made, with the aid of New York dona- 
 tions, in order to enable Dr. Finney to train 
 workers, and he was chosen its first presi- 
 dent. But, wherever he was, he reserved 
 a full share of his time and strength for 
 
Charles G. Finney 23 
 
 evangelistic and revival work, and then he 
 labored far and wide in this line. There 
 was probably no man in America, before 
 the day of Dwight L. Moody, who was the 
 means of winning so many souls to Christ 
 as was Charles G. Finney, or whose writings 
 as to such work were so widely influential 
 in this country and in Europe. 
 
 HIS WORK IN HARTFORD 
 
 It was in the winter of 185 1-52 that Presi- 
 dent Finney conducted a series of revival 
 services in Hartford. An unfortunate dif- 
 ference between Dr. Joel Hawes and Dr. 
 Horace Bushnell, Hartford pastors, stood 
 in the way of union among the churches 
 in these revival services. President Finney 
 set himself to have this difficulty removed, 
 and was successful. The meetings were 
 very largely attended, and were greatly in- 
 fluential. Although, as I have said, I had 
 attended none of these meetings, nor felt 
 an interest in them, I was, soon after their 
 beginning, won to Christ by a loving letter 
 
24 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 from a dear friend at a distance. Then, 
 in my devotion to my newly found 
 Saviour, I attended, night after night, the 
 services led by President Finney. I had 
 my earliest training in the Christian life 
 under him ; hence I bear him in mind 
 most vividly and gratefully. 
 
 I never heard such sermons as those, 
 before or since. There was something in 
 them, as I have already said, of Henry F. 
 Du rant's lawyer-like directness of appeal 
 to the hearer's conscience and best con- 
 sciousness, with something of Dwight L. 
 Moody's unconventional and unmistakable 
 application of the truth to the individual's 
 heart and sound sense. Yet Finney was 
 like neither Durant nor Moody; he was 
 Finney and was like Finney, and like no 
 other man. There was no getting away 
 from him, nor thinking of anything else 
 while he preached. There were no appeals 
 to mere feeling ; the feelings, if moved, were 
 moved by and through the conscience and 
 reason, and as an inevitable result of the 
 
Charles G. Finney 25 
 
 simple truth pressed by itself. His prayers 
 were as simple, as direct, and as impressive, 
 in their way, as were his sermons. 
 
 HIS VIGOR IN AGE 
 
 After I had been nearly twenty years in 
 active Christian service, I was at Oberlin, 
 to attend the National Triennial Congrega- 
 tional Council. There, again, I saw Presi- 
 dent Finney in his ripe old age. He was 
 in his eightieth year, but still in the full 
 vigor of his Christian manhood. His ad- 
 dress of an hour before that great assem- 
 blage of prominent clergymen will not be 
 forgotten by any who heard it. It was on 
 the " Endowment of the Holy Ghost," ever 
 a favorite theme with him. 
 
 That was a memorable occasion. Dr. 
 William Ives Buddington, Moderator of 
 the Council, said the day following as ex- 
 pressing the glad feelings of all in view of 
 the differences of former days and of the 
 loving accord following : " I rejoice to stand 
 this day upon the grave of buried prejudice. 
 
26 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 It is true that Oberlin has been a battle-cry 
 in our ranks for a generation. It is so no 
 longer, but a name of peace, of inspiration, 
 and of hope." And as Professor Wright 
 says, " the widespread and growing useful- 
 ness of Oberlin is pre-eminently due to 
 Finney's direct influence upon the com- 
 munity and upon the successive genera- 
 tions of students who gathered there 
 through the forty years of his connection 
 with the institution." 
 
 Charles G. Finney has a prominent place 
 in the volume of Bartlett's " Modern Agi- 
 tators." A volume is given to his life and 
 labors, by Professor G. Frederick Wright, 
 in the Boston series of " American Reli- 
 gious Leaders." He has prominence as an 
 American educator, from the college he 
 founded, from the clergymen and teachers 
 he trained, and from the multitude of prac- 
 tical evangelists he set at work for Christ. 
 His spirit and work are perpetuated in the 
 affections of the myriads he won to Christ 
 and to Christ's service. When it is re- 
 
Charles G. Finney 27 
 
 membered that Finney was viewed by so 
 many with suspicion or hatred in his earlier 
 labors, we see again how much easier it is 
 to form a right estimate of a man's work 
 for Christ and for his fellows when his work 
 is done and looked back upon, than during 
 the progress of the battle in which he and 
 we have a part. 
 
A CITY MISSIONARY'S CHRISTLIKE 
 
 LIFE AMONG THE POOR : 
 
 DAVID HAWLEY 
 
 " Father Hawley," as he came to be gen- 
 erally called in the Hartford community 
 and wherever he was known or known 
 of, was an eminently successful and, in a 
 certain sense, a model or pattern city- 
 missionary. Yet he had no training for 
 his work. When the Hartford City Mis- 
 sionary Society was organized, while the 
 work that was to be undertaken by it was 
 comparatively novel in this country, David 
 Hawley, who was a lover of Christ and of 
 souls, was called from his country home in 
 Farmington to be the missionary of that 
 society. He was a man of choice New 
 England stock, his brother being the father 
 of Joseph R. Hawley, the distinguished 
 general in the Civil War, and later United 
 States Senator. David Hawley had been 
 prominent and successful in personal work 
 28 
 
David Hawley 29 
 
 for souls in his country home. He had 
 taken active part in church prayer-meetings 
 and in local " revival " services ; but for his 
 work in the city mission field he had no 
 special preparation or pattern. 
 
 He took hold of it with hearty interest, 
 and he persevered in it with earnestness 
 and most successfully. " Coming to Hart- 
 ford was a door I never pushed open," said 
 Father Hawley in looking back on his 
 course, when all deemed him eminently 
 successful in that field. But God knew 
 the man, and knew the field, as no one on 
 earth did ; and when God opened the door, 
 and directed David Hawley to enter in, 
 God gave success in that field to the man 
 he had chosen for it. As I was privileged 
 to labor with Father Hawley in that field, 
 and as he and I learned lessons that God 
 would have us know, those years were im- 
 portant to both of us, and to others ; and 
 I speak of some of his experiences and ele- 
 ments of power with loving and grateful 
 remembrance. 
 
30 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 HIS EARLY WORK AND INFLUENCE 
 IN HARTFORD 
 
 It was in October, 185 1, that Father 
 Hawley began his work in Hartford. He 
 quickly made himself acquainted with his 
 new field and its necessities, and as quickly 
 planned and acted in behalf of those whom 
 he found in want. His first important 
 move was the gathering, in the early 
 spring of 1852, of the mission school in 
 Morgan Street, which has never been dis- 
 continued. Again he organized one on 
 Albany Avenue, and yet later one in Park 
 Street. Meantime he visited outside fami- 
 lies far and near, won their sympathy, led 
 their children into the church Sunday- 
 schools or into those he had organized, 
 and themselves to the church congrega- 
 tions, or into neighborhood prayer-meet- 
 ings started by him. 
 
 He reported the facts of his canvass and 
 mission work to the city churches, and 
 stimulated them to fresh activity ; he laid 
 his hands on the young converts of the 
 
David Hawley 3 1 
 
 revival of 1851-52, in connection with the 
 labors of President Finney, and set them at 
 work and guided them in it, in varied fields 
 of Christian effort ; and he drew out scores 
 of waiting members from the different 
 churches to follow him in kindly visitation 
 from house to house. 
 
 Before long, religion had new power in 
 the city of his labors, and a new hold on its 
 people. Father Hawley's work was felt 
 everywhere in Hartford. Churches of other 
 denominations made new efforts in the line 
 of his successful labors. Christian activi- 
 ties were no longer limited to one street. 
 Mission-schools and preaching-stations dot- 
 ted the city borders. Those who did not 
 seek the churches were sought by the 
 churches. Hartford came to be recognized 
 as clearly in advance of other cities in its 
 efforts at home evangelism. Its example 
 was imitated elsewhere. East and west, 
 cities were taking pattern of its methods, 
 and seeking counsel of its representative 
 missionary. 
 
32 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 Father Hawley was again and again 
 invited to other important fields to do work 
 similar to that which he had inaugurated 
 here. But here he remained until he had 
 trained a generation of skilled workers in 
 mission-school service, and had been largely- 
 instrumental in bringing about an entire 
 change in the policy and modes of work in 
 the Hartford churches as to the poor and 
 the non-church-going classes of the city. 
 
 To estimate at their true value these 
 earlier labors of Father Hawley in Hart- 
 ford, it should be borne in mind, as already 
 intimated, that there were then few prece- 
 dents in city mission work in this country, 
 and no such variety of helps to its prosecu- 
 tion as are now available. The Five Points 
 Mission, in New York, had only a short 
 time before called public attention anew to 
 the importance and practicability of such 
 labors, but only here and there had similar 
 experiments been elsewhere attempted. 
 
 Sunday-school singing of the present 
 style was almost unknown. Sunday-school 
 
David Hawley 33 
 
 papers and pictures were in no such variety 
 as now. The foundations of the mission- 
 school system were then being laid, and 
 new modes of procedure must be origi- 
 nated at every step of progress. 
 
 HIS POWER IN PUBLIC ADDRESS. 
 
 The ability of Father Hawley to meet all 
 the emergencies of such a work at such a 
 time; his rare fertility in expedients; his 
 unfailing readiness in both planning and 
 doing; his sound judgment in deciding 
 what was best, and his skill and tact in 
 carrying it into execution; his capacity to 
 direct others in work, and to train them to 
 its best performance, — all this, together 
 with his growing power in public address, 
 and his remarkable control over those 
 among whom he was working, proved him 
 to be a man of no mean order of talent, — 
 a genius in his line. 
 
 Indeed, it may fairly be claimed that 
 Hartford has reason to point with honest 
 pride to the record of David Hawley as a 
 
34 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 man of originality and force, — a man of 
 mark and permanent influence in an impor- 
 tant sphere. He had a large place to fill, 
 and he filled it well. He had a great work 
 to do, and he did it efficiently. He was a 
 man of God, complete, thoroughly fur- 
 nished unto all his good works. 
 
 Despite David Hawley's lack of early 
 special intellectual training, his native pow- 
 ers of mind did not fail to show themselves 
 to advantage. Not only was he eloquent, 
 in his pathos and humor, as he pleaded 
 any cause which had his heart, but there 
 was a Bunyan-like vigor of thought and 
 quaintness of conception in his comments 
 on the Scriptures which will not be for- 
 gotten by those who were much with him 
 in Sunday-school and prayer-meeting work. 
 
 I recall one striking illustration of this. 
 It was in the summer of 1859, wnen the 
 daily union prayer-meetings in Hartford 
 were held at the old Unitarian Church 
 then standing on the corner of Asylum and 
 Trumbull streets. He stepped in from the 
 
David Haw ley 35 
 
 street, at one of those meetings, just as the 
 leader was reading the familiar story of 
 Lazarus and Dives. It was a hot summer's 
 afternoon. Mr. Hawley came in half out 
 of breath, as if he had hurried to the place 
 of prayer from his round of daily toil ; but 
 his ear was quick to catch the words from 
 the Book of God. He took his seat, but, 
 as an invitation was given, he rose to speak. 
 " I suppose," he said, " that Dives had 
 never prayed before then. That was his 
 first prayer. He could have prayed before, 
 but he hadn't done it. It seems as if he 
 didn't dare to pray for much the first time, 
 as if he would only venture to pray for just 
 the smallest thing he could think of, — a sin- 
 gle drop of cold water ; that was all. And he 
 didn't ask God for even that. No ; he had 
 never prayed to God, and he didn't dare to 
 begin now. ' There's Father Abraham,' he 
 said, ' a fellow-mortal ; it may be he'll pity 
 me. Father Abraham, send to me — who ? 
 not one of the many angels flying about 
 on God's errands, but that poor beggar 
 
36 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 Lazarus, who used to lie at my door and 
 live on my crumbs. Father Abraham, send 
 the beggar Lazarus with one drop of cold 
 water to cool my burning tongue.' That 
 was all of Dives' first prayer. But even 
 that wasn't granted. No ; it was too late, 
 too late ! 
 
