Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

the saw-mill, supported by slant legs driven into and a proper distance through auger holes, and planed smooth on the top by the rather tardy process of friction. But the spelling went on bravely, and we ciphered away again and again, always till we got through "loss and gain." The more advanced of us, too, made light work of Lindley Murray, and went on to the pars. ing, finally, of extracts from Shakspeare and Milton, till some of us began to think we had mastered their tough sentences in a more consequential sense than was exactly true. O, I remember (about the remotest thing I can remember) that low seat, too high, nevertheless, to allow the feet to touch the floor, and that friendly teacher who had the address to start a fresh feeling of enthusiasm and awaken the first sense of power. He is living still, and whenever I think of him, he rises up to me in the far background of memory, as bright as if he had worn the seven stars in his hair."

Still farther on, he says:

"I remember being despatched, when a lad, one Saturday afternoon, in the winter, to bring home a few bushels of apples engaged of a farmer a mile distant; but the careful, exact man looked first at the clock, then out the window at the sun, and turning to me said, 'I cannot measure out the apples in time for you to get home before sundown, you must come again Monday;' then how I went home venting my boyish impatience in words not exactly respectful, assisted by the sunlight playing still upon the eastern hills, and got for my comfort a very unaccountably small amount of specially silent sympathy."

In 1833 Dr. Bushnell, we have said, was ordained over the North church, in Hartford. Twenty years afterward-last May-he preached a "commemorative discourse," in which he alluded, in the following language, to his first visit to said church:

"I received a letter in February, 1833, inviting me to come and preach, for a time, to this congregation, of which I knew nothing save that you had recently parted with your pastor. I arrived here late in the afternoon, in a furious snow storm, after floundering all day in the heavy drifts the storm was raising among the hills between here and Litchfield. I went, as invited, directly to the house of the chairman of the committee; but I had scarcely warmed me, and not at all relieved the hunger of my fast, when he came in and told me that arrangements had been made for me with one of the fathers of the church, and immediately sent me off with my baggage to the quarters assigned. Of course I had no complaint to make, though the fire seemed very inviting and the house attractive; but when I came to know the hospitality of my friend, as I had abundant opportunity of knowing it afterward, it became somewhat of a mystery to me that I should have been despatched in this rather summary fashion. But it came out three or four years after, that as there were two parties strongly marked in the church, an old and new school party, as related to the New Haven controversy, the committee had made up their mind, very prudently, that it would not do for me to stay even for an hour with the new school brother of the committee; and for this reason they had made interest with the elder brother

referred to, because he was a man of the school simply of Jesus Christ. And here, under cover of his good hospitality, which I hope he has never found reason to regret-extended by him and received by me in equal simplicity-I was put in hospital and kept away from the infected districts, preparatory to a settlement in the North church, of Hartford. I mention this fact to show the very delicate condition prepared for the young pastor, who is to be thus daintily inserted between an acid and an alkali, having it for his task both to keep them apart and to save himself from being bitten of one or devoured by the other."

No pastor was ever more loved and respected than is Dr. Bushnell by his church and congregation. For twenty years he has occupied the pulpit of the old North church, and not a whisper of his dismission ever yet was heard. We do not mean that he has never raised a storm in the church by his faithful preaching, but his hearers have loved him so well that they could not remain angry with him. When he came out so fearlessly in condemnation of the corrupt politics of the time, an angry agitation for a little while surrounded him, but it soon passed away. In his "Discourse," preached May, 1853, he speaks thus pithily of it:

"I preached a fast-day sermon, showing that "politics are under the law of God." Wise or unwise in the manner, it was greatly offensive to some, but the offense was soon forgiven; in consideration, I suppose, of the fact that, apart from the

manner, the doctrine was abundantly wanted, and even sol emnly true."

We will not attempt to sketch the history of the late agitation in reference to his "God in Christ," for it is too near the present, even had we the space, to justify such a history. Dr. Bushnell first preached a sermon before the Concio ad Clerum, at New Haven. He was selected by the district association for that purpose, and the general association, as is its usual custom, selected his subject. The sermon thus preached constitutes the first part of "God in Christ.” He was next invited to deliver an address before some society at Cambridge, which he accepted, and that sermon constitutes the second part of his celebrated book. He next delivered an address before the theological students at Andover, at their request, and that constitutes the third and last part of his book. These three parts, together with an introductory essay upon language, make up the book, which has created such an agitation among the churches, and which has been republished and sold extensively in England. He was charged with heresy, and the association to which he belonged instituted an inquiry into the truth of the charge, and after examination voted seventeen to three, that while his peculiar views were not accepted by that body, yet they saw no such heresy as would warrant further proceedings. It is claimed by his

accusers, that he tramples upon the orthodox doctrines in reference to the trinity, the person of Christ, and the atonement. In the sermon from which we have made quotations, he says:

"It is very true that I have presented some explanations of three important doctrines, the trinity, the person of Christ, and atonement, which differ in their shade from the explanations given by my brethren. Are we therefore to exclude each other? Still we can preach a trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, three persons, in a hearty love of trinity itself, and regarding it as a conception of God without which he were a being practically distant from us. And if we should happen to preach three persons meaning something a little different by the word person, just as all the wisest teachers of the ages before us have consented in the right to do, might we not have good cause to say that in effect we agree?

"As regards the divinity of Christ, we have happily no appearance of controversy. And if we do not conceive the philosophy of his person just alike, let it be enough that we can preach him as a person, Son of God and Son of Man, tempted in all points as we are, without sin, one with us in the line of Adam, born into the race, the child of a virgin, conceived by the Holy Ghost, grown up to be a perfect, the only perfect man, God manifest in the flesh.

"As regards the work or sacrifice of Christ, we can agree in showing that he lives a suffering life, dies a suffering death; that by his life and death he so compensates the dishonored law and fortifies the divine justice that pardon is dispensed, not

« AnteriorContinuar »