IV MINISTRY FROM 1833 TO 1845
" It is the tendency of some theorists at present to put Jesus and his life into the background; to imagine that we can have a religion which will continuously move the world of men with-out a human master, whose life not only kindles human emotion round human life, but also fills the aspirations of our soul with the belief that they have been accomplished by one of ourselves, in humanity. There are those who think that the vast conception of the Father is enough for life without the conception of a human life in which all that the Father conceived for man was realized on earth to claim our love. I do not believe it. Were it so, God himself would have thought so. But He did not. When man was educated by God to the point where he could see greater truths, God gave the world Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Man, that we might know what love was in human-ity; and might love Him for that love, from which neither death nor life shall part us. Thus all that men feel for divinity in God the Father was, in the religious life, doubled by all that men feel for humanity. Take Jesus, then, to your heart. Love of him is necessary for our religion, if it is to have a full power of redemption among men. It is needed to give our causes movement, our ideas personality, our life tenderness, our human soul its full expansion in love over all the children of God." - STOP-FORD A. BROOKE, The Gospel of Joy, p. 95.
IT was in December, 1883, that Bushnell took possession oŁ a house which had been built during the summer from his own plans. It is described as "a simple, square, two-story building, with small green yard, graced by a noble oak in the rear." In selecting the lot, he had provided for two things, a garden, and an open view of the country ending in distant hills. Each was a necessity to him, the manifold life of growing things, and a distant horizon. Thrifty habits and a practical talent that rose almost to genius so swelled his moderate stipend that it furnished the means for a life of comfort and refinement. From be-ginning to end he avoided debt, as in itself poor economy and bad morality; he would have resented the imputation of it more quickly than that of heresy. There was an ethical cleanness in the man in all things that played back and forth between his life and his thought, lending reality to each.
We have but scant records of the first four or five years of his ministry. His first published sermon was under the title, "The Crisis of the Church." The manuscript still exists, labeled
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"firstborn child," intimating that others might follow. The occasion of the sermon was the mobbing of Garrison in the streets of Boston. Its chief thought was that Protestantism in religion produces republicanism in government; that the principal dangers to the country were "slavery, infidelity, Romanism, and the current of our political tendencies." He clearly saw the inflammable nature of slavery, and the probability that it might at "any hour explode the foundations of the Republic." The cast of the sermon is large, and, if mistaken in some respects, it measured with great accuracy the political dangers. It was not an easy subject on which to preach at that time, in many pulpits it was tabooed; churches were divided, and the intolerance of the parties toward each other was intense. Bushnell was quite ready for criticism, but he escaped it by a high flight among the principles of his subject. During this period he began to produce those sermons, which are among the clearest signs of his greatness both as a preacher and a theologian. In the first year of his ministry he wrote a sermon on "Duty not Measured by our own Ability" that would have sustained his reputation twenty years later. The subject was a firebrand in the pulpits about him, and it is easy to imagine how the congregation anxiously settled themselves in their pews and waited to hear on which side of the general controversy the young pastor would put himself in his discussion of the "important principle, that
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men are often, and properly, put under obligation to do that for which they have, in themselves, no present ability." But neither side heard what it expected. Old School and New School were ignored, or gently set aside to make room for a discussion that had nothing to do with their differences except to supersede or rather to absorb them in a more comprehensive view of the subject. Nothing was said of natural ability, or moral ability, or gracious ability, except that " they raise a false issue which can never be settled." To thus dismiss a controversy, which had raged since Edwards, and was now embodied in the neighboring divinity schools, would have been regarded as a jest if his treatment of it had not been so serious. Instead of sinking himself and his hearers in "the abysmal depths of theology," he carried them into the world of human life and Christian experience, where all was so much a matter of fact that there was small room for question. Arminius and Edwards, Taylor and Tyler, would have listened without dissent, bating a phrase or two, - and for the time would have forgotten their differences; or possibly, as often happens with contestants when a greater truth is forced upon them, they might have said, "We always thought so." For, in truth, Bushnell thus early was "passing into the vein of comprehensiveness," of which he afterward spoke, a phrase that defines better than any other the method and spirit of the man. His own words in a sermon preached on the
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twentieth anniversary of his ordination describe the theological situation and his relation to it: -
"I was just then passing into the vein of comprehensiveness, questioning whether all parties were not in reality standing for some one side or article of the truth; prepared in that manner to be at once independent of your two parties and the more cordial to both, that I was beginning to hold, under a different resolution of the subjects, all that both parties were contending for. My position among you kept me always in living con-tact with the opposite poles to be comprehended, and assisted me, by an external pressure, in realizing more and more distinctly what I was faintly conceiving or trying to elaborate within; till, finally, my question became a truth experimentally proved, and I rested in the conviction that the comprehensive method is, in general, a possible, and, so far, the only Christian method of adjusting theological differences. . . .