 "O my friends, just think of the differ- 
 ence in his case and yours of to-day ! You 
 can pray, not for little things, but for great. 
 You can call, not on Abraham, but on God. 
 You can ask him to send, not Lazarus, nor 
 an angel, but his Son the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 to bring down to you, not a single drop of 
 cold water, but a cup brimful of the water 
 of life ; and you can drink, and have your 
 soul satisfied. Blessed be God for this 
 privilege of prayer ! Let us pray." 
 
 HIS TACT IN DEALING WITH ALL. 
 
 Father Hawley was as skilful in the use of 
 his powers as he was original in his mental 
 characteristics. He showed rare tact in his 
 sayings and doings, whether dealing with a 
 
David Haw ley 37 
 
 mission scholar or a minister. When, for 
 instance, a little colored fellow ran into the 
 Morgan Street school, and with monkey- 
 like agility threw himself on his head in 
 front of the desk, and shook his bare feet 
 in the face of the superintendent, who was 
 opening his Bible to read a lesson for the 
 day, Mr. Hawley quickly turned the boy 
 on to his feet, and said pleasantly, as he 
 pointed him to a seat, "All right, my boy, 
 only the other end up in this room." And 
 the boy seemed to think that was fair. 
 
 When, again, a reference was made, at a 
 union religious meeting, to the small in- 
 crease in the attendance and membership 
 of the churches for some time back, Mr. 
 Hawley reminded the churches that their 
 efforts had been largely confined to work 
 on Main Street and westward, while the 
 masses nearer the river were unreached. 
 " Cast your nets on the other side of the 
 ship, brethren," he said, "and you'll be 
 hardly able to draw them for the multi- 
 tude of fishes." 
 
38 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 His work brought him among all classes 
 and with persons of every shade of religious 
 opinion; but he never had trouble with 
 anybody because of seeming differences. 
 No one could make an issue with him. 
 
 " We'd like to see your children in our 
 Sunday-school," he said to a mother one 
 day. 
 
 " They are Catholics," she answered, with 
 abrupt positiveness. 
 
 "Oh, no matter for that! We'll take 
 them just as soon" he said pleasantly, as if 
 that removed every possible barrier. There 
 were Jews who contributed regularly to his 
 Christmas mission-school dinners, because 
 of confidence in him and of interest in his 
 work. On the other hand, he and his co- 
 workers arranged to have the Jewish chil- 
 dren at those dinners provided with meats 
 prepared after their own fashion, that their 
 prejudices might not be offended. 
 
 There was a time, quite a number of years 
 ago, when some of the Hartford pastors who 
 have now passed to their reward thought 
 
David Hawley 39 
 
 that Father Hawley was not ready enough 
 to call on the city clergymen to bury the 
 dead out of homes he visited, but was him- 
 self too ready to conduct a funeral service in 
 an emergency. Lay work was then by no 
 means as common as now in the churches. 
 Sensitiveness on the subject increased, and 
 at one of the anniversary meetings of the 
 City Missionary Society, Mr. Hawley ad- 
 mitted his fault, and made his apologies. 
 
 " I am sometimes asked," he said, " why 
 I conduct funerals. Well, that isn't exactly 
 my work, and I suppose I oughtn't to do 
 it. But sometimes there comes to my 
 house a poor woman with whose garret- 
 home I am well acquainted. She tells me 
 her child is dead, and she wants him 
 buried. I tell her to go to a minister. 
 She says no ; she doesn't know any minis- 
 ter ; but she knows me, and the little boy 
 knew me, and she wants me to go down 
 and bury her dead. 
 
 " So I go out to my stock of clothing 
 and look up a few second-hand mourning 
 
40 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 garments, for I know how poor that family 
 is, and I roll up a little bundle. Then I 
 hitch up my horse and go down to the 
 poor woman's home, stopping on the way 
 to hire a hack at half-price. When I go 
 up the old stairs, I find four or five friends 
 and neighbors there. I give the mother 
 the old black dress. She slips it on. Then 
 I kneel down and pray with them there, 
 and maybe I say a few words. Then, if the 
 coffin is a small one, I take it into my own 
 wagon. The mother and the few friends 
 get into the hack, and we go to the bury- 
 ing-ground. There I help lower the coffin 
 into the grave, and cover it up. Then I 
 take the mother back home, and try to 
 comfort her, or to provide for her in her 
 need. Maybe this is all wrong, but some- 
 how I feel as if I couldn't help it." 
 
 It is hardly necessary to add that Father 
 Hawley was never disciplined for his ser- 
 vice with the mourning poor. The Hart- 
 ford clergymen came to value him and his 
 work more and more, and they who out- 
 
David Hatvley 41 
 
 lived him vied with one another in paying 
 honors to his memory at his funeral, and 
 subsequently in their own pulpits. 
 
 HIS BRIGHTNESS OF MIND 
 
 Brightness was a marked quality of 
 David Hawley's mind. There was a sen- 
 tentious pithiness in his sayings, with an 
 accompanying humor, which is almost in- 
 separable from true tenderness of feeling. 
 This made more effective the striking con- 
 trasts of light and shade by which he 
 brought into relief the pictures of his mis- 
 sion work, when presenting his always 
 notable annual reports to the public. Lis- 
 teners hardly knew whether the laugh or 
 the cry ought to come in first; so they 
 were quite likely to try both together. 
 
 Many will remember his mention of the 
 poor garret-home where he found dinner 
 cooking over an old stove propped up with 
 bricks, and with no door, the scanty fire 
 being made of the legs of the last chair 
 from the dreary room. " I lifted the pot 
 
42 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 cover," he said, "and there, under the clean 
 water, I saw a bare bone that had been 
 cooked over and over again ; and above it 
 two small potatoes and an onion were 
 chasing each other around looking for 
 meat." " One hundred tons of coal given 
 out during the year," he said, in making 
 another report. " Just think how many 
 little fires have been made with that coal, 
 how many little feet and hands have been 
 warmed by those fires, how many scanty 
 meals those fires have cooked ! You can't 
 imagine it," he added, " but I can ! " His 
 imagination put life into all his statistics. 
 
 Describing one of the pitiful funerals, for 
 conducting which he had been making ex- 
 cuses, he said, in his peculiar phrase : " As 
 I found myself minister, undertaker, and 
 funeral procession, I didn't at first know 
 what position I ought to take in the line ; 
 but as I had all the mourners with me, — 
 for the widow was in my wagon, — I con- 
 cluded it was right for me just then to fol- 
 low the hearse." 
 
David Hawley 43 
 
 COST AND WORTH OF LOVE AND LOYALTY 
 
 Although at first his labors were largely 
 in the direction of organizing mission 
 schools and gathering the unevangelized 
 under religious influence, he came gradu- 
 ally and naturally into the work of provid- 
 ing for the temporal necessities of the 
 poor of his great field. When he began 
 work in Hartford he had every department 
 to attend to ; but as intelligent workers 
 multiplied, and the zeal of the churches in- 
 creased, and the necessities of varied ser- 
 vice became more apparent, it was meet 
 that some one should be designated to 
 " serve tables " for the " daily ministration " 
 to the needy ; and so David Hawley, " a 
 man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost," 
 was appointed " over this business." 
 
 The demands for such work, and his 
 efforts to meet them, grew with the growth 
 of Hartford and of confidence in his ability 
 and judgment as an almoner of Christian 
 bounties. When he left Hartford for Syra- 
 
44 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 cuse, after ten years of labor here, he re- 
 ported that, in that period, he had received 
 some 20,000 calls for charity, and made 
 30,500 missionary visits. After his return 
 he reported, for a single year, 25,000 calls on 
 him for aid, and 2,500 visits made by him. 
 
 Oh, how he loved this work, and how 
 he was loved in it! In the spirit of his 
 Master he was touched with the feeling of 
 the infirmities of those to whom he minis- 
 tered. He gave them more than silver and 
 gold, in the tender sympathy with which 
 he shared their burdens. " I don't sleep 
 nights, Brother Trumbull," he said, during 
 one severe winter. " I carry three thou- 
 sand aching hearts to bed with me, and I 
 can't sleep for thinking of their sorrows." 
 Kind deeds commonly give sweet sleep to 
 their doer, but Father Hawley was so 
 large-hearted that he gave even of his re- 
 ward to the poor. 
 
 He would be active in loving even when 
 he could not be active in doing. But he 
 was paid for love in love. That was given 
 
David Hawley 45 
 
 back to him without measure or stint. 
 There was no one ever like him to the 
 poor in Hartford, and this they recognized. 
 
 " Who was the first man ? " was asked 
 of a scholar in Morgan Street. 
 
 " Mr. Hawley," he answered promptly. 
 
 And he was not far from right. Mr. 
 Hawley was to him the first man, — the 
 first to show a kindly interest in him, the 
 first to bring light and love into his 
 wretched home. Mr. Hawley was, in this 
 sense, the first man and the last to many a 
 child of poverty in Hartford. A touching 
 illustration of this occurred in the earlier 
 years of Mr. Hawley's labors here. On a 
 summer's day a little colored boy was 
 pushed into the Connecticut River by some 
 brutal white boys from a raft where he was 
 playing. He called loudly for help. The 
 cruel prejudices of caste were worse in 
 that city forty years ago than they are 
 to-day, and those who could have rescued 
 the little fellow refused their aid. Once 
 and again he sank and rose, calling pite- 
 
46 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 ously for assistance. As he came to the 
 surface of the water for the third time, he 
 turned his gaze along the river bank, look- 
 ing in vain for a single pitying eye. Then 
 his mind seemed to go out after the one 
 friend of the poor and neglected, who was 
 always to be trusted, and his piercing cry 
 went up, " Mr. Hawley, help ! help ! help ! 
 Mr. Hawley ! " When that poor boy went 
 down like lead under the waters, his dying 
 call echoed along the river bank as "the 
 blessing of him that was ready to perish " 
 on the one man in Hartford who was 
 known to be anxious to deliver " the poor 
 that cried," and " him that had none to 
 help." 
 
 " Mishter Hawley," I heard a poor Ger- 
 man woman say in broken English as I 
 visited with him one day, — " Mishter Haw- 
 ley, I vould give you mine blood, I's so 
 thankvul." And she meant it, as you 
 would have believed had you heard her tell 
 her story of his first visit to her dreary 
 home, where, with a drunken husband, 
 
David Hawley 47 
 
 she was struggling to keep her children 
 from starving, and of his bringing bread 
 and cheering words to her in her distress. 
 That woman well illustrated the feelings 
 of very many towards Mr. Hawley, — illus- 
 trated it in her acts as well as in her words. 
 
 When Mr. Hawley had moved to Syra- 
 cuse, and the poor woman never expected 
 to see him again, and had no thought of 
 ever receiving anything more from him, 
 she, in her poverty, longed to show her 
 gratitude to him, and she did it. 
 
 She bought a young turkey in the sum- 
 mer, and perseveringly fattened it by 
 dividing the scanty store of her household 
 food ; fed it when every ounce it ate cost 
 her so much more toil to feed her children ; 
 neglected neither children nor turkey until 
 November came. Then, on Thanksgiving 
 week, she killed and dressed that turkey, 
 and sent it by express to Mr. Hawley in 
 Syracuse. And she and her children were 
 the more thankful over their own dry 
 crusts because of the belief that Mr. Haw- 
 
48 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 ley enjoyed the Thanksgiving dinner they 
 had provided for him. 
 
 Ah ! there was a meaning in that moth- 
 er's words, — " Mishter Hawley, I vould 
 give you mine blood, I's so thankvul." 
 Who shall say that Father Hawley did not 
 live and die a rich man, with such a wealth 
 of love for his possession ! 
 
 LONGING FOR THE GREAT DAY. 
 
 It is, in every aspect, a good thing to 
 have representatives and illustrations of 
 pure and undefiled religion in a commu- 
 nity. It honors God, it helps the poor, it 
 comforts the sorrowing, it tends to lighten 
 the burden on every shoulder. Father 
 Hawley was unmistakably such a represen- 
 tative and illustration in the Hartford com- 
 munity ; for it is not more true that he 
 visited " the fatherless and widows in their 
 affliction " than that he kept himself " un- 
 spotted from the world." He was an 
 upright man, a godly man. Those who 
 knew him best realized this. His daily life 
 
David Hawley 49 
 
 was " an example of the believers." Even 
 in his heart of hearts, with all his con- 
 sciousness of a need of forgiveness and 
 salvation, he could say unfeignedly, " Lord, 
 thou knowest all things ; thou knowest 
 that I love thee." 
 
 I shall never forget an incidental illus- 
 tration of this truth, given by him some 
 years ago. I preached, in the Asylum Hill 
 Church in Hartford, a sermon on the sure 
 uncovering of character, — the certainty that, 
 sooner or later, a man's true character will 
 be known to the world ; that " there is 
 nothing covered, that shall not be revealed ; 
 and hid, that shall not be known." The 
 sermon closed with a reference to the gen- 
 eral judgment, and the suggestion that 
 then, if not before, all will be known of 
 every man's heart. This seemed to me a 
 thought from which almost any man would 
 shrink. But Father Hawley, who heard 
 the sermon, said to me pleasantly the next 
 day, as we met on the street : 
 
 " I tell you, Brother Trumbull, there's 
 
50 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 great comfort in that truth you brought 
 out. Sooner or later we shall be under- 
 stood. People may doubt us now, and 
 ascribe wrong motives to us, may say we 
 are doing this wrong thing or that, but the 
 Judgment Day will bring it out all straight. 
 Then they'll see us as we are. I tell you 
 there's comfort in that thought." 
 
 What a disclosure, that, of Father Haw- 
 ley's inner self ! When a man is looking 
 forward with longings to the Day of Judg- 
 ment, so that he may be known as he is, 
 there is not much in his character that he 
 ought to shrink from having uncovered. 
 
 HIS KIND INTEREST IN ME. 
 
 It was just twenty-four years before the 
 day when I preached Father Hawley's fune- 
 ral sermon that I, as a young convert with 
 a burning desire to show my love for my 
 newly confessed Saviour, found my way 
 down to the Morgan Street mission school, 
 and beean work there as a teacher, under 
 his direction. 
 
David Hawley 5 1 
 
 For years I worked with Father Haw- 
 ley, and learned from him. I came to 
 know him, to love him, and to honor him. 
 Father Hawley, on the other hand, had a 
 kindly interest in me, and early made up 
 his mind that I ought to be in the work of 
 the Christian ministry, and this long before 
 I ever thought of it as my special mission. 
 To this end, therefore, he looked and 
 prayed. 
 
 At one time he said to me earnestly, 
 using a forceful figure out of his farmer 
 experience, " Brother Trumbull, I hope the 
 Lord will harrow up your nest as often as 
 you build it outside of his field." At length, 
 after eleven years of waiting, he heard from 
 his home in Syracuse that I was to be 
 ordained as an army chaplain. Without 
 any special invitation, and at his own ex- 
 pense, he came to Hartford to see with his 
 own eyes the fulfilment of his desire for me. 
 As I stood up for examination before the 
 council, in the Centre Church lecture room, 
 I saw him on a back seat, watching the 
 
52 My Four Religions Teachers 
 
 proceedings with tearful eyes. In the even- 
 ing he sat an interested watcher, and lis- 
 tened through all the public services in the 
 church until he saw me rise as an ordained 
 clergyman to pronounce the benediction. 
 Then his joy seemed full. 
 
 As I came down from the pulpit, he met 
 me at the foot of its steps, and, taking my 
 hand, he said : " Brother Trumbull, I am 
 glad to see this hour, and now I have come 
 to ask a ministerial service of you. I 
 suppose you haven't had many calls in 
 that line yet [I had been an ordained 
 clergyman about fifteen minutes]. I want 
 you to promise to preach my funeral ser- 
 mon." As he saw my surprise, he added, 
 " I mean it, Brother Trumbull. You know 
 me and my work. We've been together a 
 great deal. I want you to preach my fu- 
 neral sermon." I answered, " Dear Father 
 Hawley, I hope you'll say a few words 
 at my funeral." " No," he replied ; " you'll 
 outlive me, and I want you to preach 
 my funeral sermon." As he pressed this 
 
David Hawley 53 
 
 point, I could not do less than give him 
 the desired promise. 
 
 It was nearly fourteen years before the 
 call came to me to fulfil that promise. 
 Again and again, meantime, Father Haw- 
 ley referred to his request and my promise 
 of then, and not long before his death he 
 informed his family of the arrangement he 
 had made with me. Living in Philadel- 
 phia at the time of his death, I went to my 
 old Hartford home to perform gratefully 
 my long-before promise of speaking earnest 
 words of him after his death, in memory 
 of this one of my early religious teachers. 
 
ONE WHO SPOKE TIMELY 
 
 AND POTENT WORDS : 
 
 ELIAS R. BEADLE 
 
 Dr. Beadle was, in his young manhood, 
 a missionary in Palestine and Syria. He 
 loved his Saviour, and in Christ's spirit he 
 loved souls; and "beginning at Jerusalem " 
 he was ever and everywhere at work for 
 them. It seemed to me that his winsome 
 voice was influenced in its very tones by 
 his speaking as a missionary in the Arabic 
 language. At all events, his spirit as a 
 missionary was evidenced in the way he 
 used his voice whenever he spoke in his 
 Saviour's name; and all who heard him 
 felt this to be so. 
 
 At the time of the remarkable ingathering 
 of young people to Christ's fold in the city 
 of Hartford, in 1852, the Pearl Street Con- 
 gregational Church was organized there, 
 and Dr. Beadle was called as its first pas- 
 tor. At once he won the young people's 
 54 
 
Elias R. Beadle 55 
 
 hearts, and older persons seemed to be of 
 the same mind. As I had been brought to 
 Christ at the same time with many of his 
 new charge, I shared their enjoyment of his 
 loving ministry. And the first time that he 
 had an opportunity of impressing himself 
 on the community as a whole I became 
 acquainted with his peculiar power. 
 
 A MEMORABLE PUBLIC FUNERAL. 
 
 It was at the time of the great religious 
 anniversaries in New York and Philadel- 
 phia, in May, 1853. The Baptist anniver- 
 saries were just over, in Philadelphia. On 
 the evening of May 5 the American Medi- 
 cal Association closed its sessions in New 
 York City with a grand banquet in Metro- 
 politan Hall, at which some eight hundred 
 physicians sat down to feast and chat to- 
 gether. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes read 
 a poem to them, and Drs. Francis and Det- 
 mold and Welford and Osgood of New 
 York, and Professor Knight of Yale Col- 
 lege, were among the more eminent speak- 
 
56 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 ers. The banquet continued until midnight, 
 but quite a number of its guests were up 
 early enough the next morning, of Friday, 
 May 6, to take the eight o'clock train on 
 the New Haven Road for their New Eng- 
 land homes. 
 
 At South Norwalk, Connecticut, the train 
 dashed into an open draw in consequence 
 of the criminal carelessness of the engineer, 
 who failed to look for the signal of safety 
 which alone could justify his leaving the 
 station, a half-mile below the bridge. It 
 was a frightful disaster. Nearly fifty per- 
 sons were killed outright, and many others 
 were injured more or less severely. 
 
 Among the prominent of the dead were 
 Dr. Abel L. Pierson, of Salem, Massachu- 
 setts, a distinguished surgeon and a mem- 
 ber of the American Academy of Arts and 
 Sciences ; Dr. Archibald Welch, of Hart- 
 ford, Connecticut ; Drs. Smith and Gray, of 
 Springfield, Massachusetts, and Dr. Beach", 
 of Bridgeport, Connecticut ; the Rev. Oliver 
 Burr, agent of Antioch College, Ohio, and 
 
Elias R. Beadle 57 
 
 the Rev. John H. Luhrs, of Williamsburg, 
 New York. Of the injured there were 
 Professor Tenbroeck, a daughter of the 
 Rev. Rufus W. Griswold, and the Rev. 
 J. G. Oncken, a Baptist missionary of Ger- 
 many, who, with a number of clergymen, 
 was returning from Philadelphia. Thomas 
 Hicks, the artist, and a number of well 
 known physicians, were of those who es- 
 caped unhurt. Dr. Smith, of Springfield, 
 was the father of Professor David P. Smith 
 of the same city, an eminent volunteer sur- 
 geon in the Civil War, and later a member 
 of the faculty of the Yale Medical School. 
 
 Dr. Archibald Welch, a prominent citi- 
 zen and a " beloved physician," one of 
 the victims, was the first of the members 
 of the then recently formed Pearl Street 
 Congregational Church to be taken away 
 by death. His funeral was held in the new 
 church edifice, and the occasion itself was 
 a memorable one. 
 
 The railroad horror had impressed the 
 entire community. The loss of Dr. Welch 
 
58 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 was felt as a personal one in a very wide 
 circle. At the funeral service the large 
 church was crowded to overflowing. The 
 members of the church wellnigh filled the 
 body of the house. The members of the 
 Hartford medical faculty were present in a 
 body, as also were the officers and direc- 
 tors of the New Haven Railroad Company. 
 In the pulpit with the Rev. Dr. Beadle 
 were the Rev. Drs. Joel Hawes and Mark 
 Tucker, former pastors of Dr. Welch. The 
 coffined remains of the dead physician 
 were just before the pulpit. The house 
 was draped in mourning. The entire con- 
 gregation was under the influence of deep 
 and strong feeling. 
 
 After the singing of a dirge, and other 
 impressive services of worship, Dr. Beadle 
 arose to speak the first direct words to the 
 great congregation. Looking from the 
 pulpit down upon the face of the dead, he 
 pointed to it significantly as he turned his 
 face to the members of the church, and 
 said in his tender and musical tones, which 
 
Elias R. Beadle 59 
 
 reached every ear and thrilled every heart 
 in that entire assembly : " Brethren, there 
 lies the first of our dead ! " And at that 
 utterance he paused for a moment, then 
 broke again the oppressive stillness with : 
 " The first, but not the last. Henceforth 
 for us the gates of death stand wide open, 
 day and night. God only knows who'll 
 pass through next ! " 
 
 A more effective enforcement of a timely 
 and important lesson from a great and 
 sudden bereavement I have never known 
 made by a single sentence than was mani- 
 fest when those words of Dr. Beadle sounded 
 in the ears of those who listened amid the 
 surroundings and in the circumstances of 
 that hour. Then he described the effect 
 of the news in the Hartford streets when 
 the first intelligence of the disaster was 
 flashed over the wires, and men were in 
 doubt as to who might be of its victims. 
 He told of the crowding toward the rail- 
 road station of men and women and chil- 
 dren with anxious hearts, when the first 
 
60 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 train was expected from Norvvalk bringing 
 home the injured passengers and fuller 
 lists of the lost and the saved. 
 
 " As we hurried down Asylum Street, we 
 heard the shriek of your locomotive whistle 
 at the curve below," he said, turning sud- 
 denly to the railroad directors. And then 
 he ejaculated with startling effectiveness, 
 " Would God it could have waked our 
 dead ! " 
 
 Dr. Beadle's words of that day re-echoed 
 in the ears of all his hearers while they 
 lived. And from that hour he was a 
 power as a speaker before any Hartford 
 audience. I give illustrations of his power 
 in this line, as better evidencing his spirit 
 and method than any description of which 
 I am capable. 
 
 GETTING HOLD OF MISSION-SCHOOL BOYS 
 
 The mission school in Hartford of which 
 I have spoken, where Father Hawley and 
 I worked together, and where I received 
 so much good, was what the English 
 
Elias R. Beadle 61 
 
 would call a " ragged -school." It was 
 made up of boys and girls of the very low- 
 est class in the community, out of homes 
 of squalor and of vice along the river-banks 
 in one of the poorer quarters of that city. 
 It was not an easy matter to catch and hold 
 the attention of that motley assemblage. 
 There was rarely a visitor who was equal 
 to the emergency. But Dr. Beadle won 
 the eyes and ears of all who were there 
 when first he came to that school. 
 
 Standing in front of the superintendent's 
 desk, before the school closed for the day, 
 he held up a common fresh-water clam- 
 shell, and called out: 
 
 " Boys, what is that ? " 
 
 " A clam-shell," cried a hundred voices. 
 
 "Yes, it's a clam-shell, — a rough, coarse, 
 clam-shell; just such a shell as you could 
 pick up any day by the bank of the river, 
 or back in the country by a brook in the 
 woods." 
 
 Then, turning the shell quickly in his 
 hand, he showed the other valve, the out- 
 
62 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 side of which had been beautifully pol- 
 ished, its iridescent colors reflecting the 
 light attractively. 
 
 " And what is that, boys ? " he said. 
 
 " That's a clam-shell, too," was the answer. 
 
 " Yes ; but see how much prettier this 
 side is. What makes the difference ? " 
 
 " It's been rubbed down," said one. 
 