"Accordingly, the effect of my preaching never was to overthrow one school and set up the other; neither was it to find a position of neutrality midway between them; but, as far as theology is concerned, it was to comprehend, if possible, the truth contended for in both; in which I had, of course, abundant practice in the subtleties of speculative language, but had the Scriptures always with me, bolting out their free, incautious oppositions, regardless of all subtleties."
He was unlike most preachers who represent
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transitions. He did not begin on the level of those about him, but started out with a habit of thought and a set of principles, which separated him from his brethren even more than he knew. He could no more be classed with them than "Aids to Reflection" could be classed with Dwight's "Theology." There were no breaks in his ministry, as in the case of Newman and Channing and Robertson; his revolt came prior to his settlement, and was so thorough both on the destructive and constructive side that he began his career without need of any radical change either in theology or method. His first volume - "Sermons for the Few Life" - covers a quarter of a century, but so far as style, thought, and doctrine go, it would be difficult to assign a date to any one of them. That on "Living to God in Small Things" was preached in the fifth year of his ministry, and it might have been preached in the last, for he produced none more mature and effective. That on "Every Man's Life a Plan of God" - an early sermon-made an impression as deep and wide as any preached in the country, with two or three exceptions. Not many years ago the New York "Tribune" spoke of this sermon as one of the three greatest ever preached, and named as the other two Canon Mozley's on the "Reversal of Human Judgments" and Bishop Phillips Brooks' "Gold and the Calf." Without containing a controversial word, it swept away the dismal thoughts engendered by a perverted
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doctrine of decrees, and brought God down into the lives of men in such a way as to make them feel that instead of being the objects of sovereign election, they were co-workers with God in his eternal plans. It had all of Old School and New School that was of value, but without anything to justify either as they then existed.
It was in 1835 - only two years after his settlement- that he began that series of papers which involved him in question and suspicion. The first was an article in the "Christian Spectator" on "Revivals of Religion," which was incorporated eleven years later into "Christian Nurture," - a book which had its genesis and its raison deter in this essay. Fuller mention of it will be made in the next chapter. In 1837 he began to be taught in the school of domestic sorrow. An infant daughter died, and the severe illness of an older child kept him long in the region of suffering and death. These experiences, and heavier ones that came later, took full possession of him, but they bore fruit in his thought, and formed the material out of which he constructed what might seem to be the mere product of speculation. All his greater contentions had for their basis some personal experience.