 " It's been smoothed off, " said another. 
 
 " It's been polished up," said a third. 
 
 " Yes, that's it. And, boys, do you know 
 that's just what we are trying to do with 
 you in this Sunday-school ? We've brought 
 some of you in here as rough as the other 
 side of the clam-shell ; and now we are 
 trying to rub you down, to smooth you 
 off, to polish you up, so that you'll shine 
 like this side of the shell. This polishing 
 business is hard work, boys, and it takes 
 time ; but it pays." 
 
 Then Dr. Beadle pressed home the need 
 of soul-polishing in words which were 
 never forgotten in that room. He was 
 thenceforward known by those boys as 
 
Elias R. Beadle 63 
 
 " the clam-shell man ; " and they always 
 gave him a hearty welcome in their school- 
 room, or as they met him from time to time 
 in the street. Many of them were more 
 willing to be rubbed down and smoothed 
 off in consequence of his suggestive words 
 of then and later ; and some of them came 
 finally to have a character which reflected 
 beautifully the rays of the Sun of Right- 
 eousness. There were boys from that mis- 
 sion school to meet Dr. Beadle in heaven 
 as he went home to glory ; and others of 
 them are still living as polished shafts in 
 God's earthly temple, — " polished after the 
 similitude of a palace." 
 
 TENDER WORDS OF PARTING 
 
 " Father Hawley," of whom I have said 
 so much as my co-worker, and from whom 
 I learned so many things, was, as I have 
 shown, a man greatly beloved. Dr. Beadle 
 worked with him, and gave him help and 
 cheer in his work. By and by the city 
 missionary was called to Syracuse, and as 
 
64 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 he was leaving for his new field of labor 
 some of his many friends presented to him 
 a silver water-pitcher as a token of their 
 regard. Dr. Beadle made the presentation. 
 Speaking warmly of the loving labors of 
 Father Hawley in Hartford, and of the 
 hearts which would be heavy because of 
 his absence from them, he said, as he held 
 in his hand the parting gift : 
 
 " And when your own heart is heavy 
 with the sorrows of others, and your 
 thoughts turn back to those whom you 
 have loved and who love you here, then 
 may this pitcher be to you as the fabled 
 mirror which brings to view the faces of 
 those who are in the mind of the looker. 
 In its polished surface may you see smil- 
 ing upon you these faces which are now 
 turned to yours in glad affection; and back 
 of them may you see the worn and pale 
 faces of the poor and the sick to whom 
 you have ministered in their distress, and 
 the outstretched hands which you have 
 filled in the hour of their need. 
 
Elias R. Beadle 65 
 
 " And even as the sea-shell retains in its 
 inner chambers the murmur of the ocean 
 from which it is far removed, so may this 
 pitcher bring back remembered sounds to 
 you ; and as you put your ear to it may 
 you hear repeated these words of affection 
 we are speaking in heartiness to you to- 
 night; and may you hear again those thanks 
 of the friendless whom you have befriended, 
 of the helpless whom you have helped, 
 those trembling words of gratitude : ' I 
 was an hungered, and you gave me meat : 
 I was thirsty, and you gave me drink : I 
 was a stranger, and you took me in: I was 
 sick, and you visited me : I was in prison, 
 and you came unto me.' " 
 
 The memory of those loving words gave 
 encouragement and cheer to the untiring 
 missionary in many a weary hour there- 
 after ; and more sorrowing hearts were 
 comforted by his labors because of his help 
 from those re-echoing words. And thus 
 with many another to whom that man of 
 God spoke. 
 
66 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 A COLLEGE COMMENCEMENT DINNER 
 
 In the gatherings of the most cultured 
 Dr. Beadle was as felicitous as in the 
 presence of the commoner classes. On 
 one occasion he made an address at the 
 close of the Commencement dinner of 
 Trinity College. He was known to but 
 few of the alumni present. There was 
 no expectation aroused before his speech. 
 Sitting near him, and knowing him as well 
 as I did, I said confidentially to an Epis- 
 copal clergyman by my side, " Now you'll 
 see the starch taken out of white cravats." 
 And we saw it. 
 
 Dr. Beadle had then been passing some 
 months in the West Indies for his health, 
 and during that time he had been quite ill. 
 Referring to his recent life in the tropics, 
 he said : " No natural object in that arid 
 region had more attraction to me than the 
 stately palm-tree, with its graceful form and 
 its refreshing shade. And the manner of 
 its growth is recalled to me as I see these 
 
Elias R. Beadle 67 
 
 successive college classes, in their represen- 
 tatives here to-day. Out of the heart of 
 the palm-tree there comes a cluster of 
 young leaves — like the graduating class 
 of to-day — standing together for a time 
 above all about them, and then separating 
 without losing all connection with the 
 parent stock, to spread into an encircling 
 frieze, which is to be covered in turn by 
 the next unfolding cluster from above; 
 and so the growth of the tree, like that of 
 the college, is marked by the successive 
 courses of unfolded leaves, the younger 
 ones seeming to stretch themselves over 
 the others to shield them from the sun, lest 
 they should wither and fall too soon. 
 
 " O, how grateful was the shade of the 
 palm-tree to one who was weary, as I 
 was in that dry and thirsty land ! But 
 dearer far to me, my friends, than all else 
 which I came to enjoy in the tropics, was 
 the shelter of a tree which I there found 
 planted by the rivers of living water, 
 which had been started into its beautiful 
 
68 My Fo7ir Religions Teachers 
 
 growth under the shadow of Trinity Col- 
 lege walls." 
 
 By this time the college alumni were 
 aroused, and they listened with bated 
 breath to the musical flow of the words 
 that followed. " It was while I lay on a 
 bed of sickness, far from home and friends, 
 seemingly called to die uncared for and 
 alone, that there came to my bedside one 
 of God's dear children, a brother in Christ, 
 to look sympathy into my eyes, to speak 
 words of comfort to my heavy ears, to 
 fan my fevered brow, and to mingle his 
 thoughts with mine, until as we held sweet 
 converse together in Christ Jesus I came 
 to love him as if we had been born of the 
 same mother, and nourished at the same 
 breast. His fellowship and his prayers 
 gave me new comfort and new life; and 
 now, as I stand here before the alumni of 
 his Alma Mater, I say with all my heart, 
 God bless John Du Bois, of the class of 
 1854." 
 The effect of this climax was irresistible. 
 
Elias R. Beadle 69 
 
 The classmates of Du Bois led in such 
 demonstrative applause that, as the other 
 classes joined in with the cheers and the 
 table-pounding which resounded for several 
 minutes after Dr. Beadle had closed his 
 address, glasses and crockery were literally 
 shattered into fragments up and down the 
 table. 
 
 And these are but a few illustrations out 
 of a multitude which might be given to 
 show the power and impressiveness of the 
 words which were long ago uttered by one 
 who " being dead, yet speaketh." 
 
GOODNESS AND GREATNESS 
 
 AMONG ALL : HORACE 
 
 BUSHNELL 
 
 All who know anything of greatness 
 know about and honor Horace Bushnell. 
 As the years go on his name and fame 
 grow, and it is more and more manifest to 
 the world that his is 
 
 " One of the few, the immortal names, 
 That were not born to die." 
 
 His greatness all know, but his exceeding 
 goodness and his rare lovableness could be 
 realized only by those who were privileged 
 to know him intimately, and for whose 
 welfare and training he had a generous 
 sense of kind responsibility. 
 
 PERCEIVING THE BEST IN OTHERS 
 
 One indication of greatness is the readi- 
 ness of the great man to perceive undis- 
 closed possibilities in the ordinary man. 
 A street boy, with a piece of smoked glass, 
 70 
 

 
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 1 -# .£ 
 
 
 
 ffl^Hf 
 
 "*"" 
 
 
 ■M^s Jl 
 
 
 
 cy^^^td^ (^^L^^^^y 
 
Horace Bushnell ji 
 
 can see the spots on the noonday sun. It 
 takes the keen-eyed scientist with his spec- 
 troscope to discern the brighter colors of 
 every ray of the sun in its course. Simi- 
 larly, every preacher can perceive the de- 
 fects in the sayings and doings of a young 
 man just beginning to work for his Master. 
 But only the superior lover of Christ and of 
 his fellows can recognize in a young worker 
 indications of promise that are worthy of 
 cultivation and development. And there- 
 fore it is that such a man as Horace Bush- 
 nell incidentally does so much in bringing 
 out and bringing up men whom a lesser 
 man would never have deemed worthy of 
 special notice and effort at training. 
 
 As illustrative of this, on one occasion I 
 was with him when he listened to a young 
 clergyman who was fresh from the theo- 
 logical seminary. As usual, Dr. Bushnell 
 was looking for the best things rather than 
 the poorer, and he found them. After the 
 service he spoke to me enthusiastically 
 about the sermon. 
 
J2 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 " Wasn't that fine ? When he announced 
 his text I busied myself thinking how he 
 would treat it. I was greatly pleased with 
 his opening. Then I tried to keep ahead 
 of him in my thoughts. At every point he 
 was up to the best I could think of, or 
 better. And when the sermon was finished 
 I felt like throwing my arms around him 
 and kissing him." 
 
 No smaller man than Dr. Bushnell could 
 have seen all that he saw in that young 
 preacher's sermon ; but it was in such 
 ways that his pre-eminence was all the 
 time showing itself. That young preacher 
 afterwards had occasion to rejoice, through 
 all his maturer life, in the interest shown 
 in him in his earlier years by good Dr. 
 Bushnell, whom all the world knew to be 
 great. And this was only one young man 
 among many who were thus favored and 
 blessed. 
 
 As almost from the beginning of my 
 Christian life I was under the ceaseless 
 influence, and had the matchless inspira- 
 
Horace Bushnell 73 
 
 tion, of Dr. Bushnell's unequaled person- 
 ality during all the later years of his royal 
 life, I have reason, indeed, to count him as 
 pre-eminently one of my personal religious 
 teachers. Even though favored of God 
 with these advantages for, and inducements 
 to, well doing and the exercise of a right 
 spirit in God's service, I have failed to do 
 the work I should have done. Yet, un- 
 satisfactory as is my record, I should have 
 done far less in my life had I not been so 
 stimulated, instructed, and guided by this 
 teacher, this teacher of teachers, Horace 
 Bushnell the peerless one; and for him 
 and his gracious favor and rare patience 
 and loving endeavors I thank God con- 
 tinually. 
 
 HIS WAY OF VIEWING AND USING 
 BIBLE WORDS 
 
 Perhaps the best key to the distinctive 
 thinking of Dr. Bushnell, in the realm of 
 biblical or religious truth, is to be found in 
 his essay entitled "Our Gospel a Gift to the 
 
74 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 Imagination." It is to be found, in his 
 completed works, in the volume called 
 " Building Eras," but it first appeared as a 
 contribution to " Hours at Home." It is a 
 condensation and reshaping of the ideas 
 in his extended " Essay on Language," pre- 
 fixed to his earlier volume, " God in 
 Christ." It aims to show that, necessarily, 
 the truth concerning the spiritual and the 
 infinite cannot be stated in precise human 
 language, since all human words have a 
 human origin with human limitations. 
 Such words, when employed to convey 
 truth which is beyond the realm of sight 
 and sense, have their main value in sug- 
 gesting, not in defining, the higher mean- 
 ing. This essay has perhaps done more 
 than any other single chapter of his works 
 to enable readers to appreciate and enter 
 into the spirit and atmosphere of his think- 
 ing, and, as it did very much to influence 
 my character and life work, I want to tell 
 something of it just here. 
 
 When, after the beginning of our Civil 
 
Horace Bushnell 75 
 
 War, I unexpectedly found myself in the 
 ranks of the Christian ministry without 
 any previous theological training, through 
 the call to an army chaplaincy, Dr. Bush- 
 nell more than doubled his loving en- 
 deavors to inspire and guide me. After 
 my return from the war, I was accustomed 
 to take long walks with him in the suburbs 
 of the city, and to enjoy the privilege of 
 free converse and discussion about matters 
 in which I most needed help. 
 
 One day, in the early part of 1 869, as we 
 walked, he asked, in his frank way, what I 
 thought of a sermon I had heard him 
 preach the Sunday before. In that sermon 
 he had incidentally touched on the work 
 which Jesus Christ wrought for our salva- 
 tion, and in so doing he had given ex- 
 pression to his peculiar views on the 
 Atonement. These views had jarred on 
 my traditional prejudices, and I told him 
 so with entire frankness. At that time I 
 had not visited the East, nor gained any 
 familiarity with Oriental forms of speech. 
 
j6 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 Like many others, I took Bible words in 
 dead Western literalness, and, in conse- 
 quence, I saw little below the surface. I 
 closed my comments on Dr. Bushnell's 
 sermon with the statement : 
 
 " You know, Doctor, that I differ with 
 you in all this." 
 
 " Trumbull, you don't differ with me in 
 my view of the Atonement." 
 
 " Yes, I do, Doctor." 
 
 " Well, you don't hold the view I com- 
 bat. You don't hold the slaughter-house 
 theory of the Atonement." 
 
 " Yes," I said, " I think I do. I believe 
 that ' the blood of Jesus Christ . . . cleans- 
 eth us from all sin.' " 
 
 "Well, you don't hold the commercial 
 view." 
 
 " Yes, I think I do. I believe that we 
 are ' bought with a price.' " 
 
 " Well, you don't hold these views in the 
 sense in which I am speaking of them," 
 said the good Doctor, kindly. Then he 
 added : 
 
Horace Bushnell 77 
 
 " Trumbull, I've just sent an article to 
 'Hours at Home' that'll soon be out. I 
 want you to read it. It covers all this 
 very ground." 
 
 " I shall be glad to read it," I said sin- 
 cerely, without anticipating any marked 
 effect from its reading, if it were on this 
 particular theme. 
 
 Some weeks after, as I again walked 
 with the Doctor, he asked me : 
 
 " Have you read my article yet, Trum 
 bull?" 
 
 " No, I haven't," I replied, 
 
 " Well, I want you to." 
 
 " I mean to, Doctor." 
 
 A fortnight after, the Doctor asked me 
 again : 
 
 " Trumbull, have you read my article in 
 ' Hours at Home ' ? " 
 
 When I again answered in the negative, 
 the good Doctor stopped, stood before me, 
 and, taking hold of me with both hands, 
 said : 
 
 " Trumbull, I want you to read that. I 
 
J% My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 ask you to read it for my sake. Now, 
 promise me you will." 
 
 " I will, Doctor," I said earnestly. " I'll 
 stop, as I go home, and get the magazine, 
 and then read the article at once." 
 
 The next time I met the Doctor, he asked : 
 
 " Have you read my article yet ? " 
 
 " Well," I answered slowly, " I've read it 
 twice over, and have thought a good deal 
 about it ; but I want to read it again, and 
 think more over it, before I decide what I 
 do think of it." 
 
 The Doctor's face brightened, his keen 
 eyes twinkled, his lips broke into a smile, 
 he stuck out his thumb and poked it into 
 my side, as he said, with a peculiar tone of 
 triumph in his voice: 
 
 " Ah ! the pizen's workin'." 
 
 And it was — in the sense in which he 
 meant that ! That essay rent the veil from 
 before my mind. I had lost nothing. I 
 had gained much. I could never again 
 be a blind child, in the presence of that 
 which the noonday sun brought to light. 
 
Horace Bushnell 79 
 
 As I talked of that truth afterward with 
 the Doctor, I spoke of the growing gain it 
 was to me since I comprehended its real 
 significance. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " it grows on me all the 
 time. I see now the truth there is in many 
 forms I once vigorously opposed. I could 
 stand now a pretty good examination in 
 the Westminster Catechism." Then, after 
 a pause, he added, " Or in almost any 
 other catechism." 
 
 HIS PART IN OUR CIVIL WAR 
 
 Although Dr. Bushnell believed and 
 taught that Bible words are utterly inade- 
 quate to the declaring of spiritual and infi- 
 nite truths except by suggestion, he prized 
 and could most forcibly use the words of 
 the Bible at times when they were pecu- 
 liarly needed, and when he would show 
 that a truth he pressed had the Divine 
 sanction. In this he exhibited rare power, 
 as illustrated in his many felicitous sermon 
 texts, and also in his public prayers. 
 
80 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 In the second year of our Civil War, 
 President Lincoln on one occasion asked 
 that the loyal citizens of the country should 
 assemble on a given Sunday in their re- 
 spective places of worship, at the close of 
 the usual forenoon service, and unite in 
 prayer for the country in its peril. Dr. 
 Bushnell preached that Sunday in the 
 Pearl Street Congregational Church. At 
 the close of the forenoon service, he came 
 down from the pulpit, and took his posi- 
 tion, as the leader of the proposed meeting. 
 His opening words of prayer thrilled us all : 
 
 " O God, we thank thee for teaching our 
 hands to war and our fingers to fight. 
 Thou hast taught us that the magistrate 
 beareth not the sword in vain, — and if he 
 doesn't bear it in vain, he must use it, and 
 if he can't use it alone, we must help him 
 use it." 
 
 Here was the justification for our war in 
 defense of national authority, backed by 
 the Old Testament and the New, shown in 
 no strained use of Scripture, but in evident 
 
Horace Bushnell 8 1 
 
 accord with both its letter and its spirit. 
 Then he went on to plead earnestly for 
 God's help to those who had risen up to 
 aid the God-given powers in this crisis- 
 hour of the nation's struggle. All who 
 listened to that prayer went out from that 
 place in a new spirit of consecration and 
 faith for the work which God had laid on 
 them to do. 
 
 Dr. Bushnell had his full part in prepar- 
 ing the public mind for the struggle of 
 that national conflict. He early saw the 
 issue approaching, and he guided his peo- 
 ple, and many beyond them, as it cul- 
 minated in actual warfare. His sermon, 
 published at a time while Northern men 
 were hesitating whether to yield or to stand 
 firm, from the text, " Shall iron break the 
 northern iron and the steel?" had its posi- 
 tive influence in convincing them of their 
 duty of the hour. When the disaster of 
 the first Bull Run staggered their confi- 
 dence, his voice rang out in clarion tones, 
 " If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy 
 
82 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 strength is small," — and men whom he 
 reached regained their poise. 
 
 From his congregation there went out 
 scores of the bravest and the best young 
 men to bear their full part in the mighty 
 conflict, and they felt his impress in their 
 going and in their doing. He kept in 
 touch with them all along. Meeting one 
 of his active church-members, who had 
 entered the army as lieutenant in a light 
 battery, and was at home on a brief leave, 
 he accosted him cheerily with : 
 
 " Glad to see you, Metcalf. Killed any- 
 body yet ? " 
 
 " I don't know as I can say that I have." 
 
 " Time you had. That's what you went 
 out for." 
 
 When that lieutenant fell, mortally 
 wounded, in the battle of Drewry's Bluff, 
 after doing thoroughly what he was out 
 for, a warm-hearted surgeon said to him, 
 as he examined the wound : 
 
 " Lieutenant, you've got to die ; are you 
 ready ? " 
 
Horace Bushnell 83 
 
 " Oh, yes, indeed, Doctor ! if I hadn't 
 been, I shouldn't have been here," and the 
 lieutenant opened his eyes to look pleas- 
 antly on the surgeon, and then restfully 
 closed them to earth. 
 
 When I reported this to good Dr. Bush- 
 nell, it seemed to thrill him with sympa- 
 thetic pride, as if he realized that another 
 of his children in the faith had lived to a 
 purpose and died to a purpose. 
 
 When, at the close of the war, Yale Col- 
 lege, his Alma Mater, honored her many 
 soldier sons by a commemorative celebra- 
 tion, Dr. Bushnell was invited to deliver 
 the oration. It seemed to me that he was 
 never grander than on that occasion. The 
 armies were not yet disbanded, but from 
 many fields and posts officers and men 
 came to share in the impressive services of 
 that day. Starred names which the whole 
 nation delighted to honor were there, and 
 officers of every grade in the army and the 
 navy, together with the host of common 
 soldiers of uncommon worth, and digni- 
 
84 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 taries of church and state, besides the or- 
 dinary college assembly, made up an 
 inspiring audience. 
 
 The Doctor was himself the central fig- 
 ure of the hour, not merely because of his 
 position, but by his character and mental 
 and moral power. He stood there like an 
 inspired prophet of old to give his message 
 and to bear his witness. He had, in one 
 sense, been in more battles than any veteran 
 before him. His face and figure showed 
 scars that came of conflicts with intellec- 
 tual and spiritual giants. And in his 
 countenance was the clear light of assured 
 triumph in faith. All present looked up to 
 him with admiration and reverence. But 
 the temptation to speak words of praise 
 and honor to the heroes before him had no 
 power to swerve him from his duty of 
 pointing all to the recognition of " Our 
 Obligations to the Dead." He uplifted 
 himself, and he uplifted his hearers, as he 
 pointed away from the noblest of the living 
 to the nobler dead who had died for them. 
 
Horace Bushncll 85 
 
 His words for them made all ready to give 
 them higher honor. 
 
 " No, no, ye living ! It is the ammuni- 
 tion spent that wins the battle, not the 
 ammunition brought off from the field. 
 These dead are the spent ammunition of 
 the war, and theirs, above all, is the vic- 
 tory. Upon what, indeed, turned the ques- 
 tion of the war, but on the dead that could 
 be furnished ; or, what is in no wise differ- 
 ent, the life that could be contributed for 
 that kind of expenditure ? These grim 
 heroes, therefore, dead and dumb, that 
 have strewed so many fields with their 
 bodies, — these are the price and purchase- 
 money of our triumph. A great many of 
 us were ready to live, but these offered 
 themselves, in a sense, to die, and by their 
 cost the victory is won." 
 
 GENEROUS REGARD FOR VIEWS OF OTHERS 
 
 There was a charming naturalness and 
 simplicity in the ordinary ways of Dr. 
 Bushnell with reference to his own achieve- 
 
86 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 ments and the comments on them by- 
 others. He seemed pleased when an ap- 
 preciative hearer spoke warmly of any- 
 thing he had done or said. For a time, 
 during the later years of his pastorate, he 
 gave the afternoons on Sunday to a congre- 
 gational Bible-school service, with a com- 
 mon theme of study for all the classes, and 
 at the close an address from himself on the 
 theme for the day. One afternoon I was 
 present when the subject of study was John 
 the Baptist. In that fifteen minutes' clos- 
 ing address of the Doctor, I gained more 
 light on the work and mission of John the 
 Baptist, and his place with reference to the 
 old dispensation and the new, than I had 
 ever gained from all the commentaries, or 
 than has come to me since from all other 
 sources. As I thanked the Doctor for his 
 fresh exposition, he said, with child-like 
 enthusiasm in the subject, which had evi- 
 dently deeply interested him : 
 
 " Don't you think I met the common 
 difficulties in John's case pretty well ? It 
 
Horace Bushnell 87 
 
 seems to me that that's the way to place 
 him." 
 
 I heard Bushnell preach his great ser- 
 mon on "Building Eras in Religion" at 
 the dedication of the Park Church, occu- 
 pied by his old charge. I had never seen 
 him when he so soared above the plane of 
 common humanity, and so reveled in the 
 visions of the far future open to his pro- 
 phetic gaze, as while he treated Ezekiel's 
 glowing vision of the restored temple and 
 its spiritual teachings. It was two weeks 
 after that evening that I first had the op- 
 portunity of telling him of my enthusiasm 
 
 about that sermon. 
 
 "Well, / thought that sermon was a 
 
 p-ood one. It took hold of me. But some- 
 
 how it didn't seem to impress others so. 
 
 Hardly any one has spoken to me about 
 
 it." 
 
 When I heard another of his great ser- 
 mons, I was particularly pleased with its 
 opening sentences, and they fastened them- 
 selves in my memory. Two years later 
 
88 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 that sermon, with others, appeared in a 
 new volume. Its vigorous opening was 
 toned down to a less striking beginning. 
 Meeting the Doctor, I told him that I 
 missed the sentences with which he began 
 when he preached it, and then I repeated 
 them to him. 
 
 " So you liked that, — did you ? So did 
 /, but Mrs. Bushnell made me change it." 
 
 Dr. Bushnell was great in any aspect 
 you viewed him, and the more one was 
 with him the more one felt this. One 
 day, as I was walking with him, and he 
 had been pouring out the treasures of his 
 rich thoughts for my benefit, I burst out 
 with : 
 
 " O Doctor, you are simply grand ! How 
 good it is to be with you ! There's no one 
 in the world like you? 
 
 "Oh, no! Trumbull, I just look at truth 
 from another corner of the room, that's all." 
 