In the spring of 1839 a trouble of the throat, already felt, began to show itself more decidedly, and from that time on his life was overshadowed by disease. It was, however, long before he could be called an invalid, and still longer before he
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relaxed in his work, but the fatal mark was on him. He spent July in Saratoga, and with benefit, if we may judge by his work in September. He had been engaged to deliver an address in Andover, but a mistake of a week in the date so shortened his time for preparation that he had but one day for it. He wrote through one day, took the stage at sundown, rode all night to Worcester, and the next day to Andover, and gave his address in the afternoon. It was not only an achievement in physical vigor, but a turning point in his career as a theologian. The hastily prepared address had been a subject of thought since college days, and contained the germ, which was afterward fully developed in his theory of language. In discussing the use of figures and methods of interpretation and their application to Biblical statements bearing on the Trinity, he entered the world of suspicion and accusation from which he never wholly emerged. He knew that he was taking the first step, and that others must follow. It induced a state of mind which, coupled with impaired health, is best indicated by a letter to his wife written a few days later: -
"I cannot but feel a degree of anxiety about myself in regard to my future health, which is constantly acting on my love to my family. This disease hangs about me, and I am afraid is get-ting a deeper hold of me. Not that I seem to have been specially injured by my late task in the Andover matter, for I was borne through it quite
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above my expectations; but the mischief clings to me, and will not let me go. In the hasty scratch I sent you in the turmoil of the anniversary, I told you generally how I succeeded. ... I said some things very cautiously in regard to the Trinity, which, perhaps, will make a little breeze. If so, I shall not feel much upset. I have been thinking lately that I must write and publish the whole truth on these subjects as God has permitted me to see it. I have withheld till my views are well matured; and to withhold longer, I fear, is a want of that moral courage which animated Luther and every other man who has been a true soldier of Christ. Then, thinking of such men lately, I have often had self-reproaches, which were very unpleasant. Has my dear wife any of Luther's spirit? Will she enter into the hazards and reproaches, and perhaps privations, which lie in this encounter for the truth? Strange, you will say, that I should be talking, in the same letter, of doing more for my family and of endangering all their worldly comforts. But I am under just these contending impulses. However, in what way shall I do more for my family than to connect their history with the truth of Christ? How more, for example, for our dear boy than to give him the name and example of a father who left him his fortunes, rough and hard as they were, in the field of truth? But will not God take care of us? These are thoughts which have been urging me for the last few months, or since the shock that
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has befallen my health. And I have sometimes felt afraid that I should be obliged to leave the world before my work was done. Shall we go forward?"
The criticism that began to be heard outside showed itself at last in his parish, though it never reached the point of accusation. A letter which time has spared reveals a feature of the churches on their theological side, which still survives, though in lessening degree. It was an arraignment by a parishioner of his pastor for his position on profound questions of theology, such as regeneration and original sin, which he debated as a professional, and with the emphasis of having held his own views for thirty years. It did not occur to him, nor apparently to any one else at that time, to inquire if the views of his pastor might not be true; his only concern was lest he had departed from the accepted standards of belief. Such a state of mind, whenever it prevails, shows a decadence of faith and a readiness to stone the prophets. Bushnell answered the letter in a patient spirit, and with explanation except on the point of total depravity, a question on which he would not prematurely cast away the pearls he had been gathering. The arraignment came to no issue in the church. Meanwhile he went on his way not much troubled and wholly unmoved by criticism, from whatever source it came, bearing witness to the truth as he saw it.
In 1840 he preached a notable sermon on "American Politics," in which he protested against
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giving the suffrage to women on the ground that it would destroy the peace and unity of domestic life, - "the grand sacrament of creation." In the discussion of this subject, as of all others, he struck straight for the natural principle underlying it, and found it in the family. He spoke also of the spoils system in a way that classes him with the civil service reformers of today.
In the same year he was asked to become the president of Middlebury College, in Vermont. The Coleridgian atmosphere of the institution was congenial to him, but after a journey thither and mature deliberation, he declined the invitation. The degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon him about this time by Wesleyan University. He cared little for the honor, but accepted it rather than seem to reject the courtesy of a young and neighboring college. He afterward received the same degree from Harvard, and that of Doctor of Laws from Yale. The years from this time to 1845 were crowded with various forms of work. He seemed to celebrate the full development of his powers by reaching out in all directions for commensurate fields. His biographer says "there were years all through his life when a high tide seemed to set into every mental inlet." It could at no time be said of him that he neglected his parish, but his conception of it was not territorial. If he preached politics, his sermons became ethical treatises on the nature and function of government. He held to the Puritan conception of the State as
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moral, and did not hesitate to use his pulpit to en-force this conception, and to denounce any departure from it. The anti-slavery movement was so distinctly Christian that Bushnell would not keep it out of his pulpit, even if his sermons were regarded and used as campaign documents, as happened with a Fast Day discourse preached in 1844 during the presidential campaign when Henry Clay was the candidate. Bushnell denounced the Missouri Compromise, of which Clay was the author, as "bringing moral desolation on the fairest portion of the globe." When criticized, he claimed that he was not assailing Mr. Clay as a candidate, but as the leader in "a national sin." In 1842 we find him going about on lecturing tours, though he was rather too serious and weighty a speaker to win popular applause. In August he delivered a Commencement address at Hudson, Ohio, before Western Reserve College, the Yale of the West, on the "Stability of Change." In this year a great sorrow befell him in the death of his only son, a child of four years and of great promise. His disappointment and grief were keen, but the event drove him farther into the world oŁ the spirit, and served to fit him for receiving those deeper revelations of Christian life which are seen in his later work. It also gave reality to his thoughts of the heavenly world, "Have not I a harper there?" he said in an evening sermon soon after his loss.