 But who like him could find that corner ? 
 And what a privilege it was to hear him 
 tell what he had seen as he stood there ! 
 
Horace Bushnell 89 
 
 It is undoubtedly true that the storm of 
 opposition raised against Dr. Bushnell, in 
 his earlier ministry, by representatives of 
 different schools of theological thought, 
 was rather because of the havoc made with 
 their pet forms of dogma by his attacks on 
 all human explanations of spiritual truths 
 as necessarily incomplete and partial, than 
 because of people's belief that he directly 
 denied, or squarely took issue with, any 
 biblical declaration of a truth, vital or less 
 important. It was not so much that he 
 was felt to be in error, as that he evidently 
 claimed that others were not absolutely 
 correct in their statements of doctrine, and 
 therefore they felt he must be wrong. 
 
 When he stated and applied a great truth 
 in the realm of character or action or provi- 
 dence, he quickened thought and carried 
 conviction. Even men who were preju- 
 diced against him as " heretical " or " un- 
 sound " theologically, were ready to admit 
 the exceptional value of his thinking and 
 teaching in these other realms. It was 
 
90 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 only when he opened fire on the earth- 
 works of the defenders of a formal system 
 of doctrine that he had to meet the return 
 fire from enemies all along the line, — front, 
 flank, and rear. 
 
 His book, "The Vicarious Sacrifice," 
 essayed to indicate or define the nature 
 and necessity and limits of the " Atone- 
 ment," according to his view of truth. 
 This book was violently combated. After 
 a while he supplemented, and, in a sense, 
 modified, this, by another volume, " For- 
 giveness and Law." This was, in one 
 sense, an illustration of his ever-readiness 
 to revise or change his opinions as new 
 light broke in on him. In another sense, 
 it showed that not even he could employ 
 human language to so define truths in the 
 realm of the spiritual and the infinite as to 
 convey them to the human mind without a 
 possibility of misconception or error. At 
 the best, these volumes were but essays in 
 the direction of the limits of the illimitable. 
 
 When Dr. Bushnell wrote " Forgiveness 
 
Horace Bushnell 91 
 
 and Law/' he felt that it was a decided ad- 
 vance on his earlier volume, " The Vicari- 
 ous Sacrifice," and he believed that it would 
 be generally recognized as such. It was a 
 surprise to him that his own friends did 
 not give it a heartier welcome. Before he 
 published it, he read it in manuscript to 
 his brethren in the ministerial association 
 in Hartford, to which he belonged, in order 
 to avail himself of their opinions and sug- 
 gestions. He was evidently desirous that 
 his special friends should be present, and 
 he took pains to notify several of them, in 
 advance, of this wish. They gathered in 
 the parlors of the South Congregational 
 Church. He was nearly four hours in its 
 reading. Then all in turn expressed their 
 views on it. 
 
 Professor Calvin E. Stowe, one of the 
 more conservative of those present, led off. 
 He said, good-naturedly : 
 
 " The Doctor's gaining. If he revises a 
 few more times, he'll be pretty near the truth." 
 
 Then he showed where he agreed with 
 
92 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 Dr. Bushnell in his statements, and where 
 he disagreed. 
 
 Dr. Samuel J. Andrews, author of " The 
 Life of our Lord," commented in his sweet 
 spirit. Dr. Nathaniel J. Burton spoke out 
 in his robust, hearty, appreciative way. Dr. 
 E. P. Parker and Joseph H. Twichell, while 
 recognizing the good in this as in all things 
 from the Doctor's pen, were frank to say 
 that they felt he would gain nothing ma- 
 terially by its publishing. It would simply 
 seem to indicate a wavering on his part as 
 to his original position. It would in no 
 sense satisfy his old enemies, and would be 
 rather a confusion to his friends. And so 
 the comments went around. 
 
 It was evident that the Doctor was sur- 
 prised, if not indeed disappointed, at the 
 reception his work had met. He had sup- 
 posed that these friends, at least, would 
 think more of it. In his rejoinder he 
 spoke of the principal objections raised, 
 and then he came to the view taken by 
 those who had spoken of it depreciatingly. 
 
Horace Bushnell 93 
 
 " As to what Parker and Twichell say, — 
 that there's nothing in it, — I confess I can't 
 understand. It's a mystery to me, — a great 
 deal more of a mystery than the Atone- 
 ment." 
 
 As I walked away from that conference 
 with Dr. Bushnell, I spoke to him of my 
 thought about his claim that it was a 
 necessity in God's nature to make a sacri- 
 fice for his sinning children, in order to over- 
 whelm the new barrier of their sins by the 
 added floods of his love. I said it seemed 
 to me that a human mother's love could 
 go out to a disobedient child at the fullest, 
 without any added personal sacrifice on 
 her part as a necessity of her nature, and I 
 did not see why the Divine Father might 
 not have similar power of love. 
 
 " O Trumbull ! I'm not speaking of the 
 cow-and-calf love. I'm taking the moral 
 element of the love into account, — the love 
 which God feels and which is God-like." 
 
 Then, having thus sharply drawn this 
 line between love and love, between the 
 
94 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 mere love of the cow and calf and the love 
 which God is, he went on to explain more 
 fully its bearing on the theme of his new 
 volume. Having reached his home, after 
 parting with me, he wrote out more carefully 
 his views, that he might help me to a better 
 understanding of it as it lay in his mind. 
 
 Some time after this, as we walked to- 
 gether, I ventured to say to the Doctor with 
 reference to this whole matter, as showing 
 why some of those who looked to him 
 most admiringly were unable to accept 
 fully his explanations of the inexplicable : 
 
 " You must remember, Doctor, that you 
 have taught us that these greatest truths 
 cannot be expressed in human language. / 
 was slow to learn this, but at last you got it 
 into even me, through your ' Our Gospel a 
 Gift to the Imagination.' Then having con- 
 vinced us of the utter futility of such an at- 
 tempt, you undertake it yourself, and you 
 wonder that we do not at once accept as 
 final your definitions of forgiveness and 
 salvation, and their relations to law." 
 
Horace BusJincll 95 
 
 Then I added : " You know, Doctor, how 
 great I think you are, and how I prize 
 your opinions, and I assure you I am 
 ready to admit that when we get beyond 
 the realm of the finite I shall probably see 
 that you have been nearer right in your 
 thoughts and ideas than anybody else. 
 But as we are, here and now, I don't think 
 that God intends me to feel that his truth 
 on these subjects is disclosed and defined 
 by your explanations of them." 
 
 I mention these venturesome remarks of 
 mine as preliminary to an incident showing 
 Dr. Bushnell's wonderful consideration of 
 the views and prejudices of those whom he 
 was influencing. Although of a positive 
 nature, he was in no sense bigoted or dog- 
 matic, and he could not properly be called 
 opinionated. While he held his opinions 
 firmly, he was always ready to consider 
 the views of another, and to revise or 
 modify his own, as God gave him more 
 light. It was ever true of him, as he said 
 of the venerable Dr. Noah Porter of Farm- 
 
96 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 ington after his death, " He kept his win- 
 dows open to the last, willing to know any- 
 thing possible to be known." 
 
 In those days, while living in Hartford, I 
 was absent from home much of the time, in 
 the discharge of my Sunday-school duties. 
 Only now and then could I have a Sunday 
 there. If, when I was to be in town over 
 Sunday, I saw by the Saturday's papers 
 that Dr. Bushnell was to preach in one of 
 the churches, I was sure to go and hear 
 him. One Sunday I heard him preach, at 
 the South Church, his sermon on " The 
 Coronation of the Lamb," afterwards in- 
 cluded in his volume, " Sermons on Living 
 Subjects." While I was uplifted by it as a 
 whole, I could not give assent to certain in- 
 cidental references to his peculiar views of 
 sacrifice and atonement, and I frankly told 
 him so as we talked it over subsequently. 
 
 Several weeks later, I had another Sun- 
 day in Hartford. Seeing that Dr. Bushnell 
 was to preach at the Asylum Hill Church, 
 I gladly went there. I saw by the selected 
 
Horace Bushnell 97 
 
 hymns and Scripture readings that he was 
 to preach that same sermon, and I was 
 gratified that I could hear it again. After 
 service, I met Dr. Philip Schaff in the 
 house, and we two joined Dr. Bushnell and 
 walked down the hill with him. Presently 
 Dr. Bushnell said : 
 
 " Trumbull, I was disturbed when I saw 
 you come in this morning." 
 
 " How so ? " I asked. 
 
 " Why, I said, ' There's Trumbull. He's 
 come to hear me preach, and this is the 
 very sermon I preached the last time he 
 heard me.' " 
 
 "Well, Doctor, when I saw by the 
 hymns that you were to preach that ser- 
 mon, I was more than glad, for I think I 
 can always get more out of one of your 
 sermons on the second hearing than on 
 the first. I watched this one with especial 
 care this morning, and I'll tell you frankly 
 that it didn't seem to jar on me this time, 
 at the points I talked over with you, as it 
 did the other time." 
 
98 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 " I think quite likely, Trumbull. They 
 were not there. After that talk with you, 
 I went home and looked that sermon over. 
 I said to myself, ' I've stuck too much of 
 Bushnell into this. Those things are not 
 essential here. If they trouble Trumbull, 
 they may trouble somebody else.' So I 
 struck them out." 
 
 Bushnell was as great in his child-like 
 openness of mind as in the giant grasp of 
 his mighty intellect. He could be always 
 teaching. He would be always learning, 
 — from his pupils as from his peers. And 
 in such ways he was alike winsome and 
 potent, while he scattered seed-thoughts 
 broadcast, and as he gave them out by 
 handfuls to young planters or older ones. 
 
 I have already spoken of Dr. Bushnell's 
 loving desire and persistent endeavor to 
 lead me out from the bondage of dead 
 literalism, in which I was bound, into the 
 larger liberty of God's truth as beyond 
 human expression. In this was his great- 
 est work for me, as for many others. But 
 
Horace Bushnell 99 
 
 he did his work for me in little things as 
 in larger, and he was lovingly doing or 
 endeavoring to do all the time. When the 
 Civil War was over, and I returned from 
 the army chaplaincy, Dr. Bushnell seemed 
 to have set his mind on having me in the 
 pastorate in some place where I could do 
 an important work for Christ and for souls. 
 In several instances he came to me with 
 invitations from prominent churches, east 
 and west, which would have been tempting 
 had I felt I had a right to accept them. 
 Of course, it was his potent words with 
 those churches that had secured these in- 
 vitations, and it was his loving and gener- 
 ous opinion of me that had made him 
 speak those words ; but at the time I had 
 the invitation as pressed by him to con- 
 sider seriously. 
 
 Besides being in doubt as to whether I 
 should be able, at the best, to fill such a 
 place and do such a work as his generous 
 estimate had secured an invitation to, I 
 had another and a better reason for declin- 
 
IOO My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 ing it. I felt that God had called me to 
 the Sunday-school work, and in that I 
 must remain until he called me to leave it. 
 The question was not what my friends, or 
 what I, thought was best, but what God 
 knew to be the place where he would have 
 me. As the years passed on, however, Dr. 
 Bushnell came to value more highly the 
 Sunday-school and its work in comparison 
 with other agencies in God's kingdom. 
 When, at my urgent request, he consented 
 to preach a sermon at the opening of a Sun- 
 day-school convention for which I was 
 responsible, he gave evidence of this, and 
 caused others to feel it. That sermon was 
 entitled, " God's Thoughts Fit Bread for 
 Children." It is included in his published 
 works, and some of its precious utterances 
 are worthy of being read and pondered by 
 preachers and teachers who have not yet 
 come up to its high standard and high 
 plane. 
 
 Meeting me one day, not long before his 
 death, Dr. Bushnell said heartily : 
 
Horace Bushncll 101 
 
 " Trumbull, you knew better than I did 
 where the Lord wanted you. I honestly 
 thought the pulpit was a bigger place for 
 you, and I tried to get you into it. But 
 now I've come to see that the work you 
 are doing is the greatest work in the 
 world." And after a moment's pause he 
 added, " Sometimes I think it's the only 
 work there is in the world." 
 
 Because he was so great a man, Dr. 
 Bushnell's mind was wide open to the last. 
 He was ever growing and gaining ; as 
 ready to learn as to teach, to get as to 
 give. 
 
 My first bit of independent exegesis was 
 when I had had the stimulus and inspira- 
 tion of his grand teaching and of his kind 
 interest in me for a score of years. I had 
 been led to a careful study of the Third 
 Commandment, and had finally written on 
 the theme. Walking with Dr. Bushnell, I 
 told him of my conclusions on the subject, 
 and gave him the substance of the proofs 
 confirming my views. I emphasized the 
 
102 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 truth that to " take ... in vain " the name 
 of Jehovah as our God was not to speak or 
 write it profanely, but was to claim a right 
 to uplift or bear it without doing this in 
 sincerity and reverence. Dr. Bushnell lis- 
 tened, as always, with open ears and mind, 
 ever ready to rejoice in a fresh or enlarged 
 view of God's truth. As with enthusiasm 
 I emphasized the truth as I had arrived at 
 it, he responded sympathetically and with 
 heartiness, taking in the idea in all its 
 magnitude : 
 
 " I see, Trumbull, I see. So that com- 
 mandment is not against mere profanity, as 
 we ordinarily understand it, but it is against 
 hypocrisy, which is a great deal worse. Be- 
 ing insincere or hypocritical is a vast deal 
 more than merely saying words that we 
 ought not to." 
 
 As Dr. Bushnell said these words, we 
 came to the corner of Main and Asylum 
 Streets, in Hartford, where we must part, 
 he to go to his room, and I to mine. He 
 reached out his arm at its full sweep, grasp- 
 
Horace Bushnell 103 
 
 ing my hand, as we separated, and said with 
 emphasis, as he was always ready to where 
 any added light on God's truth was brought 
 to him : 
 
 "Trumbull, you've given me a great 
 truth, and I thank you." 
 
 Those were the last words that I ever 
 heard him speak ; but the influence and 
 the inspiration of this greatest of all my 
 teachers abides with me fresh and forceful 
 still. Not only was he ever teaching, but, 
 like all great teachers, his mind was ever 
 open to receive fresh truth from even the 
 least of his pupils. He not only had won- 
 derful power in teaching the great and the 
 small, but he had equally wonderful power 
 of learning from those of every grade. 
 What a man he was ! 
 
 HIS WAY OF SEEING AND SAYING THINGS 
 
 There was peculiar force in Bushnell's 
 already quoted remark about himself and 
 his way of seeing things, " I just look at 
 truth from another corner of the room." 
 
104 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 Bushnell could not use commonplaces, for 
 he neither thought nor spoke like common 
 men. There was a refreshing originality 
 in all that he said, and in his way of saying 
 it. Yet there was no striving after origi- 
 nality on his part ; he simply was original, 
 and all who were with him realized this. 
 
 When he sat with his brother clergymen 
 of different denominations in the Monday 
 morning Ministers' Meeting in Hartford, as 
 some topic of special interest was under 
 discussion, often a single sentence from 
 him would clear the mental atmosphere, 
 and at once give all a sense of the real 
 issue. On one occasion the spiritual con- 
 dition of childhood was under considera- 
 tion, and feeling waxed warm over 
 theological dogmas involved. Those who 
 felt that " regeneration " was essential to 
 salvation, and that a child must be of suffi- 
 cient age to experience the needed " change 
 of heart," had expressed their views in 
 terms that left no doubt as to the demands 
 of true " orthodoxy." When it came Dr. 
 
Horace Bushnell 105 
 
 Bushnell's turn, he simply said, with that 
 peculiar twang of his, as he threw back his 
 head: 
 
 " I don't see what right we've got to say- 
 that a child can't be born again before he's 
 born the first time." 
 
 All then realized what Bushnell thought 
 about it, and what they had thought — or 
 not thought. 
 
 At another time, the practical question 
 came up as to welcoming a special evan- 
 gelist in Hartford, with the co-operation 
 of the city pastors generally. Some had 
 favored this matter, and others had spoken 
 slightingly of " revivals " and their influence 
 in the community. Dr. Bushnell pithily 
 put the case when he said : 
 
 " However we may differ about the de- 
 sirableness of ' revivals,' we can certainly 
 agree that we all need reviving." 
 
 That was looking from another corner. 
 
 Speaking about the power of a preacher 
 as bringing God's message to men, he said 
 that many times a preacher stands in the 
 
106 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 way of the message he is set to bring, giv- 
 ing his hearers too much of himself, and 
 not letting God be heard. 
 
 " God wants his messenger to be, as it 
 were, an empty tube, for God to speak 
 through to his hearers." 
 
 Dr. Bushnell always gave advice in a 
 novel way, and in a way suited to the per- 
 son's peculiar need. It was " a prescrip- 
 tion, not a lecture on medicine." To a 
 young clergyman who was inclined to give 
 himself wholly to personal work for indi- 
 viduals, to the neglect of mental training, 
 he said : 
 
 " You need to take more interest in sub- 
 jects, and not be all the time absorbed in 
 persons." 
 
 Yet just about that time Dr. Bushnell said 
 to another, who seemed to lack personal 
 interest in his fellows, and to care for nothing 
 so much as what he counted great themes : 
 
 " You need to take more interest in per- 
 sons, and not to be all the time thinking 
 about subjects." 
 
Horace Bushnell 107 
 
 In giving a public charge to a young 
 pastor at his installation, he said : 
 
 " When you are studying, study ; when 
 you are recreating, recreate. Do one thing 
 at a time, and what you are doing do with 
 your might ; take hold sharp, and let go 
 sharp." 
 
 As to doubts, his word to that young 
 preacher was : 
 
 " Don't let your doubts trouble you too 
 much ; and don't feel that you've got to 
 resolve them all. Often the best thing 
 you can do with your doubts is to hang 
 them up to dry. Then, when a good time 
 comes, you can take them down again to 
 look at. In many cases you'll find that 
 somehow they've settled themselves ; they 
 are no longer doubts." 
 
 Although Dr. Bushnell's views or state- 
 ments of the work wrought by Jesus Christ 
 were at variance with those of many in his 
 day, no one who knew him could have 
 doubt about his personal trust in the Lord 
 Jesus Christ as his Saviour. " It is not the 
 
108 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 committing of one's thought," he said, " in 
 assent to any proposition, but the trusting 
 of one's being to a Being, there to be rested, 
 kept, guided, molded, governed, and pos- 
 sessed forever." A favorite expression of 
 his was : 
 
 " Faith always rests on a Person. Faith 
 is that act by which one person, a sinner, 
 commits himself to another Person, a Sav- 
 iour." 
 
 It was the same in little things as in 
 greater with Bushnell. He had his own 
 fresh way of ordinary comment on what 
 he saw or heard. He stopped me once at 
 the corner of Main Street and Central 
 Row, Hartford, and, pointing to the new 
 building of the Connecticut Mutual Life 
 Insurance Company, he said : 
 
 " I like that building better than the 
 Charter Oak Life building." 
 
 Just then a prominent citizen who was a 
 little finical came along, and the Doctor 
 said : 
 
 " I was telline Trumbull that I like that 
 
Horace Bushnell 109 
 
 Hartford Life building better than the 
 Charter Oak Life." 
 
 The sneering rejoinder was : 
 " Gingerbread, gingerbread, both of 
 them ! " 
 
 " Yes, but I say that this is better gin- 
 gerbread than that." 
 
 His judgment was according to what 
 the thing was, and not according to what 
 it might have been. He was keener to 
 see attractions than defects in persons or 
 things. At one time a person spoke sneer- 
 ingly of a clergyman with whom the per- 
 sonal element had exceptional weight, — 
 who was inclined to tell of his interviews 
 with others, and to emphasize the impor- 
 tance and worth of those of whom he 
 spoke. 
 
 "I don't like Dr. Blank," it was said; 
 " he's so egotistical." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Dr. Bushnell kindly, " Blank 
 isn't any more egotistical about himself 
 than he is about everybody else." 
 
 And that was a fair measure of the man, 
 
no My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 and a fine illustration of the spirit of good 
 Dr. Bushnell. 
 
 Dr. Joel Hawes was the patriarch of the 
 Hartford ministry. There was a quaint- 
 ness of appearance and deportment on his 
 part of which all felt the influence. One 
 of his little peculiarities was his manner of 
 walking with, or seemingly away from, 
 Mrs. Hawes, as they came to or from 
 church or any other place. He walked 
 off with long strides, and she followed 
 with short, quick steps, at a little distance 
 after him, as if hopelessly trying to over- 
 take him. When Dr. Hawes died, Mrs. 
 Hawes was too sick to attend his funeral, 
 and a few days later she died. The entire 
 Hartford community mourned their loss. 
 
 At the Ministers' Meeting, Dr. Bushnell 
 voiced the feelings of all when he said : 
 
 " Though we have many instructors in 
 Christ, yet have we not many fathers." 
 
 Then, paying a beautiful tribute to Dr. 
 Hawes as the patriarch of the Hartford 
 clergy, he pictured his lifetime helper in 
 
Horace Bushnell III 
 
 his ministerial work up to the very last, 
 with one of those strokes of genius, as he 
 
 said: 
 
 " She even followed him so closely in his 
 heavenward path that she seemed almost 
 to overtake him in his flight." 
 
 How Dr. Bushnell was himself looked 
 up to in love and reverence by the younger 
 ministers of his city and day, cannot be 
 better indicated than in the mention of his 
 last sermon, read before the Hartford Cen- 
 tral Association, as made by good Dr. 
 Parker in a historical sketch of that asso- 
 ciation. 
 
 " At a meeting in the South Church, one 
 of the last that Dr. Bushnell attended, he 
 began to fulfil an appointment by saying, 
 ♦Brethren, I am going to read what is 
 probably my last sermon,' and then an- 
 nounced his subject: 'Our Relations to 
 Christ in the Future Life.' We listened 
 with eager, tender attention. When he 
 finished there was a long silence. No one 
 
112 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 cared or dared to speak. At length the 
 Doctor said, ' Come, Burton, tell us what 
 you think of it' Dr. Burton hesitatingly- 
 said, ' Dr. Bushnell tells us that this is his 
 last sermon.' He got no farther, but bowed 
 his head and wept. And we all wept to- 
 gether. Then we knew how we loved 
 him, and how he loved us, and what an 
 irreparable loss his departure would be for 
 us. The dear old Doctor, calmest of all, 
 his deep eyes full of tears, his wan face 
 radiant, looked on as with heavenly grace 
 and benediction." 
 
 A WORLD-WIDE SOWER OF SEED-THOUGHTS 
 
 Horace Bushnell was unmistakably one 
 of the intellectual forces of the nineteenth 
 century. Like Coleridge and Maurice and 
 Carlyle and Emerson, he has left his im- 
 press on the thought of not only his coun- 
 trymen but his race. Like them also his 
 power was evidenced in the inspiring sug- 
 gestiveness of his utterances, rather than in 
 any formal system of thought or recognized 
 
Horace Bushnell 113 
 
 school of thinkers constructed or led by 
 him. Men have felt his influence who 
 know little about his personality. That 
 influence has indeed been most widely ex- 
 tended through the labors of men who 
 would freely acknowledge their intellectual 
 indebtedness to him, yet who are popularly 
 credited with being pioneers in lines of 
 thought where they followed him. 
 
 Years ago, I spent a Sunday in the 
 home of Dr. J. L. M. Curry in Richmond, 
 Virginia, the distinguished scholar and 
 preacher in the South, whose far-reaching 
 influence and power were well known and 
 felt in our country and abroad. As I sat 
 with him in his study, I noticed on his table 
 a volume of Bushnell's " Sermons for the 
 New Life." As I spoke of this book and 
 its author, my host laid his hand on the 
 volume, and said earnestly, " I have got 
 more sermons out of that book than out 
 of any other in the world except the Bible." 
 Then, as indicating the true nature of Dr. 
 Bushnell's influence, he added, " And yet I 
 
1 14 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 don't believe that Dr. Bushnell would 
 recognize one of those sermons as from 
 him. It's the marvelous suggestiveness 
 of his thought which gives his sermons 
 their chief value." 
 
 The fact that this eminent man was 
 counted at the very opposite pole from 
 Dr. Bushnell in religious views, in political 
 opinions, in theories of society, and in 
 methods of work, made this admission all 
 the more remarkable. At the same time 
 it was an illustration of the patent fact that 
 one who read Bushnell at all would have 
 his mind preternaturally quickened, whether 
 he agreed with him or disagreed. When 
 I told Dr. Bushnell of this incident, he re- 
 sponded pleasantly, " Well, that's the best 
 kind of a compliment. It's good to set 
 men at writing sermons that you wouldn't 
 think you had had anything to do with." 
 