In 1843 he became interested in the Protestant
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League, which later was merged in the Christian Alliance, a movement antagonistic to the Church of Rome. During the next three years he devoted much tune and strength to this object, wasting his forces on questions, which time and Providence are settling in ways far different from those he contemplated. But his interest was a Puritan inheritance, and the questions were such as easily enlisted one whose religion and patriotism were almost interchangeable terms. Perhaps nothing that came from his pen is to be more lightly passed over than his letter to the Pope, written while in London in 1846. Fortunately for Bushnell and his future career, the Christian Alliance merged itself in the Evangelical Alliance, which, in lowering its name, logically dropped into a doctrinal narrowness that led him to give it up. When the new society began its campaign for church unity on the basis of an exclusive doctrinal creed, he withdrew, leaving behind him a protest full of wise words, equally appropriate to later proposals for union on ecclesiastical terms proceeding from one party.
"Unity in itself, especially unity conditioned upon a common catechism, is not an object. Neither is it a thing to be compassed by any direct effort. It is an incident, not a principle, or a good by itself. It has its value in the valuable activities it unites, and the conjoining of beneficent powers. The more we seek it, the less we have it. Besides, most of what we call division in the Church of God is only distribution. The distribution of the
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church, like that of human society, is one of the great problems of divine wisdom; and the more we study it, observing how the personal tastes, wants, and capacities of men in all ages and climes are provided for, and how the parts are made to act as stimulants to each other, the less disposed shall we be to think that the work of distribution is done badly. It is not the same thing with Christian unity, either to be huddled into a small enclosure, or to show the world how small a plat of ground we can all stand on. Unity is a grace broad as the universe, embracing in its ample bosom all right minds that live, and outreaching the narrow contents of all words and dogmas." 1
In 1843 Bushnell gave an address before the Alumni of Yale College on "The Growth of Law," to which reference will be made farther on. It is named here in order to call attention to the criticism, which increasingly followed him whenever he spoke. An anonymous pamphlet by "Catholicus" discovered in the address "Rationalistic, Socinian, and infidel tendencies." Such attacks were not lost, and served as fuel for the fires soon to be kindled. "The Puritan" (Orthodox) indorsed the pamphlet, and "The Christian Register" (Unitarian) stretched out its hand for possible fellowship. In the same year he attended the Bunker Hill celebration, walking arm in arm with George Ripley of Brook Farm, and heard Webster, whom he always admired, deliver one of his famous orations. More
1 New Englander, January, 1847.
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important was an evening spent with Rev. Theodore Parker, when they "went over the whole ground of theology together." It is safe to say that neither appealed to the "standards." Five publications, the care of his pulpit, and the excitement of a presidential campaign rendered the year 1844 a hard one, and paved the way for a thorough breakdown in health the following year. His more than ordinary strength yielded under great and exhausting labors, and in February he was prostrated by a fever, which left him with weakened lungs. His salary was increased by his sym-pathetic parish, and in April he went to North Carolina, where rest and the "warmer sun and sweeter climate" restored him in a measure, but not sufficiently for his duties. A year in Europe was determined on, and he sailed by the ship Victoria in July, 1845.