 Some years later, when I was with Pro- 
 fessor Drummond at Northfield, at the time 
 he gave, at the Students' Conference, his 
 now famous address on " The Greatest 
 
Horace Bushnell 115 
 
 Thing in the World," I happened to men- 
 tion something that Dr. Bushnell said to 
 me on a subject just then under discussion. 
 At once Drummond turned to me with a 
 start, and said with intensity, " Did you 
 know Bushnell personally, Trumbull ? " — 
 as if he could hardly credit it. When I 
 told him that I lived near him for years, 
 and was very much with him, Drummond 
 drew his arm through mine, and turned 
 from the crowd about us toward the coun- 
 try road beyond, saying, " Come, let us 
 walk together, while you tell me about 
 Bushnell." 
 
 As we talked, he listened and questioned 
 by turns with deepest interest. " Bushnell 
 did so much for me," he said. " He was a 
 discovery, when I first read him. He 
 started me on lines of entirely new thought. 
 I shall always be grateful to him." One 
 might readily perceive, in the light of these 
 statements, that the very title of Dr. Bush- 
 nell's greatest work, " Nature and the 
 Supernatural as Constituting together the 
 
n6 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 One System of God," might even have 
 suggested the central thought of Drum- 
 mond's best known volume, " Natural Law 
 in the Spiritual World," even though the 
 two books are no more alike, nor in the 
 same line of thought, than were the ser- 
 mons of the southern divine and the ser- 
 mons of Bushnell which prompted to their 
 writing. 
 
 During all the later years of my life in 
 Hartford, I found that invariably when 
 an Englishman with whom I had corre- 
 sponded, or who brought a letter to me 
 from some acquaintance abroad, visited our 
 city, he was more desirous of seeing or 
 learning about Horace Bushnell than about 
 anything else for which the city was fa- 
 mous. The Charter Oak, the new State 
 House, and the old Puritan burial-ground, 
 were as nothing in comparison with the 
 living great thinker. I was prepared, there- 
 fore, to feel the force of the expression of 
 Dr. Reuen Thomas, when he, while still a 
 transatlantic clergyman, wrote that his 
 
Horace Bushnell 117 
 
 chief desire in the thought of visiting 
 America was that he could see " Niagara 
 and Horace Bushnell." Dr. Thomas after- 
 wards said, in explanation of this, " I came 
 to America from a country where it was 
 a very rare thing indeed to meet with a 
 minister of any standing among Presbyte- 
 rians, Congregationalists, and Baptists, who 
 was not thoroughly familiar with Bush- 
 nell's writings." " The tenth chapter of 
 Bushnell's ' Nature and the Supernatural,' 
 entitled, ' The Character of Jesus Forbids 
 his Possible Classification among Men,' did 
 more to prevent our theological students 
 and thinking laymen in England from 
 moving in the rationalistic direction than 
 any other volume or score of volumes." 
 
 A distinctive characteristic of Bushnell's 
 more notable sermons was that the very 
 text and title carried, in many an instance, 
 the main force of the sermon as a whole, so 
 that the body of the sermon did hardly 
 more than to enforce and apply the truth 
 of the announced theme. Often the text 
 
1 1 8 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 and title by themselves would suggest and 
 impress a lesson on a thoughtful mind, 
 even though the sermon itself were not 
 read. Thus, for example : " Take therefore 
 the talent from him " (Matt. 25 : 28), " The 
 Capacity for Religion Extirpated by Dis- 
 use ; " "I girded thee, though thou hast 
 not known me " (Isa. 45 : 5), " Every 
 Man's Life a Plan of God ; " " Give ye 
 them to eat" (Luke 9 : 13), "Duty not 
 Measured by our Own Ability; " " And we 
 have known and believed the love that 
 God hath to us " (1 John 4 : 16), " Loving 
 God is but Letting God Love Us ; " " Give 
 us this day our daily bread " (Matt. 6 : 11), 
 " Routine Observance Indispensable." The 
 announcement of such a text and topic vir- 
 tually carried with it a copyright. No one 
 afterwards could use these together with- 
 out being suspected of being a plagiarist, 
 or at least being supposed to use unfairly 
 the labors of another. 
 
 There was a remarkable illustration of 
 this in connection with his famous sermon 
 
Horace Bushnell 119 
 
 on "Unconscious Influence." That, in- 
 deed, was an idiosyncratic sermon. Its 
 very title first gave popular currency to 
 the phrase " unconscious influence," now 
 so familiar in our language. Its text, 
 "Then went in also that other disciple" 
 (John 20 : 8), gained a fresh meaning in 
 the sacred record from this application of 
 it. Its idea was : John had reached the 
 tomb of Jesus first, but he stopped at the 
 entrance hesitatingly. Peter, coming after, 
 pushed in with characteristic impulsive- 
 ness ; then John followed. Peter had no 
 purpose of leading John ; John had no 
 thought of being led by Peter. It was a 
 case of unconscious influence. Thus con- 
 stantly, in life, Peters are leading Johns, 
 Johns are following Peters, all uncon- 
 sciously. Our unconscious influence is 
 more potent than our conscious, and we 
 are more directly responsible for it, for it 
 grows out of our personal character. 
 
 This sermon was published in Bushnell's 
 " Sermons for the New Life," his first vol- 
 
120 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 ume of sermons, in 1858, and was soon 
 widely known throughout the country. 
 Some time after, Stopford Brooke's " Life 
 and Letters of Frederic W. Robertson " 
 appeared in England and America. In 
 that was a letter from Robertson, saying 
 that he intended to write a sermon on 
 " Unconscious Influence " from the text 
 "Then went in also that other disciple" 
 (John 20 : 8). The points of it suggested 
 by Robertson were quite in the line of 
 Bushnell's. American admirers of the lat- 
 ter pointed to this as a manifest case of 
 plagiarism. 
 
 Robertson's friends sneered at this idea, 
 and at first said that he probably never 
 heard of Bushnell. Bushnell's friends 
 pointed out a mention of Bushnell by 
 Robertson in a letter giving his estimate 
 of him. Thereupon Robertson's friends 
 retorted that Robertson's letter on this 
 subject was dated a dozen years before 
 Bushnell's volume of sermons was issued. 
 At this point, Dr. Bushnell, being appealed 
 
Horace Bushnell 121 
 
 to, said that he had preached that sermon 
 in England prior to its first mention by 
 Robertson, and that it was not only reported 
 in the daily press, but that, by request of its 
 English hearers, it was published there in 
 pamphlet form soon after it was delivered. 
 
 These facts were given me at the time 
 by Dr. Bushnell, and I ventured to ask 
 him, " Do you think, Doctor, that Robert- 
 son really intended to plagiarize ? " 
 
 " No, no," said the Doctor; " Robertson 
 was too much of a man for that. He 
 didn't need to do such a thing. There 
 was no temptation to him to appropriate 
 another man's ideas in that way." 
 
 " How, then, do you account for all 
 this ? " 
 
 " I suppose that Robertson read a report 
 of that sermon in the newspaper, one morn- 
 ing soon after I preached it, and he liked 
 the plan ; but then it practically went out 
 of his mind. Later its ideas came back 
 to him in such a way that he thought 
 he was originating them, when he was 
 
122 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 unconsciously recalling them from his 
 memory." 
 
 This incident certainly shows that men 
 of strong, fresh thought, who were them- 
 selves leaders of their fellows, as well as 
 less prominent men, were consciously or 
 unconsciously influenced by the thoughts 
 and personality of Horace Bushnell. 
 
 WINNING HIS CHILD HEARERS 
 
 Even though Dr. Bushnell could not be 
 said to use simple words as a preacher, he 
 could interest children in his preaching. 
 It may have been his earnestness and 
 sincerity in pressing the theme of his dis- 
 course, his desire to make himself under- 
 stood, coupled with his intense personality, 
 that gave him a hold on young hearers. 
 However that may be, he certainly did 
 attract children, in contrast with many 
 another preacher of his day. 
 
 I never heard him when I was a child, 
 but I have been told by those who as chil- 
 dren did hear him, on occasions when he 
 
Horace Bushnell 123 
 
 exchanged with their pastor, that he was 
 always welcomed by children as a preacher, 
 in contrast with their pastor, even though 
 he made no attempt to address himself 
 directly to children. This fact as a fact is 
 to be considered in an estimate of the man, 
 however it is to be accounted for. 
 
 An interesting incident in this line was 
 given me but recently as a reminiscence of 
 her childhood by Mrs. Whitaker, the wife 
 of the honored Bishop of Pennsylvania. 
 As a child her home was in New Haven, 
 Connecticut, where she attended one of the 
 Congregational churches of the city. She 
 did not, as a child, particularly enjoy 
 church-going, nor did she think of such a 
 thing as understanding, or being interested 
 in, her pastor's preaching. She and a little 
 brother usually occupied themselves dur- 
 ing sermon time in other ways than listen- 
 ing to their pastor. 
 
 When she was about five years old she 
 went to Hartford, in a stage-coach, with 
 her mother, on a visit to relatives. On 
 
124 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 Sunday they attended the North Congre- 
 gational Church, where Dr. Bushnell was 
 pastor. He at once attracted her attention 
 and held it through his sermon. It was a 
 new experience for her. She had never 
 before been interested in a sermon, but 
 now she listened with interest. 
 
 The sermon was on obedience. As Dr. 
 Bushnell explained obedience, and showed 
 its duty, she thought to herself, "Well, if 
 that is obedience, I ought to be obedient." 
 She was quiet through the sermon, and 
 thoughtful about it afterwards. It gave 
 her something to think of permanently. 
 
 When the family returned to their home, 
 her aunt said, in her hearing, to her mother, 
 that her little daughter was a remarkably 
 well behaved child. The mother said that 
 she was not always so. At this the 
 daughter thought to herself that if she 
 could always hear such preaching as that 
 she would always be ready to listen to the 
 preacher. 
 
 Her experience with Dr. Bushnell helped 
 
Horace Bushnell 125 
 
 her when she became a teacher of children. 
 She had learned that a child is always glad 
 to be helped with a bright, fresh thought, 
 and so she tried to help children in that 
 way. She has never found a child who 
 was not ready to be thus helped. 
 
 And this was only another illustration 
 of Dr. Bushnell's power over great and 
 small, because he was what he was, with 
 his own peculiar personality. 
 
WHY GOD GAVE ME THESE FOUR 
 RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 
 
 How was it that I had just these four 
 religious teachers at the time when I most 
 needed their teaching, and when they alone 
 could give what would most help me for my 
 life-work in God's service ? It was not a 
 matter of my choice. I had no part in the 
 selection of any one of them ; yet no one 
 of them could have been spared as a teacher 
 co-working with the others, and as essen- 
 tial to the development of the young pupil. 
 Did it just happen so ? Was there no Pur- 
 pose back of it, to be recognized and to be 
 grateful for? 
 
 I have always felt, and I still feel, that 
 this record is an illustration of the precious 
 truth brought out by Dr. Bushnell in his 
 great sermon, " Every Man's Life a Plan 
 of God." God in his infinite love, and in 
 his infinite goodness, chose those four 
 teachers for me, each one in his own place, 
 126 
 
Why God Gave Me These Teachers 127 
 
 and doing his own work as no other could 
 have done it, and all four working together. 
 Why this was, I do not understand and 
 cannot explain ; but that it was, I do not 
 doubt any more than that God has given 
 me life, and ministers to me in life. 
 
 Of the goodness of God in putting me 
 under those teachers, and granting me the 
 guidance and inspiration of their spirit and 
 words and work, I have no doubt or ques- 
 tion. Of my duty to improve and to be 
 grateful for these incentives to and help in 
 God's service, in behalf of those whom God 
 loves, I have no more doubt or question. 
 For all this good made possible let God's 
 Name be praised ! 
 
 For whatever of good has resulted to 
 any in consequence of this, I am indeed 
 grateful. That I have been no more faith- 
 ful and efficient, in view of my rare oppor- 
 tunities and teachers, is my shortcoming 
 and failure. What a God is ours ! What 
 imperfect instruments he makes use of and 
 has loving patience with ! And this is one 
 
128 My Four Religious Teachers 
 
 of the most important lessons that I 
 learned from these my four early reli- 
 gious teachers. 
 
Princeton Theological Seminary-Spe. 
 
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